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Valkyrie Standoff Chronology

After years of uneasy tensions with the race known as the Valkyries, humans discover a new substance growing near the core systems. This substance appears in very small quantities and appears to completely break the laws of physics. For now, scientists have decided to call it Dark Glass. A research vessel is sent to the core with some of the galaxy's brightest minds to help identify this new substance.

Also, as if by coincidence, the Valkyries have failed to send an emissary to the scheduled negotiation meeting, which occur every ten years.

A year has passed, and the Valkyries seem to have completely disappeared. The human research vessel completed its mission and a grand seminar will be held in the system called Rhen to inform the public of its findings. Dr. Anue Brignanin stands out as the leading expert on Dark Glass.

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Our party enters the story on a spacebus headed towards the system of Rhen. Also on this spacebus happens to be Dr. Brignanin, who appears shady and reclusive. Suddenly, the fragile spacebus is attacked by a Valkyrine raiding fleet!

The party hops in their ships and staves off the Valkyrine fighters while a nearby military patrol ship scares off the enemy capital. Without them, the fragile spacebus would not stand a chance. Though, Dr. Briganin is unnervingly calm throughout the whole ordeal.

The party is welcomed as heroes upon their arrival at Rhen. They secure their lodgings and await the seminar.

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After the seminar in the Rhen system, the public learned about the substance known as Dark Glass and what it was worth to the scientific community. Apparently it radiates a field that subdues any and all forms of energy around it, even neurological and kinetic. With so much interest in such a bizarre substance, a gold rush has started, and people make preparations to move to the core to gather the glass.

During their preparations, the party managed to acquire an insider contact who will be able to give them an advantage. The contact will be in touch with them soon about a job they'd like done in exchange for their help.

But today's smog is lined red. There are more than just scientists who have interests in dark glass...

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Unfortunately for our party, their Dark Glass expedition will have to be put on hold.

The Rhen system's stellar gate that would be the most direct route to the core has been rendered inoperable. Many rumors are floating around, and the strongest one implies sabotage by a fanatical religious group.

On top of that, a law has been hastily passed that regulates the movement of Dark Glass. Dark Glass is considered a controlled material and handling it within the Rhen system requires a permit.

Luckily, the party's contact - Gren Dendine - is willing to gift a Glass Harvesting License in exchange for a favor. This favor has the party traveling to the nearby Opiniga system to operate as poachers licensed on behalf of the Rhen system.

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Having decided to accept the poaching mission from the government official, the party finds themselves in the Opiniga system. This system is known for its rich wildlife reserves. The main commodities are wild and domesticated animals. The party lands, improvises traps and restraints, and begins their poaching operation.

Thanks to an obscene run of luck, the party comes across a giant mythical beast known only in legend - the immortal Dragon Dancer. At least, that's what they claim. They're probably just hallucinating! Silly party, always being funny.

Going back for their second poaching run, will the party manage to escape without getting caught?

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The party's journey took a bit of a detour when they discovered none other than... A LARGE ROCK! A gigantic rock flying through space was shown to be insignificant at first, but then, an explosion, and two escapees from what appeared to be a concealed prison. After a quick space fight in which pursuers were dispatched, it became apparent that this was a secret laboratory for Thaumatology experiments - forced human genetic mutation.

The escapees - a bounty hunter completing his mark and a mutated humanoid known as The Serpent - joined the party for lack of better thing to do. The party completed their last poaching run without incident and jumped back into the Rhen system to deliver the goods.

But when they arrive at their destination, something is amiss...

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After hypering back to the system of Rhen to turn in their poaching haul, the party finds superspace unusually busy... The system has erupted in war!

On one side, a fanatical religious group called the Caffeinatics. On the other side, Rhen's military force. Inevitably, the party's space bus is caught by a Caffeinatic interdictor and is forced into a fight.

After dispatching the adversaries, the party boards the enemy capital class starship and takes it over. And by doing so, they free the ship's captive - a young girl named Thuossa Ailinde.

Ailinde turns out to be an oracle of a religious - and extremely wealthy - system. She promises she will be in contact with the party again to thank them for freeing her.

The party has finally got some rest, and are the proud new owners of a Glass Harvesting License. It's time to make the journey to the core.

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With the Rhen system recovering from the fighting, the rescued Oracle Ailinde invites the party to her home system of Pierre Mentani, about half way between Rhen and the core.

On the way, Oracle Ailinde gives the party a grave warning: exposure Dark Glass seems to be causing a sickness of the mind. Her people has the technology to make someone somewhat resilient to this - a neural operation that 'unlocks' parts of the brain. Occasionally this procedure bestows gifts, which is how Ailinde earned her foresight and the title as Oracle.

