Setting: Planet Sophie

Planet Sophie is the setting for SAND: Raiders of Sophie. In the alternate history of the game, the Austro-Hungarian Empire pioneered space travel using newly discovered energy sources, and Sophie was one of its colonial worlds. Galicians from Western Ukraine were among the settlers encouraged to establish a new life on Sophie, drawn by the promise of resources and opportunity.

Colonisation

The developers have set out the chain of events behind the colony in some detail. In their account the Austro-Hungarian Empire discovered a new energy source during the 19th century, and the technical progress that followed let it build a space portal to the Ursae Majoris star system. The cost of that construction was high enough that the empire sought alliances with other powers, which brought the usual consequence: territorial divisions and quarrels weighted by who had invested most.

Austria-Hungary had put in the most money, and took the planets it later named Franz and Rudolf along with the satellite moons of the gas giant. Allied powers including Great Britain, the United States and Germany settled more distant regions. To answer growing demands for rights and territory, the Emperor tasked his heir, Franz Ferdinand, with designing a new system for the space colonies. That project was called the United Star States of Great Austria, and it divided the colonised worlds among different national groups.

Under that division, Sophie was allocated to Eastern and Western Galicia. The Kaiser's promise of land there is what drew Galicians to volunteer as the colony's labour force in the first place, and it is the promise their descendants are still trying to collect on.

Moon or Planet

Both descriptions are in use, and they come from the developers themselves. The store listing and marketing copy consistently call Sophie a fallen planet, while the studio's own lore writing describes it as a satellite moon of a gas giant. A July 2026 update added that gas giant to the sky above the play space, which fits the lore reading. The wiki follows the marketing usage in most places because that is what players see in-game, but the lore distinction is worth knowing.

The Disaster

An unexplained ecological disaster struck Sophie, rendering the planet uninhabitable. Its settlers were forced to evacuate hastily, abandoning cities, ships, monuments, and vast stores of resources. The planet's seas dried up, turning the former sea floor into the vast desert that players explore in the present day. A gas giant is visible in the sky above Sophie.

The developers date the catastrophe to roughly 30 years into the colonisation effort, before the project had been completed. The cataclysm turned Sophie's oceans into deserts of sand and killed a large part of the population outright. Authorities evacuated much of the surviving population, but doing so meant abandoning most of the colony's equipment and property where it stood, which is why the surface is still littered with usable materials.

Massive sandstorms and scorching heat then made the moon almost uninhabitable for a further 20 years, leaving the once-busy colonial cities as ghost towns. With restoration looking hopeless, the Kaiser cut further funding and froze the colonial project altogether. The Galicians, holding the promises they had been given, never accepted that as final.

The Raiders

Players take on the role of raiders who return to Sophie to reclaim what was promised to their people. These characters include Galicians, former soldiers, engineers, university researchers, occultists, and others drawn by the promise of valuable artifacts and resources. They operate out of an orbital station and descend to the surface in Tramplers for each expedition. A new raider can read Getting Started for the basics of a run.

The developers have said the game has a defined underlying story, but rather than tell it through traditional linear storytelling, which they feel does not fit the game's fast pace, they will reveal it through hints and fragments seeded across the world as Early Access continues.

Getting to Sophie

Returning is not straightforward, and the developers have described the arrangement that makes it possible. A Viennese space travel agency illegally deployed recruitment agents into the poorer regions of the empire, spreading word that quick riches were waiting for anyone willing to go back to the abandoned moon. Space travel is expensive, so these schemes are run on credit: a traveller agrees to hand over a share of their haul to cover the cost of the ticket.

Each space station has an authorised individual who handles that side of it, and a return ticket is only issued once the debt has been settled on the spot. It is a framing that explains why raiders keep going back down instead of cashing out, and why the run only counts once you have reached an extraction point. See Getting Started for the practical version of that loop.

The Upiors

The Upiors are supernatural creatures that inhabit the surface of Sophie. Players can encounter them during expeditions and must choose to fight or evade them. They represent the non-player hostile threat in the PvPvE gameplay of SAND: Raiders of Sophie.

A July 2026 update reworked the Upiors. Their movement became smoother and more responsive, they now physically collide with players, and they can operate mounted cannons, though not shotguns. An Upior using a cannon will leave it when a player gets close.

Key Locations

The developers add named points of interest across the surface as Early Access continues. A July 2026 update introduced a new island point of interest called Halbmond.

Traces of the Empire

The imperial past is not just backstory, it is stamped on the props. Settlements on the old sea floor keep their Austro-Hungarian street architecture, tall shuttered townhouses and ornamental ironwork crowded onto whatever high ground the sand has not taken, with a striped signal tower standing over a numbered quay and a gas giant filling half the sky behind it. Below the quay a steam vessel lies canted over in the dunes with the name Schmetterling still legible along its hull, a reminder that these were harbours before they were ruins.

Smaller details carry the same stamp. Ammunition crates hauled across a Trampler deck are stencilled with the name of an Austrian arms works, deck guns are marked with their calibre, and heraldic shields are riveted to the hulls of the machines themselves. Component descriptions in the Trampler Editor refer to parts commissioned by the Imperial Army, which places the machines you build in the same military supply chain the ruins came from.