The Lands Beyond (Outer Wilds/The Land Before Time)

[X] No more beating around the bush. Equip your space suit and prepare for an adventure.
[X] Enter the lift codes and head to the Astrodrome. Requires the space suit to be equipped.
-[X] Zanz jr. was at the cemetery around this time last loop. Go take a peak in their office while they are away.

As your mind pieces together your next actions, you hear footsteps heading towards you. Soon enough, you look up to see Cobalt looking down at you all sprawled on the ground in your panic.

"Littlefoot, there is nothing to fear from us," he says, in a voice that attempts to soothe you, but cannot hide the worry carried within it.

"I...sorry Mr. Cobalt. I-I had a really bad dream that the Valley was stuck in some kind of time loop and-"

Cobalt shushes you.

"I understand. Even the calmest of us fall victim to such nightmares at times. All that you must do is return to reality and banish the fear that your dream has imparted on you. It is, after all, the mind-killer, and you must let it flow past you until nothing remains of it. Breathe, Littlefoot."

You try to take his advice, letting the feeling of wrongness that surrounds you fade into the recesses of your mind. Still, you cannot help but be crushed by the realization of your situation.

He doesn't know and you are all alone. There is nobody on this world that can help you, except perhaps for Mr. Endling.

While you think over this, you hear Topsy's distant voice in the background. Suddenly, a realization comes into your head. Malin is about to confront Topsy, and Zanz Jr. should be heading over to the Shrine about now. That would mean that Zanz Jr.'s office will be empty for at least the next hour, and the conference room might be clear as well. This is an opportunity you might not get if you wait longer. Time to get a move on!

Slowly but surely, you stand up, looking Cobalt straight in the eyes.

"T-thank you, Cobalt. I'm... feeling better now. I'll go back to my grandparents," you say before turning around.

"L-Littlefoot, are you not interested in the reason for the Museum's temporary closure?" you hear Cobalt ask in an exasperated tone from behind.

"Oh yeah I'll just come back later!" you shout as you leave the City. With your grandparents still in the forest, you should be able to retrieve your suit without being caught. You make your way back to the Circle and find the coast clear, then head to the hiding place. The suit is buried beneath the pile of leaves and sticks, just as you left it before your adventure began.

As much as "before" means anything with time travel.

You equip your suit in the span of a few minutes, not wanting to waste any more time. Sadly, your items didn't make the loop. You'll have to retrieve them from the Zoological Laboratory and Astrosaur Building all over again. Perhaps later.

The way to the Astrodrome lift is just as empty as you remember it from before the loop. When you get there, you quickly punch in the code before feeling the lift ascend to the rim of the Great Wall. When you reach the top, you half-expect employees waiting for you, but none are to be found. You suppose many of them still haven't arrived from the Valley. It's the perfect time to snoop around.

The door to the office section of Mission Control is open as before. You quickly scan the corridor to make sure nobody lies in wait for you before entering in. The place is silent and it seems like the room at the end is empty. However, you turn your attention to Zanz Jr.'s tantalizing office door. You extend your right tentacle to pull it open and walk through.

The moment you step inside, you are taken aback by how disorganized the office is, especially in comparison to those of Zanz Jr's co-workers. It feels like she's strewn her work all across it, and you wonder what method she has to sort it all out, if she even has one at all. You fear this will make your job much more difficult, but you have no choice but to get to work.

Most of the documents you see are equation-filled technical diagrams complex enough that you struggle to make heads or tails of them. You soon give up on those around the room and turn to her desk. Lying on top of it is a strange-looking paperweight resembling a dimpled rock of some kind, but carved out of wood. You would almost swear it's a representation of the Quantum Shards you've encountered thus far.

The desk is mainly populated by various diagrams, similar to what's scattered around the office. However, you do spot a few notes that are of interest. One describes an examination performed on antimatter cannisters from the Far Beyonder Antimatter Collector retrieved by Expedition 31. A larger note describes specifications for an "In-Situ Resource Utilization" system on a vehicle called the "LCAV-02" that, by all appearances, is simply a large pump capable of sucking and filtering water of varying purity into a propellant tank.

