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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:07:58 GMT -5
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:11:49 GMT -5
THE FIRST INVADERS
Zorah's Eye was with the planet in the earliest records from the first Loonies on Set, in the negative years of the OSC calendar. It appears multiple times in old Madness Command Post records as a major point of interest. A handful of historians and archaeologists even suggest that the Loonies may have come from the Eye. Some even say that the redworlders came from inside, too. The First Invaders, Cloneston, the blackworlders, even the Chambers of Myth - there are about a hundred thousand theories on Set's local flavors having an origin in the Eye. As always, hard evidence is slippery.
The only established facts on the Eye are that the First Invaders - whoever they were - were there at some point. Around that time, it was close to Madness Command Post, the capital of the soon-to-be Pioneer Network. Loonies of Madness engaged the mysterious besiegers in a few off-and-on battles that never went anywhere. After about two decades, the Invaders were defeated, retreated, or simply got bored and left. After that, Madness established a cordon on the Eye and several observation posts to keep track of it.
Around that time, there was no mention of the Eye's Gaze, the pocket universe, or any of the present-day details of its existence. It wasn't much more than a big white desert full of irritating sand. Likewise, a few fragments from the time suggest the Eye was completely absent, and the Iris desert was a good deal smaller. Purportedly, the Loonies used it as a training grounds for barren-terrain survival skills. Beyond that, there's not much to be spoken of. Once the First Invaders were gone, the Eye stopped being relevant. History surrounding it drops off almost completely afterwards.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:12:02 GMT -5
THE FIRST JUMP & THE COLLECTION ERA
When the First Jump happened, the Eye didn't move. For the Pioneer Network, it was a small blessing. For one, they didn't have to worry about any of their bunkers being zonked into a giant, empty desert with no food or breathable air. For two, it gave them, the redworlders, and the eventual Zaschia a reference point on the planet they could trust. Most of Set had confused itself, but the big white spot on the map was just where it was supposed to be. Some records even suggest that the central compound of Madness stayed close by.
Apart from that, there was nothing doing. The Eye still wasn't relevant. Whatever was going on there was nobody's concern. The First Invaders had left, there were no anomalous apocalypses waiting inside, and the gate to the micro-sized galaxy hadn't opened yet. When the Zaschia asked about the Eye, all the Loonies and redworlders could do was shrug. It didn't make any sense. It shouldn't have been there. It just was. Over time, people forgot about it. Daily affairs on Set went on as they had before.
It stayed that way for a long while. About five centuries went by. The orscruft showed up and no one cared. The sorassan arrived and no one cared. Towns and Looney bunkers started popping up from nothingness and no one cared. There was no portal, no cone of dark death, nothing. The desert was growing and creeping towards Madness, but it was only ever growing in leaps and bounds with every jump. Even then, it wasn't going anywhere all that quickly. The only thing special about it was that it didn't care about jumps. No one had a reason to go there. No one had a reason to care.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:12:35 GMT -5
THE UNIONITES & ZORSEC
Things changed when Set popped into the unionites' home system, near Unity Station, around the time of 490-520 OSC. It was around that time that the Eye finally opened up. References in some old Unity documents suggest it was even the pinprick glow of the Eye that tipped the unionites off to Set's arrival. The Gaze came into effect as a tiny sliver of annihilation extending into orbit like a knife's edge. For most people on Set, it was no big deal. It was easy enough for ships, stations, and aircraft to avoid.
For the Loonies and unionites, it was one of the biggest political scuffles ever to hit the planet. When the unionites had fully settled in, around 530-550 OSC, they recognized right away that there was something wrong with it. So, too, did the Loonies in the Pioneer Network. The unionites wanted to send in research teams to study it. The Loonies wanted to lock the place down and quarantine it for good. They didn't even explain why. There was always the easy scapegoat of it being a big, spooky, and dangerous, but that was never the reason given. They just didn't want anyone touching it.
