📜 Editor’s Note from Brody

Welcome to the very first issue of the OtherSpace Observer - or maybe I should say: welcome back.

Some of you might remember the original Observer from the early days of the MUSH - an email newsletter and occasional PDF packed with in-character news stories, weird transmissions, and world-spanning updates from across the grid. It was a stitched-together collection of pirate radio, propaganda, and public service announcements. And honestly? It was kind of beautiful in its chaos.

This is the next evolution - new format, same soul.

The Observer is still your window into what’s going on out there: the shifting factions, the salvaged tech, the quiet threats, and the strange new faces drifting through Iron’s End. But it’s also a tool - something to help you plug in, catch up, and jumpstart your next scene.

Whether you’ve been around since Hivers managed the FTL drives or you just rolled up your first scavver last week, I’m glad you’re here. There’s plenty of story left to tell.

Let’s get to it.
- Wes Platt, a.k.a. Brody

🧠 State of the Grid

Iron’s End

🧱 The station never sleeps. It creaks. It whispers. It leaks.

• Power fluctuations on Deck C are being blamed on a so-called “reactor spirit.” The engineers say it’s just a failing stabilizer. The janitorial crew swears they saw a glowing silhouette near the conduits.
• Someone has been hacking the recycling chutes and smuggling contraband in through maintenance shafts. Nobody’s naming names, but more than one Pact crew has suddenly upgraded their gear.
• A scout went poking around the sealed Vault in Hangar 3 and vanished for three days. Came back quiet. Shaky. Won’t say what they saw. People are watching them now - and not just out of curiosity.
• Player Highlights: Connect with Francoise if you're interested in some player-run roleplaying opportunities ahead of our official grand opening in June.

Ashen Pact

🔧 Scavengers, survivors, and half-repaired rebels - trying to hold the line against entropy.

• A dockside trader showed up under a false transponder and unloaded crates bearing pre-Fall Consortium seal codes. Inside: blank slates, sealed containment pods, and silence. No one's claiming responsibility for what came next.
• The Pact’s go-to mechanic in Bay 6 ghosted mid-shift, tools still humming. No fights. No drama. Some think she hit the edge and walked. Others say she found a backdoor into the deep crawlspaces - and something there found her.
• A crew claims they recovered a sealed cryo-pod - and it’s still got a pulse inside. Word is, the sleeper’s wearing a uniform no one’s seen in a hundred years. Some want to open it. Some want to space it. Nobody agrees, which means it's probably still in someone's cargo bay.

Rustborn

🚷 Where the only law is heat, teeth, and torque.

• A Rustborn warband called the Coil Hounds is building something massive in the shadow of a shattered relay station - rumor says it’s a mobile forge rig with jump capability. Word is, it needs a black hole core to fire up. Nobody’s sure where they’re going to get one. Or what happens when they do.
• One-eyed warlord Vess Throttlejack was last seen dragging a gutted Hollow Choir frigate through deadspace with engine chains and prayer. The wreck vanished before reaching Rustborn space. Some say the Choir took it back. Others say Vess finally crossed a line the galaxy itself wouldn’t tolerate.
• A new Rustborn clan calling themselves the “Oathcutters” has begun broadcasting cryptic signals on old military frequencies. The messages are fragmented oaths of loyalty...and revenge. People are trying to decipher if it's a declaration of war - or a recruitment campaign.
• Salvagers working the edge of Rustborn-controlled systems report seeing a makeshift ship strung together from six different hulls and powered by what appears to be a living reactor. It's escorted by smaller craft that don't register on any known IFF system - but they bleed when shot.
• Rustborn raiders struck a Pact-affiliated outpost, but instead of taking salvage, they left behind a locked container labeled “FOR THE NEXT STORM.” It’s still sitting in a bay on Iron’s End. Nobody’s opened it. Not yet.
• A Rustborn child was found drifting in a pressure suit just outside Iron’s End. No markings. No voice. Just a data shard embedded in their shoulder that pulses when it’s near Hollow Choir tech. They haven’t said a word. But they listen.

