The Relics

Forty things the previous civilisation left behind, and what holding one is worth.

The galaxy did not start empty. Scattered through the outer sectors are 40 things the civilisation before this one left behind — rings, corridors, hollowed worlds, archives, yards that are still building something nobody has gone round to look at.

They are not ruins. Most of them still work, which is the unsettling part.

A guild takes a relic by force and holds it, and holding it changes something real for every member of that guild.

No guild may hold more than 4 relics at a time, and two relics granting the same bonus do not stack — so the most any guild can have working for it is one of each of the four below. That is what keeps the map worth fighting over rather than worth hoarding.

⚠️ The cap is not a gate on the attack. A guild that is already at the limit can win the battle and still not take the relic — it is simply left unclaimed, for whoever comes next. If you are at the cap, taking a fifth costs you a fleet and gains you nothing.

A relic just taken cannot be attacked again for 1 hour, which is long enough for the new holder to get a garrison there and short enough that it stays contested.

A guild can also abandon a relic it holds, from the Relics panel — its Leader, the acting leader or an Officer presses it. The relic becomes unclaimed, its bonus stops unless another relic of the guild carries the same one, the cap slot is free again, and every fleet on station flies home. With an attack about to land, the abandon is refused. An abandon neither restarts nor lifts the relic's lock. Until another guild has taken it, the guild that abandoned it earns no points from an attack it launches or a raid it hosts there.

Every one of them sits beyond sector 4 — outside protected space, in the frontier. That is the whole bargain of the outer map in one sentence.

Travel

The Lantern Road — Nine hundred beacons in a line, still lit. They were meant to guide a retreat.

Holding one of these is worth −10% travel time, for every member of the guild.

• The Jump Ring — Megastructure, sector 5. A ring the width of a moon, still folding space for traffic that stopped coming.
• The Tidewalk — Corridor, sector 5. A lane of flattened space that drifts a little each year. Nobody has found what pulls it.
• The Lantern Road — Beacon chain, sector 6. Nine hundred beacons in a line, still lit. They were meant to guide a retreat.
• The Narrow Gate — Waygate, sector 7. It admits one hull at a time and asks nothing. The queue outside is very old.
• The Pale Crossing — Waystation, sector 8. The last stop before the rim, with berths for a thousand and a light left on for each.
• The Long Tack — Guidance array, sector 9. It still bends every course around a storm that blew itself out long ago.
• The Drift Mark — Survey buoy, sector 9. It measures a drift no chart admits to, and broadcasts the correction every hour, to nobody.
• The Ferry Stones — Transfer array, sector 10. Five machined asteroids trading momentum with whatever passes. They have kept the launch windows open for nothing.
• The Shortening Way — Acceleration chain, sector 11. It takes whatever arrives and throws it sunward, on intervals set by an office that files nothing now.
• The Tether — Orbital elevator, sector 12. The carriage goes down through the cloud and comes back up. Nobody is waiting at either end.

Production

The Deep Orchard — Grown inward, lit from the core. The harvest has been running unattended for centuries.

Holding one of these is worth +8% production, for every member of the guild.

• The Deep Orchard — Hollow world, sector 5. Grown inward, lit from the core. The harvest has been running unattended for centuries.
• The Verdant World — Garden world, sector 6. The only planet the Eschaton made greener. Nobody agrees on why, everybody wants it.
• The Salt Harvest — Ocean world, sector 6. One ocean, farmed to the horizon by machines that log every tonne and ship none of it.
• The Thousand Terraces — Terraced world, sector 7. Cut from pole to pole into steps. Every one of them still yields, and every one is spoken for.
• The Quiet Vein — Mining world, sector 8. A seam that has never run out, worked by drones that stopped filing reports long ago.
• The Glass Fields — Heliostat field, sector 9. A million mirrors turning with the star. The grid they feed has had no cities on it for centuries.
• The Amber Reach — Gas refinery, sector 10. Six gas giants skimmed into sealed tanks. The tanks have been full since before anyone alive was born.
• The Tallow Works — Rendering plant, sector 10. Vats rendering the harvest down to fuel blocks, stacked and counted under cranes that stopped mid-lift.
• The Tide Mills — Turbine field, sector 11. Turbines turning under an ice sea, for factories that were taken apart on the shore above them.
• The Long Kilns — Ceramic works, sector 12. Armour tiles come out of the kilns without pause, into a warehouse whose doors have rusted shut.

Shipyard

The Suspended Yard — Half-built hulls hang in its cradles, waiting for a fleet order that never arrived.

Holding one of these is worth −12% ship build time, for every member of the guild.

• The Iron Cradle — Orbital yard, sector 5. It still builds. Whatever it is building is on the far side and nobody has been round.
• The Hollow Keel — Drydock, sector 6. The spine of a ship too big to finish, repurposed as the dock that would have built it.
• The Suspended Yard — Orbital station, sector 7. Half-built hulls hang in its cradles, waiting for a fleet order that never arrived.
• The Last Slipway — Slipway, sector 7. The final berth of a yard that had nine hundred. It is the one they kept working.
• The Forge Moon — Forge moon, sector 8. Hollowed out and lit from within. From orbit it is mistaken for a star, briefly.
• The Banked Fires — Engine foundry, sector 9. The crucibles have never been allowed to cool. The order they are held for was cancelled with the fleet.
• The Patient Dock — Service berth, sector 10. Every morning the gantries service the berth. There has been no ship in it for a very long time.
• The Nine Cradles — Assembly cluster, sector 11. Nine platforms welding the same frame nine times over, and passing each one on to bays that fell in.
• The Rivet Choir — Riveting hall, sector 11. Ten thousand hammers answer the shift bell together. Nobody has fed them a plate in centuries.
• The Shroud Yard — Coating bay, sector 12. It sprays hulls dark, one after another, and buries its own launch rails in the overspray.

War

Holding one of these is worth +12% battle points, for every member of the guild.

• The Attrition Field — Battlefield, sector 5. Two fleets died here and neither withdrew. The wreckage is filed as neatly as an argument.
• The Marshal's Table — War room, sector 6. A map room the size of a city, mid-briefing. The counters have not been moved since.
• The Black Muster — Staging ring, sector 7. Assembly orbits for a fleet that was never assembled. The lanes are painted for one.
• The Exarch Archive — Megastructure, sector 8. Every battle of the old empire is filed here. Reading them is worth a war.
• The Long Roll — Memorial, sector 8. The names of the dead, read aloud on a loop. It has not repeated itself yet.
• The Broken Line — Defence lattice, sector 9. Batteries covering every approach but one. The gap is where the regiment that held it used to stand.
• The Standing Order — Command relay, sector 10. It still assigns firing sectors, on schedule, to squadrons whose hangars are open to vacuum.
• The Red Parade — Drill ground, sector 11. Drones rehearse a landing across the plain and reset when it fails. It has never once succeeded.
• The Last Redoubt — Bunker complex, sector 12. The blast doors seal at dusk and the all-clear sounds at dawn, to barracks nobody has slept in.
• The Vigil Guns — Gun platform, sector 12. The guns fire calibration rounds at a horizon their crews left centuries ago. The aim is still perfect.