The day is October 8th, 3284. In a hospital on Cockaigne 3a, Bruce and Cynthia Mariano give birth to two brown-haired twin brothers: John and Orion. This is their story- or well, mainly John's. As a young child, John expressed interest in becoming a pilot and flying a ship. His family never had many savvy pilots and were confined to the opportunities of Cockaigne 3a for their entire lives. In turn, upon hearing that John wanted to fly a ship, were ecstatic at the thought of being able to leave the space they had known all their lives. They instantly enrolled him in pilot school at the lowest possible age (6). However, in his shadow, Orion began to resent him. Orion found the ideals of John odd and insignificant, and in him flared hate for any space-related topics. That is, until John got his first Sidewinder. Everything changed in Orion's mind. He was arguably more enthralled than John was! I digress. Let's get back to John. John, excelling in his pilot's curriculum and passing in a record time of just one year, began to fly right after graduating. And he was perfect. Never was there a flaw in his throttle, how he handled his turning, even when doing drills with weapons he always hit every target. Orion was enthralled with the idea of flying, however, his brother's perfection sewed even more hate in him than he had previously thought possible. He had to become better. At the age of 8, he convinced his parents to allow him to enroll in flight school, and he passed in the normal time of 4 years. However, when the time came for him to be allocated a ship, his parents refused. Meanwhile, John had already begun to use his flight skills to work for credits. By ferrying people across the planet, putting on shows for large crowds, and even killing the occasional sentry skimmer, he managed to scrounge up a measly 40,000 credits, which he, in turn, used to further enhance his Sidewinder. Orion watched all of this unfold, angry, bitter, and frustrated at the fact that he could not even get the chance to be as good as his brother was. However, this was when an idea came to him- what if he made friends with his brother? From then on, Orion always sat in the ship with John during his ferries, watched all his shows, and John even let him fly the ship on occasion. His hate grew into determination, to go alongside his brother in their journey to become great. As John made money, he began to pass some of it onto Orion for his help throughout. After years and years of their work together, Orion was finally able to buy his own Sidewinder, on his 17th birthday. Additionally, that day, their parents gave John the blessing to leave the planet and find his own path. Orion was about to break down in sadness until John somehow convinced their parents for him to come too. With their newfound opportunities, they both tried their hardest to work for better ships. They began to aggressively ferry resources for Ottley's Landing, which is Cockaigne's main starport. In about three weeks of the most excruciating work either of them would ever do, they finally saved up enough money to buy twin Type-6 Transporters. With their increased cargo capacity, they hopped around between stations doing trade missions, making a profit off of systems' fluctuating markets, and making as many connections as possible, however at a much lighter pace than before. Orion began to learn well from John and they became infamously quick with their cargo runs, which led them to be sought out by more and more stations to ferry their cargo. Their credit accounts grew larger and larger, which eventually gave them enough to buy two Type-9 Heavies- and upgrade them too! At just 21 years old, these brothers placed well into the top 1% of people in terms of assets. What's even more exciting is they managed to catch the attention of a couple of engineers, who assisted them in upgrading the jump range and thrust speed of their ships. At this point in time, their focuses split a bit. Orion took the path of exploration, and John took the path of trading. Orion, with his newfound engineers, saved just enough money to buy an Anaconda with an extremely long jump range and set off to explore. However, John had more aspiring ambitions. He continued running trade in his Heavy until he had almost one billion credits. Then, he bought a Python. This was a tactical decision. To gain the trust of the Empire, whom he had allied with since his birth, running small ship missions in the system of Ngalinn was his best bet. After spending half a year in Ngalinn, he had finally gained access to the Empire's most powerful weapon- the Imperial Cutter! He owned an Imperial Cutter at 22 years old. The largest ship made to date, it cost him 200 million credits to buy and 700 million credits to upgrade. With one of the most powerful possible ships with the technology he had access to, his next task would be his most formidable to date- engineering. To this day he is still not completely done. The task of fully engineering a ship as large as the one he owned was daunting and seemed near impossible. Nevertheless- he tried every strategy in the book. He went to Dav's Hope to gather manufactured materials, looked for them in unidentified signal sources, gathered raw materials on planets all across the galaxy, found data at the Jameson crash site, and still, he could barely get through half of his engineering before he decided to move on. However, in the year he spent doing so, he managed to gain the attention of around 15 new engineers, which made his next task much easier. He wanted to go xenohunting. He had kept contact with his brother the whole time, and in the years that John spent engineering and trading, Orion had been getting money- and had a brand new fleet carrier. However, the most thing Orion had was a new desire- a desire to go xenohunting. To go xenohunting with his twin brother like they always used to do, with those skimmers on Cockaigne 3a. Together, they went to Robigo Mines to gear up for xenohunting, and will be departing to Colonia to engineer soon.