From the ashes, a phoenix is reborn; a new star with another orbiting Novus-parallel across a fledgling wormhole. The well-oiled warmachine of the Empire was first to send scouts and prospectors, who find another replica of Novus, but fresh and unsullied by the ravages of war and resource extraction. Little did they know… this was not an exact parallel.
The discovery of another parallel planetoid is spurring on another mass exploration and the race to exploit fresh new ground before the other factions get their own footholds. With the Empire’s metal bootheels first to arrive on the yet-unnamed parallel, they spread their terraforming machines early to provide a forward camp for new settlers.
They find that they do not have to do much to get ahead: this world seems to be a younger parallel formed from when the three warring factions had already arrived, and yet… there are no above-sentient lifesigns detected, merely fauna. But the old camps were here: the armories, the settlements, the lifeless structures stood erect amidst the silence, and had this not been scanned over quickly enough, these would have given in to overgrowth and natural reclamation.
The early prospectors thought to themselves: what a bounty! At least, until the smog came, for which the planetoid would then get its name: Desolation, the 4th Parallel.
The Accretians are able to adapt quick and survive against a persistent fog that corrodes and corrupts their DNA directly. Nevertheless, no immediate solution yet allowed further growth past relative adulthood. This has never before been seen across Novus, or any known parallel in the New Age, and the scouts wonder if this would affect the other factions.
They turn their one-eyed heads to each other, and their superiors, before sending signal back to homebase for the expeditions at Novus:
“Prospects: wide, resources: at maximum estimate. Environment: near-exact.”
The signal is received weeks later after cross-wormhole interference is weeded out. The expedition base clarifies:
“Say again, prospect team: near-exact requires clarification as a term.”
They respond: “Undetermined gas permeates entire troposphere: effects immediate. Growth beyond lv55, curtailed. None are able to test further beyond.”
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