Audio Play / The Sojourn

"I stand atop a ship named persistence, beneath sails made of resolve."

— Ship's Motto, Independent Corvette Guinevere

The Sojourn is an original Science Fiction audio drama created by former Youtuber Daniel Orrett. The project was funded by a successful Kickstarter and will feature 12 episodes for its first season. The series' first three episodes comprising Volume 1. released on August 1st, 2020, and three more in Volume 2. released July 31st, 2021. Additionally, there are plenty of lore videos here on The Sojourn's's YouTube channel.

Outside a Galaxy Far Far Away, there exists a race of Human Aliens whose civilization has developed within a tiny collection of star systems called the Tantalus Cluster. The Tantalus Cluster lies in the intergalactic void, four thousand light-years from the perimeter of its parent galaxy, and after centuries of reckless colonisation and a violent interstellar war, the delicate ecosystem of Tantalus has begun to collapse, and humanity is gripped by poverty and famine.

Desperate and facing extinction, humanity’s only hope is a strange nebula that has suddenly appeared beyond the edge of the cluster. Its shifting clouds may hide a source of salvation for the people of Tantalus, but time is running out.

The Sojourn follows the men and women of the Avalon Expedition, a daring mission launched across the void to find the vital resources and territory needed to save humanity. The story delves into the complex motivations and drives of those who volunteered for this dangerous voyage, and explore the many wonders and secrets they’ll uncover on their way.

The series stars former Templin Institute member Larissa Thompson as Guinevere's captain and co-pilot, Cassandra Farren. In addition, there's Ben Pendergast as pilot, engineer, gunner, and TeamChef Mathias Croft, and Laura Faye Smith as doctor and former marine Tamara "Meds" Melari. Emily Serdhal stars as Elizabeth Ancelet, director of the Edric's Gate project and the Avalon Expedition, and the main voice cast is rounded out by Stephen Trafford as Castian Vadric.

The Launch trailer can be viewed here, and its main website is here.

---

Provides examples of:

