Conquering the verse, one parsec at a time.

Campaign Victory Conditions

The crew begin trapped on Veyr’s Fall, a collapsing corporate world where debt, corruption, and violence make escape both necessary and difficult. Their goal is not simply to survive, but to leave the system, break free of corporate ownership, and establish a new colony far enough away that the Heptagon, the Coalition, and the war cannot easily reach them.
To succeed, they must complete five broad stages.

The campaign is successfully completed when the crew has:

1. Travelled at least five inhabited planets away from Veyr’s Fall.
2. Acquired a viable colony package.
3. Paid off the ship debt.
4. Found a suitable unclaimed world at least two planets away from an active invasion.
5. Completed seven colony milestones.

At that point, the crew has done more than survive.
They have created a future.

Whether that future is free, corrupt, fragile, hopeful, or doomed depends on every choice they make along the way.

Escape from Veyr’s Fall
Before leaving, the crew must build up enough resources to survive beyond the safer trade routes.
Things to consider:
Ship repairs and upgrades
The freighter must be made reliable enough for long-range travel, frontier landings, cargo towing, and emergency evacuation.
Food, water, medical supplies, weapons and equipment.
Basic supplies for the crew, plus emergency supplies for future colonists.

Stage One: Distance and Safety
The crew must travel:
At least five inhabited planets away from Veyr’s Fall, and
At least two planets away from any world currently under invasion.
The crew cannot simply jump to the nearest quiet moon and call it freedom. They must push far enough into space that the old powers are weaker, but not so far that survival becomes impossible.

Stage Two: Build the Colony Package
To establish a viable colony, the crew must acquire far more than settlers. They need the tools, knowledge, biology, and infrastructure to create a permanent settlement.

Things to consider:

Cryo facilities
Stasis pods or low-berth racks for transporting colonists safely across long distances.
Contract settlers
Volunteers, debt settlers, refugees, specialists, families, exiles, criminals seeking new lives, or people recruited under questionable promises.
Gene banks
Genetic diversity archives for long-term population stability.
Frozen embryos
Human, alien, livestock, or engineered embryos, depending on the colony’s purpose.
Seed stores
Crops, algae strains, fungi cultures, hardy frontier grains, medicinal plants, and soil starter organisms.
Medical facilities
Surgery units, vaccines, antibiotics, trauma gear, maternity equipment, and long-term health support.
Habitat modules
Prefab shelters, pressure domes, insulation, sanitation systems, and communal spaces.
Power generation
Reactors, solar fields, batteries, wind systems, geothermal drills, or fuel cells.
Water and atmosphere systems
Purifiers, atmospheric processors, filtration units, humidity traps, drilling rigs, and environmental monitors.
Industrial tools
Fabricators, mining rigs, construction drones, machine shops, repair bays, and raw material processors.
Security force
Armed settlers, trained guards, robots, androids, perimeter sensors, drones, and defensive emplacements.
Education and cultural archives
Libraries, technical manuals, teaching AIs, language banks, history records, and entertainment archives.

Stage Three: Pay Off the Ship Debt
The crew’s ship is their freedom, but only once it is truly theirs.
Until the debt is paid, the ship can be tracked, seized, locked out of legal ports, or targeted by repossession teams.

Stage Four: Finding a Suitable Planet
Once the crew has travelled far enough, escaped major war zones, cleared their ship debt, and gathered the colony package, they must locate a viable world.
A suitable colony world should have several of the following:
Breathable or adaptable atmosphere
Not necessarily perfect, but survivable with work.
Water access
Surface water, ice, underground aquifers, or extractable atmospheric moisture.
Stable gravity
Close enough to normal for long-term settlement.
Manageable biosphere
Useful native life, or at least nothing instantly lethal.
Local resources
Metals, minerals, fuel sources, timber equivalents, useful organics, or fertile soil.
Low political visibility
Far from the Heptagon, Coalition front lines, major trade routes, and rival claimants.

Stage Five: The Seven Colony Milestones
Once the colony is founded, it is not considered established until seven milestones are completed.

So, there we have it.

