Remnants (Rems)

I write this entry knowing it may cause offence.

The Temple's position on the Remnants has always been clear: they were salvagers. Scavengers. Necessary, perhaps, in the way that carrion-eaters are necessary—consuming what was lost so that something new might grow. But not respected. Not honoured.

I have spent months reconstructing their engrams from two thousand years ago. I can no longer share the Temple's certainty.

Who They Were

Remnants—Rems, in the vernacular—were members of salvage clans operating primarily in frontier regions. They located derelict vessels, breached their hulls, and recovered whatever value remained within. Technology. Materials. Schematics. Artefacts.

The ghosts of the Collapse, picked clean.

It sounds grim when I write it that way. It was grim. The Rems knew this better than anyone.

The Clans

Rems did not operate alone. They organised into clans—extended families of a sort, though blood mattered less than capability and loyalty. The clans provided ships, contracts, crew assignments, and territorial claims on salvage opportunities.

In exchange, they demanded everything.

"Once assigned, you're either in this crew or you're on the streets," Doc Kline warned young Pax. "Get kicked, no one else is gonna take you on board with a reputation for insubordination."

The clans were not kind. They could not afford to be. A Rem who could not be trusted was a Rem who got their crewmates killed.

What They Did

The work itself was brutal. Breachers entered derelict vessels first, navigating vacuum and structural decay to assess what lay within. Pilots pushed ships to half lightspeed, enduring chemical cocktails that kept their hearts beating through forces that would otherwise stop them. Medics managed the delicate chemistry of bodies pushed beyond safe limits. Sensor operators watched the black for threats both known and otherwise.

They used biters—leather-wrapped mouth guards—to keep from cracking their teeth during slam stops. They endured cryo-sleep for months at a time, consciousness dissolved into chemical twilight. They carried knowledge of their trade in their bones, passed from experienced Rems to newcomers who must learn or die.

"Slam stop," Harrow warned his crew. "Brace."

Two words. The difference between survival and death—two thousand years ago, and likely still today, wherever Rems survive.

Why They Mattered

The Temple prefers to forget that much of what we have preserved came from Remnant hands. They dove into wrecks that would kill lesser crews. They pulled Choir-tech from derelicts and brought it back for study—or for use, in ways that made even their contemporaries uncomfortable.

The Peregrine's AI core, the engrams tell me, was a repurposed Acolyte mind. The Rems found it somewhere. They installed it. They thought nothing of it.

Two thousand years later, I think of it constantly.

What They Dreamed

This is what strikes me most, reconstructing their engrams: they had dreams. Not merely survival, but aspiration. Silas spoke of the Helix—the elite district on Drift's Edge—as though it were paradise. He spoke of Nine Worlds contracts as though they might make him legitimate.

They worked in the margins, but they did not wish to remain there. They were building something. The shipyards of Drift's Edge printed new vessels from recovered schematics. The Peregrine was proof of concept.

The Remnants were not merely scavenging the past. They were constructing a future.

Whether that future survived the Breakage, whether their descendants still dream the same dreams—I do not know. The silence between their age and mine swallows too much.

I expect this entry will require revision before the Temple approves it for the Archive. They will want the dreamers removed. The aspirations softened. The implication that Rems might be more than useful tools.

I will make whatever changes they require.

But I will remember what I learned.

~ NV