The @Rolomast system contains nine planets orbiting a dim brown dwarf: five rocky worlds in the inner orbits and four gas giants in the outer darkness. Hundreds of inhabited moons and void habitats swarm between them, forming a continuous industrial zone that extends from the broken Dyson sphere's inner edge to the comet cloud's outer reaches. System population is 1.3e14, making it one of the most densely settled sectors in the post-Schism galaxy. Every planetary surface bears surgical scars of an extinct precursor civilization—many presume the Orcharan, though this remains academic speculation, and the belief is discredited by the fact that isotope dating points towards a timeline that is much more recent than any other Orcharan constructs. Perfectly straight mountain ranges, geometric coastlines, and Dyson sphere panels etched with shifting glyphs testify to this vanished alien presence.
When the Endless Unity colonized the system in the late fifth century AF, they treated these ruins as technological treasure troves. Archaeological teams extracted exotic alloys, reverse-engineered gravitic compensators, and dissected planet-moving engines. For decades, the Unity poured resources into xeno-tech research. But as Unity technology matured, the precursor work proved inferior—brittle alloys, inefficient engines, crude designs. By the late Unity period, the ruins were dismissed as elegant curiosities of a primitive civilization - their technologies no longer advanced enough to justify any meaningful research. Sites were sealed, grants evaporated, and continents of geometric perfection were consumed by the expanding ecumeneopoli.
The @Mandate of Light inherited this materialist disdain, but the psions that had emerged in this age now reported whispers emanating from the ruins—subsonic harmonics forming patterns in their thoughts, geometric shapes appearing in dreams. Initial investigations revealed precursor structures that resonated with psionic disciplines: Technopathy interfaces responding to mental commands, sensor arrays detecting nethereal fields, crystalline lattices amplifying telepathic signals. While the @Mandate of Light still melts down most xeno-alloys for raw material, they now preserve and study select psionic artifacts in classified facilities, reverse-engineering them to enhance @Lightblessed operatives. Official doctrine still labels the Orcharan as godless precursors and aliens, but the @Mandate of Light exploits their psionic legacy with increasing sophistication.
Between 1000.001 AF and 1012.305 AF, @Rolomast descended into lawlessness as the Unity's collapse severed @Composed Antimatter shipments and dissolved central authority. Bureaucratic remnants clung to power in name only, issuing meaningless quotas while industrial continents went dark and orbital habitats depressurized from fuel starvation. The system became an anarchic heap of fiefdoms—worker militias seized construction yards, smuggler fleets blockaded the remaining functional docks, and newly formed @Lightblessed cults fought pitched battles in the habitation rings. Power rationing devolved to execution lists for those who exceeded their allocation by a single kilowatt. By early 1012 AF, the chaos had reduced industrial output to less than one percent of pre-Schism levels, and four-fifth of the population had either fled or perished.
In 1012.305 AF, the @Mandate of Light consolidated control, bringing significant economic improvement as they resumed antimatter imports at five percent of historical volumes and restarted critical industries. However, this recovery led to the system still being no more than a shadow of what it was during the Age of the Unity. Furthermore, it came at the cost of brutal religious enforcement—priests mandated faith-based production quotas, executed engineers who questioned sacred efficiency targets, and declared idle forges to be tests of devotion rather than failures of supply. System-wide rebellions erupted across @Rolomast, with worker battalions seizing accelerator control rooms and declaring materialist independence, only to be crushed by @Mandate of Light Exoplanetary Corps deploying massive amounts of firepower. The initial fury has since subsided into sullen compliance, though underground resistance cells still sabotage production schedules and smuggle food to the starving. The @Mandate of Light's promise of salvation rings hollow when the physical power to achieve it remains perpetually out of reach.
@Rolomast II serves as the system's administrative and economic heart. This super-earth supports the largest population in a continuous cityscape stretching from pole to pole. Upper levels house light industries—data processing, financial services, and consumer fabrication handling commerce from across the galaxy. The planetary spaceport is the sector's busiest, with cargo lighters transferring goods at orbital rings. Beneath the modern sprawl, sealed precursor ruins contain psionic lattices that @Lightborn Inquisitors now patrol. Every credit, cargo manifest, and travel visa passes through @Rolomast II's networks, making it the chokepoint through which the @Mandate of Light enforces system-wide control.
@Rolomast IV is the heavy industrial crucible and research frontier. Its surface is consumed by continent-spanning matter accelerators forming brilliant rings visible from orbit. During the War of the Chosen, this planet became the centerpiece of a galactic initiative to discover new starship drive energy sources and revolutionary weapons. The @Quantum Foam Distillery, @Temporal Shear Facility, and @Brane Collision Chamber were built to desperate Unity specifications, then expanded by the Mandate. The @Superheavy Nucleogen Forges create stable elements with atomic numbers exceeding five hundred, while the @H-Field Modulator attempts to manipulate fundamental mass properties. The facility consumes twenty percent of the system's energy, producing superheavy armor, temporal distortion fields, and strangelet warheads. Every breakthrough is classified, every failure buried.
@Rolomast IX is the shipwright's foundry. This outer world orbits between 500 AU and 80 AU over a twenty-thousand-year cycle, its entire surface transformed into a planet-wide shipyard and assembly complex. Built during the War of the Chosen, it constructs warships and megastructure components. Overlapping construction rings and plasma forges glow white-hot, while orbital yards hold partially assembled hulls stretching kilometers. A vast artificial ring encircles the planet for final assembly. Operating in deep space far from the brown dwarf, the yards work continuously under their own illumination. The planet's extreme orbit makes it a natural fortress, accessible only to ships with sufficient delta-v, and its production quotas are treated as sacred obligations by @Mandate of Light overseers.
The remaining rocky worlds serve dedicated industrial functions. Rolomast I is a scorched mining world of automated burrowers extracting rare earths. Rolomast V hosts atmospheric refineries processing exotic gases from the gas giants. The four gas giants—Rolomast III, VI, VII, and VIII—are strip-mining zones, their atmospheres harvested for hydrogen isotopes and their moons honeycombed with habitats. The Dyson sphere fragments serve as foundations for void habitats. Mandate control is absolute across the system, but the precursor ruins remain a contested mystery. The @Mandate of Light still exploits them for psionic advantage while officially dismissing their creators as godless. The system stands as a testament to layered civilizations, where dead alien hands shape the tools of a living theocracy that claims divine inspiration while harvesting the technological corpse of the past.