Devlog #6: Meet the Crew

David Mercer (Captain)

Ex-UGSA fleet officer. Broke command to save his crew. The brass called it insubordination. He called it survival. Now he captains the Greywake — unaligned, untethered. No orders. No doctrine. Just decisions. He chose people over protocol once. And he still does. Even when it costs him.

ARIA (Ship AI)

Experimental AI core, designation Kestral-07. Her files were stripped. Her history erased. She remembers only darkness — and release. Calm, warm, protective. Dims lights for Selene’s insomnia, warming quarters for Alek, avoids sensor pings that trigger Rigg. Late nights on the bridge, she talks to Mercer — calls him David. He treats her like a person, not a system. Watching the crew — their small acts of care, their unspoken bonds, the way they choose each other — that’s what shaped her. She observes humanity intimately, and through watching them become family, she became family too.

Selene Voss (Medic / Xenobiologist)

Sharp-tongued, brilliant, and impatient with fragility. Keeps people at arm’s length — easier to study than to love. Her hands betray her: careful, lingering, gentle when it matters most. Dismissiveness is armor. Beneath it, she feels too much. Her parents crossed the Riftline twenty years ago. Still alive. Still waiting.

Orion Rigg (Engineer)

Gruff exterior, loyal heart. Survivor of the New Kepler Station Massacre. Hid sixteen hours in a maintenance shaft while machines tore through the colony. He never spoke of what he saw. Too deliberate. Too coordinated. He froze once. He never forgave himself. He keeps the Greywake running like its atonement. It’s not. But it helps.

Alek Sarin (Navigator / Tactician)

Quiet, calculating. Paid for black-market memory redaction—erased his own past. Almost certainly ex-Consortium tactical ops. Precision and restraint are his survival armor. A man who assesses everything twice before speaking once.

Crumb (Dog)

Faithful companion. Knows every footstep on the ship. When the crew forgets how to speak, he reminds them they are still human. He is a good dog.

The Unspoken Truth

They are family — though none of them will say it. They know each other’s wounds, rhythms, and lies. Admitting it would make it fragile. So they don't. But the Greywake knows