Once upon a Nexus, there was a place called the Ranch of DOOM, headed by its CEOs and co-founders Phoenix and Dracothrope. Contact was lost with them during the Drift, just as it was with many others, but Phoenix's half of the former conglomerate has reappeared under the name "The Alveary".

Settled upon a coastal desert of the planet Atu, the Alveary is a dry clime that experiences short chilly winters and long hot summers, with very little rain. The ocean is a cold one, but that has hardly stopped aquatic residents from inhabiting a protected stretch of it simply called the Cove. The desert is marked both by gentle sand dunes and stretches of porous soil where hardy plants grow. Close to the coast, mornings are foggy before the heat of the rising sun burns the fog away.