Planets: Gloom

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Gloom

THE MOON AT THE END OF THE GALAXY

Most dead ends aren’t planned, they happen – when dreams are lost to reality, or in this case disappear in the empty swath of space known as The Nothing. The Guild never planned to stop their expansion at Gloom, but their scout ships fell victim to the unnavigable darkness beyond. So, Gloom became the end of the line. A lot of things ended on that moon, including the ancient Sentries and the giant robots. Everyone has their theories, but the truth is as obscure as starless space.

SURVEY REPORT

:::::::GUILD PLANETARY ASSESSMENT 2317-f:::::::

Planet: GLOOM

Location: The Frontier

Diameter: 1,321

Distance From Local Stars: 2.13

Moons: None, GLOOM is the moon of a large gas giant.

Atmosphere: Breathable, pleasant, and unremarkable.

Weather: Mild, billowing clouds common.

Temperature: Warm, primary heat is from its distant star, secondary heat source comes from radiation from the Gas Giant.

Plant Life: Abundant. Full ecosystem, many forms of plant life from small lichens to towering tree forms.

Animal Life: Abundant. Full ecosystem, many small to average-sized species.

Mineral Wealth: Metals detected in significant amounts.

Financial Assessment: Local religious artifacts may pose merchandising opportunities.

Spacelane Access: !! DIFFICULT !! Distance, unstable nearby star, and asteroid belt all pose major financial hurdles.

Overall Assessment: !! FRONTLINE OUTPOST POTENTIAL !! World may be suitable for a frontline Guild outpost. Further investigation needed.

Recommendation: Despite distance and cost, GLOOM may be an excellent launching point for further Guild expansion into the Nothing. Recommend seizing world and establishing a significant base.

Assessor 1068

:::::::END:::::::

ROBOT RUINS

While most battles of the Robot Wars were fought in the Core Worlds, there were a few that were waged in the Wilds, the battle on Gloom being the furthest from the Guild's military bases. Despite that, the Guild was still victorious. They recorded a proud victory in their accounts, and the remains of the giant robots they felled corroborate it.

What is unclear is where these robots came from and why they were on Gloom at all. Presently there are no other known sightings of robots of that size.

The Guild's records state that the sparked robots were building these giant war bots in a bid to take over the entire galaxy, and that they started with an attack on Gloom—perhaps because they thought it would be an easy victory, or perhaps because they were planning to work their way across the galaxy from the Nothing through to the Core Worlds.

At the time of the battle, and subsequent Guild victory, the Guild spread word far and wide of the monstrous robots, their intentions for destruction, and how they had brutally obliterated an until recently unknown ancient culture. The sparked robots were said to have destroyed something beautiful and unique, something important to the galaxy.

The ancients were mourned by all. They went from being completely unknown to being the face of a rallying call for the swift elimination of all sparked robots. The galaxy united around the Guild's efforts to hunt down and destroy these brutal enemies. Many people from all corners of the Core Worlds and the Wilds joined the Guild military, while others relocated to work in military supply factories, military hospitals, and military shipyards.

In some ways the battle on Gloom was the turning point, and the beginning of the final advance. With the Guild's newfound military might, they were able to mount an offensive and stamp out the sparked robots—or at least the vast majority. They most likely would have been fully successful had it not been for the eruption of the Tempest that brought the Robot Wars to an end and focused the Guild's efforts in the Wilds on the need for salt fuel.

Given that it was such an important moment in galactic history, there is interest in fully understanding what happened during the fateful battle on Gloom and why the sparked robots mounted an attack in the first place. There are those who have set out to find the answers to these questions, but those answers may be lost to time—or perhaps to intention.",

STAR CHAMBER

Though for most it's hard to imagine, there was a time before the galaxy was connected, before the sentient beings on different worlds knew of each other's existence and could travel between worlds, order household deliveries via starship, and exchange joggle burger recipes. In fact, that time of disconnection was far longer than the time since spacelanes and superlight brought the disparate worlds together.

During that time of isolation, people and cultures developed influenced only by their immediate surroundings—their world, a nearby star, perhaps a moon or two. That meant each culture was as unique as its world and surroundings.

Of course, that is not the way of the Guild's connected galaxy. As the Guild built spacelanes and opened up commerce, all worlds came to know each other. all had access to the same goods, services, industries, and opportunities, and the differences between them were polished away in favor of the united culture of the Core Worlds.

It is rare now, even in the Wilds, to find a culture that exists outside of the Guild's influence. The ancient culture that existed on Gloom is an interesting case because although it was found by the Guild, it was destroyed before it could be subsumed. So the remains and ruins are distinctive, representing that set of people and their specific traditions.

The traditions of the ancients of Gloom revolved around the Nothing, the dark swath of space just beyond their moon. It is very interesting corner of the galaxy to have been exposed to—and the ancients were acutely interested. All signs point to the fact that they spent most of their time studying the Nothing and the rocks that came out of it.

The Nothing seems to be chock full of asteroids—though no one can be sure how many, since it is impossible to see into it. These asteroids sporadically tumble out of the dark. Most continue to tumble aimlessly through the Wilds, but those that emerge close enough to Gloom and the gas giant it orbits are pulled in by gravity. Many find themselves in orbit too, either around the gas giant or around Gloom itself. And those that don't make orbit crash, either into the incineration pit of the gas giant or onto the rocky terrain of Gloom.

It appears the ancients awaited these meteorites with hope and anticipation. They seem to have shaped their culture around the pieces of rock, assigning significance to them and studying them to learn more about the Nothing.

If this was their goal, then when one particularly giant meteorite crashed down, they must have felt quite the thrill. When it hit the ground of Gloom it split neatly in two, revealing inside what could very well be a message from somewhere in the Nothing—at least, that appears to be the way the ancients interpreted what they found.

