The Last Stars (IC) [Closed]

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 7:15 pm

The Hidden Jewel

Forward the explorers went, behind their intrepid leader.

If any ever visited the planet again, surviving the errant defenses to land upon that parched surface, they might find a trail of desiccated corpses half buried in the sand. Their forms were strange to most, mangled and maimed, but they had pressed forward until mortal will broke, a sandstorm overtaking them and leaving any route forward or backward lost forever. No report ever returned to the Armada of the fate of their doomed explorers, and the AI gradually awakened the colonists after three scheduled checkins passed with no response from the Explorer.

Brave men, they paid the ultimate price for their people.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Thu Jun 04, 2020 5:58 am

Fascinating. An oculory, an observatory, on a cosmic scale. The sweep of Solitude, a catalog of the stellar tableau which stood before her dark side, no interference from the nearby star because of the pitch blackness which enfolded the airless world. From the continent-scale collectors, an image of what lay beyond, at a resolution that left tears starting in the corners of Violet's eyes involuntarily. Worlds flashed into existence alongside exotic solar artifacts before her eyes, and then suddenly her reverie was interrupted by a communique from the Remembrance which snapped her back to the present.

The device, whatever purpose her creators had intended for her, was drawing energy from the nearby star. Enough energy to precipitate full scale stellar collapse via siphoning of matter, it appeared. The beauty that was unfolding at her feet was thence very dangerous - potentially one of the most dangerous scenarios which could have possibly enfolded from their expedition. Even as her eyes of swirling cyan and magenta drank in the gorgeous artifacts, her mind raced.

Remembrance, chart course for the far edge of the gravity well, in the shadow of Solitude. Get yourself out of range - go now. Expedition team, dump gestalts. We'll ride this one out, if worst comes to worst.

The cautious course of action was to make sure someone was available to tell the tale, and to shelter the exploration craft in the mass-shadow of the lonely planet against any cataclysm that might ensue. If the collapse wasn't too spectacular, they would have a support craft in range for evacuations or further transit. If the worst ensued, they'd be in position to accelerate to superluminal velocities and outrun any danger.

But there was one course of action aside from that that could be taken.

Fifth, bring the Nexus offline. We're drawing too much energy. Try to leave only this conduit open.

The engineers went to work quickly, severing the other connections passing through the Nexus that were glowing nearly as brightly as the sun now. Artificial interference had precipitated the cataclysm, and removing that factor might buy Violet time to discover how to appropriately manipulate the Oculory to a less apocalyptic end.

As the engineers worked, Violet examined the controls rapidly, looking for any pattern or routine to limit power intake.

With the engineers severing the connections at the heart, the newly drawn sections of the sky would have an increasing amount of dark spots, before the scan stopped alltogether. However, that which was drawn on the dome prior was still visible, although slowly fading away. The blinking lights of the control panel also remained unaffected.

Was it supposed to tell her something? Or was she supposed to... Holding her hands over the panel, Violet touched 2 of the lights simultaniously. They begun to flicker, interfere, as if the intensity of the light itself was being added and substracted through some mechanism...

Her touching of the panel had no effect yet. She begun to connect more lights with her hands, drawing out the pattern of a standing rectangle. Suddenly, the exit reopened and a walkways extruded from the walls, reaching for her platform. It stopped midway. The lights on the screen were fading aswell, as if their energy was being siphoned by a mysterious force.

For awhile, nothing happened. Violet watched as the artificial sky around her faded, taking notes on the constellation of stars she saw. She realized after a while that their other 2 known stars fitted right in at the center. If only she could see the rest of the sky...

-

Then, out of nowhere, a mysterious red light shone from below. Looking down, Violet saw a star, a red ball of plasma slowly shrinking and changing colors. A large, glowling cloud of plasma surrounded it, and inside that glow a dark shadow was moving towards here. A disk... an orb... a planet. It was growing and growing as it came closer and closer. The sun below meanwhile begun morphing into odd blob-like shapes as shrinking accelerated. The plasma was being compressed into a tiny, extremely bright sphere, before the oncoming planet obscured the view. It was now shrouded in a mysterious lighting storm, at the center of which she saw the reflections of night sky. The paraboles... She felt as if she was rapidly falling towards them. Then a massive explosion engulfed everything. A terrible screech shook the dome, its walls shattered into a million pieces before being vaporised completely.

