In this episode, I interview José Siqueira from Star Atas. José is the Lore Smith of Star Atlas. We talk all about the lore of Star Atlas including what, where, when, factions, races, manufacturers, and the future of lore in Star Atlas. You can learn more about the lore of Star Atlas at https://lore.staratlas.com/ and in the #lore-and-core Discord channel at https://discord.gg/staratlas.
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Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, this is Matt with Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to not my weekly Star Atlas review, week in review podcast. This is actually the first and I hope one of many interviews that I hope to do with Star Atlas community members. This interview is actually with a Star Atlas employee, Jose. I’m not going to try his last name cause I will not say it correctly, but Jose and I had an interview this past week to talk about lore as.
[00:00:25] Matt: Anybody who’s in the Star Atlas community knows Jose does the lore. I actually looked up his LinkedIn profile, and his title is Loresmith and New Age Barb. So that’s that’s, that’s cool. So much yeah, makes sense to have a, a, a great job title there. So anyways so just a quick preview of what’s coming up.
[00:00:43] Matt: So we did an interview I think it was around about an hour. So it’s going to be a little longer than my normal we can review podcasts. But I asked Jose a series of questions. And as you see from the title of this podcast, it’s basically a beginner’s guide to lore and star Atlas. So I use myself as a perfect example.
[00:01:02] Matt: I think I’ve admitted a few times that lore hasn’t really engaged me in the star Atlas. Metaverse ecosystem gameplay, but I have definitely changed my mind after this interview. So I tried to ask a whole bunch of kind of intro questions, like if you hadn’t ever been in Star Atlas for a while, you know, just who, what and where questions and some of those kind of spurred other ones, but talking about kind of all the general aspects of the different species, the factions some, some stuff about the ships.
[00:01:30] Matt: And maybe you leave him a little bit about the future. So I found it incredibly insightful. I hope you do too. We’ll go ahead and get started with that interview now. Jose, would you like to introduce yourself, please?
[00:01:42] José Siqueira: Yeah, sure. My name is Jose Duarte and I come from Brazil and currently I am one of the law writers of Star Artists.
[00:01:52] José Siqueira: And I have been working in the company since February 2022. But my passion for the project goes way before that. Even in the, I don’t know, I guess July of 2021. I It’s a very interesting story because I didn’t know much about crypto or NFTs and all of this stuff back in the days, but I was always passionate about stories and MMOs, RPGs, like back I’m pretty sure I have played over a thousand hours of I’ll Be Online, World of Warcraft, well, maybe years of my life.
[00:02:41] José Siqueira: Totally understood, yeah. Yeah, I think everyone in this community is passionate about games, right? So, yeah, I have been playing those games and investing a lot of my time and And one day, I saw an ad, a random ad, on Instagram. And that random ad was telling that, Come discover a game where the players will be the major drivers of the universe.
[00:03:13] José Siqueira: All the resources, all the combat, and all the political stuff, They’ll be done directly by players. And I was like, man, this is interesting, let me check how they plan to do this. That was when I discovered Strataflux and discovered Crypto all together, and I started to write. I got, it was love at first sight, you know, like, man, I need to be involved with this.
[00:03:39] José Siqueira: So I started writing and the community enjoyed my texts. I wrote mostly about polis back in the days. And after a few months of being deeply engaged with the ecosystem, I was invited to join the team. And yeah, I have been living the dream so far. I left my career behind. I was a lawyer.
[00:04:00] Matt: Oh, wow.
[00:04:01] José Siqueira: Okay. Yeah, I had a master’s degree in law.
[00:04:05] José Siqueira: I was working especially on Supreme Court cases here in Brazil, but when I received the calling to join Star Atlas and man, I knew that it was the right thing to do. I left everything behind. And here we are. Wow. That
[00:04:23] Matt: that’s, that’s, that’s a transition for sure. Career change. Yeah.
[00:04:27] José Siqueira: My wife still doesn’t believe how fast I’ve been progressing, but yeah, we survived and we are happy and I don’t see myself doing anything else.
[00:04:37] Matt: Cool. Cool. Well first kind of question then. And again, I’m kind of maybe the the, the novice on some of these aspects. We use the word lore. But I actually don’t know what it means. So what does, what does the lore mean to you in general? So again, like you said, you’d played multi MMOs before.
[00:04:56] Matt: And again, I’ve heard the term lore, but how do you define lore related to
[00:05:01] José Siqueira: video games? That’s a very interesting question. I think more for me means the set of elements that compose in our case are metaphors. So, for example everything that we have in Staracos, the ship’s names, the different factions, the logics of how the universe works, it is governed by a set of axioms, of rules, that are determined by our universe logic, so, of course, any good story must be relatable by the story.
[00:05:41] José Siqueira: By anyone that is coming from outside, you know, we have androids, which is a cool concept that everyone understand the roosters. We have different planets, colonies and civilizations, but Star Atlas also has some unique concepts that that brings that uniqueness. It’s a two war game. So when I think about war, I’m thinking about every element that creates the narrative of what is Paratus and what informs the game that we are
[00:06:15] Matt: doing here.
[00:06:17] Matt: Oh, interesting narrative. I like that. Recently I was watching a documentary actually on Star Trek and they talked about creating a I think it was a show Bible. I just realized, do you, do you have, does there exist something similar to that? That is the maybe. And again, probably an internal resource, but has a quote unquote Bible of Star Atlas been created?