Deduction Roll (Challenging): 4 + 2 + 4 (Deduction) = 10
10 vs. 12 = Failure

Nope. Doesn't seem to ring a bell. Perhaps you'll figure out where it's used on later.

While you are moving apart the papers on the desk, you notice an object buried beneath them. It seems to be a portable tape recorder similar to the one you found on the workbench in the Construction Yard. You raise an eyelash. What exactly would be important enough that Zanz Jr. would need to record? Without hesitation, you press the "play" button. You hear the tape scratch before two voices are audible. One of them is Zanz Jr., and the other makes your blood run cold. It's Mr. Endling!

"Zanz Jr.: ...then are you sure the reaction chamber will provide the performance the LCAV requires with liquid water?
Mr. Endling: Oh yes, the dissociation math works out and Far Beyonder engineering is remarkably resilient.
Mr. Endling: Despite your best attempts to mutilate it!
Zanz Jr.: Don't blame me, it was you who told us to remove the reaction chamber from the Nightwing wreckage and gave us Far Beyonder tools to do it!
Mr. Endling: Yes, but you couldn't have been a little more delicate with the execution?
Zanz Jr.: It's hard to be gentle when your workers are harvesters from Creep Valley.
Zanz Jr.: We risked more than one life getting into the Hangar!
Mr. Endling: Yes, and their bravery is commendable!
Mr. Ending: Apologies for the risk.
Mr. Endling: Now, all that remains is to reconfigure the reaction chamber to function with Saurian electronic interfaces, and the engine will be fully functional!
Zanz Jr.: I assume you'll be handling that by yourself?
Mr. Endling: Of course!
Zanz Jr.: It's baffling.
Zanz Jr.: How are you, a random traveler, able to interface with Far Beyonder technology when the City has been struggling to do so for decades without success?
Mr. Endling: Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?"

Discovery Log updated.

The recording cuts off there. You feel taken aback. Then, Mr. Endling didn't just arrive at the City when you woke up. He's been here for months at least! Was he waiting for the Great Circle Contingency to activate? If so, why did he bother to help MBV anyway?

You suppose you could try to ask him directly when he reappears, but you doubt you'll get a clear answer. Regardless, you must proceed. An hour has passed overall, and there is still much to be done.

[] Write-in actions

Time: 1 hour/65 hours
Health: 10/10
Food: 100%
Sleep: 14 hours of wakefulness remaining
Inventory: Bridge Drone

[X] Snoop in the main Mission Control room.

Leaving Zanz Jr.'s office, you creep down the hallway to the ajar door of the mission planning room. After pausing to listen for any conversations inside, you slowly push your way in. The interior is dominated by charts, diagrams, and maps of all kinds, present on the walls and on the large table standing in the middle. Taking a glance, you notice that each wall's contents are related to MBV's operations on a specific moon of Firmament.

The Shrouded Ember wall is labelled "Expedition 38," making it the Expedition to have launched right before the Expedition to Lambent Creep. It contains a map of what appears to be Mount Death itself with various points marked on it with crosses. You squint. Some of those locations are at least tens, if not hundreds, of kilometers apart! You wonder how it would be possible to traverse them without a long-range vehicle. These locations are labelled as "temperature anomalies." A strange thing to note, but considering that Mount Death is a highly active volcano, those would indeed stand out.

Attached to this map is another map, this one of a much smaller section of Mouth Death's southeast slope only twenty kilometers by twenty kilometers across. It seems to be crisscrossed by three lava tubes with large portions having collapsed. The map is also marked by multiple crosses, these ones with labels. The largest cross, away from the lava tubes, is labelled "Base Camp," while the others, some of them situated inside the lava tubes, are labelled as "forward camps."

Besides the maps are multiple photographs taken from the surface. One of them is of a very large Quantum Shard located near a forward camp built into a jagged cliff face. Another is of a shattered landscape hewn from almost black obsidian. Looking at it makes fear rise up inside your chest, for you once walked across a land exactly like this. Trying to suppress that memory, you examine the picture more closely. Crossing its center is the ceiling of a lava tube, with a caved-in portion in the middle. However, the strangest part of it is that you're pretty sure you see... mist of some kind emanating from the interior of the tube.