She was now out in the open. She could see that all around the nexus, the domes were collapsing in a similar fashion, while the rest of the structure remained intact. The platform she was standing on was now hovering over the ruins of the majestic structure that stood here.

Star implosion in T - 0.73 Orbits. - The Remembrance reported through radio.

It was an ending. She could feel the very sigh of the world as the last vestiges of the magnificent structure collapsed, an exhausted planet spent over millenia of servitude to the purpose that these creators had forced upon her bones. The edifices crumbled silently in the vacuum, a tapestry of shattered composites and hardened materials shaken into fine macroatomic dust by the energies that were coursing through the specialized arrays.

Initial readings confirmed. Stellar degradation is beyond any calculable processes for cessation. S-band elements readings increasing dramatically - projections for exponential growth over the next three decirotations.

That was it then. With the ancient facility shattered, the fate of this world had been written. Perhaps it had been written long before the explorers ever set foot on this lonely world - a destiny long awaited here, at the end of the universe, undreamt of by the long-vanished creators but the natural conclusion of their journey. At the end of the day, it didn't matter. Violet stepped off of the platform, gravitics descending her gently to the blasted soot beyond the parabola crater, and she opened a link to her team.

- do you read? Nexus is completely degraded, 72% of the Servitors were disabled in the blast. Come in command-

This is Violet.

Thank the Makers. An EM spike associated with your request took comms offline. We're all fine, but this Nexus is no more than rubble and twisted alloys now. How should we proceed?

A worthy question. They had the readings from the dome just prior to the facility's collapse, starmaps enough to keep explorers busy for generations. And returning to the Remembrance wasn't on the cards right now - she was already a dozen stellar standards out on the solar wind, nearing the edge of the gravity well and the safe activation distance for her Omega devices.

I'm going to stay here. It isn't every century that you get to witness the death of a star. The rest of you should dump gestalts, and then I'm requisitioning your forms for sensor intake.

She could feel the resistance in the mind voices, but an order was an order. Especially an order from one of the First.

Roger Violet. Exegesis protocols initiated. Happy apocalypse.

Then it was silent again, blissfully quiet. The inaudible crunch of Violet's boots echoed in her own mind as she trudged slowly through the ash while the rest of the party evacuated their shells, and then she closed her eye. A flash of time, a searing heat of the space between spaces - and she opened them again, born fresh in a body discarded by one of the other explorers.

One of the other explorers who had made it to the far side of the tidal zone. The caress of the scorched earth was much more poignant here, though she could already feel the temperature dropping as the star above visibly shrank in on itself. Violet settled down, crosslegged, gazing up at the luminescent sphere that was the dying stellar giant, drinking it all in with a smile on her face.

A webwork of ice gradually formed about her, moisture on the ground cooling into delicate crystals of ephemeral gases as the temperature plunged, the light of the star overhead transitioning to from the cool familiar red to darker shades of crimson, and then dimming further still. The brilliant white-yellow desert of silica and disintegrated stone took on a scarlet cast as the hours spun onward, before sinking into dull muted hues of dried blood as the star above faded still, the water below undisturbed in her reverie.

She did not hear the detonation, did not feel it. From where the First sat, the star above burnt on sullenly, undisturbed. But the ripple of gravitic distortions, the subspace clarion call, could not be ignored. Datum transferred quicker than the eye could see shouted ten thousand alarms as the stellar mass finished the last stages of its collapse, and fusion suddenly reignited in its impossibly old heart. Out beyond the wash of the solitary world the star shed its funeral cloak in a cataclysmic explosion of light and heat, forces so intense that it suddenly alchemized the elements of the planets themselves, an expanding halo of utter destruction moving outward at an appreciable percentage of the universal limit.

The light reached Solitude only three minutes later, and suddenly everything was thrown into sharp relief. The very energy of the discharge in pure photons was enough to suddenly bake the surface of the wayward planet once more, carbon-ice and methane-crystals flashing into instant gas about the watcher, brilliant white and blue hues making the sand glitter like a tray of diamonds beneath the radiant star that now glowed in the sky, growing rapidly. Violet stood languidly, conceding the necessity as the sand at her feet began to puddle beneath the climbing temperatures, stepping upwards marginally to avoid being touched by the melting morass.

