Dolkar: The Last Lifeline

Hard Sci Fi Military

Earth fell. The Swarm eats worlds alive — literally: their Nests drain a planet's lifeline core until nothing grows again. A dozen free worlds remain, held together by refugees, ration votes, and stubbornness. Humans and Saurians share the last constellation, and don't always share it well. You are the Resistance: hunt the Nests underground, keep the lifeline cores burning, and try to hold a democracy together while the dark between the stars fills with chitin. No magic. Just biology, logistics, and the people who stayed.

Where things stand

Dolkar: The Last Lifeline is played by real people and keeps moving between their sessions. This is the state of it as of the last update — not a fixed setting, and not where it began.

The water crisis escalates as Quartermaster Vekk launches aggressive patrols in The Mistfields, directly challenging the fortified independent network of Dr. Imani Chowdhury and Tariq, leading to open skirmishes. Simultaneously, Dr. Aris Venn and Specialist Kael deploy experimental bio-dampeners around the Bastion Ring and Derelict Echo Station, disrupting Swarm bio-drone communications and offering a new tactical advantage, while enraging The Drummer. In a spiritual counterpoint, Saurian elders convene at Vessa-Ka to interpret the profound implications of Acolyte Nerruth's Rites of Ending, seeking to guide their people through the escalating war and environmental instability. The Mistfields remain a contested zone, with independent water convoys facing increased aggression from Quartermaster Vekk's patrols, leading to frequent, sharp engagements. Vanguard forces at Derelict Echo Station begin deploying adaptive sonic countermeasures to exploit evolving Swarm bio-drone evasive patterns. Independent water convoys in The Mistfields deploy more agile purification modules, testing evasive capabilities against Vekk's patrols. Chowdhury and Tariq intensify their efforts, field-testing advanced purification protocols under direct skirmish conditions in The Mistfields.

