The world

The factions

Four powers pull at the lanes. None of them is at war. All of them have work for you.

Faces away from the Rift

Core Authority

Order, the registry, well-supplied inner systems. Respectable, and cautious. Born in the Glass Years.

Faces the lanes

Free Traders Union

The haulers' guild. Open lanes, a fair price, keep the rifts busy. Born in the Long Stop.

Faces toward the Rift

Frontier Collective

Pioneers and prospectors at the edge of charted space. Bold. Born in the Push.

Faces the Rift's shadow

The Syndicate

Brokers of what polite markets won't list. Profit in the glare. Born nobody knows when.

Who they'll pay you to deal with

Pirates, raiders, claim-jumpers and smugglers. Never armies.

Core Authority

ghost-flyers (ships on forged transponders), glassrunners (Rift Glass smugglers into Core space), bounty-skips (pilots with a price on their head)

On the board"The registry has identified an irregularity. The Authority would be grateful for its correction."

Free Traders Union

lane raiders (pirates at the mouths), wreckers (crews who set false beacons in the slack to lure ships onto bad marks, then strip them), toll gangs (crews charging "lane fees" nobody authorised)

On the board"Somebody's sitting on the Procyon mouth taking tolls. Nobody tolls our lanes. Shift them."

Frontier Collective

claim-jumpers, strippers (Hot Salvage crews who reach a Frontier wreck before the claim is filed), the Reavers

On the board"Someone's on our claim at the snowball. We found it. We're keeping it."

The Syndicate

canaries (informants), welshers (pilots who took Syndicate money and didn't deliver), free brokers (black-marketeers on Syndicate ground who don't pay the cut)

On the board"A friend has been talking to people he should not talk to. Remind him of his friends."

The Lamplighters hate wreckers more than anyone does.

The Reavers

The ones that feint. They come out of the Rift. What pilots say about them, and none of it is settled: 1. They are crews who went too close to the Rift and came back changed. 2. They are not crews at all. 3. They are what the Rift sends when it wants something back.

What everyone agrees on: they fight as if they have watched you before.

What the Syndicate moves

Cargo	What it is
Black-Market Arms	Unregistered weapons.
Narcotics	Exactly what it says.
Rift Glass	Shards that drift out of the Rift's edge. Faintly luminous, and nobody can say whether it's safe. The Authority has banned it since the Glass Years on the precautionary principle, and the Frontier wears it.
Ghost Codes	Forged transponder identities. A ship flying one is somebody else as far as the registry knows.
Grey Genelines	Unlicensed gene-work: hardier crops, quicker healing, things the registry hasn't approved. Legal on the frontier in all but name. Spica grows its harvests on them.
Hot Salvage	Ship parts stripped from wrecks before anyone filed a claim.
Jumped Ice	Ice cut from somebody else's claimed snowball and sold before the claim-holder finds out.
Clean Papers	Forged manifests and claim filings. Ghost Codes lie about the ship; Clean Papers lie about the cargo.
Forged Relics	Fake Charter instruments and nameplates, sold to collectors as Charter Relics.
Stolen Lights	Beacon cores and relay lamps stripped from the mouths and the slack, and sold for parts. The Lamplighters think stealing a light is the worst thing a person can do. Nobody argues.