A Stars Without Number setting
The Severed Stars
An ancient, crowded galaxy already knows exactly what a human is. It's about to be proven wrong.
In 2036, a quiet United Nations expedition went to look at something buried under the Gulf of Mexico — something older than mankind. It woke up. Thirty-one hours later, a few hundred soldiers and scientists were standing in another galaxy, the door home shut behind them.
Out there, the galaxy is old, crowded, and certain it already knows what a human is: labor. Property. Stock to be bought and sold, the way it has been for ten thousand years. It has never met a world of free humans — and it has no idea one is coming.
The Severed Stars is a military, first-contact, ancient-alien-mystery saga about the youngest, hungriest newcomers in a tired old galaxy: underdogs who fight with bullets in a universe that gave up on solid mass centuries ago, building the strength to defend a home nobody out here is supposed to know exists.
Two ways in — read the novels, or take the helm yourself with the Stars Without Number tabletop tools.
Cosmology
The shape of the dark and how the gates went silent.
Species
The peoples of the Reach.
Technology
Jump drives, railguns, and coveted pretech.
Factions
Who holds the sector, and who is watching.
Sectors
Star-by-star: control, tech level, population.
The Series
The Custodian, Book 1 — and what comes after.