Furry Weekend Atlanta's theme one year was "Galactic Gunslingers," which I am ALL ABOUT. In light of that, I'd started work on a series of characters and another story idea directly inspired by that theme.

The setting mainly involves a distant, forgotten star system. The result of a colonization project that began as a way to ease the burden of overpopulation, but is now on life support due to dwindling resources and the fact the worlds researched to inhabit were not as "golden" as projected when the colonists set out. Now, civilization is stuck here trying to eke out a meager living in spite of there being nowhere else to go and no chance that anyone will be coming to take them back - it was a one-way trip from the start, regardless of the outcome. Five planets and various asteroids encompass the region, and only one of those planets is capable of harboring life throughout, though it is a harsh world that is mostly desert with little water and untamed forest regions being situated away from the equator. The other planets have only small pockets where life can exist, mostly because the colony ships that brought civilization here were sacrificed to create those pockets.

There are also outposts in a distant asteroid belt, though they mostly serve as mining stations run by dubious corporations that managed to take over during the colony effort, and listening outposts to send signals that will never be heard back out to the homeworld and detect response signals that will never arrive. However, a faint spark of hope exists in numerous ancient ruins across every planet here that hint that this system once harbored civilization, and the artifacts left behind may be starting to awaken.

This is Doc Briar, a genetically-modified cyborg rabbit who freelances as a bounty hunter in order to fund his explorations into the lost frontier. The tech that courses through his body may be somehow linked to the lost alien civilization that once inhabited this system, and he's determined to find out why.

Since one of FWA's mascots is a rabbit, Briar is as well (and fittingly, his partner is a fennec fox - FWA's other mascot).

Doc Briar © Aelius