[00:06:37] Matt: Yeah,
[00:06:38] José Siqueira: that’s a great question. And it’s something that I was just talking to them or CTO. Just this week, we do have an enormous Bible right now it’s in the four, more a timeline of events. Oh, interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t show this to anyone, but what this is, this is a map of everything that exists in Star Atlas.
[00:07:07] José Siqueira: In all the periods of time of our projects, so I have things here that goes all the way from even before the destruction of planet Earth in Star Atlas, to many years in the future from the point that the game is right now, and I have every character, every planet, every philosophy, occurrence, So it’s a really great way to go through all these character stories, and that’s about it.
[00:07:35] José Siqueira: Every political group and pretty much every concept in this paraphrase metaverse aligned in this timeline.
[00:07:44] Matt: Oh, wow. Okay. That, that, that’s wow. That’s impressive. And also kind of seems like you’d have to almost have it to do anything. So, yeah,
[00:07:54] José Siqueira: this is quite interesting. So, for example, let’s get a, let just set an example.
[00:07:59] José Siqueira: Mm-Hmm. have, like for example a pho. A pho is one of the star systems that you guys already engaged with in Sage Labs. Oh, okay. And in the lo of startup if you go to, in inside Sage Labs, you go there to a MO four and you leave, you click the more button. There will be this description about a MO four.
[00:08:23] José Siqueira: In my timeline these descriptions exist, but every single event that happened in the past. Is happening now and so far as long as I can predict will happen in the future It’s placed on a time with the cats that participate in that event who will engage with this particular sector and Even some hints of what players can expect in the future for a more for so for example in a more for it’s where the Pierce industries console is located, right?
[00:08:59] José Siqueira: Oh, wow.
[00:09:00] Matt: Okay
[00:09:02] José Siqueira: And what, what this brings in terms of law is that this is a heavily armored sector. That’s where the main fleets of the mud fashion is, where the Pierce C one, the Titan ship of the mud fashion usually is resting and there are a bunch of site stories. Particular to that, to those facts that players hopefully in the future will engage when they visit the This Star system.
[00:09:33] José Siqueira: So everything that, what I’m trying to do right now, mm-Hmm is have like those millions of leads for us so that game design of Star Atlas can pick the ones that they find most interesting. Oh, and intertwine this with game quests, narratives, plots. Gameplay loops and things like
[00:09:56] Matt: that. Oh, wow. I, I, yeah, I find that very insightful of how the lore, which.
[00:10:04] Matt: Again, seems to pre sorry, not predate, but exists before the game development comes along and interacts with it. Oh, that that’s really
[00:10:13] José Siqueira: fascinating. Yeah, it’s interesting because the Lord is for me, like my vision of layout. And, of course, this is not my decision. This is game design decision, but I feel that the role of your.
[00:10:30] José Siqueira: It should provide players with meaningful gameplay loops that are not necessarily linked with the other three pillars of Star Atlas. And as you are surely aware, since you have been following Star Atlas very closely, we have the economic dimension of the game. Yes. We have the military dimension of the game, and we have the political dimension of the game.
[00:10:53] José Siqueira: Yes, yes. The lore, the exploration of the universe, The NPCs, the star systems, the different animals, the different planets, the different philosophies that exist in Star Atlas. For me, those are like the fourth element. Like, a few, for example, just, just a scenario. The Sognean species. They have very strong moral philosophies and those different, and they have different branches as well.
[00:11:22] José Siqueira: So, their civilization is divided in different houses, and each one of those noble houses in their civilization follows one of the branches of this region. Philosophical system. And we already have players in Star Atlas that like to role play that they are members of the factions. So you’ll see players willing to sacrifice, for example, profits in order to defend the moral position of the fact of the house of faction or political group that they belong to.
[00:11:59] José Siqueira: So I think that’s what makes the game meaningful, like every gamer have inside of me the desire to do something that’s meaningful. Of course, we have players that love economy, love combat, love politics, but I also feel that we have many, many players that love engaging with the war, with the quest, with the political groups and civilizations of Star Atlas.
[00:12:26] José Siqueira: I want to give them as much content as I possibly can through the Lord.
[00:12:30] Matt: Yeah, no, no, that makes a lot of sense. And, and and I, that is one of the things about Star Atlas that intrigued me was the different aspects of the, the political, the combat, the economy. You could do all, you could do one, I mean some games are.
[00:12:44] Matt: That exists now are singular and focus. And so that that was what was really interesting to me to about when I first introduced to star house. But I want to go back to one thing you had said earlier. And maybe I just miss this. But you said Earth is destroyed. So in where? Yes, where? Maybe not physically where, but is Star Atlas in the Milky Way galaxy, or, or, because you said Earth, so Earth and Star Atlas exist in the same what?
[00:13:18] José Siqueira: Yeah, Earth existed. I think that’s correct. Existed, okay, okay,
[00:13:21] Matt: so it is gone.
[00:13:23] José Siqueira: Yeah what happened is that in the year 2121 Earth, Earth is visited by God. Oh! And there is a, there are two narratives to explain this fact. The mud, the main branch of the human civilization, believes that it was actually God that visited the planet Earth.
[00:13:47] José Siqueira: And guided them in pursuit of a holy land of their destiny of a place where the most civilization would finally find everything that they deserve in the stars, another branch, which caused a dissonance in the human in humanity, and this dissonance created the equals. Which is one of the minor factions, political groups in Star Atlas.
[00:14:18] José Siqueira: Okay. They say that the human civilization was actually tricked by a higher alien species called Potholi to destroy planet Earth and lead to space. Oh. So basically and then you just One thing that I, that I really like to do is not to give definitive answers. Like, I won’t tell you. And I want players to investigate this one day in the lore.
