Crescent Expedition

Background

MIDD and the Alteran Plague

MIDD, Malgravean Immunodeficiency Disorder, has long been the bane of the Malgravean people, a genetic disorder that is endemic to the population of that country, it is the leading cause of death for the population, and the most important goal of the Malgravean scientific community.

Some speculate that the disease is related to attempts to retro-engineer the genetic imprints of the Alteran civilization, a long dead spacefaring culture whom many Malgraveans believe they are spiritual or literal inheritors of, into the population. In order to investigate this possibility the Ancestral Study Group, a major organization within Malgravean society, sent a number of talented archeologists to travel the Great Civilization of the C’tan to seek leads to assist them in developing new treatments.

In the Great Civilization Year 398 Second Era, one of the most successful of these, Amelia Lowwe, returned to Malgrave and made a presentation at the major New Horizons in MIDD Research and Treatment, to request support and funding for the development of what she believed to be a major lead on understanding MIDD.

Rylux Crescent, Mission Coordinator

The Free City of Náar

During her journey to the Free City of Naár in the Gas Giant Baruthis, Amelia was able to commune with a memory-keeping Elder, one of the native Baruthi species, whose alien anatomy and long-dwelling life-cycles have made them able to inherit memories from millions of years in the past. By communing with this being, she was able to learn that the Baruthi recalled a time when the Alterans were affected by a plague with a similar progression of symptoms.

This information came with more than academic value though; for they also knew of the location of a world where the Alterans had used their advanced technology to fight their own, potentially related, malady.

Given that other Alteran relics have been found to be functional, even after millions of years in storage, the consensus was broadly that this was worth investigating. An expedition, funded by the Ancestral Study Group, and the Save the Malgraveans Foundation, to determine the possible viability of the site was set up as an Ancestral Study Working Group; international assets would be required, ranging from starships to experienced personnel, and the Ancestral Study Group asked the overall management and organization of the expedition to be run through one of Amelia’s long term companions, Rylux Crescent, Dystan Sage of Expeditions, whose high profile would inspire competence in the management of the expedition, with Amelia as Scientific Director.

Archaeology in a War Zone

Complicating matters greatly was the fact that the facility had a location only known to the star system, and the information on the location of the star itself was three million years out of date and second-hand; but as the astronomical information about the potential destination was analysed it became increasingly clear that stellar drift would have taken the site in question into the reach of the Unitarian Stellar Empire, a hostile power whose incursions in the Milky Way Galaxy were limited.

The main supporters of the Crescent Expedition in stellar terms, the Great Civilization of the C’tan was already involved in a prolonged low-intensity conflict with the Empire, aimed at preventing an ongoing genocide of the Elphegort people within the Empire; while sympathetic to the goals of the Crescent Expedition, the Great Civilization’s strategic operations group, under the command of Nemesor Kephrekh ita Novokh, were not willing to alter their plans or disclose their current operational priorities, as much of their work was secret and would force them to greatly accelerate their war on the Empire, with potentially millions of civilian lives lost; they also believed the risk of a conflict directly at the Alteran site entirely destroying archaeological value there made assigning a large scale mission counterproductive.

Instead they mandated that the system only be approached by ships under the two hundred fifty meter keel length, believing that this would be ignored by the Empire as a possible smuggler site, which the fringes of their empire had long suffered, and would refrain from directly assigning more than a liason from their own forces to ensure that, if possible, their ongoing war against the Empire remained entirely separate in the minds of their spatiopolitical rivals in the Empire. They were however willing to provide local intelligence and transport resources.

Gathering Support

Already Rylux and party could call on a number of allies, from other adventures, consisting of an initial party some dozen strong, as well as the Brotherhood of Heroes, a private military contracting firm from Crystal Spires, consisting of discharged military personnel, numbering in total fourteen hundred personnel: these could not all be released for the expedition at once however, and there were many skills required that weren’t available within that group.

It became a necessity instead to approach other nations for support.

