The Core Worlds are connected by the SupNet (Superluminal Network), enabling instant communication and travel through the Jumpgate system. Here, the Corporate Hegemony's control is absolute. Surveillance is constant. The immortal elite live in gleaming towers while billions struggle in the polluted depths below. It is, by all official metrics, civilized.

Beyond the Jumpgate network lies the Verge, systems reachable only by the slower, riskier Shift Drive. These worlds are not on the SupNet. A message to the Core takes years at lightspeed. This isolation breeds independence, desperation, and horrors that the Hegemony prefers to pretend don't exist.