The Vaulters

Inquisitive and fearless, the Vaulters seek traces of their past and sources of knowledge across the galaxy.

**About**
Gameplay
Traits
Ships
Strategy

 *An ancient faction, the Vaulters suffered continual setbacks in trying to establish a permanent home for themselves.  Not so much restless wanderers as adaptable pragmatists, their centuries of travel and tinkering have made them skilled at both science and warfare.  Defense remains their preferred military strategy, and their grim tenacity makes them effective defenders.  They have a tradition of appointing female leaders, and their history of escaping and surviving to fight another day continually reaffirms it.*

## Description

The Vaulters left the planet of Auriga when potentially cataclysmic geo-atmospheric problems were detected.  Having left their homes, gods, and many of their people behind them, the dream of regaining these things has gained an almost mythical status.

They are a stubborn, resilient people that have spent centuries seeking a home. Stranded on the world of Auriga, they had to survive the harsh climate and even harsher neighbors. In a years-long effort, they managed to repair their ancient colony ship, the **Argosy**, and once again depart before the dying planet became their grave. Once more among the stars, the people that now call themselves the Aurigans still seek traces of their past as well as a safe place to build their future.

## Lore

The Vaulters are the descendants of the crew and cargo of the **Argosy**, a Mezari Arkship that crashed on a landmass in the southern pole of the world of **Auriga**. Stranded, isolated and without any technology to properly repair and refuel the crashed dreadnought, the surviving Vaulters salvaged what they could from the wreck and set about making a foothold on the strange yet beautiful planet. When they first reached the surface, they found it too inhospitable for habitation and chose instead to live beneath the surface. A group of scientists experimented on a group of Mezari in an attempt to improve their surface survivability, but the test subjects rebelled, escaped from containment and formed their own nation in the surface, calling themselves the Forgotten.

They found vast underground labyrinths under Auriga's surface and built great halls and fortress cities there. As summers and winters passed, the Vaulters had finally found peace and prosperity. Skilled in mining, crafting and studying Auriga, knowledge of what came before became lost in legendary myths that were now largely ignored, and eventually forgotten.

Centuries later an "event" triggered The Great Quake, labyrinths collapsed on the Vaulter's cities and cracked open their halls revealing long forgotten relics and secrets that shared their patterns and images. A race beaten and their underground homes decimated, the Vaulters fled the destruction, taking the newly acquired relics and technology with them to surface where they were met with an uncertain and dangerous journey.

After finding Opbot in a forgotten cavern, the Vaulters rediscovered the Argosy with his help. After facing civil wars and the worst of foes Auriga could offer, the Vaulters repaired the ship as much as they could and left the dying planet behind, alongside the Sisters of Mercy, using Opbot as the ship's power source. As the Argosy escaped Auriga's atmosphere, another group of survivors that escaped the planet in an abandoned Hissho ship had a powerful device explode in the ship's cargo bay when it jumped. The explosion was so powerful that it destroyed the Argosy's propulsion systems, leaving it drifting across the depths of space for millennia.

Opbot kept the ship and its cryopods running for centuries, as the Argosy traveled the void of space. Just when it seemed he would shut down and doom the Vaulters, the Argosy flew close to the **Lodestone of the Nine**, a powerful Endless rejuvenation field, that restored Opbot's systems and the ship's engines, saving the Vaulters and giving them a new chance to rebuild.

### Leadership

Bearing the title she held before the centuries of cryo-sleep, **Ilona Zolya, the First of the Bloodline**, is the uncontested leader of the people once nicknamed "Vaulters". The Zolya family have been hereditary rulers for generations, and the continued survival of her people attests to the excellence of their dedication and training. While the structure might appear to be a monarchy, in reality the various guilds and families provide checks and balances that limit the power of the First. With a strong, shared sense of tradition and community, the Aurigans under Zolya hope to find a lasting home somewhere in the forbidding darkness of the galaxy.

### Homeworld

Before she died, **Auriga** was a garden planet, and the body of one of one of the last survivors of the Lost, a race of god-like beings from which Dust originally came from. Auriga housed the Husk of Knowledge, the greatest site for the study of xenobiology created by the genius of the Concrete Endless. A towering achievement of industry and science, the surface and crust of the planet were a warren of laboratories, biospheres, and research centers, with myriad experiments run on both natives like the Allayi, the Guardians, and the Drakken and alien lifeforms like the Kapaku. A site of major conflict during the Dust Wars, the planet never fully recovered from the damage done by the Virtuals' assault. Over the millennia, the environment degraded and the surface of the planet was covered in ice. While there are rumors and expeditions that claim to have uncovered miraculous ruins and the vestiges of great empires, today Auriga is an icy tomb.

The Aurigans have no homeworld anymore; they were driven from Auriga by its inevitable decline and seek to find a new one. While the **Argosy** fulfills this role for the moment, it is clear that they must find a suitable planet and establish a colony as quickly as possible. Time is running out for the ship, and therefore the Aurigans themselves.

### Society

Split by necessity into two peoples, the Aurigans on the Argosy hope to find and establish a colony in time to return and rescue those who stayed behind on Auriga. They are led by the leader formally referred to as "First of the Bloodline", though their intermarriage with other Aurigan humanoids has made them genetically more diverse and resilient. They still feel a strong connection with those who were stranded, of course, and dream of returning to find them alive.

Before the Argosy, their society had traditionally been structured along roughly feudal lines, with "Protectors" in the role of aristocracy and a priesthood of the Great Orrery looking after spiritual matters. Numerous cataclysms and the apocalypse of the planet have shaken the power of the church, leading the Aurigans to evolve into what would be called a constitutional or federal monarchy. However, while their faith in the divine has been shaken, their faith in the First of the Bloodline remains unwavering.

## Trivia

* The Vaulters have been present in every major Endless game so far. You can read about the Endless Legend Vaulters here, or the Endless Space 1 Vaulters here.