Exstellius

I. Sonic Architecture & Production Ethos

Exstellius tells the origin story of a future universe set in the year 3720 featuring current societal and classical themes, space battles, and dynamic music-driven storytelling as a part of a 52-minute original progressive electronic album. Because the music takes place in the future, the sound of the album was designed to be a mix of classic house drums, both expansive and basic synth structures, and pure musical arrangements that are meant to stand the test of time. Cymbal design is meant to embody the darkness of space with the energy of the stars behind various crashes, splashes, and snares. There are no samples, loops, or audio files used in this album besides what was either synthesized from scratch by Ryan McKenna or sung by him. New Entity Operations Inc. offered the depth of the technology production capabilities to put the final sonic architecture together, although Ryan McKenna utilized the technology alone while making the album. Synthesis was done using math-driven synthesizers from basic wave shapes such as saw, sine, square, and similar along with using various other waveforms to produce unique tonal structures.

The album is an entire self-contained production with every part of the album being executed by only one person, the founder of Exstellius - Ryan McKenna. Although the artistic limitations on this project were kept idealistic, he said this about the album:

"I did this project to prove original sound design fused with modern tool sets can tell stories without needing to dehumanize your art by including AI in the final product. Everything in this album was created with my own hands and in the future I may decide to work with samples, loops, or similar, but for this project, it needed to be composed without any assistance like that of any kind."

This album is an intro into the theory of what will happen to humanity with the integration of machines. To tell this correctly, AI was explicitly rejected in the creation of this album.

Exstellius - the album - is an attempt to tell a story of a higher form of humanity that we are losing today during our own integration era.

The format of the storytelling is in that of a "Cosmic Electronic Pop Opera" - although the album itself is considered an electronic album, it does have a few vocal narrative moments to be explored. In song 4, Incoming Signal, the pre-Mod Venator Von Drego sings alongside the version of himself that started to undergo modification. The first thing to change was his voice, then his movements, and eventually his mind.

Exstellius the album introduces three characters:

Exstellius

The narrator and mission-arc center

Venator Von Drego

The protagonist

Pryhme

The antagonist

II. The Morvellian Conspiracy & The Great War of Earth

The album acts as the beginning to a storied universe too. Although Exstellius is one of the main characters, he is not the "main character". The story picks up with him being contracted to go on a mission to recover information from the protagonist - a cyborg-like entity named Venator Von Drego, or "Venatio" for short. Venatio is a "Mod", a human that replaced all of their organic matter with mechanical parts during a cultural revolution on Earth during the 2800s and then vanished entirely during the 3500s after being outlawed in the 3300s. Mod is short for "Modular Humanoid Integration Entities" - a technology that became possible during the 2500s and was eventually perfected by the scientist Boggs Morvellian during the late 2800s. There has been a long-standing debate amongst the current inhabitants of Earth in a historic event known as "The Morvellian Conspiracy" which kicks off a lot of the drivers of our future narrative world.

Venator Von Drego was the co-ruler of Earth for nearly 174 years along with another Mod named Pryhme. They operated in a century-long triumvirate-like structure, governed by a series of machine senate minds and "Anointed Human Representatives". Because machines have so far surpassed the ability to process data compared to humans in the Exstellius universe, it's a constant theme that they are just known to be superior cognitively - although, they possess a variety of glaring problem points explored throughout the Exstellius lore.

In the 173rd year of their co-rulership, menacing "calling cards" started showing up across the globe - an alien-like head that went on to become known as "The Mark of Pryhme". Venatio was called upon to protect the human species, although he possessed only one remaining human part, a barely functional and withered lower left leg, primarily just a shin bone, although it was vastly supported by superficial machine assistance. The reason he kept it was to abide by the statute that "All rulers must possess human matter to be considered legitimate rulers". Some even wondered if the leg is real, but others noted its terrible smell as a way to determine its authenticity.

A series of skirmishes broke out between the two Mods that eventually devolved into a full-blown planetary war. This war devastated Earth. No other Mods survived the war and Venatio eventually emerged victorious after Pryhme was sabotaged by the promise of regrowing the pinky toe he lost during the war, his last remaining original human part, but instead - he was destroyed during the surgery, or so it was said at the time.

Pryhme was never confirmed to be destroyed and time went on. After the war, the human population of Earth and the other singular machine minds turned on Venator Von Drego and accused him of violating the statute, insisting he voluntarily decommission himself. He refused and this series of events sets off a plan to destroy him. Although he was rumored to have been killed, it was never officially confirmed.

This time period in history was known as the "Integration Purge" and it eventually shaped the worldview that hybrid machine-organics were simply "disgusting and dangerous machines with no humanity within them". However, the story of Venator Von Drego is actually far more nuanced, bold, and tragic. Exstellius is the narration of this character's life both as a human and a Mod.

III. Chapter 1: Year 3720 & The Pryhme Region

At this point in the story (Chapter 1), Venator Von Drego has not been seen in over 400 years, since right after the Integration Purge and "Great War of Earth". Because this particular Mod was once the overseer of the construction of the First Cosmic Defense Shield (set to be replaced by an upgraded version) built during the late 2900s and all prior access codes to disarm its encrypted defenses required for deconstruction/decommissioning have been lost - recovery of the "Venatio" data-archive is crucial to the safety of the roughly 380 million remaining inhabitants of Earth. When the most sophisticated engineers of Earth examined the defense shield it was noted that most of the 300 tons of purified Zomanianite (Pronounced "Zo" and named after the system it was discovered in - a compound discovered in deep space that is comparable to processed uranium) remained activated in case of needing to detonate incoming meteors or asteroids that were earth bound, yet they were also mysteriously tied to self detonate in earths orbit if tampered with.

Although rumored destroyed, these archives show a different story and that is exactly where we kick things off. They show a machine that decided to leave Earth and travel into the cosmos instead - a machine that still exists in space.

The only clue that the Mod still exists is that their "irrevocable I/O beacon" has periodically shown activity beyond the Core World ecosystem. This area resides within an area of deep space named after the antagonist - known as the "Pryhme" region. The region was named during the early 3300s due to the known presence of a dangerous and hostile civilization of machines there with an unknown origin. They are ruled by a being self-identifying with this name, although historians doubt it is the same machine that was destroyed during the Great War of Earth.

No one that has entered the Pryhme region has survived or been able to return to Earth afterwards. A total of 14 missions have attempted to visit the region without success. However, because of the sensitive nature of the issue, Earth's most feared Warp Pod pilot named Exstellius has been contracted and deployed by the Cosmic Recovery Foundation to survey the area and, if possible, make contact with Venator Von Drego. Upon arrival in the deep space region, Exstellius starts to see that the information given to him about the trip and target lacked transparency and it is up to him to make contact with the Mod to learn about what happened during the Great War of Earth, and recover the necessary data. Will Exstellius survive and return to Earth to tell about the reality of what happened to this mysterious deep-space exiled Mod?