(Contains information up to chapter 92, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

Assignment: Owner & Captain of the MV Demeter
Species: human, enhanced
Actual Age: 82
Apparent Age: 18
Height: 5'10" (178cm)
Weight: 135lbs (62kg)
General Description:
dark green eyes, short messy dark fiery red hair. tall, strong, athletic, "amazonian", attractive, quiet, taciturn, serious, but can have a playful mischievous streak. slow to open up to strangers. served 24 years in the Imperium Marine Corps, including 8 years in special-ops. currently in a relationship with Amanda Voss and Sarah Holloway.

brief bio:
Rebecca hasn't talked much about her past yet, but it's known she was originally from the Imperium & she was a career soldier in the marines. She achieved a rank of Chief Warrant Officer. During her time in the corps she fell in love with fellow marine Ellery Talwyn. She & El survived the loss of the ISS Cumberland together, then fled the Imperium & served together under Gabe Piper on the Demeter. the 29 years prior to the start of the story Rebecca's life was difficult & marked by loss, of El & Gabe. Only after she met & saved Amanda & Sarah has she started to open up again. 

(Contains information up to chapter 106, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

Main Protagonist of our story!

Assignment: Medic, Co-Pilot, Navigator, ship's mascot of the MV Demeter
Species: human-fox hybrid, enhanced
Actual Age: 25
Apparent Age: 18
Height: 5'0" (152cm)
Weight: 100lbs (45kg)
General Description:
amber eyes with vertical slit pupils, shoulder-length auburn hair, orange-red fuzzy fox-ears tipped with black fur, very large, very floofy orange-red fox tail tipped with white fur. petite, busty, cute, shy, eager, clever. freckles on cheeks, shoulders, bust. former medic of ISS Hammersmith. currently in a relationship with Sarah Holloway and Rebecca Piper.

brief bio: 
Amanda was born to a poor farming family on Kaitor-7, an Imperium agricultural world. the 4th of 6 children, she knew from an early age she was trans but her home-world does not have a good medical or social support system. She joined the Navy at age 20 on an educational enlistment, so that she could learn to be a doctor and save up money to pay for her transition after her 6-year enlistment ended.

(Contains information up to chapter 90, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

Assignment: Mechanic / Engineer of the MV Demeter
Species: human, enhanced
Actual Age: 58
Apparent Age: 18
Height: 5'5" (165cm)
Weight: 115lbs (52kg)
General Description:
bright blue eyes, long straight blonde hair. slim, attractive, witty, strong sense of humour. mischievous, likes to tease & flirt. former chief engineer of ISS Hammersmith. currently in a relationship with Amanda Voss and Rebecca Piper.

brief bio:
Sarah was born on an Imperium Core world. She has a life-long love of ships and engines and joined the Navy as a career sailor in the engineering corps. She was briefly married in her 20s and has one daughter named Katia. Her wife divorced her when realizing that ships would always be Sarah's #1 love. Sarah has survived 2 shipwrecks, the ISS Willesden in her youth and the ISS Hammersmith at the start of this story. 

(Contains information up to chapter 90, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

Also known as: Jenny
Assignment: Computer / Technical Liason of the MV Demeter
Species: Re/Gen capsule's Artificial Intelligence
Android Chassis: Synthetic Companion model Platinum-SX 6900
Actual Age: unknown
Apparent Age: 19
Height: 5'6" (168cm)

General Description:
bright green eyes, off-the-shoulder jet black hair with a coloured (white, purple, or pink) fringe. friendly, intelligent, caring, soft-spoken, reserved demeanor.

brief bio:
very little is known about Jenny. she first came online when her former ship was setting out on a mission. her former ship was a Valkyrie class warship known as the Kára. 

(Contains information up to chapter 20, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

The Merchant Vessel Demeter is considered an old ugly flying antique.

Originally designed as an interstallar tugboat, it's also classed as a light freighter and a salvar (a craft designed for salvage work).

About 140 years old at the start of the story. A tough rugged ship that doesn't look like much but has guts & heart.

