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The Orion Accord and the Artemis Working Group

A Traveller campaign framework for mythic hunters, criminal constitutions, secret task forces, and frontier intelligence war

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Mythic Frame

The central mythic tension is this:

Orion is the great hunter: magnificent, proud, dangerous, impossible to ignore. He crosses land and sea. He loves, boasts, violates boundaries, is blinded, restored, and finally destroyed by forces he underestimates.

Artemis is the divine huntress: patient, precise, austere, protective of wild places and vulnerable people. She is both hunter and guardian. She does not merely kill prey; she maintains the boundary between predator and world.

So in this setting:

The Orion Accord sees itself as the natural aristocracy of the frontier: hunters, predators, smugglers, brokers, pirates, patrons, and killers who know that civilization is just a temporary agreement between people with enough force to matter.

The Artemis Working Group sees Orion not merely as a criminal organization, but as a predatory ecosystem. Its goal is not to arrest individual criminals. Its goal is to restore balance by destroying the conditions that allow Orion to hunt.

Their conflict should feel mythic, but not cartoonish. Orion should have charm, discipline, beauty, loyalty, and old codes. Artemis should have nobility, patience, cruelty, secrecy, and the terrifying calm of people who believe they are doing necessary work.

The Orion Accord

Core Identity

The Orion Accord is a compact among criminals who have become too sophisticated to waste themselves in open gang war.

It is not a single syndicate. It is a criminal constitution.

Pirate admirals, smuggling combines, corrupt starport officials, noble patrons, information brokers, mercenary companies, illegal biotech houses, black financiers, rogue intelligence veterans, and underworld judges all operate under its protection.

The Accord does three things:

  1. It prevents destructive conflict between criminal powers.
  2. It enforces contracts that cannot be taken to court.
  3. It coordinates crimes too large for any one syndicate to manage alone.

An independent corsair captain may not know the names of the Star Council. A noble money-launderer may never meet a pirate. A starport customs official may only know one handler. But all of them understand the same rule:

If the Accord recognizes the contract, the contract is real.

Its informal motto is:

“The hunter belongs to no king.”

Its darker internal version is:

“All worlds are hunting grounds.”

Origin of the Orion Accord

Project First Hunt

Centuries ago, Imperial Intelligence created a covert criminal infiltration program called Project First Hunt.

The original purpose was practical and defensible: organized crime had spread across several subsectors, moving faster than local law enforcement could respond. Imperial agencies needed a way to penetrate pirate markets, illegal weapons channels, slave routes, smuggling corridors, and noble-backed black finance.

So they built a false criminal network.

It had ships, shell companies, corrupt port identities, forged trade codes, dead-drop systems, and undercover officers with lifetime aliases. The program was given enough autonomy to look real. It was allowed to conduct controlled crimes. It laundered funds to preserve cover. It recruited real criminals as disposable assets.

Then it worked too well.

Within a generation, Project First Hunt was moving more money than some subsector governments. It possessed hidden depots, compromised officials, blackmail on nobles, and ships that did not appear on Imperial ledgers. Its officers had spent so long acting like criminals that some of them stopped distinguishing between cover and vocation.

The break came during what Artemis files call the Chios Incident.

Orion records call it the Blinding.

The Chios Incident

A senior Imperial patron, later remembered in Orion myth as Oenopion, attempted to shut down Project First Hunt after discovering that its criminal revenue had been diverted into unauthorized operations. The official purge erased identities, burned safe houses, froze accounts, and assassinated several deep-cover officers.

The project survived because its criminals survived.

Cut off from official command, its surviving officers and assets formed a mutual-defense compact. They still had ships. They still had secrets. They still had contacts. Most importantly, they had proof of Imperial complicity.

That compact became the Orion Accord.

The founding members did not see themselves as traitors. In their telling, the Empire had created hunters, used them, blinded them, and left them to die. The survivors simply chose to keep hunting.

Artemis takes the opposite view: Orion was not abandoned. Orion defected.

Both are partly true.

Orion’s Self-Myth

The Accord teaches a private version of the Orion myth to trusted initiates.

In their version:

Orion was the greatest hunter mortal blood ever produced. He could walk over the sea because no frontier could contain him. Kings wanted to command him. Gods wanted to humble him. Lovers wanted to possess him. Lesser men wanted to blind him. Nature itself had to create the scorpion because no ordinary enemy could defeat him.

The lesson is not “do not be proud.”

The lesson is:

“If the gods send a scorpion, you have become worthy of fear.”

This is how Orion members justify their existence. The Empire is Hera. Artemis is betrayal. Apollo is manipulation. Gaia is the old order defending itself. The Scorpion is the knife the powerful use when law fails.

To the Accord, criminality is not shameful. It is proof that one has outgrown permission.

Symbols and Recognition

The Black Star Stone

The most important Orion symbol is a polished black gemstone or synthetic crystal containing a faint embedded pattern of Orion’s constellation.

The cheapest versions are just underworld fashion. The real ones are encrypted identity tokens.

A genuine Black Star Stone may contain:

  • A dead-drop coordinate.
  • A one-time decryption key.
  • Membership proof.
  • A hidden account address.
  • A record of debt.
  • A kill authorization.
  • A fragment of the old Project First Hunt command architecture.

Most stones show three brighter points representing Orion’s Belt. High-ranking members may also have red and blue-white flecks representing Betelgeuse and Rigel.

To outsiders, it is jewelry.

To those who know, it says:

This person is under the Accord. Harm them casually and the matter becomes political.

The Three Stars

The Accord’s most common hand sign is three slow taps: table, chest, table.

It means:

Debt. Name. Ground.

Debt: all things have price.

Name: identity is a weapon.

Ground: every place belongs to whoever can hold it.

The taps are also used in coded comms. Three repeated packet delays in a transmission may signal an Accord relay. Three minor irregularities in a shipping manifest may indicate that cargo is protected.

Structure of the Orion Accord

The Accord avoids formal titles that can be mapped by investigators. Its structure is mythic, ritualized, and intentionally ambiguous.

Quarry

Non-members who are useful to the Accord.

A Quarry may be a corrupt official, a desperate merchant, a compromised naval clerk, a gambler in debt, or a noble heir with an addiction. They are not trusted. They are hunted without always knowing it.

A Quarry can become a recruit, asset, hostage, or warning.

Orion slang:

“Every hunter begins by learning what it feels like to be prey.”

Spoor

Information sources and low-level assets.

Spoor includes informants, hacked databases, bribed dockworkers, minor couriers, gossip brokers, and compromised software systems. Spoor is not considered part of Orion, but Orion treats it as part of the terrain.

An Artemis Tracker who discovers a Spoor network has usually found the edge of an Accord operation, not its heart.

Hunters

Full field operatives.

Hunters are smugglers, thieves, killers, pirates, brokers, ship captains, face-men, cyber-intrusion specialists, and criminal troubleshooters. They have recognized standing under the Accord and may invoke its arbitration.

A Hunter is expected to be competent, discreet, and profitable.

A Hunter who makes noise is reprimanded.

A Hunter who makes enemies without profit is fined.

A Hunter who brings Imperial heat onto Accord infrastructure may become subject to internal sanction.

Guides

Regional coordinators.

A Guide knows routes, ports, local officials, criminal personalities, and safe houses across a cluster of worlds. They do not usually command Hunters directly. Instead, they connect people who need each other.

A Guide can arrange:

  • False papers.
  • Emergency extraction.
  • Cargo disappearance.
  • Ship transponder replacement.
  • Starport labor unrest.
  • Courtroom pressure.
  • Quiet medical services.
  • A meeting with someone more dangerous.

