In the year 5555 AD, Earth is long lost, but numberless billions live spread across ten thousand star systems of Known Space in the pancosmos - the multiverse. Across this diverse scattershot of worlds, abstract and impalpable entities flicker in the shadows of everyday spacefaring life, backdropped by the clash of great political blocs where fancifully advanced transhuman technology and bona fide magic of all stripes are as ubiquitous as air. This cosmopolitan mix of societies plays host to species and peoples from numerous known cosmoi - universes - that have been hooked into the Stargate Highway and the intricate intercosmic shipping routes plied by jumptenders and jumptrucks. Meanwhile, like a multiversal North Pacific Gyre, Known Space accumulates all manner of stray items and unwitting visitors who have melded in turn into transhuman civilization - some have eked it out on their own, while others have formed organizations to locate and shelter others like them - and in some cases, to protect them from the prying eyes of authorities whose interest, or ire, may be drawn by the unique abilities and qualities of visitors from parts unknown.

That's where you come in...