"Through the Ansible" is a science-fiction play-by-post roleplaying game about cultural knowledge and the inconsistency of truth. The player characters are members of the Ekumen, a group of interplanetary traders, explorers and scientists, who are sent through the vast distances of space to explore and learn of new worlds, and new cultures. In this strange future, humans and other species are strung out across the galaxy, lost, disconnected, the years and even decades of travel between the planets causing incredible isolation. The only means of communication is the Ansible, a device which allows information to travel faster than light, across the darkness of space, a tiny thread of information in the sea of black. The Ekumen are the only pan-galactic organization that exists. Valuing knowledge and understanding above all else, the Ekumen are the keepers of the Ansibles, traders in technology and cultures, hoarders and brokers of information. They have members on all the central planets, among a dozen species, and they communicate with countless more. The Ekumen has existed for centuries, maybe millennia, and it is constantly changing, evolving. From time to time, the Ekumen sends "mobiles", emissaries or ambassadors, usually highly trained, to seek out new worlds, new cultures, new truths. When it takes years to travel between planets, but only moments to exchange information, the most precious commodity is knowledge. The mobiles of the Ekumen are charged with seeking out this knowledge, finding new worlds and, should they wish it, inducting them into the Ekumen themselves. In "Through the Ansible", you play one of these mobiles.
Leaving everything you know behind, carrying only an Ansible and a dedication to understanding, you enter cryogenic sleep for years, sometimes decades or centuries, to reach your destination. A new world, with a new culture, awaits you. What will you do once you arrive? Will you make contact with your fellow mobiles? Will you come to understand this strange new world? Will your presence change the world for good or ill? And how will it change you? One thing is certain. Your only contact with home is the slow pulse of the Ansible, a narrow thread connecting you with everything left behind.