Hollow Choir

🕯 Not dead. Not alive. Not done.

• Two Choir ships met in dead space and locked hulls for three days. No comms. No signals. When they split, one was leaking a black, web-like substance into space. The other hasn’t been seen since.
• A package arrived on Iron’s End wrapped in stitched, organic fabric. No markings. Inside: a data crystal encrypted in pre-Fall Choir dialect and a black feather that seeps a pale blue fluid when touched.
• A former Choir member has been wandering the lower decks without their mask, whispering in forgotten tongues. They say they’ve been “unplugged” - but the circuitry under their skin still pulses.

🛰 Spotlight Feature

This Issue: 🛰️ 10 Things People Think They Know About Iron’s End

—Where Rust Never Sleeps—

“It was supposed to be the start of something new. Now it’s just where things end.”

Floating half-forgotten at the edge of no man’s space, Iron’s End isn’t just a place. It’s a last chance. A scavver’s gamble. A graveyard you can still call home.

But where did it come from?

And why does it still survive when everything else died?

Ask around the Shambles, and here’s what you’ll hear.

1. Iron’s End was a mining station – until the miners died.

The original purpose? A Consortium-backed mining and refinery station, chewing through asteroids in the Thorn Belt. Then the Plague hit. Workers died. Systems shut down. The survivors bolted, or adapted.

2. It was supposed to be scrapped.

Official records said Iron’s End was abandoned and decommissioned. But the scavvers who stayed behind rewired it, patched it, and turned it into a refuge. The Consortium forgot about it, or chose to.

3. The station’s original AI is still active – and insane.

Some say the old station AI, Anchorite, never shut down. It just changed. Sometimes systems reboot without warning. Sometimes doors open – or lock – seemingly on their own. Maybe it’s broken. Maybe it’s… something else now.

4. The core reactor is a ticking bomb.

Iron’s End runs off a patched-together fusion core cobbled from half a dozen wrecks. Every year, someone says this will be the year it blows the station into confetti. Every year, it doesn’t – yet.

5. There’s a shipyard hidden below Deck 13.

Deep below the main concourses, past the sealed hatches and crumbling maintenance shafts, people claim there’s an old black-ops shipyard: half-built ships, experimental tech, and maybe a few surprises that still work.

6. The Shambles were built on blood money.

The Shambles market wasn’t just a gathering of desperate traders. Rumor says it was funded by a warlord who laundered stolen Consortium artifacts through Iron’s End – before vanishing without a trace.

7. Patch didn’t found the Shambles – but she finished it.

Patch wasn’t the original ruler of the marketplace. She just outlived everyone else. Some say she bought it. Some say she clawed her way to the top – literally.

8. There’s a hidden sector no one’s mapped yet.

There are sealed bulkheads and unexplored maintenance tunnels nobody’s cracked open since before the fall. People hear sounds from back there sometimes: scraping, whispering, things that don’t match any known life form.

9. The station drifts. On purpose.

Iron’s End isn’t tethered. It’s been drifting slowly for decades, across dead systems and through debris fields. Some say it’s random. Some say the AI’s steering it toward… something.

10. One day, Iron’s End will tear itself apart – and no one will be able to stop it.

The welds fail. The reactor buckles. The supports crumble. Everyone knows it’s coming eventually. But until then?

You drink.
You trade.
You survive.

Because on Iron’s End, that’s all anyone knows how to do.

🗨️ What People Say

• “This station’s older than my granddad’s granddad – and meaner, too.”
• “If you stay long enough, Iron’s End knows you. And it changes you.”
• “Patch runs the market, Rake keeps the peace, Reeva keeps the memories. Anchorite keeps… watching.”
• “Ain’t the Plague that’ll kill us. It’ll be a weld popping loose near the O2 pumps.”
• “Iron’s End was the last stop. Now it’s the only stop.”

No one really built Iron’s End to last.
But somehow, it’s outlived almost everything else.
Maybe because it’s too broken to die.

