Synopsis:

Humanity had touched the stars and spread their seed amongst them. But alas, through infighting, civil war, countless disaster and strife, Terra has lost all but a handful of those colonial words. It would take many millennia before they were fit enough to reclaim the lost territories. What humanity found in the eternal depths of the void disheartened them greatly. Scores of colonies had been destroyed, preyed upon by the few humans who still possessed star drives or predatory species that had been kept at bay until the fall. The colonies that had survived were in such states of decay and ignorant of their star-faring roots or the mighty empire that had come before it.

The first attempts to bring these feudal worlds into the long lost fold of Man were disastrous. It was deemed catastrophic to pluck these civilisations from their primitive existence and cast them into the stars. A new solution was needed other than open and direct first contact. It was from this that the Protectorate formed. Their mission: to subtly influence the development of the feudal words to bring them to a level of technological and social enlightenment that first contact could be made and the lost colonies returned to the fold.

The planet designated RO:LXXI, informally known as Sijia, is just such a planet. A simple M-class world degenerated to a feudal classification.

In the stronghold of King Thasos, the Protectorate guides his hand through seemingly mystic and divine power. Imogen, the apprentice of Arch Mage Koris, is sent on her final trial to investigate a rash of disappearances in the frigid and windswept northern wastes. But all is not as it seems. Silence and death have befallen the region and a darkness from the deep abyss threatens to overtake the land and maybe Sijia itself. Can Imogen end the foulness that threatens Sijia and bring the world back from the brink? Would she sacrifice everything she holds dear to do so? Or would the temptation of power be too much?