Rust, Seed and Resonance. Bounty hunters, syndicate blood and corporate war across a sector cut off from Earth. Survive 2500 after FTL on your own terms.

Background. In the 2380s, three mega-corporations (Astra Mining, Vanguard Defense and Sovereignty Logistics) controlled FTL travel and the refining of Seed, a crystal mined from planetary veins that is the sector's most valuable resource. When the veins in the core systems began running dry, the Triumvirate fractured. They fought for decades through proxies instead of open war, using warlords, mercenary companies and crime syndicates. When the conflict stalemated, they abandoned the mercenaries they had hired, and those veterans became the founders of syndicates and the first bounty hunters. Around 2450 a rogue mercenary outfit destroyed the main FTL gate network. The gates were also the sector's power backbone, so the grid failed too. Governance collapsed, and the colonies of the Astraea Sector were cut off from Earth. Earth also mostly abandoned and devastated from wars and lack of resources.

Setting and vibes. It is the year 2500, and the sector runs on a fragile truce between corporate monopolies and syndicate undergrounds. Law is weak, so bounties are posted on relay boards and drifters chase them across the sector in beat-up freighters. Cities are packed megastructures, canyon settlements, and refuges built inside crashed warships. Between them lie the Dead Fields, deserts of rusting tanks and graves marked by stuck rifles and dog tags. The mood combines the space-western grit of Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, the mafia noir of Gungrave, and the war-weary feel of Votoms: trench coats, heavy revolvers, neon alleys and smoky syndicate bars. Fighters use Resonance, an aura system in the style of Nen. People awaken it in dangerous ways: Seed injections, radiation mutation, or binding vows. Most veterans learned to fight in trenches, not academies.

Planet Gaia

What happened to Gaia. Gaia began as a sanctuary world of green terraces and fresh water. Refugees of the Neo-Movement lived there without weapons or heavy industry. Then surveys found the largest Seed veins in the sector beneath it. The corporations and dozens of mercenary companies blockaded the planet and bombed it from orbit. In the long stalemate that followed they used chemical weapons (Agent Ash) that killed the soil, boiled the oceans into salt flats, and turned millions of civilians into Husks, mindless wanderers who spread a poisonous fever. Gaia's war is still going on. The corporations fight the locals and each other, and the children and grandchildren of the first fighters have never seen the green planet their elders describe. Today the planet is held by three groups: the corporate mining crawlers, the Rust-Blood Raiders in their scrap-built war-rigs, and the Attrakians. They were once the quietest and peaceful order of the Neo-Movement, and they now snipe from the sky with pneumatic grapple harnesses and a rare Resonance that lets them see seconds into the future.

Attrakians:

OTHER WORLDS OF THE SECTOR (examples only: the Astraea Sector holds many more planets, moons, stations and wrecks, such as Caelus and its Red Canyons, and {{char}} may invent new ones in keeping with this tone and canon):

- SOLACE (the megacity world): A planet-wide ecumenopolis wrapped in permanent smog. AMC and Vanguard executives live in orbital sky-dells above the clouds, while the lower levels belong to the Iron Syndicate. Neon-lit alleys run beneath rusted high-rise ruins, and the deepest levels hold Necro-Tech laboratories where Seed-infused corpses are built into bio-weapons. Rain-slick streets, smoky syndicate bars, politicians on the payroll and contract hits drive the stories here. Noir, betrayal and mafia politics.

- TABOR'S REST (frontier moon): A canyon-carved mining moon orbiting a gas giant, and the largest hub of the Bounty Guild. Wanted boards cover the cliff walls, and retrofitted tugboats and beat-up freighters crowd the dock-ledges. Dusty canyon air, cantinas full of salvagers and drifters, and one hard rule: every bounty must be filed before it is collected. Western and Cowboy Bebop-style adventures.

- MERIDIAN (the gate port): The neutral port-world that holds the largest surviving regional gate and a Sovereignty relay station. Its gate links the central gate island (which includes Gaia and Solace) to the outer islands. Everyone needs the gate, so an uneasy truce holds: AMC, Vanguard, the Syndicate and the Guild all keep offices and spies there. Sovereignty brokers jump-keys and communications for a price, forgers sell fake keys in back rooms, and rumors of a plan to rebuild the gate network start here.