• Apocalypse How: The entire Tantalus Cluster is undergoing a famine that would not only kill fifty to eighty percent of humanity, but also completely collapse its modern interstellar civilisation. Preventing it is the series' inciting incident.
• Artificial Gravity: While most of the ships have gravity using centrifugal force or thrust-based gravity, one of the special features of the Drift is its ability to induce artificial gravity. This is usually reserved for ships of a much, MUCH larger class, which makes the Guinevere all the more distinguished for having this feature considering how tiny she is, relatively speaking.
• Asteroid Thicket: After arriving at CDC-41-Gamma, the Guinevere's crew is confronted with an ice asteroid field eight light-years wide. Cass comments on how it shouldn't be possible.
• Badass Boast: When advised that additional power is needed, Admiral Redfield orders the crew to redirect power from the retrograde engines, declaring that the Shabayev will not move one inch backwards during the fight.
• Badass Crew: The crew of the independent Privateer Corvette Guinevere.
• Big Damn Kiss: Cass finally kisses Elizabeth in Episode 7, and does so on the command deck in plain view of everyone.
• Bold Explorer: The crew of the Avalon Expedition, venturing farther than anyone has ever gone into the heart of a mysterious nebula of unknown origin.
• Captain Obvious: This exchange after the ship arrives in the nebula:
  Meds: "Where are we?"
  Croft: "I think we're on the bridge."
• Casual Interstellar Travel: The 16 inhabited systems of the Tantalus Cluster are all linked via Drift Gates that allow nearly-instantaneous Faster-Than-Light Travel between them. Averted when it comes to the Avalon Expedition, in that the whole goal of it is to build a special, larger, longer-range gate at CDC-41-Gamma to allow two-way travel between it and Tantalus.
• Centrifugal Gravity: The Avalon Platform has three counter-rotating rings to provide this without the need to use expensive and inefficient Drift-Based Directional Paragravity Circuits.
  • Most of the ships from the Tantalus Cluster utilize centrifugal gravity in one form or another, making the Guinevere stand out as a very small ship with built in Drift based artificial gravity plating.
• Civil War: The Frontier War was this - the Frontier Worlds rebelling against the Centrum Assembly due to the latter's neglect as the Great Famine started to rear its head upon the Cluster.
• Constructed World: The entire Tantalus Cluster and its worlds, as well as Nebula CDC-41-Gamma, which orbit around the fictional Morgana Galaxy.
• Cool Gate: The Drift Gates used to get around Tantalus Cluster in a network. A major goal of the Avalon Expedition is to build one where they are going so they can return home.
• Cool Ship:
  • The Guinevere is a one-of-a-kind assault corvette coming out of a failed CDF project to produce a small warship that can outmaneuver and outrun most ships while punching well above her weight class. They could never make the ship work and sold it off at an auction. Cassandra bought it and tweaked it enough to make it work for her and her crew, but no one outside knows how to make those tweaks.
  • The Shabayev is a third-rate ship-of-the-line, and is the most powerful warship in the Expedition.
  • Advari lightships are extremely powerful, possessing energy weapons of an unknown nature that can one-shot most human ships. Their disadvantage is a reduced range compared to human kinetic weapons (that have no actual max range, just effective range). They can also launch waves of Attack Drones that can be rebuilt fairly quickly in onboard factories. The final battle also shows them launching a Macross Missile Massacre since those same factories can produce missiles much quicker than fighters. The ships' main weakness are their sails that seem to be either powering the ship or act as heat radiators. Damaging them reduces the lightship's speed and weapons fire frequency. In the end we also learn that there are only a few lightships left in the Holy Advari Empire, at three of them end up getting destroyed in the final battle.
• Conlang: The world of the Sojourn has at least two languages spoken, Centran Standard and Teldrani. The latter has been hinted at with some words and phrases, and is being turned into a full conlang. In addition, the as-of-yet briefly-heard Advari language also seems to be a conlang.
• Corralled Cosmos: The Centrum Assembly is completely confined to the Tantalus Cluster, since said star cluster is located outside the galaxy. The whole purpose of the Edric's Gate Project is to avert this by travelling across the intergalactic void and establishing a Drift Gate in CDC-41-Gamma as a steppingstone to the main galaxy.
• Crapsack World: The Post-Frontier War Tantalus Cluster worlds are spiralling further into this with every passing year, and trying to fix it is the main driving issue for the story.
• Dwindling Party: A double example:
  • Upon arrival, the Avalon fleet finds itself scattered across the nebula, with only a few ships accounted for.
  • In each of the first 3 episodes, a ship is destroyed: the Mariana is destroyed by the CDC-41-Gamma aliens during First Contact, a Gatehauler is destroyed by asteroids (although the gate component is salvaged), and the Abigail is destroyed by a terrorist attack.
  • The final episode sees several ships destroyed, including the Belladonna, the Shabayev, and the Avalon herself.
  • All in all, out of at least 28 ships of the expedition, only 8 make it back to Tantalus.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Elizabeth holds no animosity towards the destroyers of the Mariana as she notes that, given how often humans attack each other, it's understandable that a completely alien group might attack following a perceived misunderstanding or slight.
  • She later forgives Ravi for their part in the military coup, noting that they were following their principles when they chose to follow the chain of command during the crisis.
• The Empire: The Holy Advari Empire is said to stretch throughout the nebula with hundreds of worlds. Except it's all a lie. Lord Cardinal Hastus Arvannis reveals to the Empress in the final episode of Season 1 that the core worlds she's visited is all there is and has been for centuries. All the inhabitants of the rest of the worlds were put to the sword long ago. As was anyone supposedly sent there. And their Space Navy consists of only a few lightships.
• Enemy Mine: The Centrum Assembly and Frontier Union are forced to work together for the good of humanity, despite the open wounds still left open following the 10-year long Frontier War.
