Races

Humanity was interstellar long before the cradle fell — centuries of diplomacy and command doctrine carried through the crossing intact, because the world they fled was never their first. What survives from that history is not a flag but a habit: the belief that presence, not proclamation, is what makes authority real. Every lawful station in the Expanse is human-run for exactly that reason, and human commanders serve on both banners of the war that followed.

The Dralvok crossed with the convoy, not before it — no named homeworld stands behind them, only a code carried through the exodus: the open hand over the closed ledger. To take something openly is honest; to hold it and call the holding _order_ is a lie with better paperwork. That single conviction shapes everything else about them, from how they fight to why the Crimson Corsairs exist at all.

The Khareth call themselves Kha'reth — those who awaken the heart of worlds — and the name is doctrine, not poetry. Born to a metal-rich world under a crushing atmosphere, their entire civilization rests on extraction: not as an industry bolted onto a culture, but as the culture's founding act. Ancient, patient, and unhurried, they are the Expanse's deep-world people, cool blue-grey against the Human and Dralvok crews they crossed with.