There is one last photograph. It shows an eerie blue orb hovering above a small quantum shard, crackling with lightning. No explanation for what this could possibly be is given.

Besides the photographs is a note:

"Day 21 - despite the lack of evidence to substantiate his claim, Commander Nic continues to suspect the presence of hidden Far Beyonder ruins inside the lava tubes of Sector 4. However, Mission Control has suggested the crew focus on their geological studies as well as examining the anomalies discovered in the Sector, which are now believed to be of a quantum nature. The forward camps have finished deployment, and expeditions to the temperature anomalies can now be undertaken."

You pause. Quantum anomalies certainly sound strange, but you don't have any idea what that would have to do with the Great Circle Contingency or anything else along those lines. Still, you jot it down for later.

Discovery Log updated.

The Lofted Ether wall is labelled "Expedition 37." Plastered on it is a 2D map of the interior of Lofted Ether, with the locations of multiple skyberg clusters marked as traveling at the top of "convection cells" that reach the interior surface of Lofted Ether's shell. Closer to the center of Lofted Ether is a "debris belt" that is labelled as dangerous to traverse through, which culminates in a 500 kilometer-wide region surrounding the White Hole labelled as "the Photosphere" that is completely off-limits.

Among the labelled skyberg clusters is one labelled "Base Camp." A nearby one is labelled "Expedition 12 Site," while a more distant one is labelled "Far Beyonder Site 1." Even further away from that are two locations on the map denoted as being sources of Far Beyonder radio pulses. Attached are multiple photographs. One is of the Base Camp, which is built right next to an enormous Ironbark in full bloom. Another is of a desolate set of skybergs, one of which seems to have received significant damage. Another photograph shows a network of Ironbark vines crossing a skyberg cluster, with what appear to be large balloon-shaped sacks growing out of them.

Besides the photographs is a note:

"Day 91 - Commander Draco has reported that dispersal of the Hydrogen Seeds has begun across Lofted Ether, with an excursion dispatched to Far Beyonder Site 1 for observation. Due to the significantly increased hazard, all planned expeditions to the sources of the discovered Far Beyonder radio signals have been postponed until after the seeding is complete."

The noted presence of the Far Beyonders on Lofted Ether makes that moon seem even cooler to you, though you don't know how it would relate to the Great Circle Contingency. You make a note of it regardless.

Discovery Log updated.

The Gale's Abyss wall is labelled "Expedition 36." It contains two maps plastered on it. The first is a map of Gale's Abyss itself, with three locations marked on it. The first is slightly north of the equator and is marked "Site A," while the second is east of Site A and slightly south of the equator, marked as "Site B." The last site is further east still and lies exactly on the equator, labelled as "Quantum Signal???"

The second map is what appears to be a large shallow stretch of ocean, indicated as being a closeup of Site A. Many cross marks are scattered across it, and portions of the map are shaded in a dirty yellow color. Photographs of large kelp forests are attached, along with one of what appears to be the wrecked fragment of a Far Beyonder device lying on the sea floor. There is one more photograph that makes your heart sink: a section of kelp forest whose kelp is twisted, viney, and covered in yellow pustules, making it resemble Creep tendrils of all things. Is the Creep present on other moons as well?

Besides the photographs is a note:

"Day 185 - A-Team has ceased all underwater exploration of Site A pending review from Mission Control due to a close encounter with an Infested macroorganism. Commander Pearl reported that further examination of the entrance to the hypothesized Far Beyonder settlement at Site B revealed no obvious means of activation. It was proposed to divert B-Team to investigate the detected quantum signal, but this was ruled as carrying excessive risk due to the distance that must be crossed. B-Team will instead investigate the surface structures uncovered at Site B."

Deduction Roll (Easy): 3 + 3 + 4 (Deduction) = 10
10 vs. 8 = Success

A jolt flashes through your mind as you read that paragraph. MBV found a settlement at Site B? That sounds exactly like the Submerged City mentioned in the logs attached to the Circle Statue in the Zoological Laboratory! Possibilities race through your mind. The Circle Statues were manufactured there and it could hold all the answers you've been looking for... if only there was a way to head to Gale's Abyss.