Telescope and Probe Missions

Aclateo Valaruth

Few resources could directly pinpoint a planet from a millions of years out of date geospatial coordinate, and instead of attempting to calculate this mathematically the group needed to use a device called a Terascope, a long range imaging device that could use inertialess drive to position itself millions of light years away and observe the parent star from beyond the galaxy, before using its drive systems to move forward and scan the progress of the star in its orbit around galactic central point.

This required the cooperation of the Abolethic scientist Aur'ulus'thal'mar, a citizen of the Sovereignty of Ullgo'thalun, one of the constituent states of the Great Civilization. As this required rededicating the machine to the task Aur'ulus'thal'mar first had to be convinced of the scientific value of the endevour, and then made his support in imaging the destination contingent on accompanying the expedition. Aur'ulus'thal'mar was also able to derive the Alteran syllabic name for the world, Aclateo Valaruth.

When this was done, long range images of the world were produced, and the group requested an intrusion flight from the Great Civilization's Stellar Engagement forces, and were able to convince their assigned military liason to authorise this. The system was probed by an ineritaless drive equipped Sickle-class intrusion ship Dead Air, a long range light cruiser which shifts most of its emissions into alternate dimensions and is chiefly used for monitoring hostile territory, which was temporarily diverted from its assignment to Chronosian Remnant observations.

The Dead Air was able to verify that no USE forces were present in the Aclateo Valaruth system at the time of its intrusion flight, and departed shortly afterward having produced a surface scan of the planet. However, it did confirm the presence of a long duration probe with ansible capability stationed around one of the outer planets of the system, belonging to the USE. Before any substantial incursion could take place, the probe would need to be disabled.

At the same time, Alastrine, one of the Heralds, sought aid from Princess Luna, former ruler of Equestria, this was a meeting fraught with difficulties, but the Equestrian princess did confirm through divination that that on Aclateo Valaruth there existed an ancient Alteran facility used to research a cure for an a plague. This plague was a biological weapon used against the Alterans as a prelude to an ancient war. It was attacked by the creators of this biological weapon, which caused the planet's star to dim, though the star was not destroyed, causing a major shift in the planet's environmental conditions.

Expedition Makeup

Starships

The Star Sailor

The Heralds of History had long used the Curious Otter, a Talarion-class Science Ship, as their primary transport, but for a mission of such scope the vessel was inadequate to meet the full needs of the expedition. Aur'ulus'thal'mar possessed his own ship. a construct of his home but its life support systems were broadly incompatible with much of the expedition personnel. With the formalization of relations between Crystal Spires and the Great Civilization, the industrial ship Sublimation of Virtue produced a new ship for the use of the Brotherhood of Heroes, an intermediate corvette by the name of Star Sailor. This vessel had greater military abilities than the Curious Otter and was the expedition's main 'flagship' for military purposes, able to carry an entire platoon of troops.

The Ancestral Study Group were able to provide another vessel for the cause, a Dornalian-built explorer vessel called the Collaborative Capybara, while the Dornalian CDC provided a fifth ship, the CRRS Endeavour.

The rest of the expedition's flotilla consisted of another four light freighters provided by the Sublimation of Virtue, which were required to transport equipment for establishing forward operating bases on the surface of Aclateo Valaruth for the expedition personnel, as well as to transport equipment to and from the Sublimation of Virtue which remained in a star system outside the exclusion zone.

Ground Personnel

The Expedition had a substantial ground contingent, consisting primarily of military and paramilitary forces provided by Crown Alliance personnel, including a company of commando light infantry from Kouralia, with an attached speical forces troop, along with a contingent of Imeriatan High Guard, for security and cold environment preparation, as well as several hundred personnel from the Ancestral Study Group, and a contingent of specialists working for the Malgravean state enterprise 'MalPharm.'

Specialists

Along with the large number of primary personnel, the expedition included a number of renowned or otherwise exceptional specialists.