The chosen leader of the beings that inhabit the Malice-state, Asahel Keturah Pipe-Wolferstan claims to have helped create the human body of Tag and filled it with the only one of the Others - what the beings of the Malice-state call themselves - that could inhabit it. Asahel claims that Tag is not the first attempt at doing this, and if he fails to do the thing he was created for then Asahel will reclaim the Other from the body of Tag and try again at another point in time and space.

What Asahel wants Tag to do, of course, is simply destroy the entire Continuum.

Tag has thus far declined Asahel's advances, forcing the Other to become ever more crafty in the schemes and plans used to get Tag to fulfil what Asahel claims is his destiny. Whether Asahel is correct or simply trying to project on the closest thing the Others get to progeny, time will tell.

The Void Summoner from the far-flung ages of history, Tait was one of three Summoners who sacrificed themselves to bind Slakta when her greed grew beyond the bounds of her own planet. Trapped as much as Slakta herself was, Tait's soul was used as a puppet for Slakta's schemes to break free of her prison. With all the willpower she had left, Tait resisted Slakta's magics and aided the team as they sought to put an end to Slakta's evil once and for all. When Sam finally convinced Slakta to move on, Tait was released as well to join the family and friends she hadn't seen in well over a thousand years.

The Fire Summoner from the far-flung ages of history, Horace was one of the three Summoners who had given up their lives and afterlives to keep Slakta from spreading her necromantic evil out from the Blight planet that she had already thoroughly plundered and destroyed. Trapped in the same spell that kept Slakta from hurting others, Horace ended up as a pawn in her schemes to get enough power together to break the trap. He, along with the other two Summoners that made up Slakta's binding, would fulfil basic roles in Slakta's dream- magic that let her use champions to pull copies of powerful artifacts forward in time. Most often, he would end up as a grieving father looking for the powerful magical medicine that would let him save his daughter - Slakta's own cruel way of reminding him of the family he'd left behind on the Fire planet.

When the team first encountered Horace, they did not formally introduce themselves for good reasons not relevant at this juncture. It wasn't until much later that Horace learned that Bryn was the current Fire-Summoner-In-Training. After a brief heart-to-heart that was only somewhat skewed by the fact that Bryn had managed to get herself accidentally stuck as Slakta's look-alike, Horace helped Bryn and the other defeat Slakta once and for all - letting Horace finally pass on in peace and find his daughter again.

The Water Summoner from the far-flung ages of history, Danny was one of three Summoners who looked at what Slakta had done to the Blight planet and decided no more. While his spirit was trapped in the same spell that held Slakta she tried to twist him for use in her own ends. Danny ended played a number of roles in the memory-illusions Slakta set up to try and break free from her binding, but he more than even the other two managed to stick to his nature. With the will that had let him become Summoner of the Water planet when few enough people ever lived on the place to begin with, Danny survived countless centuries under Slakta's thumb and eventually aided in her downfall.

The Bloom Summoner from the far-flung ages of history, Messorium was one of the five Summoners who went to the Blight planet to stop Slakta when it looked like her schemes would begin upsetting the balance of the whole Continuum - never mind how much she'd already rendered Blight unfit for habitation. Messorium was the one who wove the spell that used three of her compatriots as anchors to bind Slakta and prevent her evil from spreading. Whether that was an act of heroism that preserved the balance of magic, or an act of desperation that consigned her friends to an unliving hell and only staved off the inevitable, is lost to the histories.

The Lightning Summoner from the far-flung ages of history, Primus is perhaps the least known of the original six Summoners. He went with his four compatriots to face Slakta, but after that point he largely disappears from the accounts of that time. Whether he survived to establish the Lightning legacy or perished in the face of Slakta's evil remains unknown.