That's the problem, isn't it?

Discovery log updated.

The last wall is devoted to the ongoing operations of the SkyNest. It contains a table displaying a list of active relay satellites in orbit around Wild Nest as well as a manifest of active scientific instruments and subsystems aboard SkyNest. Next to it is a cargo manifest for the next automated supply shipment to SkyNest, along with a note saying that the next crewed mission to it is still "TBD."

There is a picture included on the SkyNest wall as well. It depicts some kind of quasi-spherical Far Beyonder device anchored to SkyNest via a scaffolding. Its design vaguely reminds you of a Bridge Drone, but significantly larger than a Saurian and possessing a surface covered in sliding mechanisms. Below this picture is a caption: "The Orrery."

Discovery log updated.

You wonder how a Far Beyonder device like it was found by MBV, or why MBV didn't bother to tell anyone about it. Of course, while it may be closer to home, it's still impossibly far away.

There is one more thing to examine: the table itself. Sprawled across it is the planning for Expedition 39: a mission to Lambent Creep. At the center is a large, detailed map of a small section of Lambent Creep's surface, only 10 kilometers across. It is dominated by a sprawling dark mass with regular lines that you're sure are artificial. Set away from it is a cross that marks the location of the landing site and base camp for the mission, with a trail leading from it to the edge of the... structure. In addition, there are multiple purple crosses scattered around the map, on the outside of the structure, labelled "Demon Tail Locations." Next to it is a note:

"Day 7 - Commander Edmon reports crew is prepared to enter Far Beyonder complex. Mission Specialist Melly has confirmed significantly heightened electrical activity among the Creep biomass than would be expected. In addition, the crew has sighted multiple instances of Demon Tails or other quantum phenomena. Fortunately, nearby Hivestems have remained dormant thus far. High level of risk is associated with continued presence. Crew awaiting final approval for entrance."

The words hit you like a clubtail's club to the face. Commander Edmon, your greatest hero, got sent all the way to Lambent Creep, and his daughter came with him. You thought he had retired, but it seems they brought him back for this: a suicide mission. Did he volunteer for it, or was he simply the only one who MBV felt could do the job?

Whatever the answer is, you fear what might have happened to him? Is he trapped on Lambent Creep, with no one to talk to other than his crew? Or worse? The more disturbing thought is that MBV clearly saw sending him there as a lesser evil compared to not doing anything. And that worries you much more, even though Firmament's impending explosion makes all of that a moot point.

Discovery Log updated.

You realize you have gained all you can from this room. However, there is one additional exit besides the way you came, and you think this leads directly into Mission Control itself. Slowly, you creep up to the also-ajar door and peek through. Your heart sinks when you spot a digger sitting at his station. Looks like this place is off-limits for now.

You now have multiple off-world locations swimming through your head, but you are just as much of a ground-dweller as ever. What will you do next?

[] Write-in actions

Time: 1 hour/65 hours
Health: 10/10
Food: 100%
Sleep: 14 hours of wakefulness remaining
Inventory: Bridge Drone

[X] Go pick up the grappling hook and Signalscope.
[X] Try entering the LCAV.

As frustration on your grounded state builds within you, a fleeting thought enters your mind. There's another LCAV at the Assembly Yard, right? You could... no, that's ridiculous. Well... you could still take a look at it up close, something you failed to do the first time around.

First, though, you'll head back to the Astrosaur Building to re-acquire the Grappling Hook and Signalscope. If the loop repeats again, will you have to repeat this as well? Traveler, you hope not. You make your way back outside the Mission Control building and towards the Astrosaur Building, hurrying to avoid being caught by any employee coming from the Valley. Fortunately, the coast is clear, and you are able to make your way inside the Astrosaur Building. Just as you expect, the equipment is right there on the rack, waiting for you to take them. Carefully, you attach the Grappling Hook and Signalscope to the left and right straps on your suit, respectively.

