Welcome to the Solar Reach!
5 months ago
– Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 08:02:00 AM
Hail, armigers!
Behold, the Solar Reach map! Designed by the inimitable Yağmur, one of our gifted artists.
To go with this lovely map, we thought we would give a quick tour of a couple intriguing spots in the Solar Reach: namely, some of the natural and unnatural satellites orbiting the planets.
Hathor Prime, Orbital Prison City
The amount of resources that were put into the construction of this space station might be the single biggest waste of capital in human history. With the success of the Martian colonies, the Equatorial Union began work on its own megastructure in the void. It was a disaster: though they raised huge amounts of capital, much of which was wasted, and upon closer investigation, the projected returns from the project were vastly exaggerated or even forged.
Its collapse caused major economic turbulence on Earth. Not willing to throw good money after bad, the project was finished, and the station was abandoned. To what extent the station remained inhabited or used at all is contradictory in the historic record; some say that research teams remained using elements of the station. Some suggest that the cost of running even a small part of the station was more than the debtors picking at the Union’s corpse were willing to pay. After the fall of the Union and the sale of the station, it was reoccupied and refitted, at least portions of it, so that modest gas extraction could begin; the terraforming of Mars was even in these early days a beast that needed feeding. The enterprise was modestly successful, and capacity expanded to include a small fleet in support of the station. More and more of Hathor was rebuilt, and even additional orbitals were constructed to expand the operation.
During the Final Global Crisis and the events of Earth’s last days, much attention was paid to the ARK ships, but they were not the only method of evacuation; smaller ships carrying thousands or hundreds of people also fled the dying planet in smaller less space worthy vessels than the ARK ships. Most of these vessels were lost in the void, as they lacked the capacity to do long-distance space flight, but of those that did survive, a lot of them made it to Venus, one of the closest planets to Earth. These people and the ships that they brought with them set up lives in the orbital.
The station itself is built in the style of a Stanford torus, with large rotating rings built around a central hub. The gentle rotation of the rings provides the gravity needed to support human life in space. The station has everything it needs to be self-sustaining and protected from the dangers of the void. Other stations around Venus are commonly built in the same style. The station is about big enough for 30,000 people, though, excluding the era of Solar Sail, the population probably never got close to capacity.
After the devastating Wars of Coherence, Hathor Prime became a protectorate of Mars, and a large portion of it was converted into a prison. Hathor Prime is not a place where anyone wants to end up. The second ring segment is completely given over to prisoners. Mars periodically empties out its jails, offering prisoners reduced sentences if they agree to serve their time on Hathor, or just as often, sending people there without being offered a deal. There, the prisoners must work in the sulphuric acid-laced atmosphere, extracting and refining greenhouse gases for the terraforming project. It is extremely dangerous work, and the ships filled with those released from the stations are always emptier than those arriving.
The bottom ring of the station is mostly given over to industry. There are fabricators and refineries getting the bounties of Venus ready for export. The top ring is the only one that is not part of the Prison. Here, the natives of Hathor make their homes, few though they are. They have lives of their own, petty commerce, and employment. Those not directly employed by the working of the prisons below them do their best not to think about the suffering happening almost within view of their portholes.
In addition to the native Hathorians, there are plenty of Martian staff working in various capacities within the prison. The kind of people who have traveled across the void to be part of a gigantic forced labor colony are not the most pleasant that Mars has to offer. The Hathorians do their best to avoid them, and the bars and restaurants of Hathor tend to be segregated between them, albeit unofficially.
Mars Orbital Space
Deos Mons, Orbital Shipyard
In a tidally-locked orbit above the Samostan is the orbital shipyard of Deos Mons. This facility is where the solar sails are produced and repaired and where the greatest number of ships in the Solar Reach are produced. This facility is one of the most securely guarded places in the Solar Reach. It is run by the Major Council, but since the Inheritors were the first to introduce solar sails, they have a prominent position on the Shipyard Advisory Board.
Gohar Station, Asteroid Catcher
The terraforming of Mars requires immense resources, much of which come from the Asteroid Belt. With this Station, asteroids are effectively launched at Mars using advanced mathematical calculations and huge engines. Gohar Station catches those asteroids and processes them to a level that they can be transported to the surface for refining and utilization.
Deimos: The Great Fortress of Mars
Deimos was, for a lot of Mars’ history, just a research station on an unremarkable rock. A home for pirate habs, smuggling rings and strange cults. However, after the reignition of the Core, the leaders of the Samostan deemed it necessary that Mars should be able to defend itself. Even then, before the Sarvanāśa, the conflicts that would become the Wars of Coherence were being stoked.
