Player Characters

Firefly-trek2 — Usually we try to be more subtle than this in our homages and references. Usually.

Because this game started out as a traditional tabletop dice-and-paper roleplaying game, it was originally built around a small cast of player characters, people directly controlled by an individual player, each with a set of defined stats, strengths and weaknesses, and their own backstory and personality. When we moved to an online collaborative novel-writing format, we kept this tradition of each player/author having one particular player character who they controlled absolutely, and whose story they told in their orders each week. Other characters were non-player characters, controlled jointly by the authors and the storyteller, who could move from plotline to plotline, and who could even work directly against the machinations of the player characters and the players who controlled them. Once a season ended, the surviving player characters in turn became non-player characters, still around in the universe and still making their presence felt, but no longer solely controlled by the player who created them. Sometimes they came back to make a brief cameo appearance and then be killed off; sometimes they came back to rule the universe and become the major antagonist in later seasons. Sometimes they just quietly retire to an obscure corner of the galaxy and live out their remaining years in peaceful solitude...but players rarely create those kind of characters.

The current cast of Player Characters are the Miniseries 9.1 characters, the bottom group on this chronological listing.

Seasons 1 and 2[]

These are the original dice-and-paper player characters, the members of the 86th Platoon, whose adventures were told in the first two seasons of the game.

Starting Player Characters[]

Replacement or Additional Player Characters[]

Season 3[]

These were the children of the original characters from the previous season, now on the run and dodging the draft, and eventually causing the First Civil War.

Jon Clarke
A.C. Eddington
Charles Babbage
Stephanie Harrington
(Jennifer's Character, whose name we all forgot for some reason. Oops.)

Season 4.1[]

These were the characters from the first, very-short-lived online campaign. All records of this season are lost. For the first time, characters did not start out as a single group, but were spread out across the galaxy, living in the aftermath of the Second Civil War.

Zebulon Carter
Jason Monk
Rico Severns
(A couple of other characters whose name no one can seem to remember. Oops.)

Season 4.2[]

These are the characters from the semi-successful second email campaign, whose adventures are collected in the novel "The Daughters' War".

Season 4.3[]

These were the characters in the longest-running season yet, a diverse cast of soldiers, spacers, adventurers, and criminals, whose adventures are collected in the novel "Rage Against the Dying of the Light". Their exploits tell the story of the Third Civil War.

Starting Player Characters[]

Replacement or Additional Player Characters[]

Seconday Player Characters[]

Jonathon Walters
Joseph Smythe

Season 5,6 and 7[]

These were the characters from the Y3K seasons. A return to dice-and-paper roleplaying, nearly all records of these seasons are also lost.

Haythorn Zhant
Ronin
Darius Longbow
Simon Green

Season 8[]

These were the characters from the alternate-timeline season set in the Middle Kingdom, and whose adventures are collected in the novel The Middle Kingdom.

Starting Player Characters[]

Replacement or Additional Player Characters[]

Adauchi Kago
David Weathers

Season 9[]

These are the characters from the only season to ever both complete a full season and end when originally scheduled to end, and which is collected in the novel "Born Under a Grey Sky". This is the story of the Ascension War and the birth of the Holy Terran Empire.