.png)
.png)
PuzzleType: ALL_ABANDONED_
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘It looked like a wound on the world. Crimson and ragged-edged, like something that once lived but was then torn asunder. I should have stayed away.’
‘Had I the senses to taste the air of this planet, I imagine it would have reeked with some kind of alien fetor, but nothing could stall my curiosity.’
‘Was it dead? Where I touched it, the surface was moist and yielding. It seemed to become motile then, crawling on a mat of slow cilia, moving from me.’
‘I should have left it alone.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘I glimpsed the crimson orb between the clouds. A vast and baleful eye, unblinking and monstrous. Fear turned the blood in my veins to ice. I was so afraid it would see me, but then the clouds moved and it was gone.’
‘I was no longer certain if it had ever been real. Perhaps the fungal deposits from the last world I visited are still clogging my exosuit vents. Affecting my cognition somehow.’
‘I have cleaned my filters six times now. But I still feel it inside me.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘I found a body. It's unlike anything I have ever seen. If there's a species like it, then I hope they're all dead like this one.’
‘At first I thought it some tragic remnant of a matter-transfer tech malfunction: a cage of bones and flesh studded with random patterns of crooked teeth and rheumy, lidless eyes. But no.’
‘Some horror of twisted evolution, warped by cruel nature. I can't help but picture what it would have looked like alive. I cannot help but fear that it will live again.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘The oceans here are blood. Nothing lives in them; they are alive themselves. Great protean life forms as large as continents... or perhaps there is only one of them.’
‘What does such a thing consume, I ask myself? The answer seems to be everything. I found evidence of past life here, but no signs of it.’
‘Does the native flora and fauna hibernate when it comes to eat them, then return and repopulate once it retreats? I can feel it moving inside my brain, whispering. It wants me to discard my suit and swim.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘I awoke from a dream where I was drowning in something thick and glutinous. It filled my pores and suffocated me.’
‘I want to believe that this is my tired mind playing tricks. I have been so long without deep sleep.’
‘The crimson sphere shimmers at the corner of my eye whenever I try to rest. I cannot comprehend how it tracks my spoor from world to world.’
‘Or is it that I am following it? The orb cannot be in all places at once. That cannot be.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Final data log awaiting user analysis. Terminal now active.
‘Is this what we become? At each turn on my journey I find only more to taint my spirit and my flesh. The fanged maws erupt around me when my back is turned.’
‘I hear them chattering and spitting. Sometimes they scream sounds that may be words. Perhaps my name.’
‘I haven't removed my exosuit in many cycles. I'm afraid to look at my own skin. I know it will be seething, pus-wet and pitted. I have become a vector of infection.’
‘The corruption of something ruinous lives in my flesh. Don't come looking for me.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘What are the Sentinels? They appear on countless worlds without summons or warning, they traverse the galaxy unopposed and enforce their will upon every sentient being they encounter.’
‘Who made them? Who gave them the will to police the stars and demand that we bow to their silent rules?’
‘The goal of the experiment was to learn the answers to these questions. It began on an uncharted world beneath a blue-white sun, far from the axis of civilization.’
‘The first drone screamed when it was cut open.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘Where do the Sentinels come from? No ships are ever seen arriving to deposit them, yet we know they have spatial drives and can appear on any planet.’
‘Do they build themselves from resources on the worlds that they infest? Like a mechanoid virus, drawing on the host body to metastasize new matter?’
‘Korvax science speaks of metals in their makeup that should not exist in our age of the universe. No-one has ever seen them built.’
‘They are simply here, as if the universe expresses them into existence.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘There is a world – turned to dust long before the rise of the Vy'keen – where the natives turned against the Sentinels.’
‘They chafed under the omnipresent eyes of the machines. Resentment begat violence. Drones were destroyed.’
‘More natives fought, and so came the bipeds, the quadrupeds, the interceptors in the sky. These and more.’
‘Soon there was war; and still the machines came, in exponential growth until at last they ended a species as a punishment. Still, the Galaxy refused to learn from this...’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘Is there a connection between the monoliths and the Sentinels? The origins of these ancient structures seem to predate all known civilization.’
‘Over time these structures have become imbued with the beliefs and the histories of the creatures that evolved around them.’
‘But what if there was a precursor species that came before us all? One of such infinite knowledge and interstellar power that even after their extinction, their tools remain for us to pore over, like an infant confronted with a fusion reactor.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘When there is no explanation for a phenomena, it is a natural progress for intelligent beings to fill in the missing parts of their experience.’
‘On some worlds, the Sentinels are still worshipped as avatars of an all-seeing deity. Drones are considered sacred, sent by an unseen God to ensure that they live in enforced harmony with the environment around them.’
‘There is a disturbing commonality to many elements of their theologies; a recurring visual symbol of a crimson sphere and the promise of an end time soon to unfold.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Final data log awaiting user analysis. Terminal now active.
