Your first impression of the Fourth Sorrow was a vision of the beauty possessed by dying stars. Not the immediate death that a Lumen-class could enforce, but the slow, slow death of a main-sequence star that had bloomed into a red supergiant. Bloody red light washed across the system's planets, none of them living and a massive bank of stations stretched around the star at its heart. It took a few moments to realise what they were for, but the immense energy readings were hard to miss.
Mary's fingers were a blur across her virtual panels as she examined the data, pulling together the field readings until the full picture came into view. "The stations, they're stacked with Third Secret emitters," she breathed, awestruck. "It's like the beginning of a stellar converter, but stopped short to contain the supergiant's mass ejections, keep it at this point of its lifecycle. The scale of it-" she broke off, shaking her head.
"Stellar engineering, to protect this place from destruction." You nodded. If only they were so willing to do the same for the living, instead of the dead.
"There's something else," Mary said, pointing to a distant planet. Once, it would've sat squarely at the centre of a main-sequence star's goldilocks zone. A wire-pattern overlaid itself over the world, flexing organically under the star's titanic output. "The magnetosphere of that world is much stronger than it should be, enough to protect it from the red giant's radiation."
Fingers flicked, another scan began as the Adamant began the long trek towards the system's core. You were met by the same greeting, subtly different as always. This one spoke of those who'd once been here as...it was difficult to be sure. The title Shiplord messages used carried connotations of deep honour and sorrow, but something about this one felt...wrong.
"That's the message we're looking for, right?" Iris asked, voice a whisper.
"It must be," you agreed, reading it again. A single finger stabbed down at the title the Shiplords were using instead of a species name. "I guess we'll have to go down there to find out why the Shiplords called them this. Lina?"
"Course already locked, Amanda," your captain replied. "Three days."
"Three days, then." You looked down at where your finger intersected the message on the virtual screen. "And then we find out why the Shiplord would call a race the Lament."
It wasn't, all things considered, a perfect translation. According to your systems, a better one would've been the Lostguard, or possibly Hopelost. Lament, however, was what stuck aboard ship as you dived into the gravity well for the world that Mary had noted as standing protected from the vast local star. That the Shiplords had found a way to place it on stellar life support wasn't surprising in and of itself, but the resource cost for that had to be significant.
Of course it was significant: the Shiplords hadn't given a title to any of the other races lost to the Sorrows. Not one that they'd shared in the initial messages, at least The planet ahead of you had been heavily colonised, a homeworld, but one curiously absent the signs of battle. And there was something else, an ancient resonance to the system that felt to your soul like a place where enormous power had been worked. You weren't sure what that meant, but the home of the Sphere hadn't felt anything like this, and that had seen the end of a species.
Something else had happened here - but what? You'd never seen an Uninvolved form, but this felt similar enough to the process to guess this might have been a place that had seen one born. Though that just raised more questions - like why the Shiplords would let a race worthy of becoming a Sorrow simply...remove themselves from the board. Especially when your best guess was that the Fourth had taken place less than fifty thousand cycles after the Third.
Passing into the depths of the star system was like walking through a graveyard, all the other planets of the system ravaged by the terrible solar winds of the supergiant at its core. Gas giants stripped away until only cold and dead planetary cores remained. Closer planets burnt and split by radiation far stronger than any natural magnetosphere could've deflected. Moons slowly eroded over hundreds of thousands of years by the touch of a star's frozen death. It made it very easy to see what the Shiplords considered important.
And that was the world before you, where life still blossomed across its surface. Enormous city complexes sprawled across its continents, safe beneath a magnetosphere strong enough that it would have a passable chance of deflecting low intensity laser fire. Mary had deciphered the means of that on your second day in the system: a planet-based Emitter array of tremendous power. You'd known intellectually that stellar engineering was something that the Shiplords had a considerable breadth of experience with, but seeing it in action was impressive and intimidating all at once.
And all of it done in such a way that the life of the world had barely been touched. The high forests of the world were untouched, and the biosphere of the planet was still flourishing, and there was no sign of the sensor clouds that had drifted above the worlds within the Third Sorrow. It had simply been preserved, as close to intact as it could be. Only missing the race that had once called the place home.
Sensor beacons directed you down into low orbit of the world, where the boosted magnetosphere would provide additional protections for parasite craft. The spaceport below seemed to offer berths to ships even larger than the Adamant, and Warden Yarin had offered you one in his initial message. You'd considered that offer, but the danger of detection had felt too high, and there'd been enough other craft in orbit to make refusing seem safe.