The moon started its life as a missile silo with weapons, anti-ship torpedoes, and prototype interplanetary missiles. Of course, to defend these installations the base also required closer range fortifications, gun emplacements, and strike-craft hangers. These installations put the Samostan at a great strategic advantage over the other cities of Mars, as they could control the orbital space of Mars from a secure location.
As Jupiter made its play for Mars during the second phase of the Wars of Coherence, Deimos was under almost continuous assault; the big guns of Mars had to be silenced or at least distracted while the planet was under attack. While the fleets of Jupiter ruled the skies of Mars, the Martian Navies sheltered on Deimos. The guards of Deimos fought heroically through some of the worst fighting conditions of the whole war. They knew they had no choice because, if the fortress fell, the batteries and nuclear missile caches they safeguarded would surely have been turned on the planet's surface.
Against all odds, they held the line in the face of orbital bombardment, the clone armies and the Jovian vat-crafted monsters, until the Solar Sails lifted the siege and turned the tide. The defenders of Deimos, the Children of Fear as they came to be known, were and are the most respected infantry in the Solar Reach.
Since the Wars, the fortress has been expanded with added layers of defense. No threat will be allowed to get close to Mars again. Though the moon was originally built up by the Samostan, it now receives contributions of fighters and material from across Mars.
The current leader of the Children of Fear is General Jordan Victoria Ilyin, a highly respected commander with experience fighting pirates in the Asteroid Belt.
Phobos, the Hermetic Moon
The Alveolate Order:
Based on Phobos, The Alveolate Order is a religious community, monastic and austere. Their monks and nuns can be found all across Mars and the Solar Reach in small communes and hospices. However, their base of operations is Phobos. While Phobos is part of the Martian polity, sends representatives to and is within the jurisdiction of the Major Council, in reality the settlement on Phobos, built from the bones of the 4th ARK ship The Shklovsky, is run with almost no oversight from Mars.
Research from the Order can be found all over the Solar Reach; they are always on the hunt for specific snippets of occult information. The order would claim that they are simply scholars collecting information for the purpose of the advancement of knowledge. Others speculate that the resources Phobos seems to have at its disposal imply a bigger agenda, though what that is and who is funding it is unknown.
Although many in authority are suspicious of these visitors, to the laborers of Mars they are often a life saver. The hospices of the Order are often a vital lifeline providing healthcare, food, and clean water to people in need. Their hospices can be found in habs deep in the Regolith without much in the way of government support.
Titan, Gifts of the Princess
Capital: Adiri
Leadership: Princess Bronwyn Miancimu Antiochus
The 9th ARK ship, The Huygens, was disassembled when it reached Saturn. The various sections of the ship split off from each other and traveled to the various moons of Saturn to build small stations and habitation modules around the planet. The original idea of Saturn was to begin to leverage the almost endless resources of Saturn's moons for the future of Earth. Saturn was to be a mine, and ultimately a staging post as the humans of Earth began their journey even deeper into the depths of space. Of course, Earth was unable to ever take advantage of the bounty that Saturn could provide, and the pioneers, meant to be the vanguard of a glorious new interstellar civilization, were left on their own in the cold.
The planet of Saturn is not inhabited. Whatever unique power the Jovian Lords have been able to draw upon allowing them to live in Jupiter has not been shared with the rest of the Solar Reach. The moons of Saturn are a different matter. With the exception of Mars itself, Saturn's moons, Titan, Hyperion, Enceladus, Phoebe, and more are perhaps some of the easiest places to live in the Solar Reach, with habs on many of the moons and their capital on Titan. Easy is, of course, a relative term. However, the aristocratic families of Saturn, led by Princess Bronwyn Miancimu Antiochus, have built one of the most stable polities in the Solar Reach. With their own terraforming project on Titan, and vast armies of robots making up for a small human population, it is possible that there may be more than one truly habitable home for humanity within the Solar Reach. What is more, Titan has a massive hydrocarbon sea, Kraken Mare, which gives the Princess a powerful bargaining chip in dealings with Mars.