Around her the desert glittered, the dissolved. Dunes slumped under the thermal assault, hills betraying the structures which had held them together for years immemorable. Even Violet's own skin began to incandesce, not unpleasantly, but in a manner which spoke to just how much power had been unleashed upon the poor Lonely Planet. As the sun continued to swell above, sand became liquid, and before more than a minute had passed the First stood alone above a sea of molten, glistening glass.

Then the First opened her mind. She looked out through other eyes, dozens of eyes, forms which had been moving at speed to observe the death of the world. Near the equator they stood, a parallax as large as the world, and she gazed upon the end of planet. No more ancient artifacts to discover, no more slow journey mapping the cosmos as it had done for millenia. Solitude perished in fire as the first fringes of the ejected coronal matter washed over it in a wave of consuming oblivion.

Her first form was vaporized nearly instantly, consciousness fleeing at the speed of thought as the ground under her feet was impacted by that titanic force. The ocean of molten glass that stretched from horizon to horizon was suddenly cherry hot, as bright as the sun overhead, and then it was gone - the form of even the Architect no match for the cosmic forces unfolding at hand. In the span of a breath all the bodies that had been left behind by the expedition were likewise extinguished where they stood upon the doomed world, but their memories spun off into the void, such rare thoughts; the observations of the end.

At the bow of the Remembrance Violet awoke then, a sudden gasp the only concession to experiencing death two dozen times. All for a view of the apocalypse. Her second glanced over, and nodded.

"The world is no more. The nova stripped away 43% of the remaining matter, by our current projections. Only a glowing core left, and the wash."

The First nodded slowly at his words, rising from the bier upon which her form had been placed, awaiting her arrival. Her nerves still thrummed with the energy of that encounter with the forces of creation, and her voice was uncharacteristically humble as she spoke, subdued even.

"Bring drives online. Let's go home."

The Remembrance flitted away, leaving behind the stellar tableau of the extinct system.

"The bounty of the universe is endless, if we will just reach wide enough to drink our fill. Sapience is nothing compared to the knowledge of the truth of infinity."

Rotation 5295R - Timestamped 11:54.3:19:658
Coordinates 5120:4963 - Classification Prodigy - Subclass Harmonic Polar Wastes
Log Relevance: Dev. Enl. Pln.

Prodigy had a problem. And the Second of Cyan was here to solve that problem.

Above their heads, a world ravaged by being a few rotations too close to their primary gasped for water. Even the Architects, designed as perfections of form as they were, found life on a world without a proper hydrosphere rather uncomfortable. Most cultivars required a decent amount of atmospheric water to flourish, and the pittance that was available through sumps and windtraps had proven less than adequate for the needs of Prodigy's planning committees.

And so here, just above the Mohorovic Discontinuity, a thousand machines labored in the darkness. Delvings the size of planetary channels were being gnawed in the blackness, the vast aquifers and ice-caverns that interlaced the polar region now being linked up, trammeled, caged, and prepared for judicious exploitation. Exakilos of soil and slurry had to be pumped back to the surface for processing with every decirotation, but that was a small price to pay for the progress that was slowly manifesting. Before the decade was out, there would be enough water available from the near infinite alluvial wells of this region to feed an entire world.

Which was just as well. The current labor paradigms were already underway preparing for full-scale colonization of this world, something that had only recently become feasible with the new ansible upgrades. Prodigy needed to be livable, and it needed that transition to happen now.

by **Aidannadia** » Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:51 am

Development in Xibos...

The United Nations of Xibos have recently undergone an explosion of prosperity and harmony in their society, causing improved conditions for those among the lower castes through the means of food assistance collectives centered around the Faith. This development has eased tensions on the planet surface, and continues to provide high spirits going into the surrounding planets of the solar system.

The Exploration of a Tragedy
The Great Explorer II has begun to orbit the planet of Banderea, approaching the planet's atmosphere from a much shallower angle than the ill-fated Explorer II after suggestion from the Science Division that the Explorer I may have ignited combustible compounds in the Banderean atmosphere. They intend to takes samples of the atmospheric composition with this fly by, as well as ascertain the location of the wreckage of Explorer I.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:07 am

A Failing Breath

Downward the Explorer raced, superluminal velocities breaking to near crawling speed, on a cosmic scale. The telemetry of the old Explorer was carefully consulted, and data relays spitting information constantly back towards the rest of the Nation. Just a quick flyby, barely touching the atmosphere, to assess the dangers that had claimed their predecessors a generation before.