Can house up to six people in four cabins. (two officers cabins, two double-bunk crew cabins).
Has two craft (one shuttle, one fighter).
Capable of atmospheric operation & landing.
Capable of Jump-1 (limited to Jump-0 when towing another craft.)

(Contains information up to chapter 2, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

The Imperium StarShip Hammersmith was destroyed at the start of the story.

It was a frigate in the Imperium Navy.

Undisclosed number of officers & crew aboard.

(Contains information up to chapter 47, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

The Imperium StarShip Kennington is a frigate in the Imperium Navy. 

It's a Lambeth class frigate, and sister ship to the ISS Hammersmith.

Primary weapon is a large bore spinal-mount linear accellerator. Secondary weapons are an undisclosed number of missile launchers and twin pulse-laser turrets.

Capable of up to Jump-2 for prolonged distances. 

Undisclosed number of officers, crew, and marines on board.

Has one small craft, a ship's boat.

(Contains information up to chapter 90, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

18 year old daughter of Mel Lancaster. 

Inherited the Freeborn Shipyard on Rolandan-2 after Mel passed away.

She doesn't run the yard (that's handled by the new CEO Helen Ortega), but she has started working there as a junior mechanic.

Friends with Rebecca, Amanda, Sarah, Jenny.

(Contains information up to chapter 90, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

Former owner & boss of the Freeborn Shipyard on Rolandan-2

Only person in the sector who was a long-term friend of Rebecca Piper. 

Mel worked with Piper and the Demeter for at least 30 years, since he was a young man & his dad was boss of the shipyard.

Passed away towards the end of book-3, after it was revealed he'd been suffering from a rare illness for some time. 

Left the shipyard to his estraged daughter Tamsin.

(Contains information up to chapter 27, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

Piper's mystery customer. Small-time two-bit crook on Ecclestone's World. 

Amanda doesn't like him, finds him unpleasant, uncouth, suspicious, untrustworthy.

(Contains information up to chapter 36, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

Previous owner & captain of the MV Demeter, Rebecca's 'adoptive' father. Passed away some six years before the start of our story.

Gabriel 'Gabe' Piper originated from somewhere in the Imperium, but nothing difinitive is known about him beyond that. He rescued Rebecca & Ellery after the wreck of the ISS Cumberland, while he was already en route to the Frontier. He acted as captain, friend, and drinking-buddy to Rebecca and El.

Took Rebecca & Ellery on as crew. After El was lost & Rebecca went through the Re/Gen process Gabe started to see himself as more of a father-figure to Rebecca.

After Gabe died he left the Demeter to Rebecca.

(spoilers from chapter 90 onwards)

(Contains information up to chapter 36. May be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far.)

Also known as El

Died ~29 years before the story began. 

El served in the Imperium Marine Corps with Piper, she survived the wreck of the ISS Cumberland with Piper & was subsequently rescued by Gabe & the Demeter. Spent ~10 years as crew of the Demeter alongside Piper, until she was killed in the same deal-gone-wrong that almost killed Piper.

Her death played a big role in Rebecca Piper's backstory.

(spoilers from chapter 103 onwards)

(None of this is terribly relevant to the story until book 3, but its presented for anyone who's curious.)

Seconds, minutes, hours, and days all match what we're used to IRL.

One Imperium standard year is 360 days long.

Collections of years are grouped into 'Cycles', but there's no fixed number of years in a cycle. A new cycle is declared by the senate when something big or significant happens.

Calendar entries are given as C-YYY-DDD where C = cycle, YYY = year, DDD = day.

Eg. the story begins on 5-488-277 when Lt. Voss joins the crew if the ISS Hammersmith. The Hammersmith is wrecked 288 days later on 5-489-205.

By chapter 30 the date is 5-489-224, and chapter 31 takes place on 5-489-225.

Communications in this story are either voice or data. We've yet to see any real-time 2-way video calls.

Local comms are basically the equivalent of a 2-way radio and text-messaging. There's also the equivalent of wireless internet, though it's only available on worlds / in port.

