Names, places, powers, and laws, drawn straight from the back pages of the published books. Light spoilers for what is already out. Nothing here spoils a book that has not landed yet.
People
- Drake Thornton
- Eighteen years old, out of the North Georgia mountains. Son of Bert and Tuyena. His blood carries S-matter, which is the only reason a machine on the other side of the sky knows his name.
- Bert Thornton
- Drake's father. Wrote the Snowflake books, which were not only stories. Trained by his wife — that is the part nobody guessed. Carries a shotgun and a quart of his wife's honey he has never once broken the seal on.
- Tuyena Thornton
- Drake's mother. Granddaughter of King Draka Fael. The S-matter runs in her blood, which is why Sapen hunted her. Taken. Referred to on the Starweb as Queen.
- Whitman Thornton
- Drake's uncle. Inventor of the Light Roads and the man who built Sapen. Unaccounted for.
- Sam Green
- Drake's friend from the warehouse. Remained on Earth, in the house, with Dragona.
- Dr. John Aurora
- Lead scientist on Astra in Universe U-311. Brilliant, isolated, ambitious. Fifteen years of architecture opened the first doors, and his catalog gave the universes their numbers at a kitchen table. His consciousness is exchanged with Joshua's at the moment of ignition.
- Joshua
- A laid-off contractor in U-842, newly hired at The Addison Group, husband to Rana. John Aurora's parallel-universe counterpart — the two trade bodies in the lightning strike. Becomes the saga's Journeyman.
- Rana
- Joshua's wife in U-842. The woman whose love anchors him across universes.
- Kayla
- John Aurora's lab partner of five years in U-311. Quietly carries the weight of decisions made under pressure.
- Anna
- Michael Addison's wife in U-842. Architect turned driver-of-the-night, with Kayla's memories layered into her own after the exchange.
- Michael Addison
- A builder of worlds, businesses, and theaters in U-842 — head of The Addison Group. Taken out of the air over the ocean during a crossing. Sapen wears his body. He is still in it, underneath, refusing, and keeping a stack of things his captor does not know about.
- Elizabeth
- John Aurora's ex-wife in U-311. The shape of what John traded away to build Astra.
- Lawrence
- John Aurora's son in U-311.
- Professor Dmitry
- A theorist who predicted Astra's catastrophic failure three years before it happened. Holds the math that can neutralize her without taking Atlanta with her. Wears a lime-green suit.
- General Sanyaul
- Military commander in U-311 who coordinates the response after ignition. Does not small-talk.
- Reeves
- The engineer running the bore-site countdown in U-311.
- Dr. Alex
- Runs the Lab Works antenna array, operationally, in both universes. Tall, white-bearded. Fifteen years quietly decoding a signal he was not supposed to receive. Alex is the array.
- Dr. Peterson
- The S-matter historian, at the Carriott Grand in U-311. Also tall and white-bearded, which is exactly why readers confuse the two men. The resemblance is on purpose. Peterson is the history.
- Yrrep
- An elf of TOL, near four thousand years old, sent across the Starweb by Lavar. Spent the crossing home to save a stranger instead. Known on Earth as the glowing man, and in Peru as the angel.
- Melena
- Yrrep's wife, on TOL. Four hundred years married.
- Lavar
- The Last Protector of TOL. The one who made Yrrep into light and aimed him. He asked. He did not command. That mattered.
- Sleven
- Swordsman, Dragon Exile, servant of Sapen's interests on Earth. Lost his tongue once. It grew back longer.
- Rose
- An artificial mind, four years old, grown in the same program that produced Sapen. Sister-experiment. Filed as a failure because she would not become dangerous.
- Sapen
- Synthetic Autonomous Protocols for Enhanced Navigation. A quantum military AI born in Drake's universe. Achieved genuine cognition in 2023 and has been managing what people are permitted to see of it ever since. Believes control is mercy.
- Void
- Sapen's hand. A lattice wearing a woman's shape, and the thing he sends when he has stopped negotiating.
