Locations 🪐
"Sector" means a region of space, and every one of them is in Sol.
There is no interstellar travel and no interstellar anything. Light takes minutes to an hour to cross the settled volume and ships take months — a scale that only works inside one system. The Sphere is this solar system, developed outward from the sun until the charts run out.
Worlds earn pages inside their sector when they appear in play.
The sectors, sunward out
| Sector | What it is |
|---|---|
| The Inner Sphere | The old worlds and the corporate capitals. Settled, administered, and where law exists |
| The Belt | The asteroid belt. Contested claims, no authority, and an economy of debt |
| Jovia | Ninety-odd moons, the heaviest shipyards in the system, and enough industry to be a sector on its own. Jupiter formally, Jupe casually, the red eye when it is looking at you |
| The Outer Sphere | Saturn and Neptune. Cold, slow, expensive, and quietly essential |
| The Kuiper | Thin rock and long orbits, out to where the charts fail. The Kype to anyone who works it. The only source of new ember |
What each sector feels like
The sectors are not just further apart — they are governed differently.
| Sector | Register | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| The Inner Sphere | Corporate cyberpunk at megacity density. Owned in layers | A city — bureaus, fixers, jurisdictional seams. The danger is a clause |
| The Belt | Clan country. Hereditary claims, company scrip, long memories | Appalachia in vacuum — warmth and suspicion in one breath |
| Jovia | Sci-fi aristocracy. Ninety moons, ninety houses, and protocol as law | A court — favour, obligation, insult, precedence |
| The Outer Sphere | Dozens of moons, natural and built, each with a warden. Rank is measured in how often you are present | A western — the long ride, the standoff, the town that made its own arrangements |
| The Kuiper | A scatter of minor kingdoms that share nothing and never mix | A hundred small courts — every stop is rules the crew does not know |
The through-line: the further out you go, the less an institution can reach you, and the more everything depends on who you are to the people in front of you. Corporate contract, family name, house standing, personal reputation, local custom — in that order, sunward out.
"Frontier" is a condition, not a place. It describes how thinly a thing is held, and it moves. The Belt is frontier country an hour from civilisation; the Kuiper is frontier in the older sense, where nobody is coming. People use the word as an adjective and the setting should too.
Habitability tiers
| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
| garden | Earthlike, open-air livable. Rare and precious |
| livable | Comfortable with light infrastructure; domes optional |
| marginal | Domes and habs required; survivable but hard |
| hostile | Suits and short stays; the environment actively kills |
| uninhabitable | Rock. Automated rigs and crew-only outposts at best |
The Sphere is mostly hard country — marginal and hostile dominate. A garden world is wealth, and everyone knows where they are.
Related
- Communications — why distance is a wall
- Timekeeping — why a date carries a confidence digit
- Corporations — who controls what