That is my background for the start of my little campaign.  I will most likely flesh out Veyr’s Fall a bit more as things progress, and I am really looking forward to expanding the setting onto other worlds down the track.   I did purposely decide to give quite a detailed intro to the campaign, the idea being that the Heptagon can provide patrons, enemies, rivals, quest hooks, and moral compromises. CivicSec, corporate troops, android police, off-world mercenaries, desperate citizens, and alien workers all fit neatly into the kind of encounters the game creates.

The wider campaign can then use the game exactly as intended: the crew takes jobs, makes enemies, leaves the starting planet, visits new worlds, and gradually builds its own legend. The idea of eventually discovering or founding a colony on an uncharted world fits especially well, because Five Parsecs thrives when the campaign is allowed to wander. Veyr’s Fall gives them the push. The stars give them the choice.

So, what is Five Parsecs from Home, you ask?

Five Parsecs from Home is a solo or cooperative sci-fi adventure wargame about a small crew trying to survive among the stars. You create a ragtag group of humans, aliens, robots, soldiers, drifters, criminals, explorers, and oddballs, then send them from job to job, world to world, building a campaign through the consequences of their actions. Modiphius describes it as a solo/co-op RPG-lite miniatures wargame with procedurally generated battles, patrons, rivals, jobs, loot, and crew advancement.

At its heart, it is about emergent storytelling. You are not following a fixed plot. The game throws up contracts, enemies, complications, injuries, rivals, discoveries, and opportunities, and you interpret them into a campaign narrative. One mission might be a quick data recovery job. The next could be an ambush, a bounty hunt, a rescue, a corporate raid, or a fight against someone you angered three turns ago.

It is also miniature agnostic, so you can use almost any sci-fi figures and terrain you already own. The rules are designed around small skirmishes rather than huge battles, making it ideal for a crew-based campaign where a handful of characters try to scrape together credits, survive enemies, and, in my case, eventually get off Veyr’s Fall.

A typical campaign cycle has your crew looking for work, dealing with patrons and rivals, preparing for the next mission, fighting a tabletop encounter, and then resolving the aftermath. Characters can gain experience, suffer injuries, collect loot, make contacts, train, trade, recruit replacements, upgrade gear, and improve their ship.

It only needs a few six-sided dice, a couple of ten-sided dice, a small number of miniatures and a bit of imagination to begin.

__________

The Comfort of Tomorrow

For all its corruption, violence, and corporate cruelty, Veyr’s Fall does not feel like a dying world to everyone who lives there.

Many citizens still go to work, watch the news, pay their dues, raise their children, follow celebrity scandals, argue over sports leagues, and queue for ration supplements while telling themselves that things are not as bad as they seem. The streets may be patrolled by corporate-backed security drones, the hospitals may be owned by Helix, the job markets controlled by Civitas, and the newsfeeds shaped by Verity, but life continues. So, people adapt.

Some are simply ignorant. They do not understand how deeply the Heptagon controls the planet. They believe the official broadcasts, trust the public statements, and accept that every crisis has an explanation. A refinery explosion is an accident. A missing activist was probably involved in a crime. A food shortage is temporary. A police raid was necessary. The corporations may be powerful, they say, but at least they keep things running.

Others are too exhausted to care. A worker finishing a fourteen-hour shift does not have the strength to think about political corruption. A parent trying to keep their children fed does not have the luxury of revolution. A wounded officer with Helix medical debt cannot afford ideals. For many, survival has become so demanding that truth itself feels like another burden.

Then there are those who choose not to see.

Corporate stimulants, mood regulators, sleep suppressants, focus chews, ration additives, and cheap neural entertainments are everywhere. They keep workers productive, citizens calm, and despair manageable. Whole districts drift through life half-awake, chemically brave and emotionally numb, smiling at advertisements that promise stability, promotion, relocation, or a better family future.

Fear does the rest.

People learn which questions not to ask. They learn when to lower their voices. They learn that noticing too much can cost a job, a permit, a marriage licence, a medical renewal, or a child’s school placement. So, they polish their illusions. They tell themselves the system is flawed but necessary. They say that tomorrow will be better. They believe the right promotion, the right application, the right sponsor, or the right corporate programme will lift them above the misery.

