The Continuity Directorate is a treaty body: laboratories, infrastructure ministries and extraction authorities bound together by the Asterion Accord. It owns Asterion Station, licenses every descent and holds every Rift Shard ever recovered.
# Charter
The Directorate’s name describes its purpose. Its first duty is continuity: to make sure the world above the basin continues as it was, whatever is happening below. Research comes second. Extraction is not mentioned in the charter at all, though it pays most of the bills.
# Blocs
Directorate politics divide roughly into two blocs:
- The containment bloc: research institutes and several member states. They hold that the Rift should be studied from the rim, with descent kept to a minimum. Commander Graf was appointed with their support.
- The extraction bloc: led by the Meridian Extraction Consortium. They fund the larger share of the station and want more shards brought up, faster.
Neither bloc controls the council outright. Most Directorate decisions are compromises that satisfy no one.
# In the field
For the C-9, the Directorate is the supplier of the carrier, route maps and equipment caches. Some caches predate the blackout. Others appear in places the expedition has not yet reached. The Directorate denies planting them. See the cache memorandum.
Asterion’s radio operators are Marek’s allies. Their reports are incomplete and their orders sometimes conflict, which makes them unreliable narrators. The Directorate still lists Marek Venn as an unauthorised pilot under recall. It also keeps paying his salvage tallies. See Credits and caches.
Related articles
ARCHIVE RECORDThe Asterion Accord (2211)The treaty that built a station, closed a basin and created the Continuity Directorate to keep the Rift under control.
ARCHIVE RECORDMeridian Extraction ConsortiumThe largest industrial member of the Directorate. It pays for much of Asterion and wants shards in return.
ARCHIVE RECORDCommander Helene GrafRim commander of Asterion Station. She locked the rim, ordered the evacuation and issued the recall order Marek ignored.
WORKING THEORYThe cachesSealed Directorate supply crates found where no Directorate vehicle has been. Their scratches match crates still sitting in Asterion’s stores.