Phasma. Some call it “the new oil”; others call it the greatest sin known to man. Either way, it’s undeniable how it has simultaneously aided and harmed humanity in equal and equally immense measure.

The Phasma Revolution started over a hundred years ago, in 2238, with the shocking sudden appearance of a new celestial object 2 million kilometres past Pluto’s orbit. Upon closer investigation, it appeared to fit the size definition of a moon, but it sudden unexplained appearance sent waves through the scientific community. Taking advantage of this, the NanoTrasen corporation, previously a somewhat-powerful multinational responsible for the creation of everything from small consumer products to whole space stations, deployed the first prototype of their Deep Look project: a combined orbital probe and rover system that promised to be able to visit and investigate the moon in approximately 50 years, and return in another 50. With international support (and competition), NanoTrasen finally launched the prototype unto the stars in 2242, and began a long waiting game.

2377 rolled around, and the Deep Look prototype finally returned.

Its results would change NanoTrasen, and the world at large, forever.

The rover had collected samples of an incredibly strange, unknown element from the surface of the moon; an otherwise barren rock that mysteriously had vast fields of this strange, lustrous purple metal that coated it almost like giant stains. Initial testing with the element was inconclusive of anything at at first it was merely regarded as a curious sort of jewelry material, named Phasma for its almost ghostly shine. NanoTrasen’s executives were livid at having wasted time and money on something so useless, and their scientists remained perplexed at how a whole moon had suddenly moved.

And then, one day, a scientist toying about with a bit of Phasma ended up exposing it to Alpha Radiation.

He, and half his laboratory, ended up teleporting a very short distance away into the garden of the research centre he was working at. While en-route, he claimed to, for a split second, see the entirety of the cosmos in a strange blue tint.

Years of intense research work later, he and his colleagues had cracked the secret that had perplexed man for so long: Bluespace. Phasma exposed to intense Alpha Radiation had been the long-hoped for key to interstellar travel, and though man understood very little about it, they knew exactly how to utilize it with a bit of trial and error.

Practically overnight, NanoTrasen was building the first Phasma-fueled spaceship, the NTSC “Breaking Dawn”, an immense research vessel crewed by 80 of the finest scientists on NanoTrasen’s payroll. And though they huffed and puffed, no other force on Earth could stop the inevitable.

NanoTrasen sent out the completed Breaking Dawn in 2379, bearing for the strange “Phasma Moon”. Once there, studies confirmed that the moon had indeed traveled from its original orbit, many many light years away, through the awakening of some Phasma by an unknown external force. Aliens? A freak solar event? Nobody could know. All they knew was that they needed to mine the stuff.

Phasma had soared in price and demand; the stars were in humanity’s reach! And though NanoTrasen held on to the secrets of Bluespace travel for many years, it was in 2391 that double agents finally cracked the secret and revealed it to the world.

However, the original source of Phasma, the Phasma Moon, had been picked clean, and new sources of the precious stuff were required. The Phasma already mined was beginning to lose effectiveness, making Bluespace travel more and more unreliable. And thus began the Bluespace Race, an era of immense competition between governments and corporations to find and extract as much Phasma as they could.

Thirty years later, in 2421, the race is well underway. NanoTrasen has successfully operated twelve Orbital Phasma Research Facilities (OPRFs), and now a thirteenth has been constructed in the Betelguese system. Orbiting some distance from the star, it has been entrusted with mining Phasma from a nearby asteroid belt supposedly rich with the stuff.

Codenamed OPRF-DELTA13, it is in need of crew. You’re in need of a job. And guess what? You’ve been offered to fill one of many open job slots on DELTA13.

Little do you know what a ride you’re in for.