The universe of COLONIZED

Where does it take place?

In the Aurin system, inside the Parhelion galaxy. At its centre is one star, also called Aurin. Around it:

• four habitable planets, from 6,000 to 6,400 km in radius;
• ten moons and one captured asteroid, Ashkar;
• three belts: the Cementerio de Aura, the Anillos de Kaldrek and the outer ice belt.

The present is Year 47 E.A. E.A. stands for Años de Asentamiento, the Settlement Years: the settlers’ calendar.

Where do the settlers come from?

From Solmera, another galaxy, where humans lived alongside allied species. Its tutelary star entered its terminal phase: it began to die.

That civilisation answered with the Expedición Aura, its plan to escape. It built the Flota Aura: ark ships, mobile shipyards and stellar refineries. The voyage, the Éxodo, took centuries. Along the way, all technology was brought together in the MMU (Matriz de Manufactura Unificada), a single standard. A shared culture of fleet survivors grew up too.

Why are there two sides?

In Year 0 E.A. the Flota reached Aurin, and a debate began on how to colonise. A year later it ended in gunfire: the war of Year 1 split the fleet into two sides, the Zenith and the Nadir.

The war brought the Arca Aurora, the heavy transport ark, down on Ithera. Nobody has ever established whose shot was decisive. Twelve years of war produced no winner: both sides relied on the same MMU, and neither could destroy the other’s supply. In Year 12 E.A. the Armisticio de Ithera was signed: the pact that stopped the war. The cold peace began, a tense truce.

They came out of the same crew: they fly the same chassis, fire the same base weapon and speak the same technical language. They pay in the same currency, Solmera Credits. One grandfather can have grandchildren on both sides. They disagree only on what a new world is owed: to be remade in our image, or to be allowed to remake us.

Who is who?

The two factions are also known as the two houses, and each settler chooses theirs only once.

	The Zenith	The Nadir
Formal name	La Cátedra de los Arquitectos	La Concesión
What they believe in	Absolute vertical progress	Rootedness and balance
Their station	El Pináculo	El Fondeadero
Their motto	“La luz se gana”, light is earned	“Lo que nadie quiso”, what nobody wanted

The third power is the 5 Global Guilds, five trade organisations: The Pioneers (settlers), Apex Syndicate (hunters), The Forge (producers), The Vanguard (soldiers) and The Pathfinders (explorers). They were born among the wreckage of the Arca Aurora, at La Cicatriz. Since the Armisticio they have held Ithera in trust, demilitarised in practice. They take no side, and both factions fund them because neither can do without what they produce.

What does the map look like?

From the inside out:

• Ormek, hot, beneath a veil of white cloud. The Zenith hold it through the Colector Solar Prima, which powers half the system.
• Kharsis, arid, the system’s quarry. The Zenith hold it too, working it alongside The Forge.
• Ithera, temperate and with the richest native life. The Guilds hold it.
• Kaldrek, cold, geothermal and ringed. It has no owner: both factions are there in equal measure and the front is still open.

The faction stations orbit no planet. They are anchored at Delvar and Trasvar, two rocks at the L4 and L5 points of Ithera’s orbit. One travels ahead of the planet and one behind, equally far from the world both swore not to touch. Between them, the Guilds run El Fulcro and the Mercado Global de Aurin, the neutral trade between the sides.

Sizes are true to life. Distances are compressed: 15 million km to the lore’s astronomical unit, which is the distance from Aurin to Ithera. Each surface’s gravity follows from its radius and density. Aurin is the first system; the canon leaves room for others, with no scope or date.

What is happening now?

By Year 47 E.A. the first generation that never saw Solmera has come of age. The cold peace is cracking. Incidents are mounting at the strategic points, the contested sites. Both stations are recruiting in numbers again.

Every recruit first passes through the Arca Custodia, the fleet’s administrative ship. There they are met by CUSTODIA, its intelligence, the only voice in the system that takes no side:

“You are part of the new recruitment wave, the forty-sixth year since the outbreak of the war of Year 1. Both houses need hands again.”

CUSTODIA, Núcleo de Registro

Read on: Start here and the Glossary.