Ghosts of the Antipode

The Ghosts of the Antipode are a speculative fiction writing organization dedicated to the pursuit of creating professional collaborative fiction in their own independently created scifi worlds. Ghost works draw upon a number of influences: in popular culture, history, past scifi universes, spiritualism, religion, and other common themes. The Ghosts began as a tiny group of writers who began writing interesting fanfiction for the Starsiege universe in 1999. From those beginnings the organization has changed and evolved over time to its present state, where it operates on its parent site Yetzirah Wiki to support writing efforts and get potential interested writers more involved in developing their skills.

Origins

The official date of the formation of the Ghosts of the Antipode is August 26, 1999. A small group of writers on the Sierra-run Starsiege forums were involved in writing Starsiege fiction, mostly for their own entertainment but also to promote the recent release of the video game. Writing under the alias of Maria Wolfe, Victor Sheckels and some of his fellow Starsiege writers banded together to begin a continuous series of Starsiege stories centered around the planet Mercury. In the Starsiege storyline, Mercury is the first planet to be attacked and fall to the Cybrid invasion, and thus is treated as mostly unimportant compared to the defense of Earth and the outer colonies.

As the writers indulged in writing themselves into the Starsiege world, the story took on a life of its own. These early stories focused on the handful of survivors on Mercury banding together, using makeshift weapons and the few remaining walking battle tanks called HERCs to stage a guerrilla war against the Cybrid occupation of the planet, dubbing themselves the "Ghosts of the Antipode" after the Antipode region of Mercury. Over time, the unique conditions of the planet, strange solar activity, and their daily ritual of "haunts," as they called their covert guerilla raids, changed them. Some of the Ghosts were also already Immortals, people with long-preserved organimech brains that can easily be transferred from body to body. Whatever the exact reason, the Ghosts eventually developed varying levels of psychic ability, paranormal sensitivity, and other strange and fantastic powers. Later it would be discovered that these developments were also influenced by the Ghosts themselves through non-linear feedback from different periods in history and even different universes.

In a short story known as "Paradigm Shift", Sheckels redefined the strange and abstract nature of the Ghosts' fiction by going further than any fanfiction author ever had up to that point by having the character of Maria Wolfe "Shift" the planet Mercury through some unknown means into another solar system, in orbit around a star near the Eta Carinae Nebula, thus removing the Ghosts from the immediate setting of the Starsiege. This opened the door for the Ghosts to stray further and further from the canon boundaries of the Starsiege universe, creating a subject of debate between those who favored the more open approach to writing and franchise loyalists who felt that by taking such drastic steps away from the core story, the Ghosts had crossed beyond the boundaries of reason and were no longer writing as a part of the Starsiege 'sandbox.'

Controversy

The Ghosts of the Antipode have been viewed with admiration, appreciation, suspicion and occasionally outright hostility within the Starsiege fan community at various times. The significant departure from Starsiege's immediate setting in the Sol system and in the spiritual, psychic nature of the Ghosts' characters themselves has annoyed some critics, who claim that the Ghosts have hijacked the Starsiege storyline to suit their own desires without any regard for continuity or appreciation for the fiction as it stands. Many of those who consider themselves experts and stewards of the franchise's story and spirit refuse to recognize the Ghost stories as Starsiege materials at all, claiming that they do not operate within the same universe.

The Ghosts themselves have somewhat encouraged that thinking by labeling their line of stories the "Ghosts Starsiege Universe" (or @ Starsiege, the @ symbol being a tag some members use to identify themselves in a gaming environment) so as not to confuse fans new to the franchise. Recently, this universe has been redesignated the Legacy Universe. The Ghosts have never put forth any claim of monopoly over the story elements of the Starsiege universe, and the stories have been published online as a free resource to interested readers. However, despite the fact that the Ghosts do not claim exclusive domain over Starsiege's universe, their representatives have in the past expressed annoyance that their materials are not considered valid Starsiege fanfiction at all. Thematically the Ghost stories do not stray very far from the core themes and ideas expressed in the Starsiege story, and technologically and philosophically there is nothing which makes the events of the Ghost timeline outright impossible. Ghost "powers" are handled responsibly in a way that suggests a lack of understanding about the true nature of the Ghosts, and their apparent immortality and deeper mission suggests a similarity to Robert A. Heinlein's character Lazarus Long. The argument about whether Ghost fiction is legitimate Starsiege fanfiction or not is ongoing, but the Ghosts have announced that they are leaving the Starsiege universe to the past and moving on to create their own universes and internal projects.

