The galaxy is in a dark age. The peak of civilization is long forgotten to history, and reduced to the stuff of myth, legend and religion. People live in ignorance and awe of the technology the Ancients left behind: the Stellar Gates, the World Machines and other wonders that they use, but do not fully understand. Through its near-monopoly of the most potent Ancient technology, the Combine of Interests nominally rules much of the galaxy, but it is an empire in decline. Its disparate client states have grown in power as the Combine implodes under the weight of its own corrupt bureaucracy. The galaxy is now in a state of constant, open war. On the dying, backwater world of Ar Suft, a rumor of unclaimed Ancient wonders has drawn a new wave of fortune finders, tech hunters and political powers.