Three Storylines Explained: AOS, TS, TOA

Some of the prior Lore Posts missed an important note!

AOS is a science fantasy short story series with three distinct tracks that differ greatly: AOS, TS, and TOA. Collectively, we're calling it AOS. I was asked what that stood for about a month ago and didn't know and RedFailHawk had to make something up on the spot, so the name is officially Advent of Spacefaring, which is actually pretty cool... points to Tobi!
"I" means Loren (me).
"We" means Loren and RedFailHawk.
"RFH" means RedFailHawk (Tobi).

AOS is based off an RP that I was in back in 2011-2014. There's a lot of different races and while originally there was a long-lost plot, we've altered it a bit. The new focus is that aliens and humans have made first contact in (unknown year), and the aliens are friendly, for the most part. Various races and schools participate in a program to send "culture logs" to the humans: discussions of their race, stories of their daily lives, and facts and information about their planets to the humans. Eventually, we'll probably add a true plot to it. About twenty years after first contact the humans do appear. It's a great way for us to use some of our lesser-accepted RP characters without spoiling their unique stories and gifts, so inspiration for a LOT of the characters is just homeless RP characters. My very first RP character is a canon AOS character now, and finally gets her own story because she never actually got used. Protip: AOS means this arc, Advent of Spacefaring refers to the combination of all three stories.

TOA is also an RP-based story, but this one focuses on the social war between three distinct but related races (who are also rarely seen in AOS). The war centers around the fact that a genetic mutation has created members of their kind with special abilities. It's almost like a Warriors RP with Wolves that went horribly wrong and descended into a murderfest. That's really how it went the first time and that's probably how it's going to work out this time. For now, it's also going to be heavily ignored, as we would not be able to get it started alongside AOS and TS. Since it intertwines with AOS we have to do them concurrently, but we can skip around at first to avoid this. We're NOT writing events linearly here, not for any of the stories, which is a godsend.

TS stands for Traveler's Star, and directly incorporates my short No Longer A Memory (though I've lost the original copy of NLAM so I'll have to rewrite that...). It's focused on an alien legend about a gigantic star gem that has to be restored (and was originally directly based off events in Eragon and Eldest). The idea itself goes back to 2007, but I didn't start writing it down until earlier this year. It's also told partially through poetry!
"There are twenty thousand pieces of the Traveler's star
Twenty thousand pieces to show who we are
Twenty thousand pieces we carry to show
One day we will know where to go."
Each poem piece plays a part in the story, so it's crucial for the poem to be there. I'm writing the poem as we go so it might not be linear either. But, I'm at least trying.
TS actually intertwines with AOS as well, and I know of a few characters in AOS who are probably unaware of the legend of the Star that carry pieces of it. I'm curious as to how that's going to work out, but that should help keep it going.
I think my favorite part about this one is that if I screw something up (the rock weighed one kilogram, the rock weighed six ounces) I can blame it on alien gravity or strength and get away with it. I keep detailed fact sheets but I can't promise that the differences in alien biology won't play a part. One character says the rock glows. One might say it floats. One might say that it's opaque and one clear. And while some of this can be blamed on geology some of it can literally be blamed on aliens seeing different light spectrums. I'm not saying I'm doing this intentionally but I'm also not saying I don't have an excuse ready to go.

Wow that was a WALL. But it's kinda hard to sum all that up concisely?

For starters we will probably be focusing almost entirely on AOS, then segueing into the other two slowly.