The Blight Summoner from the far-flung ages of history, Slakta was not satisfied with being Summoner of the Blight planet. Her hunger for power was insatiable, and she did whatever she deemed necessary to pursue more of it. Her actions nearly destroyed the Blight planet, taking a lush - if swampy - ecosystem and turning it into a place fit only for rot and decay. For hundreds of years she acted without check or oversight, and the Blight planet suffered mightily for it; where once swamp-adapted trees and grasses made the planet a place of genteel decay and the restful peace of death, Slakta's experiments with necromancy corrupted the very planet itself until it was very nearly impossible to even exist on.

When her experiments reached the point of affecting the Continuum as a whole, her fellow Summoners stepped in to stop her. Her works had given her power, though - more power than the other five Summoners were prepared for. In a desperate last-ditch attempt to put a stop to Slakta's plans, three of them sacrificed themselves to trap her in a mostly-unliving state. Whether the other two survived their comrades is anyone's guess.

Still, being trapped in a state neither living nor dead could stop Slakta's plans. When a new line of Blight Summoners arose in the wake of the vacuum she left, she reached out to each of them in turn. She promised power and riches to each of them, and any other sufficiently talented mortal to fall into the range of her web, if they would only complete a few simple tasks for her. While the majority of her power remained locked away, she still retained access to her memories and just enough power to make them real - to a point. Interacting with the illusions she conjured was the purview of the living, and only they could retrieve the memories of power she needed to break her chains.

While many other heroes tried, it wasn't until the Void Jumpers team entered the fray that things began to shift dramatically. Our four heroes managed to get enough artifacts to release Slakta from her bindings - and had the fortitude afterwards to send her on to her final reward. Slakta, and the three Summoners bound with her, were finally freed after more than a thousand years to pass on to whatever was next for them.

As Fire Summoner and leader of the Fire planet, Amelia Cosaint is one of the most powerful people in the galaxy, politically and in terms of general magical power. Old enough to have participated in the war that leveled the original Summoner palace and tainted the river for generations to come, Amelia is painfully cognizant of the consequences of wielding that much power selfishly. Combined with Bryn's headstrong nature and natural dislike for authority, Amelia did what she thought was best when she asked the Company to transport her daughter to the Bloom planet for instruction from Langorium - the gentle, if somewhat shortsighted, Summoner of the Bloom planet.

When the planetary shields came up and cut each planet off from the rest of the Continuum, Amelia had more to worry about than her daughter. Traitors stalked the halls of her palace, and if Bryn hadn't been able to get back to the planet in time it might very well have been the end of Amelia.

Undeterred by the close call, Amelia has done her best to help her daughter in any way that she can. She has also taken up the cause of those who oppose the Company in addition to her normal Summoner duties. Anything to keep her people and her daughter safe; Amelia Cosaint is ready, willing, and able.

A loyal Parallel to Amelia Cosaint for many years, Variq helped raise Bryn almost as much as Amelia herself did. With Bryn's father not in the picture, Variq was there to pick up the slack. A model of quiet efficiency and diplomacy, Variq did his best for decades to aid and abet the Cosaint family in the wake of the war which destroyed the old Summoner palace.

It was, therefore, all the more surprising when Variq turned on the Cosaints. First trapping Amelia in a garret, then actively working with the Malice to enslave the Tine - a race of Fire elementals - Variq completely disregarded and abandoned the people he'd spent more than two decades treating as family. In a climactic fight in her mother's throne room, Bryn burned Variq to ash and dust.

Groomed almost from birth to be the next Void Summoner, Ira is well-versed in all levels of polite society for the Void Planet - and several of the impolite ones, too. While somewhat insular in their interests, being as they profess to caring very little about what happens on other planets as long as it does not affect Void, they do care extremely deeply about their planet and their people. While their relationship with their father is somewhat stilted, the man did manage to impart a sense of responsibility to his offspring that Ira embraces wholeheartedly. Despite their somewhat antagonistic relationship with Bryn - still sore over her fighting them to a standstill in her very first proper duel - they readily put their personal feelings aside when the time came for them to do their duty and defend Void.

