The Drift

• settled fromThe Cradle (Earth)Humanity's origin world — Earth, by its oldest name. The Drift's population left it generations before the Drift's present, in a long desperate migration rather than a golden age.
• shaped byThe Ledger WarsDecades of proxy war among corporations, defense cartels, and sovereign funds with navies. Soldiers were treated as assets, and the wars ended through bankruptcy rather than treaty.
• divided intoSectorsThe Drift's local political units, governed variously by councils, hereditary charters, or whoever controls tariffs; there is no empire.
• usesThe mark (coin)Post-Ledger scrip kept alive by common consent. People almost always call it coin rather than marks.
• links hereCinderThe forge world whose foundries cast the war's exo-frames and never fully shut down: the orders were never cancelled because the cartels that could cancel them no longer exist, so the…
• links hereDeepveinA crystal mine: caverns miles down in a mining world, filled with formations taller than the lift towers, crawled by cave crabs with glowing shells that miners follow when the lamps fail.
• links hereDrift long-haulersThe Drift's slow bulk freighters: a blunt command block, a long spine of strapped containers and tanks, a cluster of engine bells.
• links hereHighwindThe cloud city: a station drifting through a gas giant's storm bands, airships moored at its rings, sky-whales in the bands and kite-birds in the updrafts.
• links hereLowtownThe rain city: a megacity under permanent cloud, all neon, elevated trains, hover-cabs, bounty boards and rebuilt bodies, its mesh sold three times over and its old bands owned by nobody.
• links hereMireThe bayou that swallowed a war: a Ledger Wars jungle front left behind when the money moved on, sunk under black swamp water among huge moss-hung trees, lily pads, mist and fireflies.
• links hereRimeAn ice moon mined until the Switch-Off, when its ore contracts went to a receiver, its relay found no buyer, and the crews left on the last paid transport.
• links hereSunderThe salvage desert under two suns, a white one and a small red one the clans call the Debtor.
• links hereThe VergeOrbital slums built from retired station ring-stacks, where hull art is magnificent and oxygen bills arrive weekly.
• links hereTidewellThe ocean world: ninety-nine parts ocean, settled on rusted sea platforms lashed together by catwalk and cable, worked by trawlers and cargo haulers among jellyfish blooms and storms from…
• links hereWorlds of the DriftThe worlds where BLACKFLAME's unlisted relays are kept lit because no one else will pay to serve them: one post to a world, each marked somewhere with the burn-in (on a mast, a buoy or a…

1. 1. Generations ago

      Humanity leaves the Cradle in a long migration and establishes the settlements that become the Drift.

   2. War's end

      The Ledger Wars end through institutional bankruptcy; units such as Null Cell are erased and unpaid weapons scatter into the Drift.

The whole timeline