Late fiction

The later end of the Ghosts timeline focuses on the twice-repositioned Mercury at the heart of a new federation of planets called the Heartworlds Compact. After a prolonged period of peace, where the Ghosts went their separate ways to explore themselves and the universe, as well as persist in sheltering the development of the tiny Heartworlds nation, a new threat is perceived by Ghost Maria Wolfe. This "half" of the Ghosts timeline (roughly the years 3300-4100) is a period of waiting and intrigue, as the Ghosts relinquish hands-on control over the people of the Heartworlds and work from behind the scenes to force them to build up and prepare for an inevitable confrontation with the Paradigm, a race of Cybrids who traveled with Mercury to its new location. After a vague period known as the New Worlds Wars (2838-2845) these Paradigm had been in exile, only to return in the year 4101.

Here Ghost fiction ended in a cliffhanger for a prolonged duration. Other turbulent events prevented the further development of the new war, which was supposed to be partially depicted in a Ghost-managed mod for Starsiege called the "Ghosts Starsiege Expansion" or GSE. The GSE to this day has not been fully developed or released, and most hopes for eventual release are hazy at best. Thus the 4101 stories remained in undecided status quo.

Until recently it appeared as though that would remain the case. However, Sheckels again decided on a radical course of action to bypass and summarize the events of the Paradigm war entirely. Seeing the need for the Ghosts to move on and spend time on other projects, and upset at their lack of progress to date, in March of 2005 he wrote a story called "Endings", which he claimed at the time was his last Ghost story. This story detailed the death (or final transcendence, at least) of Ghost Maria Wolfe and described the conditions of the aftermath of the Paradigm War. At this point also his co-manager Jordan Jackson assumed control of the organization. It was assumed by everyone that this story was set as the final ending point of the Ghost Starsiege universe. However, certain writing games on the S&S forums, including "the Chase" and "Legacy - Millenia's Mysteries (a takeoff on the intense "Devastation's Legacy" story arc), showed recurring Ghost characters and other new factions interacting, some of them in post Paradigm war settings. Noticing in 2006 that this storyline was still of interest to Ghosts members and audience, Sheckels reorganized the story during the move to the new Wiki, renamed it the Legacy Universe, and has set some direction for continuing story.

Recent developments

After reviewing the pros and cons of several new website engines, the Ghosts settled on a Wiki as the optimal method of making their works accessible to both internal and external audiences. The Sun and Shadows community PHP-Nuke website was largely shut down and projects and subsites, including the Ghosts, were moved to the Yetzirah Wiki. As of this writing the Ghosts are the largest contributors to said wiki.

Current projects

As of 2007 the Ghosts of the Antipode are based off of the website Yetzirah Wiki, and are its owners and primary contributors. The managers of the Ghosts at this time are Victor "StarSeeker" Sheckels, Jordan "Altas" Jackson, and Rich "Maestro" Karpusiewicz. The Ghosts are currently working on four primary projects:

* Lines Universe RPG: "A free-form, self-constructing universe where players are authors creating their own stories and characters inside a setting of their own making. With self-improvement and entertainment as the goal, stories are rated by their peers and moderators and particularly good stories and collaborative works receive extra points and are added to the universe's canon, to be used as the basis of new stories by other authors. Offers organized criticism and co-operation to create story arcs only as unlimited as imagination itself."

* Yetzirah Universe: "A work-in-progress and the first non-Starsiege sci-fi universe to be developed and pursued by the Ghosts of the Antipode writing guild, Yetzirah offers a tortured future history of the Earth and outlines a new world order which rises from the chaos... only to be tried anew, but this time not by internal strife but by encounters with alien races beyond the understanding and emotions of human beings."

* Management of the Yetzirah Wiki. Other various projects not affiliated with the Ghosts are also underway on the site.

At this time, Jackson manages the Lines Universe project, Karpusiewicz manages the rewrite of the Legacy Universe, and Sheckels manages the Yetizrah Universe project as well as maintaining the Wiki, doing concept art, providing technical information, and interlinking the various projects on the site.

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