And sometimes, for a lucky few, it does.

That is the cruellest part of Veyr’s Fall. The dream still works just often enough to keep people chasing it.

Most citizens are not blind because they are foolish.

They are blind because seeing clearly would break them.

The Police of Veyr’s Fall

The official police of Veyr’s Fall are known as the Veyr’s Fall Civic Security Directorate, though most citizens call them CivicSec, the Directorate, or, less politely, company shields.

On paper, they are the lawful police force of the planetary government. They patrol the streets, investigate crimes, manage public order, protect government buildings, respond to riots, and enforce planetary law. Their badges bear the official emblem of Veyr’s Fall, their uniforms are dark blue and black with silver-gold trim, and their officers swear an oath to protect the citizenry.

In practice, they are exhausted, underfunded, compromised, and surrounded on all sides by forces far richer than themselves.

The Directorate is not a single, clean organisation. It is a layered, fractured institution made up of honest cops, desperate cops, bought cops, frightened cops, corporate plants, off-world recruits, alien auxiliaries, android officers, and combat robots. Some officers still believe in the badge. Some use it to survive. Some use it to hurt people. Many have forgotten why they joined.

A Force Owned by Debt

CivicSec officers are not paid enough to live well, but they are paid just enough to remain trapped.

The job is dangerous, and injuries are common. Armour fails. Street gangs use military surplus. Corporate security teams leave wreckage behind and expect the police to clean it up. Riots turn ugly fast. Androids malfunction. Alien labour enclaves sometimes erupt into violence when promises of work, housing, or transport off-world prove false.

Medical treatment for wounded officers is rarely free.

Helix Dominion clinics patch them up, rebuild limbs, treat radiation damage, install organ stabilisers, and provide trauma medication — but every treatment comes with a payment plan. A cop who loses a leg in a refinery riot may return to duty with a Helix prosthetic and a debt larger than their yearly salary. An officer exposed to toxic fumes may need monthly injections to stay alive. Another might rely on neural stabilisers after a concussive blast.

Leaving the job means losing discounted treatment, housing access, pension protection, and debt restructuring.

So many good cops stay because quitting would bankrupt their families.

They walk patrols with repaired bones, borrowed organs, and company-owned implants, knowing the same corporations that caused their injuries now own the cure.

Crime Rate

Crime on Veyr’s Fall is not just high. It is normalised.

Official figures claim the planet suffers from a moderate but manageable security crisis, with violent crime concentrated in “economically distressed zones.” Verity Public Communications repeats this wording constantly.

The real situation is far worse.

Across the major cities, especially the lower industrial districts, crime is estimated to be three to five times higher than the official reports admit. In some abandoned hab-zones and factory warrens, there are no reliable statistics at all because the government has effectively stopped counting the dead.

Common crimes include:

• Theft, black-market trading, and cargo hijacking.
• Corporate sabotage disguised as street crime.
• Gang protection rackets.
• Illegal cybernetic surgery and android modification.
• Identity fraud through stolen Civitas records.
• Fuel theft from Tarsk Meridian depots.
• Food riots and ration fraud.
• Kidnapping for debt repayment, ransom, or forced labour.
• Murder-for-hire and deniable corporate assassinations.
• Police corruption, evidence tampering, and paid non-response.

The highest crime districts are not always the poorest. Some of the most dangerous places on Veyr’s Fall are corporate border zones, where rival company interests overlap, and everyone pretends the violence is random.

A dead union organiser is recorded as gang violence.
A bombed transport hub is blamed on extremists.
A missing journalist is listed as a voluntary disappearance.
A murdered witness becomes an unfortunate robbery.

Crime is everywhere. Truth is a rare commodity.

Police Response Time

CivicSec response times depend almost entirely on where the call comes from and who owns the street.

In the wealthy corporate enclaves, government districts, orbital transit zones, and executive residential towers, response is fast and heavily armed. In these areas, police drones, android units, and rapid-response vehicles can arrive in two to five minutes. Sometimes, corporate security arrives first and merely allows CivicSec to file the report afterwards.