Oracle Ailinde offers this operation to the party on one condition: they take with them a transponder, and will return to Pierre Mentani if it begins beeping. When questioned why, she alluded to a grim future ahead.

In addition to the operation, the party was also gifted new equipment, supplies, and a capital class starship. Hopefully these tools will be sufficient enough to protect them on their journey ahead.

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Our party wakes refreshed and ready. First shopping, then the combat sim to test out their new gear.

However, the topic of the system's history came up. It was somewhat bizarre that the Pierre Mentani system kept such sparse records of their history. When questioned on the subject, Oracle Ailinde's normally calm and calculated demeanor became uncharacteristically uncomfortable.

It turns out the Pierran people were once known as the Sunrise Nomads and originate from the extremely hostile planet of Focana, the Two Faced Planet. There exists their sister culture - known as the Mentani, or the Sunset Nomads.

All that is known about the Mentani is that they have worked towards perfecting their physical form, in contrast to the Pierran's interest in perfecting their mind.

What are these Mentani like? What can the party learn from their culture?What other Pierran secrets are there to be uncovered?

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Focana's geography is unique due to its very slow day/night cycle, requiring five full years for one complete day. On the daylight side of the planet are volcanic badlands, and on the opposite are craggy glaciers. The only areas that are capable of supporting human life are the areas of indirect light - sunrise, sunset, and the polar caps. A thick, hot jungle forms in the evening (sunset) side of the planet, before cooling off and becoming the frozen wastes as it rotates over to the night side. A chilly steppe covers the morning (sunrise) side between the ice and the scorching desert before coming around to being under the full power of the sun. The polar caps are overrun by ferocious and territorial animals and no humans are capable of settling there.

The party lands on the jungle side of the Two Faced Planet, where the Mentani people are rumored to be. They find and follow a path through the hostile jungle, but something is watching them. A Blitzcat announces its presence. It uses its ability to project light to confuse the party before making a lightning fast lunge for one of the front liners.

Before connecting with its prey it is intercepted by Giarest, who rips the beast's throw out. He introduces himself as a leader of the Mentani tribe nearby, and escorts the party there. Giarest is inhumanly large, almost anthropozoomorphic in nature. He was faster than the blitzcat, which was the fastest thing the party has ever seen.

The party tells Giarest of their quest for Dark Glass. Giarest is skeptical, but for now trusting of Oracle Ailinde's judgement, and agrees to gift them some of the Mentani power. He and the others break every bone in the party's body before applying a healing ointment that makes them grow back much stronger.

Now, the party boards the Glizardon, the starship gifted from the Oracle, with Navigation Officer Rumm, a savant pilot and Pierre Mentani visitor eager to go on an adventure. Together they make their first jump towards the core.

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After making their first jump, the Glizardon flew face first into a glowtick swarm. The microscopic firefly/locust space creatures devoured all sources of energy throughout the ship. Officer Rumm managed to get the party's ships working, but the Glizardon itself would need more time.

The party decided to explore a small, lonely, and uninhabited planet in the system, on which they found a crashed space bus type starship emitting a distress signal. The reactor was leaking deadly radiation throughout, but some insect creatures called Brownies had made a small nest on the bridge. By utilizing the obedience of these creatures, the party managed to shut down the radiation and explore the vessel.

Apparently it was a research vessel sent on an expedition for none other than dark glass! And Dr. Anue Briganin's name appears on the manifests. How did he survive the crash? The party grabbed as much documentation as they could, and made another jump towards to the core.

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The party arrives at a simple system with an icy water planet populated by many sparse islands. On the islands are cold cacti type vegetation. The oceans run quite deep.

Thankfully, one of the party's ships is capable of going underwater. Everyone gets in and decides to check out what's down there. They make a trip to the ocean floor to find that it's covered in crystal. By Macgyvering a construction arm to the front of the ship, the party managed to harvest a few handfuls of materials.

But they are not alone in the deep.

Movement is noticed nearby. The ship's sensors are becoming more and more scrambled the closer they get. Finally they get a visual, and see what appears to be a crystalline hexaped. Inching closer, they find that it begins draining their energy reserves - the only thing between them and a hull crushed death. They book it and return to the Glizardon.

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The party notices an anomaly closer to the system's star. It turned out to be a debris field from a somewhat recent battle. Among the debris were canisters of Dark Glass!

But also among the debris were four looters, who had already succumbed to the madness taint emanating from Dark Glass. The party engaged them in combat from within the crowded debris field.

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The party finished their fight against the tainted looters and harvested their spoils. The materials paid for many upgrades that the party will surely need.

