Most of the rest of the world tends to see the Stormkeepers as a monolithic organisation - with one faith, and a single, coherent set of beliefs and guiding principles.

The truth could be quite different.

Thus begins this journey into the complex undercurrents into the society behind the organisation. A single, simple question polarises the Stormkeepers, and makes them ask questions about what they believe in. A healthy thing, by the way. Now, this makes me seem to side with the Searchers as depicted in this story, but, hey, everyone is entitled to their own point of view, right? :)

Here are some of the points that I've brought up in this story :

• The Stormkeepers give high priority to the education of their children, going so far as to construct grand halls of learning for that very purpose.
  
  
• In the era c. 2830, holographic displays are everywhere. They are environmentally friendly because they do not consume trees like paper does. However, they do take up large amounts of power. What we might be assuming here is that power will come cheaply in the future.
  
  
• Stormkeepers of the various ranks wear different-colored robes. It serves as a visual form of identification. So far, we've got red for Fire Rages, and black for Tempestkeepers. Obvious choices besides these might be brown for Earthmasters and blue for Wave Riders. These are for the adults. Children might probably be robed according to a different scheme.
  
  
• The stormkeepers.org domain would have been around for almost a thousand years by the year 2836. A nice thought, isn't it?
  
  
• Eidolon is introduced into the official SK storyline, as Vociferous's girlfriend, although this part is only hinted at in the actual story proper.
  
  
• The use of powered armor is brought up. Though the way it has been shown, it was not of too much use in the Starsiege, pre-Tribes-era with multi-ton Hercs stomping around, except perhaps as support and backup.
  
  
• Conditions on Mars after the Cybrid landing - I guess you could write whole books on this one. An area which is also being explored actively by the other Starsiege writers.
  
  
• The ArcticStorm Base could conceivably have its own spinoff. Not much ideas there yet - but what could you really do with a massive floating base in a post-Starsiege era? Hmmm...
  
  
• I've imagined the search engines of the future to be souped-up versions of today's AltaVista. Though, with the massive information overload in that future, you'd need all the help you can get - not to mention a few tricks up your sleeve too. And then you still might not get what you're looking for. Ah well, that's life with search engines, I'd suppose.
  
  
• And then, of course, there is this fundamental question - what is the Darkstar? A question which will eventually lead to the Stormkeepers' involvement in the Tribes Universe. Read my introduction somewhere under the history section at tribes.stormkeepers.org for a better idea of what this is all about.
  
  

I hope you've liked this story. It may be a little hard to grasp if you're not a Stormkeeper, especially with the religious angle and all - but it does give everyone, even present Stormkeepers themselves, I'd suspect, a closer glimpse into the workings of our organisation.

More stories can be found here:
http://starsiege.stormkeepers.org/fiction-bin

Your feedback on this story will be very much appreciated. You can send it to me at louie@stormkeepers.org.

Thank you for reading.