[00:14:52] José Siqueira: So they discover what is the truth in game. But what happens is that humans indeed gets the last resources that can be found on planet Earth. And depart on a galactic journey trying to find their their Their place in the galaxy.
[00:15:15] Matt: Okay, cool Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
[00:15:18] José Siqueira: Just just to close this stuff. Yeah, this is this is like a long journey for humanity and they spend like a long time searching And they finally find the exodus And this is where the events of Star Atlas takes place.
[00:15:42] Matt: Interesting. Okay. Well, let’s hold on Gau Expanse. I want to touch on that in a second, but I wanted to go back. So you, you mentioned your timeline kind of the, yeah, the guide book or Bible, whatever terms you want to use. And you, you mentioned a date and I, I now feel terrible because I remember the trailer video on YouTube has a date, but I don’t remember.
[00:16:06] Matt: So, so it’s 2024. Refresh my novice person on lore again where, when is the gameplay not, well, I guess there is some gameplay now, but, but some of the aspects around does the current, again, End of January, 2024, if somebody’s listening to this podcast in the future might not know what the gameplay we’re working on now.
[00:16:33] Matt: So what time range are we in? So how many years in the future are we? Cause again, now, obviously you said we’re in earth. So I can think of it as the stars that I see out above, or maybe some solar system. I get a play in star Atlas in the future. So how, where are we again on the actual timeline from 2024?
[00:16:51] Matt: When are we in star Atlas? Yeah,
[00:16:54] José Siqueira: that’s a great question. In Stratafos right now, we are in 2624, so basically 600 years in the future. Okay. Okay.
[00:17:06] Matt: I am not around nor are my very, very, very, very, very distant kids.
[00:17:13] José Siqueira: I don’t know, Matt. Maybe we will live to ultimately death. I don’t know, the humanity is progressing so fast at this point that maybe the two of us will live to see the end of that, who
[00:17:26] Matt: knows?
[00:17:26] Matt: Yep, you’re right. Technology is a, is a, is a, who knows? Yes, exactly. 600 years in the future is, is the time we should be thinking. Okay.
[00:17:35] José Siqueira: But yeah the events of Star Atlas, and this is something that I really like doing, is that everything that’s happening in Star Atlas right now is Happening in war and in the project development.
[00:17:48] José Siqueira: So for example never alone this campaign never alone There are lots of law events happening at this point never alone and all those events They have repercussions In the status universe if you saw my timeline right now, you’d see like 50 different entries That are related to the never alone campaign.
[00:18:12] José Siqueira: Okay, and they and the influence The development of the lore inside Starapus universe. The same thing happened with the release of Sage. The release of Sage, for us players, is an event inside the Starapus metaverse. What was happening was that the consul of peace started an intervention in the medians zone, doing the constant harassing that the Jarvik and some other populations in the medians zone did with safe zone territories in the Staratnik world.
[00:18:46] José Siqueira: And all those events will lead us to the next update of Star Atlas, which is Star Base. Mm-Hmm. . And then there will be more related to Star base to explain how things developed in the world of Start Atlas and how things will move forward on our 2.2 and other gameplay developments that we have.
[00:19:08] Matt: Okay. So just to kind of connect the dots.
[00:19:11] Matt: So again, we’re physic or. In real life end of 2020 or sort of 2024 Earth time Sage Labs is a product that exists. The never alone campaign is a product or an experience that exists. Are those in the same time frame? Are they occurring? Simultaneously
[00:19:35] José Siqueira: are happening right now in 2, 624.
[00:19:39] Matt: Gotcha. Gotcha. Is is.
[00:19:42] Matt: Is, again, don’t have to say if it’s alpha or whatever, is Starbase further out in the sense of time has gone by when that occurs, or is that going to be a current timeframe?
[00:19:56] José Siqueira: Yes, when we launch Starbase, it will happen precisely at the same moment. Oh,
[00:20:03] Matt: cool. Okay. This is, this is very helpful to me realizing, and, and again, I if you’ve listened to my podcast, you know, I’m I mm-Hmm.
[00:20:10] Matt: I personally haven’t had the time to play Star Sage Labs that much. I knew the lower button existed, but you know, I haven’t, I haven’t clicked on it. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll own up to my. Lack of more things, but that, but that actually helps me kind of see the, well, one, the intertwining of gameplay and lore, but also giving, I guess, much more of a sense of existence, if that’s the right term that these things exist and aren’t just.
[00:20:37] Matt: Again, clicking a button on a, on a browser screen or something like that. So I’m, I’m actually regretting a little of my decisions only in the sense that now it’s starting to make sense. So cool. Thank you. Yeah.
[00:20:48] José Siqueira: I’m going back. Oh, go ahead. No, no. Just to try to this point, it’s like what I, what I’m slowly doing is like a spider web full of small warranties.
[00:21:03] José Siqueira: Connecting through the different stories and narratives and one day this timeline of mine will be published to the community to some degree. So maybe we can have even an interactive site where you guys can see every single more entry that I have. Every single year of startups development, like when you see, for example, the convergence war in my timeline, you can see that, for example, in the year two thousand five hundred twelve, there are like twenty entries of relevant events happening just in that year specifically.
[00:21:44] José Siqueira: Oh, okay. And through the 10 years of the Convergence War, there are many, many other events that are super important for how Gallia Expanse developed to what it is today.
[00:21:57] Matt: Okay, gotcha. And actually, you brought up my next thing, which I was going to go back to, but you just said it again. Can you define Gallia Expanse?
