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Stellaris: The Exile's Quest

Departing the unreal in-between to return to reality is a singularly unusual feeling. Your mental awareness immediately encompasses your ship, but your physical body takes several seconds to phase back in. The sensation of your heart beating in a futile effort to push non-existent blood to your not quite real brain almost distracts you from the state of your ship. Almost. But you can't be distracted from the final angry burst of information from the psionic computer interface as its databanks explode, ruining the primary controls and basically all of your defenses against other ships. Hopefully you won't need them.
Unfortunately your jump drive has also been destroyed, reduced to scrap by the same dimensional backlash that ruined the computer. You'll have to use the back up hyperdrive to navigate, but all things considered that's barely even a hardship.

Once you've fully materialised in your ship you immediately dismiss the shattered display and access the secondary controls through a scorched floor panel. The holographic display is rudimentary, but it shows you what you need - you've emerged in the gravity well of a black hole, thankfully well clear of the event horizon. There appears to be nothing else of interest in this system, so you set a course for beyond the gravity well as you assess the long-range results.

The stars are wrong. Even compared to the longest simulation you ran, spanning billions of years, the Milky Way should never have ended up looking like this. Five arms instead of four, a much larger stellar disk and significantly thicker at every part of the disk, particularly around the galactic core, which seems to have vertical bars rather than the horizontal bars you are familiar with. The end result is a bulging and uneven galactic plane, top heavy with arms that spiralled upwards as they thinned. Though the stars are as beautiful as any you've seen, they're utterly alien. And you cannot decide if that renders them terrifying, repugnant or alluring.

After what feels like a lifetime of contemplation, look away from the holographic display, before turning back to the console. It'll take several days for you to leave the black hole's gravity well behind maybe two weeks to enter the uncharted hyperlane that is you only way out of the system, but you might as well assess your destination sooner rather than later.


What is in the system that the only hyperlane leads to?

[ ] Abandoned Evolution - A tiny moon inhabited by what seems to be a semi-sapient species, complete with orbital habitat above the nearby gas giant.
[ ] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
[ ] Neural Symbiosis - A primitive culture of reptilians on an arid world, currently gripped by xenophobia about some sort of extra organ?

[ ] The Peace of the Grave - A world ruined by prolonged nuclear conflict, but with new life rapidly evolving and developing a unique culture.
[ ] The Perfect Planet - A gaia world inhabited by a diverse ecosystem on non-sapient life.
 
[X] Neural Symbiosis - A primitive culture of reptilians on an arid world, currently gripped by xenophobia about some sort of extra organ?

lets save the lizard folk!
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
 
[X] The Peace of the Grave - A world ruined by prolonged nuclear conflict, but with new life rapidly evolving and developing a unique culture.
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
Adhoc vote count started by Raptor580 on Jan 2, 2019 at 9:44 PM, finished with 35 posts and 22 votes.
Click to expand...

Adhoc vote count started by Raptor580 on Jan 2, 2019 at 9:44 PM, finished with 8 posts and 7 votes.
  • [X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
    [X] Neural Symbiosis - A primitive culture of reptilians on an arid world, currently gripped by xenophobia about some sort of extra organ?
    [X] The Peace of the Grave - A world ruined by prolonged nuclear conflict, but with new life rapidly evolving and developing a unique culture.
Click to expand...

Adhoc vote count started by Raptor580 on Jan 3, 2019 at 9:31 AM, finished with 17 posts and 16 votes.
  • [X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
    [X] The Perfect Planet - A gaia world inhabited by a diverse ecosystem on non-sapient life.
    [X] Neural Symbiosis - A primitive culture of reptilians on an arid world, currently gripped by xenophobia about some sort of extra organ?
    [X] The Peace of the Grave - A world ruined by prolonged nuclear conflict, but with new life rapidly evolving and developing a unique culture.
Click to expand...
 
[X] The Perfect Planet - A gaia world inhabited by a diverse ecosystem on non-sapient life.
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
 
[X] Lost and Alone - A damaged colony ship helplessly drifting through space, only a few hundred light-seconds from the alpine world that was their target.
 
[x] The Peace of the Grave - A world ruined by prolonged nuclear conflict, but with new life rapidly evolving and developing a unique culture.
 
[X] The Perfect Planet - A gaia world inhabited by a diverse ecosystem on non-sapient life.
 
tally time
Adhoc vote count started by Raptor580 on Jan 3, 2019 at 2:49 PM, finished with 19 posts and 17 votes.
Click to expand...
 
Im curious to see what race this is thats stuck in the ship and to hear the story of how they got to space and why they were heading to a new planet.
 
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