About This Guide

This site is meant to be a complete and authoritative guide to the universe that the Wing Commander games are set in. The computer game series Wing Commander was originally created by Chris Roberts, and is owned by Origin, Electronic Arts.

If you've come here looking for tips and techniques for the games, you've come to the wrong place. You won't find cheat codes or mission walkthroughs anywhere here, though some of the sites listed in the links might be useful. What you will find here is a complete (or as complete as I could make it) reference to a universe that we've been shown glimpses of through 9 computer games, 8 novels, one cartoon series, and one feature movie. Since its humble origins in Wing Commander 1, "The 3-D Space Combat Simulator", the Wing Commander Universe has expanded considerably in detail, with a multitude of spacecraft, technology, aliens, and planets. All of that information has been gathered up, collected together, and molded into a continuous whole, a coherent narrative, if you will. And the result is this little corner of the Internet that is now spread out before you. Hopefully this site will give long-time fans a chance to remember again all the campaigns and battles that they fought on the side of humanity (or Kilrathi), let more casual computer gamers see what else lies beyond whichever incarnation of Wing Commander they happen to be battling with, and inform the readers and TV viewers about where Wing Commander really comes from.

But wonderful though it is, the universe is far from perfect. It is only recently that suitable attention has been paid to continuity, and while chapters have managed to avoid contradicting each other for the most part, there are still a few cracks below the surface. Thus I have decided to abide by a number of ground rules while putting everything together, which are listed below.

Though I've tried my best to ensure the accuracy of everything, mistakes can happen when I'm typing in specs for the Scattergun at 3 am. If you think I've listed something wrongly or left something out, contact me and I'll verify the error and correct it. Feel free to send any other feedback as well.

Obviously, given the nature of its content, this page is full of spoilers. So if you don't really want to know the whole story before the game reveals it to you, tread carefully. Generally, the "History", "Campaigns", and "Flight Roster" sections will have the most plot spoilers. The rest can be looked at with relative safety.


The Ground Rules

  • The sources I used are the games, their manuals, the official Origin guides to the games, the movie, and the books. This means --

    Games (inclusive of manuals and guides):
    1. Wing Commander, including Secret Missions 1 & 2
    2. Wing Commander 2: Vengeance Of The Kilrathi,
    as well as Special Operations 1 & 2
    3. Wing Commander Academy
    4. Privateer & Privateer: Righteous Fire
    5. Wing Commander Armada
    6. Wing Commander 3: Heart Of The Tiger
    7. Wing Commander 4: The Price Of Freedom
    8. Wing Commander Prophecy (aka Wing Commander 5), and Secret Operations

    Movie:
    1. Wing Commander -- Twentieth Century Fox, 1999, Director Chris Roberts
    Screenplay by Kevin Droney and Mike Finch

    Books:
    1. Action Stations, by William R. Forstchen
    2. Freedom Flight, by Mercedes Lackey & Ellen Guon
    3. End Run, by Christopher Stasheff & William R. Forstchen
    4. Fleet Action, by William R. Forstchen
    5. Heart Of The Tiger, by William R. Forstchen & Andrew Keith
    6. False Colours, by William R. Forstchen & William H. Keith
    7. The Price Of Freedom, by William R. Forstchen & Ben Ohlander
    8. Wing Commander, by Peter Telep
    9. Official Authorised Wing Commander Confederation Handbook,
    Compiled by Chris McCubbin

    Just on a side note, William Forstchen is probably the best thing to happen to the Wing Commander Universe on the written page. He has added considerable depth to what might have otherwise become a fairly two-dimensional construct, expanding it to include a rich set of diverse characters, human and alien, with the worlds and technology that go with them, as well as an incredible history of the Terran-Kilrathi War outside of the games themselves. Because of him, my experience of the Wing Commander Universe has been greatly enriched, and I thank him for it.

  • A note about the Wing Commander movie: It never fails that things just begin to go smoothly, and then a monkey wrench gets thrown in the works. This time round, the writers of the Wing Commander movie pretty much threw continuity out the window, and the information in the "Confederation Handbook", which forms the source for the movie, simply exacerbates the problem. So now the Wing Commander Universe has Hopper Drives as well as Jump Drives, there's a whole new war before the Terran-Kilrathi War, and events did not take place when they were supposed to have (based on the other earlier sources), among others. I am suddenly faced with the prospect of ironing out HUGE wrinkles in continuity, and have thus chosen the following stance: the games will continue to take precedence, up to Wing Commander 4, as this was the last game project in which Chris Roberts was still involved. Everything else (books, background info from Prophecy, movie) will be "bent" to fit this framework, with the movie taking on precedence within continuity outside of the games. Hopefully in the bending, nothing will break...too badly.