Tension rose within the command deck as the first readings of external atmosphere composition began to come up on their sensors. The inert gas, spectra chromatography confirmed, as the long range electrochemical absorption patterns indicated... yes... nitrous dioxide, a waste gas, highly reactive - curious but known... and another element, trace hydrocarbons. A precursor to the other chemicals? The ship-brain was still processing the new data for transmission when the skin of the ship began detecting elevated levels of electrical activity.

Lightning sparked in the clouds below, first once, then in a great mass of static discharge as the signature of the Explorer dipped lower on her trajectory for sampling. It happened all in less than a second, far too quick for an organic mind to react, or even an electronic brain to process. Some interaction in the volatile atmosphere fluxed at a devastatingly powerful energy range, a nimbus of light and heat coursing upward to envelope the Explorer. Klaxons wailed for an instant as automated systems detected hull failures, coolant evaporation, thermal dissipation systems failing...

And then another explosion blossomed in the high atmosphere of Banderea. The brilliance was enough to show up even on watching optical telescopes on nearby Xibos - a detonation with the force of several atomic weapons. Of the Explorer that had bravely ventured where her sister had faltered, there was no sign once the thermal bloom dissipated.

27 November 2022

The Xetan Opus

*Catching up intensifies*

by **Bredtonia** » Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:25 pm

Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the system. He who controls the sources of energy controls the means of survival.

Cacia took a moment to close her eyes and draw herself back to focus. This is what she was made for. Not quite literally - the Combine tried not to have specific jobs in mind during the first few years of awakening - but in general as an overseer. She had gone through months of education and hundreds of simulations over the last four years to prepare her for this day and all the ones that would follow it. She could do this, she reminded herself, she could handle what ever reality through her way.

She opened her eyes and her vision returned. She stood in the middle of a medium sized room filled with black voids and streaming blue data. She called out for final checks. Responses echoed from stations around the room - status green, all accounted for, temperature nominal, technicians in place and standing by. Everything was as it should be.

At her command, the control rods were raised out of the coolant baths. The temperature started to increase almost instantly, following precisely calculated curves well within the system’s generous tolerances. The steam tanks began warming on schedule, the first wisps of gaseous water rising their way to the massive turbines. Slowly they started spinning.

A small icon and interface line popped up along the bottom of dozens of monitors across the facility. Congratulations Technicians. it spelled out even as the words were spoken over the internal voice network Atomic Station Alpha-1 is operational. We are producing power. Nuclear Energy is ours again. The icons slid off the screens, and Cacia turned her attention back to the endless streams of data that populated her digital world.

by **Bredtonia** » Sat Jun 13, 2020 10:38 pm

There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter.

“The tragedy at the mines was horrific,” Mantus commented, “but the data recovered from the laborors’ memory banks has provided exceptional background information for our advanced industrial projects. As you can see in the overview I sent this morning, with only a few approachable developments we should be able to expand the mine complexes sufficiently to qualify as an complete colonization.”

The visual data cluster being shared among the dozen digital synths twisted as control were passes from unit to another. Calculations and visual aids highlighted under the rapid commands sent by the younger AI.

“Approachable Developments may be underselling the issues a bit.” Veritas commented. “The materials required to create the supports here and here are not currently able to be manufactured. Indeed, while they would have been commercially available in the old empire, neither the methods or materials were ever available to the Mentek.”

27 November 2022

The Xetan Opus

The farming colony flourished--or, more accurately, did not descend into utter chaos for the first six Turns. Despite the buildup of slums over the years, the colony, while not harmonious, refrained from collapsing. The inevitable was delayed in the eighth Turn since discovery of the three systems when a research colony was established--but the people still remained uneasy, for this meant there would be a food shortage come Turn 10.

The elected governors of the farm colony grew more and more anxious about this, but the leadership from the exploratory vessel assured them that a second farm colony would soon be established. More often than not, disputes broke out between the governor and Acting Leader Olofowski, a man who seemed, to many colonists, so intangible as to be practically nonexistent.

Yet widespread revolts didn't break out. They always seemed to be on the verge of forming, but something seemed to keep the citizens at bay--perhaps it was the introduction of new developmental improvements, or the natural harmony of the continent they inhabited.

