Logbook entry

Well, at last, the ride has come to an end - though calling this journey a rollercoaster ride would most certainly be an understatement. If you are interested in hearing the thoughts and special thank you's to those who made impacts along this journey, please read below - although do note that it may include some spoilers!

How it started.
TITAN Contractors started six years ago in October 2016 (the official creation date of our Discord), although our 'adopted creation date' is the 23rd of January 2020 when we began to properly grow and expand the squadron. It began as a 'pet project' of sorts, just a small group co-founded by one of my best friends and people we had met in the Elite community. It was our little corner of community, but the plans for it were never particularly ambitious.

However, I love Elite Dangerous. For all the ups and downs this game may have, it captures a scale and fascination of space that no other game quite accomplishes, along with a plausible universe and overarching story to go with it. The more I got into the game and began playing it more and more, growing out TCON and broadening our ranks became a natural progression, and as we began to steadily advertise and invite new people onboard, it began to deepen from there. Every idea that came since was more-or-less created on the fly, and designed to be cool, distinct but lore-friendly to Elite Dangerous itself.

I've always enjoyed creative writing, graphics design, video-editing and whatnot - all outlets which I've explored in other communities, creating universes and being inspired by whatever movies or stories I enjoyed. As TCON grew, it drove the wish to share that with others, and foster a little corner in which our own story could be made, as well as offer support to new players or anyone looking for a casual experience along with the option provided to follow a deep narrative. It made me happy to write and do stuff, and if it made others happy or helped them too - well, that was a win-win.

With that, TITAN's Internal Affairs service started in December 2020 (exclusive to our Discord), kicking off a narrative that became solely written and maintained by me. Supported by our small community of frankly awesome and talented people, the story started off rather random and began to explore some ideas I had around the TITAN corporation a bit deeper, with a bit of danger and mystery thrown in. At the time, the story did not have a goal or intend to play into anything particular - but very early on, I strictly decided that the story always had to be improvised with minimal planning, to keep it dynamic.

The philosophy behind this was, as long as the story had realistic roots and 'background context' that I understood and loosely plotted out, it was possible to easily and quickly iterate on the story, revealing stuff incrementally. This did have the added side-effect of having many loose ends created at the start, which only tied together much later (purely by fate, more on that later). This might not necessarily be a negative effect, and I felt it added to the realism - after all, we don't always know all the facts right out of the box.

Since the narrative service started, over 400+ articles have been written, an effort which is easy to miss if you are not apart of our Discord. However, the TITAN story was more than that. As it grew, a cast of characters were added into the story, along with custom graphics created to represent them visually, as well as a system that allowed our community to interact with these characters. While every story undeniably has its ultimate goal, and it cannot be completely non-linear, this system allowed people to affect the narrative at key points by interacting directly with the story and its character - and sometimes make me think of stuff I hadn't thought of.

Particularly, the roleplaying aspect became a large part of the story - something directly inspired by a completely random event in the squadron story accomplished by a group of individuals. It soon brought along an expansion to the aforementioned system allowing people to get their own lore-friendly ID cards that allowed them to be visually and uniquely represented. So while the story has been carefully guided by me with my own ideas, others have impacted the story perhaps without even knowing it. Our community has played a big part in supporting and helping motivate this story, and implementing the various facets in which it represented itself.

Along with the system that allowed people to engage directly with narrative characters on our Discord, other forms of engagement included custom-made puzzles, unique to every step of the story, which allowed our members to assist and impact the story at key moments. Some of these puzzles were even in-game, including a long chase to find a carrier belonging to the enemy. Incorporating all these different elements created this additional depth, and having it seep into the game and see some of the changes were really cool - despite the limitations that needed to be worked with. Trying to also design and write the MARS story in a stand-alone way, considering people outside the squadron could not see all the pieces that led into certain events, was also an interesting challenge.

So, how did the story get here?

Frankly, it is amazing to me that the story even made sense in the end, and that's saying something as its sole writer. Being completely improvised, there were some things introduced that were intended to be a one-off, but ended up playing a huge part in the endgame. The biggest one in this case would be EMBER.

The MARS storyline effectively started off with the creation of my character, Aurora Adair, although this series only came later. She was originally intended to be just an alternate perspective in the story, as her original logbooks started off with her as a Centurion SF specialist, part of the squadron's private army. She had very little backstory then, but as time went on she grew in small ways - again with many open ends as per the main TCON story. I had another character at that time who had directly founded TITAN, by the name of Quinton Marshall, but his character left a lot to be desired as he had never been fleshed out, and was more of a background character rather than appearing more as the actual leader of the squadron.

That desire to grow the story more resulted in an arc that had the Squadron Commander supposedly 'assassinated' by a small terrorist group known as EMBER, who only composed of 11 people supposedly disgruntled with the squadron before their purpose and origins were expanded upon later, almost by fate. With that major event, I utilized a mysterious will as a device in the story to have Aurora step up as Squadron Commander - which at the time was a spontaneous decision just to try create something interesting and 'unknown'. That subsequently began her entire personal story of becoming a Commander, and later facing a dark past she had tried to hide.