The shuttle ride passed in a blur, barely any attention paid to the sweeping presence of life all around you as your focus narrowed steadily with every second closer you got to the ground. The words Entara had said ran through your mind over and over, swirling out into the Heartcircle's network, where it met and merged with matching repetitions. It wasn't that you weren't curious about the truth of this place, you were. But you also had a much more important purpose driving you, and a deadline.
Then you were down, landing in the shadow of one of the planet's vast cities. The monoliths of ancient metal loomed high around the spaceport, and you were surrounded by the bustle of people and silent machines. The air hummed at a level below standard human perception, the feeling of energy being cast up far beyond the planet's atmosphere. And that ancient, immeasurable presence that you'd sensed first on entering the system was far stronger here on the ground. Enough that you thought you might be able to understand it, given time.
You had a moment to take in the sight, and then a Shiplord was approaching you, walking with a slow, deliberate pace. Warden Yarin seemed much more solemn than all the other Wardens you'd met except Kicha, perhaps a result of what this place was. He stepped forward, spreading manipulators to speak a greeting you knew more than well enough by now. And you...you broke through it.
"I mean no disrespect in this, Warden," you said, the perfect translation impossible to notice thanks to the Masques' systems. "But I was sent here with a message. A question for you, that I believe would make the offer you are about to make moot." The Shiplord paused, shifting their nanoshell into curiosity, but also an undertone of concern blended with a curiosity too faint to be certain from where it sprung.
"What do you seek, then?" He asked, expressions stilling back into solemnity.
"We were told to ask for the last memory."
If he'd been human, you were certain that Yarin's eyes would've widened to the size of saucers. It was just the impression you got from the reaction of shock and...was that concern? It was difficult to be sure. And yet for all that, he didn't question it.
"Of course," he said, turning quickly. "Follow me." He was already moving as the second word finished forming, fast enough that you had to rush a moment to keep up. Signals leapt out from the Warden to automated systems built into the memorial, and a transport pad arced down from the viridian sky to land a few steps before him.
He turned, gesturing sharply. "Come."
You stepped onto the pad, and it rose smoothly into the sky before streaking out across the lonely city. The avenues here were large enough to fit a FSN destroyer into them, but they seemed to have been built to handle beings much the same size as yourselves. The size of the streets had been a deliberate choice, one informed by a desire for artistry that the Shiplord had preserved, as sections of parkland and small rivers wove between the roads and sprawling structures.
It was peaceful, and in a way that you'd not expected from a planetary scale grave. As if the world was quietly waiting for the old residents to reappear. You didn't think that could ever happen, but the sentiment was there.
The transport pad carried you in total silence for almost ten minutes, landing at last on the edge of a vast structure of metal and stone with the sun behind it. You looked up, seeing black stone rising into the sky like the peaks of mountains, the walls reaching so high that they seemed to almost scrap the clouds. It was an illusion, you knew, but that didn't make it any less impressive. And yet that was the secondary concern to you and the rest of your Heartcircle. The place seemed to resonate with the presence of the planet, like an enormous tuning fork that your presence had somehow struck to life.
It made concentrating a bit of a challenge, one that made you glad of the stabilising and entirely unaffected presence of Iris and Mary. Fortunately, Yarin seemed to take your reaction to the planetary citadel as simple awe at the scale of it. You thought for a moment he almost smiled, actually, before leading you off the pad and down into the installation. One that, you realised quickly, was still very operational. Targeting systems for an enormous array of security systems tracked your every step as you approached it, and further scanners and weapon systems littered the path deeper into the complex.
It was odd, actually. The place was clearly similar in underlying aesthetics to the cities and more that you'd seen from orbit and then on approach, but there were differences too. As if it had been constructed much later, all at once, and for a very different purpose. And the deeper you went, the more certain you became: this place hadn't been built to defend the planet, but to protect something inside it. And you'd seen construction like this exactly once before, the result of it was back on the Adamant.
:This is the work of an Uninvolved,: Vega sent suddenly, as if reading your mind. :I don't know how they did it - how they were allowed to do it. But this was the work of one of them.:
:You're certain?: Mary sent back, ducking down another flight of stairs sinking you deeper into the planet, and closer to the centre of the installation.