Guides are the Accord’s true middle class. Killing one without authorization is a major offense.

Beltmasters

The Accord always has three visible senior authorities, collectively called the Belt.

They are not the highest leaders, but they are the highest people most members can petition.

Each Beltmaster governs one pillar of criminal power.

Alnitak — Violence

The Alnitak seat manages mercenary contracts, enforcement, piracy, assassination permissions, hostage rules, and war between members.

Alnitak does not order every killing, but decides which killings matter.

Alnilam — Information

The Alnilam seat manages blackmail archives, intelligence markets, identity fabrication, encrypted communications, and secrets recovered from Imperial systems.

Alnilam is feared more than Alnitak by people who understand the Accord.

Mintaka — Wealth

The Mintaka seat manages finance, laundering, trade fraud, shell companies, debt ledgers, bond manipulation, and noble investment channels.

Mintaka makes sure everyone gets paid, including people who do not admit they are being paid.

The Star Council

Above the Belt is the Star Council.

No one knows how many members it truly has. Tradition says nine, but that may be symbolic. Some believe each councilor corresponds to a major star in Orion. Others think the “nine” includes dead founders whose votes are simulated by legacy algorithms.

Possible truths:

  • The Star Council has nine living members.
  • The Star Council has six living members and three artificial decision systems.
  • The Star Council is a myth used by the Beltmasters to legitimize decisions.
  • One seat is held by an Imperial noble.
  • One seat is held by an Artemis mole.
  • One seat is still occupied by the original Project First Hunt command intelligence.
  • The Council is not above the Accord; it is trapped by it.

The Star Council rarely gives orders. It issues interpretations of the Accord.

In practice, that is more powerful.

The Seven Articles of the Accord

The Accord’s internal law is known as the Seven Articles.

Different cells recite them differently, but the core principles remain.

I. The Hunt Has Boundaries

Members may compete, deceive, and profit, but they may not destroy the hunting ground itself. No action may cause enough Imperial attention to endanger major Accord infrastructure without prior sanction.

This is why Orion sometimes stops reckless pirates, terrorists, or cults. Not because they are moral, but because they are bad for business.

II. A Recognized Debt Is Sacred

If the Accord witnesses a contract, the debt must be paid. Failure to pay is not merely breach of contract. It is sacrilege against the compact.

Debts can be paid in money, service, blood, territory, silence, or names.

III. Names Are Property

Identity is a negotiable asset. False names, noble lineages, ship registries, gene records, and citizenship files can be bought, sold, inherited, or revoked.

Stealing an Accord-protected identity is treated like grand theft.

Destroying one may be treated like murder.

IV. Do Not Hunt Another Hunter Without Leave

Members may not assassinate, expose, or ruin one another without arbitration.

This does not prevent conflict. It makes conflict procedural.

V. The Guide Is Neutral

Guides, underworld judges, and recognized brokers may not be harmed while conducting Accord business.

Breaking this article is one of the fastest ways to trigger a Scorpion Protocol.

VI. The Stars Remember

All major agreements are recorded somewhere. The existence of the record may be hidden, but the Accord believes no meaningful transaction should ever truly vanish.

This article is the philosophical basis for the Accord’s blackmail culture.

VII. No Hunter Is Greater Than the Hunt

If a member becomes an existential threat to the Accord, the Accord may name that member Orion Fallen.

At that point the Scorpion Protocol may be invoked.

Major Orion Divisions

The Poseidon Fleet

Named for Orion’s divine father in some traditions, the Poseidon Fleet controls illegal movement.

It is less a fleet than a distributed maritime and starship logistics empire. Its captains specialize in routes that conventional authorities find difficult to monitor.

They use:

  • Ocean-world submersible ports.
  • Gas giant refueling shadows.
  • Misfiled naval tenders.
  • Salvage claims.
  • Belter habitats.
  • Corporate freeports.
  • Abandoned scout stations.
  • Old war caches.
  • Misjump recovery myths.
  • Emergency medical transports as cover.

Their internal boast is:

“Orion walks on water. We walk between worlds.”

Poseidon captains are often romanticized by lower-ranking criminals. Some are flamboyant privateers. Others are meticulous freight accountants with bloodless manners.

Artemis considers the Poseidon Fleet the Accord’s circulatory system. Cut it, and Orion starves.

The Oenopion Division

The Oenopion Division handles blindness.

That means forgery, legal sabotage, false evidence, erased files, memory manipulation, witness corruption, sensor spoofing, and bureaucratic misdirection.

Its name comes from the king who, in myth, blinds Orion. The Division’s private joke is that they learned from the wound.

Their creed:

“A dead enemy is a problem solved once. A blind enemy solves problems for you.”

They do not just hide crimes. They make investigators believe the wrong story.

Typical Oenopion operations include:

  • Replacing cargo manifests with mutually contradictory but plausible versions.
  • Creating false noble genealogies.
  • Planting evidence that implicates a rival syndicate.
  • Engineering audit trails that lead to dead agents.
  • Generating synthetic eyewitnesses.
  • Creating fake xboat traffic histories.
  • Erasing a person from medical, tax, and travel records.
  • Making an honest customs inspector appear corrupt.

Oenopion specialists are among the most hated people in Artemis. They are why Artemis rarely trusts a single piece of evidence.

The Merope Network

The Merope Network specializes in desire.

It handles social engineering, elite compromise, marriage contracts, romantic manipulation, court gossip, artistic patronage, vice markets, and diplomatic seduction.

Merope operatives are not simply “honey traps.” The best of them never need sex, beauty, or blackmail. They understand loneliness, ambition, shame, vanity, grief, and the desperate hunger to be seen.

They compromise people by offering exactly what the target believes they deserve.

A Merope operation may involve:

  • A patronage circle for neglected noble spouses.
  • An illegal dueling club for bored heirs.
  • A philosophical salon seeded with controlled rumors.
  • A luxury clinic that records genetic secrets.
  • A matchmaking service for dynastic families.
  • A cultural foundation funding dissident artists.
  • A grief-support network for families of naval casualties.
  • A private school that quietly sorts future assets.

The Merope Network is especially dangerous because many of its relationships begin as sincere. Its operatives often become emotionally entangled, and some become double agents for love, guilt, or revenge.

Artemis calls Merope cases silver wounds: compromises that look clean until they start bleeding.

The Eos Initiative

Eos, the dawn, is associated with abduction, desire, renewal, and the beginning of pursuit. In Orion lore, the Eos Initiative recruits people at the moment their old life ends.

It looks for:

  • Disgraced officers.
  • Bankrupt merchants.
  • Exiled nobles.
  • Failed revolutionaries.
  • Orphaned ship crews.
  • Former intelligence assets.
  • People betrayed by Imperial institutions.
  • Criminals who are too talented to waste.
  • Survivors of scandals the Empire covered up.

Eos recruiters do not lead with threats. They lead with recognition.

Their favorite line is:

“The Empire used you. We will pay you.”

The Eos Initiative is why the Accord keeps replenishing itself. Artemis can destroy a cell, arrest a Guide, or seize ships, but so long as the Empire produces embittered, talented, abandoned people, Eos has raw material.

Some Artemis officers privately admit that Eos is not entirely wrong.

That admission is dangerous.

The Bellatrix Houses

Bellatrix is one of Orion’s bright stars, later associated by name with warlike imagery. In the Accord, Bellatrix Houses are elite violence salons.

They are not common assassins. They are finishing schools for people who kill in politically meaningful ways.

Bellatrix Houses train:

  • Duelists.
  • Noble bodyguards.
  • Hostage recovery specialists.
  • Assassins.
  • Counter-assassins.
  • Boarding team leaders.
  • Close protection details.
  • Ceremonial killers for vendetta contracts.

A Bellatrix graduate is expected to understand etiquette, law, poetry, weapons, and timing.

They do not merely ask, “Can this person be killed?”

They ask:

“What will the killing say?”

An Alnitak Beltmaster often draws from Bellatrix when a death must be understood as a message.

The Rigel Line

The Rigel Line is the Accord’s courier and extraction network.

Rigel operatives specialize in impossible movement: getting people, cargo, or data across borders that should be sealed. They use passenger liners, tramp freighters, diplomatic pouches, frozen embryos, religious pilgrimages, medical evacuations, salvage drones, and misregistered smallcraft.

A Rigel courier is judged by two standards:

  • The package arrives.
  • No one understands how.

Their motto:

“The foot leaves no wound.”

Artemis hates the Rigel Line because it turns victory into rumor. A target is surrounded, warrants are issued, ships are locked down, and then the target is simply gone.

The Betelgeuse Compact

Betelgeuse is the red shoulder of Orion. The Betelgeuse Compact is not a formal division but a faction within the Accord: older, bloodier, more romantic, and more violent.

They believe the Accord has grown too cautious. They argue that Orion should not merely profit from the Imperial order, but dominate it from the shadows.

Betelgeuse members favor:

  • Spectacular reprisal.
  • Pirate kings.
  • Noble humiliation.
  • Open corruption.
  • Military-grade theft.
  • Public demonstrations of impunity.

They are useful in war and dangerous in peace.

Artemis sometimes covertly encourages Betelgeuse recklessness because it makes Orion visible. Mintaka and Alnilam usually prefer to restrain them.

The Pleiades Vaults

In myth, Orion is sometimes said to pursue the Pleiades. In Accord mythology, the Pleiades Vaults are seven hidden archives containing the Accord’s most dangerous leverage.

Each Vault supposedly contains a different class of secret:

  1. Noble bloodlines.
  2. Imperial intelligence crimes.
  3. Megacorporate illegal research.
  4. Naval procurement fraud.
  5. Blackmail on subsector courts.
  6. Identities of deep-cover Orion assets.
  7. The truth of Project First Hunt.

No one knows whether all seven are real.

The phrase “Orion still hunts the Seven Sisters” means the Accord is searching for one of its own lost archives. The phrase “one sister has gone dark” means a Vault has been compromised.

An entire campaign could revolve around one Pleiades Vault.

The Scorpion Protocol

The Scorpion Protocol is the Accord’s most feared internal mechanism.

It is invoked when a member becomes so dangerous, reckless, disloyal, or exposed that their continued existence threatens the Accord itself.

Once invoked, the target is declared Orion Fallen.

At that moment, every debt owed to the target is suspended. Every safe house is closed. Every account is frozen. Every alias is burned. Former allies are permitted, and sometimes required, to betray them.

The Protocol has four stages.

I. Shadow

The target is quietly isolated.

Their calls are delayed. Their money moves slowly. Their usual contacts vanish. Their ship receives inconvenient maintenance holds. Their lovers are warned away. Their enemies receive anonymous tips.

At this stage, the target may still submit to arbitration.

II. Venom

The Accord begins poisoning the target’s life.

Their secrets leak. Their crews mutiny. Their forged identities fail. Local police receive evidence. Rival criminals are given permission to collect old debts.

At this stage, survival is still possible, but recovery is rare.

III. Sting

Direct action is authorized.

A Bellatrix killer, Poseidon boarding crew, or betrayed subordinate is assigned to end the matter.

The Accord prefers elegant deaths: airlock accident, duel, overdose, misjump, surgical complication, suicide note, pirate raid.

The method should close questions, not open them.

IV. Black Sky

If the target survives Sting, the Accord treats the matter as existential.

The Star Council may authorize mass exposure, orbital-scale violence, noble ruin, or the destruction of entire facilities. Black Sky is rare because it risks everything Article I exists to prevent.

Artemis watches for Scorpion activity because it reveals the Accord’s internal fault lines.

The irony is deliberate: Orion fears the Scorpion more than Artemis.

Orion Culture

Initiation: The Blindfold of Chios

A new Hunter is blindfolded and taken through a route they cannot reconstruct. They are seated before unseen witnesses and asked three questions:

  1. What did the Empire take from you?
  2. What are you willing to hunt?
  3. What name will you leave behind?

Then they are given a task. It may be theft, deception, delivery, sabotage, or betrayal. Murder is not required and is sometimes considered crude.

When they return, the blindfold is removed. The lesson is that everyone begins blind. The Accord gives sight, but only after obedience.

The First Quarry

Every Hunter is expected to identify and cultivate a Quarry within their first year.

This can be a customs clerk, naval technician, banker, court secretary, port medic, entertainer, or family member of someone useful.

The Quarry is a test of patience. Brute intimidation is considered amateur work. The best Quarry never realizes they were hunted until the trap has already closed.

The Feast of the Rising Hunter

On worlds where Orion’s constellation is visible, some cells hold a private feast when Orion first rises in the local night sky.

The ritual varies. In sophisticated circles, it is a masked dinner. Among pirates, it may be a drunken oath-taking. Among old Project First Hunt descendants, it resembles a memorial service.

Common elements:

  • Three lights are placed in a line.
  • A black cup is passed.
  • The names of dead Hunters are spoken.
  • A debt is forgiven.
  • A new debt is created.
  • Someone tells the story of the Blinding.

Artemis sometimes schedules raids around these feasts.

The Accord knows this.

Sometimes the feast is bait.

Public Faces of the Orion Accord

The Accord rarely appears under its own name. It operates through respectable fronts.

Examples:

Accordance Logistics

A freight consultancy that specializes in “difficult customs environments.” It is a Poseidon Fleet clearinghouse.

Chios Risk Instruments

A boutique insurer that quietly launders ransoms, cargo fraud, and piracy payments. It is tied to Oenopion and Mintaka.

Dawnward Foundation

A charity for displaced spacers, disgraced veterans, and frontier disaster survivors. It is an Eos recruitment pipeline.

Three Star Arbitration

A private commercial dispute-resolution firm used by corporations that do not want court discovery. It is an Accord tribunal.

Merope Cultural Trust

A patronage network for artists, scholars, salons, and noble retreats. It is a social compromise engine.

Bellatrix Security College

A legal bodyguard and executive protection academy. It also trains assassins.

Weaknesses of the Orion Accord

The Accord is powerful, but not invincible.

Its weaknesses are thematic.

Pride

Orion members often believe they are smarter than lawful institutions. Many are. Not all are.

Ritual

The Accord’s mythic habits create patterns. Artemis exploits those patterns mercilessly.

Arbitration Dependency

The Accord works because criminals trust its dispute-resolution mechanisms. If Artemis can corrupt, expose, or fake Accord arbitration, criminal trust begins to collapse.

Old Imperial Roots

Some Orion systems still use architecture descended from Project First Hunt. Artemis has partial legacy access.

Fear of Exposure

The Accord’s greatest shield is ambiguity. Once a local government, noble house, or naval command understands that scattered crimes are one structure, Orion becomes vulnerable.

Scorpion Paranoia

Every senior Orion figure fears being named Orion Fallen. Artemis can weaponize that fear by making leaders think the Protocol is already moving against them.

Key Orion NPCs

“Mintaka” — The White Accountant

A perfectly polite financial criminal who never raises their voice. Mintaka can ruin a world without firing a shot by calling in debts, collapsing insurance, freezing payroll systems, and exposing illegal loans.

Public identity: senior partner at a legitimate interstellar risk firm.

Private goal: keep Orion profitable and quiet.

Secret: Mintaka has been feeding limited information to Artemis to weaken Betelgeuse extremists.

Use at the table: the charming devil who can offer the PCs money, legitimacy, and protection.

“Alnitak” — The Red Shoulder

A former naval boarding officer turned underworld warlord. Alnitak believes violence is most effective when it is theatrical enough to prevent future resistance.

Public identity: private security magnate.

Private goal: restore fear of the Accord.

Secret: Alnitak wants to provoke a limited war with Artemis to identify Imperial moles.

Use at the table: the enemy who respects courage and punishes insult.

“Alnilam” — The Listener in the Middle

The least visible Beltmaster. Alnilam trades in secrets, not money or blood. No confirmed image exists. Some believe Alnilam is a person. Others believe Alnilam is a distributed intelligence built from old Imperial systems.

Public identity: unknown.

Private goal: preserve the Pleiades Vaults.

Secret: Alnilam knows the true origin of Artemis.

Use at the table: the voice that contacts the PCs through impossible channels.

The Blind King

Head of an Oenopion cell. Once an Imperial records magistrate, now a master of evidence manipulation.

Public identity: retired legal scholar.

Private goal: prove that reality is just paperwork with witnesses.

Secret: genuinely hates murder and considers killers intellectually lazy.

Use at the table: the villain who can erase the PCs’ ship, licenses, citizenship, or criminal charges depending on whether he likes them.

Lady Merope Vale

A noble patron, salon hostess, and emotional predator. She knows which heirs hate their fathers, which admirals are lonely, which priests doubt their faith, and which corporate officers need absolution.

Public identity: philanthropist and cultural patron.

Private goal: make the next generation of subsector leadership emotionally dependent on her circle.

Secret: one of her romantic compromises became real, and Artemis knows it.

Use at the table: someone who can help the PCs socially while making them feel seen in ways that are dangerous.

Captain Tidal Graves

A Poseidon Fleet commander whose ships specialize in ocean-world extraction and gas giant shadow refueling.

Public identity: salvage operator.

Private goal: keep the routes open.

Secret: has a personal code against trafficking children, prisoners, or unwilling passengers. This puts him at odds with Betelgeuse clients.

Use at the table: a criminal ally the PCs may actually like.

Dawn-Eyes

An Eos recruiter who appears after disasters, scandals, failed missions, and betrayals.

Public identity: humanitarian relief coordinator.

Private goal: recruit the wounded before Artemis can protect them.

Secret: was once an Artemis Ranger left behind during a denied operation.

Use at the table: the tempter who offers the PCs a way out when lawful society fails them.

The Artemis Working Group

Core Identity

The Artemis Working Group is an interagency Imperial intelligence task force created to counter the Orion Accord.

It is intentionally not a bureau, service, or ministry.

It is a working group because a working group can cross boundaries that formal agencies cannot. It borrows authority. It borrows personnel. It borrows ships. It borrows budgets. It borrows jurisdiction. Then it vanishes back into paperwork.

To the public, Artemis does not exist.

To most Imperial officials, Artemis is a rumor attached to sealed warrants and strange interdepartmental requisitions.

To Orion, Artemis is the only Imperial enemy that understands the hunt.

Its motto:

“One arrow. One truth.”

Its informal field saying:

“Do not chase the hunter. Find what he cannot stop hunting.”

Artemis Origin

After Project First Hunt became the Orion Accord, the Imperium faced an impossible problem.

It could not openly admit that Imperial Intelligence had helped create a trans-subsector criminal compact. Public exposure would ruin noble careers, invalidate court cases, destabilize frontier governments, and reveal old covert methods.

So the response had to be deniable.

The first Artemis cell was created under a bland administrative heading: Interagency Commercial Irregularities Working Group 12.

Its initial mandate was narrow: recover records from Project First Hunt.

Its real mandate was broader:

  • Identify surviving Orion infrastructure.
  • Prevent exposure of Imperial involvement.
  • Neutralize defected assets.
  • Recover blackmail archives.
  • Destroy the Accord if possible.
  • Control the truth if destruction failed.

Over time, Artemis changed. Its younger members were not responsible for the original sin. Many joined because Orion destroyed lives, corrupted worlds, and made law look foolish. Artemis became less cover-up and more crusade.

But the cover-up remains buried in its foundation.

That contradiction should haunt the organization.

Artemis Self-Myth

Artemis teaches a different Orion myth.

In its version, Orion was a mighty hunter who mistook strength for license. He boasted that he could kill every beast of the Earth. Whether through Gaia, Artemis, Apollo, or the Scorpion, the world answered him.

The lesson is:

“No predator is larger than the world that contains him.”

Artemis officers do not see themselves as police. They are guardians of the boundary.

Civilization can tolerate vice, smuggling, bribery, and local corruption. It cannot tolerate a predatory order that places itself above law, sovereignty, and personhood.

Their task is not vengeance.

Their task is balance.

At least, that is what they tell themselves.

Artemis Structure

Trackers

Trackers are analysts, auditors, signal interpreters, linguists, accountants, customs specialists, and historians.

They find the trail.

A Tracker may spend six months studying freight irregularities before identifying one suspicious cargo pattern. They may reconstruct a criminal route from fuel purchases, marriage records, medical imports, and missing spare parts.

Trackers are often underestimated because they do not look dangerous.

Artemis considers them sacred.

A dead Tracker usually means Orion has begun to understand the investigation.

Rangers

Rangers are field operatives.

They conduct surveillance, infiltrate starports, follow suspects, handle informants, enter dangerous places under false names, and survive long enough to report what they find.

A Ranger needs patience more than courage. They must watch predators without flinching and without being seen watching.

Rangers often have the highest psychological casualty rate in Artemis because they live closest to Orion’s seductions.

Archers

Archers are case officers and operation planners.

They decide where to aim.

An Archer’s job is not to gather every fact. It is to identify the one fact, person, transaction, ship, or secret that will collapse the larger structure.

A good Archer does not raid ten warehouses.

A good Archer makes ten warehouses useless.

Huntmasters

Huntmasters command campaigns.

A campaign may target a single Orion Guide, a Poseidon route, a Merope compromise network, or an entire subsector-level Accord structure.

Huntmasters manage relations with local nobles, naval commands, courts, ministries, and sometimes journalists. They are part intelligence officer, part prosecutor, part diplomat, and part priest.

A Huntmaster who becomes obsessed with one target is quietly removed.

In theory.

The Silver Bow

The Silver Bow is the executive council of Artemis.

It has five seats, each representing a discipline.

The Eye

Surveillance, reconnaissance, and observation.

The Hand

Field operations and direct action.

The Tongue

Human intelligence, informants, social infiltration.

The Ledger

Finance, trade, contracts, and economic warfare.

The Veil

Counterintelligence, secrecy, and internal discipline.

The Silver Bow rarely meets physically. Its members may not know one another’s true identities. Decisions are issued as hunt authorizations.

A full Silver Bow authorization is called a drawn bow.

Once the bow is drawn, someone important is going to fall.

Artemis Doctrine

Predator Ecology

Artemis does not ask only, “Who committed the crime?”

It asks:

  • Who profited?
  • Who protected it?
  • Who moved the cargo?
  • Who forged the papers?
  • Who laundered the debt?
  • Who supplied the ship?
  • Who looked away?
  • Who was compromised?
  • Who will replace the criminal if this one dies?

This is called predator ecology.

An ordinary police agency arrests the smuggler.

Artemis identifies the port official, the false insurer, the bank node, the noble patron, the data broker, the shipyard, the customs algorithm, and the social leverage that made the smuggling sustainable.

Then it chooses one arrow.

The One-Arrow Principle

Artemis prefers operations where a single action causes systemic collapse.

Examples:

  • Arresting a low-level courier whose testimony invalidates a hundred false manifests.
  • Freezing one insurance instrument that strands six pirate crews.
  • Leaking one noble scandal that causes Orion patrons to abandon a Guide.
  • Seizing one data vault that destroys trust in Accord arbitration.
  • Turning one Merope operative who knows which marriages are compromised.
  • Exposing one Oenopion forgery method so thousands of documents become suspect.

The One-Arrow Principle makes Artemis seem inactive for long periods. Local authorities may think they are doing nothing.

Then a whole criminal ecosystem dies in a week.

The Silver Vow

Artemis officers swear an internal oath called the Silver Vow.

The Vow has three renunciations:

  1. No profit from the hunt.
  2. No glory from the hunt.
  3. No love of the hunt.

The third is the hardest.

Artemis fears officers who begin to enjoy hunting Orion. Enjoyment leads to rivalry. Rivalry leads to obsession. Obsession makes the officer predictable.

Predictability is how Orion kills you.

Artemis Subgroups

The Apollo Office

The Apollo Office is Artemis’s strategic analysis and predictive intelligence branch.

Apollo sees farther than Artemis but is less trusted.

It uses statistics, old intelligence archives, psychological models, traffic histories, noble genealogies, market distortions, and sometimes morally questionable simulations to predict Orion moves.

Apollo analysts often manipulate Artemis field teams by withholding context. Their defense is simple: if the Archer knows too much, the Archer becomes readable.

Apollo’s motto:

“Light before arrow.”

Artemis’s private complaint:

“Apollo always tells the truth after it matters.”

Campaign role: Apollo is the ally who gives useful information in the most infuriating possible way. It may also be using the PCs as bait.

The Selene Network

Selene is moonlight, reflection, and patient observation.

The Selene Network handles orbital surveillance, passive sensor grids, traffic metadata, port shadowing, and long-duration observation.

Selene does not chase. Selene watches.

Its assets include:

  • Quiet satellites.
  • Maintenance drones.
  • Port traffic models.
  • Refueling logs.
  • Dockworker rumor feeds.
  • Shipyard telemetry.
  • Long-lens observation posts.
  • Passive emissions buoys.
  • “Dead” weather satellites.
  • Naval systems no longer listed as active.

A Selene file may contain years of seemingly meaningless observations. Then a Tracker notices that the same maintenance drone is present near three unrelated ship disappearances.

That is the trail.

The Hecate Cell

Hecate is crossroads, thresholds, ghosts, magic, and night roads.

The Hecate Cell handles deep cover, false identities, illegal border crossing, forbidden tradecraft, and operations that Artemis will later deny.

Hecate agents specialize in becoming the sort of people Orion wants.

A Hecate cover identity may take years to mature. Some agents live as criminals so convincingly that even Artemis handlers worry whether the cover is still a cover.

Hecate has three internal rules:

  1. Always leave yourself a crossroads.
  2. Never trust a door that opens only one way.
  3. If your handler cannot extract you, your name was already dead.

Campaign role: Hecate is perfect for morally ambiguous PCs. They may be asked to carry a false identity, protect an undercover agent, or discover that someone they trusted is Hecate.

The Gaia Program

Gaia represents the world itself.

The Gaia Program studies logistics, environments, and material dependencies. It asks where Orion physically lives.

No criminal empire survives on secrets alone. Ships need fuel. Crews need food. Weapons need parts. Clones need vats. Drugs need precursors. Bribes need banks. Safe houses need plumbing. Pirates need shore leave.

Gaia finds the material roots.

Typical Gaia questions:

  • Which worlds import more ship parts than their registered fleets require?
  • Which starports sell fuel that never appears on legal manifests?
  • Which agricultural shipments mask biotic contraband?
  • Which mining habitats report impossible population changes?
  • Which noble estates consume enough medical supplies to support hidden prisoners?
  • Which religious pilgrimage route is actually a courier channel?

Gaia’s internal maxim:

“The hunter still leaves footprints.”

Campaign role: Gaia gives the PCs grounded investigative missions: inspect cargo, trace fuel, follow food shipments, audit life-support parts.

The Scorpion Unit

The Scorpion Unit is Artemis’s direct-action arm.

It exists for targets that cannot be arrested, exposed, or turned.

Its existence is controversial because it mirrors Orion’s own Scorpion Protocol. Artemis officially uses Scorpion only when lawful structures cannot safely contain the threat. In practice, “cannot safely contain” is a phrase with dangerous flexibility.

Scorpion operators are quiet, disciplined, and rarely dramatic. They are trained to end a threat without producing a legend.

Their motto:

“No song for the sting.”

Some Huntmasters despise them. Others rely on them too often.

Campaign role: Scorpion can be a terrifying ally, a rival team, or the sign that Artemis has decided the situation is beyond courts.

The Hounds

The Hounds are behavioral profilers and pattern analysts.

They track habits: favorite ports, repeated lovers, preferred lies, stress responses, payment rituals, revenge patterns, and the emotional signatures of criminal cells.

A Hound does not ask, “Where is the target?”

A Hound asks:

“What does the target need to do in order to still feel like themselves?”

That question catches people.

The Hounds are especially effective against Orion because the Accord’s mythology encourages members to repeat symbolic behavior.

Campaign role: a Hound can profile the PCs, unsettle them, and correctly infer things they never said aloud.

The Brauron Houses

Artemis is not only goddess of the hunt. She is also a protector of children and the vulnerable.

The Brauron Houses are secret safe-house networks for witnesses, defectors, families of informants, trafficked persons, and children threatened by Orion retaliation.

They are among the few Artemis programs with a clear moral purpose.

They are also security nightmares.

Orion knows that Artemis will risk much to protect Brauron locations. This makes them targets, bait, and moral pressure points.

Campaign role: protecting a Brauron House is a strong mission for PCs who need to see why Artemis matters.

The Actaeon File

In myth, Actaeon sees Artemis unveiled and is destroyed by his own hounds.

In Artemis usage, an Actaeon File is opened when someone has seen something they were not meant to see.

This may include:

  • An honest police officer who discovers Artemis.
  • A journalist who finds Project First Hunt records.
  • A noble who learns Orion was Imperial-created.
  • A PC who sees both sides of the secret war.
  • An Artemis officer who uncovers internal corruption.
  • An Orion member who identifies a Silver Bow seat.

An Actaeon File does not automatically mean execution. It means the person has become a containment problem.

Possible resolutions include recruitment, memory alteration, discrediting, protective custody, false death, blackmail, or elimination.

Campaign role: the PCs may become an Actaeon File.

The Iphigenia Clause

This is Artemis’s darkest internal doctrine.

Named for mythic sacrifice before a great campaign, the Iphigenia Clause allows Artemis to sacrifice an asset, operation, reputation, or innocent opportunity in order to preserve a larger hunt.

Officially, it is almost never invoked.

Unofficially, every Huntmaster knows the temptation.

Examples:

  • Letting a smuggling shipment pass to preserve a deeper cover.
  • Allowing one corrupt noble to escape to expose three others.
  • Abandoning an undercover agent rather than reveal Artemis.
  • Permitting Orion to kill a known traitor whose death will reveal a route.
  • Framing a dead criminal for crimes they did commit, plus one they did not, to hide an operation.

The Iphigenia Clause is where Artemis can become monstrous.

Campaign role: force the PCs to decide whether Artemis’s patience is wisdom or cowardice.

Artemis Public Covers

Commercial Irregularities Board

A dull-sounding investigative panel used to access trade records.

Customs Harmonization Review

A bureaucratic excuse to audit starport procedures and freight manifests.

Anti-Piracy Liaison Cell

A cover for joint Navy-Artemis operations.

Frontier Witness Relocation Office

A Brauron House administrative mask.

Often used by Gaia and Ledger personnel to examine ship parts, fuel, and weapons contracts.

Cultural Security Assessment

A cover used to investigate Merope salons, schools, and noble gatherings.

Weaknesses of Artemis

Compartmentalization

Artemis protects itself by limiting knowledge. This means field teams often do not know why a mission matters.

That saves secrets.

It also gets people killed.

Political Fragility

Because Artemis is a working group, not a formal ministry, powerful nobles can interfere by attacking its borrowed authorities.

A local duke may not be able to abolish Artemis, but they can deny port access, challenge warrants, withhold naval escorts, or demand personnel reassignment.

Moral Injury

Artemis officers are asked to watch crimes continue while they build larger cases. Some break. Some defect. Some decide Orion’s honesty is preferable to Imperial hypocrisy.

Apollo Manipulation

The Apollo Office sometimes uses people as variables. This can produce brilliant results and deep resentment.

Scorpion Contamination

Every time Artemis uses direct assassination, it becomes easier to use again.

Orion understands this and tries to force Artemis into Scorpion choices.

The Founding Lie

If the public learns that Orion grew from an Imperial intelligence operation, Artemis could be crippled by scandal.

Some within Artemis believe the truth must eventually come out.

Others would kill to keep it buried.

Key Artemis NPCs

Huntmaster Selene Armand

A calm, elegant campaign commander known for waiting months before acting. She never raises her voice. She treats criminal networks like weather systems.

Public identity: senior customs liaison.

Private goal: dismantle the Poseidon Fleet in her subsector.

Secret: she once allowed a Poseidon ship to escape because it carried children Orion was evacuating from a war zone.

Use at the table: the patron who gives the PCs strange, limited tasks that later prove devastating.

Director Cynth Vale, Seat of the Eye

A member of the Silver Bow. “Cynth” is probably not her real name. She controls surveillance authorizations and Selene assets.

Public identity: unknown.

Private goal: identify the Star Council’s living members.

Secret: she believes one Star Council seat is an Imperial intelligence legacy system, not a person.

Use at the table: the remote authority whose decisions arrive as sealed orders.

Maro Ionescu, Apollo Analyst

Brilliant, cold, and socially unsettling. Maro predicts criminal behavior with disturbing accuracy but often refuses to explain the model.

Public identity: naval strategic consultant.

Private goal: force Orion into triggering its own Scorpion Protocol against the wrong person.

Secret: Maro has identified a likely Artemis mole but is allowing the mole to continue operating for predictive value.

Use at the table: the person who gives the PCs exactly enough truth to be useful and not enough to feel safe.

Agent Kallisto Ren

A Hecate deep-cover operative embedded in the Merope Network.

Public identity: social fixer and private tutor for noble families.

Private goal: reach Lady Merope Vale’s inner circle.

Secret: Kallisto has fallen in love with one of her targets, or has convinced herself that the feeling is only cover.

Use at the table: the compromised ally whose rescue may destroy years of work.

Commander Pike “Sting” Varras

Leader of a Scorpion Unit team.

Public identity: retired Marine security contractor.

Private goal: end threats cleanly before more civilians die.

Secret: Orion once tried to recruit him after Artemis abandoned his team during a denied operation.

Use at the table: the hard man who may be right for the wrong reasons.

Dr. Hestia Morn

A Gaia Program logistics savant.

Public identity: academic economist studying frontier trade inefficiencies.

Private goal: prove that Orion can be starved without mass arrests.

Secret: she has discovered that several worlds depend on Orion-controlled logistics for essential medicines.

Use at the table: the person who reveals that destroying Orion too quickly could kill innocents.

The Little Bear

A young Tracker trainee assigned to a Brauron House after surviving Orion retaliation.

Public identity: refugee child or junior clerk.

Private goal: become Artemis.

Secret: has memorized part of a Pleiades Vault without understanding it.

Use at the table: the vulnerable NPC both sides need alive.

The Secret Shared History

At the highest levels, both Orion and Artemis know fragments of the same buried truth.

Neither side has the whole story.

The First Hunter

The original commander of Project First Hunt is remembered only by title: the First Hunter.

Orion claims the First Hunter saw the truth before anyone else: that the Empire’s law was a costume, and real order came from enforceable debt.

Artemis claims the First Hunter tried to shut the project down after realizing it had become criminal.

A third possibility is more interesting:

The First Hunter deliberately split the project.

One half became Orion, to control the underworld.

One half became Artemis, to control Orion.

If true, the war itself may be part of the original design.

That makes the campaign much stranger.

The Black Star Ledger

Somewhere there is an archive called the Black Star Ledger.

It allegedly contains:

  • Names of the original Imperial officers who founded Project First Hunt.
  • Identities of the first Orion defectors.
  • Evidence that early Artemis operations protected Imperial reputations.
  • Proof that certain noble houses funded both sides.
  • The original command protocols for Accord identity stones.
  • A list of agents who were never recalled.
  • A final message from the First Hunter.

Orion wants the Ledger because it can blackmail the Imperium.

Artemis wants it because it can destroy the Accord, or destroy Artemis.

Apollo may already have part of it.

Alnilam may be built from it.

The PCs may accidentally transport it.

How Orion and Artemis View Each Other

Orion’s View of Artemis

To Orion, Artemis is not justice.

Artemis is the Empire’s guilty conscience with a knife.

Common Orion sayings:

“Artemis only hunts what the Emperor cannot tax.”

“The silver bow is still Imperial steel.”

“They call us predators because they hate competition.”

Orion respects Artemis more than ordinary police. A Hunter who survives Artemis attention gains status. A Guide who fools Artemis earns mythic prestige.

But there is fear under the respect.

Artemis is patient in a way criminals find unnatural.

Artemis’s View of Orion

To Artemis, Orion is not romance, rebellion, or frontier freedom.

Orion is organized predation.

Common Artemis sayings:

“A smuggler avoids law. Orion replaces it.”

“Do not admire the hunter from inside his trophy room.”

“Every Accord contract is a border drawn around someone weaker.”

Artemis officers are trained not to be seduced by Orion’s elegance. The Accord will always offer a better story: more loyalty, more honesty, more gratitude, more reward.

That is part of the trap.

The Current Conflict

At the campaign’s start, the cold war between Orion and Artemis has entered a dangerous phase.

Three things have changed.

1. A Pleiades Vault Has Surfaced

Someone found part of one of the seven legendary archives.

No one knows which Vault it is.

The data may be incomplete, corrupted, or intentionally seeded. But it is enough to make Orion nervous and Artemis reckless.

Possible location: hidden inside a ship’s old black box, a noble family archive, a derelict scout base, a monastery database, or the memory of a courier who does not know what they carry.

2. The Betelgeuse Compact Wants War

A violent Orion faction believes subtlety has made the Accord weak. They want to bloody Artemis publicly, humiliate Imperial authority, and prove that the frontier belongs to hunters.

They may stage a spectacular attack and blame a rival faction.

They may target a Brauron House.

They may assassinate a minor noble under Artemis protection.

They may try to force the Accord to invoke Black Sky.

3. Artemis Suspects a Silver Bow Leak

Someone inside Artemis is feeding Orion enough information to avoid catastrophe, but not enough to expose themselves.

Possibilities:

  • A true Orion mole.
  • An Apollo-controlled false leak.
  • A Silver Bow member protecting the founding secret.
  • A Hecate agent whose cover has inverted.
  • An old Project First Hunt system still obeying legacy commands.
  • One of the PCs, unknowingly, through compromised gear or contacts.

This means Artemis may hire outsiders because it cannot fully trust itself.

That gives the PCs a perfect entry point.

Campaign Use

Starting Situation

The PCs are a crew with a ship, debts, skills, and just enough independence to be useful.

They receive a job that looks ordinary:

  • Move sealed cargo.
  • Extract a passenger.
  • Inspect a derelict.
  • Deliver a diplomatic pouch.
  • Transport a witness.
  • Recover a stolen identity stone.
  • Carry medical supplies to a restricted world.
  • Investigate why a freighter vanished.

The job touches Orion.

Then Artemis notices.

Now the PCs are not just doing a job. They are standing between two hunters.

Campaign Escalation Clock

Use this as a loose campaign structure.

Phase 1: Spoor

The PCs encounter signs of the Accord without knowing what they mean.

Clues:

  • Three-star symbols.
  • Strange freight irregularities.
  • A polite criminal who honors a debt.
  • A forged identity that is too good.
  • A customs official afraid of a black gemstone.
  • A ship that disappears from port records.

Artemis appears only as a distant pressure: sealed questions, odd inspections, or a stranger watching from the concourse.

Phase 2: The First Arrow

Artemis contacts the PCs.

The offer may be legal, coercive, or desperate.

Possibilities:

  • “Carry this tracker and do not open the case.”
  • “Tell us who hired you and we erase the customs violation.”
  • “Your passenger is not who they say they are.”
  • “That gemstone is an Accord credential.”
  • “We need your ship because our own assets are compromised.”

The PCs learn the Orion Accord is real.

Phase 3: The Guide

The PCs meet an Orion Guide.

The Guide is helpful, civilized, and dangerous. They offer a counter-narrative: Artemis lies, the Empire uses people, Orion pays debts, and the PCs have already broken laws whether they admit it or not.

This is where Orion should become tempting.

Do not make the Accord stupidly evil too early. Let the players feel why people join.

Phase 4: The Silver Wound

A Merope or Oenopion operation compromises someone close to the PCs.

A patron, ally, family member, noble contact, or shipmate becomes leverage.

The conflict turns personal.

The PCs must decide whether to trust Artemis protection, Orion negotiation, or their own plan.

Phase 5: The Scorpion Moves

Someone is declared Orion Fallen.

It might be an NPC ally, a PC patron, or eventually one of the PCs.

The underworld turns against the target. Safe houses vanish. Money disappears. False charges appear. Friends stop answering.

The PCs see how terrifying Orion is when its rules become weapons.

Phase 6: The Black Star Ledger

The founding secret emerges.

The PCs obtain, decode, steal, or become the only witnesses to evidence that Orion and Artemis share an origin.

Now the campaign is no longer cops versus criminals.

It is about who gets to define truth.

Phase 7: The Drawn Bow

The Silver Bow authorizes a decisive campaign.

Artemis may attempt to destroy the local Accord structure in one massive operation.

Orion may respond by invoking Black Sky.

The PCs can choose to help Artemis, help Orion, expose both, protect innocents, seize the Ledger, or create a third path.

Adventure Hooks

1. The Black Stone Passenger

A passenger dies aboard the PCs’ ship during jump. Among their belongings is a Black Star Stone.

When the ship exits jump, three groups are waiting:

  • Local police with a murder warrant.
  • Orion operatives claiming the stone is theirs.
  • Artemis agents insisting the passenger was under Imperial protection.

The stone contains only one useful thing: coordinates to a place no one admits exists.

2. The Feast That Was Bait

The PCs are hired to provide security for an elite private dinner. They slowly realize it is a Feast of the Rising Hunter.

Then Artemis raids it.

Then the PCs realize Artemis raided the wrong feast.

The real meeting is elsewhere, and this one was designed to expose Artemis methods.

3. The Blind Manifest

A cargo manifest implicates the PCs in smuggling weapons to rebels.

They did not do it.

The forgery is perfect because the Oenopion Division did not merely fake the records; it rewrote the surrounding reality. Port cameras, dockworker testimony, fuel logs, and maintenance data all agree.

To clear themselves, the PCs must find the one person the forgery could not account for.

4. The Brauron House

Artemis hires the PCs to transport refugees from a compromised safe house.

One refugee is a child who knows part of a Pleiades Vault.

One refugee is an Orion plant.

One Artemis officer believes the group should be sacrificed to preserve a larger operation.

5. The Poseidon Route

A world is suffering medical shortages because legal supply chains have failed. The only functioning route is controlled by the Poseidon Fleet.

Artemis wants the route mapped and destroyed.

The local population needs the route to survive.

Orion offers to keep the medicine flowing in exchange for formal local dependence.

The PCs must decide whether law, survival, or independence matters most.

6. Orion Fallen

A former Orion Guide begs the PCs for extraction. They have been named Orion Fallen and claim to possess evidence that can expose a Star Council seat.

The Accord wants them dead.

Artemis wants them alive.

Apollo wants them moving.

The Guide may be lying, but the Scorpion Protocol is definitely real.

7. The Merope Marriage

A noble wedding is actually an Accord operation to fuse two compromised houses. Artemis wants the PCs to identify which member of the wedding party is the Merope operative.

Complications:

  • The bride knows and approves.
  • The groom is an Artemis informant.
  • The officiant is Orion.
  • The dowry contains a Pleiades key.
  • The marriage may prevent a subsector war.

8. The Apollo Betrayal

The PCs discover that an Apollo analyst has been feeding them missions designed to provoke a particular Orion response.

Every job they completed was real.

Every person they saved mattered.

But they were also bait.

Now Orion believes the PCs are Artemis assets, and Artemis is not sure they are controllable.

9. The First Hunter’s Tomb

A derelict station contains the preserved command archive of Project First Hunt.

Orion calls it a shrine.

Artemis calls it evidence.

A third faction calls it a weapon.

The station’s old systems recognize both Orion stones and Artemis clearance phrases.

That should be impossible unless both descend from the same root.

10. Scorpion Against Scorpion

Orion’s Scorpion Protocol and Artemis’s Scorpion Unit target the same person on the same night.

The PCs are hired to protect, kill, extract, or identify that person.

The twist: the target is not a criminal. They are the last living witness to the original split.

Rumors Table

Roll or choose.

  1. “The Orion Accord isn’t real. It’s what criminals say when they want to sound important.”
  2. “Three taps on a table will get you killed in some ports.”
  3. “There’s a customs auditor on Regina Station who can make your ship vanish from Imperial records.”
  4. “Artemis agents don’t carry badges. They carry warrants that haven’t been written yet.”
  5. “The Accord never breaks a contract. That’s what makes them worse.”
  6. “A black stone with three stars is worth more than a ship if you know who to show it to.”
  7. “The Poseidon Fleet can move cargo through a naval blockade.”
  8. “Merope doesn’t blackmail people. Merope makes people grateful to be owned.”
  9. “The Scorpion Protocol is just underworld theater. Unless you hear your own name.”
  10. “Artemis once let an entire pirate crew escape because they were following the money.”
  11. “There are seven Vaults. One of them contains the name of an Emperor.”
  12. “Orion and Artemis used to be the same operation. That’s why they hate each other.”

Signs the PCs Are Dealing with Orion

  • A criminal keeps a promise when betrayal would be easier.
  • Three unrelated people use the same phrase: “recognized debt.”
  • A forged document survives checks it should fail.
  • Someone pays an old debt on behalf of a dead person.
  • A broker refuses a profitable deal because “the Guide is neutral.”
  • A pirate crew releases a ship after discovering it is under Accord arbitration.
  • A noble’s scandal disappears from every archive except one.
  • A black gemstone appears in a place it should not be.
  • A local gang leader panics after hearing the word “Scorpion.”
  • A polite stranger knows the PCs’ debts better than they do.

Signs the PCs Are Dealing with Artemis

  • Local officials suddenly cooperate across jurisdictions.
  • A customs inspection asks questions unrelated to cargo.
  • Someone knows what the PCs carried three jumps ago.
  • An old minor crime is forgiven in exchange for one favor.
  • A patron gives oddly specific instructions without explanation.
  • A surveillance drone appears to malfunction at the same time every day.
  • An “auditor” asks about food shipments, not weapons.
  • A witness vanishes into protective custody before anyone admits they were a witness.
  • A sealed warrant references crimes that have not happened yet.
  • A calm agent says, “We are not after your employer. We are after what your employer needs.”

Making Both Factions Morally Interesting

The campaign is strongest if neither side is simple.

Orion’s virtues

  • Keeps its word when the Accord recognizes a debt.
  • Punishes reckless predators who endanger the larger order.
  • Offers refuge to people the Empire used and discarded.
  • Provides functioning logistics where Imperial systems fail.
  • Can be more honest about power than lawful institutions.
  • Rewards competence regardless of birth, species, or class.

Orion’s sins

  • Treats people as assets, leverage, prey, or property.
  • Replaces public law with private enforcement.
  • Corrupts courts, families, governments, and identities.
  • Uses loyalty as a chain.
  • Makes exploitation elegant.
  • Calls predation freedom.

Artemis’s virtues

  • Protects witnesses, children, and vulnerable targets.
  • Thinks systemically instead of chasing headlines.
  • Resists bribery and personal glory.
  • Understands that some crimes cannot be solved locally.
  • Can dismantle evil without mass violence.
  • Contains threats the public will never know existed.

Artemis’s sins

  • Lies habitually.
  • Sacrifices individuals for larger operations.
  • Protects Imperial reputations as well as Imperial citizens.
  • Uses deniable violence.
  • Treats truth as a controlled substance.
  • Can become indistinguishable from the thing it hunts.

Table-Ready Faction Moves

Use these when the PCs act.

Orion Moves

  • Offer a better-paying version of the same job.
  • Make a PC’s legal problem disappear.
  • Call in a debt the PCs did not know they inherited.
  • Provide information that is true but morally compromising.
  • Threaten an ally through bureaucracy rather than violence.
  • Invite the PCs to Accord arbitration.
  • Declare a mutual enemy Orion Fallen.
  • Frame the PCs to prove they need Orion protection.
  • Rescue the PCs, then charge them later.
  • Reveal that an Artemis patron lied.

Artemis Moves

  • Freeze a payment until the PCs answer questions.
  • Offer immunity for cooperation.
  • Provide a precise clue with no explanation.
  • Protect someone the PCs care about.
  • Ask the PCs to leave a crime unreported for now.
  • Turn a minor NPC into a key witness.
  • Reveal that an Orion ally has been cultivating them.
  • Use the PCs as unwitting bait.
  • Rescue the PCs, then deny involvement.
  • Present a warrant signed by someone impossibly high-ranking.

Mythological Code Names for Operations

Orion Operation Names

  • Operation Sea-Walker: illegal movement through impossible routes.
  • Operation Blind King: evidence corruption.
  • Operation Dawn Bride: recruitment through romance or rescue.
  • Operation Red Shoulder: spectacular violence.
  • Operation Three Stars: arbitration between major criminals.
  • Operation Seven Sisters: search for a Pleiades Vault.
  • Operation Fallen Hunter: Scorpion Protocol activation.
  • Operation Empty Quiver: disarming Artemis informant networks.
  • Operation Black Cup: ritualized debt settlement.
  • Operation Giant’s Step: expansion into a new subsector.

Artemis Operation Names

  • Operation Silver Bow: coordinated strike against Accord infrastructure.
  • Operation Moon Net: long-term surveillance.
  • Operation Crossroads: Hecate infiltration.
  • Operation Wild Earth: Gaia logistics attack.
  • Operation Clean Sting: direct action against non-arrestable target.
  • Operation Brauron: witness/family protection.
  • Operation Actaeon: containment of someone who learned too much.
  • Operation Sunlit Lie: Apollo deception campaign.
  • Operation Quiet Arrow: single-point systemic collapse.
  • Operation Last Hunt: attempt to identify a Star Council member.

A Strong Central Campaign Mystery

Here is a full spine you can use.

The Premise

The PCs are hired to transport a sealed antique navigation core recovered from a derelict station.

The job looks like salvage.

In truth, the core contains part of the Black Star Ledger.

Act I

Orion sends a polite Guide to buy the core.

Artemis sends an agent to seize it.

A local noble claims legal ownership.

The PCs discover the core responds to their ship because some previous owner had Project First Hunt credentials.

Act II

The core reveals coordinates to a Pleiades Vault.

The PCs need Orion routes to reach it and Artemis intelligence to survive it.

Both sides offer protection.

Both sides lie.

Act III

The Vault contains evidence that a current Imperial institution, noble house, or megacorporation was built on Orion money.

The PCs also learn that Artemis has concealed this for generations.

Act IV

Betelgeuse extremists attempt to trigger open conflict.

Apollo manipulates the PCs into exposing the extremists.

Mintaka offers the PCs a deal: hand over the Vault and receive wealth, clean identities, and Accord protection.

Artemis offers a different deal: hand over the Vault and receive pardons, legitimacy, and protection from Orion.

Act V

The PCs discover a final layer: the First Hunter may have intended the war to continue forever because it keeps both the underworld and Imperial intelligence dependent on the original system.

Destroying the Ledger may preserve stability.

Publishing it may cause chaos.

Keeping it may make the PCs the most hunted people in the subsector.

Useful Tone at the Table

When Orion appears, emphasize warmth, elegance, debt, appetite, and danger.

Orion rooms should have good wine, expensive silence, old favors, beautiful weapons, and people who smile while measuring exits.

When Artemis appears, emphasize quiet, patience, moonlight, paperwork, and precision.

Artemis rooms should have dim screens, sealed files, tired analysts, exact questions, and agents who already know more than they should.

Orion says:

“You are already in the story. We are offering you a better role.”

Artemis says:

“You are standing in a predator’s shadow. Step carefully.”

Neither side should ever feel random.

Both are hunters.

The question for the PCs is: who is prey, who is predator, and who decides when the hunt is over?