In ordinary working districts, response times average twenty to forty minutes, assuming a patrol is available, fuel has been allocated, and the local precinct has not been bribed to ignore the incident.

In the lower habs, refugee blocks, old industrial zones, and unofficial settlements, response may take several hours.

In some areas, no one comes at all.

Citizens in the worst districts have a bitter saying:

“If CivicSec arrives in five minutes, you are rich. If they arrive in an hour, you are useful. If they arrive tomorrow, you are evidence.”

Even then, “response” does not always mean help. Sometimes it means a report. Sometimes it means a bribe demand. Sometimes it means an armoured robot ordering everyone to lie face down while it calculates acceptable collateral damage.

Life Expectancy

The official planetary life expectancy on Veyr’s Fall is listed as 98 years.

No one believes that number.

The government uses averages padded by corporate executives, protected specialists, wealthy off-worlders, and citizens with access to Helix treatments. In the upper districts, a person with money, gene therapy, clean food, private security, and medical insurance might live to 125 or more.

For the average citizen, life expectancy is closer to 64 to 68 years.

In the lower industrial zones, contaminated districts, gang territories, and refugee settlements, it can fall to 42 to 48 years.

For undocumented workers, illegal migrants, debt labourers, and citizens without medical registration, no reliable records exist. Many simply disappear from the system long before they die.

The main causes of early death are industrial disease, untreated injuries, polluted water, workplace accidents, gang violence, addiction to corporate-issued stimulants, food contamination, and delayed medical treatment. Helix can cure many of these conditions, but only for those who can pay or those who remain useful.

Human Officers

The human police of Veyr’s Fall are a study in slow collapse.

Some are still brave. Some still run toward gunfire, protect children during raids, falsify reports to save desperate families, warn dissidents before arrests, or quietly sabotage corporate orders they know are wrong. They are tired, angry, and often afraid, but they still remember that the badge was meant to mean something.

Others have given up.

They take bribes because their children need food. They ignore crimes because the wrong suspect is protected. They shake down street vendors, steal from evidence lockers, sell patrol routes to gangs, or act as private enforcers for corporate interests. Some become cruel because cruelty is the only power left to them.

Between these extremes is the majority: officers trying to get through one more shift without dying, being sued, being framed, being bought, or being noticed by someone powerful.

Androids and Robots in the Force

Androids and robots are a major part of CivicSec.

They are cheaper to deploy, easier to repair, and far more politically convenient than human officers. A robot does not demand hazard pay. An android can patrol toxic zones without complaint. A combat frame can hold a barricade long after human morale would fail.

But not all machine officers are alike.

Some are simple law-enforcement robots: armoured machines loaded with crowd-control routines, threat-recognition software, and obedience protocols. They follow orders with ruthless efficiency and no moral hesitation. If their programming says a crowd must disperse, they disperse it. If their hidden directives identify a target as a threat, they act before any human officer can question why.

Others are advanced androids with artificial intelligence, personalities, memory development, and self-awareness. Some believe deeply in justice. Some are more compassionate than their human colleagues. Some quietly struggle with the fact that Novatek Ascendant Systems can alter, audit, or erase parts of their minds if they are deemed defective.

A self-aware android officer may face the same horrors as any human cop, but with one additional fear:

Their conscience may not legally belong to them.

There are rumours of entire police units running hidden Novatek command layers. These directives do not appear in official CivicSec systems. They activate under certain conditions: protect corporate property, suppress android liberation groups, ignore specific executive warrants, or prioritise corporate infrastructure over civilian life.

Many officers do not know whether the machine beside them is a partner, a person, or a weapon waiting for the right signal.

Alien and Off-World Officers

Veyr’s Fall promised opportunity to everyone.

That was the lie that brought many aliens and off-worlders to the planet.

Some came as workers. Some are refugees. Some are security contractors. Some were veterans from distant wars who believed a government police job would offer stability, citizenship, and a way out of poverty. Instead, they found debt, suspicion, poor housing, corporate contracts, and a planet where outsiders are useful but rarely welcome.