With the equipment secured, you head out of the Astrosaur Building and towards the landing strip by the Assembly Yard. As you approach the LCAV, you begin to make out more details. The hull itself is made out of carefully welded metal components similar to the rest of MBV's vehicles, but with somewhat greater care taken for the welds and additionally painted white. However, the three landing legs are made of what you think is cured wood, with only the bowl-shaped tips being made of metal. Looking closer, you can see that the leg tips are split in two and contain a folding mechanism. Moving up, the legs enter into bays which also contain two landing engines each and have open bay doors.

Deduction Roll (Medium): 4 + 1 + 4 (Deduction) = 9
9 vs. 10 = Failure

You don't understand how it all fits together or what the point of it is. Of course, there's probably a way to find out.

Looking at the swept wings, you notice that their undersides are lined with interlocking plates of an odd-looking pitch-black material. You know that MBV capsules require some kind of heat shielding to withstand the heat of entering an atmosphere, but this seems like a step above the expendable coverings used in the first Expeditions.

When you move forward to the front end of the vessel, you spot something that makes your heart race: a ladder deployed from the craft and reaching all the way to the ground, beneath an open hatch! You race forward, eager to find a way into the LCAV. When you make it to the hatch, you spot a label written in large letters besides it:

"LCAV-02 - Starflyer"

"Starflyer," you mutter to yourself. The latest and most advanced creation of MBV, and it's just sitting here all by itself. You know you might deeply regret trespassing here, but your curiosity cannot be held back any further. You inflate your tentacles, grip the rungs, and slowly but surely pull yourself up the ladder and into the hatch. Once inside, you plop down on the floor and take a moment to breathe. As you begin looking around, your breath grows shorter and your heart races quicker. Here you are, inside a spaceship!

The inside is a single room. To the right of you is what you assume is the cockpit of the Starflyer, containing multiple computer screens behind a large semicircle visor. Hanging down from the ceiling of the room are eleven harnesses, two right behind the controls and the nine others behind those in three rows of three each. From their multiple adjustable straps, you suspect they can be fitted to Saurians of many different shapes and sizes - even, perhaps, a four-legs.

To the left, you see a suit rack on each wall of the interior. There's a lot of space behind the harnesses, enough to hold plenty of equipment or a few cargo boxes. At the very back is a circular door with a rotating latch. Besides it is a lever labelled "bay doors," currently set to the "closed" setting.

Returning to the cockpit, you take a closer look at the computers. Resting below them is a thick book labelled "Starflyer Operations Guide." You flick it open and begin skim-reading. It's packed with arcane procedural jargon, but you manage to extract plenty of useful information from it nonetheless.

The Starflyer is a craft capable of not just achieving orbit but traveling to another moon on a single stage, thanks to its Far Beyonder antimatter engine. Furthermore, it uses liquid water as propellant and can be restocked with a hose and pump built into the docking bay on any world with available water. The specifications list it as having 10,100 meters per second of delta-v on a full tank, which from the manual you guess is a way of measuring how far the Starflyer can travel.

In addition, as you suspected from snooping in Qiu's office, the Starflyer possesses an advanced autopilot system named CORS 2.0, capable of a variety of functions, including automatically piloting the Starflyer into orbit, rendezvousing with MBV vessels equipped with a beacon, performing interplanetary transfers to other moons, or even landing on clear and flat landing sites with an MBV landing beacon. From what you've read, you could order the ship to do stuff without you knowing the first thing about flying it!

The thought jolts your mind. You... you could do it. Press a few buttons, and take off into the Mysterious Beyond, just like that. It's real, after all. Your wildest dreams, the ones that haunted you for years, are now within your reach.

You feel queasy. Actually flying into space while the grown-ups watch in horror and your grandparents fearing they'll lose the last piece of their daughter they have? Hurtling into a realm filled with unknown horrors, where death hides around every corner? It sounds insane! But then, another thought crosses your mind.

As far as you know, there's nothing that's changed about the Great Circle Contingency. In less than three days, Firmament will explode, and all the grown-ups' worries won't amount to anything. They'll perish, along with you, and you'll all find yourselves back where you started, as if nothing ever happened. Your eyes open as you reach a final conclusion.