:We are,: you said. :It feels like the drive Tahkel made for us. Just...more focused.:
:What does that mean?: Iris asked.
:I have no idea.:
It took nearly an hour to reach the centre of the citadel, only for Yarin to turn to you at the final door and speak. "This is as far as I go, pilgrims. I know what is beyond, but it is not for me, and has not been for any who've come here since the Lament left the world. I wish you luck. And I will be here once you are finished."
Somehow you weren't sure if he meant that last sentence to be ordered that way. The way he said it felt more like 'once it's finished with you'. Whatever that nebulous it might be. Fun.
"Then let's get this done," you said, flicking your nanoshell through a soothing expression of solemn appreciation. "Our thanks, Warden."
The door vanished as you stepped up to it. Not retracted, not slid aside: literally vanished. It left nothing behind but an empty frame and the sense of being watched. But that wasn't going to stop you now. Not when you were so close. Looking through the darkness beyond you saw a low pillar or table, perhaps eight metres across. It was carved out of the same black stone as the rest of the enormous structure. You looked right and left, feeling the presence of your fellows.
All of you stepped through the doorway together.
The moment you crossed the threshold your senses were full of the enormity of presence of an Univolved's actions, seemingly unaltered by over a million cycles of history. You didn't know how you knew that number so perfectly, but somehow now you did. You took another step, another, and emerged from the line of darkness into a gently lit chamber beyond. The circular construction resolved itself into a recessed column with a single rune engraved on its surface, one you didn't recognise. A moment later you felt the door materialise again behind you. As if the curtain of shadow hadn't been enough?
"Everyone alright?" you asked. Your Heartcircle was still all there, cycling the energy of the room between you in a constant circuit to keep it from becoming overwhelming. It was extremely intimidating given how old this had to be, but what was almost worse was how you could tell it was affecting you less than the other Potentials here.
"Fine here," Mary and Iris said, the former already several steps ahead of you and examining the central column of the room. A haze of micro-sensors swept out from her, scanning everything and feeding the combined image back to her nanoshell. That had been an upgrade she'd managed to add with the Trailblazer systems aboard the Adamant. You'd not used that nearly as much as you'd hoped to, but for tweaks to personal nanoshells it had proven more than capable.
"I'm not picking up anything," Iris reported a moment later. "Nothing my avatar can connect to, or any general signalling."
"But there's something here," Vega said, confirming what all of the Potentials in the room could feel. "Something very old, but also incomplete. Like a remnant?"
You only had a moment's warning as the energy around you suddenly spiked. The circuit between the Heartcircle splintered, almost breaking for a moment before you could channel enough of it away into the space around you. The rune at the centre of the column flickered blue-white like an electrical spark, like it was reflecting the sudden surge of discharge.
Then a shape of curved light and bare colour filled the space above it. It reminded you a little of Vision, the same evershifting patterns contained within a simple ring, but this felt...it was just like Vega had said. Ancient, powerful here in the centre of a citadel seemingly constructed purely to protect it, but also intensely limited. Incomplete, compared to the AI the Elder First had left behind.
"Not like." The room rang with a voice in Shiplord standard. "Exactly as you have said. A remnant, a memory, of those called Lament but who were truly the Teel'sanha peoples. The last who remained who'd witnessed the horrors of the Sphere, and the only with the will and potential to oppose what we could see our mentors becoming."
Images flashed across the walls, moving from speeches before grand galleries full of armoured figures to the flickering movements of War Fleets in full flight. Planets lost, planets won, and all through it a wish that was less than a demand but more than a plea. That had driven these people to fight, even when they'd known their enemy was beyond them. But they'd tried all the same, and the Shiplords hadn't killed them for it. Why?
"You will have to be more specific," the voice replied, and you flushed beneath the nanoshell as you realised you'd asked that last question out loud. "This system was never fully completed, and despite certain conversational routines, is not a full AI."
"I see," you said carefully. Looking up at the walls, you found them already back to their mirror-bright black sheen. You glanced about the room, checking for consensus. No one objected. "Would direct enquiries be better?"
"They would."
"Very well." You took a breath, and started to ask.
What will you ask a-
[X] Who were the Consolat?
Oh. Ok then. Pick two additional focus points?
[] The Teel'sanha Peoples - Will cover the details of who the Teel'sanha were, and how they became the Lament.
[] The Lamentable War - Details of the war fought between the Teel'sanha and the Shiplords as well as how it ended.
[] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
[] Write-in?