Campaign of the Month: July 2020
The Verge
The Graveyard
Here be dragons.
In 2205, a wormhole abruptly opened up on the very border of the Chlaer Radical cluster within the Moros Belt. Although this space-bridge was not entirely stable, it promised untold riches to whoever controlled it, which only exacerbated the already existing conflicts in-system. All three major factions – the Ducal Royal Navy, the Taareh PKF, and the SpaceFarer’s Collective – hurled several fleets at the location in a desperate attempt to stake their claim and, on 2 August, the Battle of Three Navies erupted.
The loss of life was staggering, but the abrupt collapse of the wormhole in the middle of the conflict only made things worse. For reasons that remain unclear, a vast swatch of space around the the epicenter of the collapsed space-bridge immediately become extremely treacherous to navigate. Strange anomalies became common. All three factions were forced to abandon attempts to retrieve ships lost in the region because of the oddness that occurred: rescue craft would completely lose power and some of their crews would spontaneously go mad; ships would simply vanish without warning, only to reappear later, now empty of crew and with scoring indicative of hundreds of years having passed despite only having been missing for days or weeks; phantom readings would crash computers; and so on. Duke Alexei officially declared the location a red zone that was off limits, and, despite their ongoing hostilities against his House, the Collective did the same.
Private scavengers tried to step in for the salvage opportunities, but a lot of them would end up simply adding more vessels to the growing scrap that was now referred to as the Graveyard. More than a few businesses went completely bankrupt trying to make their fortunes there, and only the bravest or most desperate dared venture within the deadly zone.
Thousands of warning buoys have been placed ten thousand kilometers away from what is commonly believed to be the edge of the Graveyard, but there is no official enforcement of this red zone. Initially, there was some under the table discussion about a joint operation to police the region, but with neither side trusting the other, those talks fell through and it is commonly considered a self-correcting issue. Anyone who decides to venture into the Graveyard does so knowing that they are taking a very dangerous risk…
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