Lore & Concept Art
Day 1:
If we die here on this backwater planet, let the logs show it was John Smith’s fault. When we got into that lux shuttle to escape, we had the information on a myriad of planets, but he insisted upon this one. We all would’ve preferred to go home, but “home” was too far from what they had. We needed to set up shop somewhere that had life, and call out SoS, praying our military stops by. If we still have one left. And on top of it all, we fucking crashed. I won’t forgive him for this.
However, the planet is beautiful. The minutes we had on approach captivated all of us. It was a mixture of fresh blues and sunny yellows, with mesmerizing swirls. For a moment, I felt like it could be a good home. A new start. It’s nice to let myself be optimistic, especially in these circumstances. But realistically, I can already feel that this group is gonna make the experience hell.
Day 2:
The first four are awake, though everyone’s a little hazy. Jared Montag, dimwitted military punching bag. Dr. Shannon Niamh, airhead biologist. Dr. John Smith, allegedly a ship engineer. And me, Dr. Nova Cainen, extraterrestrial specialist and master of reverse-engineering. A crack team of geniuses, we are. Military R&D can’t afford to send the best out to deep space, and here we are…so. I can’t stay cooped up in here, I’m already starting to lose my mind. Did we have to land in the arctic? Maybe it’s better than a desert. At least there’s water… Dust storms cloud your eyes, but ice storms can tear your skin apart, like a tornado of cold glass. For now I’m stuck inside, raising these children to relearn their jobs. Getting food should be our top priority. We’ve only got so much stored for the food fabricator. We just need more raw materials, some nutrients, for it to rearrange into good food items for us.
Day 3:
First signs of life!
Niamh was on watch when she called the wake up signal. I was the only other one that woke up, but I shook John awake. Outside their ship window, they watched a blue creature wobble up to their wreck. Despite all of our complaints, Niamh opened the ship door and stepped outside towards the creature. It turned its first row of eyes over to her, its teeth still slobbering over the metal plating of our ship. It’s two antennae bobbed thoughtfully. Niamh moved closer. It detached its teeth, surprisingly revealing teeth marks in the incredibly hard ship exterior. And it lunged towards Niamh. Montag came from nowhere, dashing between Niamh and the creature while firing a shot in the air, causing it to ram headfirst into him. When had he joined them? It bounced off with a buoyant sound, and turned around. It jumped onto its belly and quickly accelerated down the hill, away from the crash sight, becoming a speck in the distance quickly. It was rather reminiscent of a… penguin, she realized. Niamh chastised Montag for scaring it off. Montag later made a comment to me about eating it. I’m not sure what that creature could digest, and I recommended against it; he said he was joking. I’m not sure. I’m sick of the food too. Our fabricator makes shit that tastes like cardboard.
Day 4:
Niamh and John came up with the name Chomper, because we found more teeth marks around the ship, and he was biting into anything. The run-in with a chomper yesterday seems to have revived the crew. None of us are excited. Moving, doing anything comes with a lot of pain. Cryo-sleep isn’t meant to be shaken off so quickly. But we lost a lot of our food in the crash. We don’t have a choice but to start improvising. We spent less of the day sleeping this time. Instead, we lazily took inventory. To name the most important, half of the armory, the food stores, and the instant shelters were taken out. Nearly all of our fuel exploded or burnt up, except for a small emergency reserve. The engines were crushed in the fall. Our willpower was running low. I have hope, however. This place has life. The mission is recoverable. When shit goes wrong, you have to hold on to the truth that you’re not doing this for you. You can’t give up on others; a colony can still be founded. We have the DNA and the incube chambers. John is going to get started on the drones tomorrow. They could help plot a path out of the icy shithole.
Day 5:
John worked all night. The drones are already back on, tucked away in the launching pods at the top of the ship wreckage. I guess that’s what recovering looks like to John. Now he’s campaigning hard to use our reserve fuel to launch a small satellite into orbit, but I’m unsure. Not because it’s a bad idea, but because I don’t trust any engineer coming off Cryosleep to think through all the computations and complications, on a planet we don’t know too much about from our dead main ship computer. If he does it wrong, we won’t get another chance at this. But we’re desperate. If food is far, we’d need all these reserves to get there; and we’d never know how far unless we send the drones into these winds, or we get some satellite imaging.
I’m so thankful for my tablet. Writing this out… helps… immeasurably. My migraines are getting worse, not better. And still I overthink things, through the pain.
Sometimes I wish the team had spent time together before this operation. Other times, when I remember myself, I’m glad we got a chance to start anew, completely. While I write I watch John work. He must have been a brilliant inventor... He doesn’t remember so much of it. But he never stops tinkering. Judging by his work at least, he might be the most ‘with it’ of all of us. I didn’t push the argument with him, leaving him with only “good luck.” Tomorrow, he plans to make a launching rig from ship parts.
Day 6:
Smith and Montag stayed up all night. I think they took combat zone stimulants. Though I’ve only known him so long, there was something deeply disconcerting with the edge John spoke with today. He took control of the room with speed and anger, the way Montag did when he got paranoid. They should be careful with those.
Regardless, he woke us all up to show us the launch. He didn’t give anyone a moment to protest, as it flew up into the sky like a dart. The glowing blue LED was outshined by the suns and faded out of view.