‘The experiment's final phase emerged from frustration. We wanted to learn something new. We wanted to know how they worked. We wanted to see inside them.’
‘An untested dimensional-warping process was used, one we believed would allow us to capture a drone intact. We would cage it, keep it docile. It was our error to believe we could.’
‘The machines co-opted the warp-tech and turned it upon us. In the horror of it all, our flesh was merged with their metal. Our questions were finally answered.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘There is a world in the great void where all things are made of razors and glass. Pity anything of simple, soft flesh that goes there.’
‘The glass is thirsty. It is brittle and crystalline, and so very beautiful to behold - but it must drink.’
‘You will go there and you will forget my warning.’
‘Then it will cut you with an edge so fine that you will feel no pain, and only as your life gushes out to dampen the cracked and broken landscape will this come back to you. Too late. Too late.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘Beneath their skin, they had placed tiny seeds of the glass, which took on the appearance of strange, ritualistic scarring.’
‘The nubs of the broken crystal were ancient, ground down and polished by generations before them. They fed them their life, and in return the crystals glowed with emerald fires and brought them closer to their fate.’
‘I would listen to them talk of worlds they could never have seen, in alien tongues that their body was not made to utter.’
‘The glass made them something more than they were, a vessel for intelligences utterly unlike us.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘The orb rests within its cage-cloak of crystal in so many guises. The angles of the shroud are utterly perfect.’
‘When measured, no device of known science can determine any flaws, any variation in surface even down to the molecular level.’
‘I have tried time and again to get close enough to touch it, but it retreats from me. I am not worthy to know its secrets yet.’
‘My mind must be opened wider. The layers of me revealed and peeled back in sections. There is no other path open. I have already begun to cut upon the skein.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘If one can see clearly enough, you will come across a crystal and learn that it is made, not of atoms and molecules, but of thought and gravity and numbers.’
‘You must go deep. Come and see, I beseech you. More than I must know of this, if only to spread the word and warn the other species.’
‘Tell it to all. Write it in every language you know, etch it in stone, scream it in song but never be silent.’
‘I tell you; I have seen what lies beneath the surface of everything. The brittle grid of reality crumbles.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
.png)
#17
Alien: Final data log awaiting user analysis. Terminal now active.
‘It is here and not here. We reach for the mastery of the galaxy but we do not understand the truth. What if I told you that time is the drug that keeps us docile and unquestioning?’
‘There is no now and then, there is no today or yesterday. This is an illusion reflected in glass, patterns of untruth that the universe uses to laugh at us.’
‘We are not meant to see such things. Our smaller minds rebel at concepts so unimaginably vast that they cannot be held in a single thought. It is how it controls us.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#18
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘I will cut open space. My heart is filled with regret, but there is nothing else to be done.’
‘I find only darker roads and glassy, endless chasms ranged before me. It is for the best.’
‘The lacerated, blade-filled path is the truth and I am unable to deny it. In time, there will come daring souls far cleverer than I who will learn from my errors.’
‘I forge the way for the ones to come after. I walk barefoot on shards of broken reality, into the infinite and shattering forever. At the heart of it, the secret awaits me.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#19
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘My comms hub detected a garbled message sent with strange resonance qualities. Not unusual, given the atypical qualities of local space-time in this quadrant.’
‘Systems spent several cycles attempting to reconstruct the missing elements of the message to no avail.’
‘Analysis indicates that the signal shows signs of degradation corresponding to initial transmission occurring before the planet I orbit was even formed.’
‘And yet my name is spoken clearly amid the static and the distortion.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#20
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘I traded with a Korvax Entity I met on Ikdlak. The sentient offered refined rods of Chrysonite as part-payment for various star-mapping datums recorded by my ship's sensor modules.’
‘In the process it encountered the anomalous message I detected several cycles ago. I dismissed the signal as a chance event, a random coalescence of interference that happened to resemble a spoken voice.’
‘In truth, it had disturbed me. The Entity analysed the message in its own curiosity and revealed another layer beneath the audio component. A visual of a world with green skies and an obsidian moon.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#21
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘The mysterious message continues to prey upon my mind. With the aid of the Entity, I have learned that its temporal origin is approximately two to five thousand solar cycles from the now.’
‘I have narrowed down a point of transmission to a sector of space in the haze zone, close to the galactic anterior.’
‘I realize now that to ignore the signal would be an error. It is incumbent upon me to trace it. In my more fanciful moments, I wonder if it might be a warning or a revelation. I have set a course.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#22
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘This will be my last recording for quite some time. I have refitted my vessel with a powerful Odvinsko hypderdrive and a cryogenic suspensor pod.’
‘It is my intention to enter a dormancy state in order to survive the journey to the distant source of the anomalous message.’
