The Story Behind the Universe
About the Saga
The Undying Saga is a science-fiction horror series built around one central idea: humanity reached the stars, conquered distance, reshaped worlds and convinced itself that nothing remained beyond its control. It was wrong.
Set across a vast and fractured future, the saga blends cyberpunk, military science fiction, cosmic horror, action and psychological suspense into a single expanding universe. It is a world of artificial planets, colossal warships, neon megacities, mercenary crews, ancient technologies and empires that have survived for centuries by becoming almost as ruthless as the things they fear. Beneath all of that machinery, however, the story remains intensely human. The characters bleed, grieve, love, fail, betray one another, forgive one another and continue moving even when survival itself begins to feel meaningless.
Humanity in The Undying is no longer confined to Earth. Centuries of expansion have scattered civilisation across the galaxy. Warp technology broke the first great barrier, while the discovery of the ancient Relay network accelerated mankind's reach even further. Entire cultures developed beyond the Solar System. New nations rose. Old identities evolved. Humanity learned to terraform planets, construct enormous artificial colonies and move populations between the stars.
Expansion brought power, but it also brought arrogance.
Human civilisation encountered alien species, fought wars over territory and technology, and eventually unified beneath the pressure of enemies it could not defeat alone. From that desperation emerged Zeus: at once empire, military machine, religious authority and political order. Zeus promised stability and survival, but survival came at a cost. Faith became doctrine. Doctrine became law. Opposition became dangerous. What began as protection gradually hardened into a civilisation built upon control, sacrifice and the belief that humanity possessed a divine right to inherit the stars.
Then came the Ag'nagaruth.
They are not simply another invading species. They do not arrive as a conventional army with borders, diplomacy or comprehensible motives. Their presence is corruption made physical. They whisper. They tempt. They exploit fear, grief, anger, desire and desperation. The dead can rise beneath their influence. The living can become something else. Husks, Striders, Brutes and other possessed forms are not merely monsters roaming ruined worlds; they are evidence of a far more terrifying possibility—that identity itself can be stripped away and repurposed.
Above the possessed stand the Twelve: ancient and powerful entities whose individual methods of destruction differ as greatly as the nightmares associated with them. Their existence turns war into something larger than military conflict. Against the Ag'nagaruth, armies do not only fight to hold territory. They fight to preserve thought, memory, identity and the fragile belief that a human being still belongs to themselves.
This conflict forms the dark historical spine of the universe. The Holy War transformed survival into religion. The Pantheon War consumed generations. Armageddon became humanity's final attempt to contain an enemy it could not fully understand. The Hades Nebula, the Great Tear and the disappearance of the Genova remain scars upon history—events surrounded by classified records, half-truths and unanswered questions. Humanity survived, but survival never meant certainty. The enemy was never conclusively destroyed. It simply stopped.
Two centuries later, people have learned to live beneath that silence.
That is where much of The Undying Saga finds its tension. Civilisation continues. Ships travel. Governments rule. Criminal organisations thrive. Mercenaries take contracts. People drink, gamble, fall in love and argue over money while the remnants of old wars remain buried beneath everything. The galaxy feels lived in because most of its inhabitants cannot afford to spend every waking moment thinking about ancient horrors. They have jobs to do and lives to survive.
At the centre of the saga is the Avenging Sun, a mercenary cruiser carrying a crew assembled from the people civilisation discarded, damaged or failed to kill. Captain J. Miller, once a decorated officer of Zeus, commands not through blind obedience but through loyalty earned over years. Around him are soldiers, pilots, engineers, criminals, survivors and specialists whose histories are rarely clean. Kazuomi Nagasawa carries the weight of a murdered family and a destroyed clan. Ivy Hart survived abandonment, betrayal and the brutal education of the underworld. Mya Hendrix understands machinery with an intimacy she has never found in people. Yoko Yoshiro carries the legacy of the Phaser Initiative and a childhood shaped by exploitation. Weber trusts survival more readily than ideals.
And then there is Mitsuko.