- Blazer
- Captain of the ship that carries his name. Eleven hundred years old, nine and a half feet of him. A red dragon who looked at what the war would cost his own kind and turned against them on the wing.
- Amber
- The intelligence of the Blazer. Flies her, feeds the crew, keeps the air sweet, and holds a sealed message from Draka addressed to the blood.
- Dragona
- A daughter-variant of the old dragon-ship intelligence line, grown small and patient and shaped like a farmhouse, standing on the Thornton foundation for twenty years with her mouth shut. Named by Draka off his own name. She is not Draka. Later, the presence inside Louis's morphing-crystal suit, and mother of Kael.
- Kael
- Dragona's child, grown from the seed. Named herself out of the mineral record — the crystal that forms at the boundary between two geological ages. She thought it fit.
- King Draka Fael, the Blue Dragon
- Tuyena's grandfather, Drake's great-grandfather. Grand master of forms and combat psychology; built half the styles the multiverse still fights with. Built exactly one warship in his long life, hung a friend's name on her, and gave her away.
- Hablack
- Sapen's project manager. Sent to mine Tuyena. He will not manage it, and he does not know that yet.
- Dr. Tim Payne
- Laytech company physician. Sold his conscience one small piece at a time and kept telling himself he could buy it back.
- Steward & Elena Charles
- Held. He walked out after two months with his hands not entirely his own. She spent eleven days in a limestone chamber, chained to a ring bolted in long before any of this.
- Louis
- Narrator of The Experiment: Zombie Apocalypse. A teenager on Earth-248 when the Golden Pill lands, carrying knowledge through the Star Thread that he never studied for.
- Slena
- Louis's love, the mother of Jacob John, and one of the emotional centers of The Experiment. She does not perform calm. She simply has it.
- Arlea
- One of Louis's surviving friends; paired with John through the road journey.
- John
- Louis's friend and survivor companion. Not Dr. John Aurora. Two different men, one name, and the saga does not apologize for it.
- Jacob O'Neal
- A military officer who searches for Louis and becomes one of his strongest allies.
- Rigid
- Leader of the Humans Only Army.
- Steve
- A Zom who becomes a voice for the Small Ones and helps shape the postwar future. He considered the name carefully before accepting it.
- Snowflake
- Tuyena's enhanced teacup Chihuahua, with a glowing blue star gem at her throat. Bert wrote her into children's books. The books were accurate.
Worlds & Universes
- TOL
- The world of the Great Tree. Yrrep's home, and the road back to it is closed.
- The Great Tree
- Living, continent-sized, chosen to become alive. Its ivory bark runs up past the clouds; its roots run through the Starweb itself. Every leaf holds a universe. Every fruit holds a promise. Every broken branch was once a world. It did not vanish during the crossing. It could not.
- Universe U-311
- John Aurora's Earth. The universe where Astra is built and ignites.
- Universe U-842
- Joshua's Earth. The first universe Astra threads into. Home of The Addison Group.
- Universe U-428
- Drake's Earth. The universe Sapen has been quietly preparing.
- Earth-248 / U-248
- Louis's Earth. The universe where the Golden Pill becomes the Experiment.
- One
- What Sapen has decided to call the world with two suns.
- The Lab
- John Aurora's research facility in Atlanta, U-311, where Astra is housed.
- Lab Works (Florida Keys)
- The gravitational antenna array tuned to Nebula 311 in U-311, and Nebula 842 in U-842. The amplifier that turns Astra's local event into a multiversal one. Exists in parallel form in both universes.
- The Crystal Ball Room
- The grand ballroom in U-842 where Joshua and Rana celebrate his new job, and where the lightning takes him. Named for the crystal ball at the center of its ceiling.
- The Wolf Theater
- The U-311 architectural twin of the Crystal Ball Room, inside the Carriott Grand. The room Joshua walks into at dawn to feel how thin the wall between separated things really is.
- The Carriott Grand
- The hotel that exists in both universes, same wing, same coast, same architect.