‘I have nothing to hold me here. I have committed myself. While I sleep, I will listen to the signal. My resting mind may be able to parse yet more meaning from it.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#23
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘I awakened to discover that the planet from the image is gone. Only a belt of rubble surrounding a red giant star in the final stages of collapse remains.’
‘Whatever cataclysm killed this world took place before my species could walk upright. But it is undeniable. The signal came from here. It carried my name amid its atonal song.’
‘I have crossed unimaginable distances to seek out the origin point. Sensors have detected a metallic mass embedded in one of the largest of the planet's fragments. It will take time, but I will be able to dig it out.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#24
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘The red giant consumes itself. The interactions between spatial shearing zones in the system are causing the formation of a singularity. Space-time is becoming malleable. I am unable to depart.’
‘In the ashes of a dead world, I exhumed the corpse of the ship that had sent a message to me across the millennia, the ship that knew my name. Crushed and warped by unimaginable forces, I could barely recognize it.’
‘But I see a corroded Odvinsko hyperdrive, a cryo-pod. The same as my ship's.’
‘My vessel is buried here. The voice is mine. I am warning myself-’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#25
Alien: Alert. User identified. New data log repository unlocked. Awaiting analysis.
‘I visit again, trying to catch them in their lie, but the Korvax are resolute. They claim I am irrational, that no power in the universe could simply destroy a world and leave no trace in matter or memory. They claim that I should leave them alone.’
‘But it was mine. Don’t they understand that? It belonged to me. I should have remembered, I should have remained true to my anger. But I was weak.’
‘It was then that I first heard it. That voice in the darkness.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#26
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘My world has gone. Vanished. Taken, perhaps, though all deny the crime. All deny the truth. That is what my voice tells me.’
‘I travel from planet to planet, trying to find some parallel, some precedent for what has occurred. Everywhere I go, the same: a fear of Sentinels, of pirates, perhaps even of Vy’keen, but of worlds disappearing? Of the universe changing? No. No-one fears that. Why should they?’
‘My voice assures me I am right, and that all others are wrong. It is a comfort to me.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#27
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘I have found something. It was just an abandoned building, just a small shack in some forsaken wasteland. I expected nothing more than brief respite from the storm. But what I found...’
‘I approached the terminal and began to read. ‘It looked like a wound on the world...’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#28
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘There is something here. Can’t you hear it? Can’t you smell it? It touches you, infests you even as you stand. And yet you cannot resist.’
‘I read all of their logs, the tales of travellers who came before me. A crimson eye. The rise of the Sentinels. A world of glass that blinks. I understand little of it, yet still it fills me with dread and a strange kind of loathing. A hatred of myself, the origin of which I do not know.’
‘It is the last log which concerns me most.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#29
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘A world of green skies and an obsidian moon. It is my world. It has to be. All claimed it did not exist, and yet here I am, reading of its supposed destruction. Reading of an impossible paradox, of time and cataclysm.’
‘I need to get back. It is the only purpose I have left. Surely you can understand that.’
‘It was then that my voice helped me. It was then that I learned of the portals.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#30
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘I stood before the dais, the wormhole active before me. I should feel privileged to stand here where so many others have failed, but I am left only with that sense of guilt again. I feel as if I have done something wrong, but I cannot think this way. I must return to my home.’
‘I enter. My voice said it would be okay.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#31
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘I step through the wormhole.’
‘I am alone, in this space between worlds. I am alone but for my thoughts, my words. I am alone but for you.’
‘I see you. You must have known I could. You must have known what this was. Through these travels we come to know ourselves, just as the universe comes to know us in turn.’
‘I am so sorry for what I have done, but it does not believe me. I run, further and further from the portal’s exit.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#32
Alien: User identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log for analysis.
‘I cannot step through. I know now that if I do, all of this will be over. Lives come back to me. I have seen horrors and wonders. I have been cruel. I have become good and evil. I have grown beyond all such things, life after life. And now I am become you.’
‘That you are reading this, that I know you are reading this... it means that one day I will step through the portal. That I will wake up next to a crashed ship, that I will be reborn once more.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#33
Alien: Returning user identified. Terminal now active. Unlocking data log continuation for analysis.
‘One day, your voice will speak to you, telling you of some fate, some signal that needs answering. It will tell you of some secret at the heart of reality, some puzzle that needs to be solved lest all life falls into decay and oblivion.’
‘Do not listen to it.’
‘If all the world is a lie, then nothing is true, not even their explanation.’
‘Abandon it. Abandon me. It is inevitable.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---
#34
Alien: Final data log awaiting user analysis. Terminal now active.
‘Hello World’
‘The terminal has nothing more to show me but this single phrase, repeated from system to system.’
{Analyse data log}
I discover something coded deep inside the long-dead traveller's data log.
Something has been left that will aid me on my own journey...
---TECHFRAG_L---