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Lore & Codex

Starbroken has a backstory, and it's written down. Scattered across the galaxy's libraries and vendor shelves are 17 in-fiction books — pamphlets, histories, survival guides, corporate catalogs, and one recovered recording. You can read them in-game, and each one is also indexed on this wiki as its own page. This page is the framing overview plus the codex index.

None of this lore gates gameplay. You never have to read a word of it to fly. But if you want to know why there's a wrecked civilization out there to salvage, why insurance brings you back from death, and who the pirates shooting at you actually are — it's all here, written by the people who live in the setting.

The setting in one breath

You are a pilot in the new era — roughly ninety standard years after a catastrophe called the Silence broke the interstellar civilization that came before you, the Old Reach. Every drive, gate, and station you use is salvaged or reverse-engineered Reach technology. Nobody fully understands it. As one instructor puts it: "We work with the wreckage of something larger."

The dates you'll see in the books are in Expansion Standard (ES) years. ES 0 is First Light — the first successful post-Silence fold-jump, the moment the new era begins counting. The books in the codex are mostly published around ES 88-89, which is roughly "now."

What happened: the Silence

In OC 602 (the Old Reach calendar), across every system the Reach inhabited simultaneously and without warning, the fold-network failed. Within hours, automated systems turned on population centers; within months, colonies that depended on the network for food and supply began to die. Over two billion died in the first hours. Humanity went from many systems to one — Sol — isolated in the dark for roughly 530 years until First Light.

Nobody knows why the Silence happened. The histories lay out four competing theories — internal war, an external threat, a runaway technological cascade, or a deliberate self-suppression to contain something dangerous — and admit that none of them explains everything. The mystery is the point.

How the galaxy is organized now

A few institutions and factions recur across the books and the game:

The IPU (Independent Pilots Union) — the neutral pilot organization that runs the public stargate backbone and gives you your starter grant. Not a government; it administers transit, it doesn't govern.
The Sol Compact and the Vega Reach Confederacy — the two big human polities, old rivals from the Boundary War (ES 24-29). They tell different histories of the same events.
Corporations — Brace Conglomerate (your insurance / pattern-respawn provider), Helios Industrial (Common-tier hulls and modules), the Ceres Commune Trade Council (markets, Compasses, Maps).
Pirates — the Black Halo (cargo extortionists with a "fee schedule") and the Crimson Reavers (ideological, came out of the Helix Plague refugee fleet, cannot be bought off). See Factions.

The mystery thread: the Reach, Garden Three, and the questline

Underneath the worldbuilding is a live mystery the story questline follows: recovered Reach artifacts marked "Garden Three Primary Care" that no surveyed location matches, and an encrypted recording whose last unencrypted words are "...all residents accounted for." Something out there may still be transmitting, expecting someone to listen. The codex books carry the hints; the story questline follows the thread.

> A note on the Outset. Three of the books below (The Five Voices of the > Outset and The Returns and the Newcomers) describe a fringe cosmology — Five > Voices that "spoke the world," and endless cycles of beginning. It's a religious > sect's metaphysics, separate from the historical Reach/Silence record: the Reach > is history, the Outset is faith. The two are kept apart on purpose.

The Codex — all 17 books

Most of these are sold at the Hub Prime Library vendor (and seeded at other docks). Each title below links to its full per-book page on this wiki.

Histories & the Silence

Book	Author	The teaser
A Brief History of the Silence	Marcus Halloran, Cradle Library	The four theories of what ended the Old Reach — and why none of them quite fits.
The Helix Plague: A Historical Account	Marcus Halloran	A Reach "medical cache" opened in the Cooper Belt killed ~600,000 — and birthed the Crimson Reavers.
A Vega History of the Boundary War	Doctora Marin Kothe, Confederacy	Vega's side of the ES 24-29 war: "We are not a province. We are not a colony."
The Stargate Treaty: A Layman's Summary	Marcus Halloran	How the IPU came to run the neutral backbone — and what aggression against a gate triggers.
The Cradle Calendar	Sera Vinnir, University of Olympus	First Light Day, Founder's Day, the Cooper Belt Memorial — the observances of a 90-year-old culture.

Technology & trade

Book	Author	The teaser
Field Guide to Fold-Tech	Helena Vorel, IPU Instructor	What a fold core actually does: warp, the bigger-on-the-inside hull bubble, and your respawn.
A Pilot's Almanac	Ceres Commune Trade Council	Markets, cargo categories, seasonal price patterns, and the scams that recur every year.
Maps, Compasses, and the Brokerage	Ceres Commune Trade Council	Your Compass points at fold-stress, not north — and the Ceres "Brokerage" is not the pirate one.
Helios Industrial: A Catalog of Modern Hulls	Therin Voss, Helios	The Dart, Brick, Disc, and Interceptor frigates, from the era's biggest Common-tier manufacturer.
On the Brace Conglomerate	Yuko Bremer, Brace	"Your hull is destructible. Your pattern is not." How insurance respawn actually works (and why cargo doesn't).
Reach Designations: A Salvager's Reference	Roen Mavik, Salvager	How to read the marks on Reach wreckage, what each is worth — and the ones marked Garden Three.

Survival & culture

Book	Author	The teaser
Black Halo & Crimson Reaver: A Pilot's Survival Guide	Jorek Vail, Freelance Pilot	You can pay off the Halo. You cannot pay off the Reavers. Learn to tell their silhouettes apart at distance.
Pilot Years: Stories from the New Era	Vex Karell	Five short stories of working pilots — "None of them are true. All of them happened."

The Cradle Vigil

Book	Author	The teaser
The Servants Who Would Not Be Served	Abbess Halen, Tycho Watchhall	The lunar order that keeps watch over a wounded, sealed Earth — and names the Silence's cause "the Old Servants."

The Outset (a fringe cosmology, separate from the Reach history)

Book	Author	The teaser
The Five Voices of the Outset	Marenval, Outsetkeeper	A fringe sect's account of the five "voices" that spoke the world into being.
The Returns and the Newcomers	Marenval, Outsetkeeper	The cycles theory: the world has begun thousands of times — and you, the pilot who can't recall your parents, are a Newcomer.

Recovered media

Book	Author	The teaser
Encrypted Recording	Unknown	A relay-buoy capture from deep Wild Drift, tagged Garden Three Primary Care: "...all residents accounted for."