The research colony, when it was established, was decidedly less harmonious than the farming colony. Comprised of hard-nosed, analytical intellectuals, it operated like an automated colony, but its citizens were entirely organic. Some were the original settlers who were cursed with decelerated aging; they worked alongside descendants who only knew of Xetan through VR and history lessons. It never occurred to these next-gen Xetanians that the people they interacted with in Digital Xetan had once been flesh and blood; they had, once, lived on a planet that was destroyed eons ago. A planet that many of the settlers recalled with great detail.

But the settlers were estranged members of a society that was moving forward. Their minds were still haunted by the past, their spirits torn asunder by the increasing divide between their lives on Xetan and the present. And the next-gens failed to understand their torment, for they had only ever known Haven.

It was with this increasing rift between heritage and Haven that the two colonies moved into Turn 10, and it was with knowledge of this divide that Acting Captain Olofowski truly began to panic.

[spoiler=Acting Captain Olofowski]
Commandeering the fate of an entire species was, Svennosław had discovered, the most stressful job in the universe.

It was not, granted, as difficult as hyperphysics or cryobioengineering, but it was certainly a hundred times more demanding.
For instance, he was pinged by the Eden governor every hypersecond, for what felt like an instant to him was months for the colonists. And Officer Lin was nagging him nonstop; she was insistent that he continue as though Captain Matsumo was dead.

Svennosław himself was half convinced that the Captain was dead. It had been five hyperweeks since he was electrocuted, and he had yet to regain consciousness. Hieran was immersed in restorative burn gel, dependant on a heart stimulator and breathing machine, and he was completely unresponsive to sensory stimuli. The medical staff--both organic and AI--calculated his odds of survival as being astronomically slim.

He hadn't talked to the medbay specialists. Rather, they sent him detailed reports every two hyperhours that he usually just skimmed. There really was not enough time for him to track the health of his boss and juggle the demands of both an exploratory vessel and a colony operating outside hypertime.

"Zing yourself, Hieran," he muttered. "Why the hell were you messing with the control panel anyway--there's nothing--"

His watch beeped for the umpteenth time. Gritting his teeth, Svennosław answered, the muscles in his shoulders coiled with anxiety. "Acting Captain Olofowski."

"Hello, Acting Captain. This is-this is Nurse Aikina Vinh." A shaky female voice wafted into his ears. "We apologize for interrupting
you, but-but...well, this warrants your immediate attention."

Get to it, Aikina. This was evidently about the Captain. But anything could be unfurling on the surface of Haven, and he was getting sidetracked. Exactly why I never married. No way to manage both work and a family--

"Sir, Captain Matsumo is showing levels of minimal responsiveness. It is believed that he will soon wake up."

by **Bredtonia** » Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:44 pm

Arbores serit diligens agricola, quarum adspiciet baccam ipse numquam. (The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit.)

Although the Atomic Reactors scattered across the wasteland areas of the planet had been constructed and operational for years, it was not until well into the Sixth Indiction that the planetary energy grid was fully constructed and interconnected. It was another dozen years before all of the manual and combustion generators that had been powering Mentek’s extractors and factories during the planet’s colonial days were completed disassembled.

The effort quickly proved worthwhile. Orbital climate monitors monitored the atmospheric changes as the planet returned to an acceptable homeostasis level for the Princeps to authorize the cultivation of the rest of the herbaceous zone. Thousands of industrial and labor units moved into the planet’s forests to lay tracks, refining planets and the hundreds of other infrastructure improvements required to draw the sustaining resources from the planets ecosphere.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Thu Jun 18, 2020 12:25 pm

"Synthetic intelligence and mind-shattering has been the foundation of our present prosperity. If one mind was restricted to overseeing the labor of one body alone, we would be little better than biological computers - we owe much to the Makers and their gifts, indeed."

Rotation 5327F - Timestamped 05:11.8:70:402
Coordinates 4832:5104 - Classification Prodigy - Subclass Coriolis Wastes
Log Relevance: Haz. Ign. Mon.

The trammeled energies of the core-reactor pulsed through the supple skin of the artificial ecosystem like the purr of a contented cat, dozens of skittering Servitors barely visible at the distance carefully monitoring the containment dome of the constructed geoscape. The Third of Soot sat atop a small flowering hill nearby, one of the few places in the blasted heath that the carefully woven organisms of the Seeding had taken to with gusto in this inhospitable corner of the gardening world.

