The United Colonies

Lore & Background

The United Colonies was forged in the aftermath of humanity's desperate exodus from a dying Earth. With the homeworld's biosphere failing, the first generation of off-world settlers needed a governing structure that could coordinate resources, enforce law, and keep a fractured species from tearing itself apart in the vacuum. The UC was that structure: a coalition of colonial governments bound by proximity to Sol, sharing a single security force, a single fleet, and a single seat of power in New Atlantis on Jemison.

For generations, that was enough. The colonies were close, the threats were manageable, and the UC's bureaucracy—imperfect as it was—kept the lights on and the borders secure. But the discovery of the Mound and the subsequent opening of the frontier changed everything. Suddenly there were systems beyond Sol, resources beyond reach, and populations beyond the UC's ability to govern. The United Colonies, designed for a closed system, now found itself governing an open one. Tensions between those who want to extend UC law to every new settlement and those who believe the frontier must be left to its own devices have become the defining political fault line of the era.

Within New Atlantis, the UC's institutions—its Senate, its Security force, its Fleet—operate under the constant pressure of that contradiction. UC Security officers patrol the streets of a city that is, in many ways, a museum of the old order. UC Fleet captains command ships that are too few to police a frontier that keeps growing. And the President's office becomes a stage for a debate that the colonies are not yet ready to resolve: whether the United Colonies is a government that will adapt, or a relic that will be outgrown.

In Their Own Story

The hum of New Atlantis's atmospheric processors is the sound you stop hearing after a while. You've been here long enough. The city sprawls across Jemison's red plains in a lattice of white and grey structures, all of them bearing the UC seal, all of them a little more weathered than the brochures suggested. You stand on an observation platform overlooking the residential tiers, watching the evening shift of colonists file toward transit hubs in their grey work uniforms. A UC Security patrol drifts past on the mag-rail below, two officers in the blue-grey of the force, their visors catching the low Martian sun. Somewhere below, in the Senate chambers, a vote is being taken about a settlement in a system the UC has never actually visited. You wonder if anyone in that room has breathed air that wasn't recycled. You wonder if the frontier settlers, the ones who've been out past the Mound for a decade, even remember what the UC seal looks like. The hum of the processors goes on. The vote is taken. The frontier keeps growing. The United Colonies keeps trying to keep up, and the gap between those two facts is where the whole story lives.

Reader's Guide

The United Colonies is not a single quest but the political spine of Starfield's early and mid-game narrative. You first encounter UC authority in New Atlantis on Jemison, where UC Security and the UC government introduce you to the rules of the settled world. The UC questline weaves through your early missions: you'll deal with UC Security cases, interact with UC political figures, and gradually learn that the government's grip on the frontier is thinner than its rhetoric suggests.

**SPOILERS BELOW**

As the story progresses, the UC's internal divisions become a central plot driver. You will be asked to take sides—or at least to act—in disputes between UC factions that disagree on how (or whether) to govern the new frontier systems. Choices you make with UC Security, the UC Senate, or the President's office can shift the political landscape and alter which allies and enemies you face later. The UC storyline does not resolve in a single dramatic confrontation; instead, it peels back layer by layer, revealing a government that is simultaneously the most powerful institution in the game and the most uncertain about its own future.

Completing UC-related quests typically rewards you with access to UC military assets, new dialogue options with key characters, and narrative context that reframes later events. If you want to understand the political stakes of the game's climax, the UC arc is the thread to follow.

Did You Know?

• New Atlantis, the UC's capital on Jemison (Mars), is where the player character begins the game, making the UC the first political authority you encounter in the Starfield universe.
• The UC's central dilemma—governing a frontier that outpaces its authority—mirrors the real historical challenge of colonial administrations trying to manage territories far beyond their logistical reach.
• UC Security and the UC Fleet operate as separate institutions within the same government, and the game gives you distinct points of contact and mission types with each.
• The UC's political tension with the frontier is not presented as a simple good-versus-evil conflict; the game deliberately gives the player reasons to sympathize with both the government and those who reject it.