Bonded to Ira early at their father's insistence, Maksha provides a stabilizing and grounding force for Ira. Her ability to see the most likely possibility to occur in the next few seconds has been an invaluable tool in Ira's arsenal, and Maksha herself tends towards a dependable level-headedness that usually keeps Ira's propensity towards unnecessary drama from causing a diplomatic incident.

Summoner of the Bloom planet and beloved by his people, Langorium was perhaps one of the best examples of what a Summoner should be. While not especially bright or politically-minded, he nevertheless did his very best to make sure his people and planet thrived in equal measure. And, when he made a mistake, he went and dealt directly with the consequences of that error. Unfortunately, his most grievous error was also his last; he died before he could put to right what the Company had done to and on his planet. Upon his death he became one with his element, as all Summoners must in the end, and turned into a small meadow of brilliantly colored flowers inside the bowels of the Elder Seed Facility.

The latest in a long line of Blight Summoners to fall for Slakta's tricks, Caepio was more cunning than he was wise or powerful. Tired of being what he considered to be the butt of Summoner's Council, he took matters into his own hands when a rift to the Malice opened up on Blight. Using the power he'd garnered from her memory-illusions, and with the aid of a laboratory she conjured up for him, Caepio was the first - and so far only - Summoner who managed to actually capture and use the Malice via any kind of magic. His triumph was short-lived, however, as the release of Slakta from the mortal plane allowed Asahel to get a clear shot at him. Asahel stabbed him through the chest with an eight-foot glaive, killing him nearly instantly.

Caepio's Parallel, Figmot carried out most of the day-to-day duties of running the Blight planet. When exactly he died and Caepio raised him to continue his services is unknown, as is what happened to him after Caepio died. He was not well-liked by the villagers, and led the household only by dint of being the most intelligent zombie in service.

Ms. Kale is a powerful executive, and Rex's patron in the upper echelons of the Company. Ruthless and cold, Kale initially granted Rex temporary executiveship when it was proven that the then-commanding-executive of Haven, Shavanaugh, was unfit to continue her command. While that privilege has not yet been rescinded, Kale has grown considerably cooler towards Rex in light of her actions on Water and on Void, where much of value to the Company and to Kale personally has been lost. What exactly Kale's role in the Company is remains a mystery, for she isn't on the Board of Directors but manages to hold considerable sway over them anyway - and she's tapped into every major network the Company services.

No matter what mysteries surround her, one thing remains very clear: Ms. Kale is not a force to be trifled with. Ever.

Head of the research conducted in the clandestine Company facility of LAST SHORE on the Water planet, Herr Dobyns was cut from the kind of cloth that let nothing stand in the way of progress - especially not something so easily discarded as a moral and ethical code. Responsible for the experiment that inextricably wove Sam and Puq into one being, much of his research was not nearly so successful. The lucky ones among his test subjects died, and quickly. He was fascinated with the various forms of higher elementals, and desperate to try and harness their power by binding them into the medium of a human soul - much akin to how a Summoner is bound to their element on a very basic level.

By the time the team found him, however, his priorities had shifted. When the Malice-driven portal opened up on the Water planet, it brought with it a host of parasitical worms that bound themselves to animals with higher brain functions and forced them to do their bidding. Herr Dobyns was fascinated by the creatures, especially after being infested by one, and much of his research after that point was bound up in how the worms worked and how to make them work better. Fortunately, his experiments were at first incomplete and then totally erased when Rex initiated self-destruct procedures on the facility. Herr Dobyns himself met his final fate at the hands of Sam, whom he'd tortured nearly to insanity in the name of science.

Gwennaig got her start early with the Company; while only a few years older than Bryn, Gwennaig was in the Company's employ for several years on the Fire planet before being re-assigned to another world. In that time, she and Bryn shared a mutually satisfying relationship until Bryn refused to go with Gwennaig off-world. Embittered by the fact that Bryn put her position and responsibilities before their relationship, Gwennaig left Fire planet without saying a proper goodbye and their relationship never recovered.