The Armigers of Saturn
The military of Saturn is sometimes looked down upon by the warriors of Mars as being bloodless, relying on drone warfare rather than soldiers. This is true, and given the small size of even the free population, Saturn is always loath to risk human life. The front-line soldiers they do have are armigers; their task is to support the drone fleets as commandos. As the drone armadas follow their algorithmically determined routes, the elite Armigers teams of Mars conduct lightning raids to assassinate key staff, sabotage infrastructure or gather intelligence. The Armigers of Saturn are one of the few places where bloodline does not matter, and free can command nobles (theoretically).
Unlike on Mars, where armiger companies are private institutions, most of the Armiger companies of Saturn are controlled by a noble family and ultimately the princess herself. Private armiger companies on Saturn do exist, as do companies or cells from other parts of the Solar Reach looking to make their fortune in the rings. The foreign companies, in particular, are looked upon with suspicion as little better than pirates.
Adiri
The royal capital of Adiri, built on the western shores of the vast, dark sand sea of Shangri-La, is perhaps the most picturesque city in the entire Reach. It resembles an elaborate crystal shell that perpetually catches the light of the icy Titan surface. Many of the crown’s robot soldiers constantly work to keep the buildings spotless.
Royal Labs
The Royal Labs are a massive complex of laboratories attached to the Royal Palace, specializing in studying tholins, a tar-like organic sludge formed from Titan’s methane-rich atmosphere. Since tholins are used as a base for genetic manipulation, the Saturnine monarchy tasked scientists with studying it extensively, with the ultimate goal of overcoming biotic entropy. Tholins are a highly prized resource for Gene Sifters and Grafters across the Solar Reach.
Kraken Mare
An immense hydrocarbon sea and a major source of Saturnine power. The Princess of Saturn has tasked a guild of magi, known as the Sisters of Kraken Mare, to ensure the sea’s protection, as well as a full squadron of robot sentries. They have a fortified stronghold and refinery on Mayda Insula in the center of the sea, as well as airborne processing drones.
The Rings of Saturn - Project Satiate
The mesmerizing rings of Saturn are composed mainly of ice crystals and rocks. High above the rings floats Project Satiate, a slow-orbit water depot built to store and distribute harvested ice. Swarms of autonomous Scavenger drones swoop into the rings, extract ice and other materials, before going back to Satiate where the ice is processed and then sent via void ships to Titan. Some of the ice is later sold to the Ganymede Cartel, which they use to help fulfill Mars’ insatiable thirst.
Ganymede, the Water Trove
Capital: Nanshe Catena, New Phrygia
Leadership: The Seven Slake Elders, headed by the current One, Pamir Kertész
Ganymede is the capital of the Galileans and home to one of the most influential organizations in the Solar Reach, the Ganymede Cartel. Its capital city of Nanshe Catena is a bit of a misnomer, as the moon could really be considered an ecumenopolis. Almost the entire surface of the moon is covered by urban sprawl with little division: extensive mining operations, with habitats-turned-cities which formed on and around them and then metastasized; the moon is now a vast ocean of lights, towers, vent towers, and domes. The main resource on Ganymede is water and water purification; underneath the surface is an ocean with more water than was once on Earth. This, naturally, puts Ganymede in an incredibly powerful position: the Cartel sits on the Minor Council and helps dictate Solar Reach policy. The entire moon works for the water, and there is very little in the way of opulence like Titan’s Adiri. However, no expense has been spared when it comes to efficiency and productivity. Workers must be properly trained, fed, and given sleep and leisure time; thus, the cities are well appointed. Outside of the few domes with artificial gravity, most inhabitants of Ganymede live in the large rotating cities built atop the immense water drills and pumps, a dual design which was exported to the other Galilean Moons as well: the spinning of the artificial gravity cores helps power the continuous extraction of water.
Nanshe Catena proper is a domed city where the Cartel highest ranks and their attendants reside, where the Cartel’s offices and halls of leisure can be found, as well as temples (precious few), austere shopping centers, and the small embassies allowed, one from Mars and one from Titan. Conspicuous consumption and extraneous opulence are prohibited by the Cartel’s Sumptuary Laws. Production and Prosperity are the guiding lights.
The Cartel
The powers behind this immense organization all trace their lineage back to the 7th ARK ship, the Rapier. Previously, several cartels ran different operations on the moon, but they have since been subsumed into a monolithic entity with absolute power on the moon and the rest of the Galileans. The inner workings and decision-making of the Cartel are highly secretive, and no known Harrower has ever been able to gain access. What is known is that the Cartel is overseen by an oligarchy, currently headed by Pamir Kertész, whose grandmother was the last head of the Cartel. Pamir is taciturn and calculating; his stare is penetrating, and his cold countenance chills rooms before he enters. He has trained extensively in the duellist’s arts as part of his private education, and rumor has it that he is also psionically gifted, though this may be rumors spread by the Cartel’s intelligence to maintain an air of supernatural danger. Make no mistake: the danger is not purely smoke and mirrors. The Cartel’s influence and power spreads across the Reach. It has its own standing armigers, its own private security more loyal than armigers, a fleet of drones, and a standing cadre of powerful psions and magi.
