The pathfinders found it: a swollen red giant in the last age of its life, circled by a belt of asteroids so rich in minerals and helium-3 that the first survey readings were assumed to be sensor faults. They named the star Aurelia. The arks that were still flying converged on it, and the calendar of the Frontier began. Every date since is counted in years After Landfall.
No world around Aurelia was fit to live on, so the survivors built one. The arks were dismantled for their hulls and reactors, and from them the first segments of a habitat ring were raised in orbit around the star. The ark council that directed the work governed by emergency decree, because there was no time for anything else. The decrees never lapsed. The council became the Throne, and the Throne became the Solar Empire.
The Ring was fed by the belt. Crews who had spent their lives in the cramped holds of the arks were sent out into the asteroid fields with cutting beams and ore haulers, to mine the metal and fuel that the Ring consumed. They were told it was temporary. It was the most important lie in the history of the Frontier.
“We will build a world where none was given. We will build it in the light of a dying star, and we will make the star remember us.”
— The Landfall Charter, preamble