To say that Bryn was surprised to find her old flame working in a lab of dubious morality on the Water planet would be to understate things significantly; still, when Gwennaig needed aid Bryn was the first to reach out and help. A choice that, in hindsight, was ill-conceived at best. Still, when the team left the smoking ruin of LAST SHORE behind, Gwennaig was the only survivor. Upon reaching the Haven, Gwennaig struck a deal with Rex to be transferred back to Company holding facilities instead of where Bryn wished her to go - back to Fire. A researcher of her skills and knowledge was of high value to the Company, and Rex agreed; where Gwennaig finally ended up is currently unknown.

Originally the executive in charge of the trip between the Fire planet and Bloom, Shavanaugh had her sights set on bigger prizes. Though she did have executive privileges, they were not as extensive as she would have liked them to be, and saw her chance to break into the big leagues with the success of bonding Puq to Sam. While the trip to Bloom was an excellent time to make nice with the future Summoner of the Fire planet, Shavanaugh had her eyes on bigger prey and thought the trip to Bloom a mere diversion at best

Her grip on the ship and her executive position grew tenuous, however, when an unexpected event cut off all communication between planets, and between the ship and the Company HQ. On top of that, Baxter's actions and discoveries on Bloom caused her to overreach her hand when trying to deal with him, and in the hubbub Rex was successfully able to prove to her patron - Ms. Kale - that Shavanaugh was not only unfit for duty, but that she had also gone around the bend. Ms. Kale ordered Rex to take executive control of the ship, and to take Shavanaugh to LAST SHORE for processing.

Shavanaugh knew what was really going on in LAST SHORE, however, and protested mightily - in vain, for the very lab rat she'd intended to trade into a higher position within the Company was one of her gaolers and had very little sympathy for her plight. In the end, there was nothing Shavanaugh could do to resist and she did indeed end up in the holding cells of LAST SHORE.

Tragically, she did not make it out of the facility before the self-destruct sequence completed and blew the place sky-high. A real shame. Very sad.

Baxter's immediate supervisor and mentor in the Company, Milt was no slouch at anything to do with electrical engineering. Transferred to Haven alongside Baxter himself, Milt was meant to be an aid and guiding hand to the younger man. Unfortunately, the advent of the planetary shields rendered his help rather negligible and by the time Baxter could request his aid again, the young genius was forced to run for his life and freedom from the Company. Milt himself was quick to condemn his erstwhile protege, being a Company man through and through - to no avail. Tarred with the same brush as young Brautigan, Milt was recalled from the Haven in disgrace to face a panel of HR appointees to determine whether or not he was complicit in Baxter's actions. His fate remains unknown.

At the start of the series, Arrn was the Master-of-Arms for the Haven. Any and all weapons were his responsibility to clean, maintain, and keep track of. An ex-Problem Solver in his own right, he and Rex had known each other for a number of years prior to their mutual stations aboard Haven. Perhaps the closest friend Rex had aboard before the mission truly started, Arrn was a man of few words and much action. Whenever Rex needed something - or someone - to punch without having to talk and explain, Arrn was there to help. Not the best with words, Arrn largely kept his own council about what he thought of the goings-on in the ship.

Whatever his thoughts, Arrn transferred off the Haven when the call went out for all able-bodied personnel to assist in the reconstruction of planets both affect by and freed from the planetary shields. He left with as much fuss as he arrived - that is to say, none. Last reports had him helping to restart food shipments from Bloom to the other planets in dire need of those supplies.

At the start of his career, C-NACK88 did one thing and he did it very well: He piloted shuttlecraft to and from planets. He had the latest piloting software, he had the best, most reactive hardware - he was damn good at his job, and the Company knew it. It's why he was chosen to pilot the shuttle that was designated to take the Fire Summoner in training down to the Bloom planet.

Of course, the explosion was an unpleasantly unexpected factor.

Despite being damaged by the crash, C-NACK88 accompanied the team to the settlement on Bloom. He spent most of his time on Bloom there, waiting for the team to return from the Elder Seed facility. When they had finally brought the shield down, he was brought back up to Haven with the others; unlike the others, he did not return a conquering hero. Immediately upon his return, the Company accessed his memory banks to get his view of what had happened down on the planet.