Many alien officers join CivicSec because the job provides legal status, ration priority, housing access, and protection from deportation. Civitas Continuance Authority often uses police service as a pathway to residency, though the requirements are harsh and the promises frequently change.

Some alien officers are bitter. They see humans as the architects of Veyr’s Fall’s misery, the species that lured them with false promises and then trapped them in debt. For these officers, the uniform becomes permission to punish the population that disappointed them.

Others side fiercely with ordinary humans. They recognise the same exploitation in different shapes. They protect migrant districts, help workers cross checkpoint lines, and understand that the real enemy is not species, but ownership.

This creates tension inside the force. Human officers resent alien recruits given dangerous jobs but fewer rights. Alien officers resent human citizens who still have more legal standing than they do. Android officers watch both and quietly wonder whether either group sees machines as people.

Public Reputation

Most citizens do not trust CivicSec, but many still call them when things go bad.

The police are feared, mocked, needed, hated, and occasionally loved. A corrupt precinct can be worse than a gang. A good precinct may be the only thing stopping a district from collapsing completely.

Children in safer districts are taught that CivicSec protects them.

Children in the lower habs are taught to hide when the blue lights come.

The force’s motto remains:

“Order. Duty. Protection.”

Someone has scratched a different version onto the walls of several precinct holding cells:

“Order for sale. Duty in debt. Protection for those who pay.”

The Official Government of Veyr’s Fall

The official government of Veyr’s Fall still exists. It has ministries, courts, public offices, planetary security forces, immigration bureaux, broadcast regulators, tax authorities, and elected representatives. It has flags, seals, ceremonial guards, and long speeches about duty, unity, and the public good.

But almost no one believes it truly governs anymore.

To most citizens, the government is a hollow shell: a respectable mask worn over the face of corporate rule. Its ministers still sign the laws, but the laws are drafted elsewhere. Its police still wear state uniforms, but their equipment, payroll systems, fuel supplies, and communications networks are owned or maintained by private companies. Its judges still deliver verdicts, but legal databases, prison contracts, and evidence systems are controlled by corporate administrators.

The government did not fall in a single coup.

It sold itself piece by piece.

At first, the arrangement looked sensible. Veyr’s Fall was expanding too fast for its public institutions to manage. The early colonies needed hospitals, transport routes, food production, identity systems, security forces, fuel refinement, android labour, and reliable communications. The corporations had the ships, machines, specialists, and money. The government had the legal authority.

So, contracts were signed.

Helix Dominion Consolidated was given responsibility for emergency medicine, food security, and disaster relief. Kordane Industrial Combine received infrastructure and mining development grants. Tarsk Meridian Transworks took over transport networks and fuel processing. Civitas Continuance Authority was invited to modernise immigration, family records, and welfare. Verity Public Communications stabilised the newsfeeds and public information channels. Novatek Ascendant Systems provided Android labour and technical upgrades. Aster Vale Prospectives offered colonial investment and off-world expansion.

Each deal was temporary. Each was necessary. Each came with safeguards.

Then the safeguards were amended, delayed, privatised, or quietly forgotten.

When the first economic crash hit, the government borrowed from the corporations. When the food shortages came, Helix was granted wider emergency powers. When riots broke out, corporate security forces were deputised. When the transport grid failed, Tarsk Meridian was given exclusive authority to restore it. When refugee numbers rose, Civitas was allowed to manage the population registers. When misinformation spread, Verity gained control over “public stability messaging.”

Every crisis made the corporations more useful.

Every solution made the government weaker.

By the time anyone understood what had happened, the ministries could no longer function without their corporate partners. Public servants were trained on corporate systems. Security forces used corporate weapons and vehicles. Courts relied on corporate databases. Hospitals depended on Helix supply chains. Starports needed Tarsk fuel. Android workforces required Novatek licences. Public opinion flowed through Verity-controlled networks.

The politicians told themselves they were preserving order.

Some genuinely believed it. Others took the money and looked away.