Through this, many other entities came through to threaten the squadron, with Aurora left at the helm to try keep the squadron afloat, before it all circled back around to EMBER, revealing them as the prime antagonist who had used several proxy organizations to covertly dismantle the squadron bit by bit, ultimately to ensure nobody could learn of them or use the information implanted within the squadron by Aurora's father.

But, how did the story work out in the end?

And, to answer that question, I would like to thank several specific individuals who made the biggest impact on the story.

Thank you to Isabella Levine (or Maple) for inspiring me to deepen Aurora's story, and contributing to TITAN's story with Isabella's character. Were it not for a few very specific events inspired ultimately by you, I don't think I would have managed to end the story in a satisfying way. Along with several people who joined the roleplay segment of TCON's story, Isabella became integral to Aurora's character, first as her best friend, and then as her romantic partner. I was inspired by Isabella's backstory to flesh out Aurora's more, which led to the idea of associating her with the Crimson Venators as part of a haunted past she tried to leave behind.

Such a seemingly simple inspiration became massively impactful to the story later on, and the details of how and why she became Squadron Commander became more clear, with her father manipulating her into control of the squadron after convincing Quinton to join him on a venture to take down a fatalist terrorist group within the Federation - who also happened to be developing a prototype superweapon. Well, that's a mouthful, huh? All of that came from the original inspiration, which would not have happened without you.

As the story slowly progressed up to that point, the underlying inspiration and written interactions between Aurora and Isabella were important to the emotional motivations of the story, and it certainly has been emotional writing this. I couldn't possibly imagine how such small things made a gradual, cascading impact that led to a pretty epic finale with the squadron taking on the full brunt of the EMBER Syndicate, and I owe much of that to you. So, to Isabella - thank you for being a great friend, for sharing your stories and creativity, and for being along this journey with me. It hasn't always been easy to keep this story going, but I will always appreciate you for inspiring me and motivating me to push on.

To Sharales Kryik (or Spectre), thank you for being apart of the original team of role-players who made this possible, and bringing your ideas onto the table with regards to parts of the story that touched the Federation. Your interactions with the Crimson Venators made the group even more relevant, personal to your own story, and allowed those characters to be expanded upon as well, which made its way back into the MARS stories. Along with that, your own specific contributions made important parts of TCON's story more plausible and possible, such as MARS: 17 - Hyperion. Thank you so much for being apart of this story.

To Novus - if it wasn't for your mad scientist brain, several aspects of TITAN's story definitely wouldn't be the same as they are now - and I can't imagine the story being as good as it is any other way. Thank you for involving your character in the lore, bringing in his unique expertise and slightly odd addiction to large, armoured suits and big guns. I truly appreciate it.

To Solix (Zoe) - our local shipbuilder nut and puzzle solver. Needless to say, you touched TCON's community in a big way with your help and experience, but also your knack for somehow managing to break every puzzle I threw at you like a certain other Mal. Not just that, but the interactions between our characters - no matter how simple - go extremely valued. Thank you for all you have done for TITAN.

To Vidal Fallharbor (or Fallharbor), thank you for allowing TCON's story to touch your own, and for incorporating The Void Kin and your carrier, the Hecate's Rest, into some beats of the story. I would have loved to do so much more, although it was really chaotic at times! I especially appreciate your involvement in the finale, and allowing these totally separate worlds of ours to interact. I hope I can return the favour as the Elite universe grows, as do our own stories. Thank you.

To those mentioned above, Cycronos, Davewheeltalk, Mal, MikachuNLD, Pseudowoodo, Krynesur, GoblinCoffeeshop, Rinark, Shaterthomkolen, and Sir-Duke - thank you for your involvement in the finale, and your interactions within the squadron via our concourse channel. Your support is appreciated deeply, and while this is not an exhaustive list of everyone who got involved and made an impact - know that I thank you all for the activity and interest you displayed. Writing TITAN's story has been difficult for me, and it has even been taxing at times. It is thanks to you, the people mentioned above, and many others apart of our community, that I was able to pull this off. You all are awesome. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.

What's next?

Honestly, I don't know that myself just yet! But, this is the end of the MARS story, and EMBER will not return. Of course, I will continue to run the squadron, write its present and future stories, and continue along the growing Elite Dangerous narrative. Whether or not I will continue to write any logbooks... well, that I haven't decided just yet. TITAN - and Aurora as a character - is deeply and personally important to me, and it has been emotionally taxing to push on writing the story at times, for reasons I won't disclose. I've faced difficulties, loss of motivation, personal struggles, and I've made mistakes. It hasn't been easy, but on the flip side, it has been super fun, largely positive, exciting, and I've learnt a lot from writing this story. I'm glad to have stuck it out, and that I was able to share this experience with others.

If you enjoyed the story, thank you as well. I never bothered much about getting 'shiny's' or other approval for the writing, as I wrote this story for me, my close friends, and my community - but if other people enjoyed it and found it impactful, that means more than you could ever know. So, thank you for reading. If you're interested in joining our Discord, either to ask me questions, or to come hang out with our awesome community, the link is here.

Thank you for being apart of this journey.

Blaze your trail,
- CMDR Radiumio