Overview
Seven worlds and a shattered belt of ice around Eris A, an orange K-type star out at the edge of visited space in Sector 7-G. Where Thides is a dead end that nobody watches, Eris is a junction that everybody uses. Three gates ride the dark beyond the outermost orbit, and between them they open the lanes to Corwin, Betelgeuse, and Peric. Traffic crossing this part of the sector comes through here.
The life of the system sits on Eris III, the one world in the habitable band. It runs nearly half again Earth’s mass, wrapped in shallow mineral-rich purple oceans and thick belts of equatorial rainforest, under a dense reflective sky that turns noon into something closer to a long bright dusk. The city of Aethel and its starport hold most of what matters.
The Aethelian Federation governs, and it governs on a genuinely wide franchise: every adult citizen votes. Its reach stops at the edge of the Eris planets now. It used to run further. A “deal” with Pratrock Dynamics ended that, and cost the Federation the Corwin system outright.
Aethel Starport is where the Republic keeps its teeth. Federal Fleet Base Aethel is fleet headquarters for the whole sector, though anyone arriving expecting warships at anchor finds a supply depot instead, because the hulls themselves run patrols or sit in orbital maintenance. The Marshal’s office works out of the same station and fields six marshals, the largest posting in the sector. SkyBridge Transport owns every run between the starport and orbit, guards that monopoly hard, and stays close to the local Fleet commander by making life difficult for smugglers. House of Parts deals junk and salvage from a berth on the same station. Down in the city, Firetemic Tower rents floors to anyone who can pay, Firetemic Corporation included.
The Erisian Belt between Eris IV and Eris V is the money. Water ice and precious metals packed thick, and a dwarf planet inside it cut through with vacuum-exposed chasms that crews are working right now.
For a crew coming out of Thides, Eris is where the Federal Republic stops being an abstraction. Marshals, fleet officers, licensing, courts, and a starport full of people whose whole job is to notice cargo. That cuts both ways.