After jumping to the next system, the party finds a star and a lonely planet. A thing of awe and horror, the entire star is entirely encased in an energy sucking shell of Dark Glass. Completely baffled by this phenomenon, the party investigates the notes they pilfered from the crashed research vessel a in a previous system and finds that Dark Glass operates very much like a fire: it has a triangle of requirements that must be met for it to sustain itself, and is a destructive and chaotic force. But where a fire consumes material to radiate energy, Dark Glass appears to subdue energy as it expands.

And just like an unhindered fire, it's beginning to grow out of control.

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The party made a jump closer to the core to see if they could discover the birth of Dark Glass and if there was a way to stop it. They found three stars completely encased in glass, orbiting a supermassive black hole. The speed at which these stars were orbiting was unbelievable, needing only a few hours to make a complete revolution. And they were gaining more speed incredibly quickly.

After several hours the stars had sped up so much they needed but a few minutes to make a complete orbit around the black hole. Not long after that, they were sucked in entirely. The interaction between Dark Glass and a singularity unleashed a massive explosion of dark energy. As the wave passed over the ship, massive glass crystals formed, wrecking havoc on its electronics. Navigation Officer Rumm was mortally wounded, and the Glizardon lost power.

The party pooled their resources and managed to save Rumm's life. While tragic, the event also gave the party enough data to research a potential way to stop the spread of dark glass.

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Before embarking on the their journey, Oracle Ailinde gave the party a transponder, telling them to return to Pierre Mentani if it were to ever go off. Today it went off.

With Officer Rumm in critical but stabilized condition, the party made hurried trips back to the Pierre Mentani system to find that it had also been struck by the dark energy wave released earlier. The damage was severe, especially to the planet Focana, home of the Mentani.

Due to the Oracle's foresight, thankfully the planet had been evacuated. However the dark energy wave also injured her, and she's slipped into a mysterious coma.

Despite this, the party is still receiving communications from her. Though a combination of subliminal queues and hypnosis, the Oracle was able to leave behind messages by triggering hallucinations embedded deep in the party's subconscious. There's no doubt that this was implanted during the neural surgery they underwent earlier.

Sharing what they've learned with the legendary minds of the Pierrans, the party learns they have about 60 hours to stop the spread of Dark Glass, the blasts of dark energy waves, and entropic decay. Otherwise, it'll start a chain reaction that will be the end of the galaxy.

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Earlier, the party learned that the key to stopping Dark Glass and the creep of entropy that comes with it was through an equal an opposite reaction. The party found an equal and opposite force in the form of the small firefly like creatures called glowticks encountered earlier. When exposed to energy, these creatures multiply and emit enormous amounts of extropic energy - they release more energy in the form of substance, heat, and light than they consume.

The current plan is to set up a scenario that is exactly opposite to the circumstances of the one that made the dark energy wave. Instead of introducing quantities of Dark Glass to a black hole, the party is going to use a particle collider to create a white hole, and introduce glowticks to that. After a small scale test run, it appears to completely neutralize Dark Glass in a massive radius.

However the effect is far too potent to be conducted on the planet's surface, and would completely destroy the planet's population. Without time for an evacuation, the party is now lifting the particle collider into space (very carefully!) so that they can do a full scale run, and hopefully stop Dark Glass for good.

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All is going well. Officer Rumm (mostly recovered from his injuries) is leading the lifting of the particle collider. However, malice is afoot. Attention is turned to a military patrol which has seemingly up and vanished from a corner of the system. The party leaves supervision of the particle collider to the master mechanic among them, and heads off to investigate the disappearance.

While the mechanic deals with the problem of increasingly frequent dark energy wave pulses threatening the fragile particle collider (and covering everything with Dark Glass), the rest of the party finds a capital starship belonging to Dr. Anue Briganin cloaked amidst the debris of a military patrol. They attempt to board and investigate, but they are quickly overpowered and taken prisoner.

Dr. Briganin reveals his plan to bomb the home planet of Oracle Ailinde with a pathogen that will alter the psychology and physiology of the population to become aligned with the nature of Dark Glass, allowing for co-existence with the impending doomsday. In effect, he's going to make everyone become rude and give them cancer, and by doing so, save a fraction of the human race. He and his associates are completely convinced that this is the only way for the human race to survive.

The party shares their findings with the doctor, specifically those regarding the eradication of Dark Glass. While the doctor is fascinated and distracted by the science, they murder him, aiming to seize the ship and disarm the ordnance.

A very difficult fight then erupts in the bridge as the party attempts to bring down the doctor's bodyguards. After a successful battle, they rejoin the group lifting the particle collider, and bathe in the revitalizing glow released from the glowticks. The positive energy wave neutralizes Dark Glass within the system. The event can be repeated to cleanse other systems and fight the process seeking to unmake reality.

Dark Glass - like entropy - is a force that will never be fully removed from the universe. Thanks to this success however, humans will be able to continue to exist within the galaxy.

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At least, until the next threat emerges.