Places

Emberfall Commonsdistrict: The civic heart of Dolkar: a bowl-shaped district of stacked prefab terraces, ration exchanges, and memorial walls etched with the names of fallen worlds. At its center stands the Concord Hall, an open-sided amphitheater where the joint human-Saurian council votes in public session — anyone may watch, and everyone does. Refugee kitchens steam at all hours. The orbital elevator's cable is visible from every street, a silver thread going up through the clouds to Highdock.
Highdockstation: Dolkar's orbital port: a ring station at the top of the elevator cable, all docking clamps, cargo nets, and corridors that smell of coolant and old coffee. The Drift Compact runs it — evacuation pilots, scout crews, and smugglers who stopped apologizing for the word. Every arriving hull carries the war in with it: hull scoring, refugee manifests, and rumors traded faster than fuel. The departures board lists lanes by risk color, and the risk colors keep getting warmer.
Cinderwakewasteland: A world the Swarm finished: grey dust plains, dead river-braids, cities standing empty under a sky that no longer rains right. Its lifeline core was drained forty years ago. Now it is the Resistance's great experiment — domed revival camps where bioremediation crews seed microbes into the ash and measure hope in parts per million. Walking Cinderwake is walking the war's stakes: this is what every free world becomes if the Nests win. And in test plot after test plot, faint green is coming back.
The Sunken Warrenswarm territory: A cave-riddled world the Swarm took eight years ago, its surface now resin-sealed and silent. Below, the cave systems descend for kilometers — chitin-lined galleries, egg-warm air, and the deep vibration every veteran learns to feel through their boot soles: an active Nest, feeding on the world's lifeline core. The Warren is the constellation's nearest confirmed Nest and the Vanguard's next great target. Approach routes exist. Survey teams that used them exist in smaller numbers.
Halvora Frontcolony: A human farm colony that refused to evacuate: fortified grain towers, militia trenches around the lifeline wellheads, and families who voted — twice — to stay. Halvora's siege has become the Concord's conscience and its headache. Every convoy that runs the lane to keep it fed costs fuel the fleet needs; every proposal to withdraw dies in a wall of Halvoran testimony. The colonists' defiance is either the Resistance's soul or its most expensive luxury, depending on which councilor is speaking.
Bastion Ringfortress: A ring-shaped fortress district girdling Dolkar's old crater rim: barracks, drill yards, armories, and the dueling floor where human officers settle promotion the formal way — witnessed, scored, and argued about for weeks after. The Ashfall Vanguard trains here for the war's defining work: Nest assaults. Deep in the secure wing, a xenobiology lab holds the only living Swarm specimen in the constellation. The guards call it the Drummer, because it taps.
The Mistfieldsfarmland: The Mistfields is now a critical, though highly dangerous, artery in the Resistance's supply network. Its volatile bio-signature activity is under intense scrutiny by Dr. Chowdhury, making it a hotspot for both covert trade and scientific observation. The water table is contaminated.
Latchpoint Relaystation: A deep-space relay station strung across an asteroid like rigging: antenna farms, cipher rooms, and a listening floor where the constellation's war news arrives first and worst. The Drift Compact crews it with analysts who speak in dispatch shorthand and drink too much recycled coffee. The big board — the Ledger — tracks every front: what fell this cycle, what's bleeding, where Nest-sign was last confirmed. Latchpoint knows before anyone. Latchpoint sleeps worse than anyone.
Vessa-Kasanctuary: A cold, tidally-lit moon-world of stone terraces and slow rivers where the Saurian remnant rebuilt its faith after the homeworld fell. Shrine-circles stand open to the sky, tuned to moon-tides and growing seasons. The rites practiced here are the bright half of the old religion — renewal, gratitude, the turning wheel. The dark half — the rites of grief and ending — went down with the homeworld, and the fragments being recovered are argued over like live ordnance. Humans are welcome, watched, and quietly studied.
The Root Vaultssanctum: The living heart of Dolkar, deep beneath Emberfall: vaulted caverns where the planet's lifeline core breathes in slow teal light. Root-columns thick as towers pulse with water and nutrient flows that feed the whole world's agriculture. The Verdant Chorus tends it in work-shifts that feel half engineering, half liturgy — Saurian hymns and human soil chemistry in the same breath. Every Resistance strategy ends in the same sentence: the Vaults must not go dark.
Korrun's Anvilwarfront: A hammer-hard mining world of open pits, ore gantries, and trench lines cut into slag. The Anvil feeds the Resistance's foundries — lose it, and the fleet stops being repaired. The Swarm wants it for the same reason it wants everything: the lifeline core under the crust. Garrison life is shelling rhythms, dust in the teeth, and the particular humor of people who have decided to stay anyway. The front line moves in meters and is paid for in more.
Derelict Echo Stationruins: An abandoned Vanguard listening post, partially collapsed and overgrown, situated on a desolate ridge overlooking the Hidden Seam. Its arrays are rusted, and internal systems are dark, but its strategic location remains crucial.
Concord Hallcastle: The central administrative building of Emberfall Commons, now under Mirelle Kade's occupation. Its imposing facade belies the political turmoil within.

Figures

Duel-Warden Callan ReyesKeeper of the Vanguard dueling floor
Quartermaster Ssarl VekkSaurian quartermaster and lane-broker
Warden Halcyon RheeSenior evacuation pilot and Drift Compact warden
Captain Rhoda MaksaneGarrison commander of Korrun's Anvil
Elder Sesska VayilChief bioremediation scientist
Acolyte NerruthYoung Saurian rebuilding the lost rites
Keeper SszinnahEldest keeper of Vessa-Ka's shrines
Dr. Imani ChowdhuryChief bioremediation scientist
Commander Ssevar Ka'ReshSaurian second-in-command of the Vanguard
Dr. Aris VennXenobiologist, keeper of the Drummer
Analyst Juno AdlerSenior signal analyst at Latchpoint
Speaker Talia MerevElected Speaker of the Dolkar Concord
Councilor Ossek ThavSaurian hardliner councilor
Marshal Adaeze OkoroElected war-marshal of the Ashfall Vanguard
The DrummerCaptive Swarm vanguard-caste specimen
Mirelle KadeRefugee organizer from the fallen worlds

These are the figures the world was seeded with, and who are still alive in it. Others have appeared since, and some of these are no longer who they were — the world keeps moving whether or not anyone is watching.