A tidally locked world, Verces has no day or night — only a scorched light side called Fullbright, where iron-hard plants and photosynthesizing animals survive, and the partly frozen seas of Darkside, home to predators like hoarbats and the infamous bloodbrothers. Between these extremes runs the Ring of Nations, a temperate zone along the twilit terminator filled with gleaming skyscrapers, bustling spaceports, vertical park-farms, and high-speed bullet trains. The native verthani are tall humanoids with color-changing skin and mouselike black eyes, long at the forefront of cybernetics due in part to their traditional caste system: the technology-augmented Augmented warriors, the unmodified Pure Ones who handled governance and food production, and the scarred God-Vessels who served as living avatars of deities. Though the caste system is now considered archaic, many still credit it with giving Verces its head start in implant technology. Verthani were also among the first races to adopt space exploration, voyaging in dirigible-like aetherships, and their massive shipyards at Skydock remain second to none. The Ring of Nations' government model — a coalition forming a single worldwide Grand Assembly — so impressed the other worlds that the Pact Worlds adopted both its structure and its peacekeeping Stewards. Beyond the terminator zone live the Outlaw Kingdoms: nomadic tribes, survivalist cults, criminal organizations, and political exiles generally ignored unless they raid Ring settlements. Even within their territory, vast stretches of untouched wilderness remain, including the mysterious Qidel, Aerie of the Sun — a strange tube-spire descending deep into the planet's mantle from which no expedition has returned.