Being that the unionites were still fresh on the scene, the Loonies won out. People trusted the railgun-slinging cavemen more than the clunky brain-jars - especially with the unionites still acting like robots. The Northeast Transorbital Security Curtain, or ZORSEC, went into effect around Zorah's Eye around 540-560 OSC. Looney military facilities and air patrols set up shop at the Iris's edge. Redworlders pitched in with naval patrols and orbital infrastructure to help secure it. The Zaschia and the rest were too confused about the hubbub to help out. Still, they upheld the quarantine and kept their noses away from the Eye. Things were quiet again.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:12:45 GMT -5
MADNESS ORBITAL SECURITY
In a way, it served as the seed for the Pioneer Network's budding planetary defense fleet. The Loonies were determined to lock it down, which meant slapping as much firepower and force projection as possible into one spot. Redworlder naval bases and fleets served as the core for future orbital expansion. Loonies patrolling the area served as security and terrestrial integration. The proximity of Madness - on most jumps - made it all the more appealing. The major nerve centers for the Pioneer Network's command infrastructure were all clustered around the area to support it. All it took was moving assets into position to consolidate it. By 600-650 OSC, ZORSEC evolved into the Madness Orbital Defense & Security Cluster, or MADSEC.
As time wore on and the unionites earned more and more respect on Set's stage, the Unity Trust lobbied to have the quarantine lifted. It was around 680-750 OSC that they started off the political rematch, with some tentative support by the Zaschia and orscruft. The Loonies maintained their stance on the quarantine; nothing went near it that wasn't a Looney patrol. Around that time, they were citing it as a matter of military security. They finally had a tangible and logical reason, even if it was a little late. The redworlders stood by them.
If anything, having a reason only gave the unionites something to hook into and hammer on the political stage. The Eye was widening all the time, the Gaze was getting bigger, and the light on the inside was getting to be more of a beacon for the planet. It was a security risk that had to be studied and understood to know what kind of implications it would have on defending the planet, if it ever came to that. The Loonies didn't budge. The redworlders stood by them still. The battle in the background raged on for years afterwards. Sometimes, all the Loonies had to fall back on was their founding role and controlling stake in the Pioneer Network.
One of the odd and inexplicable facts about the Eye was that it had the same kind of repulsive effect on blackworlders as it did on light and sense. For reasons no one could explain - or would explain, in the blackworlders' case - the mysterious energy beings refused to go near it. They said nothing about it, refused questions, and did their best to keep clear. In a funny kind of way, the Eye was a safe haven from the darkness; if someone was dead-set on privacy from the blackworlders, all they had to do was rub up against the edge of the quarantine. No one was ever able to determine why. Eventually, it ceased to be a concern.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:12:54 GMT -5
THE SPLINTER WARS
It took at least a century before the unionites finally got what they wanted - and it was in a way that no one wanted. Around 780-850 OSC, Set jumped into the Third Invaders' home system. The Splinter Wars loomed on the horizon. Some theories even suggest that the Third Invaders swept in to turn off the Eye - because they thought it was a threat, because its light was damaging orbital infrastructure, or just because they were trying to sleep. When they finally showed up, one of their biggest targets was Zorah's Eye.
Zorah's Eye was where MADSEC was clustered, which made it a given as a major target. What didn't make so much sense were the repeated bombing campaigns the Third Invaders conducted against the Eye. Some were targeted against Looney outposts on its periphery, but most shots landed inside the Iris or on top of the Eye itself. Meanwhile, in orbit, the Gaze complicated fighting. By then, the Loonies had already figured out they could hide in it, behind it, or even stick ships in front of it as decoys. Oddly enough, the Eye was a small, meaningful contributor to the planet's defense, instead of the time bomb the unionites had painted it as.