[00:22:05] Matt: What, where, who, I don’t know. What, what is a, what is the Gallia Expanse? Yeah,
[00:22:13] José Siqueira: Gallia Expanse is a I I’m not sure how much detail I can give you here, but I can tell you that that’s a pocket place a region of the galaxy where the events of Star Atlas uncold. Okay, okay, gotcha. In that expanse, there are three relevant environments.
[00:22:35] José Siqueira: It’s, there is the safe zone, where the main factions of Star Atlas exist, like the Woosters. The mud and the only that are players driven factions. We have the medium zone where the populations of the colonies and independent independent independent realms of startups live and we have the high risk zone where Lots of crazy and cool
[00:23:03] Matt: stuff happened.
[00:23:06] Matt: Well, and actually that leads me to the next thing, because you had mentioned the Convergence War. So, in the lore of Star Atlas, and again, you’ve mentioned your timeline. You’ve kind of said that we as gamers are in a specific point in time. But there are past events, like the Convergence War. So how
[00:23:27] Matt: Briefly, if that’s possible, but but there is a before time. I mean, maybe it won’t go all the way back to where Earth was destroyed. But again, you mentioned some characteristics that but but if I understood my pre getting personally involved star as there was the poster series. And that was definitely war lots of events were described, but those are, again, are history, right?
[00:23:49] Matt: Those occurred, you said the Convergence War was 10 years in the past of our current Star Atlas time, whatever, whatever we call that, you know I’m trying to think of a Star Trek has those star date type things. And I never got into that stuff, but it seems like we need to have a Star Atlas dating system or something.
[00:24:09] José Siqueira: Yeah, we have that. The Congress has four. It happens between two thousand five hundred and twelve and ends on two hundred five thousand twenty two. So it’s one hundred and two years. From the current timeline of events, inta. Okay. And most of the public floor relates to the Congression floor. The poster series relates to the con, to the, to the congression floor.
[00:24:38] José Siqueira: Okay. And core, the or draft novel. Oh, yes. Tell the tells the tale of the discovery of Iris and the ly. Mm-Hmm. and the Convergence War. It’ll talk about those two big topics. And we jump 100 years in the future for the events of Sage and the current timeline. Okay. Okay. But that’s not to say that there’s not no history to learn before.
[00:25:07] Matt: Yes. Oh, gotcha.
[00:25:09] José Siqueira: Yeah. This is something that I am currently expanding on like the story of how those sters were born. Oh, yes. How, how the only consortium was formed, how, what happened with the earth and equals all, all those stories, most of them at least happened before the convergence war, and they set the stage for the convergence war to happen.
[00:25:37] José Siqueira: So, they are relevant to the lore as well, we’ll be spending on those in the future. But, yeah, the thing that I want to do, I have suggested this internally and maybe we’ll have this in the future, is to have some sort of archaeology career inside
[00:25:56] Matt: science. Oh, that would be fascinating. Indiana Jones in space.
[00:26:00] José Siqueira: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you can go to different worlds, explore ruins, learn new languages of that, of civilizations that have vanished already. Yep. And if you read the war of some of the star systems in sage labs, you will learn that some of them were there were civilizations that needed there before the current timeline of events.
[00:26:28] José Siqueira: So these things are lots of cool stuff that will happen in the future of Star Atlas, but I, I can’t share too much about that
[00:26:35] Matt: right now. No, no, no, that’s fine. And again, just these even little tidbits that it’s really helping understand the, well, again, I’m totally impressed with Star Atlas, the scope of what you guys are talking about developing, but just even thinking of an archaeology.
[00:26:52] Matt: Path career and realizing, you know, other people, that’s the single game. And that’s just could be 1 part of this massive again, metaverse, whatever you want to call it. So 1 thing I think maybe would be good to maybe step back real briefly. Because again, I’m I know a little, but again, I’m hoping this is again great for beginners.
[00:27:09] Matt: There are three factions in Star Atlas, and you’ve mentioned them offhanded, and then there’s, I don’t know if you call them minor factions or whatever, but, but three main, or three, three main ones. So preliminary question why three, and then what are the three? Yeah.
[00:27:26] José Siqueira: The Y3, I think that was mostly game
[00:27:29] Matt: design.
[00:27:30] Matt: Okay, yeah, because I mean, you know what is it? Yeah, lots of games have three things. You know, it seems pretty Starcraft has three, has three
[00:27:37] José Siqueira: races. So, yeah. Exactly. And this creates a dynamic equilibrium between them. Especially in Star Atlas, since the game opens up the space for a competition between the political groups of the game.
[00:27:51] José Siqueira: So, when we have three sides, each one of them will counter each other, you know? So, this, this brings more stability to the overall system. Makes sense. Each one of the current fact of Atlas. It’s important to notice that all of them are under a three, are under the three of peace agreements. So what’s happening right now is that after the conversions floor Mm-Hmm.
[00:28:21] José Siqueira: which was an, an now out battle between this, those three factions, thes, which is an enjoyed civilization whose passed. Not even them are aware about, they simply, they simply awaken one day in a very curious star system. That seemingly was crafted. It didn’t. It doesn’t look like it was naturally formed on the other side.
[00:28:53] José Siqueira: We have the only consortium, which, which is a conglomerate of alien species with different backgrounds, the sub millions, which I already addressed it today, which is a civilization or groups of warrior tribes with very high moral standards and very strict worldviews and philosophies the punas Which are the or smaller smallest aliens that look like?
