How to read The Aurin Chronicle: a spoiler-free guide to Book One

Corporal Yannick Osk took eleven minutes to write that report and three hours to regret the last line. That is how The Aurin Chronicle begins, and the report he regrets ends with a single word: holding.

The Aurin Chronicle is the novel of COLONIZED, published free in the Codex in English and Spanish. Book One, Holding, is complete: a prologue, thirteen chapters and an epilogue in three parts, about 35,000 words, or around two and a half hours of reading. It is set in Year 47 E.A., the present of the game, and this guide tells you what you need to start it without giving anything away.

The book in two minutes

For forty-six years, a sealed room in the Cementerio de Aura repeated the same number every six hours. Inside, a pilot of the Arca Aurora slept in a pod; in the middle of the room, facing the door, a machine of the Flota Aura held the pressure because someone had ordered it to.

When they wake her, Ada Lys is twenty-four, owes the cost of her own thaw and stands in a system she doesn’t know: two houses that hate each other, five guilds living in the wreck of her ship and a treaty that says nobody fires on Ithera. And the machine that kept her alive, MAMPARO, has just been stolen. Everyone wants it: the pirate who took it, the Chancellor of the Zenith, the Nadir’s barter queen, the Vanguard. Ada wants it back.

It reads fast: short scenes, a lot of dialogue and a story that moves across the system without stopping to describe it.

Book One at a glance

Series	The Aurin Chronicle (Crónica de Aurin)
Book	Book One, Holding
Pieces	15: a prologue, 13 chapters and an epilogue
Parts	The Crate (5 pieces), The Door (5), The Lights (5)
Length	About 35,000 words in each language
Reading time	Around two and a half hours; 9 to 12 minutes per piece
When it happens	Year 47 E.A., days 221 to 238, with one chapter set in Year 1
Where	Canonical places of the Aurin system, from the Cementerio de Aura to Tirane
Price	Free, with no account
Languages	English and Spanish, each written for its own language

Where to start

1. Start with the prologue, Holding. It takes nine minutes and sets up the object everyone will chase.
2. Read in order. One chapter jumps back to Year 1. It is placed where it is so that you learn things at the right moment.
3. Use the header. Every piece opens with its date in the world’s calendar, its place and its point of view.
4. Look things up only if you want to. Ada knows nothing about Aurin, so the novel explains the world as she meets it. Each chapter lists the Codex entries it touches.

If you have one evening, the first part, The Crate, is five pieces and about fifty minutes.

The fifteen pieces, without spoilers

Part one · The Crate

#	Piece	Day · place	Point of view	What it sets up
Prologue	Holding	221 · Cementerio de Aura	Corporal Osk and El Notario	A Vanguard patrol opens a room of the Arca Aurora sealed for forty-six years
1	No Prior Record	222 · Arca Custodia	Ada Lys	Ada went to sleep for four months; they wake her forty-seven years later, with a debt and two houses waiting
2	We’re Not Your Friends	222 · the Tozuda	Vedma Oleiro	A ship that owes eighteen thousand credits takes a job in the Cementerio, with a recruit who flies like another century
3	Received	222 · Cementerio de Aura	Ada Lys	A handover on a wreck goes wrong, and Ada has to fly out of there
4	Unnumbered Axiom	222 · El Pináculo	Commander Kray	The Chancellor of the Zenith gives an order with no number

Part two · The Door

#	Piece	Day · place	Point of view	What it sets up
5	One Alive	223 · La Cicatriz, Ithera	Ada Lys	Ada sets foot on a planet for the first time, and the hole in front of her was made by her own ship
6	The Wall	223 · El Bastión	Ada Lys	A wall of 412 names, and two of them belong to someone who is alive
7	What Nobody Wanted	224 · El Fondeadero	Tejedora Sable Vunn	The crate everyone wants reaches someone who sells things her own way: in the dark, to everyone at once
8	Measured, Not Derived	224 · El Faro Roto	Ada Lys	An Ombrask shows Ada how hunting works on Ithera, and a violet compi knows something about the Aurora
9	Red Ribbon	225 · El Fondeadero	several	Five buyers, two crates and an auction in the dark

