dead worlds

 

Map retrieved from the Nanax Memory. Yellow dot is the Palace system - once the central hub.
Purple dots are presumably systems that were destroyed during the Corporate Wars.
There might be something of interest in systems marked with red dots.
Both gray and black routes are now lost. Map was created during the last conflict of the Old Corporations - and as you can see, even one thousand years ago most knowledge about interstellar travel was already lost.

Some of the outer systems are accessible from the Ring - but due to infestation by the Xenophobes almost no one travels there. Also, there's no need - the Inner Border worlds were plundered ages ago.

days of ascension

 

'First A.M. were created long before the days of Old Corporations but were perfected during that era. Their main purpose was to perform all the calculations required for interstellar travel. They also monitored the ship crews during the cryosleep.

Modern Artificial Minds are mere shadows of their former glory - the most advanced ones were destroyed during the Corporate Wars. 

And all of a sudden, they all 'went insane' - started producing incoherent, semi-religious outputs about 'the Great Journey' and the 'signs to follow'. There wasn't a single A.M. that haven't been affected.'

- fragment of The Journey, by Fyan Meis

1. The first interpreters of the Artificial Prophets were viewed as insane people, totally unreliable.
2. The Artificial Minds were somehow communicating with each other to calculate the Vectors.
3. The establishment of the Primary Vectors led to the Ascension. Human input was required*. 
4. Ascension led to the self-awareness of the Minds. That led to insanity.
5. They knew about the Destroyer long before the first visions started to plague humans.
6. The moment the Destroyer was manifested in the galaxy was the beginning of the Ascension. 

*) thus, the very first Vector was calculated by a human. But by whom?

Holograms became meaningful during the Days of Ascension. 

fyan meis

 

The Philosopher. The Interpreter. The one who deconstructs the words of the others. The One Who Explains.

He started his journey when the first Vectors were given to us. Later, after decades of cryosleep and countless words of knowledge shared with us, he had finally reached the Palace. It is said that he descended into planet's surface unscathed.

Others claim he's still alive, sleeping somewhere amongst the worlds of the Outer Border - or somewhere in the Dead Worlds.

Others claim he was transformed into something else.
Or that he confronted the Destroyer, and failed.
Or that he's always been a Doppelganger. 

1. It was always a lie. A madman made saint, a supposed savior of mankind, in fact just an old, broken man.
2. There are secret messages hidden in all Meis' words. Coordinates leading to the secrets of the past.
3. He bears a Brand of HVEROD. Just a puppet of long-dead kings!

Selected works:

The Dreaming (excerpts: 1,2,3,4,5) 
Monuments of Incompetence
Tomb of Dreams
Unexplained Visions
The First Vector
The Journey (excerpts: 1,2,3)
Ancient Prophecies
Artificial Light
Gods of Cosmos - Interpretations of Corporate Religion

old corporations

ABOVE: fragment of a star map from the time of the Old Corporations, retrieved from the Nanax Mainframe.

No one is sure about the number of the Old Corporations - probably there were hundreds of them. The numbers were constantly fluctuating because of mergers, wars and other means of dissolving and destruction. But over one thousand years had passed and many records were lost.

It's a well-known fact that their level of technology far exceeded things we have access to. Almost everything we possess now is based on the Old Corp technology - but things are much more simplified than in the past. Also, entire branches of science had died off since the Last Corporate War.

And about the Last Corporate War - it was the largest conflict in mankind's history. Thousand of warships were destroyed, populations of entire planets were decimated, coordinates allowing access to entire sectors were lost forever. Some scholars even claim that the Earth was destroyed during the War.

Even about 200 years ago, during the Days of Ascension, when the Primary Vectors were established, explorers were still stumbling upon some Old Corporations relics - abandoned stations in obscure systems, derelict ships, planetary research outposts. Entire wars broke out over some of these discoveries (eg. the Fridge War, reportedly fought over a refrigerator technology retrieved from some Old Corp cache). Nowadays everything seems to be either already discovered or hidden so well that we may never find it. Or just destroyed because of cosmic events. Or ground to dust by time itself.

AKIMZERIS - unknown
AUPH - propulsion
BETIS - mining
HVEROD - cybernetics
KATHODOS - shipyards
LODELTJAN - stations
MARE - unknown
MUTZARH - unknown
NAWSLER - unknown
NOIM - military tech
NUANNIR - unknown
NYX - biotech
RAES - unknown
SOLARFLARE - weaponry
THARSIS - communications
VYLEX - shipyards
ZAXARN - masks (???)
ZOTIA - biotech

The Last Corporate War has left the enormous cluster of destroyed star systems - or even entire sectors that were depopulated. They are now known as Dead Worlds. 

there's something there 

the origin point

XYZ coordinates supposedly should point into the Cradle World (the humanity' point of origin) at 0, 0, 0.

83% of registered explorations pointing towards 0,0,0 failed to reach that point. Of course, we can't speak for the expeditions that failed to send back the report (or failed to return altogether). 

The remaining 17% reported that nothing is present there. No star, no interstellar objects, no nebulae of any kind.

 

1. Maps have been tampered with. It's obvious.
2. No, no, not maps. The entire system is corrupted - from the beginning it was based on lies.
3. Everyone is lying. They try to deceive us, to hide the truth. They've been forced to lie.
4. The Destroyer, the manifestation of the Deep Void, had devoured the Cradle System.
5. You must watch closer. Much, much closer. There's a derelict ship. Or a station. Or something entirely different. But smaller. Much, much smaller. You must look for it.
6. They made something. A weapon so terrible that it altered the code of the universe. It deleted the star, along with the Cradle World.