An Intro to Aushlin Xhunder

Aushlin Xhunder was an interesting guy. Unfortunately, I didn’t meet up with him until after his home world was destroyed and he was basically drifting through space with his fleet.

His fleet deserves a little attention. His race was called the Xhunderians, from the planet Xhunderia. And, as you may guess from his name, he was their leader. How he got there was quite an interesting story, especially considering how our paths crossed.

Aushlin said his name basically translates to a word similar to chief. Head honcho. President. Something like that. His claim to fame was decoding the Xhunderian genetic code and fixing the aging problem of his people. Not that they had any real issue relative to other mortal races, they just wanted to live a little longer. He made them immortal. Kinda.

Xhunderians could still die, but not of natural causes. Unless you consider falling off a cliff or being sucked into the vacuum of space a natural cause. Their bodies would not age after reaching adulthood. This created many unique problems, one of which was apathy. They had built some spacecraft at the time of his genetic breakthrough, most sounded fairly similar to what humans can produce now.

This is where apathy came in, they didn’t care if a journey to a neighboring star took a few centuries; they had time to kill. Aushlin didn’t think this way. So, he took his phenomenal brain and concentrated on how to make a spacecraft that was fast. And, much like his genetic breakthrough with aging, he found the mildly above and beyond technology. Gravity field manipulation is what he called it. I saw it as a return to the magic I knew and loved. He didn’t have wizards, so I guess his method was a little better overall. Infinitely.

He admitted he didn’t know the details of making it work, as his team of engineers did the math and swung the hammers. But, his ships were equipped with numerous gravity generators that could place what amounts to a black hole in front of the ship for it to fall into. But, that singularity was held at a constant distance. Carrot on a stick.

Admittedly, that sounded fantastic to me, but they did recognize a minor issue with creating gravity wells. It attracts other things too. So, they created a second anti-gravity field for the singularity to fall towards as well as push dust and other nasty things that could puncture armored hulls. I’m simplifying, of course, as my real understanding stops at how my horse was able to walk on air. Some would say flying, but, no, he walked. But, this is about a star fleet, not a horse.

To summarize the technology, his ships are fast. And there are a lot of ships he’s commanding by himself. Which, means they can’t move quite as fast as they should, so he’s just been meandering through space trying to find the surviving colonies of his people. He did find Earth, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He’s been watching, though. Deciding if it’s time to stop wondering.

You may be curious what exactly is watching your planet and if you’ve happened to see his ship on some night when looking up. Not likely. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to him last, one dragon sleep. However long that is. But, his ship is still there, I’m sure. If it isn’t, he at least knows you’re here.

I’ll get into more about his ships, but, for now, just know that there are more than twelve ships tied together in a flotilla tied together that allow him to fly them all from the central ship, which happens to be about twice the size of the ships around it. And those ships are about twice the size of the twelve ships I mentioned. The smallest would hold over a million humans. And provide infinite nourishment, according to Aushlin.

More important for this context is his story, which I’ll get into some time in the near future. Hopefully before you have the opportunity to meet him for yourself.