When Set finally jumped around 790-860 OSC and the smoke had enough time to blow over, the Pioneer Network was gone. The Eye, as always, was still there, still in the exact same spot, still doing nothing of particular importance. All it'd done was grow, with a little spurt just as the Network died. As the Loonies started biting back at the aliens and the Space Loonies started to leave the drawing board, the quarantine collapsed. The defense cluster broke apart. For the big players, Zorah's Eye was forgotten again.
For the average spacer and the alien outcasts flying up to orbit, the Eye was anything but forgotten. Hearsay and war stories from Pioneer Network crews and captains worked the rumor mills in orbit. Word got around that the interior of the Gaze was safe so long as you took it from above. Refugees started hovering over it in droves. Whenever a leftover Third Invaders ship flew in, or whenever some of the newly-formed pirate fleets popped by, they'd dive in to hide. When the Space Loonies finally poked their noses in, they didn't care about the big conga line of quarantine violations. They were just relieved to see some of their families still safe and sound.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:13:04 GMT -5
FIRST MAN IN
In the years after, things stayed the same. People learned the Eye and the Gaze. They treated them as the same navigational hazard as most spacers do today. In 927 OSC, all that changed - all thanks to a suicidal depressive trying to make his death a little more interesting. Conrad Cassidy was the man in question. He was a widower who lost his wife Bella in a derelict collision over the Eye. His kids died not too much later in an environmental systems failure - which was made all the more tragic by the fact that Bella was his environmental technician.
For Conrad, there wasn't much left. He had no friends, family, or shipmates after all that. All he had were sensors, engines, and enough fuel to ram his ship into the Eye. Naturally, given his only other option was to go insane and die alone, it seemed like a decent way to wrap things up. He parked over the Eye for about a month, studied it, and figured out the best approach vector to hit it dead center at full blaze. He ran every possible calculation, including arriving ships and debris that might've gotten in his way. Once he figured he'd spent enough time preparing, he gunned the engines. If everything went well, he'd have hit the Eye with the same kind of force as a thermonuclear missile. He'd have his vengeance.
What Conrad didn't know was that his chunky freight shuttle was just the right size to hit the Eye's portal and pass through to the other end. Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, he was the first living person on record to enter the Eye and live to tell the tale. It was kind of a bummer, really. As soon as Conrad found his bearings, he took a few pictures, spun around, and hit the portal again. He left for Unity Station to find someone to help him make sense of it. He wound up in psychiatric care instead, but his sensor data went into unionite hands.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:13:14 GMT -5
THE ZORAH'S EYE PILEUP
The very next year, in 928, the first research teams bumbled along to try to make sense of what Conrad had discovered. Curious spacers and Space Looney spies followed after to see what the toasters were up to. A few garbage haulers even flopped in around that time, on a late attempt to catch up with Conrad's shuttle. At first, the Unity Trust tried to keep the research under wraps, to keep the Space Loonies from trying to pull off another ZORSEC. For a while, they kept it quiet - up until a garbage hauler found its way back. The Space Loonies seized it first. As soon as they pulled the data from its sensor logs, the cat came out of the bag.
The Trust was happy to find out that the Space Loonies weren't in any rush to lock the Eye down again, but that was the end of the sunshine. In 939, word on the Eye had leaked to the rest of orbit. Adventurers, pirates, and independent science teams swarmed the location. It was a gold rush, a stampede, and a demolition derby all in one. Ships lined up - or plowed through - to dive into the Eye. Most didn't realize how small the opening was. If they didn't smash into another diver or a research probe, they slammed into the Gaze's wall or the edges of the portal. The whole incident went down in history as the Zorah's Eye Pileup. Some wrecks are still floating inside the Gaze today - and at least a quarter are T-boned into another.
