Faction & NPC Dossier — who hunts, who helps

A chase needs hunters, a few people to put faces on it, and a hand or two the crew can borrow against the people chasing them. This file is that cast: the two powers that drive the pursuit (NULL and Lumen), the minor powers along the corridor, and the hinge people the threads actually run through. None is a stat block; build any of them on the fly as a person (Chapter 39) or, if it comes to violence, an adversary (Chapter 40). The two powers are full Chapter 34 trackers — an agenda, a reach, a pressure point, a standing — but only NULL carries a tracked clock, the Net, because there is only one chase. Lumen presses through standing and obstacle, and feeds the Net when the crew makes an enemy of it.

Everything here assembles existing chapters. Where a roll comes up, the owning chapter is cited; the Net is an ordinary influence clock (Chapter 34) moved by the law of distance (Chapter 27), not a new rule.

How to read a dossier§

Each power entry gives the four things a faction needs (Chapter 34) — agenda, reach & methods, pressure point, standing — plus a face to put it on the table (Chapter 39). NULL then carries its copy-ready A4 tracker with the Net; Lumen carries a tracker with no clock, because it isn't racing the crew so much as standing in their road. The players act in the fiction against 8; you keep the clock (Chapter 34). When the Net fills, NULL closes — once, decisively, at the threshold.

A note on the reveal: NULL is meant to be uncovered slowly — a coincidence, then a pattern, then an enemy (the slow burn is the point). For most of the campaign the crew should know only that a buyer who is really an owner is hunting them on a claim that makes no sense. What that claim secures, and why a company older than the Ejection wants a dead world's last word silenced, is the thread that runs off the far end of this campaign and into the next; keep it veiled here. Reveal the lien and the burying; withhold the rest.

NULL — the hunter§

The company that shouldn't still exist. A shell holding company rumored to predate the Ejection, owning subsidiaries it never admits to and acting always through someone else (Chapter 34, roster 16). It is the campaign's whole pursuit, and for a long while the crew will not know it is in the game at all — only that the buyer's money is too good, the dead couriers too many, and the bad luck too well-aimed.

Agenda (hidden): repossess the relay on a claim older than the law that would judge it, and bury the fragment it carries — along with anyone who has read it. NULL does not want the Last Transmission decoded, copied, or delivered; a silenced word is a safe word.
Reach & methods: secrecy and deniability, never NULL's own hand. Money waiting at every relay; debts quietly bought; subsidiaries threaded through the corridor's customs, salvage, and banking, so a hold can be placed, a berth refused, or a contact turned without NULL ever being named. Its instrument is patience and a fat purse, until those fail — then hired violence, deniable to the last.
Pressure point: a truth about its own claim that it has buried, and there is no lever sitting ready (Chapter 34). The crew must make one over the campaign — by decoding the fragment, by holding the lien up to a registrar's light, by keeping the word alive where NULL cannot reach to kill it. Spread or proven, the word is the only thing NULL fears.
Standing: Unknown, curdling to Enemy as the truth surfaces. Early, "Mr. Ashford" is merely a generous stranger.
Face: an intermediary who calls himself "Mr. Ashford" and signs only "N." — never the same description twice, never the real client (Chapter 38, patron 64).

FACTION: NULL
  Kind: A shell holding company rumored to predate the Ejection (Ch 34, roster 16)
  Agenda (hidden): Take the relay and bury it; silence whoever read it
  Reach & methods: Secrecy, deniability, money at every relay; bought debts and
    subsidiaries inside the corridor's customs, salvage, and banks; "Mr. Ashford"
  Pressure point: A claim it should not be able to hold — the lever must be MADE
  Standing toward the crew:  Unknown  (→ Enemy as the truth surfaces)
  THE NET (8):  [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
    +1 every jump-week; +1 on a decisive move or a trail left; -1 on a clean break.
  When it fills → NULL closes at Saltgate. The reckoning; the crew's deeds set its terms.

Lumen Sleeper Trust — the obstacle§

The bank that holds your sleep — and the say over when it ends. A cryo-trust managing the fortunes and votes of the still-frozen (Chapter 34, roster 52). Lumen is not chasing the crew; it simply owns the one stop in the Throat they cannot route around — Halflight Station — and it would prefer that what happens there stay off the record.

Agenda: keep Halflight's secret quiet. Its triage apparatus decides who thaws and who waits, and the waiting is not always for the sleepers' good; the crew, passing through for fuel or a medic or a decode key, is the kind of witness Lumen pays off or buries.
Reach & methods: law, debt, and the station itself — the berths, the medical bay, the only fuel for a jump in any direction. A courteous offer first; a lien or a held berth second; a quiet accident last.
Pressure point: a wake-record that proves the lists are rigged — the same kind of proof that damns Lumen wherever it operates. Take it, and Lumen has to deal.
Standing: Contact, patron-and-threat — warm while the crew is useful and discreet, cold the instant they see too much.
Face: the station's triage officer (a hinge person, below), caught between the Trust and her own conscience.