Part three · The Lights

#	Piece	Day · place	Point of view	What it sets up
10	Lelo	226 · El Pináculo	Ada Lys	The Chancellor of the Zenith receives the Aurora’s sleeper
11	Dock Seven	227 · Tirane	Commander Kray	Nobody fires on Tirane, by custom, and everyone who wants the crate is on their way there
12	Twelve Minutes	Year 1, day 236 · Arca Aurora	MAMPARO	What a core heard in the twelve minutes before the first shot
13	The Names	236 · El Bastión	Colonel Ostrach	Every day 236, the Colonel reads the names on her wall aloud
Epilogue	Choose Your House	238 · Arca Custodia	Ada Lys	CUSTODIA asks Ada its three questions again

The seven main characters

Character	Who they are	Where you meet them
Ada Lys, “Nueve”	A pilot of the Arca Aurora, twenty-four, who went to sleep for four months and wakes forty-seven years later. She asks the time when she wakes and goes by the number of her pod	No Prior Record
MAMPARO	An auxiliary core of the Flota Aura, found in the middle of a sealed room with its lens facing the door. Speaks in three to six words and counts everything	Holding
Vedma Oleiro	Foreman and pilot of the Tozuda, the induction crew that picks up new colonists. “We’re not your friends.” She closes on the hour, with whoever is inside	We’re Not Your Friends
Commander Ysolde Kray	Commands the Guardia Vertical at El Pináculo. Says “understood” when she disagrees	Unnumbered Axiom
Tejedora Sable Vunn	Runs the barter board at El Fondeadero and puts a price on everything. “Everyone has a price, darling. The odd thing is knowing it”	What Nobody Wanted
Colonel Reyna Ostrach, “El Muro”	Commands The Vanguard at El Bastión, and reads aloud the 412 names on her wall every day 236	The Wall
Chancellor Vantis	Chief Architect of the Zenith, with implants in his hands and eyes. He never raises his voice	Unnumbered Axiom

Around them: Chemo Ardal and Tais Renne, the Tozuda’s labourers; El Notario, a pirate of the Cementerio who gives a receipt for everything he steals; Corporal Yannick Osk of The Vanguard; CUSTODIA, the intelligence that registers every recruit; and the guild leaders with their compis: Sable Okoye and LUMBRE at El Vivero, Quill Sarn and CUADRANTE at El Faro Roto, Kestrel Vasko and AVISPÓN at El Aguijón, Torvun Ekes and FUELLE at La Fragua Baja. Most of them are people of the canon you can look up in the Codex.

The places

The novel adds no place to the map: it uses the Codex’s.

• Cementerio de Aura: the band of wreckage from the war of Year 1.
• Arca Custodia: the neutral ship where every recruit is registered and chooses a house.
• El Pináculo and El Fondeadero: the Zenith and Nadir stations at Ithera’s L4 and L5 points.
• La Cicatriz: the crash site of the Arca Aurora on Ithera, with El Vivero of The Pioneers, El Bastión of The Vanguard and El Faro Roto of The Pathfinders.
• Tirane: the sanctuary moon, with Puerto Aurora and its dock seven.
• Arca Aurora: the ark that fell in Year 1.

The guide to the Aurin system has the figures for every body.

How to read it on the site

• One page per piece: each opens with its date, place and point of view, and shows how long it takes to read.
• Reading settings: three themes (Void, Night for reading in the dark, and Paper for daytime), text size and a book or sans-serif typeface.
• Your place: the site remembers where you stopped and offers to pick up from there. That memory lives only in your browser.
• The Codex alongside: every chapter links the entries it touches.

How it fits the game

• Same world, same present. The novel is set in Year 47 E.A., the year in which the game starts, with the same factions, guilds, compis and places.
• No geography changes. It does not add, move or rename any body, station or place.
• No feature promises. The Chronicle is a novel of the world: it says nothing about what you can do in the game. What exists in the game is listed in our devlogs.
• Some echoes are real. In the game you also enlist aboard the Arca Custodia and choose the Zenith or the Nadir, a permanent choice in the current build, and you earn trust with the same five guilds. The Compis exist as a system in a development branch.
• Three questions run through the book: whose shot brought down the Arca Aurora, why the moons of Aurin run faster than their masses allow, and what is inside the container at dock seven. This guide will not tell you what the book does with them.

Where to go next

Start with the prologue or the book’s contents. If the universe is new to you, the Codex has it in five minutes. For the background, the factions are in the Zenith and the Nadir, the guilds in the five Global Guilds, the cores in the Compis and the wreck that started everything in the fall of the Arca Aurora.