The Rim is the lawless frontier beyond Corporate space. Stations like Halcyon are the only infrastructure out here, and they run on thin margins and skeleton crews. Spacers have a saying: "The Rim doesn't kill you — the paperwork does."

Religion on the Rim is a patchwork of old Earth faiths and the Spacer's Creed, whose single tenet is that no one who can be saved is ever left behind. It is quoted more often than it is obeyed.

The Corporation is not a government. It is a logistics company that inherited the frontier by being the only one willing to fund it. Its loyalty is to its balance sheet, and everyone on the Rim knows it.