FACTION: Lumen Sleeper Trust
  Kind: A cryo-trust banking the fortunes of the still-frozen (Ch 34, roster 52)
  Agenda: Keep what happens at Halflight Station off the record
  Reach & methods: Law, debt; the station's berths, medbay, and only fuel; quiet accidents
  Pressure point: A wake-record that proves the lists are rigged
  Standing toward the crew:  Contact  (patron-and-threat)
  No tracked clock. Cross Lumen badly (expose it loudly, leave a body, steal and run)
    → it informs on the crew or sells them out, and the Net ticks +1.
  Deal with Lumen quietly (trade the secret for passage, take the discreet exit)
    → it pays in fuel, a decode key, or a berth, and the Net is untouched.

The minor powers§

Two more names matter along the road, neither a thread in its own right:

GANYMEDE Salvage (Chapter 34, roster 26) — the derelict-breakers who work the Greywell graveyard where the relay surfaces. They are the find's cover and its first complication: a rival crew racing the same wreck, a breaker-boss who'd buy the drone for scrap before anyone reads it, a reason for the crew to be out among the dead hulls at all. GANYMEDE is unsentimental, not omniscient; it wants the salvage, not the secret. Use it to open Act I, then let it fall behind — it does not cross the Throat.
The Saltgate Free Companies (Chapter 34, roster 56) — the free-port authority at the corridor's far mouth, who answer to no one and sell that fact. The crew meets them only at journey's end, where every pressure converges: Saltgate will witness a claim, broker a sale, sell silence to the crew and to NULL with the same hand, and tax all of it. They are not a hunter and not a friend — they are the board the reckoning plays out on (Act III, 03).

Hinge people§

The faces above run the powers; these are the smaller figures the threads actually pass through. Each gets what they want, what they know, and the leads they hand out. Build them as people (Chapter 39); none is an obstacle that can't be talked to.

"Mr. Ashford" — NULL's intermediary, who signs only "N." (Chapter 38, patron 64). Wants: to buy the relay, cheaply if the crew is foolish and dearly if they are not — and, failing that, to know exactly where they're going. Knows: nothing he'll admit; he never names the client, and his descriptions never match between witnesses. Leads: the too-generous price → who pays this much, and why?; the relay's provenance → the dead couriers who held it before. Reappears at every stop, never quite the same man.
The Halflight triage officer — the Lumen officer who runs the wake-lists at Halflight Station and has stopped being able to live with them. Wants: out, or at least clean hands, before the Trust notices her doubts. Knows: which sleepers Halflight keeps under for reasons that aren't medical, and where the real wake-record is kept. Leads: the rigged list → the lever against Lumen; a frightened, half-said warning → that the crew's "buyer" has already sent word ahead of them. She is the crew's way through Halflight if they treat her as a person, not a lock.
A Concordat reader — a thawed old-world Sleeper, eloquent and tired, who can read what the crew carries (the woken remember a Shore the relay was sent from; Chapter 30). Wants: the word delivered, not sold — it belongs to everyone who reached the Shore. Knows: enough of the old encoding to push the decryption a layer further than the crew can alone, and enough history to recognize what a "final window" transmission is. Leads: the next decryption layer → what the fragment names; the reader's own conviction → an ally for the disposition at Saltgate. The crew's conscience, and their decoder.
A corridor fixer — the broker who works the Throat's dead air, selling routes, berths, and rumors at both mouths. Wants: a cut, and to be on the winning side of whatever this is. Knows: who's been asking after the crew (NULL has paid here too), and the quiet beacon-dark route that ticks the Net back instead of forward. Leads: a clean break of contact → time bought; a sold tip → the reminder that anyone the crew pays, NULL can outbid. Useful, never trustworthy.

The Net, in detail§

The Net is the campaign's one clock and its spine; run it the same way every jump-week (Chapter 34; the faction turn, Appendix A4):

Default tick. A week passed in the Throat → +1. NULL's reach is everywhere the crew has to stop, and no word outran them (Chapter 27). This is the floor; the chase tightens even on a quiet week.
Pressure ticks. A decisive NULL move (an ambush sprung, a contact turned, a hold placed at the Sill), or a crew mistake that leaves a trail (spending loud, selling a lead, a body left at Halflight, an enemy made of Lumen) → +1 more.
Relief ticks. A clean break of contact — a ditched tracker, a covered transaction, the fixer's beacon-dark route, a false trail the crew actually sells → −1. Never below zero, and never enough to stop the climb for long.
Crest. Built to fill in Act III at Saltgate. When it does, NULL closes — once, in the open, on terms the crew's whole journey has set (what's decoded, who stands with them, whether the word is already spread). A full Net is the reckoning arriving, not the players losing (Chapter 33).

The players never roll against the Net. They act against 8 in the fiction; the GM moves the clock. A fast, careless crew and a slow, careful one reach the same reckoning — but in very different shape.

Starting state§

Set the Net before session one and move it on the faction turn (Appendix A4; file 00). A suggested opening, with the relay just in the crew's hands and NULL only beginning to reach:

THE NET (8):  [X] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]   (1 of 8 — Ashford has made his first offer)

Lumen Sleeper Trust ...... no clock; standing Contact, patron-and-threat at Halflight
GANYMEDE Salvage ......... Greywell only; a rival at the find, then behind them
Saltgate Free Companies .. unmet until Act III; the board the reckoning plays on

NULL starts a single tick ahead because it was reaching for the relay before the crew ever held it. From there it climbs on its own, and the crew learns how far only when they make the next port — because no word outruns a ship (Chapter 27). A full Net is the next, and last, confrontation. The act-by-act of how NULL presses, and how the crew can press back, is in 01–03.