It has always been there. Before the first world sent its first ship into the black, before the first era was named, before anyone was left to name it. It sits at the center of everything and it burns like a sun and it has never once opened. Eight eras of civilization have tried.
They orbit the Fragment, not Sol. Sol is out at Rim 560, just another body in a crowded dark. Thirteen worlds is what scholars have agreed on. Scholars have been wrong before.
A library radiates arcane. A corpse radiates divine, fading. A storm radiates primal. Something that should not exist at all radiates occult, the term scholars settled on for phenomena without apparent cause. Magic is measurable. It follows rules, even when those rules permit instability.
Built on Pathfinder 2e with significant modifications. Stamina pools. A moment-to-moment XP system. Soul levels. Magic type interactions. Collective casting. Where a rule here contradicts the base game, this takes precedence.
A grounder who has never left their city is playing the same game as a spacer captain who cannot remember which planet they were born on. The system does not require you to pick one. Some parties have both at the same table.
Assassin guilds, capitalist empires, monastic orders, prophecy hunters, pirates, ghost fleets. Most conflicts in the 9th Era have more than two sides. None of them are entirely wrong. Most of the dangerous ones believe they are entirely right.
Eight eras of civilization tried to breach it. None succeeded. In the 9th Era, some have stopped asking how to open it. They have started asking why it hasn't opened itself. Whether these are the same question is a matter of some debate.
Nobody named it first. Nobody built it. It was there before the first era was counted, before the first ship left the first world, before anyone was left alive to ask the question. It burns. It is sealed. The shield that surrounds it turns away everything that has ever been aimed at it, and eight eras of civilization aimed quite a lot.
It does not respond to communication. It does not threaten. It has been compared to a locked room, except the room is the size of a small moon, it has been locked since before recorded history, and no one has found a door. In the 9th Era some scholars have stopped calling it a problem. They have started calling it a message. The distinction has not won them many friends, but the argument has proven difficult to put down.
They carry starblades and the conviction that the darkness is organized. The most coherent force in the system when something genuinely terrible arrives. Called zealots by everyone until they're needed.
They do not trade. They own the terms of trade. They fund both sides of wars, which means they win both sides of wars. Their loyalty belongs to no world. They have never pretended otherwise.
Space-based. Asteroid safehouses. The contract is paid upfront, never discussed afterward, and has never publicly failed. Whether it has privately failed is not a question they answer.
They study prophecy the way a mathematician studies a proof. When a Chosen One appears, they mobilize completely. Whether the Chosen One wants their help is rarely something they pause to ask.
Space travel was a mistake. They are willing to go considerably further than most to prove it.
Monks and druids who chose a bounded path, on purpose, with eyes open. Spiritually, some of the most capable people alive. The occasions where they have intervened are well-documented and short.
Necromancers with strongholds on three worlds, command vast undead hordes, and some of them have taken to space. No one who has faced a Vashier horde in a sealed ship corridor has published an account of it.
Unmanned ships from before the 7th Era, crewed by something that is not undead and is not crew. They appear near worlds before catastrophe. Three of the last five appearances preceded a catastrophe. The Sunward Pact tracks their movements.
Born on a world, live on a world, die on a world. Most lack steam technology. Looked down on by nearly everyone in the black. They are also most of the people who have ever lived.
Ships and flying cities. The most technologically sophisticated people in the system, a fact they remind others of frequently.
The Void is compressed space, navigable only by those trained from childhood in how not to be destroyed by it. Almost exclusively pure-blooded. Almost exclusively enigmatic about why.
The most militarily capable people alive. Hardened by constant war in the black. Every world with a navy recruits from them first.
Their origins are not discussed here.
All matter is magical. Everything trends toward zero, toward stability, toward silence. A spell is a deliberate act of instability injected into that silence. Stability always reasserts itself. Most spells last seconds. The powerful ones last long enough to matter. Read more about the nature of magic.