Lore:Setting Primer

The year is 2741, you're currently employed by the largest megacorporation in the known galaxy, NanoTrasen, to operate as part of a crew assigned to various research stations in a region known as "The Drift".

The Drift

The Drift is a collection of stars located in a forgotten corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. It originally had only a scientific title, KT-338, and was just the location of a few small mining colonies. The area was deemed mostly undesirable due to a lack of rare resources or inhabitable planets. Recently, however - in terms of galactic history - unknown events have resulted in the appearance of a massive anomalous space fissure which has taken over the identity of the sector and attracted major attention from NT, who've quickly colonized the sector for long term research efforts.

The Thing At The Center Of It All

At the center of the sector is a large, unstable space fissure. In appearance, the fissure is set up in a vortex manner; sprawling outwards from a fuchsia center are arms of dark purple that encircle and rotate around it. The Fissure goes by a lot of names, The Rift, The Vortex, The Breach, and so on. The Fissure’s past is rather blurry, as no other entity like it has been seen before, and it has only appeared recently with no records from the original mining colonies indicating when it appeared.

It is known to materialize objects in and out of itself. It is unknown if the fissure creates matter on its own, or if the objects exiting it existed already elsewhere in space and time. Upon appearing from the fissure, objects will usually be shot out at a fast pace and enter a near orbit around it. The rate that this orbit decays varies heavily; no consistent factors affecting it have been found. Eventually the orbit will decay, and it will re-enter the fissure, if the object is teleported elsewhere or destroyed is unknown. No object observed to the fissure has been reported to come back out in any manner.

The debris ejected from the fissure have been found to contain bodies, NT gear, and Syndicate technology. All confirmed structures originating from the fissure are torn apart and heavily damaged, but none so far have been linked back to any known facilities. Bodies from the fissure are mangled to a point of being unidentifiable, DNA samples indicate their genetics have been so heavily scrambled that they are unrevivable.

Several interference waves and unknown distorted signals have originated from the fissure. The waves of interference carry the same properties as The Divide, although weaker, and usually don't cause permanent damage. There is no observable pattern to the interference. The unknown signals, as with all things from the fissure, have not yet been linked to any past signal from facilities. It is, however, confirmed that occasionally the fissure will emit a signal that has been recorded to emit from it before.

The Disturbance Zone

Tightly surrounding the fissure is an area that is described as The Divide. Difficult to discern exactly what it looks like, it seems to be a constant shift, mix, and blend of the space around it.

When entering The Divide all technology appears to falter. Power systems flicker, communications distort, camera relays go static. If anything gets past the initial effects, more significant damage on a physical level is shown to occur the deeper it goes. Some of these include vision warping, sound distortion, and material warping or breakage. Approaching the Fissure's Divide and exiting has occasionally caused permanent damage to facility systems. The deeper a probe has been, the more severe the damage upon returning.

The Divide has also shown some psychological effects on beings entering it. Reported effects include hallucinations - both visual and auditory - sudden hostility in fauna, and onset of severe lethargy, loneliness, and dread.

The Divide appears to pulse outward at times, with seemingly no pattern being able to be drawn between occurrences. These pulses send interference waves out into the sector carry the same properties as The Divide, but with vastly varying levels of severity. Sometimes unknown, fragmented signals are also picked up after a pulse, but they rarely consist of anything workable.

The Drifting Belt

The Drift, as it's most commonly called, is the collection of scrap and facilities that orbit the fissure. The Drift is as old as the fissure it surrounds, unsurprisingly.

Most NT facilities stationed here are on a full orbit track, a few are constructed around long term debris, a couple facilities have even course corrected wrecks and permanently set up on them. Due to the constant stream of asteroids and wreckage from the Fissure, The Drift is a resource rich environment, meaning mining and salvage operations are mainly conducted in this region. Research stations are mostly found in a much higher orbit, usually away from the risk of getting hit with stray debris.

The Consistent Staffing Program

Traditionally, NanoTrasen assigns employees to shifts semi-randomly and it was exceptionally rare to have the same crew members assigned to multiple different shifts together. However, due to the isolated nature of the Drift, a different system where the same crew were consistently assigned together was rolled out in a limited capacity to gauge effects on morale and productivity. You are currently assigned to one of these trial crews, either via your own volition or because NT forcibly assigned you for one reason or another.

This consistent staffing program has been linked to a demonstrated increase in nepotism, low productivity, unionization, and revolts. However, due to the popularity among members of these crews and the difficulty of finding staff willing to travel to such a remote place, the program remains running on a limited number of shifts.