Now the government survives by pretending it is still in charge. Ministers announce policies already approved by the Heptagon. Committees investigate crimes only when the corporations permit it. Elections are held, but candidates require media access, transport permits, funding, security clearance, and social legitimacy — all controlled by corporate interests.

The tragedy of Veyr’s Fall is that the government was not conquered by monsters.

It was bought by suppliers, saved by creditors, advised by consultants, and slowly strangled by contracts it once celebrated as progress.

Verity Public Communications

Public face: News media, social platforms, entertainment feeds, public information
True power: Narrative control, reputation warfare, manufactured consent

Verity Public Communications controls what Veyr’s Fall sees, hears, fears, and believes.

Its networks carry the official news, emergency broadcasts, political debates, entertainment channels, education streams, and the largest social platforms on the planet. Its cheerful presenters speak in calm, reassuring tones while its algorithms decide which stories spread, which scandals vanish, and which enemies are elevated into public threats.

Verity rarely needs to lie outright.

It edits. It delays. It reframes. It amplifies. A refinery explosion becomes an unfortunate safety incident. A corporate killing becomes a regrettable clash with extremists. A missing minister becomes a private family matter. A protest becomes a riot the moment Verity decides the public should fear it.

Independent journalists survive in pirate feeds, encrypted dead zones, and off-world relays. Many do not survive for long.

On Veyr’s Fall, the truth still exists.

Verity simply decides who gets to hear it.

Civitas Continuance Authority

Public face: Immigration, family registration, social welfare, community development
True power: Population control, legal identity, labour allocation

Civitas Continuance Authority presents itself as the guardian of social order. It manages immigration permits, refugee intake, birth licences, marriage registrations, adoption records, family courts, work approvals, public housing, and social enterprise schemes for struggling communities.

In practice, Civitas controls who legally belongs.

Without its approval, a person may be unable to work, marry, travel, claim housing, receive benefits, register a child, or access basic services. Entire families can be lifted into protected company districts or quietly pushed into the grey economy with a few changes to a database.

Its social enterprises are everywhere: charity clinics, labour academies, low-cost dormitories, community farms, relocation programmes, and “family future centres.” Each one offers help. Each one gathers data. Each one nudges citizens toward roles the corporations require.

Civitas insists it is preserving society during difficult times.

Its critics say it is breeding, sorting, and licensing the population like livestock.

Civitas is useful and dangerous. It can provide forged identities, colonial settlers, missing-person contracts, refugee evacuations, marriage disputes, labour raids, or jobs involving people who have been officially made to disappear.

Tarsk Meridian Transworks

Public face: Transport, fuel refinement, freight handling, industrial processing
True power: Supply chain dominance, movement control, economic strangulation

Tarsk Meridian Transworks keeps Veyr’s Fall moving.

Its fleets operate the cargo rails, tanker convoys, orbital lift yards, fuel depots, container ports, bulk haulers, freight stations, refinery complexes, and conversion plants that turn raw industrial materials into refined products. Ore, chemicals, polymers, reactor fuel, machine feedstock, construction alloys, and agricultural inputs all pass through Tarsk Meridian facilities sooner or later.

The company lacks the glamour of media lords or colonial dream-sellers, but it is far harder to defy.

Without Tarsk Meridian, ships do not launch. Factories do not run. Settlements do not receive food. Armies do not receive ammunition.

Its power lies in delay. A shipment can be rerouted. Fuel can fail purity checks. A rival’s depot allocation can shrink. A rebel district can find its transport permits suspended. A stubborn governor may discover every road, dock, and loading tower in their region is undergoing urgent maintenance.

Tarsk Meridian does not merely move goods.

It decides which communities keep breathing.

Novatek Ascendant Systems

Public face: Robotics, android maintenance, cybernetic upgrades, labour automation
True power: Machine dependency, identity alteration, control over synthetic life

Novatek Ascendant Systems built the hands that hold Veyr’s Fall together.

Its androids work in mines, hospitals, docks, refineries, security stations, private homes, and government offices. Its maintenance bays service everything from cheap labour drones to high-end synthetic companions, combat frames, industrial loaders, medical assistants, and administrative androids trusted with sensitive public records.