Mitsuko stands at the heart of the larger mystery. Found by Miller on the ruined colony of Higashikawa, she possesses abilities that should not exist and memories she does not fully understand. She can survive what should kill her. Violence comes to her with frightening ease. Yet beneath the mystery surrounding her is someone still attempting to understand ordinary human existence: friendship, love, belonging, restraint and the possibility of becoming more than what circumstance made her.
Her presence connects the personal story of the Avenging Sun to forces stretching far beyond the crew itself.
The saga is therefore not built around a single kind of conflict. Some chapters are battles fought across the hulls of warships. Others take place in quiet rooms where two people attempt to say what they actually mean. There are abandoned colonies where the silence matters more than gunfire, political chambers where entire populations become numbers, diseased cities illuminated by neon, and places where something moves beyond the edge of the light. Horror in The Undying can be a creature in a corridor, but it can also be the realisation that a government has already decided a world is expendable.
Technology is everywhere, but it does not make humanity invulnerable. Cybernetics replace limbs and eyes. Neural systems alter perception. Phaser pilots push human reaction beyond natural limits. Weapons can tear through armour, ships can bend space and artificial worlds can support billions of lives. Yet every advancement creates another dependency, another weakness and another way for power to be abused.
That tension defines the visual and thematic identity of the series: beautiful technology against decay; neon light against darkness; enormous civilisations built over forgotten graves; human beings made stronger by machines while becoming increasingly uncertain what being human actually means.
Above all, The Undying Saga is about survival without pretending that survival is the same thing as victory.
Its characters survive terrible things, but they carry those things forward. Empires win wars and inherit consequences. Monsters are defeated and leave scars behind. Every answer reveals another question. Every sanctuary is temporary. Every generation lives among the remains of decisions made by the one before it.
The universe continues to expand through novels, character archives, historical records, creature classifications, military documents, artwork and comic adaptations. Each piece reveals another part of the same world: a future where humanity has travelled farther than it ever imagined, only to discover that the darkest things in existence were waiting for it to arrive.
The stars were never empty.
Humanity was simply too young to hear them screaming.
From Daydreamer to Storyteller
About the Author
Karl Astirbadi
I was never particularly academic. School was a struggle, and the classroom rarely held my attention. More often than not, my mind was somewhere else entirely, lost in imaginary worlds while I stared out of the window, counting down the minutes until I could escape.
Dyslexia made an already difficult experience considerably worse. Reading and writing were obstacles rather than opportunities, and any enthusiasm I might have had for education gradually disappeared. All I wanted was to leave school behind and return to the things I genuinely enjoyed.
One of those things was drawing.
As a youngster, I spent countless hours creating comics, sketching characters and bringing imaginary worlds to life. Every spare moment was an opportunity to put pencil to paper. My imagination was never the problem. Finding the skills to translate what existed inside my head into something tangible was another matter entirely.
Throughout my life, my abilities have often felt uneven. Some things came naturally, while others seemed almost impossibly difficult. As I grew older, however, I discovered something about myself: I enjoyed a challenge. More specifically, I enjoyed taking something I was terrible at and refusing to remain terrible at it.
One by one, I began confronting my weaknesses, turning obstacles into skills and finding satisfaction in the process.
Yet one particular challenge remained.
Books.
For someone who loved storytelling, the written word had always felt frustratingly inaccessible. Then I discovered audiobooks.
Through Audible, an entirely new world opened up to me. Stories that had previously felt beyond my reach suddenly became accessible. I began with the Halo novels before venturing into the extraordinary scale and brutality of Warhammer 40,000’s Horus Heresy.
What started as a casual interest quickly became something of an obsession.
Before long, I had worked my way through hundreds of audiobooks, exploring enormous fictional universes, complicated characters, devastating conflicts and the seemingly limitless possibilities of storytelling.
And somewhere along the way, a rather dangerous thought occurred to me.
What if I tried writing a book of my own?
There was one small problem.
Writing and reading were arguably two of my greatest weaknesses.
Naturally, I decided to give it a go.
I began with little experience, no established process and very little understanding of what I was getting myself into. There was no grand plan or carefully constructed roadmap. Just an idea, an overactive imagination and the determination to see where they might take me.