Europa:
One of Jupiter’s icy moons, much of the surface of Europa has been taken over by subsurface water mining, under the auspices of the Ganymede Cartel. The majority of people who live on Europa are water ‘diggers’, engineers, or scientists. Because there is still some hope that Europa could become a habitable garden one day, a significant portion of the surface has been left untouched by the Cartel…for now. As Europa is more important in the Cartel’s eyes, their Margraves (rank 415) run the industrial islands, though they are heavily surveilled.
Langshan Station:
The inter-lunar ecosystem of Io and Europa creates an intriguing dynamic: Io’s constant volcanic activity sends sulphur and other particles into the void, with much of it ending up on Europa’s icy surface. Scientists have been fascinated with this exchange since before the end of Earth, as it poses questions that might lead to interesting discoveries about the possibility for making habitable ecosystems, and how large those ecosystems can be. The Langshan Station on Europa is financed by the Ganymede Cartel to study the effects of the interplay of Io’s effect on Europa. Nothing substantial in the way of creating an artificial “new Earth” has emerged, but the scientists are hopeful. The Cartel is patient, for now.
Callisto:
The furthest Galilean from Jupiter, Callisto’s tidally-locked surface is riddled with craters from a long life of impacts. Some scientists indicate that Callisto’s surface is older than any known celestial body in the Solar Reach. Similar to Europa, Callisto has a subsurface ocean 100km below the surface, which the Cartel has diligently set up infrastructure to exploit. Several of the Cartel’s Lieutenants (rank 432) run the facilities as quasi-fiefdoms.
The Valhalla Palimpsest:
The entire facade of Callisto is one of violent impact after impact. Nowhere is this more apparent and more awe-inspiring than the Palimpsest, so named because its surface has been rewritten so many times. It is a sprawling impact basin of around 360 km on the Jupiter-facing side, and it is surrounded by concentric circles of mountain ridges spreading out over almost 2,000 km. Punctuated around this massive area are huge craters from later arrivals. In the center of the Palimpsest, recently built by a joint Mars-Ganymede venture, is a military training facility of truly staggering proportions. Here armigers and regulars train in martial practices, in view of the gas giant and its dormant Jovians. Some of the major arms companies have satellite branches here, especially the ones perfecting experimental technology, such as Oliana Nullworks and CTR (Céüse Tactical Research). The facilities include accommodation for staff and visiting armiger or military groups who wish to train in the rippling hellscape, dotted with mines, drones, turrets, and captured monsters.
Final Words
In other news, we are done writing the books! Now it moves to the design stage and then the inevitable tweaking stage. We are still waiting for more feedback from the Second Playtest as well, which we can implement before the final proofreading stage.
Take Care, Stay Safe, See you in the Void,
The Metis Writing Team
New Public Playtests Incoming and a Detailed Look at the Specter Class!
7 months ago
– Tue, Feb 03, 2026 at 06:53:16 AM
Greetings Armigers,
Tyler here from Camp Writing Team. A cold front has hit us here in Istanbul, as it has in other parts of our dear planet. As we sit huddled over our keyboards, staring out at the winds whipping over the ferries and fishing boats on the Golden Horn, we are reminded of somewhere else that’s cold and unforgiving. Hmm, where could that be? Ah yes…
In this update, we are talking about our final class of Armigers, the Specters. In previous updates, we have detailed the other classes and their archetypes: the Bastions, Synths, Vitalists, and Aethers. Interestingly, some of the Specter archetypes have been with us since the early days of ASTRA ARCANUM development (with changes along the way), and some are newer additions that took longer to gestate.
Before we get to the sneaky Specters, though, we have another big announcement.
The Next Round of Playtests are Coming!
We received a lot of useful feedback from all of you during the first round of public playtests. Since then, as we approach the end of our writing tasks, we have also been busy interrogating and implementing your feedback. We are eternally grateful to all the intrepid volunteers (especially the GMs!) who played the game and got back to us. Thank you so much!