[00:29:25] José Siqueira: You know, Sam of Never Alone, right? So those small guys, they are very funny. They like to imitate the habits of other civilizations. They are the comic relief somewhat of Star Atlas. They are very cool guys. And we have also the Minirees. which is a group of nomads of space. They live in a living planet called Neonoon, which is constantly trying to destroy their civilization.
[00:30:00] José Siqueira: So they, they managed to escape this planet after they ascended to the stars. And now they live a more free life, trying to experience the whole of what Gaga has to offer. They don’t have a written language. They, they think that writing is a very poor vessel to convey feelings and experiences. And that’s what’s important to them.
[00:30:26] José Siqueira: So everything that they know they do, and they will do in their lives, they have, they save it by memories, songs, and other theatrics.
[00:30:40] José Siqueira: Presentations and things like that convey their true feelings and passion. And finally, on the only consortium, we have the Portoli, which is a very serious and highly advanced species that’s able to manipulate lights. Travel at light speed and yeah, they are the most mysterious group of Star Atlas right now.
[00:31:06] José Siqueira: No one knows really well, for sure, what is their agenda, but mostly they just sit outside of conflicts and let the other species figure them out unless they are provoked. And finally, we have the muds. or humanity who ascended to the stars after the calling of God created many colonies in God’s expense.
[00:31:33] José Siqueira: After the collapse of the mud civilization during the Convergence War, those colonies become dependent and there is some ill blood between the mud leadership and those colonies, even today, 100 years later, and humanity is trying to, humanity has regained some of its former power, and now of all of those groups, those strict manufactures, they live under the ruling of the Council of Peace, which is like an intergalactic United Nations, but they actually hold power in terms of military, they have the biggest ship in the galaxy called the cradle, which can by itself fight the other three titans.
[00:32:23] José Siqueira: Of the faction. So yeah, right now the concept piece is the strongest faction in this universe and it keeps everyone in the line. Gotcha. Yeah,
[00:32:35] Matt: though. Maybe not forever, but that that’s for the future. So that’s actually a really great. Thank you. That’s a great overview of the three factions and then even some sub sub species.
[00:32:47] Matt: I’m not not not. Whatever, but, you know, there are other parts to it. They’re not monoliths. They have individuals. So one other aspect of star Atlas, probably the one most people think of when they think about getting the game is I want to buy a ship. The ships have lore, right? I mean, again, they’re not all unique.
[00:33:06] Matt: I’m sorry. They’re not all the same. They have uniqueness is and correct me if I’m wrong there. They are Not the ships themselves, sorry, I should say the manufacturers of the ships also have alignments with the different three factions, correct? Absolutely. So are there how, how, again, briefly how, how do the ship manufacturers or who are they and then how do they kind of align with the factions?
[00:33:32] Matt: We
[00:33:32] José Siqueira: have three main ship manufacturers in Star Atlas. And those three main ship crafters, they belong, they are institutional ship crafters of each one of the manufactures. We have the first console in, in the mud sector. They belong to the mud. We have the business enterprises. And we have the house of Busan on the only consortium, those three, they are the main producers of ships for both the console piece and the factions of Star Atlas and each one of them have different specializations.
[00:34:14] José Siqueira: It’s something important to notice that in Star Atlas, the different manufacturers, they have different play styles visions. And overall personalities so for example, Pierce is very focused on, on the military aspects. Their ships are oriented to destroy and the, the only ships on the other hand, they are more focused on spell and other kinds of attributes.
[00:34:47] José Siqueira: So we have those three main ships, and then we have faction agnostic ships. We have , which is a low cost manufacturer that was created in the media zone by the people of the media zone to serve their needs, especially after the convergence war when they were left in shambles. And we have Armstrong, which is a infrastructure focus on manufacturing.
[00:35:15] José Siqueira: They specialize in mining here. And right now in the lore of Star Atlas, they have the monopoly of all COP operations regarding mining. Oh, okay. And finally, we have other manufacturers, and those are corporations between different factions. We have Omrico, which is a corporation between Oni and Lustru, led by the Unabs of the Oni Consortium.
[00:35:47] José Siqueira: We have Opal, which is a cooperation between Usturs and Muds, led by the Usturs. And finally, we have Calico, which is a joint enterprise between Muds and Omni, led by the Muds. So, those companies, they reflect this period of peace that we are living right now, and those, and every ship right now with Star Atlas, you can acquire them regardless of which faction you belong to.
[00:36:15] José Siqueira: So this is something that can change in the future, especially if we, if the piece that we live right now is broken. Ah,
[00:36:24] Matt: okay. So potential spoiler for the future.
[00:36:28] José Siqueira: Maybe who knows? Let’s see. Who knows? Yeah. And finally we have still other porn. We have King boos. We have the ramifications of people in the street, which, which are people’s bios and people equals.
[00:36:43] José Siqueira: We have the Tufa, which is one of the species of Staracus as well, but not much is known about them, other than they are tied with iris, geniesium, and the events of core and the deep zones of the iris zone of Staracus. And finally, we have the rainbow industries. Which are Portoli which is a Portoli manufacturer, and they have various optic tech and chips.
[00:37:16] José Siqueira: So those are the manufacturers of Staratus and their current alignment.
[00:37:21] Matt: And again, obviously, there’s, there’s lore, history about why a manufacturer is aligned. Maybe how, how they came into existence. Like you said, one of them is kind of aligned with that. So, yeah, I’m really seeing the tie in of, of everything.