  • Addendum to above: I decided to attempt to force the Wing Commander movie, as well as its source material as detailed in the "Confederation Handbook", into the continuity around the middle of 1999. Since then, I've grappled constantly with the large contradictions and compromises that needed to be made. As a result, I've decided instead to implement an "alternate universe" approach to recounting the events of the Pilgrim War. Thus my revised approach is as follows: anything in the "Handbook" that does not directly contradict any event in the existing Wing Commander timeline gets added to it; everything else is marked by an "inverted" Terran Confederation symbol (you'll know it when you see it!). In this way, you get to see both the "original" timeline as well as the "Pilgrim" timeline, including the changes I made to both source materials in an effort to fit things in. Hopefully this method will go down better than the previous one.

  • In summarising the events chronicled in the books, and in some of the games, I've chosen to highlight the more "monumental" parts of them, rather than do a complete step-by-step retelling. In other words, I describe the plot, highlight the major players, and leave out such things as character development and person-to-person conversation. If you want the rest, stop sitting here reading this and go get the books! Trust me, you'd enjoy them.

  • The cartoon series "Wing Commander Academy" I have ignored because (1) I've seen exactly three episodes, and (2) the cartoons are more spinoffs, taking Wing Commander as a premise to go their own way, rather than part of the whole. If I tried to force it into continuity as well, it'd probably be impossible. And I'd go nuts from the attempt.
    I have also ignored "Privateer 2", which is not actually set in the Wing Commander Universe at all. It simply borrowed the concept of "Privateer 1" and transposed it to a different universe.

  • In relating events for each campaign, I've chosen to assume that Colonel Blair performed every mission successfully, taking the complete so-called "winning" path in each game, rather than use the paths taken by him in the books. Also, Vaquero survived to fly the bombing run on Kilrah, though it was Maniac, Vagabond, and Flint who I assume flew with Blair.

  • For the biographies section, I chose to include all the characters Christopher Blair or Lance Casey (ie the main characters in the games) had direct contact with. That is except for Shotglass, as it doesn't really take all that much space to say: "Shotglass was the Tiger's Claw's bartender. He died when the Tiger's Claw was destroyed in 2656." (In fact some other characters' biographies are almost as brief.) As for other characters who appear in the books, I chose those who played a major role in the various campaigns and battles that they recount. My rough guide was those characters who had appeared in two or more books. Everyone else, as well as those who actually have biographies written about them, is listed in a fourth part of the "Flight Roster" section, which includes a list of all the ships that have ever appeared anywhere -- that is, if I didn't miss any by accident.

  • Accidents can and do happen. In this case, while Admiral Vance Richards is assumed to have been alive AFTER the Border Worlds Conflict in the book "Action Stations", "False Colours" kills him off (or at least gives the appearance that he dies) in that battle, which occurs about two years BEFORE the Border Worlds Conflict. I have assumed, for now (though I might decide otherwise later), that Admiral Richards does die. If you prefer him alive, then a possible way out is for him to have gotten into an life pod and escaped the destruction of the FRLS Xenophon, though being the CO of that ship, that is extremely unlikely (you know, captain going down with the ship and all that).

  • When recounting the events of the Border Worlds Conflict, I assumed that (a)Colonel Blair did not defect Masa System, but in the Silenos System, (b)that he chose to aid the Border Worlds government in the Circe System, (c)that he chose not to use the Flash-Pak on the Ella Superbase, and instead used it on the TCS Vesuvius, and (d)that he said all the right things at the Confed Assembly meeting when he was sparring with Space Marshal Tolwyn.

  • In my effort to keep things consistent, as well as to add some cool stuff to this page, I have taken a few liberties with the information. Visit the Liberties Page for more information.


    And finally, everything in here is copyrighted and trademarked by either Chris Roberts, or Origin, Electronic Arts, or both. Everything has been used without permission, though I hope that I've used them with their blessing.

    That's it then. Hope you enjoy this page. Godspeed, good luck, and good hunting!




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