Counterweight hangs in the center of the golden branch star sector, a forked path where the

Perseus and Sagittarius arms of the Milky Way come together.

Because of its location, life on this planet of billions brims with energy, and an exchange

of cultures has led to an exchange of technologies.

Automated robots valley's valet vehicles.

Starships launch in the distance at regular intervals.

Holographic pop idols perform for holographic crowds.

Giant humanoid mecks Aidan tasks civil, commercial, and military, and sometimes you look up to them and think, we could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us.

It has been four and a half busy years since the September incident.

That fateful day when the first divine rigor stood in full view of the golden branch,

its mere appearance a new sort of violence. But before it could wound the sector, it was

cast away, halted by heroism, locked behind sacrifice.

The chime, a group of cast-offs as diverse as the golden branch itself,

stood ground while others quaked,

and the threat of rigor was stopped. In the long shadow of the September

incident though, things have changed. Maps have been redrawn. old enemies have become friends, and new powers have emerged.

Chief among these has been the Principality of Kesh, whose rapid evening intelligence and special operations unit has been surreptitiously influencing

the sector for decades, policing dangerous technologies, and operating history-changing experiments. Now the secretive monarchy has gone public.

A mistake like rigor could not be allowed to happen again. The future of every culture depended on it. And so, under the leadership

of Adex Dawn, the Principality of Kesh has opened communications with every major faction operating in the sector,

and the evening's demands were stated plainly.

The expansive and skirmish-prone borders of the sector's superpowers would be reduced,

...