The Galactic Empire of Sol has collapsed, just as the futurists predicted. All that is left now is a sprawling web of kingdoms great and small, fighting for the scraps of the Orion arm. Across the arm there emerged a dense and shifting mosaic of successor states: stellar kingdoms, merchant hegemonies, doctrinal theocracies, dynastic enclaves, and autonomous fortress-worlds. Once again, humanoids of all kinds battle each other in interstellar space. In this environment, victory increasingly depended on the ability to reason spatially in three dimensions. Times of war have led to games of war, and a new variant of an old Terran game has emerged as a popular pastime among the astral lords and their glittering courts. It is a game of abstract strategy, which is thought to hone the ability of leaders to think in three dimensions.

The contemporary game's exact origin is disputed. Some claim it was first designed by grandmaster Yohenn the Centaurian during the Siege of Proxima, as a variant of the old Terran Space chess. Others insist it emerged from the war colleges of New Thebes, where young nobles learned the geometry of orbital combat along with Solarian history. What is certain is that within a generation of the fall of Old Solaria, no self-respecting spacelord would receive an ambassador without first testing their mettle on "the battle cube". To refuse a game was to admit one's timidity and weakness, and to lose badly was to invite conquest. Though officially regarded as a pastime, the game quickly acquired symbolic and educational importance. In the courts of astral lords, in the academies of fleet strategists, and in the salons of planetary governors, Astrochess came to be regarded as both a test of intellect and a quiet measure of fitness to rule. The game also quickly replaced plasma fencing duels as a way to settle matters of honor among nobles, though some traditionalists continue to grumble at the shift.

Astrochess has become a language of interstellar diplomacy and culture. Alliances are forged over the battlecube, and insults delivered through aggressive openings. In the floating halls of Gliese palace, fortunes are won and lost on exhibition games, and the reputations of admirals and courtiers rise or fall based on their performance against visiting dignitaries. War is expensive and bloody, combat on the battlecube serves as a decent replacement for nobles in peacetime, as well as an abstract diversion for admirals in times of crisis.

Among the nobility, ornate holocrystalline sets are prized heirlooms, passed down through generations. Commoners play with makeshift sets or electronically, their games being no less fierce. Street tournaments in the lower levels of orbital habs draw crowds of betting spectators, while in the high towers, masters of the game command fees that could purchase entire corvettes. The game has spawned its own culture, and skilled players can rise through official ranks, no matter their birth. It has thus become one of the few sources of social mobility in a highly stratified neofeudalistic society.

The spacenoid mentalists of the Pythalian Orders claim the game does more than sharpen tactical thinking. For them, Astrochess expands human consciousness. Just like shifting one's life into zero gravity allows one's mind to experience the world "just as it really is", unchained from the treachery of two dimensional movement, playing Astrochess is thought to help the mind transcend the limitations of planar thinking and being. The Pythalians, along with numerous other spiritualities influenced by spacism, have adopted the game along with other disciplines as ways to move beyond planetarianism, the ways of thinking and being that limit themselves to old two dimensional ways that should be left in the past. Or least, this is what the spacenoid philosophers would have us believe!