Arzad

Expansion into the Reach

Expansion beyond Riftmoor began with Kelek and Eleos, the twins establishing the first permanent footholds on Riftmoor’s moons. Kelek developed Kel into a center of commerce, enchanting, and Rift-crystal industry, while Eleos slowly transformed El through imported ice and atmospheric work, eventually creating an oceanic world that became a center of healing and a major waypoint.

Zurn next established the first major planetary colony on a hot inner world. Rather than forcing it into a temperate climate, Zurn and Arzu made it livable and seeded it with imported Riftmoor life suited to its harsh conditions. Morvaren later established his own foothold on the planet’s moon.

Paith followed with the Reach’s great breakthrough in conventional terraforming, creating the first truly temperate colony world beyond Riftmoor. Its success attracted extensive settlement. Vord established an industrial and mining presence there, first on Paith’s world itself and eventually on one of its moons, before expanding into the asteroid belt. His scattered mining outposts remained dependent upon Warden shipments but reduced that dependence through careful reuse and recycling.

Vord eventually pushed beyond the belt and reached a great frozen gas giant a the farthest edges of the outer zone, which he named for himself. He began terraforming and settling several of its moons, establishing the Azure Guard’s first substantial presence in the outer Reach.

Arzu then undertook the most audacious planetary project yet attempted. An otherwise exceptionally valuable world between Zurn’s colony and Riftmoor suffered from catastrophic rotational instability caused by immense subterranean voids and uneven internal mass. It was considered useless because of how impossible a task it would be to terraform such a disaster that close to Riftmoor would be. Arzu spent years surveying the planet and charting asteroids throughout the Reach, then executed a precisely timed sequence of planetary impacts. The first collapsed the unstable cavern system; subsequent counterstrikes corrected the resulting rotational disturbances; and enormous later impacts added mass to the deficient hemisphere. Arzu had not terraformed a broken planet—he had further broken it into a usable state.

Once the world stabilized, Arzu began the actual work of making it habitable. Its excellent position and proximity to Riftmoor immediately made it the most strategically valuable colony yet established.

Battle for Arzad and the Coming of Warp

Arzu anticipated that the Empire would attack his newly terraformed world and deliberately allowed it to appear vulnerable. The resulting invasion became part defense and part ambush, with prepared Alliance Wardens ultimately repelling the Imperial assault. During the battle, Zurn deliberately drew Kelek away from the main fighting, preventing the strongest of the three Imperial siblings from joining Vord and Eleos against Arzu.

Zurn died at Kelek's hands, but her sacrifice succeeded. By the time Kelek returned, Arzu had already killed his daughter Eleos and his son Vord.

Wounded, outnumbered, and among the last Imperial attackers remaining, Kelek was forced to flee back toward Riftmoor as Alliance Wardens pursued him. With only a few hundred Wardens in existence, the losses were extraordinary. The Empire nevertheless established footholds on Arzad in the years that followed, beginning the world's long history of fortifications, blockades, occupation zones, and contested borders. Its proximity to Riftmoor, enormous investment, and the blood of legends ensured that it became the second most valuable world in the Reach—and an enduring battlefield neither side could afford to abandon.

Much later, orbital drift began carrying Arzad and Zurain away from Riftmoor for what would have been a prolonged period. The Empire saw an opportunity to isolate the Alliance forces remaining on Riftmoor and finally destroy their foothold there, with Kelek particularly determined to avenge his siblings. Instead, Hep's accidental discovery of warp travel transformed the war. Distance and planetary alignment, which had governed expansion and warfare throughout the Reach, suddenly ceased to be insurmountable barriers. The Alliance could reinforce Riftmoor from worlds that should have been generations away from favorable alignment, denying the Empire the strategic window it had waited so long to exploit.