"Cleansing" is how she came to join the Erebus Confederacy. She believed her mother was on their home planet of Doreius in the Chaon System (five satellites orbiting a giant, desert-like primary-planet, bathed in light at all times of the year save a cyclical period of eclipse when the satellite planets align), keeping a warm, inviting home. She was proud that her older brother was a model sibling and soldier, and their father, the late Marshal, a noble man who as well as rehabilitating the wretches crossed on their trade routes, rehomed the many refugees left destitute on orphaned worlds. Positions were delegated by hereditary succession and she considered her promotion to Warden an honoured family duty. Breaking the prisoners free and instigating a riot was as much a reaction to the truth as it was a means to wrench the ship free from the flotilla. Combating the guards was a successful joint effort between freed slaves and defectors, but combating reinforcements posed the risk of catastrophic fatalities amongst non-military. She escaped by overpowering and killing a former comrade transporting her from the infirmary, and put her nose down to the grindstone on the merc' circuits, aiming to return and strike during her brother's promotion ceremony.

The ceremony was marked by an ex-Terra style execution of her allies, exposing them to intense heat within a chamber that emulated the heightened rays of radiation during Chaon's perihelion. She reacted in a way most unexpected. She watched, unmoving. Across the sea of weeping witnesses and seated dignitaries representing Chaon and its five moons - and indeed its conquered peoples - stood her brother, a fiendish grin lighting the gaze he was giving her. She left the ship without trouble, on the shuttle she had hijacked a moon-cycle ago, and slunk beyond the known borders of memory - or whatever memories had supplanted her own. The first "native" memory she would rewrite would be her name, no longer the one given, but one chosen in memory of her allies, Aphelia - the most distant point from a star's burning light.

The Chaon System is a placeholder name taken after her home planet. The humans peopling this expanse form a feudal society of planetary-states based around a solid titan of rock and metal, sworn to serving the Crux Tenebrous, fervent and devout, contributing fuel and manpower across the empire (is it?). I imagined their economy to be dependent on natural resources present on their primary-planet and in its surrounding astral bodies. Gaining in prominence is their other form of commerce - trafficking, particularly labour camps.