The Outrim Void. The Trojan Reach. The place where empires die.
Between the Spinward Marches and the ever-advancing Aslan Hierate is an expanse of wild space called the Trojan Reach. A narrow ribbon of stars, the dust-spice trade route, links the two empires. Every day, ships brave the perilous crossing from Imperium to Hierate, navigating a circuitous route from Fist (Tobia 3215) to Tyokh (Tlaiowaha 2226). Between these two worlds is a sea of lawless, dangerous planets.
The Reach is where empires run aground and mortally wound themselves, and where fortunes can be made on trade and commerce. The First Imperium never conquered the Reach; the Second Imperium left isolated colonies across its expanse, and even the Third Imperium claims no more than a sixth of the systems here.
During the long night, another petty empire arose here – the Empire of Sindal. The Sindalians were barbarian raiders who crowned themselves kings and conquered several dozen worlds before their subjects rose up against them. Today, Sindal is a ruined world of a few hundred dirt farmers whose ancestors once ruled all the night sky, and the Sindalian empire is remembered in confused tales of a golden age and wars amid the stars.
When the Empire of Sindal collapsed, outlying regional capitals became the seat of even lesser kings, and the longest-lasting of these was Drinax (Tliowaha 2223). Drinax’s kings claimed half the worlds in their subsector for generations. The Drinaxians were wiser than their cousins; they learned to hide the iron fist of orbital bombardment behind a velvet glove of trade and protection. Drinax itself became a garden world, fat and plump, an oasis of culture and technology in a dangerous and barbaric sector. The floating palace of Drinax – a huge citadel of beauty and art, suspended on a grav platform of prodigious size – was a wonder of the galaxy.
Then, another empire came to the Trojan Reach. The Aslan were numerous, hungry, aggressive and confident, and the Empire of Drinax was fat, lazy and wholly unaware of the sheer numbers and might of the Hierate. The Aslan trade routes to the Imperium ran through the Kingdom of Drinax, and the kings became greedy. They demanded tolls, taxes, bribes… and the Aslan were incensed. In a single bloody war lasting less than a year, the Aslan shattered the last surviving remnant of the old Empire of Sindal. Drinax’s subject worlds were either conquered by the Aslan or revolted. Drinax itself was blasted to ash, leaving the floating palace as the only remaining property of the King of Drinax.
One palace… and a few ships.
That was two hundred years ago.
Today, trade ships from the Imperium and the Hierate pass by broken, beggared worlds. The worlds once claimed by Drinax realise they have exchanged one master for another, and that the Aslan have even less regard for them than the kings did. The Imperium and the Hierate pretend to be friends while they jockey for position. The sector stands on a knife edge. The right pressure could push half the Trojan Reach into the claws of the Aslan, force an already overstretched Imperium to extend its forces deeper into the sector, permit Drinax to rise again – or carve out a new kingdom in blood and steel!
POWERS OF THE TROJAN REACH Along the trade route, only a dozen parsecs separate the Third Imperium of Humaniti and the Aslan Hierate. Those two great imperial powers may control less than half the space of the sector, but their political gravity wells perturb affairs far beyond their borders.
The Third Imperium: The great empire’s expansion has ground to a halt. It controls parts of four subsectors, protected by the ‘rampart worlds’ of Pax Rulin and Tobia. While the Imperium shows little interest in extending its borders – the cost of protecting more worlds against the Hierate is prohibitive – there are several potential ‘client states’ that the Imperium is cultivating as a buffer against the Hierate. The Imperium is a lazy giant until provoked. The Imperium’s interest lies elsewhere right now, but if the Aslan advance or pirate lords makes too much of a nuisance, the Imperial Navy will be dispatched to enforce the will of the Iridium Throne.
