The three colonies

There was a homeworld. It is gone; the Cinder Belt is what is left of it - the shattered middle of the map, the richest ground in known space, and nobody’s. The catastrophe is also called the Cinder; the belt is the event itself, still cooling. What caused it is deliberately unsettled: the three colonies carry three accounts, and the disagreement is the engine of the game.

A voidborn is anyone born after the Cinder - which is now everyone. No living pilot has stood on ground. The word weighs differently in each mouth: in Concord a legal status, in Sepulchre the generation that carries the dead forward, in Ashaari a customer base with no inheritance.

Raising and oath

Every pilot reads “voidborn of X, sworn to Y.”

• Raising is chosen at the door, is permanent, and carries no stats at all - every colony starts with the same purse. It gives you your voice, the creation text, and a line on your pilot card when it differs from your oath.
• The oath (allegiance) is the mechanical side. In the creation screen’s words, it decides your home, where you may dock, whose Wanted marks you see, whose bounties you claim and your house; it also sets the leaning weapons your Arms post stocks, the ground you fight for, how garrisons read you, and your tint. It belongs to the account, so every pilot on it is sworn to the same side. It can be re-sworn once a season, in the Slack, docked at the drums in the Cinder Belt, for 10,000 credits: /swear registry | kindred | concern reads the terms, yes on the end swears. Your standing with every Compact goes to zero, open writs are void and your wing is left; the raising, the ships and the history stay.

Concord · the Registry

Registered claims and armed escorts. Nothing here flies unfiled.

The structure is accreted: districts welded on for a job, over time. The survival logic is order: registries, escorts, law. It remembers the Cinder as an administrative failure - somebody’s negligence, provable, litigable; the belt belongs to whoever registered the claim. Its voice is paperwork: writs, registries, clause numbers. Members are registered; expulsion is being struck from the rolls.

Sepulchre · the Kindred

Belt-born salvagers who bury their dead in their hulls. Nothing here is new, and no name is forgotten.

The structure is carved: one mass, three cuts, nothing added. The logic is inheritance: the dead, the rite, the right of the cutter. The Cinder is a death in the family; the belt is the ancestor’s body and belongs to whoever tends it - whoever cuts it. Its voice is rite: genealogy, the second person plural, the names of the dead. Members are adopted; expulsion is being unnamed - the one thing not forgiven.

Ashaari · the Concern

Outside money in a thousand cells. Everything here is leased, the guns included.

The structure is grown: daughter cells budded over a core. The logic is capital: buy in, scale up, move on. The Cinder was a market event; the old world was overleveraged, the belt is distressed assets, and ownership is whoever can pay to hold it. Its voice is the offer: percentages, terms, everything negotiable and nothing free. Members are vested; expulsion is being divested.

All three are right in their own colony. None of them makes the others look bad.