Four powers divide the frontier. Choosing a faction is part of creating a captain, not a difficulty setting. It sets your side in the territorial war, your colour on the map, and the way other pilots name you.
The four powers
Federation — “Order has a price”
The oldest surviving power and the keeper of the Gate documentation. It began as a mutual insurance pact between the first jumping worlds and became a senate, a fleet and a censorship office.
- Strength: order, infrastructure, access to the registry.
- Weakness: cannot tell a citizen from a threat when there is no file to fill.
- Colour: cold blue.
Seth — “Every debt is a road”
The working caste that built the Gates and ended up on the wrong side of the sky after the First Compression. Forty million people without a legal address. The surviving clans wrote the debt into a book.
- Strength: navigation, repair, clan mutual aid.
- Weakness: the code protects the clan and devours the person.
- Colour: scorched orange.
Sokar — “Nothing is lost. Nothing is free.”
A post-biological choir that copies the dying into a shared archive. Not a hive mind, but a civilisation that decided to cure loneliness at any cost.
- Strength: memory, archives, predictability.
- Weakness: never lets go without a copy, and calls that love.
- Colour: violet.
Free Worlds — “No Gate. No god.”
Frontier settlements that never signed the registry. Poor, stubborn, heavily armed.
- Strength: a home for anyone without a name.
- Weakness: no history — only a place.
- Colour: teal.
How to choose
| If what matters to you is | Look at |
|---|---|
| Order and a large structure | Federation |
| Family, repair and your own people | Seth |
| Knowledge, archives and mystery | Sokar |
| Freedom and no master | Free Worlds |
Don’t treat the choice as a difficulty switch. A faction is also how other pilots treat you, and whose side you take when the argument is about a relay.
Territory
The frontier is divided not only into systems but into victory nodes. The power holding 60% of the nodes when a season ends takes the territory.
The season boundary is soft:
- Territory and stockpiles reset: the map begins again.
- Blueprints, standing and appearance stay with you.
What changes right now
- The faction marker on the map and in your profile.
- Your side’s colour in the territorial war.
- How other pilots read you: your side is visible before the first shot.
- The records of each power in Story.
Some systems already belong to a power: Skurn is Federation, Aera is Seth. Once a relay or planet is captured it changes colour, and the map becomes a record of the war.
What next
- Story — full records on the four powers.
- Star map — where the borders run and what security means.
- Online and the world — what survives a season boundary.