Faction Index
AX.GAT.07.01 - Faction Index
Professions on Astraeus Terminal
On Astraeus Terminal, a character's profession is their operational identity, the faction, organization, or independent role that defines their access, their obligations, their social standing, and the skills they have developed to survive in the specific niche they occupy. The Terminal does not have a neutral credential system. What you do and who you do it for determines what doors open and what doors close, which corridors you walk through without being questioned, and who calls you when something needs to be handled.
Each profession provides the following per core rules (AX.C.07):
- Favored Save (+1D to one Save: Body, Speed, or Wit)
- Power Access (optional, the ability to purchase and develop one tradition as an Odd Talent; not all professions grant this)
- Progression Track (perks at 10 XP / 25 XP / 50 XP that develop faction-specific capability over time)
Characters begin with one profession. A profession is not a job title; it is the framework of training, access, and obligation that shaped the character before the campaign began and continues to shape what they are capable of during it.
The Six Factions
The Terminal's power structure is maintained by six factions in ongoing negotiation, competition, and occasional open conflict. Each faction is a source of professions. Characters without faction affiliation use the Unaffiliated Templates in AX.GAT.07.09.
Oryx Logistics
Administrative corporate entity, Station Administration, extraction economy, economic control - Leader: Administrator Loriya (Synthari) - File: AX.GAT.07.03
Oryx Logistics holds the Terminal's economic architecture: extraction contracts, cargo fees, credit system backing, and the Restricted and Controlled supply tiers. It is Station Administration in the formal governance structure, the entity that owns the infrastructure and holds the contracts that make everything else function. Oryx does not run enforcement directly, but it funds enforcement. It does not operate the Survey Corps, but it holds the Corps' primary contract. Its power is economic, administrative, and structural.
Oryx professions attract characters who work within institutional systems, contractors who operate in the extraction economy, analysts and brokers who manage information and relationships at the organizational level. The faction rewards competence, discretion, and the ability to produce results without creating problems that administration has to resolve.
The Vigilants
Mil-Sec enforcement, law, access control, detention, hard power - Leader: Commander Andrea Sawyer (Human) - File: AX.GAT.07.02
The Vigilants are the Terminal's law. They field enforcement across all publicly accessible station areas, manage sector access protocols, run the detention facility, and maintain the Seraphim battlecruiser as the station's primary hard-power asset. Their formal authority is broad; their practical reach has limits, Violet Sector, the Outer Hull, and the informal economies throughout the station are territory where Vigilant presence is nominal rather than real.
Vigilant professions attract characters in enforcement and institutional roles, officers who maintain order and manage the social complexity of a multi-lineage frontier station, and analysts whose methods the Vigilants do not discuss in detail but whose effectiveness shapes the faction's most decisive operations.
The Span
Guild/labor confederation, operations, technical work, collective bargaining - Leader: Confederation council (rotating by constituent guild) - File: AX.GAT.07.04
The Span is the operational layer that makes everything else function. Dock workers, engineers, technicians, surveyors, miners, haulers, and the Survey Corps' support infrastructure are organized under a shared bargaining framework. The Terminal works because the Span's members make it work. This is leverage the Span has used twice in the station's history to achieve significant concessions and create permanent tensions with enforcement that have never fully resolved.
Span professions attract characters who work with their hands, their technical skills, and their relationships, operators who keep the station's systems running, and fixers who navigate the space between the Span's institutional interests and the individuals those interests sometimes fail to serve.
Survey Corps
Void exploration, Ki Nebula operations, navigable corridor mapping, deep void - Leader: Director (designation withheld in public records) - File: AX.GAT.07.05
The Survey Corps is the Terminal's exploratory arm and the primary operational presence inside the Ki Nebula beyond STX-97H. It is semi-independent, nominally under Oryx Logistics contract, operationally answerable to its own command structure, funded through a combination of corporate contract and Guild support. Every faction has leverage over it. None fully controls it. Its personnel are some of the most capable operators on the Terminal and some of the most consistently undercompensated.
Survey Corps professions attract characters who operate beyond the station's controlled environment, specialists who work the extraction system and map navigable void, and navigators whose relationship to the Ki Nebula is the operational capability the Corps cannot replace.