Montag and Niamh clapped ecstatically. “Where’s the smoke?” I had asked him. “That’s the best part; It’s a mag launcher. I didn’t even need the fuel.” He clapped Montag on the shoulder, and Montag laughed and put his arm on Smith’s back, hard enough John stumbled forward. They seemed… like old friends.
Writing this now, I’m wondering where the hell he generated the power for a hypercharged electromagnet. Well, he’s asleep now. He deserves it. Now I’m going to meet the others to look at the scans and satellite images.
The imaging is broken, the atmosphere of Bragalava is not cooperating and the small drone doesn’t have the equipment to pierce through it. But the data collecting sub-drones are doing their work, and… we found it. A gold mine. A massive nutrient dump detected by one of the drones, 4 km away over two hills. Seems like a mixture of plant life and decaying organic matter. The readings remind me of the aftermath of a mini-extinction event. So far, this planet seems to be really fickle. Clear skies one day, cloudy and violent ice storms the next. Maybe a herd of something got unlucky. We go tomorrow.
Day 7:
We wanted Niamh to stay back to look over the still-frozen two crewmembers. She was infuriatingly obstinate, like a child. She needs to get into line and trust us. She seems too curious about this world for her own good. Instead we had to leave John behind with the ship.
Montag, Niamh and I headed out over the hill. The ice makes for uneven footing. That didn’t stop Niamh as she cheerfully butt-slid down. Once she turned her back, Montag took out a vial from his pack, and looked over at me, as if looking for judgment. I glanced, neutral faced, and looked back to the ice field. He pressed the combat stim into his arm injector, and followed our careless field biologist. Why am I already starting to feel like a babysitter?
By the time I caught up to them, Niamh was poking around a large body on the ice. There was supposed to be a field of nutrients. Instead here’s a single creature, legs collapsed, still as tall as us. I circled it. On the far side, a blue frostbitten tongue lolled out beneath it like a carpet, and shards of ice collected atop it like broken glass. The side of the creature was burnt, but in a single point of contact on its top. Like something had pressed boiling slag metal against it. When you got close, it smelled sulphury and putrid. The idea of eating any part of this creature, even molecularly rearranged, is sickening. Niamh was making sketches of the creature in her field book. Montag just stared into it, blankly, for a few seconds, then started poking, prodding, banging against it. Wherever he pressed, it buoyantly pressed back. Until he found a spot that exploded into puss. I can admit here it was mirthful, and Niamh laughed. But nothing about this is funny. There were dozens of bodies suspended under the ice.
I swear, every single thing we find about this planet seems to tell us that surviving here takes more effort and is more dangerous than open space. An analysis of the ‘stomach’ of the creature proves it has acid that could dissolve just about anything, including the end of the analyzer we put in it. Niamh threw out that it might have similarities to the Chomper. On the surface it doesn’t look like it. But the type of acid it’s using would take years to mature into efficacy. And this creature seemed much older. Perhaps with time, that chomper really could have eaten our ship. For me, this was a sobering thought. For Niamh, this was the most exciting alien expedition she’s ever been on, and she won’t shut up about it. So, what do you do, when you’re hungry for food and find such an aberration? Montag proposed bringing small pieces of it back to the ship, and making a decision there. He seemed antsy to get home. I… didn’t like leaving John behind either. Yet I wasn’t ready to pull away from here yet. We could come back, but when do we know the weather would allow it again? These bodies tell a story, I’m sure of it. At first, they were blurry under the ice. We could see mottled flesh, red and dark brownish green in places. Not human, mind you. But… humanoid. At least some of them. Two legs, two arms. Others had four legs, and one of th faces was turned up, and she felt his gaze. The way you feel human eyes watching. Unfortunately a storm was picking up. I took a bunch of pictures of the goliath and the lost boys under the ice before we made our way back to camp.
Day 8:
First signs of sentient life!
Looking back over the pictures, and playing with contrast, I noticed something new. There were metal frames around some of the creature's limbs. Like a… exoskeleton, though often broken down in many places. Scanning for more metal, I found my prize: one of them had a fully metallic limb, though the end was obscured beneath another body. The part that was revealed was… worrying. It had a chamber to load something. I nicknamed this image “captain hook.” I will come back to it for further analysis later. We have clear signs that these people are capable of advanced technology, a thought which excites but also terrifies me. Their use of metal wasn’t aesthetic, or religious, or a farming tool. I’m sure it was military. Think about the bigger picture. With these twin suns, where is all of the life that should be using these entropy? Where are the photosynthesizers? Inevitably, that always comes back, if there’s life here So it must have been a somewhat recent, rapid change. Nuclear winter? Possible, but there’s no other signs of it. I wish we could get a time stamp on those bodies. My intuition says it was at least decades ago, so there’s no clear implication of danger for them. But we could track the progression of the ice. Something tells me that the planet itself is going to be our biggest struggle.
Day 9:
I keep seeing creatures with wings in the distance. I swear it’s like they’re… checking up on us. I don’t want to tell the team. Doubt they’d agree, and don’t need them distrusting my judgment. But if there is life here, why wouldn’t something be watching us? We crash landed nearly two weeks ago. UIt had to have lit up the sky. Of course by now something would come to check it out. The bodies in the ice have irreversibly sparked John and I’s scientific, military R&D curiosity.