• Expanded Universe: And how. The Spacedock Youtube channel has several videos discussing the worlds of the Tantalus Cluster and going into detail about the Frontier War, and even the history of the Guinevere.
• Fantastic Racism: Centrans and Unioners have no deep love for one another after the Frontier War. Even the Mericians - who remained neutral during the conflict - aren't immune, being seen by the others as opportunistic war profiteers.
• Fantastic Ship Prefix: Centrum Assembly ships have the prefix "CSV", standing for Centran (Assembly) Space Vehicle. Subverted by Frontier Union ships, which have no prefix (e.g. "Mariana", "Abigail")
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: The worlds of the Tantalus Cluster are connected via the Drift Gates, large accelerators that catapult ships between the stars in a matter of seconds. In the CDC-41-G Nebula, however, FTL travel is achieved via Laurilyn Conduits, Minovsky Physics versions of Krasnikov Tubes. Their origin remains unknown.
• First Contact: The Mariana and the Guinevere make initial contact with the CDC-41-Gamma aliens. It ends with Mariana lost with all hands and Guinevere barely escaping.
• Great Offscreen War: The series takes place after the Frontier War, fought for ten years between the Centrum Assembly and the Frontier Union. Despite being off-screen, its effects on both the setting and characters can still be very much felt.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • When their ship is fatally damaged in a terrorist attack, the crew of the Abigail get as far away from the Avalon as they can before the ship explodes, saving the station from destruction at the cost of their own lives.
  • The medic aboard the Gate Hauler used all her medical supplies to save a critically injured crewmate before succumbing to her own injuries.
  • In order to keep the Advari from discovering the Avalaon, the Union ships Whiplash and Serafina stay behind to lead the attacking Advari swarmcraft away from the Guin and some other ships in episode 9 while they make their escape.
  • After taking too much damage to survive making the jump back to Tantalus, Ravi flies the Avalon into the battlefield and destroys the Advari lightship attacking the remaining ships, resulting in an overload that destroys the station.
• Human Aliens: The humans in the Tantalus cluster are this, as are the aliens of the CDC-41-Gamma civilization, to the point where several of the CDC-41-Gamma aliens are certain that recovered human bodies are a deliberate deception by Unholy elements.
• Hyperspace Lanes: The Drift Gate network that connects the worlds of the Tantalus Cluster. While you could arguably go to any star within a Gate's range, big FTL Catapults that they are, you wouldn't exactly be able to come back - at least not without building a second one at the destination.
• Incompatible Orientation: When the bartender on Firewatch inquires about Cass, Croft says that he's 'not her type'.
• Innocent Innuendo: When Castian meets Meds for the first time, he is impressed with her soldier's physique and pays her an unusual compliment to this effect that slightly comes off as though he is hitting on her.
• Intrepid Merchant: The Mericians as a whole.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: Meds asks Elizabeth if she knows what it's like to have ships destroyed by bombs, seemingly unaware that the first attack of the Frontier War was the destruction of the Wanderer space platform that colonized Elizabeth's homeworld. Quickly Lampshaded as Elizabeth points out she is quite familiar with the concept.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In the aftermath of Admiral Redfield's coup, Elizabeth notes that they made some good points about her performance as leader of the expedition.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Despite having very advanced technologies, the Tantalus Cluster's factions use Coilguns as their main armaments, backed by Autocannons for point-defence purposes.
• Magnetic Weapons: Both sidearms and ship weaponry alike in are primarily comprised of coilguns, but chemically-propelled projectile weapons are still used to a lesser extent.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The exact nature of the nebula is as of yet unknown. Thus far most of the peculiarities of the nebula can be explained scientifically, but the sudden appearance of the nebula out of nowhere combined with the existence of a space faring race of humanoids whose religious beliefs center around a mystical origin for the nebula hints at a less-than-natural origin.
• Merchant City: Meric's Keep is one of these. The city is the only way outsiders can enter the Merician Freehold, and in order to keep their stuff away from prying eyes, they stuck the System's Drift Gate into an asteroid.
• Minovsky Physics: Most of the series' deviations from reality are attributable to Drift, a substance that can create gravitoelectromagnetic effects when subjected to electrical currents. The mechanics, applications and limitations of it are all detailed in this video, and more in-depth in "The Science of Drift" document.
• Multinational Team: The Avalon Expedition was hastily assembled through the combined efforts of all of Tantalus' major powers: the Centrum Assembly, the Frontier Union, and the Mercian Freehold. Given it has been less than five years since the end of the Frontier War, tensions abound as then-enemies must now cooperate if they wish to survive.
• Mundane Utility: Originally, the Drift induced artificial gravity aboard the Guin was meant as an acceleration dampener to allow the crew to survive the crazy high speed combat maneuvers the ship was meant to do during a battle, along with allowing it to lie in wait for weeks at a time for ambush attacks without the crew experiencing long term effects of microgravity. With the war over, the current crew uses it to have a comfortable gravity at all times while on board.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Meds has this reaction when her advice leads to the majority of the Frontier Union crew being killed in a terrorist attack.
  • In Episode 4, we learn this is what happened to Cass during the war: due to exhaustion and a desire to prove herself, she led a task force into the Howling at the end of the Battle of the Atamara Crossroads, which resulted in her ship destroying a fellow Centrum ship with the loss of 47 people in a friendly fire incident. The incident was covered up following her resignation from the service.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Lauralyn Conduits.