"I can't die," you mutter. No matter what, the Great Circle Contingency will send you back. You can do anything.

What shall you do now?

(An hour has passed.)

[] Write-in actions

Time: 2 hour/65 hours
Health: 10/10
Food: 100%
Sleep: 13 hours of wakefulness remaining
Inventory: Bridge Drone, (On Suit) Grappling Hook, (On Suit) Signalscope

[X] Your Scout mentioned something about available programs and learning new ones. Can it learn the CORS 2.0 program in case you need to pilot a different ship?
[X] Launch for the Hangar of the Far Beyonder Biohazard Laboratory.

As you examine the computers, a thought crosses your mind. The Bridge Drone can learn programs, can't it? What if it could download CORS 2.0 if you needed it for some reason? While you ponder that, you decide to boot up the guidance computers - a significantly harder process than you anticipated. You originally thought it would be as simple as pressing a button, but instead you find yourself reaching for the manual in order to find the complex start-up sequence required. Traveler, couldn't MBV just make their vehicles a little more accessible?

Once the sequence is complete, the computer screens in front of you boot up, displaying readouts in green wireframe. You find yourself looking at a map of Wild Nest with the location of the Starflyer marked with a single triangle and your current coordinates displayed on the top-right corner. On the top-left corner is displayed the label "Ground." Looking at the manual, you figure out how to select the option to designate a landing target. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow you to do so while you are landed on the ground. Furthermore, it appears that the Starflyer has not detected a valid landing beacon anywhere on Wild Nest except for your current location, meaning that CORS 2.0 is not capable of landing you at Creep Valley automatically.

Frustrated, you then turn to trying to copy CORS 2.0 into your Bridge Drone. Unfortunately, the Bridge Drone doesn't seem to recognize the Starflyer's navigation systems at all. Figures, given that it's Far Beyonder technology and thus would not be able to interface with Saurian technology on its own.

You examine the instruments to your right. Displayed on other computer screens are detailed readouts of the Starflyer's systems, such as the status of the engines or measured temperature readings on the Starflyer's hull. You also spot what you think is called an "attitude indicator" that displays the Starflyer's orientation with respect to the horizon, which shares a screen with an altimeter and speed indicator. You notice that the contents of this screen is also being displayed in front of you on the cockpit glass itself - a HUD similar to your suit's.

Placed in front of the computer screens for both the pilot and what you presume to be the copilot's spot are joysticks allowing the Starflyer to be manually piloted. They contain multiple buttons and can twist in multiple different directions. You wouldn't even know where to start if you tried to pilot this ship. Better to stick to CORS for now.

You figure out how to switch the mode on the display currently in "Ground" mode from the manual. By pressing a button, you are able to switch it to "Orbit," a view that displays the Starflyer's current orbital parameters, "Rendezvous," which displays information for docking to another MBV vessel, and "Transfer," which displays the Starflyer's position in the Firmament system as a whole and allows you to plot trajectories to other moons. However, only the Orbit view has CORS enabled, as both the Rendezvous and Transfer autopilots are disabled due to the Starflyer being landed. The Rendezvous mode has detected the SkyNest's rendezvous beacon, however, and is displaying its orbital parameters, allowing you to enter a similar orbit to it using the launch to orbit autopilot function if you wanted.

It appears that, with your total lack of piloting skills, there is nowhere to go except up. The thought of that turns your legs to jelly.

(AN: Littlefoot's unsanctioned status only applies to his interactions with the City authorities or MBV personnel on the ground. Once you're in space, the travelers you meet will understand your plight, or at least won't try to apprehend you. Don't feel afraid to speak to them.)

(A map of the current orbital configuration of the Firmament system is displayed. As the loop proceeds, the moons will orbit around Firmament at different rates. Unfavorable orbital configurations will increase the delta-v cost required to transfer from one moon to another, though this shouldn't be prohibitive in most cases.)

[] Write-in actions

Time: 2 hour/65 hours
Health: 10/10
Food: 100%
Sleep: 13 hours of wakefulness remaining
Inventory: Bridge Drone, (On Suit) Grappling Hook, (On Suit) Signalscope