Long distance communications are referred to as an FTL (faster than light) and is not real-time.

 FTL messages are like emails, they can contain text, voice, or video data. They aren't instant, it takes time for FTL messages to get to their destination, but the actual speed a which they travel is not given in the story.

(Current as of chapter 36, may contain spoilers if you haven't read that far.)

The Re/Gen capsule aka Healing Pod is a large mysterious black tube in the Demeter's secondary hold. Its functions are controlled by the built-in AI known as Jenny. 

The Re/Gen process is meant to Regenerate and Rejuvenate users, or in other words it restores users' bodies to a near-perfect condition. As a byproduct it can heal "damn near anything". Another byproduct is bodies are restored to the age they were originally scanned, i.e. eighteen years old.

The process employs a 'nano-swarm' to deconstruct a patient's body. The disassembled body becomes the raw material from which a new body is built, following the templates in Jenny's database.

The technology is far advanced from anything seen in the Imperium or the Gorath Sector. Its origins are unknown and so far Jenny is the only one of her kind in the story. It is known that she was salvaged off a ship that was destroyed in a war which took place "centuries ago".

Jenny's Re/Gen capsule is a 'field spec' unit which was originally designed to be used on a warship. It was pre-loaded with 37 body files which belonged to the members of her original crew. All the body files of her previous crew have been modified to increase strength, stamina, energy, healing, and disease resistance. 

As a 'field spec' unit Jenny lacks the hardware and software to perform an 'intake scan' which means she's limited to working with her existing files. As a further complication, her previous ship had an all-female crew.

This means that while Jenny is able to fix or cure 'damn near anything' she can only do so by replacing patients' existing bodies with one taken from her 37 original crewmates. Which means Rebecca, Amanda, and Sarah are now all living in cloned bodies of people who died hundreds of years ago.

Jenny also employs a 'neurological interface' which gives her some amount of access to a patient's mind. It's unclear how much she's able to do with this interface, but in Rebecca's case she used this interface to make changes that Rebecca consented to.

In general terms ships use conventional drive for local travel, i.e. around a given planetary system. Conventional drive works for travelling to & from a planet's surface, and between worlds within the same system.

For interstellar travel they use something called Jump drive. That can be broken down to two kinds of jump:

Level Zero (aka Jump-0) is the slowest & safest kind of jump. Ships create a bubble of unspace / hyperspace around themselves which allows them to travel faster than light. While using Jump-0 ships can still get readings from their sensor systems and can still send and receive comm traffic (radio etc).

Level One (aka Jump-1) is an order of magnitude faster, but it requires ships to fully leave normal reality and enter 'jump space'. Transitioning in and out of jump space carries a number of risks, and while a ship is in jump space it is effectively blind and deaf - neither sensors or comms will work. Jump-1 also consumes fuel at a much faster rate than Jump-0.

Higher levels of Jump exist, and are orders of magnitude faster again, but the risks and complexity go up as does the cost of fuel. 

Actual speeds are not quantified in this story. The closest is a comparison, for the MV Demeter Jump-1 is approximately 72 times faster than Jump-0. (As in, one hour of Jump-1 covers as much space as three days of Jump-0).

There's two classifications of weaponry in this universe. 

Ship-to-Ship (or anti-ship) Weapons are the big guns. This includes Pulse and Beam lasers, Missiles, and Linear Accellerators aka rail guns. Weapons like this are mounted on ships or orbital platforms.

Small Arms are what the people carry & use against each other. There are no handheld lasers (or blasters or laserswords etc) in this story. Small arms are generally what we have available IRL. Firearms, knives, swords, etc.

So far there hasn't been a single sighting or mention of an alien race in this story.

That doesn't mean they're not out there, but it in this galaxy humans are the primary intelligent life form. possibly the only intelligent life form. 

(Contains information up to chapter 38, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

A de-facto empire, controlled by a senate. The Imperium is something like a cross between the Star Wars Empire & Galactic Republic, and the Firefly Alliance.