The Pileup taught the unionites the value of grabbing garbage haulers early. For regular spacers, it taught everyone about the risks and realities of the Eye. The survivors came back with footage of the micro-galaxy on the inside and stories about how they got in and out. People took the Gaze and the portal much more seriously after the dust had settled. From then on, daily affairs around the Eye shaped up to something like the present day. People steadily grew accustomed to the way the Eye and its pocket universe worked. Collisions slowed down, wrecks scaled back, and the sad clouds of ship vapor thinned out soon after the Pileup's end.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:13:28 GMT -5
THE RAIDS ON THE GAZE
Exploring the Eye was seen as just a matter of calculating the risk on getting in and out. Charts on entry vectors managed to get around orbit and clear that up. Unionite efforts on maintaining navigation buoys on the other end made exits mostly safe. Maps of the subreality chunks inside the Eye were in the process of being drawn up and ironed out. The Eye was on its way to being nice and tidy - a break from orbit's norm. There were just a couple of things waiting to shake things up. The first one was what no one could make sense of; an invasion.
Word eventually made it down to the planet through the MASTER network that the space aliens were up to no good with the Eye. There weren't many Loonies who still cared much for it, but a few big names with big gunship fleets weren't happy to hear it. To them, ZORSEC was still in effect. The Eye's quarantine was still law. Loonies didn't have spaceships to do real fighting up in orbit, but plenty knew how to pull off a good boarding action. By 958, a few networks came together to do just that. The Raddem Junkyard Council, Georgetown Network, Terrestrial Interests Concern, and a few others pooled their assets together for the effort. A swarm of gunships hit orbit over the Eye to shut down research efforts. The Raids on the Gaze kicked off.
It was a classic demonstration of the big gap between the Loonies and the Space Loonies. The cavemen were up to no good for no apparent reason, as usual, and they knew just how to do it. Troop transports flew in with escort gunships and passed themselves off as civilian craft in need of emergency repairs. Sensor masking and spoofed identifiers managed to fool even the unionite teams in orbit. When they hit, they hit hard, fast, and burned up every last bit of scientific data they could find.
The problem was that the Loonies had absolutely no fleet strength. Gunships could only hope to deal with other gunships, not space fighters or frigates. When the Space Loonies heard that the boots had come off the ground, they swarmed in themselves. Looney boarders ended up stranded on the stations they'd seized or shot down on their way back home. It took about a year for the Space Loonies to assert themselves in full, but the Loonies took the hint. The Raids on the Gaze ended officially in 959. Isolated hits by bunkers acting alone continued for a few decades after, but never on the same scale as the Raids. All that was left for orbit to deal with was the second big shake-up; a blink.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:13:41 GMT -5
THE FIRST BLINK
In 990, Zorah's Eye blinked for the first time. The realm inside the Eye crunched itself and wiped out at least a few dozen spaceships in the process. The navigation buoys disappeared, the planets shuffled up, and the only familiar objects left were blobby remnants no one could recognize. At first, people took it as a random fluke and mourned the wave of deaths as a tragedy. It was around thirty years later that it happened again, in 1021. Before anyone could say it was another fluke, a third blink hit just three years later. Each time, every person inside disappeared, and the Eye dealt a new hand of planets and stars.
No one had an explanation for it, but people came to accept it. The Eye was on a timer. What that timer was set to and what it was going to do when it expired, no one had an answer for. Interest tapered off to nothing but unionites, daredevils, and bankrupt salvagers. For around three centuries, it's held on like that. Whenever the Eye blinks, the Unity Trust sends the word out to the rest of orbit. Each blink is a small-scale repeat of the Zorah's Eye Pileup; a little gold rush to see if anything easy and pricey is hiding just outside the portal.
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Post by Insano-Man on Jan 9, 2019 22:13:49 GMT -5
PRESENT DAY
All the while, the Eye keeps growing. The unionites keep poking it, seeing if they can figure out when it'll blink and what makes it happen. Divers keep trying to make it rich on the unexplored worlds inside. Gazers hide around in the black spot above. Occasionally, the two meet up - at terminal velocity. The Loonies still don't want anyone touching it, but they know better than to try another repeat of the Raids. The Space Loonies don't much care for it. Whether the research teams prodding it have come up with anything useful is something they're keeping to themselves.
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