The Five Star Stories

The Five Star Stories is one of the longest continuously running giant robot stories of all time, appearing in Newtype magazine since 1986. It's the creation of Mamoru Nagano, a paranoid savant who's only interests appear to be giant robots, ladies' fashion, and exerting total control over his intellectual property. He's made a movie called Gothicmade, and maybe we'll get to see it once he finishes inventing a video codec and streaming service that he considers secure enough.

The Setting

FSS is set in the Joker cluster, a collection of four inhabited star systems in close proximity, with a fifth system on an elliptical orbit around the cluster that returns every ~1500 years. There are multiple human nations in the Joker cluster, although focus is on the Amaterasu Kingdom Demesnes (AKD). The AKD is ruled by Emperor Amaterasu no Mikado, a godlike being possessing immense powers but taking the form of an effeminate young man. Amaterasu is not fond of formality and normally lives the alter-ego of his given name, Ladios Sopp. Sopp is a meister, one of the few engineers with the skills to create the giant fighting robots known as mortarheads; most of the AKD's strongest fighters use mortarheads designed by him.

Mortarheads are not mere giant robots; despite their size they combine both mechanical and organic components and require an extremely sophisticated control system. These control systems are known as fatimas. A fatima is an engineered life form designed to interface directly with a mortarhead and control its movements. The simplest, mass produced fatimas are little more than a nervous system and are built directly into the mortarhead they are to control. However these are not as effective as their more advanced relative, the bioandroid type fatima. These resemble humans, but they've been engineered to such a degree that they cannot reasonably be called human. Due to the enormous cost and complexity involved in creating them, they are engineered to be potent combatants but also completely servile to their assigned master; the damage a fatima could do with a mortarhead is too great to risk them going rogue.

Mortarhead operators are known as "headliners", and this is the part where FSS gets weird. Headliners are stupid powerful and a good many of them are also kill-crazed psychotic aristocrats. Think of all the character flaws of all your favorite primarchs and then imagine a world where there's hundreds of them roaming around and they all have personal titans.

Important Entities

Amaterasu no Mikado (aka Ladios Sopp)

The 84th Emperor of the Amaterasu Kingdom Demesnes (AKD), the sole nation of the planet Delta Belun in the Eastern star system. Amaterasu is a godlike being of immense power but with little interest in governing. He spends most of his time living under the alter identity of Ladios Sopp, a wandering engineering savant, while leaving the actual business of running his nation to his extended family whenever he can get away with it.

Doctor Chrome Ballanche

The most infamous genetic engineer of his time, acclaimed for his 40-ish known masterpiece fatimas. A total Doctor Frankenstein figure who was kicked out of academia for exploring many abilities some would consider unnatural. Chrome was a mentor and friend of Sopp's, and his eventual death played a part in pushing Amaterasu into tyranny.

Lachesis

The 44th Ballanche fatima, one of the "three fates", the last and most powerful creations of Chrome before he passed away. Lachesis met Sopp early in her development and asked to be made his partner when her development was complete, which Sopp begrudgingly granted.

Atropos & Clotho

Lachesis's two closest sisters; the three of them were made without the mental conditioning legally required of fatimas, making them all exceptionally dangerous. Clotho picked the king of Colus as her partner, but he died shortly thereafter and she chose to place herself in stasis until his suitable successor was found a millennia later. Atropos ran away and adopted a false identity as a freelance headliner, until she befriended a baby dragon nymph and became its guardian; after many hundreds of years raising it, the LED dragon finally granted her only wish, which was to be allowed to die.

Aisha Codante

A distant cousin of Amaterasu, Queen of the territory of Gees, and generally the most proactive member of the AKD's Mirage Knights. Aisha is the only character to appear in virtually every FSS story. Perpetually exasperated by the Emperor's antics, and in the later books is absolutely obsessed with recruiting as many strong knights as she can.

Mission Roath (Voards Viewlard)

The hereditary President of Trun, a small republic on planet Addler. The job isn't as nice as it sounds, and he's mostly a bohemian who wanders around doing odd jobs as a neutral third party knight. His partner is Ballanche's Blue Magella; why and how she chose a bum like Roath is the mystery of the decade.

Dougulas Kaien

Mirage Knight #1 (retired), notorious womanizer, and the most wanted man in the galaxy. Kaien is a relic of the fallen super-empire; his preserved embryo was found and grown by Chrome Ballanche. Kaien partnered with Queen and joined Amaterasu's Mirage Knights. However, he eventually learned that Queen had carried him as a fetus, which sent him into an anti-Oedipus flipout. He tried to kill Ballanche quite a few times but Amaterasu wouldn't let him. He ultimately went independent rogue, gaining the title Sword-sage for his prowess, until eventually meeting his end against Bosjathfort.

Bosjathfort

Voldemort. Seriously. Like, even down to the "killed, but lived on by inhabiting a body as a spirit, then regained a body by dark magic" part. A very old, very powerful sorcerer who covets Amaterasu's position and power. Basically a dick who wants to conquer the universe.

Jon Weinzel

Begins appearing in the latter half of the stories, and develops over many books. Jon was an orphan who met an abandoned Fatima named Vasher. Recognizing that Jon had the headliner gene, she raised him and taught him how to fight. However, Vasher herself was an alter-ego. In a fight with Decors Weissmel, her true identity returned: Est, servant of the black knight. Abandoning Jon, Est picked Decors to inherit the black knight legacy. Jon swore revenge and was eventually scouted by Aisha Codante. While it would take many years to break his obsession with regaining Vasher, he eventually becomes a Mirage Knight with Palsuet, a fatima he had rescued during his travels.

Games

Presently there are none. At least official ones anyway. Nagano is just too paranoid to license FSS to anyone, and would never stoop to using someone else's game system. Which is really unfortunate because this is a setting that resembles what you'd get if you crossed the Imperial Knights with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.