The Five Star Stories

The Five Star Stories unfolds within the Joker Star Cluster, a region of space governed by four stars—Eastern, Western, Southern, and Northern. Its so-called fifth star is Stant, a colossal comet that sweeps through the sector once every 1,500 years, trailing its own retinue of orbiting planets. Ages ago, all four of the cluster's solar systems answered to a single power: the Farus Di Kanon Empire, remembered today as the "Super Empire." Its technology dwarfed anything known in the present age, and its explorers charted the farthest reaches of the Joker Galaxy—until internal strife shattered the empire around the year 9000 of the Ammon Duul calendar. The explorers were recalled home, and what remained of civilization turned inward, fighting merely to survive. In the chaos, vast stores of knowledge and technology were lost to the ages. Generations later, the imperial families of Amaterasu, Fillmore, and Hathuha came together to establish the JC era—the Joker Calendar—a shared frame of reference for all nations, meant to nurture a lasting peace. The calendar was embraced, but the peace it envisioned never came to pass. The saga's first story opens in JC 2988, an age when interstellar travel is routine and war between nations is an everyday reality. The battlefield belongs to the fearsome mortar headds, machines whose might would mean nothing without the genetically engineered fatimas, beings who serve as their indispensable co-pilots. Amid the endless fighting, only a scattered few still dare to dream of peace.