Tyrena System

The Tyrena System lies deep within the Shackleton Expanse, its three inhabited worlds bound by cooperation rather than conquest. For centuries under the Shroud, Tyrena’s peoples were united by a shared scientific creed: the pursuit of knowledge as a collective good. Their greatest achievement was the Triarch Network - vast orbital observatories spanning their worlds, mapping the invisible dance of subspace across their skies.

Since the Shroud’s fall, that unity has faltered. One world, armed now with true warp capability, seeks to claim leadership - or dominance - over its siblings. Their shared legacy of reason and discovery risks collapsing into rivalry just as outsiders arrive to study their wonders.

Overview

Tyrena orbits a bright F-type star, its three inhabited planets forming a chain of civilisation across the inner system.

Tyrena Prime, closest to the star, is an arid but mineral-rich world whose people built the foundations of the Triarch Network and long served as the system’s engineers and artisans.
Hespar, the middle world, is temperate and fertile, home to the system’s largest population and the traditional centre of governance. Its cities grew around universities and research enclaves dedicated to collective advancement.
Varin, the outermost world, is cooler and more industrialised, long responsible for energy production and the orbital power grid that sustains the observatories.

For millennia, each world specialised and shared in a carefully balanced interdependence maintained through subspace communication and slow-haul convoys. Now, with high warp finally possible, Hespar has launched vessels beyond the system and declared itself the rightful leader of a “new Tyrena order.” Its neighbours, wary of old cooperation turning into colonial ambition, have fortified their orbital defences. A fragile peace endures, one maintained by diplomacy and the fear of destroying the very infrastructure that once united them.

The Tyrenans

All three worlds are home to near-identical humanoid species descended from a common ancestor. The Tyrenans are tall, fine-boned, and long-lived, distinguished by subtle cranial ridges along the brow and temples. Genetic variations across the three populations are cultural rather than biological.

Their society was long defined by the Philosophy of the Lens, a belief that truth can only be found when many perspectives converge. This creed guided the Triarch era: shared governance by councils of scholars and engineers from all three worlds, and a system-wide commitment to education, transparency, and the open exchange of data.

In the wake of the Shroud’s collapse, however, old fault lines have re-emerged. Prime resents its dependence on Hespar’s academies, Varin fears economic dominance by its partners, and Hespar’s new generation sees itself as the natural vanguard for system-wide unification under its leadership. The very philosophy that bound them - that knowledge should belong to all - is now the battleground for political legitimacy.

The Triarch Observatories

The Triarch Network is a chain of colossal orbital installations built during the height of Tyrena cooperation. Each planet maintains a primary observatory - a kilometres-wide ring of sensor arrays and subspace telescopes capable of mapping interstellar phenomena at unprecedented precision - all linked by power relays and quantum entanglement nodes forming a system-spanning web.

The network was designed to study quantum subspace resonances, but the fall of the Shroud revealed unexpected dangers. A cascade malfunction originating in one relay has begun to destabilise the power grid, threatening catastrophic overloads across all three observatories. Repair requires access to the network from all three worlds, but political suspicion and fear of sabotage have brought collaboration to a standstill.

Regardless of the upheaval, perhaps no power in the Shackleton Expanse has better studied the region from afar than the Tyrenans, whose star charts and scientific records are extraordinarily detailed for a people who have never left their own system.

Encounters

There are many reasons for Starfleet to visit Tyrena, from general exploration to trading knowledge. Access to their star charts would be invaluable for Starfleet’s ongoing ventures into the Expanse. But the technological and political turmoil in the system provides opportunities for tales of scientific and diplomatic challenges. Some concepts which can be used for a story at Tyrena include:

A Fair Exchange: The Tyrenans are happy to negotiate the exchange of knowledge with Starfleet - but their cost is assistance in repairing and stabilising the Triarch Network.
Delicate Balance: From the moment Starfleet arrives, each faction tries to curry favour above and beyond the others, hoping to harness this relationship for their own gain. Perhaps a world seeks supremacy over the others - perhaps they wish to restore the status quo. Officers must navigate these local politics.
Cascade Failure: The cascade instability grows unpredictable: power surges race through the Triarch Network, causing subspace distortions that threaten orbital infrastructure or even planetary weather systems. Teams must work with (or around) local scientists to stabilise the network before catastrophic collapse.
The Lost Equation: The system’s oldest archive reveals the network’s original harmonic equations - but one constant is missing. Recreating it requires data from a ‘zero node’ once planned but never built. Its theoretical location lies deep beneath the crust of Tyrena Prime, suggesting the planet itself may host a buried core of the system’s design.
A Question of Warp: Varin unveils its first independent warp-capable ship - built from stolen Hespari designs. Its test flight may prove a symbol of equality, or the spark of open war.
Scholars in Exile: Scientists fleeing Hespar’s new nationalist policies seek asylum on Prime, claiming the government is weaponising the Triarch Network. Their data could prove or disprove the accusation - but handing it over risks reigniting hostilities.

Writers can freely develop the political dimensions of the system, but also the nature of the Triarch Network - a hugely powerful means of interstellar charting and observation, which could merely be a technological marvel. But its use of quantum subspace invites the chance for the Network to be, or expose, something much weirder.

While the Vezda are not written to be an influence at Tyrena, they could be. Likewise, the Triarch Network might be able to reveal insights into the nature, origin, or collapse of the Shroud.

In Play

Tyrena is a setting of scientific intrigue and political tension, where collaboration and mistrust coexist in every conversation. Encounters here should lean on diplomacy, problem-solving, and scientific drama rather than open conflict.
Tyrenans are intellectual and idealistic, but fractious: even in disagreement, they are rational, articulate, and driven by belief in their own moral superiority. Each faction should see themselves as the true heirs of the Philosophy of the Lens.
The Triarch Network is a wonder of subspace engineering: immense, elegant, and fragile.
The fall of the Shroud has shattered old certainties. To the Tyrenans, this is not liberation but upheaval: what once felt like immutable physics has changed, and entire scientific disciplines are being rewritten in real time.