The Warp Squad 16, an elite squadron of pilots and peace keepers, were individually chosen to represent each of the 16 alliance planets. They participated in exploration and defense of the alliance territory and promoting its interests.
The Warp Squad 16 was created after the destruction of Home Planet, also known as Sol, to locate new planets as potential new homes for the evacuation. What followed was a storied history of participation in wars and exploration missions throughout the galaxy discovering new planets, lost races, artifacts and resources. New generations and cycles of Warp Squad had new members and slowly intensified training, testing and regularly received the newest, latest equipment. Training is conducted at the Warp Squad Reformatory, or the WSR. Their exploits are legendary and members enjoy celebrity status on Home Planet. Once a member, you are stripped of your identity and given a number as a callsign. Other WS16 members do not know the true identities of other WS16 pilots they fly with. Retirement is possible but rare due to casualties. Pilots sometimes request special items in exchange for conducting missions and have a healthy pension of ETH in retirement. As a condition of retirement, WS16 members are under strict confidentiality from speaking about events while in service.
Black Hole incident
A mysterious black hole event began enveloping stars. Sirius was the first star snuffed out, followed by Procion a year later. Proxi Centuri fell and soon the home planets’ skies fell dark. The planet Lyton was threatened next. The Warp Squad 16 were called upon by the council to return and travel together to Lyton to investigate. The mission was notable for being the first time Warp Squad 16 had conducted a mission together in many years.
On August 15th, the WS16 encountered the black hole, it was discovered to be artificial and tests concluded it was consuming planets rather than destroying them. It appeared to have been placed on a set trajectory. The team was unable to send transmissions and confidently flew into the wormhole to find who created it, what powered it and to perhaps turn it off.
Traveling through the wormhole “chewed, sliced and fractionalized” the team. Warp Squad 16 was killed but 8,888 wanderers were born.
Controversies
Accusations have been made that the training of WS16 is overly harsh. One former member, Matteus Erickson, was preparing evidence of his allegations but committed suicide by hanging in his home 3 days before a scheduled interrogation at Warp Squad Reformatory.
Calat War Incident
Warp Squad 16 pilot Caliope Prost, callsign “9” was a 2 year veteran of WS16 when he initiated a war in the Calat system, disobeying orders to do so. Prost was dishonorably discharged from the squad. The incident has given rise to a faction in the council that advocates for ending the Warp Squad 16 program and replacing it with separate exploration and defense programs.
The wanderers are a generative NFT collection with unique looping animation with hundreds of possible attributes and rarities - including music. They were released August 15th, 2021 at a mint price of .08 eth. Eth price that day was $3310. They sold out immediately.
“The original Wanderers collection will remain the central key to the Wanderverse, acting as your gateway to the story, future drops and utility.”
The Wanderers are stored as ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and hosted on IPFS. There are, and will only ever be 8,888 Wanderers in existence.
Some wanderers were assigned special traits. “Warp Squad 16” are a collection of 16, “Guardian Marked” have 42 and “Radioactive” have 84.
After the release of Wanderers, it was noticed two traits were “glitched”. Right arm wine and bongs mistakenly had a glass of whiskey or an antenna instead of the assigned traits. These are referred to as “glitched”. They are not marked as such on marketplaces but are highly collectable. All of these special traits guaranteed special, corresponding traits when the PFP collection Wandernauts was released.
Wanderers ships have 5 panels of randomized panel traits. Cockpits with no panels were quickly noted for their sleekness and beauty. While not promising future utility, “no panels” are sought after by collectors.
Original wanderer NFT were the key to getting free planet pass airdrops in early 2022. They also acted as a ticket for live events like NFTNYC, DeFiPhilly, FutureShape360 and NFT Paris.