Derived From: Xenowardens
The Arkbound Conservancy is a wandering alliance of eco-wardens, xenobiologists, and “xenodruids” who travel the Starfall Galaxy in living bioships, defending threatened ecosystems—natural, artificial, and Rift-twisted—from corporate strip‑mining, reckless Metronome projects, and weaponized biotechnologies.
Arkbound Conservancy: Keepers of Living Worlds
Most people see a dead rock and ask how many Yoms of ore it holds.
The Arkbound see soil that has not yet learned to breathe.
The Conservancy drifts between the Outer Sphere and the Frontier in colossal living arkships, each grown from a seeded biosphere that can unfurl forests, reefs, or fungal jungles across a scarred world. They intervene when fief-lords, Commission cartels, or Rift cults treat planets as disposable, fighting to keep at least some corners of the galaxy alive, wild, and capable of healing itself.
Their doctrine is simple to state and brutal to uphold: no profit, no prophecy, and no experiment is worth extinguishing a world’s ability to renew itself.
Rules and Tenents
Edicts Protect planetary ecosystems; favor symbiotic technology; preserve genetic diversity; stabilize Rift‑twisted biomes rather than purge on sight.
Anathema Rendering a world uninhabitable for profit or ideology; deliberate extinction of a sapient species; uncontrolled release of bioweapons; industrializing a protected biome without Conservancy consent.
Wandering Living Arks
The Conservancy’s mobile headquarters are arkships: vast, semi-sapient bioships that ride Rift currents and Metronome lanes like migratory beasts. Each ark carries seed vaults, gene libraries, and whole “sample biomes” in terrarium decks, ready to replant devastated worlds—or evacuate species before the next collapse.
Eco‑Wars in the Frontier
On the Frontier, Arkbound cells race wildcatter guilds and Commission-backed prospectors to new finds, trying to set “no‑go biomes,” negotiate sustainable extraction, or ignite local uprisings when negotiation fails. Their presence turns routine resource grabs into three‑sided struggles between profit, survival, and the stubborn persistence of living systems.
Rift‑Tainted Nature Guardians
The Rift warps ecology as easily as minds, birthing impossible food chains and psychic forests. The Arkbound reject the fantasy of returning to some pure, pre‑Rift “pristine” nature; instead, they specialize in stabilizing these new ecosystems and containing the most apocalyptic mutations. To outsiders, their willingness to protect certain Riftborn species makes them look like eco‑cultists—or collaborators with horrors the rest of the galaxy would rather burn.
Arkbound Culture
Conservancy crews are mosaics of cultures and species: ryphorian ecologists fleeing seasonal over‑exploitation, uplifted animals whose ancestors were once lab specimens, ex‑corporate terraformers wracked by guilt, and witches who made pacts with planetary spirits instead of distant gods.
Arkbound training looks more like a pilgrimage than a boot camp. Recruits are dropped into a sequence of “teaching biomes”—from derelict Inner Sphere arboretums to poisoned asteroid gardens—where they must learn how to help an ecosystem recover without turning it into a museum or a farm. Those who try to “fix” everything at once usually wash out; those who learn to make small, survivable changes become wardens.
Every arkship keeps a Living Ledger, a gene‑coded record of every species they’ve saved and every world they’ve failed. Wardens carve personal glyphs into their exosuits and weapons, reminding themselves which creatures they fight for—and which ghosts they owe.
Organizational Structure
Structurally, the Conservancy operates as a loose lattice of “Wards”—regional chapters tied to specific spheres, Rift-Burg clusters, or arkships—coordinated by an itinerant High Curator council that travels aboard a wandering worldship-laboratory. Many Wards maintain formal ties with the Chronologists Guild and Navigators’ orders, swapping ecological stabilization expertise for Metronome data and safer Rift routes to move fragile cargo.
Hierarchy
How is the faction hierarchy structured? What are its ranks, and each of their functions?
Power Centers
A migratory flotilla of arkships
List notable subgroups of this faction here, especially if these subgroups' activities contribute to rifts in the organizational structure.
Governing Laws
If your faction is a government or other group with huge sway over whole populations of people, you may find it useful to list the most common laws here as it relates to your world (if applicable), along with the punishments for breaking those laws.
Implications
Disaster Relief & Refugee Support
Conservancy cells excel at triaging devastated colonies, establishing emergency agro‑domes, and converting Rift‑warped flora into safe food chains. PCs aligned with the Arkbound can lead evacuation efforts, negotiate the resettlement of both people and keystone species, or oversee long‑term remediation contracts instead of simple “monster clearing.”
Scientific & Diplomatic Mediation
Arkbound xenobiologists and “biosphere translators” often mediate between Commission planners, Navigators, Chronologists, and local populations when infrastructure threatens a biome. They can help parties secure permits, reduce environmental impact, or re‑route projects—at the cost of profit, convenience, or political goodwill.
Bio‑Tech and Healing
Their labs prototype symbiotic gear—exosuits that host lichen that recycle CO₂, rifles that grow bone‑like recoil dampeners, or med‑pods that use engineered coral to regrow tissue. In social play, Arkbound contacts can supply unusual medicines, clean food, or bio‑compatible implants that don’t scream “black‑clinic augmetics” to airport security.
Social Impact
In the Inner Sphere, the Arkbound are an annoyance and a moral mirror—useful when an arcology’s air scrubbing fails, but troublesome when they lobby to shut down a profitable Rift‑adjacent refinery built over a migrating herd’s only freshwater springs. Commission politicians publicly praise their “noble work” while quietly funding mercenaries to keep them away from critical assets.
In the Outer Sphere, they are kingmakers. A fief that adopts Conservancy practices can gain food security, weather stabilization, and access to seed‑ark support. One that defies them may find its soil collapsing, its pollinators gone, and its harvests rotting under unseasonal storms—natural consequences the Arkbound are very good at predicting and, some say, nudging.
On the Frontier, rumor paints them as eco‑terrorists in moss‑grown armor, sabotaging drill rigs and Riftgates. The truth is more complicated: Arkbound cadres vary from cautious diplomats to zealots who will gladly strand a war fleet if it means saving the last breathable valley on a dying world.
The Arkbound Conservancy brings a clear “living worlds first” through‑line into Starfall’s grim, resource‑scarce galaxy, giving you a faction that can be patron, obstacle, or uneasy ally whenever survival, profit, and ecology collide. If you’d like, we can next build a dedicated Arkbound archetype, a specific arkship profile, or a reputation table formatted exactly like the Chronologists Guild for direct drop‑in to your rules compendium.