Nanotechnology is one of the greatest advances in the history of mankind's scientific progress, but unfortunately it's proven unreliable at larger scales. Quirks and what can only be called mutations seems to creep into even the best designed nanomachines, especially if they spend long periods of time "in the wild" exposed to solar radiation and other environmental influences, leading to nanotech becoming a restricted technology.

Several worlds and stations have had to be abandoned due to rogue nanotech mutations, and these have developed what has been called Nanotech Ecologies, or NanEcos. On these worlds organic life and nanotechnology exist side by side, the affected nanotech strains rarely destroy everything organic, nor do they possess a central intelligence or any kind of organisation beyond the most basic.

With that said they do tend to randomly attack one another and have a form of self preservation instinct, which due to early failed attempts to wipe them out, has often identified humanity as a dangerous predator.

These worlds are eerie landscapes of forests and glittering metallic canyons, wild animals and their robotic equivalents, and even naturally formed cybernetic hybrids. Much of the nanotech is completely random, serving no purpose and filling no niche, only existing, creating some very strange locations indeed. There's no combination of technologies that wild nanotech hasn't manifested, and rumours persist of tech advanced even beyond the achievements of humanity literally growing on trees.

These worlds and places are of course strictly forbidden as the risk of wild nanotech spreading to more controlled environments is considered too great, and ships which land in pursuit of curiosities, on safari trips or seeking legended technological bounties are destroyed on sight by the authorities.