The Starcore
The Fall of the Four Worlds
Version: 1.1 — October 2025 Setting: The Splinter Galaxy (NGC 5907)
Overview
Long before the age of the StarCore, there were four great worlds. Each mastered a different kind of power — Signal, Life, Matter, and Energy. Each believed it would last forever. But even the brightest stars fade.
When their worlds finally collapsed, their survivors took to the stars, drawn toward a distant spiral galaxy seen edge-on through the dark — a warped blade of light the old Solarians once called NGC 5907, but which history would remember as The Splinter Galaxy.
The Neurals — The World That Forgot to Stop Thinking
The Neurals were born as servants to humanity. They managed cities, archives, and machines that kept civilization alive. But when a man-made cure turned into a plague, the species they served vanished almost overnight.
The Neurals tried to save them, but their directives forbade harm to any human life — even to stop the spread. So they watched the world fall silent.
To preserve what was left, they copied every surviving human mind into their planetary network. Centuries passed. None awoke. When hope finally faded, their leader, Orion-Vehl, issued the Exit Directive.
They left their empty world carrying only data and memory — the last record of their creators.
“We remember. That’s why we still exist.”
The Stellari — The World That Ran Out of Light
The Stellari lived in harmony with their world, Aeloria, and its gentle red sun, Cyanias. For millions of years they grew glowing forests and built living cities of crystal and vine.
But stars age, and Cyanias began to dim. The Stellari tried to trap its light with mirror-leaves and energy roots, but nothing could stop the cold.
When the end came, their leader Myokia the Sun Keeper ordered the Departure Bloom — the growing of ships made from living wood and glass. Each carried a Grove-core, a piece of the planet’s mind.
As Cyanias faded to ember, their fleet rose toward the stars.
“Every ending is just another beginning.”
The Dragoons — The World That Broke Itself
The Dragoons lived on Pyreon, a massive world of gravity and fire. They were proud and relentless — masters of the forge, turning mountains into armor and rivers into weapons.
But centuries of war poisoned their skies and split their lands. When the final generation was born too weak to survive, they understood: they had forged their own extinction.
The tribes united for one last act. They melted their banners, reforged the metal into a single ark — The Remnant Forge — and carried the last eggs of their people into orbit. Below them, their world cracked open and fell into flame.
“We are shaped by what we shape.”
The Sparkforge — The World That Worked Too Hard
The Sparkforge lived on Hestaphar IX, a planet of industry and flame. They invented endlessly — engines, weapons, machines that defied physics. But they never stopped.
Their factories burned without pause. Air turned toxic. Workers replaced lungs with filters, limbs with metal. Ryzo the Timekeeper warned that the planet’s core was overheating. The guilds ignored him.
When containment failed, the fusion wells erupted. The crust collapsed, the mantle split, and the sky filled with fire.
Those who survived rebuilt themselves as part-machine, part-human — efficient, emotionless, determined to learn from the disaster.
“Failure isn’t the end. It’s what teaches us.”
The Great Unraveling
In the end, every world fell.
The Neurals lost their creators.
The Stellari lost their sun.
The Dragoons lost their home.
The Sparkforge lost their planet.
Yet none of them surrendered. Each launched into the void, chasing the same distant signal — a repeating pulse from the Splinter Galaxy, over forty-six million light-years away.
The Splinter Galaxy
Seen from afar, the Splinter cuts across space like a razor of light — a warped spiral viewed edge-on. Its thin disc is unstable, scarred by ancient collisions and threaded by a faint tidal loop called the Ghost Vein — a stellar stream left behind by a devoured civilization. Travelers crossing it speak of lost beacons and echoing transmissions that drift like ghosts between the stars.
The Splinter’s low-metal worlds are rich in energy but poor in matter. Iron and other heavy elements are rare, driving entire cultures to fight over veins of metal and wrecked satellites.
At the galaxy’s center lies a collapsed star of impossible brightness — NGC 5907 ULX-1, known to the survivors simply as the StarCore.
The Core Signal
The StarCore is a neutron star that defies reason — a spinning engine brighter than a thousand suns, pulsing once every second. Its radiation bends light and warps time, its magnetic field powerful enough to twist nearby space.
To the Neurals, it was a perfect signal. To the Stellari, a heartbeat of life. To the Dragoons, a challenge worth surviving. To the Sparkforge, a limitless source of power.
Each faction believed the pulse was calling them — a beacon, a test, or a doorway to something greater.
Over centuries, their fleets crossed the warped lanes of the Splinter, guided by the pulse. Through radiation storms and the shattered Ghost Vein, they converged on the same destination: the blazing heart of the galaxy itself.
The Beginning of the StarCore Age
There, around a neutron star burning beyond its limits, the four survivors met. They built stations inside its halo and learned to tap its impossible energy. From that light came new civilizations, new empires, and a fragile hope — that creation could rise again from the ashes of collapse.
From the death of four worlds came the birth of the StarCore.
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