Overview

Zoe is the only human survivor of the "7th colony ship" one of 20 ships launched from Earth before an apocalyptic event that was expected to lead to the end of all life on the planet and render it inhabitable. Each ship was launched into space towards different viable planets for colony establishment. Most would take thousands of years to reach their destination. Once ship 7 finally did it collided with a debris field surrounding the planet and crashed onto the surface leaving Zoe the only surviving embryo of the hundreds meant to be the first generation born on the planet. Raised by her mother Robyn, one of a small crew of cutting edge androids that were capable of taking care of the ship during it's long voyage and trusted with overseeing the start of the colony, and her brother Ru55e1, a simple maintanance robot jury rigged by Robyn to help her raise Zoe. Both would be understandably protective of Zoe as the only human survivor of the mission pushing her to prove her own capabilities. Eventually she leaves the planet to explore a galaxy that has seen a human ruled empire rise and fall in the time between ship 7 reaching it's destination.

Early Days

Endling was initially never really meant to be particularly narratively focused project. It was and still is an outlet for me to draw sci-fi nonsense. Zoe being the endling, the last of her kind, came about relatively early on. To begin with Zoe kind of just inhabited a world of aliens through coincidence of me having fun drawing weird looking aliens than trying to draw human characters, and eventually I decided for that to be an intentional part of the narrative surrounding her character. As I drew her more I began to draw her with some characters that I came up with doodling little comics made from office supplies my Dad would bring home from work. These comics were pretty much just genre tropes from various blockbuster movies I grew up with I called Galaxies. The first comic for Galaxies was a comic I made in school of a couple of alien soldiers catching up. One asks the other what they'd been up to the night before with a flashback to them conquering some poor alien planet. The Zefrons as I would later call them were a strange mix of very wide Stormtroopers with Boba Fett wrist gadgets with the head of the B2 Brawler from Ratchet and Clank 2: Locked and Loaded (Going Commando in the States).

Following this I drew a few Galaxies comics and a bunch of random diary books full of aliens, spaceships and technology from this universe. The main factions were the Star Trek Federation-esque (with a lot of ooh rah influenced from playing Halo CE) primarily human good guys the Galactic Defenders vs the Evil Zefron Empire who were kinda just the weird skinny brain headed aliens in bright green power armour from before that wanted to do evil stuff for evils sake. Character wise there was the hero protagonist "Zak Orlano" (a second name I probably stole or spliced from other names in Star Wars) who grew up on a desert planet with a dull dead-end life until he was recruited into the Galactic Defenders as a skilled pilot (just blatently stolen from Star Wars). His best pal was Piron, who I made up with my brother. He was pretty much Han Solo if he was a dinosaur-man bounty hunter along with his sidekick in the form of a silent-type robot bounty hunter Clyros. There was also Zak's helpful robot companion Boltie, who had a kind of bug/spider eye thing going on but otherwise was meant to be the comic-relief super-intelligent but socially awkward robot ala C3-P0. The only other recurring character was the evil Cera, who was the mastermind evil leader of the Zefron Empire. What his goals were I have no idea but he had a partially scarred brain-head with or earlier in the story a brain in a tube with his body all splayed out mid restoration (I do actually remember this was inspired by that awful and traumatic Torchwood arc where people stop dying and someone gets blown up and is just a bunch of burnt gore that's still alive??? mixed with Vilgax from Ben 10). He would often just kinda be evil-y brooding and looking out of space station windows at planets and mwahahaha-ing. The comics kinda just bounced around and had various events happening in various locations inspired by whatever I was hyperfixated on at that point.

Worldbuilding

Back to Endling, I kinda liked bringing back some of these ridiculous goofy ideas I'd come up with as a kid incorporating them into the world of Endling. The Galactic Defenders rather than a galaxy wide federation were a small civilian militia formed after the fall of an expansive Human-ruled Empire. Piron is here and is an adoptive father figure for Zoe. He used to be part of the Defenders and beforehand was a merc for hire doing odd jobs now settled in his elder years on an asteroid colony, known to locals as an outlaw for his past allegiance to the Defenders but brought in to help officials thanks to his pre-collapse knowledge which is what finds him sat in front of Zoe in the local sherriffs office, the only person who knows anything about humans and how to speak English, a by-gone language now, for lightyears. He teaches her about the universe she finds herself thrown into as she gets him back back in the saddle going on adventures across the galaxy flying the Arrowhead, Piron's ancient human exploration ship that keeps on chugging and thanks to it's age is free from the restrictions set on interstellar travel by the Zen'ron.

The Zefron now Zen'ron? are still the primary antagonists but Cera has been changed quite a bit. The Zen'ron were a race created by humanity now, rather than some strangely human-innards looking aliens hell-bent on evil. Humanity or the Solarens as the "ascended" humans who ruled over the Solaren Kingdoms were called, created the Zen'ron as a tool to help encourage other races to join the Kingdoms, else face the brutal Zen'ron alone. The Zen'ron were not aware of this manipulation until Cera uncovered the truth. Instead of revealing this manipulation upfront Cera would themselves manipulate the Solaren's to increasingly bolster the Zen'ron by feigning inability to intimidate species to join the Kingdoms from lack of firepower and resources. Once he had amassed enough excess military power he led a brutal attack across the Kingdoms directly towards the core systems and executed the Solaren leadership. The Kingdoms collapsed, the Solaren's built the Kingdoms with absolute certainty of their immortality. The Zen'ron would try to control what systems they could along their path of conquest but most systems would fall into anarchy. The Zen'ron would still be considered the defacto rulers of the Kingdoms and held most of their power by controlling the network of FTL gates and thus most trade. The Zen'ron would collect and destroy any human technology and tightly control that which was essential to maintain the territory they had a grasp on. Cera would be nearly killed by a young man called Zachary Orlano who piloted starfighters as part of the Galactic Defenders militia intent on securing and defending the independance of a small but growing number of star systems. After their fight aboard Cera's crashing capital ship Zachary would go down a martyr and Cera would not be seen for years, eventually returning to the public light as a grotesque mass of cloaked flesh and metal.