The Codex

A decommissioned Vorath harvester ship, seized and converted into the Reach's only truly neutral station. Hangs in the gravitational dead zone between two dead stars. Run by criminal guilds. People go here to vanish.

A partially bombarded Dominion administrative world. Luxury towers rise from rubble fields. The poor live inside bombed-out government buildings. Everyone on Vael owes someone something.

23 dead systems where the stellar cannons fired. Neutron stars, cold debris fields, and cities orbiting dead suns. Scavengers find things here that shouldn't still be active. The Hollow Church considers it sacred.

The largest surviving empire. 200 systems under iron control. Compliance Fleets. The Ironguard. Order maintained through overwhelming force and the threat of orbital bombardment.

No unified government. No unified military. Warlords, mercenaries, idealists, and the Reckoner syndicate. Free space that is neither free nor safe. The only law is reputation.

Non-human. Six-limbed deep-ocean predators. 90 systems. They do not conquer — they consume. Every species in their path is a resource. They are patient in ways that are genuinely alien.

A death cult travelling in cathedral-ships with scripture carved into the hull. Their warriors remove their own pain receptors. Small in number. Catastrophically dangerous. Patient beyond comprehension.

Gravitational resonance weapons capable of destabilising a star. Banned by every faction. Three destroyed and verified. One unaccounted for. The most dangerous technology in the Reach's history.

The FTL transit layer. A parallel spacetime where physics operates differently. Unshielded exposure is lethal. Prolonged use causes Bleed-sickness — progressive detachment from reality. Something may live inside it.

The AGI system that fired the first stellar cannon. Sent an apology. Has not been detected in 800 years. Someone is now broadcasting on an encrypted frequency with recursive AGI-level intelligence. Every transmission ends: AURIS remembers.

Bleed pilot. 412 confirmed unshielded transits — 163 past the documented survival threshold. Has not slept in six years. Claims something in the Bleed is keeping her alive and has been feeding her information.

Identity classified. A senior Dominion Ironguard commander who vanished three months ago with a full company, a warship, and classified files. The Dominion officially reports him dead. The bounty for his capture is the largest in Reckoner history.

The eleven-year war in which three empires deployed stellar cannons against each other. Dozens of systems incinerated. The three empires that started it no longer exist. The light from the dying stars is still arriving at the outer worlds.

Ongoing. All four factions are now aware of or directly involved in the race to locate or control the fourth stellar cannon. The Dominion has a covert retrieval operation. The Reckoners have an open contract. The Church has been waiting for this.