CORE SETTING
GALACTIC POWER & FRAGMENTATION
There is no single galactic government. No empire, federation, or universal authority unites the stars. The galaxy is simply too vast, too fractured — its peoples too diverse.
Even among humanity, no centralized power remains. Instead, the galaxy is carved into Sectors, each ruled by independent governments with wildly different ideals. In one sector, aliens might be outlawed entirely, viewed as threats or pollutants. In another, interspecies trade and diplomacy might flourish. Some governments are theocratic, having formed entire religions around the Void — worshipping what lies within it. Others revere the entities glimpsed through alternate rifts, praying for the day those portals open again and their gods return.
Despite the chaos, a few galaxy-spanning initiatives exist.
THE DEFENCE CORE
A militarized coalition tasked with responding to large-scale threats like Rift incursions, Void outbreaks, or sector-wide wars.
THE MINING CORE
An economic body focused on resource extraction and interstellar logistics, operating across systems with near-autonomous authority.
THE CORPORATIONS
Sprawling megaconglomerates often more powerful than local governments. Where there's profit or knowledge to be gained, they will be found.
THE GALACTIC COMMITTEE
Amidst all this sits the Galactic Committee — a diplomatic forum with little real power, but considerable influence. While it cannot enforce laws, it can issue mandates, investigations, and intersectoral pressure to encourage peace or cooperation. Most sectors ignore the Committee — until it exercises its one, terrifying authority.
The Committee has been granted a single, binding power by nearly all recognized governments:
The ability to enforce containment.
When a species is deemed too volatile — due to aggressive expansion, dangerous mutations, or psychic instability — the Committee can invoke Containment Protocols. The affected species is sealed within a limited number of solar systems using Quantum Shielding: a vast barrier that permits only light to pass through. No matter, energy, or signal can escape.
From inside, these species know they are trapped.
Some species are only confined temporarily, monitored until they are deemed "stable." Others are locked away indefinitely, judged too dangerous to ever be released. In some cases, this judgment is based on hostility. In others, it's because the species consumes resources too rapidly — or their biology poses a threat to all life.
THE SYSTEM IS BREAKING
Rifts do not obey rules. They can tear open inside even a sealed sector, offering an escape route into other realities. Worse, the Committee has occasionally lowered segments of the shielding on purpose — to insert strike teams, recover stolen tech, or disrupt technological advancement. The species confined inside are aware of these intrusions.
And they're growing desperate.
As the realization sets in — that they are being watched, manipulated, and contained — the psychological pressure mounts. Cultures turn inward. Some descend into madness. Others sharpen their blades.
We are cornering predators. And predators bite.
CONFINED SPECIES
THE GRENTH'KAL
The Grenth'Kal evolved in a reality where time was fluid. After falling through a Rift, they began to "feed" on local timelines, consuming possible futures and alternate pasts to grow stronger. Victims of a Grenth'Kal attack often cease to have ever existed, except in residual memories or psychic echoes.
The Committee maintains six layers of Quantum Shielding around Grenthis IV. No known survivors remain within — but pulses of backward time noise still flicker from the sector, suggesting something is trying to rewrite its way out.
THE MARNACH BROOD
The Marnach are a self-replicating swarm of biological constructs — intelligent, mobile, and driven by a need to harvest organic DNA and integrate it. Their queens are believed to possess psychic unity with the rest of the swarm, allowing interstellar coordination without signals. They once consumed an entire sector's worth of life before being lured into a decoy zone and sealed inside.
THE LIX'THAL
The Lix'Thal do not speak. They project emotion and thought into unshielded minds. Their language is not just communicative — it's transformative. Those who hear the "Whisper Song" become devoted, then mutated, then something else. Entire species have joined the cult of the Lix'Thal without knowing it. They are confined in a web of psychic dampeners and null-shielding, but every few years, a song leaks out.
ESCAPED OR EXTINCT
THE THAR-KUIN
The Thar-Kuin were once confined for their rapid resource consumption and violent tribal conflicts. When a Rift unexpectedly opened inside their sector, they escaped — into a galaxy unprepared for the rate at which they multiply and harvest planetary matter. Their ships are grown, not built. Their cities are mobile. Their god is the black sun they birth in every world they devour. Now scattered across fringe systems, they are whispered about in refugee fleets and scorched border planets.
THE KYVERI
The Kyveri were an ancient species confined not for violence — but for knowing too much. Their ability to access alternate timelines gave them insights that threatened Committee control: futures where the Committee fell, truths hidden in erased histories. The Committee classified them as existential threats and sealed them away. Rumour says the Kyveri foresaw this and uploaded their minds into an alternate layer of reality, waiting for someone clever — or desperate — enough to find them.
THE VULDRAX
The Vuldrax were not dangerous because of biology — but ideology. They believed reality was theirs to rewrite. Their ruling caste had discovered Void rituals capable of editing memory, identity, and even physical constants. When they began unmaking other governments via memory warfare, the Committee launched a full-scale annihilation operation. Their sector was bombed with null-matter warheads and Rift destabilizers. The destruction was total — so the Committee claims.
HUMANITY
Within a few centuries of reaching orbit, humans had created multiple self-learning AIs (three of which attempted planetary-scale domination), developed primitive quantum entanglement warfare, and nearly wiped themselves out during the Tripartite Gene War. But it wasn't just destruction that caught the Galactic Committee's attention — it was how fast humanity adapted. Give them alien tech and they'd reverse-engineer it in weeks. Expose them to a new ideology and they'd fracture into a thousand cults before the cycle finished.
Most humans never knew the truth. For generations, they believed the limits of their reach were natural — technological ceilings or environmental hazards. Only a few underground movements whispered of the Skylock — an invisible chain wrapped around the stars.
Roughly 1,100 years ago, after decades of political stabilization, the Committee loosened containment. Within 200 years, humans had splintered across the stars. Some joined alien governments. Others built trade syndicates or isolated colonies. And a few remembered the lock. These "Breakers" now form fringe movements, convinced that the Committee is still watching — still waiting.