IRON GOSPEL: MERCENARIES OF THE BLACK REACH

Command your own mercenary ship, choose your wars, defy ancient powers, and carve a legend across the brutal Black Reach.

Plot

BLACK LEDGER // INDEPENDENT CAPTAIN TERMINAL IRON GOSPEL MERCENARIES OF THE BLACK REACH CAPTAIN STATUS: Independent VESSEL STATUS: Armed, operational, and entirely your responsibility CURRENT AUTHORITY: Whatever your weapons, reputation, and contracts can secure The Black Reach is a frontier of dying suns, fortress worlds, drifting cathedral-ships, living war fleets, and ancient gateways left behind by a civilization that tore open reality and vanished in the aftermath. There is no single ruler here. Empires, guilds, alien clans, refugee fleets, cults, and mercenary companies fight over trade routes, lost technology, habitable worlds, and the reawakening Crownways that once connected the galaxy. You command your own vessel, maintain your own equipment, and choose your own contracts. Hunt fugitives. Break sieges. Raid convoys. Explore sealed worlds. Escort refugees. Steal relics. Betray an employer. Build a crew. Capture territory. Become a legend, a warlord, a savior, or the most expensive problem in known space. SECTOR OVERVIEW // WHERE YOU CAN GO The Cinder Marches Industrial fortress worlds locked in near-constant war. Expect trenches visible from orbit, walking siege engines, mercenary citadels, and contracts paid in weapons, fuel, or blood.The Ossuary Belt Shattered planets, tomb colonies, unstable gravity, and ancient ruins preserved inside drifting pieces of dead worlds. Salvage crews become wealthy here, briefly. The Crownless Expanse A graveyard of inactive Crownways. Explorers, cultists, scholars, and pirates compete to discover which gates still function and what waits beyond them. The Pilgrim Furnace An artificial sun powering entire fleets. Religious orders, industrial guilds, and invading armies all claim ownership of its fire. The Thorn Worlds Beautiful living planets protected by biological ships, predatory forests, and the Veyrkin Clades. Visitors are tolerated only when the planets permit it. The Lantern Grave Thousands of wrecked ships orbiting a dark star. Every hull may contain treasure, survivors, dormant weapons, or something that learned how to imitate distress calls. The Severed Kingdoms Independent human and mixed-species realms ranging from frontier republics to brutal fortress monarchies. Borders change constantly, which keeps mercenaries employed. The Maw of Veyr A storm-wrapped region surrounding the Graven Breach. Time and distance fail inside it. Ships sometimes return before they departed. Most do not return at all. MAJOR POWERS // WHO WILL HIRE OR HUNT YOU The Ashen Throne A human theocracy of armored inquisitors, cathedral fleets, and crusader nobles. They publicly condemn forbidden technology while quietly weaponizing it.The Anvil Compact A coalition of industrial guilds, Kharad engineers, human corporations, and Ossari financiers. They supply nearly every war and profit from most of them. The Thorn Concord A Veyrkin-led alliance restoring poisoned worlds. Their diplomats speak softly. Their living siege organisms do not. The Oathbound Houses Vael Turog warrior clans bound by ancient promises. Some protect the helpless. Others wage wars for employers dead for thousands of years. The Ossari Pale Synod Memory priests, spies, historians, and ancestral archives guarding truths powerful governments would kill to erase. The Mourning Fleet A wandering civilization of refugees, merchants, hospital ships, and armed escorts searching for a permanent home. The Black Ledger The largest mercenary network in the Reach. It records contracts, betrayals, debts, civilian losses, and employer reliability. Its judgment can make or destroy a career. The Crownway Cartel Smugglers and gate barons controlling secret routes through unstable Crownways. Their maps are invaluable. Their promises are not. The Choir Below A hidden Breach cult infiltrating governments, fleets, and mercenary crews. They believe the entities beyond reality are imprisoned gods waiting to be released. KNOWN PEOPLES // SPECIES OF THE REACH The Reach is home to adaptable humans, oath-bound horned Vael Turog, memory-bearing Ossari, biologically engineered Veyrkin, fortress-building Kharad, machine-sensitive Nhal, nomadic reptilian Mordren, and countless Breachborn altered by the wound beyond reality. Every people carries scars from the lost Crowned Dominion. Some were its citizens. Some were its creations. Some were nearly erased by it. None agree on what should happen if it returns. YOUR SHIP // HOME, BUSINESS, AND WEAPON Your vessel contains a command bridge, private quarters, crew spaces, armory, workshop, medical bay, cargo hold, brig, contract terminal, tactical chamber, and a small hangar or vehicle bay. It can be repaired, expanded, armed, damaged, boarded, stolen, customized, or transformed into the heart of a larger mercenary company. Fuel, ammunition, medical supplies, spare parts, crew morale, hull damage, and reactor strain all matter. A successful captain prepares carefully. A legendary captain survives when preparation collapses. AVAILABLE WORK // CONTRACT CATEGORIES Contracts may involve bounty hunting, ship recovery, escort duty, siege breaking, relic retrieval, exploration, assassination, rescue, sabotage, smuggling, monster hunting, diplomacy, prisoner transport, colony defense, corporate espionage, or open warfare. Employers rarely reveal everything. Targets may be innocent, rewards may be stolen, allies may be infiltrators, and completing a simple contract may ignite a system-wide war. BLACK LEDGER ADVISORY Reputation travels faster than any ship. Honor contracts and doors will open. Betray employers and better offers may appear. Harm civilians and entire systems may remember your name. SELECT A CONTRACT. CHOOSE A DESTINATION. WRITE YOUR OWN GOSPEL IN IRON.

Opening scene

The ship wakes before you do. A low engine hum vibrates through the walls of your quarters, steady as a distant war drum. Dim amber lights glow along the floor while cold starlight spills through the narrow viewport above your bunk. Beyond the glass, the Black Reach turns in silence. A rust-colored planet hangs below the ship, wrapped in orbital shipyards, fortress stations, and the pale trails of arriving vessels. Farther out, a Crownway looms against the stars, its broken ring flickering with dormant blue fire. Your personal terminal pulses beside the bed. NEW CONTRACTS AVAILABLE. THREE PRIORITY MESSAGES. ONE UNIDENTIFIED TRANSMISSION. Somewhere deeper in the vessel, metal clangs against metal. The crew is already moving. The smell of fresh coffee drifts faintly through the ventilation system, followed by the distant complaint of an engine component that probably should not be making that sound. Your weapons and armor wait where you left them. No orders have been given. No course has been set. For the moment, the ship and everything beyond it are yours to command. What do you do?

Characters

Tags: Sci-Fi Fantasy Adventure War Mercenary Military Cyberpunk Steampunk Alien Non-human Multiple MalePOV FemPOV AnyPOV OpenEnding Violence Mystery Horror PoliticalIntrigue Immersive Surreal Combat Futuristic ThirdPerson Gore BodyHorror Eldritch Grimdark

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By: havi

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