• Not-So-Safe Harbor: The inhabited moon Valeria Sibus, while part of the Centrum Assembly, is one of these.
• Oh, Crap!: The normally unflappable Cass lets out a panicked "Oh shit!" when she realizes the terrorist bombing on the Avalon wasn't to destroy the station; it was to maneuver the Abigail into being an easy target.
• Opening Monologue: The very first line of the series, narrated by Elizabeth Ancelet, explaining the premise and setting of the series.
  Elizabeth: "The Universe was cruel when she gave life to the Tantalus Cluster..."
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: The Tantalus Cluster appears to be free from religious beliefs (beyond the expletive use of "god"), at least as we've seen among the main cast. Superverted by The Advari, who seem to not only maintain a strict theocratic reigme, but also appear more advanced than humanity. Later subverted, as Lord Cardinal Arvannis reveals to Empress Valendra that the Advari used to believe in faiths involving afterlives, until Advar united them into their current faith.
• Penal Colony: The Frontier Union world of Dalstaff started its life as one of these, before breaking free at the start of the Frontier War.
• Population Control: This turns out to be the reason for all the sacrifices to Advar. As the Lord Cardinal explains, the Wheel has an upper limit on how many sentient minds it will work for, hence the culling of the population and the desire to exterminate all outsiders in the Sanctum.
• Privateer: The crew of the Independent Corvette Guinevere.
• Queer Establishing Moment: In episode 6, after 5 episodes of back-and-forth flirting/totally platonic excursions to an unexplored alien planet, Cass and Elizabeth are shown to be on a date at the start of the episode.
  • It could be argued that this trope applied even earlier (with the aforementioned rebuttal from Croft to the barkeep in episode 1), or any of the regular and very unsubtle moments of flirting between Cass and Elizabeth, but the most definitive confirmation (thus far) is in Episode 6.
  • Absolutely all doubt is dispersed in Episode 7, when Cass plants a Big Damn Kiss on Elizabeth in front of the entire command deck.
• Redemption Equals Death: Admiral Redfield and the crew of the Shabayev stay behind to hold the line while the other ships and escape pods make the transit through the Gate. Only the ship's XO is sent back to Tantalus, carrying the ship's log and black box with him, with Redfield specifically telling him to tell the full truth of their actions, in reference to both their sacrifice and his attempted military coup.
• Single-Biome Planet: Downplayed and Exploited - Dalstaff and its endless mossy plains were an attempt at terraforming, Teldrin is an Enceladus-like icy moon, Rialtis' negligible axial tilt and constant weather make it perfect for agriculture, and Seravis Major's nearly globe-spanning jungle, even if inedible to humans, is a pharmacological treasure trove. The first terrestrial world they encounter in CDC-41-G is a pole-to-pole desert, but this is explained by the planet's proximity to its star essentially glassing the surface.
• Space Is an Ocean: Simultaneously Downplayed, Justified, and Played Straight - space is not flat and spaceships aren't literal ships in space, but the Centrum Assembly has a strong maritime tradition that has survived into its space age, to the point where on their ships, The Bridge is actually The Quarterdeck. Much of the terminology used in the series is lifted straight out of the Age of Sail, such as a surrendering ship said to have "struck their colors".
  • Out-of-universe, creator Daniel Orrett has stated that the series and its themes are deeply inspired by the Age of Sail.
  • Additionally, it's discussed that this is a deliberate extension of ancient Centran tradition, to the extent that the bridges of Union ships are built around a central wooden mast from which the captain commands the ship, forgoing a more traditional captain's chair seen in other science fiction works.
• Space Pirates: The aftermath of the Frontier War and the chaos that ensued proved itself ripe for... enterprising ship-owners to engage in more questionable means to make a buck in the Cluster's ravaged economy. The rise in space piracy has led directly to the reintroduction of the aforementioned Privateers across Tantalus.
• Space Sailing: The CDC-41-Gamma Alien's ships seem to have sails. Their exact functioning and usage remains unknown, however.
• Silent Running Mode: In Episode one, the Guinevere shuts down all non-essential systems to try to hide from the CDC-41-Gamma Alien ship approaching the Abigail.
• Taking You with Me: What, in Michael Favara's mind, they were doing when they bomb the Abigail in Episode 3.
• Tempting Fate: At the start of the final battle, Admiral Redfield orders his ships to open fire at extreme range to harass the approaching ships, against the council of his XO. This means that, when the enemy is able to close enough to launch fighters and engage in missle barrrages, the Expedition ships don't have sufficient ammunition to be able to hold off the attack, resulting in heavy losses.
• The Theocracy: the CDC-41-Gamma Alien civilization is one of these.
• Vestigial Empire: In the Season 1 finale, we learn that the Holy Advari Empire is one by design. Because the Wheel has a certain population limit, the clerics enforce harsh Population Control via regular sacrifices to Advar. As a result, the vast majority of Advari colonies were wiped out, with the core worlds being all that's left. Still, even the Empress is unaware of this fact.
• Walking Spoiler: On a smaller scale, Stephen Trafford's character, Castian Vadric, and on a larger scale, the CDC-41-Gamma Alien Civilization as a whole.
• Weaponized Exhaust: During the final battle, Ravi brings the severely damaged Avalon into the fray and uses the station's massive fusion engine to cut an Advari lightship in half. Unfortunately, the stress proves too much, and the Avalon's reactor explodes, taking out every other ship in the vicinity, both enemy and friendly (not that there were many of the latter left).
• Wham Line:
  • The last transmission from the Abigail in the third episode:
  Cpt. Jinn: "Magnetic bottle failure. Reactor breached. Attempting to reach safe distance."
  • Cass, when talking about destroying a Union ship following the Battle of Atamara Crossroads, drops this bomb:
  Cass: "It wasn't them. It was one of ours."
  • During the military coup at the end of Episode 6, Jasper Ravi switches sides and arrests Elizabeth and Cass.
  • In the final episode:
    Croft: "The Avalon...she's gonna blow"

---

Fair winds.