🎲 Scene Hooks & Character Prompts

• You’ve been asked to “audit” a patch job done on an Iron's End data terminal. What you find inside isn’t just code.
• A stranger in the market claims they know your name. You don’t recognize them - but they’ve got details no one else could.
• A weapons crate misrouted to the station turns out to contain something very unscrupulous. The seller wants it back. Now.

🎤 From the Community

ROLEPLAYING FLASHBACK: A Blessing in Blood

Two Nall - Rathorl and Betoth - battle for the right to wed a Nall named Kh'rrtyris.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Rathorl grunts as he parries several blows. He's still bleeding badly from his wounded arm, and his parries seem to carry less strength, as if he has grown tired.

Betoth's blows, coming as they are from his good, but relatively untrained right hand, are equally weak. CLANG! CLONK! CLANG! The combatants continue circling each other, eyes locked on the other as they step back for a breather.

Kh'rrtyris whips her head around to regard her mother with cold, reptilian eyes. "It is no dishonor to challenge, and it is certainly no disgrace should I require my future mate to prove his strength mother." Her low growling hiss is the eerie calm before a battle, tail held stiff and straight behind her, jaws parted in a rather savage Nallish smile.

Betoth stumbles abruptly, weak leg giving weight beneath him. He snarls, neck exposed to attack.

Rathorl tastes the air with his forked tongue, then, sensing an opportunity to strike, roars and leaps forward, bringing his sword down toward the exposed neck. His shadow falls across the gleaming knife on the ground.

Betoth's mouth lolls open. His knee dips abruptly lower, with seeming suddenness able to support his weight again. As he drops beneath the slashing blade, his own return strike comes, adrenaline driving his battle-wearied muscles to new strength as he tears his sword at his enemy's abdomen.

Rhas'eas opens her large jaw, raising her palm in a contemptuous gesture. "Betoth fights his own battle. There is no honor in taking refuge in your protection.

A surprised hiss and a gout of blood issues forth from Rathorl's mouth, spraying Betoth, as the sword finds a groove in the armor and punctures the Vox guard's belly. The sword gripped in his hand falls to the dirt. He sags forward, blade digging deeper.

Kh'rrtyris lifts her snout with equal contempt. "There is no law against my challenging Rathorl after this has ended if..." Her eyes whip to the battle and she releases a savagely triumphant hiss. "Or perhaps that will no longer be necessary." Her eyes flicker to Betoth for a moment with great approval.

Rhas'eas raises a clawed hand toward the effigy of Nalia and screams. "No!"

Betoth roars his triumph, spraying his opponent with foam. His wounded arm rises, supporting the wounded Nall for but a moment with his forearm. In that moment, the curved blade draws back once more, swinging mercilessly at its owner's neck.

Unable to defend himself, Rathorl can do nothing as the sword slices into his neck and then - *CLUNK!* - becomes lodged in Rathorl's windpipe. Jammed in place, the sword remains attached to Rathorl like some bizarre, bloody silver appendage as he collapses to the ground. His blood splatters the ceremonial knife nearby.

🧰 Behind the Scenes

• With Newt's help, we've upgraded the database.
• I've been breaking CSpace. Colchek's fixing my damage.
• You can follow OtherSpace MUSH on BlueSky!
• Connect on our new OtherSpace MUSH page on Facebook!
• Look for upcoming lore drops about character archetypes and ship classes in the latest iteration of OtherSpace! You'll find those first on our subreddit!

Want to run a player scene or arc? Ping Brody on Discord!

🫶 Thanks to Our Supporters

Huge thanks to our Patreon crew:

Curnan, Seth, Navigator, Kaiser, Colchek, and Jeremy - you’re keeping the station spinning and the story alive.

Every dollar supports:

• Hosting at otherspacemush.com
• The 24/7 MUSH server
• Premium subreddit features
• Community outreach like Facebook ads and new player onboarding

📡 Closing Signal

Thanks for reading this issue of the OtherSpace Observer. The galaxy’s still broken - but it’s alive, and full of stories waiting to be told.

See you on the grid.
— Brody