[00:37:36] Matt: And, and yeah, that, that timeline you’re describing, it seems very, very interesting. It would be awesome
[00:37:43] José Siqueira: to see all of this. For example, in my timeline, you can see when Kimbo Winsor C was formed and when it due to a family conflict, it broke into three branches. It’s one that’s neutral. And other two that align themselves with groups in the medium zone to fight the faction’s influence in that zone.
[00:38:06] José Siqueira: So, yeah, you are right, everything is tied together, there is lore tying everything, every event that happens in Star Atlas. It’s just It’s a lot to write down. Yeah The planning is already there. So just sit down and write this bible. Yeah, by the way, I think that Just me joseph personally. I have over 1500 pages.
[00:38:31] José Siqueira: Oh my word.
[00:38:32] Matt: I was about ready to compliment you that you’ve been Talking now for a while and I’m like, he’s not reading off a notes. You just know this, but yeah, if you wrote a thousand pages, you, you forget, forget those lawyer briefs to be writing, you wrote, you wrote a novel or, or something. Yeah.
[00:38:50] Matt: Fascinating. Very fascinating. Yeah.
[00:38:51] José Siqueira: It’s crazy. And I’m not here and I’m not even talking about core or the other stuff that teams going to do, you know, this is my part and, but it’s. It’s super cool at this point. I know pretty much every event of startups by heart. One day. I’ll learn it by year as well.
[00:39:12] Matt: Well, that’s great. Going back to something you said earlier about again, the 3 kind of mean. Aspects political combat economy combat ships like we in former wars. Got it. Obviously, there’s the economics, but maybe briefly there’s there’s. There’s probably lore related to political aspects, obviously, but, but I kind of was just realizing as, as you’ve been talking, everything kind of before is history.
[00:39:39] Matt: So it could be about a previous combat, a previous yeah, historical events. There’s politics in the past too that way to us, but there, there’ll be. Lore, or maybe the best way to ask this is, does the lore help inform how the political aspects of the game will play out? So I’m in the United States.
[00:40:03] Matt: We have two political parties, Democrats, Republicans, but they, they have history. I mean, they go back. I don’t know, 200 years. Let’s just say I, I forgot my revolutionary. Yeah, the founders, all that stuff is, is there political lore that is part of the history, but then will that move forward and start defining kind of some of the gameplay based again on the, the political sides or because we have the Dow, the dist, The Decentralized Autonomous Organization, which is controlled by real gamers.
[00:40:36] Matt: I mean, they can invent political conflicts, but I guess do they, is there a political aspect that the gamers are involved with, or is it more of the gamers will kind of pick how the political aspects work?
[00:40:48] José Siqueira: That’s a wonderful question. From this point when we look about where we are right now, and we look to the past of everything that happens around us.
[00:40:58] José Siqueira: It was totally driven by us, right? I pretty much wrote all the political history of each one of the different groups of Star Atlas happened. So we have things like, for example, one thing that’s very, very clear how impactful it was, was the death of Paizo, which was the leader of the Sardinians during the Convergence War.
[00:41:22] José Siqueira: When that happened. And the Sardinians got massacred and nearly extinguished, it caused the rest of their civilization to unite and create the first Titan ship. And this ultimately was what ended the Convergence War. So yes, there is the, the law of Stratus dictates how the politics, the politics happen and where we are now with the concept of peace.
[00:41:50] José Siqueira: If you think about that right now in Sage Labs, players are crafting RFRs, which is basically a token that’s ensued by the console piece. So in a sense, you are working for the console. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. It’s already the lore impacting how the gameplay works. In the future, what’s going to happen is that the players We’ll become agents of the Lord to some extent and maybe to a major extent.
[00:42:24] José Siqueira: So to be completely honest with you, we don’t know the limits of how much each one of those will impact each other. But I feel that this is actually super exciting because you start Atlas. We’ll have NPCs, right? And those NPCs, they have agendas. Yes. I am controlling them in the legal sense, Chipto is controlling them in the game design, and Chris is controlling them in the economics.
[00:42:53] José Siqueira: So it actually may, probably will happen that players interests will clash with their interests, and then we’ll see what happens when that happens. And it’s, I think it’s eventually super cool.
[00:43:08] Matt: If, if, if that I’m going to call it not a revelation. It wasn’t alpha, but the way you just described that, because people that are in the discord and definitely in the foundation room and know these people and know yourself putting their creation lore to the NPCs, And, you know, we’ve talked a lot about, or they talk about in discord, a lot economic levers, but in reality, the 3 of you have levers for those 3 elements through non playable characters.
[00:43:45] Matt: Again, I can’t do the analogy because it’s an audio, but again, mind blown. I had never put that connection together of your roles in the company, the action, the things you’re creating. And the impacts to us as gamers. So I, I, yeah, I’m, I’m blown away with that. That is, that is such an like that.
[00:44:05] José Siqueira: Yeah. It’s another level of interaction, right?
[00:44:06] José Siqueira: Yeah. As I was telling you, we don’t know how far this will go. Sure. Maybe in a few years we I can sit down with Chris. I can sit down with chip and we create the personality of the leaders of those. Factions and groups and they become AI NPCs that you guys will face and try to overcome or even ally yourselves with in God expense.
[00:44:37] José Siqueira: Yeah,
[00:44:38] Matt: and you bring up a whole nother aspect with AI. I mean, who knows where we’ll have access to AI in a year
[00:44:44] José Siqueira: or two. Yeah, and this is already being researched. Cool. Not only by Star Atlas, but everyone else in the world. So, yeah, I feel we’ll see a revolution in many different areas, not just in gaming, but for our purpose here.