Oblis Consortium
Galactic criminal organization, corporate fronts, information brokering, sector intelligence - Leader: Agent Zane Vandran (Human) - File: AX.GAT.07.06
The Oblis Consortium is a galactic-scale criminal organization that operates through legitimate corporate structures. It has no acknowledged seat at any official table on the Terminal. In practice, it has relationships with individuals in every faction, access to information flows that parallel the official intelligence networks, and a strategic interest in the Terminal's position at the nebula's edge that makes this posting significantly more important than its size suggests.
Consortium professions attract characters who operate through institutional cover, infiltrators who function within legitimate organizations while serving Consortium interests, and brokers whose product is information and whose method is maintaining relationships on every side of every conflict.
Solis League
Organized street crime, Violet Sector, informal economy, the Stellar Equinox - Leader: Boss Zhess Nelari (Velhari) - File: AX.GAT.07.07
The Solis League is the Terminal's organized street economy, theft, contraband, unlicensed services, and the informal supply chain that the official economy does not serve. Boss Nelari's ownership of the Stellar Equinox casino and hotel provides legitimate cover, a money-laundering operation, and neutral ground where every faction maintains relationships they conduct nowhere else. The League holds information about what every faction does outside its official behavior. It has not weaponized this. The threat of doing so is probably more valuable intact.
League professions attract characters who operate in the station's informal economy, enforcers who maintain territory and resolve problems with physical authority, and fixers who deal in the full range of goods, services, and information that the station's official economy does not supply.
Lineage-to-Faction Affinity
Affinities reflect cultural presence, recruitment patterns, and lineage-specific reasons a character from that background would find a given faction natural or accessible. Affinity is texture, not restriction, any lineage can take any profession, but these patterns reflect the social reality of who works where and why.
Key: ◆ Strong affinity, lineage is notably present; faction actively recruits or lineage community clusters here · ◇ Present, lineage is represented in typical proportion ·, Rare or absent
| Lineage | Oryx Logistics | Vigilants | The Span | Survey Corps | Oblis Consortium | Solis League |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Velhari | ◇ (contracts, analysis) | ◆ (analytical division) | ◇ | ◇ | ◆ (high value; targeted) | ◆ (Nelari; community network) |
| Gorrathi | ◇ | ◇ | ◆ (heavy labor, hull work) | ◇ | ◇ | |
| Skein | ◇ | ◇ | ◆ (adaptive, maintenance) | ◇ | ◇ | ◇ |
| Synthari | ◆ (Loriya; archival) | ◇ (records) | ◇ (station maintenance) | ◇ | ◇ | |
| Human | ◇ (Sawyer; majority) | ◇ (Sawyer; majority) | ◆ (plurality presence) | ◇ | ◆ (Vandran; cover identity) | ◇ |
| Ashori | ◇ | ◇ | ◆ (engineering, technical) | ◇ | ◇ | |
| Meridian (supp) | ◇ | ◆ (EM navigation) | ||||
| Keth (supp) | ◆ (pack-bonded labor clusters) | ◇ | ◇ | |||
| Drift-Touched (supp) | ◇ | ◆ (navigators; essential) | ◇ (Violet Sector) | |||
| Auric (supp) | ◇ (historical) |
Faction Relationship Matrix
The six factions exist in ongoing negotiation rather than stable alliance. No two factions are truly allied; no two are simply enemies. The matrix below describes each bilateral relationship as it stands at the campaign's current moment.
Oryx Logistics ↔ The Vigilants
Functionally dependent. Oryx funds Vigilant operations; the Vigilants provide the enforcement that makes the economic order stable. The dependency runs both ways, neither can fully function without the other, which produces a relationship where both parties are constantly negotiating the terms of their cooperation without acknowledging publicly that it is a negotiation. Where enforcement authority ends and corporate prerogative begins is the unresolved question at the center of every significant dispute between them.
Oryx Logistics ↔ The Span
Primary structural tension. Oryx holds the contracts; the Span holds operational indispensability. Every significant labor negotiation on the Terminal is a version of this dynamic, and the current Gorrathi campaign is the most organized version in recent memory. Both factions understand that mutual destruction is possible and neither wants it. This understanding produces compromise, slowly and under pressure.
Oryx Logistics ↔ Survey Corps
Contractual leverage. Oryx holds the Corps' primary contract and uses this as nominal authority over Corps operations. The Corps uses its operational independence in the nebula as leverage against that authority. AM-7278 is the current site of this tension: Oryx wants what the system might contain; the Corps wants launch authority it can act on without being subordinate to Oryx's ownership questions. Neither can proceed without the other.
