The Shadow Brokerage was the Throne's Quiet Office, the imperial intelligence service that knew everything about everyone. During the Sundering it sold the Throne's secrets to every side of the civil war, and when the war was over it owned a piece of all of them.

The Brokerage trades in secrets and sabotage. Its wars are decided before the first shot: reactors frozen mid-burn, defences blinded, shield-piercing rounds slipped through gaps nobody knew were there. Its ships are fragile, because a fleet that cannot move, see or fire never lays a finger on them. Nobody knows where the Brokerage rules from. The Brokerage, of course, knows where everyone else does.