Arknights: Endfield Lore & World Guide — Talos-II, Timeline, and Factions

Talos-II is not the planet its residents think it is. It is the second moon of a gas giant called Talos, though generations of settlers have simply called it home. A nitrogen-rich atmosphere with enough oxygen and greenhouse warmth to sustain life makes the moon survivable, but far from safe. Terran pioneers reopened an interdimensional passage and set foot here roughly a century and a half ago, and their descendants have spent every year since building outposts, fighting to keep them standing, and pushing the frontier outward.

Most of that civilization is concentrated in a region called the Civilization Band, the political, cultural, and economic spine of the moon. It links together the major settlements you will hear referenced constantly in dialogue and mission briefings, including Mat' Gorodov, Alloycarrot, Kjersch, La Fantoma, Neo Tsukushi, Triglava, and Wuling City. Everything outside the Band tends to be rawer: mining frontiers, ruined outposts, and territory contested by hostile lifeforms. When a mission briefing calls a location a "valley," it usually means exactly that — a resource-rich but dangerous fringe zone still being pulled into the Band's orbit.

Talos-II shares its universe with the original Arknights setting, Terra, but the two are separated by both distance and time. Terran pioneers crossed over through a gateway commonly called the Cosmic Gate (also referenced as the Æthergate) roughly 152 years before the events you play through. That crossing was the first time Terrans had ever reached another world, and for a period afterward the gate stayed open, letting people, supplies, and Originium move between the two sides.

The gate did not last. Within the first years of settlement it was lost, severing the direct link between Talos-II and Terra. Everyone who had already crossed over was stranded, and their descendants make up the population you meet today. That separation is exactly why Endfield reads as a spinoff rather than a sequel: it runs on a parallel clock, in a different location, with its own homegrown conflicts, and you do not need any history with the original game to follow it. The strongest bridge between the two settings is organizational rather than geographical — Endfield Industries itself was founded with support from Rhodes Island, the operator company at the center of the original Arknights story, which is why its Originium science and Arts terminology will feel familiar if you know that game.

Endfield Industries is the company you run as the Endministrator, and its founding charter is deceptively simple: push research, exploration, and industrial development further into Talos-II than anyone else has managed. It grew out of an early partnership backed by Rhodes Island during the settlement's first years, and it has since become one of the moon's most capable organizations at solving problems nobody else wants to touch — clearing corrupted zones, standing up new settlements, and fielding the Automated Industry Complex (AIC), the mobile industrial base your operations are built around.

Its headquarters sits above the surface entirely: the OMV Dijiang, the only orbital vessel Talos-II has, and the nerve center for coordinating field teams across the Civilization Band and beyond. Below the Endministrator, the company runs through specialist divisions — engineering, logistics, medical, security, and a dedicated Specialist Tech Division that handles crisis response — each answering up the chain for major decisions. Endfield Industries also spearheads Protocol-Originium (PROTORIG) research, the technology behind the company's most advanced tools and its rapid-transit protocols between sites.

If the Endministrator sets direction, Perlica is the one who keeps Endfield Industries running day to day. She holds the title of Supervisor, effectively the company's chief operating officer, planning and executing the corporate operations that turn broad goals into field assignments. Every divisional lead ultimately reports up to her, which makes her the person players will hear referenced constantly even in missions that never put her on screen.

Perlica's technical specialty is Protocol-Originium: she is one of the field's leading experts, and her research work directly shaped how PROTORIG technology gets applied across Endfield's operations, including refinements to the Automated Industry Complex. She is also known for staying composed under pressure, a trait that matters more than it sounds — during periods when the Endministrator has been unreachable, it is Perlica who has held the Crisis Team together and kept the company's response coordinated. She speaks for Endfield Industries publicly, which makes her the closest thing the company has to a face beyond its founder.

Endfield Industries is powerful, but it is far from the only organization shaping Talos-II. Understanding who else holds influence makes faction-specific dialogue and side content click into place.

Faction	Focus	What they control
United Workers' Syndicates of Talos-II (UWST)	Labor and industry	The moon's largest union body, run out of Mat' Gorodov; it organizes most large-scale mining and manufacturing labor and has done so since the earliest days of settlement.
Hongshan Academy of Sciences (HAS)	Research and agriculture	A prestigious academic institution founded in the aftermath of the earliest large-scale conflict with hostile lifeforms, now dedicated to studying Originium, the Blight, and Pioneer-era technology out of the Hongshan district.
Order of Steel Oath	Military defense	A knightly military order whose members, called Oathkeepers, are organized into combat squadrons known as Banners and serve as one of the primary standing defenses against hostile incursions.
Free Cities	Local self-governance	Independent settlements outside the Band's tighter administration, each running its own affairs and often striking separate deals with larger organizations like Endfield Industries.

Alongside these stand fringe groups worth knowing by name even without deep involvement, most notably the Landbreakers, an armed group that survives through raiding and scavenging rather than joining the Band's formal economy.

Reconveners are the clearest thread tying Talos-II back to the original Arknights cast, and they are handled carefully enough in-story that a spoiler-light explanation still holds up. When the First Originium — a crystal that crossed over during the earliest settlement — was contaminated and underwent emergency repair, fragments of encoded data began manifesting as real people. Each of these fragments carries the appearance, abilities, and partial memories of a specific operator from Terra, but grows into someone new the moment they arrive on Talos-II.

That is the key distinction worth holding onto: a Reconvener is not a copy or a flashback character. They know they share an origin with someone from Terra, and they may carry pieces of that person's memories and relationships, but their choices, personality, and future belong entirely to them. Every Reconvener who has emerged so far has chosen to work alongside Rhodes Island rather than against it, which has made them some of the most trusted — and most narratively loaded — figures connecting Endfield's world to the game that came before it.

A short glossary for terms that show up constantly in mission text, item descriptions, and character dialogue without much explanation.