Lazuna is a hollowed asteroid spun into domed cities and deep drydocks: the system’s principal shipyard and the one place where pre-Scream procedures for spikedrives still run end-to-end. The ancient core remains in Guild hands; the surrounding slips and habs are a patchwork of concession zones and worker enclaves. It looks orderly from orbit and feels negotiated up close.

Governance

The yard is held together by a compact between three pillars: the Guild’s Core Trust (stewards of the pretech lines and certifiers of spikedrive work), the concessionaires that finance and operate peripheral slips, and the Commons Deputies who represent the unions. There’s no true monopoly of force; peace is maintained by norms everyone can live with—Court Lanterns that suspend violence under their light, Shift Truces that keep arrests off the clock, and the practical threat of blacklisting that starves offenders of cranes, parts, and berths.

Yard capability

Tech level is TL4 for ordinary fabrication, with TL5 procedural inheritance inside the Core for sealed spikedrive assemblies. Throughput in peacetime is predictable: three capital slips that turn city-hulls and carriers in roughly a year plus; seven major slips that handle cruisers and big merchants in four to eight months; a lattice of light slips and service cages that keep patrol craft, free merchants, cutters, and drones moving in weeks rather than months.

Industrial web

Inputs arrive as Serambi refractory metals and doped alloys, Timara solvents and industrial gases, Javon biosynths and med-kit staples, and imported photonics. Outputs are hulls and refits, sealed cores in small numbers, hab segments and life-support racks, drone swarms, radiation baffles, and overhaul kits. The reason Lazuna matters is simple: schedules hold and certifications stick.

Districts

The Core Vaults

Pressurized caverns beneath stained blast doors, quiet enough that tool carts sound like bells. The pretech lines and the sealed drive protocols live here, and the Guild’s authority is not theoretical. Wardens in pale coats move with the calm of people who don’t explain themselves twice. Hylix-Ventross only appears as brass plates on service cabinets—legacy concessions that no one seems willing to renegotiate. Cobalt crews visit as petitioners, never in numbers, never with visible muscle. If you want a license signed or a tolerance certified, this is where the ink dries and where the price of mistakes is a lifetime off the yard.

Slipway Alif

A canyon of gantries where the shift bells are tuned by deck so crews can sort their time by ear. Alif takes the flagship work: city-hulls, carriers, anything that makes the rest of the yard stand straighter. The Guild controls the central run and any cradle that touches a driveset; Hylix-Ventross holds supply corridors on the rim and runs the doped-alloy ovens that gate the schedule. The union marshals are everywhere in high-visibility harnesses, and everyone pretends not to notice Cobalt’s lighter slipping in after lights-down to tug a disputed hull two berths north. A Lantern mounted over the master gantry keeps arguments civil; when it flares, negotiators arrive faster than medics.

Bendahara Exchange

A smoked-glass oculus throws down a ring of daylight on the auction floor. Credit houses line the inner circle, insurance syndics occupy the spokes, and parts brokers haunt the shadows between. Prices here are diplomacy by other means: Hylix-Ventross writes vendor lists on embossed paper; Cobalt trades favors across coffee cups; the Magistracy’s clerks keep a ledger that never seems to close. The Guild appears as a rumor—“the certification window opens next week if you can produce a clean dosimetry chain”—and disappears before anyone can take notes. Deals made in the Exchange settle fights outside it; if you want to move a mountain with a signature, this is where you learn what mountains cost.

Lavender Kubah

The dome that rioted and then learned to mourn. Names are etched by tool—wrench, torch, meter—because trade is identity here and the dead don’t leave their crafts behind. The Commons Deputies keep an office opposite the memorial slates; their Safety Veto travels on a short walk from there to any slip within shouting distance. Hylix-Ventross avoids press conferences inside the Kubah and prefers to announce concessions from the Exchange, which tells you what they fear. Cobalt funds the tea at night vigils and pays for replacement visors without receipts. The Legion’s liaison sends wreaths on anniversaries and stays away the rest of the year.

The Forge Spine

A zero-g lattice bored through the asteroid’s marrow, lit like a chapel with task lamps and inspection beams. Fabrication here tastes of hot metal and lemon detergent; the air turns thin when the big ovens feed. The Guild calibrates the Spine’s metrology rigs and posts a Warden at the cardinal nodes. Hylix-Ventross owns the longest bake ovens and the rail that feeds them; their logo is the only thing here allowed to be shiny. Cobalt uses third-shift gaps to “test” reclaimed swarms and to swap tags on identical parts that differ only in provenance. If something vanishes in the Spine, it wasn’t stolen so much as renamed.

The Skein

Out past the domes, the yard becomes lines in vacuum: tethered workways, beacon hoops, cold-soak cradles, and EVA ranges slung over raw rock. Crews qualify here with real stars in their visors. The Guild’s jurisdiction thins with the air; their Wardens ride scooters along the tethers and speak mostly in hand signals. Hylix-Ventross maintains the beacon network and therefore controls who gets a safe corridor after curfew. Cobalt trains drone schools on the far hoop where the cameras don’t quite overlap; if a hull needs to cool fast or disappear faster, it passes through the Skein first. Blacklisting bites hardest here—no one will catch your tether if the yard has turned its face from you.

Magistracy Ring

A slow-turn ring with court chambers, bonded vaults, and a library of contracts bound in cloth. Filings matter more than guns in this orbit, and the Bailiffs know the difference between a seizure that holds and a spectacle that won’t. Hylix-Ventross always seems to arrive with a stamped form that everyone else swears didn’t exist yesterday. The Guild argues with footnotes and meets every deadline by an hour; Cobalt’s counsel has a genius for continuances that stretch into opportunities. If a Lantern lights anywhere on Lazuna, a docket blooms here within the hour.

Kampung Rantai

Stacked worker rows over steam canteens and kit repair stalls, named for the chain slung on laundry lines between balconies. Apprentices sleep in shifts; elders keep the dosimetry logs like family bibles. The unions recruit here because everyone owes and remembers. Hylix-Ventross funds a clinic on the lower tier and gets better attendance at vendor briefings in return. Cobalt sponsors a youth tug-race every fifth restday and places quiet bets on which pilot will be worth hiring at seventeen. The Guild rarely enters except to bless a cohort of new drivewrights in a ceremony that looks suspiciously like graduation.

Vibe cues

A rigger presses a prayer strip to a gantry and the whole shift falls silent until the adhesive cures.

The Court Lanterns flare and an argument collapses into hurried forms at the filing desk.

Children surf a maintenance mag-sled down the Forge Spine, leaving lemon-scented vapor in their wake.

In the Exchange, three meters of chain pay for a man’s debt and a week’s berth besides.

Beyond the domes, a tether line thrums as a drone school wheels in vacuum against the bead of a beacon.

A Warden turns a valve a quarter-turn and the engineers bow as if a rite has concluded.

Under Lavender Kubah, welders keep their visors up while the names are read, sparks falling like petals.