Coming up next, we will be asking you to take the rules and build the most insane, broken, overpowered armiger characters you can. We want you to gleefully stretch and break the game. More info about that coming soon!
Specters - The Unseen Menace
Specters are precision killers, infiltration experts, and agile tacticians. Whether operating as stealthy assassins, close-quarters infiltrators, or long-range snipers, Specters are built around high lethality, targeted elimination, and adaptive mobility. They don’t start fights: they end them before anyone realizes a fight has begun. These archetypes are perfect for players who like to play characters with emphasis on stealth, burst damage, mobility, or disruption.
Here’s a quick rundown of the Specter Archetypes:
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The Noctis Commando: a master of speed and shadow, able to approach, blast you with a shotgun, and be gone.
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The Pistoleer: the quick-draw expert, deadlier and more accurate than most in the Reach.
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The Saboteur: the consummate maven of dirty jobs, the Saboteur plants explosives, gets behind enemy lines, and plants more explosives.
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The Sniper: patient, careful, and unerringly precise, the Sniper had you dead in their sights ages ago.
Every class has a Core Ability which is unlocked as soon as you choose the class, and Specter is no different. When you first create your Specter character (or if you multiclass into it later on), you gain access to the Silent Footfalls ability, which grants you better Stealth:
The Noctis Commando
At the western edge of the vast Marineris Canyon is the Noctis Labyrinthus, the “Labyrinth of Night.” In the stygian, byzantine chasms of the Noctis, the city of Marineris trained a special group of armigers: commandos able to disappear in shadows and strike with ferocious precision and power before disappearing once again. The original Noctis program’s tactics have become more widespread, but anyone using the tactics remembers the name of their provenance.
The Noctis Commando specializes in quick, silent movement and then attacking from concealment. They are ambush experts, able to hit an enemy with a devastating shotgun or assault rifle blast from close range; before the enemy knows what hit them, they’re down and out. Now, normally firing a shotgun is like waving a flag and announcing your presence to everyone. That’s another area where the commando shines: they are able to slip back into concealment and pop up somewhere else on the battlefield, always one step ahead of their adversaries. It’s very difficult to pin a Noctis Commando down, and it’s very difficult to know where they will be next.
The Pistoleer
Like the crackshots of old, Pistoleers are the deadliest guns in the Reach. They match incredible speed with accuracy and pinpoint damage, and they are experts at close range firefights. In their arsenal they have trick shots which confer bonuses to accuracy and damage, and their speed allows them to perform more actions than some of their other armiger counterparts.
Pistoleers typically don’t come from a particular military tradition or research initiative, like the Noctis Commandos; instead they tend to be stand out talents from armiger companies who then hone their skills. Or they are deadly wanderers who build up a reputation, perhaps even passing down their skills to an apprentice.
The Saboteur
The Saboteur is my personal favorite armiger archetype. I’m not sure what that says about me, but trust me when I say that these guys are a fun, high-risk and high-reward build. They are sure to light up (pun intended) your battlefield.
Though any armiger can plant an explosive or chuck a grenade, the Saboteur has taken explosives to a beautiful, deadly art. They are experts at sneaking into places that normally should be inaccessible without a fight: behind enemy lines, through polluted tunnels and mined wastelands. After they’ve snuck to where they want to, they do their grim work, planting bombs and sneaking off to watch the fireworks. They have specially developed armor weaving that allows them to blend in more effectively and even mimic the physical appearance of others for brief periods. Moreover, they have a movement mechanic that allows them to move in the margins of Sectors on the map, giving them the chance to plant mines that target more than one Sector (expanding the AoE damage) and also move in a more concealed manner.
The Sniper
Finally, we have the sniper, death from above and beyond. The sniper was one of our first ideas for armiger archetypes, and for good reason: snipers are an indispensable addition to battlefields like those in ASTRA ARCANUM. If executed correctly, a single well-placed shot can be more effective than an entire company of Armigers. Snipers are often found operating as part of combined arms operations or sometimes alone, spending days traversing terrain to get to advantageous firing positions, waiting in the harsh Martian climate until the perfect moment to fire presents itself. They can perform Overwatch for their fellow armigers, or take a target out from long range without putting the team in direct danger. Patient, accurate, and deadly.
Final Thoughts
As always, thanks to everyone for the feedback and support. We are nearing the end of the writing process, and it’s time for me to put my writing cap away and put on my editing helmet. Until next time, see you in the Void. Stay safe out there.
