The Reactor War
Stakes Control of starstone energy decides which habitats receive heat, water, shield power, and access to safe rift crossings.
World Atlas·Shattered·Every shard survives by feeding the wound that broke the world.
Industrial heart and Combine stronghold · Dense industrial asteroid cluster
Hook
A refinery city hires hunters after workers vanish into maintenance shafts that lead to a rift dungeon.
Shattered Maw is an asteroid belt civilization built around a planet-sized spatial wound. Its broken rocks hold crowded habitats, mining towns, pirate ports, and sealed rift dungeons where monsters enter from other planes. Starstone reactors keep people alive, so every spell, shipment, and military campaign is part of an energy struggle. Mercenary hunting guilds serve as rescuers, bounty crews, and political weapons while eldritch anomalies spread between the shards.
Themes
Form · Shattered
Shattered Maw is a broken planet reduced to thousands of inhabited and uninhabited asteroid shards circling a vast spatial wound.
Traversal
Ships cross ordinary void with fusion drives, spell sails, and beacon routes, while rift gates provide faster travel at the risk of monsters, memory loss, and altered destinations.

Shattered

Magic
High

Technology
Futuristic

Death & Souls
Founding Era
The First Landing
Expansion Era
The Long Reach
War Era
The Energy Wars
Current Era
The Hunt Years
The Reactor War
Control of starstone energy decides which habitats receive heat, water, shield power, and access to safe rift crossings.
The Maw Breach
A growing chain of spatial anomalies may tear the asteroid belt into an unreachable void or open a path for something vast to enter.
Monopolize starstone extraction, reactor design, and the safest commercial rift routes.
Control ports, raid energy convoys, and keep the outer settlements independent from the inner powers.
Protect settlements, claim monster bounties, and preserve the guilds as a neutral force in the energy wars.
Prepare minds and bodies for communion with the Maw rather than resist the anomalies.
Stakes Control of starstone energy decides which habitats receive heat, water, shield power, and access to safe rift crossings.
Stakes A growing chain of spatial anomalies may tear the asteroid belt into an unreachable void or open a path for something vast to enter.
Refugees from a dying world settled the asteroid belt, naming their new home Shattered Maw after the great rift that opened through its center.
Mining fleets, spell engines, and habitat foundries linked the largest shards into a harsh but prosperous civilization.
Major houses fought over starstone reactors and rift routes, leaving wreck fields, poisoned habitats, and lawless frontier stations.
Mercenary monster hunter guilds keep settlements alive as pirates, rival powers, and creatures from spatial rift dungeons press against the remaining routes.
A habitat reactor begins broadcasting a distress call in the voice of a dead guild captain, drawing hunters toward a newly opened dungeon.
A pirate crew offers proof that the Meridian Combine is deliberately starving outer settlements to force annexation.
A rift opens inside a moving convoy and links every ship to a different dangerous plane.
A famous monster hunter returns from a breach with no shadow and claims the Maw is learning the names of everyone aboard.
The First Landing fleet was guided into the belt by an intelligence speaking through the rift.
Discovery · Recovered navigation cores all contain the same erased flight plan.
Impact · The original settlers did not discover the Maw by accident, and their descendants may be maintaining it for a reason.
Some rift creatures are transformed people whose bodies were used in early starstone experiments.
Discovery · Guild veterans recognize certain monsters as former licensed hunters.
Impact · The guilds may be creating the very threats they are paid to destroy.
The Maw has begun dreaming through human minds and is slowly learning how to imitate the dead.
Discovery · The Choir's sermons include accurate descriptions of places no living scout has visited.
Impact · The Maw is not merely a passage between planes, but a growing intelligence that can perceive the whole civilization.