Determined to be an irredeemable waste of Company resources, C-NACK88 was slated for decommissioning about the same time as Shavanaugh handed down the sentence for Brautigan. When the good Professor escaped, he made his exit with the help of C-NACK. To keep the Company from pursuing them, the Professor used his not-inconsiderable wealth of engineering skills to remove all Company tracking and kill switches from C-NACK; free to make his own choices for perhaps the first time since his manufacture, C-NACK88 chose to join the Resistance to the Company.

C-NACK immediately proved himself invaluable to the Resistance, and not only for his superior flight skills. One of less than a handful of robots not under Company control, he maintained his server access to a degree and was able to help the Resistance begin assembling plans for their own independently operated Void-relay stations. He even went so far as to go out on several missions to gather non-critical but helpful parts from current active relays.

Whether or not he was willing party to the decisions that have had such consequential results on the Void planet remains to be seen.

Born and raised on the Bloom planet, Tara made her living by guiding offworlders through the frequently-hostile jungle of her home. More at ease in said jungle than in a settlement, Tara ended up as a Company contractor when the Company established the Elder Seed facility near the capital of the Bloom planet. It was in that capacity that she first met the party after their rather abrupt arrival.Guiding them safely to their destination, she managed to leave a hell of an impression on Rex - one that was warmly reciprocated.

Though initially left behind when the party left Bloom, later personnel reassignments brought Tara to the Haven. Currently she works as a combination quarter- and arms-master, gathering any supplies or munitions the team could possibly need on their missions. She also enjoys taking long walks in the late hours down the corridors with Rex. It would be more romantic, except Rex keeps putting her feet where they shouldn't be - down an unexpected step, on her own other foot, in her mouth, etc.

Not a bad boy, despit all his shortcomings. Fidditch simply suffered that unfortunate combination of extreme wealth and a complete lack of any kind of boundaries. Like most children with that combination, Fidditch turned to dubiously legal past times in a bid both for his mother's attention and as a way to find the boundaries he needed. After he lost heavily to the Morelli Family, his mother cut off his cash supply. Unfortunately by that point the gambling had become an addiction Fidditch was unwilling or unable to give up, and he continued to go out in the evenings. When his losses became too great, the Morellis gave him an ultimatum: Settle up one way, or they'd settle up another. So Fidditch stole what at the time was a low-priority Company prototype.

Unfortunately for him, the prototype worked - to a degree. It worked well enough that a number of factions were willing to kill to get their hands on it, and that in the end was all that mattered. Fidditch Kale was murdered in Sam's office on the Void planet.

More gifted with theoretical physics than any kind of leadership, Corvix rather fell into the position by dint of being the first person to ask his fellow scientists for results rather than theories. Once people started listening to him, he had to learn on the fly how to lead and make tactical decisions; while he is a quick study, he made some rather stupendous blunders when first starting out. Desperately afraid of failing again, he covers his flaws as best he can by faking knowledge he doesn't possess. That fatal flaw lead him to make extremely poor decisions regarding the Osai Device - decisions that might yet spell the doom of Void planet.

A six-year old far more advanced than her years would suggest, Claire Vancil is Captain Matt Vancil's daughter. She stays in the Captain's ready room just off the bridge most days, unless actively getting lessons on the elemental language of Void from Puq. She is highly articulate in it already, and a voracious learner.

Despite every trope in every gangster movie ever, Sophia Morelli did not choose to marry Sam to spite her family. Sam knew how to be suave, debonair when it suited him, and treated her as right as his budget would allow. He was romantic to a fault, and Sophia loved him for it - enough to say yes when he proposed to her with a silver ring studded with the smallest of diamonds.

Romance could only take them so far, however, and Sophia was not a woman used to the stresses and uncertainties of a Private Investigator's life. What had been romantic and forgivable as new lovers - constant tardiness, long absences, little cash - became irritating and unsuitable as the love matured. When it reached the point of irreconcilable differences, Sophia divorced him and returned to her father.

