Keros

Keros is a frontier mining region characterized by abandoned arrays, cracked moons, and colonies built by people who did not want to be found by the Core. It is Vex's home territory. For most players, Keros is the first region outside the safe starting zone of the Verge, and its character — equal parts derelict industrial infrastructure and unsettling timeline phenomena — sets the tone for everything that follows.

The region's star, Keros Prime, went unstable two hundred years ago during an event that the Weavers refer to only as the Third Unspooling. The resulting radiation made the inner planets uninhabitable but also created conditions that allow certain timeline-bleed phenomena to manifest. This is why Vex chose Keros — her kind of work requires a place where timelines are already unstable. The population dropped from an estimated 600 million before the event to roughly 4 million scattered across 18 surviving systems in the present day.

Geography and systems

Keros is composed of 18 navigable systems clustered around the unstable Keros Prime. Unlike the Verge, which has a clean orbital hierarchy, Keros systems are irregular — some planets orbit at extreme inclinations, some moons orbit nothing obvious, and two asteroid fields are classified as "free-floating," meaning they do not obey local gravitational wells in any consistent way. Navigators describe these anomalies as residual effects of the Third Unspooling.

The most important systems for Chapter 1 gameplay:

• Keros-4 — The abandoned array where Vex first meets the player. The core location of Chapter 1. Contains a functional dock, three empty cargo bays, and one sealed chamber the player cannot enter until Chapter 3.
• Keros-2 — A medical colony of roughly 400,000 people, also Medical supply destination in Chapter 5 Sacred ending. The market here has the best discount on Repair Kits.
• Keros-7 — A decommissioned mining platform now used as a neutral meeting ground by smugglers and the Weavers. Contains the game's first traveling merchant encounter.
• Keros Prime — The unstable star. Ships do not travel close to it. Rumors suggest things live in its corona. In Chapter 4, a specific side mission requires flying within 0.3 AU of the star, during which the HUD visibly distorts.
• The Ash Ring — An asteroid field between Keros-3 and Keros-5. Contains the wreck of the Old Pilot's ship, which the player can board for the Missing Pilot side quest.

Economy and trade

Keros is the best region in the early game for profitable trade. Rare minerals and black-market items move through here at high margins. The Core does not patrol Keros — you can carry contraband openly without risk of interdiction. This is also why Scourge agents operate here: unregulated trade routes are easier to infiltrate than Core-controlled ones. Mid-run players who have unlocked a Freight Hauler can easily double their credits by running Keros-4 ↔ Keros-7 with refined ore and nav data.

The specific goods that move through Keros at favorable prices are: refined ore (produced at Keros-3, sold in the Verge at +40%), fold-touched data (harvested from the Ash Ring, sold to the Weavers at +120%), salvaged Scourge components (drop from combat, sold to the Hooded Buyer at 3× market), and unsanctioned medical supplies (bought cheap in Keros-2, sold at high margin in Scourge Reach border stations).

Timeline bleed phenomena

Keros is one of only two regions where timeline bleed can be observed without special equipment. Players navigating the region will occasionally see visual artifacts that correspond to other branches: a second copy of their own ship ghosting briefly alongside them, a station that appears intact when it is actually ruined, a voice on comms from someone who does not exist in this branch. These are non-interactive atmospheric effects — the game is reinforcing the region's thematic instability through environmental storytelling.

The rarest observable phenomenon is the Ghost Trunk, a massive dark vessel that flickers into visibility at the edge of the Keros Prime corona once per chapter. Attempting to approach it causes it to vanish before scanners can lock on. Some players claim the Ghost Trunk reappears in the Keystone chamber in Chapter 4 — an Easter egg referenced in the All Endings guide.

Chapter 1 strategic notes

If this is your first playthrough, Keros is where the game begins to demand that you make commitments. The Vex encounter at Keros-4 sets your initial reputation with three factions at once. Before heading to Keros-4, it is strongly recommended to:

• Fill your cargo hold with refined ore from Keros-3 — you can sell it later for a profit that funds your first ship upgrade.
• Complete the Keros-7 traveling merchant encounter, which offers nav data for 5,000cr that reveals the Ash Ring wreck.
• Keep at least two Fuel Cells in your hold. The array has no refueling dock if you exit via an unexpected route.
• Visit Keros-2 at least once before Keros-4 to hear the medical colony rumor about "the woman who waits" — this is Vex, and hearing the rumor first changes her opening line.

Region lore and the Third Unspooling

The Third Unspooling — the event that destabilized Keros Prime two hundred years ago — is partially explained through scattered data terminals in the Keros-7 archive. The event was not a natural supernova. It was a controlled timeline collapse initiated by a Weaver splinter group that believed destabilizing Keros would trap the Scourge on the far side of a permanent temporal rift. The plan failed: the Scourge were slowed but not contained, and the collapse killed everything else living in Keros within a month.

The present-day Weavers refuse to discuss the Third Unspooling, which is why the term comes from a Core Worlds Alliance classified file and not Weaver sources. Players who complete the Keros-7 archive quest in Chapter 3 receive a small Weaver reputation penalty (-10) because they now know something the Weavers did not want known.