Solace: how the system runs
The day-to-day mechanics of the Solace system: how messages and ships move, how the sub-factions live, how the houses deal with each other, the shared currency without a shared economy, and how time is kept across the system.
Communications and travel
Movement within the Solace system is instantaneous on the gameboard timescale. Ships do not cross distance over time; they jump. What limits a jump is the power available to the Drive at the moment it fires. A ship at full charge can reach the limits of its range, while a ship running on a depleted charge cannot move at all until it recharges, either by sitting stationary for a time or by drawing on a power infrastructure node nearby. Range is a question of power, not of time. The base Drive technology came from Kael's artifact and was distributed to all six houses during the early colonization period, and each house has spent two centuries refining it with the contributions of its own artifact, so that no two houses' Drive systems are identical anymore. Communications are instantaneous as well. A quantum entanglement network carries messages between any two points in Solace without latency. The network is house-independent in design and shared in operation, and every house has access to it. It was this network that let the Witnesses transmit Vera Umberlin's words to all six houses at once.
Sub-faction internal life
The three sub-factions operate as cross-house bodies that serve the system rather than any single house. Their members come from all six houses in equal share, recruited under strict balance. The Gatekeepers are organized as a military unit, with the standard rank ladder running through their structure: Lieutenant, Captain, Commander. The Commander leads the entire Gatekeeper body and is the final authority within the sub-faction. New Gatekeepers train at the Veil temple compound on Velhuneth and rotate through Garrison duty as part of their preparation, and combat readiness is continuous. Their internal culture rests on discipline, restraint, and the absolute nature of their charter. The Guides are organized around a single function, preparing candidates for the Veil. A Guide takes on candidates by selection and carries responsibility for each one's readiness across years of preparation, while senior Guides certify the work of newer ones. Their culture turns on patience, careful observation, and the individual bond between Guide and candidate. The Witnesses are organized around the cross-faction redaction process. They observe crossings, draft reports, and take part in the joint review that produces the redacted documents released to the houses. Their culture values discretion, accuracy, and the trained restraint of people drawn from political backgrounds. All three sub-factions keep their members for as long as those members choose to serve. Retirement is honorable in all three, and retirees return to their birth house and are welcomed back into civilian life.
Inter-house diplomacy
Each house publicly announces its current chair so the others know whom to address. Beyond that name, the internal governance of every house is private, and inter-house diplomacy works entirely on this surface: chair to chair, with neither side able to see how the other reached its position. Disputes between houses are negotiated by the chairs of the houses involved, and most resolve at this level through direct exchange. When negotiation fails, trial by combat is the binding fallback.
Trial by combat carries a cultural honor hierarchy. The most honor belongs to the original parties fighting their own fight directly, the actual offender against the actual victim or the victim's representative. Below that, each house sends a chosen champion to fight on behalf of the principal. Below that again, the chairs themselves fight in person, which carries particular weight because it commits leadership to the outcome. Each house holds its own expectation about whether and when its chair takes the field. Kael chairs are expected to fight when honor calls for it and lose standing if they delegate. Imperia chairs fight only for grievances against the house itself, and then with formal restraint. Astraea chairs almost never fight in person, and delegation is treated as the wiser course. Solari chairs decide quickly, and any hesitation reads badly. Myndari chairs choose carefully, and a Myndari chair fighting is itself a signal. Nox chairs do not fight publicly, and when one does, the situation is grave. All the parameters of a trial, who fights, the location, the time, the weapon or unarmed style, and the win condition, are agreed by the chairs before the match, and the result is binding.
System-wide economy and currency
All six houses share one monetary system: a common requisition currency the founding colonists arrived with and never changed, because it always worked. The unit is the same across the whole system and holds its value everywhere.
What the houses do not share is an economy. Each house is economically independent. It issues its own members' requisitions (a monthly baseline, plus amounts earned through effort, assigned tasks, salaried full-time duty, and bounty bonuses, all of it use-it-or-lose-it on a roughly six-month reset) and supplies their necessities directly. Formal trade across house borders is minimal, since each house funds and provisions its own, but the unit of account is common to them all. (See each house's Economy and wealth.)
Calendar and timekeeping
Solace System Time is the shared reference for all inter-house coordination. It is anchored to Tharosian, the largest body in the system, and derived from that world's orbital and rotational cycles. Inter-house communications, joint operations, sub-faction scheduling, and any matter that requires cross-house synchronization all run on Solace System Time. Each homeworld also keeps its own local time for daily life, built from that world's own day-cycle and seasonal rhythms and governing the rhythm of work, rest, meals, and household activity. Within a house's settlement, local time is what people use day to day. Inter-house dates and durations are written and announced in Solace System Time, while local dates and durations are written and announced in the relevant house's local time. The two systems run continuously and in parallel, and conversion between them is routine for anyone whose work crosses house lines. There are no system-wide holidays or commemorations; each house observes its own events on its own local schedule. The Era of Stratagem began with Vera Umberlin's return, and that date is recorded in Solace System Time, but no formal anniversary has been adopted.