What Came First ..., Part II
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;4642491]It is relatively small, more an outpost or station of some sort. The normal First Race design and patterns met her sight. After probably two hours of searching, she finds only three things:
-Emptiness. No one and nothing remains here.
-A single odd metallic cube about four by four by four inches in size.
-Data. The place was a research station, and it looks like the scanners it employs are beyond anything, even Jinzi, has made. From here the First Race scanned the Galaxy, and terrifyingly their information gathered concerned hundreds of races, some so far away (including Earth) that it shouldn’t be possible to reach that far.
The data seemed benign though. Descriptions of the planets, their races, biology, chemistry, etc.....[/QUOTE]
It was First Race certainly, the derelict outpost; though they had seemingly left little of anything behind. Given what they were capable of however Inanna couldn't help but wonder, as she scoured the place, why they had vanished.
After several hours of nearly nothing, this question was even more important ... as though they had vanished, what they had left behind was pristine and gave little if anything away. Save for a cube, with a compendium of data on hundreds of planets, and their flora, and fauna; though the distances involved ...
"How ?" She heard herself muttering.
With everything of value collected and stowed away however. It seemed there wasn't much reason to hang around ... and there was still a place she needed to head to.
The cosmic storm, and what lay hidden at its center.
So, after forwarding the coordinates of the Research Outpost to Sarada -- who could forward it to Jinzi at her leisure -- the Oni stepped) departed and made her way to where all known starmaps had labeled "impossible to navigate".
What Came First ..., Part III
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;4642737]The cosmic storm is monstrous. Energy discharges, strange ripples of power, cosmic winds that batter and tear. The Cruiser gets her there and she departs from the ship into the storm.
She soon realizes the storm is untraveled for good reason.
Powerful swells of energy rip and tear at her, temporal and cosmic and more batter and attack as she travels through a multiple solar system sized storm.
Eventually, however, beaten and bloody and sure she wouldn’t have lasted much longer, she suddenly flies into open space, free of the storm. More than that it’s a small solar system, with five planets and a warm, yellow sun.Two massive gas giants orbit on the outer rim of the systems, two smaller ones close to the sun. The last is remarkably Earth looking, oceans and forests and mountain. It is to this she finds herself drawn.
Literally.
Something pulls her towards the planet.[/QUOTE]
Of all the poor decisions Inanna had made in recent years, the decision to cross the cosmic storm unaided was perhaps the biggest; as she found out rather quickly why it had been labeled too dangerous to traverse: it was a massive roiling tempest of energy that spanned from what she could sense, multiple times the length of a solar system.
Having already made the trip however ...
[I]Already come this far ...[/I]
So departing the Cruiser and stowing it away -- knowing it wouldn't survive the trek -- Inanna forged on ahead; and were it not for her durability and ability to rapidly heal from otherwise fatal injury it would have killed her.
A thought that was rapidly becoming a reality, the moment before she shot out of the storm and found herself staring at a hideaway Solar System. Five planets surrounding a medium star; with two pairs each -- two gas giants, and two unknown closest the star -- with a final one that seemed almost ... indistinguishable from Earth.
Of course, it wouldn't do to approach without issue; and with a look of surprise she found herself being forcibly pulled toward the planet before she even had a chance to enter the atmosphere. Having come this far however, and without the energy to return the way she came ...
[I]In for a Zeni ...[/I]
Inanna aided unknown gravitational pull by descending rapidly toward the planet's surface.
What Came First ..., Part IV
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;4642841]Her descent is slowed as she gets closer, and reentry is surprisingly gentle.
As she descends she sees blue skies, lovely mountains and oceans and tracks of vast forests. In fact, she ends up being deposited just in the outskirts of where a rolling plain meets a forest.[/QUOTE]
As she descends, Inanna cant believe how similar to Earth the planet is ... to the point where, had she happened upok it first and been told its name [I]was[/I] Earth; she likely would've believed it.
Though stranger than the planet itself, was the lack of ... danger. She half expected, given the storm and the strange pull; that it would've been some kind of trap. And yet here she stood, in front of a lush forest that met a rolling plain.
"... huh."
Checking herself to see how she was healing -- rather well, if a bit bloody -- she started forward into the forest. Though not before scanning for energy signatures ...