Discover the Universe

01

The Foundation

The Veil

No civilization has ever fully explained it. The oldest records in the Driftway Archive describe it simply as "the breath between stars."

Running through every star system, every inhabited world, and every living creature is The Veil — an invisible resonant field that connects all life. It predates every civilization that has ever mapped the galaxy. It will likely outlast them all.

Scientists have measured its effects. Philosophers have debated its meaning. Empires have tried to control it. None of them have come close to understanding what it actually is.

The closest anyone has gotten: the Veil seems to respond to consciousness. It grows stronger near large populations. It weakens in dead space where nothing lives. When a species goes extinct, the Veil around their home world dims for centuries before recovering.

The most disturbing discovery: in three locations across the known galaxy, the Veil has gone completely silent. Not weakened — gone. Those regions are called the Sundered Reaches. No one who has traveled there has ever come back able to explain what they felt.

The Veil — golden energy threading through deep space

The Veil as rendered by Tidecaller researchers — golden energy threading between star systems

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What the Veil feels like — to a Veilborn touching it for the first time, the sensation is described as sudden warmth, like being recognized by something vast. To a Voidshaper severing from it, it's described as stepping out of the sun into a cold room where you are, at last, completely alone.

02

The Gifted

Those Who Feel It

Most beings pass through their entire lives without sensing the Veil at all. A rare few cannot ignore it from their first breath. They are called the Veilborn — and the galaxy has never agreed on whether they are blessed or cursed.

Harmony

Tidecallers

Tidecallers harmonize with the Veil's natural flow. They do not command it — they listen to it, move with it, and channel it outward through gesture, voice, and intent. At their most powerful, a Tidecaller can calm a riot without raising their voice, heal wounds that no medicine can touch, or read the emotional residue left in a room years after the people who were there have died.

The Sovereignty recruits them aggressively. The official Tidecaller Order operates as a kind of spiritual police force — respected, feared, and never entirely trusted, even by the empire that controls them.

In Game

Tidecallers use Veil Points (adapted spell slots) to channel harmony abilities — healing, crowd control, environmental sensing, and emotional manipulation. High Wisdom. High Charisma. Fragile. Devastating in the right moment.

A Voidshaper drawing power from the void

Severance

Voidshapers

A Voidshaper does not use the Veil. They cut themselves off from it — a process that is painful, permanent, and deeply misunderstood. Once severed, a Voidshaper draws power not from the Veil but from its absence: the cold, pressurized silence left behind where the field no longer flows.

The result is a different kind of power entirely. Voidshapers can suppress the Veil in those around them, disrupt Tidecaller abilities mid-cast, harden themselves against effects that target the Veil-connection, and shape raw null-energy into physical force.

The Sovereignty officially outlaws unsanctioned Voidshapers. Unofficially, they fund the research programs that create them.

In Game

Voidshapers are counterspell specialists and battlefield controllers. High Constitution. High Strength. They negate, disrupt, and absorb. Where Tidecallers feel everything, Voidshapers feel nothing — and they have learned to weaponize the quiet.

03

The Powers

Six Factions.
One Broken Galaxy.

The last great war ended two generations ago. Nobody won. The factions that remain have been negotiating the terms of an uneasy peace ever since — while quietly preparing for the next one.

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Empire

The Sovereignty

The dominant galactic empire. It didn't conquer through cruelty alone — it conquered through the promise of stability, infrastructure, and an end to the chaos that came before. Roads were built. Trade was secured. Wars between worlds were ended. The cost was sovereignty itself: the right of worlds to govern themselves.

What the Senate doesn't know: Regent Valos Edreen funds a secret directorate called the Null Protocol, quietly training Voidshapers as covert intelligence operatives while publicly sponsoring the Tidecaller Order.