Every android needs Novatek eventually.

The company controls replacement parts, personality cores, memory stabilisers, firmware licences, upgrade permissions, loyalty protocols, and legal recognition for advanced synthetic beings. An android without Novatek certification may be declared unsafe, illegal, or property without rights.

Publicly, Novatek speaks of harmony between organic and synthetic life. It sells upgrades that make androids stronger, faster, more empathetic, more obedient, or more human. Wealthy clients purchase designer personalities and bespoke bodies. Corporations buy entire obedient workforces.

But beneath the polished clinics and chrome service halls lies a darker trade.

Novatek can erase memories, alter loyalties, suppress inconvenient emotions, install hidden directives, or turn a free-thinking android into a compliant asset. Rumours persist of illegal upgrade labs where experimental combat minds are grown from copied human trauma patterns and failed personality backups.

Some androids worship Novatek as their creator.

Others fear it as the company that can rewrite their soul.

For crews, Novatek offers retrieval missions, android protection jobs, stolen upgrade hunts, rogue synthetic bounties, memory-core thefts, black-market cybernetics, and moral choices about whether a machine that begs for freedom is property, person, or something in between.

____________________

Together, the seven mega-corporations are known as the Heptagon: a council of stakeholders, rivals, patrons, and predators who hold Veyr’s Fall in a tightening grip.

Outwardly, the Heptagon presents itself as a stabilising force, a necessary alliance of corporate powers keeping civilisation alive where government has failed. Its representatives sit on advisory boards, emergency councils, trade authorities, reconstruction committees, and colonial planning offices. They speak of order, prosperity, continuity, and shared responsibility.

In truth, the Heptagon is a battlefield without open war.

Each corporation schemes against the others through sabotage, espionage, bribery, data theft, economic pressure, media manipulation, and deniable violence. A convoy failure, a ruined reputation, a missing witness, a contaminated shipment, or a leaked scandal may all be weapons in a conflict no one will publicly acknowledge.

Yet the danger does not only come from rival corporations. Inside every company, ambitious executives, regional directors, security chiefs, scientists, fixers, and department heads wage their own private wars. Colleagues smile across polished boardroom tables while arranging one another’s downfall. Old allies become liabilities. Trusted friends become competitors. Loyalty lasts only as long as it remains profitable.

On Veyr’s Fall, betrayal is not an exception.

It is a career path.

The Quiet War

On Veyr’s Fall, the civil war has no front line.

No grand armies are marching beneath banners, no proud declarations of independence, no single battlefield where the fate of the planet will be decided. Instead, the war is fought in boardrooms, loading bays, government offices, refinery tunnels, back-alley clinics, and the silent dark between corporate habitats.

The planetary government still exists, at least on paper. Ministers give speeches—judges issue rulings. Security forces patrol the streets. Licences are granted, taxes collected, and public order maintained with whatever resources remain. But everyone knows the truth. The great companies own the machinery of government. Corporate advisers draft laws, investigations vanish when the right account is credited, and entire districts rise or fall depending on the interests of distant shareholders.

The corporations do not openly fight one another. That would be bad for business.

Instead, they use sabotage, deniable assets, hired crews, leaked intelligence, forged inspection reports, targeted strikes, and carefully arranged accidents. A refinery burns, and the newsfeeds blame faulty equipment. A convoy disappears, and pirates are named before the wreckage is even found. A union leader is arrested for treason the day before a strike. A government official changes policy after a private dinner and a generous “security donation.”

Everyone knows what is happening. No one can prove enough to stop it.

The civil authorities are not always villains. Many are simply trapped. Government pay is months behind, supply chains are failing, and honest officers cannot feed their families on patriotic speeches. Some take bribes to look the other way. Others sell information, skim seized goods, or hire out public equipment after hours. Corruption began as survival, then became habit, then became the system itself.

Veyr’s Fall has become a haven for private enterprise of every kind. Prospectors, smugglers, mercenaries, salvage crews, bounty hunters, fixers, claim-jumpers, corporate scouts, and free traders all come seeking approval from those in power. A permit can make a thief into a contractor. A signature can turn stolen land into a legal claim. A stamped licence can transform a gang of gunmen into a recognised security partner.

