Last Watch

Last Watch is one settlement on a vast world that is otherwise empty. Or — and this is the thing — appears otherwise empty. The world is roughly Earth-sized, has a single small inhabited city of 40,000 people clinging to the coast of a temperate sea, and is otherwise covered in roads. Maintained roads. Not overgrown. Going nowhere any human has ever found. The roads are old. The city is new.

To stay. Last Watch's residents are mostly second- or third-generation colonists from the Core, descendants of an expedition that arrived two hundred years ago. They are not natives. They do not have origin myths or ancient claims. They have records of arrival and a quiet cultural agreement that they will not, under any circumstances, admit how unsettling it is to live next to roads no one built.

Aware but cautious. The Path that brought the original colonists here is well-known and well-mapped. There are rumoured to be others — there should be others, given the road network — but they have not been found, or have not been announced. Last Watch's relationship with Solace is that of a frontier outpost to its supply line: respectful, slightly resentful of being condescended to, dependent.