Along macrobundles the size of planetary fissures the energy of the atomic furnaces passed languidly, distributed by dedicated neuronets to the myriad forms which required it for maintenance, and the datalathes that predominated here on Prodigy. It had proven more difficult to extract virtue from this barely-habitable ball of sand and dust than the Architects had anticipated, but that did not mean it would not yield results, in time. Already the steady flow of machined mind-sheathes from the newly erected fabricator facilities in the mountains was beginning to uptick steadily, and it would not be long now before the potential of this world had been reached.

The Third stirred, uncallused hand reaching down to pluck one of the brilliant orange flowers which blossomed atop the azure stem calibrated to make the most of the diffident radiation of Prodigy's star. Behind her eyes the calculations required to move the dozens of forms under her control continued unabated, but her primary functions quietly appreciated the beauty of a worldly slowly being turned from useless waste to productivity and balance.

by **Piscina** » Sat Jun 20, 2020 6:04 pm

Turn 8, 224APF-256APF
”New Nitor III is a prime candidate for settlement by our species, after terraforming operations. Though I do not deny that our own moon would be far easier to colonise due to its comfortable temperatures and breathable atmosphere, there are multiple issues that hinder colonisation. It is almost entirely covered in oceans, and what little landmass there is has poor resources, meaning that settlement there would require extensive resource intensive aquatic energy arrays to even be self-sufficient, let alone contribute to our civilisation as a whole. By comparison, New Nitor III has larger amounts of usable land, even after one considers the melting of the ice sheets that will provide a hydrosphere. An additional reason to focus on it is that there are extensive deposits of carbon and rare elements that have a wealth of applications for energy generation and scientific research. In conclusion, focusing on developing technology that will enable terraforming hostile worlds into potential new homes for our species is the wisest long-term goal we could focus on at the moment.” -Understanding Sharpfeather-Coordinator-Starwatcher-Forwardwalker, 28th Chancellor of the Federation

I haven’t had the time to write a description yet, but don’t worry! One will hopefully be coming soon, focusing on the daily life of the average Pinnarum and how AI has affected it.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Mon Jun 22, 2020 4:39 am

The Burning Heart

As the Federation starship approaches the silent cold belt of asteroids at the far edges of the unnamed system, her sensors begin to fluctuate wildly. There is something moving in that orbital track, something artificial... and several of the floating chunks of failed planetary bodies appear to be giving off thermal blooms radically inconsistent with their status as cold, dead, bits of stone and silicon in space.

Some of the orbital tracks are altering, far out beyond visual sensor range. Gravitic fluctuations indicate that at least a half dozen objects, broadly square in shape, are now angling toward the starship. The crew shift uneasily as ESPAI reports the information in an emotionless tone, and an imminent proximity alarm begins to wail. Orders, captain?

Steady as she goes.
Battle stations!
Commence barrage!
or
Something else

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Thu Jul 16, 2020 9:38 am

Anomalies in Exploration

The Generation 13 explorations from the Architects have come across a myriad of strange outcomes...

In the uncharted System A-0, a weird world is throwing off sensors. Upon approach, massive static discharges wrack the Explorer, which barely manages to avoid an uncontrolled descent to the surface. Atmospheric scans reveal the rollicking ball of rust-colored mist to be nearly pure mercury, a volatile metal uncommonly found in nature, and as the Explorer descends it soon becomes clear that this is an artificial world, or at least one of very strange provenance. Nearly the entire planet is liquid mercury, subsisting under immense pressure and heat, with a few scattered remnants of what might be aerostadts hanging in low orbit. These structures are ancient, at least ten thousand years old, and so corroded that it is a wonder they are still in orbit at all.

Elsewhere, in the Kuiper Belt of the Song of the Void System, strangely dense asteroids moving with ponderous grace greet the exploration probes of the Explorer commanded by the First of Violet. Their immensely durable configuration is tested with a variety of weapons, cutting beams, and cannons - it soon becomes clear that whatever naturally occurring superstable alloy composes the rocks, it poses significant improvements in the field of spacecraft armor. Duranthium discovered!

The Last Stars (IC) [Closed]

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