In the Dark Between the Stars

"There are places beyond the edge of known space where even the most hardened Pathfinder captains refuse to travel. Not because the routes are dangerous, not because of pirates. Not even because of the GCPS. Sometimes ships go missing, and occasionally they come back."

The Warpath Universe is a vast place.

For centuries, humanity and its allies have expanded across the galaxy, pushing further into unexplored regions, discovering new worlds, establishing colonies, and uncovering the remnants of long-forgotten civilisations. Entire wars have been fought over territory, resources, and ideology. Empires have risen and fallen.

Yet for all that expansion, the truth remains unsettlingly simple - most of the galaxy is still unknown.

Beyond the trade routes and military patrols, beyond the prosperous worlds of the GCPS, there are entire sectors that remain uncharted. Regions where communication becomes unreliable and where expeditions disappear without explanation.

And increasingly, reports are emerging of something lurking within that darkness.

Something that has been watching.  Waiting for a weakness or moment to act.

Echoes From the Void

Across the galaxy, isolated incidents have been recorded.

A mining colony vanishes overnight.

A research station transmits a final, garbled distress signal before falling silent.

A survey vessel returns months after it was declared lost, its crew missing and its systems inexplicably changed.

Individually, these events are easy to dismiss but taken together, a disturbing pattern begins to emerge.

The same symbols.

The same biological anomalies.

The same impossible accounts from the few survivors who live long enough to tell their stories.

Most citizens of the GCPS will never hear these stories. The corporations have little interest in spreading panic and military authorities are quick to classify information. Frontier settlements are often too isolated to verify reports before they disappear into rumour and speculation.

Among explorers, scavengers, smugglers and deep-space crews, the stories persist.  Mercenaries whisper them around campfires on forgotten worlds and the details vary but the warning remains the same.

Stay away from the Curtain

Because something is there.

And it is no longer content to remain hidden.

+++ PRIORITY TRANSMISSION RECEIVED +++
+++ Origin: CLASSIFIED, Sector CLASSIFIED +++
+++ Contact with survey teams lost. Unknown biological signatures detected beyond perimeter. +++
+++ Immediate reinforcement request follows... signal integrity degrading... +++

Corporal Rikord took a cursory glance at the scanners for about the hundredth time that night and yawned. This wasn’t why she had joined the corps! She thought she would be on distant planets fighting hulking aliens whose only purpose was to wipe out the Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere. She wanted to protect the homeworlds of the First Sphere with a laser rifle gripped in her hand.

Instead she had been assigned to help a bunch of boffins from the Exo-Threat Counteraction Unit (ECTU) on a tired space station in the arsehole of the galaxy. In fact, she couldn’t even remember the last time she had even shot a laser rifle. Rather than executing acts of heroism she was responsible for monitoring a bunch of scanners and read outs that she didn’t really understand. Even worse, as the newest recruit to the team, she was assigned to the night shift, which meant she didn’t even have anyone to speak to.

Despite her best efforts, she simply couldn’t care less about whatever ‘vital mission’ she had been given. A bunch of brainiacs on Outpost Megaladon had told her they were monitoring signals from beyond the Mariana Curtain - the impassable energy field that protected the Nameless sector - following a spate of increasingly larger attacks. In the past the Nameless had limited their activities to a few small aquaforming operations on no-name planets that most corporations didn’t even care about. Even the most high profile encounter on the planet Starfall had mostly fallen into distant memory. But for some reason the ‘squiddies’ - as she and her fellow troopers called them - were getting more agitated and aggressive, so the ECTU was increasing its monitoring operations. However, Rikord didn’t want to just watch, she wanted to be out there fighting the weird-looking squiddies.

Ignoring the scanners, she turned her attention to the highlights from that afternoon’s DreadBall All-Stars play-off game between the Painkillers and the Krakens. She rolled her eyes when she saw the Nameless player Deadeye slip past Nox and score a Strike. Rikord didn’t understand why the DreadBall Governing Body even let the Nameless play in the leagues. Surely if they were such a threat, shouldn’t they be exterminated rather than accepted? Then again, on the latest episode of Rho’s Realitycast, he said Nameless like Deadeye were actually drones created by the Council of Seven to normalise Nameless and make them less terrifying. That wouldn’t surprise her in the slightest. Rho was right that the Council couldn’t be trusted. Although she kept those sorts of thoughts to herself. She didn’t want people to think she was a Rebs sympathiser. 

Out of the corner of her eye Rikord noticed a red light flashing on one of the computer panels. She wheeled her chair over and gave it a tap.

“Hmm, it’s never done that before,” she muttered to herself.

To her right another light began to pulsate. Rikord looked at the monitors and was surprised to see sharp spikes shooting across one of the screens. Suddenly an alarm started to sound, causing an urgent klaxon to echo around the small room. She desperately cast her mind back to her briefing sessions to try and remember what she was meant to do in a situation like this. With her mind falling blank, she opened the drawer of a desk and started scrabbling around for the emergency manual. 

Coming up empty handed she looked at the monitors again and her stomach lurched. What appeared to be green lightning was shooting across the shimmering blue waves of the Mariana Curtain. The audio sensors pumped a loud crackling noise into the room which was so overwhelming that Rikord had to cover her ears. At the point where the lightning was originating, an inky chasm was growing wider and wider. Beyond the gaping hole Rikord could see nothing but darkness.

Thoughts of raising the alarm drifted away as Rikord was mesmerized by the strange light show on the screen. It was almost as if her mind was being dragged into the rift, like something was calling to her. Then - just as quickly as it had started - the lightning stopped, the warning lights went out and the alarm ceased its desperate cries. All that remained was the black hole in the glittering waves of the Curtain and an expectant silence in the room.

Rikord breathed a sigh of relief.

“Just a solar storm,” she said, mainly to comfort herself. “Probably happens all the time out here.”

Yet she couldn’t turn her gaze away from the gaping chasm. Was that normal? While she watched something shot out of the hole and raced beyond the view of the monitor. She glanced between the different screens but only caught glimpses as the object sped into space. It was quickly followed by another and another. Rikord wished she knew where that emergency manual was.

Her eyes now fixed on the monitor, Rikord watched in horror as the smaller craft were joined by gigantic tentacles that emerged from the breach and reached into the space beyond. Each must have been longer than a Wyvern class ship and appeared to cause the space around them to shift and warp unnaturally. The tentacles squirmed and writhed as they stretched beyond the edges of the screen - whatever it was creeping from beyond seemed impossibly large.

Suddenly the audio receptors erupted into a sickening screeching noise, accompanied by a peculiar mix of clicks and whistles. This was no Nameless incursion. This was an invasion! She needed to sound the alarm.

The darkness between the stars is vast and something is finally emerging from it -  Who can you trust?