Hotwire
RareShip · Interceptor · Driftworks
24HP
lightMounts
Ability
Once each round, after you discard 1 or more cards to empower a weapon, if you have 2 or fewer cards in hand, draw 1.
Set 01
Alpha Carinae
A debris field the size of a moon drifted into reach of a quiet system — and every freelancer in the sector came running. The only war here is over who hauls out the most scrap before the others do.
The Keel
A boom town where the war is over scrap.
Alpha Carinae was a forgotten system until, eighteen months ago, the Fall drifted into reach — an enormous, newly-workable debris field. Nobody knows what it actually is: an old fleet graveyard, a shattered megastructure, the leavings of a war long forgotten. What matters is that salvage law is clear — whoever’s still flying owns what they haul.
The boom hit overnight, friendly and lucrative. Salvage crews, repo contractors, parts fences and fixers filled the system, and for a season it was the best work in the sector. Then the easy salvage ran thin, the Authority got stricter, and the Syndicate started paying better money for dirtier strings.
Business is good. Lucrative, fast, professional, cutthroat.
The sector
A line everyone maintains and nobody respects.
Three powers hold Alpha Carinae together, barely. None of them is a flag — they are the people who hand you work, take their cut, and look the other way.
Alpha Carinae · the legitimate trade
The Freeporters
The freelancers’ own loose guild and hiring hall — mutual aid, shared charts, and a bar that doubles as a contract board. Not a government; a handshake that mostly holds. The closest thing to a side you’ll ever pick.
Alpha Carinae · the shadow
The Syndicate
The Freeporters’ shadow — unlicensed salvage, off-book parts, and the contracts the Authority won’t stamp. Same trade, opposite side of a line everyone maintains and nobody respects.
Alpha Carinae · the thin institution
Carina Salvage Authority
The corporate-backed skin over the boom. Issues salvage rights, takes its cut, and pretends it’s in control. Under-resourced, over-stretched, bribable.
The hulls of the Fall
Salvaged, modified, and named by hand.
A few of the frames you’ll meet across the sector.
ART
Lodestar v2
RareShip · Lancer · Meridian
26HP
mediumMounts
Ability
Meridian systems you control have +1 damage. When a Meridian system you control is exhausted, you may ready a non-weapon Meridian system.
Backbone
RareShip · Bastion · Ferrumcast
28HP
heavyMounts
Ability
When you Disengage, if you lost 5 or more HP this round, ready target system.
ART
Crucible-Ø
RareShip · Interceptor · Sable
23HP
lightMounts
Ability
Whenever you shut down an enemy system, if you control fewer online systems than they do, you may play target Sable system for 1.
The cold edge
Some pieces scan wrong.
Something started showing up in the haul. Pieces from the Fall that return null where there should be readings. Mass that won’t settle. A clock that runs slow in one cargo bay. Pieces that match no human foundry — and someone made them anyway.
A few crews began chasing contracts to the cold edge of the exclusion zone, the part of the Fall everyone agrees not to talk about. Most came back fine. Aleksei Vor came back fine too. Now he sleeps with his eyes open, and talks about the Fall like it talks back.
⌁ End of season — sector note
The set ends not with answers but with a chill — the sense that the Fall came from somewhere, that somewhere is still out there, and that it may have noticed the lights coming toward it. The debt gets paid later.
Faces on the board
The captains you’ll fly against.
Orin Vask
SalvagerMagpie
Old hand, gallows humour. The voice in the log.
“Sundown” Doss
CourierDriftworks Interceptor
Cocky hotshot — fastest in the Fall, and says so.
Severin Cole
Bounty hunterLong Account
Cold and patient. Chasing a person, not a wreck.
Mara Okonkwo
SmugglerUnderstar
Charming, slippery, and into the Syndicate for more than she’ll say.
Aleksei Vor
SurveyorNo ship of record
Took a Sable probe contract to the cold edge. Came back. Sleeps with his eyes open.
The permanent powers
The class war you can read off a hull.
Factions come and go by the sector. The shipwrights are forever — and which badge is on your frame says more about you than any flag would. Establishment versus underdog, written in steel.
Halcyon
Shipyard · the prime
Matched, warrantied, expensive — the navy’s builder. Fly Halcyon and you look like you work for someone.
Driftworks
Salvage frames · the merc’s brand
Cheap, ugly, hackable, beloved. Half the galaxy’s hot-rods are a Driftworks frame under stolen parts.
Kessler Heavy Industries
Guns · armor · big hulls
The military-industrial giant. Sells to every navy and every warlord — amoral, enormous, never funny about it.
Vance Reactorworks
Foundry · cores
The centuries-old gold standard. “Whose Plasma runs cleanest? Vance.” A Vance core outlives the ship around it.
Meridian
Sensors · FTL-particle tech
Bleeding-edge and arrogant — beta-tests on its customers. Brilliant and recall-prone in equal measure.
Sable
Exotic materials · Graviton
“We move what others won’t.” Quiet, secretive, unsettling. Holds the exclusion-zone contracts — the thread that touches the hollow star.
NRC-9 · the exclusion zone
A star-sized thing with nothing inside it.
For three centuries it was filed as a black hole. Then a survey found the impossible: a physical shell where there should only be a singularity — a star-shaped thing with nothing inside, returning null to every probe. Everyone calls it the hollow star now.
It sits behind an exclusion marking. Ships that ignore it malfunction; instruments lie; crews fade in and out of time. And it may be made of the only exotic matter in the galaxy — which would make it the one doorknob anyone has ever found on a locked room.
Every probe pointed at it comes back null. Not noise. Not error. Just nothing — as if the instrument never looked.
The ships that ignore the marking don’t come back.