Wiki / The world
The stars
Fourteen stars in one arm - the Kindling - every zone a site around one body of one of them, and the lanes between them are what a jump crosses.
The map is an arm of fourteen stars, the Kindling. Every zone is a site around one body of one star - a world, a giant, a ring, a disc or a shell - and that is what decides how you get there.
- A seam: the two zones sharing a depth on a spine sit on one body and share a wall. Fly out at the edge and you are in the other.
- Same star: a warp, priced in AU. It spends nothing from the tank. A home and its Shallows share a world, and they too are a warp apart.
- Another star: a jump along the lanes, priced in light years, one lane from the warp tank for every lane crossed.
The chart, warp and jump has the numbers; the zones has what each place holds.
The arm
The Cinder sits in the middle. Four lanes leave it: one to each Compact’s frontier star, and one to the common ladder. A Compact’s spine is three stars long, so home to the Cinder is three lanes; the ladder is four, 5, 6, 7 and 8 light years, each longer than the last. A Compact’s lanes run about 5 to 10 light years. Home to the ladder’s end is seven lanes - the whole arm, and the reach of a level-5 drive.
| Star | Class | Whose | Bodies and their sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cinder | white dwarf | nobody’s - the middle | a ring round the star: Cinder Belt, The Tailings, The Scrape, The Assay |
| Headframe | orange dwarf | the ladder | a world: Cutwater, The Hangfire |
| Rust | binary - a red dwarf and Scale | the ladder | a world: Rusthook Drift, Carrion Shoal · a giant: The Lathe, Gallows Reach |
| Plumb | black hole | the ladder | the Race, a disc: Salt Wake, Last Ledger · a giant: Ashfall, Ninefold |
| Trommel | pulsar | the ladder | a ring round the star: The Overburden · a world: The Dross · a shell: The Windrow |
| Curfew | red dwarf | Concord | a world: Ash Run, Broken Span · a world: Long Watch, Iron Shoal |
| Vesper | orange dwarf | Concord | a world: Tin Hollow, Quiet Verge · a giant: Belt, Overcut |
| Noon | main sequence | Concord | the home world: Home, Shallows · a giant: Foundry Yard, Shallows Drift |
| Farewell | binary - a red dwarf and Farewell Younger | Sepulchre | a world: Long Watch, Iron Shoal · a world: Ash Run, Broken Span |
| Kerf | main sequence | Sepulchre | a world: Tin Hollow, Quiet Verge · a giant: Belt, Overcut |
| Elder | red giant | Sepulchre | the home world: Home, Shallows · a giant: Foundry Yard, Shallows Drift |
| Hedge | red dwarf | Ashaari | a world: Ash Run, Broken Span · a world: Long Watch, Iron Shoal |
| Accrual | orange dwarf | Ashaari | a world: Tin Hollow, Quiet Verge · a giant: Belt, Overcut |
| Prospectus | young blue star | Ashaari | the home world: Home, Shallows · a giant: Foundry Yard, Shallows Drift |
Each system is a whole solar system: the other planets, moons and rings are in the sky and on the system chart, but have no site - No site. Nothing orbits here that you can reach. - and the chart calls such a body SCENERY. The two binaries, Rust and Farewell, show both their stars: a second disc, redder and half as bright, stands beside the first and lights the sites from its own side.
Two strange stars
Plumb is a black hole, and the system chart draws its wells: NO WARP INSIDE 0.4 AU and a slow-warp ring at 1.0 AU, and the Race’s panel reads WELL · SLOW WARP ×1.5 - as does the Windrow’s shell at Trommel. No site stands inside the inner ring, and today every wind-up is eight seconds, well or not.
Trommel is a pulsar. Its two beams sweep the system, one pass every 90 seconds, and the system chart counts down to the next pass over your site - BEAM · EVERY 90 S · NEXT PASS 40 S. It is a light to read, not a hazard.
The dark
Eleven more stars stand on the arm with a catalogue mark and no name - UNLIT 052 - and no lane: No lane. Uncharted. Nothing reaches them yet.