The Outer Ring

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On the outskirts of the star system of the Aleph Null System, skirting the borders of Red Space and far beyond any of the system's jump gates or regular traffic is the Outer Ring. This place is home to a rag tag motley of near-lawless worlds with no overarching government or oversight, and pirate warlords interested in their own lots.

For as long as the Aleph system has been a nexus for trade, commerce, ideas, and people, it too has been home to an underbelly in the farthest reaches - preying on merchant caravans and lone travellers, or getting on with minding their own business without anybody telling them what to do. While it is a lawless area of space, it is not necessarily characterised as villainous by the residents of the Cluster: Many truly legitimate opportunities exist in the Outer Ring for those willing to reach out and grab them. Stories about treasures, motherlodes, ruins, and other inciting yarns spun over drinks. With each tale however is mortal danger from any number of sources.

The Outer Ring's population cannot be accurately surveyed, as there's no service or government willing to head in and count everyone's heads. That said, it is possible to find humans and aliens from around the Aleph Cluster, the next system over, or somewhere else entirely. Most of the system's 'permanent' population of outcasts, drifters, miscreants, and rabble rousers live inside of the remnants of asteroid mining space stations. Others prefer to live inside their own spacecraft in loose, nomadic fleets, banding together for resources and survival whilst shying away from civilisation and/or trouble.

Legitimate employment opportunities within the Outer Ring are scarce. Most employment from without involves venturing into unknown parts of the Outer Ring, looking for a supposed treasure, digging up a stash, or finding ancient alien ruins. Within this band of space, opportunities boil down to crime, and punishment¹⁾.

Illicit operations thrive out in this area due to the lack of oversight, as most organised system patrols from government or private services rarely go beyond the perimeters of Aleph's jumpgates. Bounty hunters provide the vindication, living for the next paycheck earned at gunpoint, or from their spacecraft's autocannon.

Occasionally, less than ethical corporations recruit their disposable and plausibly deniable wetworkers from these parts, with varying degrees of success.

Divided into eight major bands corresponding to cardinal directions, the Outer Ring has few permanent residences or locales, with most moving around within their bands. This general sense of movement and randomness, along with tendrils Red Space phenomena baffling sensors make it difficult for law enforcement from within Aleph to pursue those fleeing deep into the Outer Bands.

• Northern Band - Designation: Brainchild
  • A common tale told about this area of space finds its place from the sheer number of scientists who 'went north' aboard the SSS Unfettered. Starting amiably at first, the duelling intellects gave way to ego, and they became convinced they could become as Gods. The culmination of their horrific and arcane experiments resulted in the spacecraft disappearing entirely from the Aleph Cluster inexplicably. Periodically, nomads passing through the area get phantom signals from a ship of unknown and inconsistent model identifying itself as 'The Unfettered'.
• Northeast Band - Designation: Pirate's Cove
  • A loose coalition of pirates under a common banner of causing trouble for traders and travellers called The Mayhem Fleet make their roost here. They get their name from the disorganisation of their captains and fleets - consequently, it makes it hard to predict where they will strike next.
  • A space station floats in this band, and within it is a notorious dive named Archie's. Originally a Greaseheart-styled burger joint, the raucous nature of the most frequent patrons transformed it into a noisy bar where pirates go to recruit crews. Woe betide someone looking for a quiet time here or immediately outside; For even in the backrooms, there is no peace.
• Eastern Band - Designation: Staging Zone
  • This band of space is commonly used for weapons tests and flight practice by various aerospace, military, and industrial organisations. There are large clusters of Space Junk floating about from failed or completed tests, or the outcomes of a dogfight spilling over from Pirate's Cove, or a hulk drifting in from the Horse Winds.
• Southeast Band - Designation: Horse Winds
  • Many ships avoid this sector of the Aleph Cluster's outskirts. The spatial and mnemonic hazards plaguing the area are to be the work of Bounders, a fluctuation in space caused by a reality-warping matrimony of maelstrom and the Red Tide, or other Weird phenomena allegedly coalesced around the Graveyard. Whatever the cause, scraps from battles past and hulks tumbling through space are drawn to accumulate here, presenting both opportunity for daring scroungers amidst extremely hostile space phenomena.
• Southern Band - Designation: Old Town
  • A permanent settlement borne from the remnants of a failed space colony project is called Last Light 5, originally one of six colonies dispatched to the area as the others were ransacked, destroyed, or otherwise faced calamity - remnants merging with Last Light 5 until it was the last one standing. Years of neglect and a lack of local technical expertise has rendered the air inside the station difficult to breathe for long periods.
• Southwest Band - Designation: The Rocks
  • One of the few bastions of honest employment amidst the lawlessness of the ring, there is a Mining Outpost run by a company located somewhere in the Kingdom of Albion. They are tasked with finding rare earth and other minerals for export. Consequently, this has lead to an armed private security presence patrolling the area due to the neighbours.
• Western Band - Designation: Lovelace
  • Far beyond the reach of any law enforcement and taking advantage in the lapse in regulation and oversight, a space station built from the remnants of an old mining colony dubbed the Bacchus Strip floats here. Overcrowded, desperate, and brimming with iniquity; The Strip boasts a range of gambling dens, black markets, hired guns, and criminals.
• Northwest Band - Designation: Here and There
  • Something belonging to the Gruppen Tanhauss Conglomerate through a series of elaborately obfuscated companies occupies this area: The Zero-G Max Security Prison is exactly what it says on the tin: A privately run prison complex. The location of the prison keeps changing, and it is accompanied by a formation of private fighters working from Vogeljäger Security.