World Guide
The universe Aeron Skyrift defends — the Concord, its fleet, its enemies, and the space between.
The Concord
Forty settled systems bound by a charter, a council, and a navy. The Concord was founded to end the system-wars of the previous century, and for fifty years it worked — trade flowed, the charter held, and the Starfleet was mostly a coast guard with good PR. Then the Hollow Maw came, and the Concord learned what its navy was actually for.
The Concord is not an empire. Its council seats are elected, its charter guarantees free passage and mutual defense, and its citizens — from the forge-worlds to the garden stations — think of themselves as Concordant first. It is, by the standards of fictional space polities, a decent place. Aeron’s loyalty to it is absolute and, by his own admission, uncomplicated: “It gave a welder’s son a commission. I owe it everything.”
The Concord Starfleet
The navy’s rank structure, which Aeron climbed from ensign to Fleet Admiral:
| Rank | Typical command |
|---|---|
| Cadet | Training |
| Ensign | Division aboard ship |
| Lieutenant | Department / picket ship |
| Commander | Frigate / expeditionary wing |
| Captain | Cruiser / squadron |
| Commodore | Multi-squadron task force |
| Rear Admiral | Fleet element |
| Fleet Admiral | Theater / Starfleet command |
The Starfleet’s doctrine was defensive and conservative before Aeron — hold positions, protect trade lanes, don’t take risks. He spent thirty years dragging it, sometimes kicking, toward maneuver warfare: the Chevron Protocol, deep logistics, and the heretical idea that a smaller force, properly handled, beats a larger one.
The Hollow Maw
The enemy. A void-born raider force — part pirate fleet, part migration, part mystery — that has menaced the Concord for a generation. No one knows where the Maw comes from; its ships appear from deep space, strike, and vanish. Its clans are bound in the fractious Maw Pact, currently dominated by the warlord Kael Vorn (see Allies & Rivals).
Fan lore is careful about one thing: the Maw are not monsters. They are desperate — driven from whatever dark they came from by something worse, though no one in-universe knows what. Aeron knows it. It is one of several reasons he has never hated them, only out-planned them.
Key sectors and worlds
- Veyra-3 — the forge-world; Aeron’s birthplace; site of the 1209 evacuation.
- Kharad Gate — the strategic chokepoint held for nineteen days in 1199.
- The Black Reef — the Maw’s former forward base; now a Concord listening post.
- Trelayne — the Concord capital system; site of the Naval Academy and the 1211 summit.
- The Shattered Field — a debris-choked asteroid belt; site of Aeron’s first StarTeam operation.
The StarTeam’s place in it
The StarTeam is the Concord’s answer to problems fleets can’t solve: small, deniable, extraordinary. Officially it doesn’t exist; unofficially, every council member knows exactly what it is. Aeron is its tactician — the bridge between the fleet’s way of war and the team’s way of operating. His standing joke: “The fleet is the fist. We’re the finger on the trigger.” (Pax Corwin maintains the joke needs work.)
Source notes
This universe is fan-written world-building for a fictional character from the Vizlings app — not real astronomy, history, or politics. See Methodology. The dreadnought image on this page is AI-generated dramatization art.