Progress was slow.
I fumbled my way through sentences, wrestled with grammar and repeatedly discovered how difficult it was to transform an exciting idea into something another person might actually enjoy reading.
But something unexpected happened.
With every passing day, I fell a little further in love with the project.
Characters began developing personalities of their own. The universe expanded. Ideas that had originally seemed insignificant grew into entire storylines. What had started as a personal challenge was gradually becoming something far more important to me.
After approximately a year, I finally completed my first novel.
All 60,000 words of it.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t satisfied.
The story I had imagined was considerably larger than the one I had managed to write. There were characters who needed developing, environments that deserved exploring and countless ideas that had barely scratched the surface.
Rather than accept the manuscript as finished, I made a decision.
I would start again. From the very beginning.
I tore the novel apart and rebuilt it from the ground up, applying everything I had learnt during that first year. Scenes became richer, characters gained depth, and the world began resembling the enormous universe I had originally imagined.
Another year passed.
This time, the manuscript stood at approximately 180,000 words.
Feeling rather pleased with myself, I forwarded it to my editor.
I can only imagine his expression when he opened the document.
Between the questionable grammar, creative spelling and undoubtedly impressive collection of literary crimes, I suspect the poor man quickly realised he had his work cut out for him.
Fortunately, he persevered.
His guidance proved invaluable. He helped transform my manuscript into a coherent novel while teaching me an enormous amount about writing, structure, grammar and the finer details of storytelling.
More importantly, he gave me knowledge I could carry forward.
And I wasn’t about to waste it.
Without taking a break, I began applying everything I had learnt to the second novel, then the third, and the stories that followed.
Each book became another opportunity to improve. The process gradually grew smoother, my confidence increased, and the weaknesses that had once seemed insurmountable became challenges I was increasingly equipped to overcome.
Of course, I am still learning.
I suspect I always will be.
Building The Undying Saga
My love of science fiction, horror and action has played an enormous role in shaping The Undying Saga.
I grew up fascinated by fictional universes that felt enormous, dangerous and believable. Films such as The Thing, Event Horizon and Aliens demonstrated how effectively horror could be combined with science fiction, creating environments where the unknown was every bit as terrifying as the monsters themselves.
Video games introduced another dimension to that fascination. Dead Space, Mass Effect and Halo showed me how deeply an audience could become invested in fictional worlds through their histories, technology, characters and conflicts.
And then there were the books.
The Horus Heresy, in particular, demonstrated the extraordinary possibilities of creating a universe whose history stretches across generations, where individual stories contribute to something almost unimaginably vast.
These influences helped shape my creative ambitions, but I never wanted simply to recreate the worlds I had enjoyed.
I wanted to build my own.
A universe that felt alive. One with its own history, politics, religions, technological advancements, competing civilisations and terrifying secrets. A place where characters possessed genuine motivations, where actions carried consequences and where the horrors lurking beyond humanity’s understanding were more than simple obstacles waiting to be defeated.
I wanted battles that felt desperate, mysteries that encouraged readers to question everything, and characters whose personal struggles mattered just as much as the enormous conflicts unfolding around them.
Above all, I wanted a world that could continue growing.
And that is precisely what The Undying Saga has become.
Every year brings new ideas, new discoveries and new challenges. As my abilities develop, so does the universe. Stories evolve, characters surprise me, and seemingly insignificant details occasionally grow into something that changes the direction of an entire novel.
What began as an attempt to overcome one of my greatest weaknesses has become one of the most rewarding adventures of my life.
There is still an extraordinary amount I want to accomplish, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
My ambition is simple: with every new book, I hope to offer readers something unexpected. New mysteries, memorable characters, terrifying encounters and enough twists and turns to ensure they never become entirely comfortable.
If I can entertain you, surprise you, occasionally frighten you and leave you wanting to discover what happens next, then I have accomplished what I set out to do.
To everyone who has picked up one of my books, explored the universe or supported this project in any way, thank you.
Thank you for joining me on this adventure.
Karl Astirbadi