Led by Regent Valos Edreen, in power three decades
Controls the Tidecaller Order officially
Secretly runs the Null Protocol Voidshaper program
Largest standing fleet in the galaxy

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Resistance

The Fractured Coalition

Not built — stitched together from the wreckage of the Shattering. Refugee fleets, outlawed Tidecallers, species that refused annexation, scientists who asked the wrong questions. Named not for weakness but for history: it is made of fractured things that chose to hold together anyway.

The Coalition fights for the right to feel the Veil without a Sovereignty license and exist as Veilborn without becoming an empire's property. Their biggest weakness: they agree on what they're against. What they're for is still being argued.

Led by Admiral Seva Mirathi and Councilor Rinn Olathe
Decentralized command — strength and liability both
Haven for unregistered Veilborn
Perpetually short on ships, credits, and unity

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Ancient Order

The Tidecaller Order

Older than the Sovereignty. The Order predates the empire by centuries and has its own hierarchy, its own scripture, and its own long memory. They serve the Sovereignty — but they serve the Veil first. That distinction is becoming harder to maintain.

The Order is fractured along a fault line between the Bound (who believe cooperation with the Sovereignty preserves their ability to do good) and the Free (who believe that service to empire has corrupted everything the Order was built for).

Led by Grand Caller Maris Solenne (Bound faction)
Tidecaller Varek Ashend leads the Free faction, in hiding
Keepers of pre-war Veil research
Internal schism close to open conflict

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Underground

The Voidshaper Conclave

Not a cult of destruction. A genuine philosophical movement with compelling arguments and a vision of the galaxy that is coherent — if terrifying. Voidshapers believe the Veil is a form of cosmic dependence, and that severance is not loss but liberation. They operate in shadows not from shame, but from practicality.

The Conclave is not interested in ruling the galaxy. It's interested in finding whatever built the Veil — so they can dismantle it. Led by Archon Tessivane Drel: brilliant, not cruel, and absolutely willing to do monstrous things for her thesis.

Hidden academies and deep-space sanctuaries
Hunted by the Sovereignty (and secretly used by them)
Ideological opposition to the Tidecaller Order
Inner circle of twelve — identities unknown

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Trade Network

The Merchant Drift

Not a government. Not a military. A trade network that has made itself so essential to galactic commerce that attacking it is functionally equivalent to economic self-destruction. Every major faction depends on Drift shipping lanes, credit systems, and information brokers. The Driftway station is their jewel and headquarters.

The Drift sells to anyone, serves anyone, provided they can pay and do not conduct violence on Drift property. Guildmaster Priya Sorn has made deals with every faction and owes favors to none.

Controls the Driftway station and its Archive
Strictly neutral — enforced by Captain Zeyla Orath (Vrask)
Information broker network spans every faction
The one place every faction agrees is too valuable to destroy

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Mercenary Guild

The Ironclad

The galaxy's premier mercenary guild — not a mob of sell-swords but a professional military organization with standards, training, and a 200-year record of never breaking a contract. Ironclad units are expensive. They are worth it. Their value is reliability, and reliability is only worth something if it's absolute.

They have no permanent allegiances. They have fought for every faction at least once, hold grudges against none, and will fight against former employers without hesitation. No one finds this surprising. It's in the contract.

Led by Marshal Davan Cors from Ironhaven station
Never broken a contract in 200 years — known fact
Hired by Sovereignty, Coalition, and Merchant Drift
Even the Voidshaper Conclave has hired them. Once.

04

The Crossroads

The Driftway

The Driftway — six hexagonal ring segments, population 4.2 million permanent residents

Every story in the Echoveil galaxy eventually passes through here.

The Driftway is a space station the size of a small moon, built in sections over three centuries by six different civilizations who couldn't agree on anything except that they needed a place to meet that didn't belong to any of them. It is, by most measures, the most important location in the known galaxy.

Level 1 through 3 — the merchant tiers. Thousands of vendors, dozens of cuisines, currency from forty star systems. You can buy anything here. You can find anything here. Some of it is legal.

