The Vanishing

Summary

Later ages remember the collapse of the galaxy-spanning Luminari order as the Vanishing. ^*1

To the peoples who survived it, the event looked like a disappearance: Vanished ships were gone, interstellar travel collapsed, and worlds that had once belonged to one network were left isolated with only ruins, relics, and half-understood warnings. The term therefore names not only the loss of a people, but the moment the old galactic order fell apart. ^{*2 *3}

The present story begins inside that long aftermath. Nearly every major thread in the setting is shaped by some surviving fragment of the vanished age: stranded populations, broken gate routes, buried emergency plans, and the lingering effort to understand what truly happened. ^{*4 *3}