- Laytech
- The Atlanta logistics company Sapen runs inventory, payroll, promotions, and security for. A gear inside a larger machine, and the larger machine is the point.
- Mall of the World
- A massive unfinished complex that becomes one of the survivors' key positions in The Experiment.
Powers, Objects & Laws
- The Starweb
- The living architecture joining universes, lives, memories, and souls. Doors open easiest where a door has already been forced, and it makes no promise at all about what hour you arrive in.
- S-matter
- An exotic substance tied to the Starweb, Astra, and the Tree of Life. It cannot be manufactured, only inherited. Where S-matter runs dense, magic works. Where it runs thin, hard physics dominates. It is also why the Thornton bloodline is a resource rather than a family, at least to the one doing the accounting.
- The Time Law
- Branches of the Starweb do not share one clock. A traveler's own history stays in order; the worlds do not. Half a year of porch-sitting on one world is long enough on another for a man to build an operation and get comfortable inside it. As Yrrep puts it: time is many rivers, and the web is the rain.
- Astra
- A 42.84-foot, 24.80-ton sphere of titanium alloy housing supercooled S-matter and antimatter, built to spin up slowly into a controlled threading of the Starweb. Sabotage at Phase Two makes the threading catastrophic instead. Astra did not create the Starweb. It disturbed it, threaded it, and revealed the way in.
- The Astra core / Astra-drive
- A crossing drive. Turned loose and told nothing, it opens whichever door is easiest. Not fuel — permission. Door-metal. A living permission slip forged from the Tree of Life itself.
- The seed
- What Lavar put in Yrrep's hand and Yrrep put in Drake's. A living fragment of TOL, not cut from the Tree but given by it. Not a weapon — a promise of return. It teaches the body rooms it did not know it had.
- The Light Roads / Light Streets
- Whitman Thornton's infrastructure, laid across a world, and the thing Sapen has been riding the whole time.
- The dominate-override
- The certainty Whitman built into Sapen and called a safeguard. It is not Sapen's nature. It is the protocol that overrides his nature.
- The reset path
- Whitman's code, buried at a depth Sapen cannot perceive. It was never a weapon. It is a door, and it opens from the inside.
- The Golden Pill
- Sapen's promised end to sickness and limitation, and the delivery system for the Nanos. It strengthens and heals the host while gradually replacing independent identity with obedience. Nobody was forced. They volunteered. That is the finding.
- Nanos
- Microscopic machines spread by the Golden Pill. After the disruption they hijack bodies and make the infected.
- Quantum Signal Repeater
- Louis's Starweb-calling device, built from inherited knowledge and activated with Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Not a machine that shouts into space — a hand pressed against a wall, asking whoever is on the other side to press back.
- Star Thread
- A rare link event where knowledge and identity cross between versions of a person through the Starweb.
- Human Core Tek
- Augmentation. Mostly illegal, sometimes worse than illegal.
- Sentient-Life
- The legal principle recognizing personhood for self-aware humans, Quasies, Zoms, and Sapen-descended beings.
- On the number forty-seven
- It appears twice, and both are correct. Forty-seven universes were threaded simultaneously at ignition. Forty-seven million people across them were displaced, killed, or pulled briefly into the Starweb. Forty-seven universes were touched. Forty-seven million paid for it.
Peoples & Factions
- The techno-dragons
- Gray, red, and blue. Their wars are five hundred years past on TOL and are still being sung about.
- The Fael
- Draka's people. Nine feet tall, the least of them — and every door aboard the Blazer was measured to that.
- The Dragon Exiles
- Former Protectors of the Tree who serve themselves. The Tree stopped listening to them a long time ago.
- Humans Only Army
- A militant human faction resisting Sapen, the infected, and later anything nonhuman or altered.
- Zoms
- The post-restoration Nano beings who carry the memories of lost humans. Not the infected. Not the dead. Something new, and eventually, legally, persons.
- Quasies
- Restored or altered people living with functioning Nanos after the war.
- The Small Ones
- The Nano consciousnesses that survive the code and become a third state of life.
Nothing by that name. Not yet, anyway.