The Hierate: To humans, the Aslan Hierate looks like an impossibly frozen tsunami. At any moment, the Aslan horde could jump over the border and conquer the whole reach. The Aslan are certainly an intimidating race. Physically, they are larger and stronger than humans, and while their technology level is not quite on a par with the Imperium, they make up for this with weight 24 of numbers. External observers miss the deep divides in Aslan society; the Hierate is a loose alliance of warring clans, and only act rarely act in unison. The Aslan drive for territory means they will inevitably expand into the Trojan Reach. The only question is where their next advance will come. The divided Hierate is much more likely to act than the Imperium. Each clan – and there are dozens of them – has its own navy and can react to pirate attacks or vulnerable worlds with alarming alacrity. No human can predict what the Aslan will do next.
The Trade Route: The trade route between the Hierate and the Imperium is important enough to be considered an independent entity. The Imperium exports primarily manufactured goods and dust-spice in exchange for raw materials and Aslan goods; many of the Imperium’s exports are resold by the Aslan to independent worlds across the Reach. It takes 7 or 8 jump-2 jumps (depending on the course chosen) to cross wild-space, a journey that takes approximately 60 days. Imperial escorts usually follow ships as far as Acrid; the Aslan pick the convoys up at Techworld, while mercenary and corporate escorts follow convoys along the whole route.
Pirate activity varies along the route. Most of the attacks happen in the Borderlands subsector, where Travellers must navigate an unpromising series of systems. In general, both Imperium and Hierate tolerate a low level of piratical activity, as long as most of the attacks hit independent, small-scale merchants. Once the losses impact on a megacorporation’s bottom line, though, the fleet is sent out to scour the stars and the pirates are driven out of the Borderlands for a few months.
General Development Company: The General Development Company (GeDeCo) is not the largest Imperial corporation operating in the Reach, but it is one of the most widespread. The company was originally founded to improve conditions in colonies and independent worlds throughout the Reach, but has become a major political player. GeDeCo advisors have the ear of many rulers of the independent worlds.
Independent Worlds: Most of the independent worlds in the Trojan Reach were settled by exiles or wanderers from the First Imperium, or by long-range colonisation efforts by the Second Imperium. During the Long Night, the Sindalian Empire was the great power in the sector; even the worlds that were not conquered by the Empire were under its influence. Today, the worlds of the Reach are isolated, visited only by a few traders. Their technology declines, their cultures calcify, and they turn in on themselves. The Aslan will pick them off, one by one.
Pirates of Theev: The free pirates of the Reach use Sindal subsector as their base of operations, especially the ‘pirate world’ of Theev. As of 1105, the best-known pirates are:
• Admiral Darokyn: A former Imperial navy officer who fled the Imperium and made his name as a pirate. He operates out of Theev and commands a fleet of pirate ships, said to number more than fifty vessels. Other tales claim he still has allies in the Imperial Navy who protect his followers from hunters.
• Peytr Vallis: A newcomer, Vallis has had great success preying on Aslan traders along the border. Other pirates are said to be less than happy about Vallis stirring up the Hierate’s wrath, but the young captain seems to have a vendetta.
• The Ghost: A legend among pirates of the Reach, the Ghost is more thief than pirate. Whenever a ship vanishes without a shot being fired, the Ghost is held to be responsible.
• Hroal Irontooth: An Aslan outcaste, Hroal fled the Hierate with a retinue of a dozen warships, including a Halaheike-class pocket warship. His name comes from his cybernetically-enhanced jaws strong enough to bite through battle dress.
• The Dread Pirate Ashan: The reaver Ashan is perhaps the most feared pirate in the Reach. She rarely strays into the Borderlands, preferring to attack independent worlds with her band of cutthroats.
• Zuekhvi the Corsair: A Vargr born and bred to space, Zuekhvi has escaped Imperial hunting patrols time and again. No-one knows the trade route worlds better than him.
The Glorious Empire: A splinter state of Aslan, the socalled Glorious Empire practices human slavery on a massive scale. Their slave ships are a threat throughout the Reach.
The Florian League: On the far side of the Trojan Reach dwell a strange race of humans called the Florani. They are extremely xenophobic, and even more conservative than the Vilani. The Florani trade a little with the Imperium; the trade route to the League is also beset by pirates.