Level 4 — the diplomatic tier. Every major faction maintains an embassy. Ceasefire negotiations, trade treaties, information handoffs, and assassination attempts all happen within walking distance of each other. The Conclave charges rent to all of them at the same rate.

Level 5 — residential. 4.2 million permanent residents. Species who couldn't go home after the war. Refugees who became merchants. Spies who became locals. The most diverse community in the galaxy, held together by the simple shared fact that they all needed somewhere to be.

Level 7 — the Archive. Sealed. Accessible only to senior Conclave archivists and, historically, members of the Tidecaller Order. The symbols carved into its deepest walls predate the station's construction by an unknown number of centuries. The Conclave has never offered an explanation.

05

The Stakes

The Convergence

"When the third Reach goes silent, the Veil will choose. Not the strongest. Not the purest. The one who was there, and acted, and meant it."

— Translation disputed, Driftway Archive Level 7, inscription cluster 9

The Tidecaller Order has known about the Convergence for two hundred years. They have never made it public.

The Veil is not stable. This is the secret the Order's inner circle has been sitting on — the Veil has been weakening for centuries, the Sundered Reaches are expanding, and the third Reach shows signs of imminent total collapse.

When it does, something will happen. The ancient inscriptions call it the Convergence: a moment when the Veil will reconstitute itself, collapse entirely, or — according to the most terrifying interpretation — choose a new configuration based on whatever the dominant state of life in the galaxy is at that moment.

What does that mean practically? It means the factions aren't just fighting over territory and trade routes. They're fighting over what kind of galaxy survives the Convergence. A Sovereignty victory means a galaxy where the Veil is an imperial tool. A Coalition victory means a galaxy where the Veil is free. A Conclave position means whoever controls the Archive controls the outcome.

And somewhere in the Unbound, there are people who believe none of those outcomes are acceptable — and who have access to research the Order sealed for very good reasons.

Your character doesn't have to care about any of this at first. Most people in the galaxy don't. But the Convergence is coming whether anyone is ready for it or not.

And the galaxy will remember what you did when it arrived.

06

Who You'll Play

Six Species.
One Galaxy to Navigate.

Arion

The Adaptable

The most numerous species in the galaxy — bipedal, wildly diverse, and internally divided on nearly every issue that matters. Arion appear in the Sovereignty, the Coalition, and everywhere in between. Nobody is surprised to see one anywhere, doing anything.

All classes available

Keth

The Architects

Four-armed builders who prize making things above all else — systems, structures, long-term plans. Their engineering guilds are among the most powerful non-governmental bodies in the galaxy. Skeptical of the Veil; deeply empirical by culture.

Fabricant · Lorekeeper · Vanguard

Vrask

The Unbowed

Large, scaled, and built around a genuine honor ethic — not performance, but an absolute commitment to keeping one's word. Once a Vrask commits to a course, they do not stop. A Vrask who breaks an oath is culturally dead. This is known. It matters.

Vanguard · Tidecaller · Wraith

Sylari

The Resonant

Slender, bioluminescent beings whose skin patterns shift with emotion — and who are Veilborn at five to ten times the rate of any other species. The Tidecaller Order recruits from Sylari communities aggressively. The Sylari have complicated feelings about being recruited.

Tidecaller · Wraith · Lorekeeper

Naxxid

The Eternal

Silicon-based crystalline lifeforms — slow to speak, not slow to think. The oldest extant civilization in the galaxy. A Naxxid pausing thirty seconds before answering is running ten simultaneous threads. They describe the Veil as a texture, not a flow.

Lorekeeper · Fabricant · Tidecaller

Drifborn

The Unanchored

Not a biological species — a cultural one. Any being raised on deep-space stations or generation ships. They know every port, read every room, and carry home with them. Most factions treat them as versatile and perpetually untrustworthy. That's largely the Drifborn's preference.

Wraith · Vanguard · Fabricant