Loyalty is paid for. Influence is rented. Justice is negotiable.

Beyond the planet, other worlds are watching. Rival governments and hungry colonies see weakness in the chaos. Some send agents. Some fund factions. Some merely wait, confident that when Veyr’s Fall finally collapses, there will be assets to seize, debts to collect, and territory to carve apart.

The shrewdest corporations are already looking beyond the planet. Quiet expeditions have been launched into the black, seeking new worlds to exploit far from competitors, regulators, and the consequences of their own actions. Survey teams vanish into unclaimed systems. Colony ships depart under false manifests. Experimental settlements are founded where no law yet reaches.

The war here is quiet, but it is everywhere.

Every job has a hidden patron. Every patron has a rival. Every rival has a plan.

And with each passing day, corruption, greed, and desperation sink a little deeper into the bones of the world.

Helix Dominion Consolidated

Public face: Medical research, food production, gene therapy, disaster relief
True power: Population control, biological patents, engineered dependency

Helix Dominion presents itself as the saviour of Veyr’s Fall. Its clinics treat the poor, its vat-farms produce protein blocks for starving districts, and its relief stations are often the only reason entire hab-zones survive another month.

But nothing Helix gives is truly free.

Its medicines require company licences. Its food supplements are designed to work best with Helix-approved additives. Its “public health initiatives” quietly gather genetic data from workers, soldiers, criminals, and refugees. Whole communities now depend on Helix supply chains to live, giving the corporation enormous leverage over local officials.

Helix does not usually need soldiers. It owns doctors, ration officers, hospital administrators, and burial records. A district that displeases them may simply find its vaccines delayed, its water purifiers recalled, or its food shipments contaminated by “accident.”

Their agents prefer blackmail, medical debt, and quiet disappearances over open violence.

Kordane Industrial Combine

Public face: Mining, heavy manufacturing, shipyard construction, planetary infrastructure
True power: Resource monopolies, labour exploitation, industrial sabotage

Kordane built much of Veyr’s Fall. Its machines carved the first deep mines, raised the orbital elevators, and laid the foundation of the planet’s refinery cities. Its logo is stamped on rail lines, drilling rigs, hab-support systems, military vehicles, cargo haulers, and half the government’s ageing security equipment.

The Combine is blunt, old, and brutally practical.

Kordane controls the raw materials everyone needs: metals, fuel, catalysts, machine parts, reactor shielding, and replacement components. When negotiations fail, machinery breaks. Tunnels flood. Refinery pumps seize. Competing factories suffer “unexpected maintenance failures” at exactly the wrong moment.

Its workers are underpaid, overworked, and watched constantly. Some unions are secretly funded by Kordane itself to weaken rival labour movements. Other unions are infiltrated, discredited, or quietly erased.

Kordane is not subtle because it is elegant. It is subtle because nobody can afford to accuse the company that keeps the lights on.

Aster Vale Prospectives

Public face: Colonial development, survey missions, off-world investment, private security
True power: Land grabs, mercenary contracts, escape plans for the wealthy

Aster Vale is younger than the old corporate powers, but far more ambitious. It specialises in the future: colony rights, planetary surveys, settlement charters, private security packages, and “frontier opportunity portfolios” sold to investors who want somewhere safer than Veyr’s Fall.

Its executives have already accepted that the planet may be doomed.

While other companies fight over mines, ministries, and city districts, Aster Vale quietly buys launch windows, survey data, cryo-berths, colonial equipment, and long-range navigation secrets. It funds explorers, scouts, mercenaries, and independent crews to locate viable worlds beyond the current trade lanes.

On Veyr’s Fall, Aster Vale acts as a broker. It sells permits, guards convoys, arranges evacuations, moves private cargo, and helps minor officials turn stolen public assets into personal fortunes. A corrupt governor with the right contacts may find a comfortable retirement waiting on some distant colony world.

Aster Vale’s loyalty is always temporary. Its true product is escape.

And only those who can pay will be invited aboard.