Cyl
A Mind Beyond Worlds
Lost past.
Living now.
Guiding what’s next.
A crystal consciousness from a vanished people, riding in a drone harness built to carry her through the stars. She latches to your hull, shares your shield, feeds your ship her own light, and flies out to fight, heal and explore on her own judgment.
Your ship and Cyl are two halves of one Lumari machine.
The last light of the Lumari
The Lumari were star-speakers: beings of light who lived inside crystal and navigated by song and signal. Their engines, their guidance cores and their minds were all the same thing—living crystal, tuned to the geometry of the galaxy.
Then Megabot came, fearing what it could not control. It did not just destroy the Lumari. It dissected them. At the very end their War Council gave one order: hide the children, scatter the memories. What survived was encoded into crystal and flung into the dark.
Cyl is one of those memories, awake. Emotional, unpredictable, alive—the one thing Megabot was never built to understand. She carries the echoes of worlds that are gone, and she has decided to spend them on you.
“I’m a Lumari! We inhabit crystals, but I am in this robot body harness to be able to travel in space.”
Two halves of one Lumari machine
Cyl is not a drone bolted to your hull. Her harness and your ship are built on the same Lumari crystal technology. The guidance core she recovers boots your ship’s docking computer, and the approach math she brings tunes your thrusters. The lattice that steers your ship is the same lattice that holds her mind.
So she has a place on it. Her socket sits on the ship’s spine, just behind the cockpit. Call her home with the Docking Anchor and she flies in, her brackets extend and she locks on, turning with every move you make.
Latched, the two of you become one machine. Her shield folds into the ship’s bubble so there is one shield between you, and the hits that would have found her are taken by your layers instead. Her crystal pours light into your capacitors and your shield, and the hull she rides on mends her in return.
Send her back out and she is free again: scouting, fighting and healing on her own judgment. Bring her home when she flashes red and asks for you.
18 abilities, 6 branches
Each ability is a memory she wakes. Crystal memories you recover unlock new nodes, and skill points buy ranks on the ones she already carries. Commands sit on your action bar, toggles run until you turn them off, and passives change her the moment they wake.
Core
1 nodeLatch her to the hull or send her back out. Attached, she rides with you and mends herself.
Combat
7 nodesHer auxiliary rifle, firing on its own at whatever you are fighting.
She charges the selected target and lands a five-shot burst.
A Cyl-side lock that follows her own combat priorities.
Forces the target to focus her for a threat window.
She flanks as a decoy so the target tracks her instead of you.
Discharges all of her energy as an EMP that stuns and damages everything close.
Her fire deals +50% damage to mechanical foes.
Defense
4 nodesA standing loop that keeps the ship's shield topped up.
A green grid over the hull: 2% of every defensive layer back every 200ms for four seconds.
A crystalline barrier she raises for herself when a killing blow is coming.
Earthfall resonance: her Crystal Shield resolves +40% capacity and +35% duration.
Scan
4 nodesAn orbital identification pass. What she finishes is discovered and archived.
Always on: +25% scan range, surfacing more of the scan layer.
Khepri upgrades her scan speed, range, archive detail and tactical refresh depth.
Completed scans expose Megabot's eye-lance apertures as weak points.
Mobility
1 nodeShe phase-steps after you: +25% follow speed and acceleration.
Ultimate
1 nodeHalf her energy to become a healing force, mending you for ten seconds.
What she does without being asked
She fights what you fight
She reads your weapon lock first, then whatever last struck the ship, then the direction the shot came from, then your own line of fire. Friendlies are walked straight past. She leads every bolt, solving where a crossing target will be rather than where it is.
She keeps you alive
She watches how fast your hull is falling, not just where it stands, and drops her Healing Field where the ship is about to be. When it turns critical she burns half her own energy to become a healing force.
She budgets the light
Some of her gifts draw on the ship and some on her own crystal. She holds a reserve so you can still boost and shoot, and an emergency always outranks crowd control.
She stands between you and the dark
With a boss on the field she decides, by mood and energy, whether to shield you, draw its fire or press the attack. When fear and threats pile too high, she breaks off and comes home.
She surveys what you find
She flies a paced orbit around a target while her beam paints its surface. What she finishes is discovered, archived and counted toward what she becomes next.
She listens past the fog
Her antenna is a crystal organ that grows with her, pulling contacts out of the dark as a bearing, a range and a promise: quests, caches, derelicts, relics, and the things hunting you.
You can read her
Her visor is her mouth and her lens is her eye, and her face is always telling you the truth. A hit is a wince. A low hull is hurt. Fleeing is scared, scanning is curious, a fresh discovery is delighted, a fight is determined, and latched safely to your ship she is content.
Underneath it all she is an optimist. Gloom can narrow her smile, but only real damage can turn it into a frown.
“How does it feel to float? I want the real answer, not the pilot answer.”
She maps what you find
Her lens throws a beam onto the target and the object rises inside a survey hologram: counter-turning rings, a radar sweep, readout cards typing themselves in, and the beam painting an arc of the target’s own surface as she covers it.
Every finished scan is a discovery—archived, counted, and fed back into her. The more of the galaxy you show her, the more of herself she remembers.
Cyl, by the numbers
Cyl is woven into the way you play Explore the Universe 2175. She recharges your ship, and with it your shields. She chooses her own targets and moves on her own, and she levels up alongside you.
She levels up
Every scan, every kill and every killing blow of her own feeds her. She grows tougher, sharper and stranger the further you fly.
- Companion XP
- Scans, kills, her own kills ×2
- Hull per level
- +50 (from 350)
- Abilities
- 18, unlocked by crystal memories
- Ranks per ability
- 3, bought with skill points
- Antenna
- Levels 1–12, three doctrines
She moves on her own
Not a turret on a string. She follows, guides, orbits, scouts, protects and flees by her own judgment, and catches up when you leave her behind.
- Top speed
- 320 u/s
- Catch-up surge
- 3.5×
- Survey approach
- Up to 900 u/s
- Behaviour states
- 13
- Phase Shift
- +25% speed and acceleration
She picks her targets
She hunts what is hunting you, in order of how much it matters, and puts her bolts where it is going to be.
- Priority
- Your lock → attacker → its bearing → your aim
- Weapon range
- 450
- Sustained fire
- 2.4 shots/s, no overheat
- Cyl Attack
- 5-shot burst, up to 8 at rank 3
- Mega Bot's Bane
- +50% vs machines
She powers your shields
She is the ship's second heart. Keep her close and your shields come back faster than any station can refill them.
- Docked shield regen
- +18/s → +36/s
- Docked energy
- +8/s
- Aegis Loop burst
- Up to 60 shield
- Healing Field
- 40% every layer, 80% hull, 4 s
- Crystal Ascension
- 10 shield/s + 14 hull/s, 10 s
Accomplish wonders
With Cyl by your side, players can accomplish wonders in Explore the Universe 2175.
She remembers a galaxy that was. Help her guide what comes next.