Lords of Iron

Halmyris is a dead brine-world on the far rim of the settled Reach. For two centuries its refineries fed the forges of Sol; then the Imperium looked elsewhere, the lifts came down, and the high colony was left behind the way a tool is left in the rain. Three hundred years later, new survey satellites proved the old assays right: iridium veins, rare-earth cores, and helium locked in the deep brine. The Great Houses came first. The corporations came a week later.

You hold a mercenary charter, a handful of cataphracts, and the ear of no one important. Command your company across grounded, tactical battles, refit each war-machine hardpoint by hardpoint within its ordnance budget, and take contracts that pay in Solars. On Halmyris, wars are fought by contract, and reputation is the one currency salt cannot corrode.

Between engagements you play the longer game: swearing and breaking oaths, marrying into power, and maneuvering between hungry Houses like Calantyr and Mourne and syndicates like Brackenfield and Cinderforge. And far out past the last relay, Azurelight is digging in brine that holds nothing worth digging for. Whatever they are pulling out of Halmyris, it is not ore, and it may unmake the feudal order entirely.