Argent Flight

The Shikrai people have been spacefaring since before the time of the Mahact kings, but their disappearance from galactic records and sudden resurgence after the disaster at Acheron is no accident. The Argent Flight are ancient keepers of an unbroken pact spanning many thousands of years, and they intend to keep their pledge until they can no longer take wing.

Before the Argent Flight, the Shikrai were just one more sentient species in a galaxy teeming with life. Originally a loose collection of closely related avian subspecies, the Shikrai organized themselves along large migratory groups that traveled among a clutch of worlds that they called their own, having long abandoned their ancestral homeworlds. Never developing any noteworthy technology and lacking in desirable commodities, the Shikrai were ignored by galactic civilization at large, and for the most part, they liked it that way.

As for why their homeworlds were abandoned, the triple system of Valk, Avar, and Ylir is an oddity even by the standards of the galaxy. The worlds are barely larger than moons, remnants of a larger ancient planet that broke up over time. The three planets inhabit a common orbital torus filled with masses of planetary debris. Due to the gravitational eddies caused by their massive neutron star, Phorus, and the gas giant of Hacid orbiting farther out, these precarious orbits are nevertheless stable. But even more remarkable, the vast, ring-shaped nebula of the torus is filled with breathable air. The ancient Shikrai rode the winds of the Atharal Torus, flocking from world to world and the smaller chunks of rock drifting between them.

Eventually, however, the Shikrai developed space travel and sought out new worlds. They left the torus and the infrequent but deadly rad-storms from Phorus behind, seeking a more stable planet on which to build their homes. Unfortunately, the worlds they colonized ended up being caught in the middle of a war.

Two Mahact gene-sorcerers each claimed vassalage of the Shikrai and their planets. The Shikrai found themselves caught between the awful might of these megalomaniacal tyrants, their populations decimated, their cities razed, and their worlds scoured with godlike weapons.

For a time the Shikrai despaired that their people would be consumed feather and wing. But at last, a Lazax battlegroup arrived, under command of the warlord Harkor Ilban Tal, intent on carrying out the extermination of the Mahact. After fighting the Mahact forces to a rout and slaying both gene-sorcerers in single combat, Tal pronounced himself liberator of the Shikrai. The grateful avians allied themselves to Tal and, by extension, the newly risen Lazax Imperium.

After the Mahact were exiled beyond the Acheron Gate, the Lazax saw that the ancestral Shikrai homeworlds were located nearby. In exchange for the Shikrai’s liberation and the technology to make both the torus and their decimated colony worlds more habitable, guardianship of the Acheron Gate was entrusted to the newly formed Argent Flight, to whom the Shikrai would send cadres of their finest warriors, scholars, and engineers. The Lazax then erased the entire Phorus system from the Hall of Cartography, and all mention of the Argent Flight from their records. In time, even the Shikrai who lived outside the Atharal Torus forgot the Argent Flight, which suited the Argent Flight’s purposes well.

The Argent Flight Today

The Argent Flight soon transformed the torus into one of the galaxy’s largest habitable zones, and they have maintained it to this day. Genecrafted zero-gravity trees live free-floating, growing edible fruit. Mechanical grav-wings allow the Shikrai to travel through the torus at incredible speeds, capturing water vapor and nutrients from the rich atmosphere to sustain them midflight. Their planets were geoformed to retain a dense atmosphere, and the air of the torus was thickened as well, providing much more sufficient shielding against Phorus and interstellar radiation.

Meanwhile, with the Lazax uplifting, the Argent Flight became one of the galaxy’s premier fighting forces. Those tithed to serve within the Flight spend a decade in training, during which they break their natural instincts for flocking and pair bonding. Members of the Flight are instead forged into wings, small and elite groups able to perform all the tasks of a particular discipline. Within a discipline, members of a wing are generalists, not specialists. When one feather of a wing becomes fatigued or injured, another individual takes over. Argent Flight workspaces are designed to be crewed by any member of a wing; the bridges of larger starships, for instance, feature sliding consoles that allow the current captain to be at the front of the wing.

Still, members of the Argent Flight can switch to a different discipline should they develop an aptitude or desire for it. In this way, the Flight preserves the strongest use of each of its members’ talents and abilities. Each discipline, or flock, is commanded by a representative who then sits on a council called the Murmeration. The representatives of the Murmeration swap responsibilities as needed when it is felt that a particular representative’s skills would be most useful.

The Murmeration governs the Flight from its towering aerie sanctuary on Avar, directing the training of new recruits, the operations of the various war pinions, the massive ranks of gas and comet miners, and the myriad parliaments of scientists working to advance the Argent Flight.

Goals of the Argent Flight

The Argent Flight has always been singularly focused on the threat the Mahact pose to the galaxy, and the gene-sorcerers’ return has only refocused its zealous determination. The Argent Flight sees the Mahact as the galaxy’s greatest threat. However, the Murmeration also recognizes that the Mahact’s choice to move Ixth into the galaxy’s core presents a unique opportunity to wipe out the gene-sorcerers once and for all. Unfortunately, its pleas for unity in the Galactic Council have mostly gone unheard, as many of the members are too busy squabbling with one another to face this larger threat.

Before the return of the Mahact, the Argent Flight had remained aloof from the rest of the Shikrai, preferring to covertly recruit new warriors from among Shikrai populations. However, in light of current events, the Argent Flight has revealed itself to the worlds populated by various Shikrai flocks. The Murmeration has called on all Shikrai worlds to remember their people’s ancient debt and pledge loyalty to the Argent Flight. However, not every Shikrai is eager to join a government that, until recently, was a complete secret. Some see the Argent Flight as a tool to control the disparate Shikrai flocks, while others don’t feel that they are responsible for events that took place tens of thousands of years in the past.

But despite all, the Flight will persevere, and keep its pact.