[00:45:01] José Siqueira: I feel like gaming is going to be super cool to see how this next level of engagement will help will happen. Like imagine, for example, Matt, you have your ships, you have your crew members, right? And one day, maybe those crew members, they will have personalities and they’ll grow attached to your crew members, you know, because they will be there with you every day.
[00:45:25] José Siqueira: They go to the different missions with you. You see that progression, you see them grow and maybe you have to watch them die as well. And I think that this is going to be. Changing experience in terms of gameplay.
[00:45:43] Matt: Yeah, no. Excellent. Fascinating. Well, this leads directly in kind of my last couple of questions again.
[00:45:48] Matt: I want to thank you for all your time, but there was one thing in talking about again, the game products that are available in, in early 2024, when we’re recording this. So Sage labs. We talked about that briefly, the Never Alone campaign on Zilli. You mentioned the core graphic novel and where that kind of fits in.
[00:46:03] Matt: Where does the quote showroom fit in? Is it, I know there’s lots of talk about things that are being developed in there, both for actual gameplay mechanics, erasing the combat, but there was also talk about building a gate. And I know there’s the. Breakpoint release a year ago where there was all these seasons or versions.
[00:46:25] Matt: I can’t remember, but is there a lore? Well, anyways, I guess my point was, you’ve mentioned there’s lower buttons in sage labs. The never long campaign is. Every one of them has lore, even if you’re just posting something on X or Twitter, does the showroom have war at this point? Or is that, is that coming when, when more parts, because again, it’s just the mud what is it?
[00:46:51] Matt: The central station right now, right?
[00:46:55] José Siqueira: Yeah. Yeah. And the mud space station, the showroom, it’s a place in the world. Yes. It’s referred both in NeverAlone and in stage labs. Okay. And the, the events and the development that we have in showroom right now, it, it’s happening in the same moment of everything else that we are doing.
[00:47:16] José Siqueira: Okay. So
[00:47:16] Matt: they’re all, yes. So they’re all same time where we’re calling current. Okay. So it exists that way for
[00:47:22] José Siqueira: sure. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Everything that you see right now is happening together in the same timeline. Every product of startup. I’ve
[00:47:33] Matt: got a couple, so yeah, so I got a couple final questions and these are going to be more future looking.
[00:47:38] Matt: So again, you’re, you’re welcome to not share or, or just what’s the word theory craft, but I am kind of curious a lot. We’ve talked about is kind of the history of the lore briefly talked about. So we’ll call it current lore. You know, there’s the current factions and there, you know, things we might do when MPC show up and things like that.
[00:47:58] Matt: But does, does do you have a A future thought for the lore or is the lore for the future to be written as the gamers come in and, and help define things? Or do you seek on your timeline, you have some, Hey, I got. Again, you don’t have to spoil anything, but yeah, I got some events that are coming down the pipe that’ll tie into maybe this part of the game design or something.
[00:48:21] Matt: How does the future of lore look?
[00:48:24] José Siqueira: The future of lore, from my perspective I’m not sure how much it will be used by game design, but for me the future of lore is writing the world building of the future of Star Atlas. Zones and space. So for example, one of the main things that I’m going to do in the future of more is create the logics, planets, civilizations, and monsters, and events of the high risk zone, that’s one of the things, and I want to make those very chaotic, very wild, and even logically fine due to the very nature of the more of that place, right?
[00:49:06] José Siqueira: That’s where I recently. And Iris, in the lore of Star Atlas, Iris is an anomaly, and due to the circumstances of its history, Iris has an influence in the overall galaxy, like, the closer you get to Iris, the more weird reality gets, and more, let’s say, unreliable are the laws of physics, and I want to give players So I want you to, when you join the hybrid zone the music gets intense, the atmosphere gets weird, and every planet, every sector will be filled with things that should battle your life.
[00:49:52] José Siqueira: Even good things, bad things, all of this is part of the future of the world of Star Atlas. Aside from that, I need to write down every single entry that I have in my timeline. Right now, most of those are bullet points. For example, when I wrote the lore of Puzzle Passage in Sage Labs, you see a brief description of the story of that star system.
[00:50:21] José Siqueira: You learn that there was a royalty bloodline in that sector. You learn that there is a cult of assassins that grow in that star system. But all of that Actually, it turns out to be a huge story that happened for many, many years and a story that will be that there are future developments. There are things that happened in the past so that to explain why it reached at that point.
[00:50:53] José Siqueira: So if you think that there are 51 star systems right now in Star Atlas and sure there are more to come in the future, I have work to do for that. Yes, yes,
[00:51:06] Matt: that’s that’s for sure. Well, then 2nd to the final question. So the thing was interesting what you just described again, no commitments needed, but eventually and again, there is sort of now to the gamers will be adding in.
[00:51:23] Matt: They will be involved again political for sure gameplay combat maybe they’ll be a battle and and I kind of I guess allude to i’ve heard of these battles and political stuff in eve online I would assume that the development of star atlas. Is open, but probably will embrace player driven events and maybe they become, you know, the, the battle of the bulge to use World War Two or something like that.
[00:51:50] Matt: And that we, in effect, as gamers will be building and helping you build some more in our interactions.
[00:51:57] José Siqueira: And one thing that I would, you know, that would be making me really, really happy was that we can set through game design, very difficult objectives. Let’s say, for example, creating a titanship. This would require a series, like a long, hard, time consuming, resource consuming risk taking endeavor by a big group of players.