Oryx Logistics ↔ Oblis Consortium
Information asymmetry. The Consortium knows more about Oryx's internal decision-making than Oryx knows about the Consortium's presence on the Terminal. Administrator Loriya suspects a more structured outside influence than the visible activity suggests and has not moved on this suspicion. Vandran's patience with Loriya's caution is institutional rather than personal.
Oryx Logistics ↔ Solis League
Arm's-length with recurring approach. Oryx has periodically attempted to formalize relationships with League supply networks in ways that would benefit Oryx's supply margins. The League has declined each approach. Oryx has not stopped making them. Nelari reads this as either persistence or inability to accept that some arrangements work better without formalization.
The Vigilants ↔ The Span
Recurring managed antagonism. Two work stoppages in the Terminal's history, both ending with Span concessions and Vigilant enforcement, both leaving permanent resentment. Commander Sawyer's field presence reads differently to different Span members, some find it respectful engagement; others find it pressure dressed as accessibility. The Gorrathi campaign is approaching a point where the Vigilants will have to take a position rather than manage from the middle.
The Vigilants ↔ Survey Corps
Jurisdictional deference. The Vigilants have no formal authority beyond the station's hull. The Survey Corps operates in the space where Vigilant jurisdiction ends. This is not a conflict, both factions accept the boundary, but it creates a gap in accountability for what happens in the nebula that every other faction has noted and some have found useful.
The Vigilants ↔ Oblis Consortium
Asymmetric intelligence competition. The Vigilants' analytical division has partial visibility into Consortium activity, enough to know something structured is present, not enough to act on it with confidence. The Consortium has significantly better visibility into Vigilant operations than the reverse. The Velhari analysts in the Vigilants are the Consortium's primary intelligence concern on the station; Vandran monitors their work carefully.
The Vigilants ↔ Solis League
Managed tolerance with increasing instability. The Vigilants' selective enforcement in Violet Sector has been stable policy for years, maintained through individual officer judgment rather than institutional directive. Sawyer's field visibility has introduced unpredictability into an arrangement that worked precisely because it was predictable. Nelari has adjusted the League's operational exposure; the adjustment is sustainable but not permanent.
The Span ↔ Survey Corps
Labor-crew solidarity with unresolved grievance. Survey Corps support infrastructure is Guild, the ships get crewed by Span members, and the Span's interests are directly present in Corps operations. The AM-7278 crews were Span. The separate incident report is still in administrative review. The Corps and the Span share a structural interest in the expedition proceeding on terms that are not solely set by Oryx Logistics; this interest has not yet produced coordinated action.
The Span ↔ Oblis Consortium
Passive monitoring. The Consortium tracks information flows through informal Span networks because those networks carry operational intelligence from every part of the station. The Span is unaware of the systematic nature of this monitoring. Individual Span members have unknowingly sold information to Consortium contacts through broker intermediaries.
The Span ↔ Solis League
Community accommodation. Many Span members live in sectors where the League operates and use League services that the official economy does not provide. The relationship is not political; it is the practical coexistence of a population that needs things and an organization that provides them. The Span's official position on the League is silence, which is the institutional version of the same accommodation its members practice individually.
Survey Corps ↔ Oblis Consortium
One-directional intelligence interest. The Consortium wants what the Corps discovers, archaeological finds, anomaly data, whatever AM-7278 contains. The Corps is largely unaware of the Consortium's specific interest level. Vandran has ensured that at least two current Corps personnel report to Consortium contacts. The Corps director has not identified either of them.
Survey Corps ↔ Solis League
Transactional and occasional. The League has periodic interest in objects and materials the Corps brings back from deep void operations. An informal broker relationship exists through intermediaries neither party has fully identified. The volume is small; the sensitivity of what has changed hands is not.
Oblis Consortium ↔ Solis League
Transactional with competitive undercurrent. The Consortium buys raw intelligence from the League's street network, the League's breadth of contact across the station's population is something the Consortium cannot replicate through its more controlled channels. The League is aware that the Consortium is a buyer; it is not fully aware of the Consortium's scale or purpose. Nelari has begun wondering what the Consortium does with what it buys. This is the specific inquiry that Vandran monitors most carefully.
