World Lore
The Sundered Reach & Its Factions
Coldmarch is set in the Sundered Reach — the last part of human space that still answers. Three centuries ago it was the edge of an empire that spanned a thousand systems. Then the relays went dark, one shell at a time, and no one has ever learned why.
What’s left answers to no capital — only to whichever fleet is still on station when the lights go out. Five banners now hold what nothing else will. None of them are winning. All of them are still here.
Concord Fleets
The last true navy the Reach has left, built from the wrecks of a hundred lost commands. Concord doesn't fight to win anymore — it fights to hold formation, because formation is the only thing standing between the Reach and silence. Officers drill routes that lead nowhere, defend systems already abandoned, and log every loss in the same steady hand.
“Hold the line. Not because the line will hold — because someone has to write down that it did.”
The Choir
Once a fleet chaplaincy, now a fighting order that sings its dead into the battle log. Choir crews go to war lit like funerals — banks of requiem gold, hymnals wired into targeting computers — because grief, sung loud enough, is also a weapon. They lose more ships than anyone, and mourn none of them quietly.
“We do not bury our dead. We arm them.”
Vharn Hegemony
Not an army so much as an appetite. The Vharn spend hulls the way other factions spend ammunition — cheap, endless, and without ceremony. No one has ever counted the true size of the Hegemony, including the Hegemony. What looks like the last of a broken raid rarely is.
“You killed the flight. There are eleven more behind it, and they were never counting either.”
The Silent
The Silent don't announce themselves; they simply arrive after a system has already gone quiet. No fleet has ever taken a Silent ship in open engagement — sensors fail, orders don't arrive, and the record afterward reads like static. They are the colour that means absence, and the Reach has learned to fear the gaps more than the guns.
“You will not see them coming. You will only notice, after, what stopped transmitting.”
The Spiral
Freeport crews, salvage runners, deserters who kept their guns — the Spiral is the one warm light left in the Reach, and it is entirely for sale. They'll fly for Concord on Tuesday and against them by Friday, and everyone still calls them when the official channels have already given up.
“We don't fight for a flag. We fight for whoever's still paying when the flag's gone.”
Pick a banner and find out how long you can hold it.
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