Galanova Universe

Lore · A colony

Rath

A far-flung colony on a largely uninhabited world, a long way from anywhere that matters. The Republic has not abandoned it. It has done something quieter than that.

The colonial condition

The Galactic Republic rides an eternal, stable upward trend. Prosperity is the norm at and near the core, and has been for long enough to be unremarkable. That very stability is what makes it complacent about its margins.

Outlying colonies ride harder cycles. When one hits an economic downturn, lawlessness creeps in and then gets quietly swept under the rug — not suppressed, not addressed, just filed somewhere nobody reads.

Slavery is genuinely uncommon across the Republic. It surfaces in downturn colonies anyway, tolerated through neglect rather than policy. That distinction matters to the people writing the reports and to nobody else.

Rath is exactly such a colony. It is why the Rath Colonial Authority — the world's own governing body — can go on pretending the danger in and beneath the settlement does not exist.

Greyskins

Sephir skin is blue, and it greys the farther from Meyn-Sephir a Sephir lives. It is not an illness and it is not a choice. It is a distance, worn visibly, and it means you can see a colonist coming.

The core calls them greyskins. Their complaints routinely fall on deaf ears there — the letters arrive, get logged, and go unanswered. Rath's population is greyskin Sephir, and they are righteously bloodthirsty about their own justice for reasons that are not difficult to work out.

Lati Ashera is one of them — a greyskin youth of Rath, and the reason any of this is a game rather than a setting document.

Who lives there

Rath is a Sephir colony, but it is not only Sephir. The two most common non-Sephir peoples in this part of the galaxy both live here, and between them they run most of the shops.

Trob

Large, rangy and tusked — the big half of a counterpart pair. Glaag, who runs the general store and therefore knows everything, is a Trob.

Gob

Small, quick and cunning — the other half. The Trob and the Gob are foils of each other physically and culturally, which has not stopped either of them settling the same rock.

All nineteen peoples

The shape of the place

  • The colonial sprawl

    The colony itself — walls, berths, a run of shops, and a Colonial Authority office. Nine keepers trade here, Sephir, Trob and Gob between them, from a forge to an apothecary to a pen full of mounts. Nobody on Rath sells a ship.

  • The Colonial Sewers

    Directly beneath the sprawl, and vermin-infested. The Authority is aware of this in the sense that a docket exists.

  • The East Rathian Grasslands

    Open country east of the colony walls. Scrawny bovines, carrion kites, and a false dragon that is not much of a dragon.

  • The East Rathian Desert

    Further east and considerably less forgiving. Not a place the colony has any reason to go, which is exactly what makes it useful to people who would rather not be watched.

  • The North Rathian Mountains

    The high approach, and the last of Rath that most people ever see.

What the colony shows visitors

The Founders' Gate
Where the colony says it began.
The Old Stones
Marked, plaqued, and unexplained.
The First Berth
The landing that made the rest of it possible.
The East Watch
A post nobody has been assigned to in some time.
The Dry Canal
It was not always dry.

Rath is act one

It is deliberately right-sized: the opening of a radically expanding galaxy, not a home. You leave it, and the map keeps going for a very long time afterward.

It is also the whole of the free demo — one planet, played properly, rather than a strip of several.

Play it