Power Dynamics Overview
The Terminal's power structure is not a hierarchy; it is a web of mutual dependencies and leverage points in ongoing adjustment. Understanding how each faction's power functions clarifies why no faction has been able to consolidate authority despite the obvious advantages available.
Oryx Logistics holds economic leverage, the ability to make things difficult to do officially, to withhold contract renewal, to set the terms of resource access. This is the most structural power on the station and the hardest to directly oppose. Its limit is that economic pressure produces the informal economy it ostensibly opposes, and the informal economy is where the Solis League and the Oblis Consortium operate.
The Vigilants hold institutional legitimacy and hard power, the legal mandate, the detention facility, the Seraphim. These are decisive tools and significant constraints simultaneously. The Vigilants cannot use hard power routinely without creating legitimacy crises that undermine the institutional authority that makes their soft power effective.
The Span holds operational indispensability, the credible threat of work stoppage in systems the station cannot run without. This power has been used twice; both uses produced concessions and resentment in equal measure. The Span's constraint is that the threat of work stoppage is more powerful undeployed than deployed, and deploying it creates windows in which the other factions can reorganize to reduce the dependency.
Survey Corps holds information monopoly, specifically, knowledge of the Ki Nebula's interior that no other faction can replicate without the Corps' cooperation. This is narrow leverage but genuinely irreplaceable. The Corps' constraint is that its information power is only decisive in situations where nebula knowledge is the bottleneck, and on the Terminal day-to-day, those situations are rarer than the Corps' strategic position would suggest.
Oblis Consortium holds relational leverage, knowledge of what every faction does outside its official behavior, embedded contacts in institutions that cannot identify them, and the capacity to act through intermediaries that leave no direct trace. This power is most effective held in reserve; most of the Consortium's leverage evaporates the moment it is used visibly.
Solis League holds network breadth and deterrent information, the street-level relationships that cover every sector and every social layer of the Terminal's population, and the accumulated knowledge of every faction's unofficial behavior that the League has never weaponized. The League's constraint is that its visible operations are the hostage: any faction that decides the League has become a crisis rather than a useful tension has the capacity to end those operations, and the League's deterrent only holds as long as the factions believe Nelari's patience is not unlimited.
Faction Dossier Format
The following format is used for all six faction dossier files (AX.GAT.07.02–07.07). It is designed to provide both player-facing content (choosing a faction, understanding what membership means) and GM-facing content (running the faction as a living presence in campaign play).
Each dossier contains:
- Overview, the faction's position and role on the Terminal; what it controls and how; the social experience of working within it (2–3 paragraphs)
- Working for [Faction], daily operational life; what the faction expects of its members; what it provides; the specific social dimension of this faction's membership culture
- Professions, two profession entries per faction, each containing:
- Flavor description (the specific role within the faction)
- Favored Save (+1D, Body Save, Speed Save, or Wit Save)
- Power Access (if any, tradition name + access rule)
- Progression Track, three perks at 10 XP / 25 XP / 50 XP
- Notable NPCs, faction leader + 1–2 operational contacts relevant to player interaction
- Faction Relations, one sentence on the faction's current stance toward each of the other five factions; player-facing
- Plot Hooks, four adventure seeds specific to this faction's interests, methods, and tensions
History, founding, and detailed political analysis are in AX.GAT.01.04 and AX.GAT.14.02. The dossiers do not reproduce that material; they reference it where needed and focus on operational and mechanical content.
Quick Reference
| Faction | Leader | Favored Professions | Likely Power Access | Primary Lineages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oryx Logistics | Loriya (Synthari) | Field contractor · Analyst/broker | Cybernetic Integration | Synthari, Velhari, Human |
| The Vigilants | Sawyer (Human) | Vigilant officer · Station analyst | Psionics (analytical track) | Human, Velhari, Skein |
| The Span | Confederation council | Crew operator · Guild fixer | Void Attunement (Stage 2) | Human, Gorrathi, Ashori, Keth |
| Survey Corps | Director (unnamed) | Survey specialist · Void navigator | Void Attunement | Drift-Touched, Meridian, Ashori, Human |
| Oblis Consortium | Vandran (Human) | Corporate infiltrator · Info broker | Cybernetic Integration · Psionics (Stage 2) | Human, Velhari |
| Solis League | Nelari (Velhari) | League enforcer · League fixer | Arc Theory (Stage 2) | Velhari, Human, Skein, Drift-Touched |