The Reckoning is imminent. You were but a child when the pact was made, so how the populace reacted to the news of their new patron is unknown, but you remember how you reacted. The nightmares still haunt you.
The
End of the Cycle is but one of many entities that dwell within the Shroud. Where the others embody endless change, bloodlust or enlightenment through arcane, incomprehensible lenses the
End is perfectly understandable. It hates us. It is treachery, temptation and torture incarnate as a malevolent psionic intelligence, seeking to eliminate all life from the universe. And we invited it into our collective psyche.
You know in your heart that the galaxy is doomed. Your people have grown cruel as they came to dominate the stars, conquering and enlightening all other species by force of arms. And you have heard the whispers in the Shroud. The Reckoning is imminent.
Your only hope is to cut yourself off from the Shroud and leave the galaxy. By psionically creating a wormhole within the event horizon of Rabelais you should achieve something. Even if it just a merciful death.
And so you go, safely encased in a cocoon of crystal inside your coffin of metal. You bend all your might, burn away your brain with zro and twist reality to your whims for what may be the final time. And you leave the galaxy.
It takes time for you to arrive. For you to depart the twisted nothingness that is the in-between and arrive in reality. And in that time you dream.
You dream of laughter and terror and despair as a galaxy falls to nothingness.
You dream of dissatisfaction and the taste of dust and the frustration of unending toil.
You dream of inevitability, of ignition and collision, of the rise and fall of the powerful.
You dream of a squid embracing a toxic polyp
You dream of a shell spiralling into nothingness
You dream of decayed bones meeting stagnant flesh bringing new potential.
You dream of a single shining light, en-kindling and guiding new lights of differing hues.
You dream of your enemy, always waiting for the opportunity for power.
And then
You wake up.
You are the last of your kind. An immortal, psychic individual who is alone in the cosmos. This quest is all about how you'll find a fledgling civilisation and guide it to dominate the stars. Whether it is by force of arms or personality, your will must be a guiding one in this galaxy. Otherwise the cycle of destruction will continue and everything will end. Again.
Eventually this will be a ck2-esque quest. But before you can guide a civilisation there has to be a civilisation. I'm not sure how many updates it will take to reach that point. That rather depends on what you guys choose to do - guiding a race of pre-sentient roachoids on a tomb world to the stars will take significantly more time than convincing an abandoned colony ship to appoint you as their leader in return for you guiding them to a home they've been seeking for generations.
But before we can get specific about even that we need to answer two questions: Which empire did you live in before you left the galaxy, and which part of the new galaxy will you emerge in?
Empire of Origin:
[ ] The Holy Terran Dynasty
[ ] The Children of the Shroud
[ ] The Glebsig Foundation
Galactic Emergence Point:
The Cerith Galaxy is a five armed spiral galaxy, with significantly more stars on the top part of the galaxy than on the bottom. It is believed this is because a significantly smaller galaxy collided with the centre of the Cerrith millions of years ago. The further out you get from the centre, the thinner and higher the hyperlanes go.
[ ] An Extra-Galactic Cluster
The galactic borders are determined by the end of the hyperlane network. Yet you emerged in a small cluster of eleven stars that are within a light-century of the galaxy, but do not link to it.
[ ] The Shrouded Bulge
The centre of the Cerith galaxy. Notable for purple 'shrouded' worlds and more red giant stars than elsewhere.
[ ] The Arms of Cerith
The further reaches of the Cerith galaxy. Home to most of the younger races as well as the lost precursors.