[00:52:26] José Siqueira: Yeah. But, if one such group managed to do this, They deserve their place in the Staratus lore. Yes. And I want to reward them for that. Let’s say we have a player that’s so famous, so efficient, or maybe the correct word would be infamous.
[00:52:46] Matt: Yes, that’s what I already said, or they’re infamous. Yeah,
[00:52:48] José Siqueira: yeah.
[00:52:48] José Siqueira: Yeah, that he manages to steal money, assets, stuff from the cause of peace from other players. Maybe he can become the pirate king of Staratus. Sure. No. Yep. So that’s, I want to do this. I want to have huge achievements linked with the lore. Yeah. And I want to allow players to earn their space. By doing extraordinary things in StarLabs.
[00:53:16] Matt: Cool. Well, I’ve been promising the final question, so here it is. What’s the best resource for someone who’s getting started in StarLabs, or maybe been around but not too much in the lore, or hey, maybe didn’t know everything? Where, where would you point people to go to learn more other than, of course, maybe following you on Twitter X or, or following around on, I, well, actually I, I forgot in discord, right?
[00:53:39] Matt: There, there is a lore channel, so you can definitely there, but, but what are the best resources for people to learn more besides buying the core novel or something like that? So
[00:53:47] José Siqueira: we have the lore wiki right now. Yep. There are some entries there that will, that will get you started on everything that, like the foundations of everything that I have been saying here as you said, you have the Lord channel and right now the hologram is.
[00:54:04] José Siqueira: creating a whole timeline of their own with every event of Star Atlas linked there. So that’s also a very good place to start. And of course, we have many content creators, some of them in DSP himself, show aspects of the lore. Sage Labs also has lots of lore on the descriptions of the star systems. Never alone, and yeah, there is lots of lore spread over there, but the main place you go now would be the lore reading portion.
[00:54:38] Matt: And I guess to reinforce, because it wasn’t as obvious to me, the lore is found by playing the game. Go do go do things and learn as you go. So, well, Jose, I want to really thank you again for all your time. This has been a great experience learning more. I mean, I, I now have a much better. Well, 1, I have a total appreciation for the amount of effort and time you’ve taken to, do these behind the scenes things that again, someday, hopefully we get to see, but, you know, creating the timelines working through. And like you said, over 1000 pages of of, I’m assuming text written content that that forms, you know, different things. So that that’s been a. Great insight for me, and I do really appreciate your time coming on my podcast and, and, and sharing some of your knowledge and what you do on a day to day basis to keep building out the lore.
[00:55:28] Matt: So thank you very much. So last point to you, any other things you’d like to leave the hopefully audience listening to this with about the lore of star
[00:55:35] José Siqueira: Atlas. Oh, man. I would love to give a shout out to the. To the guys who come every day to the Lord channel there are many people here. So I won’t be naming all of them by name because if I miss someone, but I love you guys.
[00:55:54] José Siqueira: Thank you so much for being passionate about the Lord. Keeping me dry, driving me forward and yeah, man. Thank you very much for giving me this space to talk about the status more. I am very patient about this.
[00:56:14] Matt: Yes, it shows through again. You’ve made a big life change and it shows you picked your future calling for sure.
[00:56:25] José Siqueira: Yeah, hopefully I’ll be able to create some cool stuff for our People to enjoy the startup was metaphors and thank you for this invitation. Yes, it was very funny and hopefully I can hop here again in the future to talk more
[00:56:45] Matt: about. Oh yeah, definitely. Love to have you back on and we can maybe do some more deep or do more deep dives into specific things as either developments in the community kind of bring it up.
[00:56:56] Matt: So again, thank you very much for all your time. Absolutely, Frank.
[00:56:59] José Siqueira: very much and have a good evening. So I hope
[00:57:04] Matt: you enjoyed that interview. I again, was very eyes opened just things I had never even contemplated before. Maybe I missed to me one of the biggest revelations that Earth is in the timeline.
[00:57:18] Matt: So I, I don’t know why I thought this was a completely made up Fiction, but it is a content continuity of our present day. So again, I found that insightful, definitely the whole discussion about the timeline and history and probably caught, you know, just the whole concept of the, how the three different parts of starless, the combat, the lore.
[00:57:39] Matt: Or excuse me, excuse me. Game design, lore, and economy. And there’s a person for each of those at the Stardust teams can use those as levers for some of our future interactions within the Stardust game. So again I found this really insightful, very interesting. Hope you did too. I hope again, this is the first of Maybe not a consistent series, but definitely an ongoing one as I can make some different outreach as any long time listeners of the podcast.
[00:58:02] Matt: No, I’ve been definitely looking for guests. So I really appreciate that. Reached out to me and offered to be on here. And I think it was a great opportunity to get some, some insight. But I’m definitely looking for other community members, content creators, anyone on the start list team. Obviously I’m totally open to that.
[00:58:19] Matt: I may have a slant though of kind of much like my podcast, a little more tutorial based or learning or kind of well, the terms evergreen content, but, but not necessarily just the news what’s just happened this week. Cause you know, I’m hoping to as people come. Into the star Atlas thing, kind of understand actually I know one cool and I just thought it would be if somebody could do the history of star Atlas.
[00:58:41] Matt: I don’t know. Anyways. So again, if you’re interested again, just even community members content creators, anybody in the build program definitely looking at this kind of supplemental episodes to kind of provide some of that context to star Alice and not necessarily just what’s happened in the last week.
[00:58:57] Matt: So again hope you enjoyed the listen. And again, do all the standard things if you liked it. But again, this is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald.