Integration Era: [Begin]

The system is online. You are now being measured.

A century ago, a colonial expedition cracked open something ancient on a frontier world. What came out wasn't a weapon. It wasn't a plague. It was worse. It was an answer to a question nobody asked. The Integration ignited across known space like a shockwave — an alien system of unknown origin that wrote itself into the mind of every sentient being it touched. No opt-out. No terms of service. One moment you were human. The next, you were human with a stat screen burning behind your eyes: six numbers, a designation, and a neural overlay that measured what you are whether you wanted to know or not.

They call the ones who built it the Architects. They're gone. Whether that means extinct, ascended, or watching through the system they left behind is the question that has haunted civilized space for a hundred years. No one has answered it. The Vethari — an alien species six centuries deeper into the Integration than humanity — know something. They won't say what.

[NOTIFICATION: Integration sphere expanding. Frontier systems reclassified. Designation protocols active.]