Taking up her place as her father's heir, Sophia took to the back-alley deals and criminal underworld like a duck to water. The only thing Sam was to her now was a fond memory and a gem-studded silver ring.

A Parallel rejected by his Summoner, Toman was sent back to the Monastery after his bond was severed. Like many former Parallels, Toman took up a position at the monastery to try and help train the next generation of Parallels. While mainly a hand-to-hand instructor with his favored weapons of tonfa, Toman took his turn on guard duty at the gates as all weapons teachers did. While not strictly speaking necessary - nothing hostile has landed on Cylvahl Cylesso in more than a thousand years - the guard position is still required to this day.

On a particularly strange night some twenty two years previous to the current date, Toman and two other guards found a baby in a basket resting on the steps of the monastery. While none of the three formally adopted the child, whenever something went wrong and the kid needed discipline or assistance it was usually one of the three who would be called in to administer punishment or advice as required.

The leader of the Tine - a race of greater Fire elementals - in the outer deserts, Zeem comes off as an extremely chipper person. While the Tine take on a variety of shapes to interact with the material world, Zeem tries to choose shapes they think will put the mortals in their company most at ease. Unfortunately, because they base their guesses on random psychic sampling, this does not always work the way they hope it will.

A nervous man, Luke chose to remain on the Haven during personnel reassignments more because the ship was familiar than because of any expectation of safety. His skill with sauces is nothing to sneeze at, however, and his barbecue sauce is a longstanding family tradition.

A short dumpling-shaped woman, Mika is head of the Haven's kitchen. Nothing happens in her domain that she does not know about, and woe betide the trespasser who thinks they can sneak treats while the kitchen is active. Her preferred weapon is a solid oak ladle.

Fran is a small, thin, anxiety-ridden wisp of a grandmother. Her ex-husband Silas was executed by the Company for following the rules and regulations in a place where such things did not, they feel, apply. Since the Company did not deem it necessary to inform her of this, Fran spent the next twenty-three years wondering what had happened to him - and terrified it was going to happen again if she let anyone else into her heart. In charge of desserts in the kitchen.

An adventurous soul, Zaza joined the Company to get out of the slums of Void planet and into the wide vastnesses of space. While her credentials only just merited a spot as a fry cook, her dreams are much, much bigger. When she was little, she dreamed of magical places and faraway lands where she had all the power and the ones who routinely belittled her and her father would be crushed beneath the heel of a boot that actually fit her. Whether or not she has the drive to see those dreams come to fruition remains to be seen. Works the frying vats on Haven.

A devoted bodybuilder, Hank mostly joined up with the Company to get out from under the thumb of his father who disdained his hobbies. His sister, who is the last member of his family he still loves enough to communicate with, begged him not to join the Company because of what it had done to their town. Hank snuck out in the middle of the night, and never looked back. In charge of busing and kitchen maintenance.

Born and raised in a sect of religious zealots who believe that not only is the Continuum sentient, but that it would intercede on your behalf if you asked it often enough in the correct form, Zip was chosen by his religious leaders to go out into the wider system to support his community. A gangly young man with a haunted look in his eyes, Zip constantly mutters the prayers and devotions he learned as a youth while going about his duties. The other cooks find him odd, if harmless. His job in the kitchen is ingredient preparation.

A tall man and master of the kitchen's grill, Big Mike takes up a lot of space with his sheer presence. A booming voice and a booming laugh underline an affable nature that belies the fact that he could absolutely floor a several thousand pound steer with a single punch. Currently single and looking for love.

A rather cynical person, Zeriogh is on Haven at this point for the damn spectacle. Every other trip down to the planet results in such ridiculous drama - especially when you have an in with the audio tech so you get a ringside seat to the bullshit - that if you tried to take it to a holodrama producer they'd laugh you right out of the studio. Zeriogh joined the Company basically for a paycheck and a ticket out, and all the current nonsense is just the icing on the cake.