The Imperium is a collection of thousands of worlds and systems, it has at least two branches of armed forces (Navy and Marines). It also has an intelligence branch known as Imp Int (Imperium Inteligence).

Like any empire, the Imperium is always seeking to expand its borders. It needs a constant influx of new systems, worlds, and people to keep it running.

The story doesn't take place within the Imperium, but as the single largest political entity in the known galazy the Imperium (and the place many of the cast originally came from) a lot of the story is influenced by the Imperium's actions in the past or present.

A loose term which generally means anywhere outside the Imperium.

More specifically relates to sectors along or near the Imperium's borders.

A free sector beyond the borders of Imperium space. 

There is no centralized government, but it contains a number of free / unaligned worlds.

This sector is the main locale for the events of the story.

(Contains information up to chapter 25, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

A large planet in the Gorath Sector.

This is primarily an agricultural world (meaning most of the landmass(es) and population are dedicated to the production of food). 

There is a single large city known as Port Ecclestone which is home to the main space-port.

Said to be the economic capital of the Gorath Sector, their currency (Ecclestonian dinars aka ecks) is the de facto standard for the sector. 

Main export is food, main import is tech. 

The system of government is a plutocracy, laws are generally centred on property rather than individuals. A capitalist libertarian world. 

Estimated population, 3 - 5 million people, with about half living in Port Ecclestone & the rest spread out over the rest of the planet, either living on farms or in small communities servicing local farms.

(Contains information up to chapter 20, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

A planet in the Gorath sector.

This is primarily a tech world (highly industrialized / developed, population is well-educated).

Approximately 20 large cities, half of which have spaceport facilities.

Main export is tech goods, main import is food.

Government is participating democracy.

Home to the Freeborn Shipyard.

Population approximately 30 - 50 million, primarily living in the cities.

(Contains information up to chapter 12, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

A planet in the Gorath sector.

An airless rocky world.

There is a single mining colony located 1km below the surface.

Main export is minerals and metals, they import everything else.

No system of government, everything is controlled by the mining corporation.

Population approximatedly 10 - 15 thousand, 90% of whom are employees of the mining corporation.

(Contains information up to chapter 40, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

An asteroid belt in the Gorath sector, with a half dozen large inhabited asteroids.

Main export: minerals, metals. main import: everything else.

System of government varies; residential city is a representative democracy, the other main asteroids tend to be run by the corporations that own them, and the rest of the cluster is like the wild west (except without any oxygen)

Overall population for the cluster is approx. 50 - 100 thousand, but it fluctuates widely.

Fuminja Alpha: the main residential 'city'.

Fuminja Beta: the main spaceport.

Fuminja Gamma: private foundaries that produce common metals and alloys from the ores mined in the asteroid belt.

Fuminja Delta: private processing facility that focuses on rare and valuable ores, precious metals, heavy metals, radioactive & exotic materials.

Fuminja Epsilon: a private facility, port of call for the Demeter.

(Contains information up to chapter 27, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

A planet in the Gorath Sector

An airless rocky world, a prison planet.

Was once a mining colony similar to Regulon-4 but the mine failed. Mine is now used to house prisoners.

No system of government, the prison is run by the corporation which owns it.

Population, unknown. Approx. 100 - 150 employees & guards, unknown number of prisoners.

(Contains information up to chapter 104, may be considered Spoilers if you haven't read that far)

A planet in the Gorath Sector.

Deveron-8 is an agricultural world (meaning most of the landmass(es) and population are dedicated to the production of food). It is currently several years into a drought. A wild, dangerous, lawless world. It's said that Deveron-8 was the place people settled if they thought Ecclestone's World had too many rules & regulations. 

This is the world where Rebecca's first love Ellery was killed & Rebecca nearly died when a job went bad.

There is a single large city (unnamed) which is the capital and spaceport.

System of government: allegedly a plutocracy, at least in the capital city. Outside the city it is effectively an anarchy.

Estimated population, 1 - 2.5 million people, with about half living in the capital city & the rest spread out over the rest of the planet, either living on farms or in small communities servicing local farms.