They constructed around it a place of study, both to probe and ponder the meaning of the meteorite's contents and to observe the Nothing and await anything more it might send their way. Was someone communicating with them? Or was this an accident? How long ago had this rock left its place of origin? What did the inscriptions within it mean?

There were so many questions, and there still are, for the few who care to ponder them—questions about the meteorite, the Nothing, and the ancients themselves. Though they were never subsumed by the Guild, they left an impression on the greater galaxy, and many still have questions about their beliefs and their abrupt end.

FREEGUNNER SPACELANES

Presently, the only route to Gloom is a Freegunner shortcut known as Long Shot. The Guild had wanted things to go differently—they planned for a road to Gloom—but their irresponsible rush and inattention to detail landed them in the middle of a supernova.

The Freegunners went around the remnants of the explosion, setting up their own buoys—buoys whose navigation coordinates are sometimes poached by other starship traffic, even the Guild at times; it's a constant battle of frequency-altering as the Freegunners try to keep their route off radar.

A route to Gloom is valuable, what with all the robot parts, ancient artifacts, Robot Wars history… and toxic fungi. The robot parts are perhaps the most important Gloom export; there are so few remaining manufacturers that make the parts sparked robots need that they have to rely on what can be collected from their fallen counterparts. And Freegunners play a critical role in getting these replacement parts into the hands of the robots who need them. The sparked robots are grateful for their efforts.

Sparked robots are far from the only ones who depend on Freegunners. Freegunners play a critical role in procuring, transporting, and delivering many of the things people need across the galaxy—things the Guild doesn't approve of. Vital things, like food, medicine, information, and hope. Things that break down walls, remind people of who they are, let people know they are not alone, that there's a whole galaxy out there and it's not all Guild-owned.

The Guild would have the Wilds believe that Freegunners are the enemy, a menace, disrupting order, threatening safety and progress. But most of the Wilds sees there's a lot more to it than that. They see the Freegunners as the connective tissue, helping to bring the galaxy together.

Connectivity is the principle spacelanes were built around. When superlight was achieved for the first time and the initial handful of worlds were connected, the ambition was to provide a way to unite and share. To give people a chance to experience new things, to explore, to broaden their views.

Since then, the Guild has clamped down significantly, so much so that it would seem they've lost sight of their original vision. For the time being, it's up to the Freegunners to keep that spirit of adventure alive in the stars.

ASTEROID BELT

The moon of Gloom is an enthusiastic shepherd moon of its gas giant. So committed is it to ensuring the planet’s loose ring of asteroids stays in orbit that it has collected the asteroids that attempt escape. It has built up quite the collection over the millennia, enough that it now has an asteroid ring of its own.

Thanks to this asteroid belt, navigation to the moon of Gloom is dicey at best. The belt is wobbly and wide and asteroid movement within is unpredictable. It’s the primary hazard for dropships approaching Gloom for a landing—many have met their end in a fiery crash.

In the initial risk assessment, performed by Guild expansion corporations looking to use the small moon as a launch pad into The Nothing, it was listed as the most likely reason for failure thanks to sporadic asteroid disengagements. While actual failure was a result of a supernova explosion, the asteroid belt still sends shudders down the spines of any Captain who has flown through and lived to tell the tale.

SENTRY STATUES

It's said that if a fashion makes it to Hox, that's the sign that it's out of style. Being tucked away behind the Cinder Nest nebula and accessible only by one spacelane—a spacelane that's known for its inadequate navigation buoys—Hox receives extremely sporadic deliveries of food, products, and entertainment. So when replicas of the Gloom Sentries' statues showed up, the people of Hox knew the rest of the galaxy was already over them.

Before they were shuffled off to Hox, Sentry statues had been the hottest trend in the galaxy; three different Guild tchotchke manufacturers devoted entire production lines to churning them out. Everyone wanted one, or more than one, depending on how many windows were in their living units.

The Guild media did a stand-up job of marketing them as a must-have for anyone who wanted a little extra promise of protection for their home. The idea was that the Sentries of Gloom had built the real—and much larger and heavier—versions of these statues to ward off the dangers they believed were in the dark swath of space known as the Nothing.

When the Sentries were brutally wiped out by sparked robots during the Robot Wars, the Guild broadcast the loss to the galaxy and billed it as the greatest tragedy of the war. The galaxy mourned the Sentries—whom they hadn't known existed until that moment. But tragedy has a way of drawing attention, and with the spotlight on the ancient mysterious culture on Gloom, curiosity piqued and gave way to investment in the culture that was lost.

Stories spread about the guardians who lived on the small moon, staving off the darkness of the Nothing with their statues. A collective shiver went through the galaxy, knowing they were no longer there. Statue replicas were put in windows as a sign of solidarity, mourning, remembering—and as a bid for just a modicum of the kind of protection the Sentries provided. People hoped for protection both from the darkness, if it should seep in, and from sparked robots. Those who displayed statues were united in their goal to eliminate the sparked robot threat.

Shipments of statues started appearing on Hox after the Tempest eruption, along with other outdated goods. Most of the tchotchkes sent to Hox as an afterthought were recycled by the local population and used to make necessities like bottles for water, shoes, belts, and home appliances; Hoxans were far more pragmatic than the rest of the galaxy. However, when it came to the statues from Gloom, the people of Hox had a more emotional response—they felt a connection to a culture that lived on a distant world at the edge of the galaxy, remote and unconnected. They felt it was up to them to carry the torch on behalf of the ancients of Gloom. They put the statues in their windows as a nod to the importance of tiny places in the big, wide galaxy.",