Rōnin Saints / OPRS

Out beyond the trade lanes—where jump points flicker like tired stars and law thins to rumor—citizens speak softly when regarding the name Ronin Saints Syndicate as if they might hear them. You never knew who or where they were, often hiding in plain sight amongst the local populous.

Their leader, a samurai shogun master known as Kael Verex ruled without ranks or uniforms. He taught his followers to move like pilgrims—independent, untraceable, loyal not to command chains but to an idea: freedom through defiance. Cells formed and dissolved. Names were optional. Only the sigil mattered—a broken halo split by a blade.

That lack of structure was their strength.

Once members of an ancient, powerful intergalactic order, the “Saints” were noble protectors/peacekeepers of the cosmos, sworn to defend the weak and maintain peace between the star systems. But over centuries of warfare and political strife, the Saints grew disillusioned.

Kael began to see the corruption within the galactic empire they had sworn to protect—the politics, the power struggles, and the endless betrayals during the restructure of the UEE after its catastrophic losses in the 2nd Tevarin war.
No records in the United Empire of Earth would ever admit Kael existed as doing so would only acknowledge that he, a single human and his band of barbaric misfits, had such a large profound reverberating effect on the UEE and its systematic security expansion efforts. The UEE sought to erase anyone who could be seen as a saboteur or those deemed in the way of stifling its goals towards progress and innovation.

In the capital orbit of the Stanton system, beneath the polished hulls of diplomats and defense fleets, the UEE tirelessly began working on the integration of an advanced alien technology communication system that would dwarf the current technology in place. They would succeed in this regard with the integration of a reverse engineered device they named the Phylax Network. This device had been recovered by the Nine Tails in 2938, a crime syndicate that rivaled the “Saints” at the time hidden within a shadow council littered throughout the UEE’s ranks. After gaining access and scouring the UEE’s archives some 500 years later they were able to find and decode some of the UEE’s top secret redacted files and the current whereabouts of a downed Banu ship found in 2438 during the very first human-alien contact, when explorer Vernon Tar stumbled upon it in the Davien system, leading to the signing of the first Interstellar Peace & Trade Accord that same year. Officially, it didn’t exist. Unofficially, it was a device that contained an integral ghost interface layer woven into the Banu’s galactic trade network that monitored the entire race’s traffic control, surveillance arrays, and private comm relays—an invisible hand that could rearrange reality without firing a shot.

The UEE’s intention was to use this new form of transcendent communication tech to unify its military logistical efforts and fortify its military positions throughout the verse, reducing the walls of communication down to fractions of a second regardless of distance.

With the Phylax Network, the Nine Tails, lead by Kael’s brother Jinyakashun were able to utilize the UEE’s resources to hunt down Kael. They eventually were able to trace, track and capture him. His ships were redirected. His allies flagged. Patrol routes altered. His safe ports turned hostile. Jin’s relationship with Kael was estranged. Kael would meet death—caught in a customs “inspection” that no one recorded—it looked like an accident wrapped in procedure on the side of the UEE. The Nine Tails Syndicate claimed the kill in an attempt to unite the two syndicates but everyone who mattered knew it hadn’t been that simple. The UEE denied any involvement of course. Empires always did.

The Saints felt the loss like a snapped nerve.

There was no council to respond. No hierarchy to absorb the shock. Just survivors, and dozens of fractured cells, blades drifting through space after their hilt had been shattered.

To the Saints, he was law, purpose, and gravity each holding a different piece of Kael’s last teachings, each convinced they understood his will better than the others.

Grief turned sharp. Faith turned absolute.
But grief and faith have a way of reorganizing people.
Not into armies—but into obsessions.

They deemed everyone guilty.

Not just the Nine Tails, and not just the UEE, any officials who looked the other way were marked for death. Criminal kingpins. Corporate middlemen. Law-abiding clerks who had followed orders. Innocent bystanders who’d looked away at the wrong moment. Anyone who helped, knowingly or not. All were to meet justice.
Clerks who processed the wrong clearance. Dockworkers in Arccorp who lost their transport when a Saints-aligned saboteur vented the bay after finding out they fueled the wrong ship. A Nine Tails accountant disappeared mid-jump, his ship later found drifting, its logs erased. UEE civil aide—clean record, model citizen—dragged into a public tribunal broadcast from an unregistered satellite, accused of pushing a single approval stamp years earlier. The feed cut before any verdict was shown.That was the terror of the Ronin Saints Syndicate now.

Their strikes were chaotic by design. A relay station sabotaged in one system. A corporate gala ruined by exposed data in another. No single signature, no claim of responsibility—only the broken halo split by an etched blade left behind, burned into bulkheads or blinking briefly across hijacked screens. Not as a warning but a receipt.

No pattern. No mercy. No distinction

UEE analysts frantically tried to map the chaos and failed at every turn. Even with the new Phylax Network you couldn’t decapitate a thing with no head. You couldn’t negotiate with grief scattered across a thousand systems. Every Saint was acting alone—and yet, somehow, together. Bound by memory. By loss. By Kael’s last recorded words, leaked after his death:“If I fall, do not build a throne from my bones. Become the storm I taught you to survive.”

The UEE fortified their holdings. The Shadow Council tightened its secrecy. The UEE increased patrols and called it “stability operations.”
None of it stopped them. The remaining saints began calling themselves the Ronin Saints Syndicate. It was a reckoning—moving silently through the dark, blade by blade, until the stars themselves learned what justice looked like when it had nothing left to lose.

The UEE labeled them terrorists.
Nine Tails labeled them a nuisance.
Civilians called them monsters.

And maybe they were.

Yet among the stars, there were those who noticed something unsettling: the Saints never took territory. Never held power. Never asked for loyalty beyond the moment. After every strike, they vanished—pilgrims again, scattering into the verse.

Some say they are looking for a new master.
Others say they are waiting for Kael’s ghost to speak.
The Ronin Saints believe Kael walks the hidden path of the Kami, bound by ancient Shinto rites lying in wait until the moment he speaks again to unite all the teachings and carry the Saints into the foreseeable future .”

Ronin Saints—now a symbol of defiance in a galaxy with no allegiance to any government, have become the most feared and respected mercenary group in the verse. Their reputation is built on their unwavering honor, their ruthlessness in battle, and their ironclad code simple enough to carve into bone: Loyalty is chosen. Justice is taken. Each member of the Ronin Saints as seen from scoured security footage seem to don black-on-black armor with intricate markings, representing their personal history and dedication to the cause.
Hidden within the Akrio cluster of the Pyro system is their last known base of operations, a massive, untraceable battleship known as the Ryūjinmaru though no one has seen it in some time.

From there they offer services to the highest bidder—whether it’s protecting colonies from raiders, sabotaging corrupt corporations, or overthrowing tyrannical warlords. No mission is too dangerous, and no enemy is too formidable. They operate in the shadows, often without mercy, but always with purpose. The Syndicate’s warriors are a mix of outcasts, bounty hunters, and disillusioned soldiers—each with their own story. They are known for their unique combat style, blending ancient martial arts with advanced technology.

Though their actions often leave them on the wrong side of galactic law, the Ronin Saints Syndicate continues to fight for a single goal—to restore balance to a galaxy on the brink of corporate control, even if it means standing alone against the forces of oppression.

One thing is for certain in a universe stitched together by hidden councils and quiet betrayals, is that everyone who wrongs the Ronin Saints will fall to the blade, guilty or not.