HELLO DOZENS HUNDREDS OF NEW FOLLOWERS, WELCOME I SUPPOSE

HELLO DOZENS HUNDREDS OF NEW FOLLOWERS, WELCOME I SUPPOSE

I honestly did not expect that post to breach containment but HERE WE ARE??? Pinned post will be your guide, and there are snacks in the pantry. Have fun :)

wrote a teaser prologue thingy for a Hyperlanes campaign I want to run, called Orion’s Echo. possibly more parts to come!

Captain's Log // Pathfinder Telamon // 20.5.5240 // 05:15 Fleet Standard Time

[several seconds of silence]

(quietly) ... I never know how to begin these things, even after twenty years of recording them.

(normal volume) This is Commander Akair Vayth of the Pathfinder Telamon, Argo-class capital ship for the Pathfinder Initiative expedition into the Trapezium Cluster. We're currently docked in Palladion Skyharbor, and preparations to leave Athenian orbit are nearly complete. We're scheduled to launch at 0600, bound for 45 Orionis. Our plan is to take the jumpgate routes to Rigel to resupply, then make the jump to Alnilam. From there, we're on our own as we fly into unknown territory.

[beat]

Our fleet is twelve ships strong: the Telamon herself, a support carrier and the capital ship; four Asterion-class exploration frigates, the Archimedes, Pythagoras, Aristarchus, and Eratosthenes; four Hephaestion-class industrial frigates, the Prometheus, Brontes, Arges, and Steropes; two Heraklion-class support frigates, the Balius and Xanthus; and an Asclepion-class medical support corvette, the Dione. I'll admit, when the commission proposed a mere twelve ships for an expedition of such long duration, I was quite skeptical, but in composing the fleet I've grown confident in the crew's capability.

[beat]

Still... I worry. We're going further into the Orion Nebula than anyone ever has, and we don't know what lurks in the dark between the stars. Previous expeditions in the Clouds have described unusual readings from the Trapezium Cluster, hinting at... well, we're not sure. It could be a black hole. Could be a high-arity pulsar, or an exotic star. Or something... organic.

[beat]

I'm overthinking this, I'm sure. We're just going to chart the cluster, gauge its habitability, and set up a jumpgate if possible. But in any case, I'm needed on the bridge again. Commander Vayth, signing off.

[log terminates]

The Lost Starfarers

An excerpt from the book The Lost Starfarers by Dr. Erin Burke, published March 2472 CE. Image: the planet Hemera in 2470, seen from high orbit.

Ten thousand years ago, the apocalypse happened.

Not on Earth, of course; we were spared, and our pre-agricultural ancestors never knew the fortune that had shone upon them. But the ruins of nearly a hundred worlds in nearby space tell us everything: ten thousand years ago, the world ended eighty-seven times at once. Far more, in fact, if one counts the tens of thousands of shattered stations and constructs that lay scattered across the expanse of more than a dozen solar systems. Our own system did not fully escape this fate, and indeed the derelict station over Uranus is how we came to realize that, once, long ago, humanity was watched over by beings far more powerful than ourselves.

In our fledgeling centuries of starfaring we would come to learn that these beings called themselves "skgri'i," and came from a world called "o'Kora" -the planet now known to us as Hemera. Over two thousand metric years, they spread across the stars, developing their science and technology to heights we still will not match for another dozen centuries. And yet, somehow, they did not fully shed their primordial divisive nature –much the same nature as the human race– and this was ultimately their undoing.

Our predecessors, our cosmic kin who once flourished across the stars for millennia, were erased from existence in thirteen short years by the most cataclysmic war in known xenoarchaeological history -so absolute in its destruction that it has been simply dubbed "the Apocalypse." We know very little of the conflict itself, or of the terrible weapons with which it was fought, but we can still see plainly the cost that was paid: billions of souls eradicated by the actions of a few; thriving global ecosystems turned to dust in mere seconds; planets left scarred with radioactive craters and unnatural volcanic glass. Most worlds in space are simply dead, inert from their birth... but can you fathom looking upon a world which was killed?

Centuries ago, Earth’s scholars puzzled over the lack of evidence for advanced intelligent life in the universe. After much thought and debate, some proposed an event common to the development of all sapient species called the Great Filter: that which determines whether a civilization will achieve starflight or collapse into oblivion. The ancient Hemerans show us the sobering truth: only cooperation will see us through the Great Filter, because cooperation is the Great Filter. We must take to heart the lesson which those magnificent starfarers did not survive to learn: if we do not forge our path through the stars with goodwill and camaraderie, all that awaits us is the end.

okay since the monoxide post seemed to be reasonably popular, here’s another take:

bones (and biology in general, but particularly bones) are frequent subjects of humor. every species has a unique approach to a skeletal system: humans and rimor have calcium phosphate + collagen bones, shyxaure have hollow cobalt carbonate + collagen bones augmented with carbon fiber, skae have chitin bones on the inside and the outside, and ziirpu just have a springy tube-shaped cartilage lattice. so even after hundreds of years of regular contact and cultural integration it’s still funny to have conversations like

“did you know humans have five bones in their EARS?”

“damn I wish I had bones in my ears”

“damn I wish I had bones”

“you do have bones and they’re bright pink you idiot, I don’t have bones”

“haha yeah boneless ziivor”

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

had a fucking hilarious dream that tumblr replaced the "block" function with the far funnier "glock" function, which did the exact same thing except whenever anyone blocked you a random bullet hole, like a png of a bullet hole, would appear on your blog. discourse blogs were unreadable bc you'd go to the page and the sheer amount of bullet hole pngs stacked over the blogs obscured everything. I woke myself up laughing