It’s not every day you get to find out what caused the earth to become inhabitable. It turns out someone had some grand plans that involved humanity, and they were willing for everyone to pay a massive price for it. I also had some further artifacts still to acquire.
While I've been to Tacu Ceti quite a few times I never noticed there was a Forgotten Mech Graveyard on one of the plants. That sounds like quite an interesting place to check out. Even more so if it holds any clues or even possibly another artifact. So, I was on my way to investigate it further
Needless to say, I was thrilled to find out the graveyard part of it on the surface was not the only section of it. There was also a cave for me to explore.
To my shock this place was empty. I was expecting some kind of massive fight to break out at any moment. It was after all a mech graveyard. I was expecting to have to fight some massive robots.
Yet before I knew it I was looking right at another artifact. It was quite rare for an artifact to be this easy to acquire. It was almost like no one was attempting to stop me from getting it.
In the same system, there was also a ping for another power to be acquired. I quickly ran over to the temple for it and got it. Like most of them, I did not even bother to test what it did. I quickly killed the guardian that showed up and was on my way. I had further artifacts to get and I should stop getting sidetracked so easily.
I then had a short run-in with The Emissary who wanted me to head to Earth’s moon and check out the Nova station. I was hoping this would end up leading to another artifact. It certainly did as it pointed to Earth regarding a projected name Prism.
That is when I had to infiltrate NASA. At least what was left of it. Earth had become quite a barren wasteland over the years. With how run down the place was. It was just a challenge finding anything that still worked as an access point to the facility.
I ended up climbing up the strongback that was in place to hold an old spaceship that was left behind. There were some broken areas I was able to use as makeshift ladders to get up to the next floor. After a while, I made it up to where the elevator was still working.
I then started to piece together different logs about the project that was being carried out here. I would slowly find out that one of the scientists who had a breakthrough was being fed information about how to do so by himself from another universe. His research partner became quite alarmed but could never work out how he always knew how to solve issues they were running into before they had the data sets to even understand what was going on.
He was also keeping a dark secret from the world at the time. They were able to create grave drives by folding space around them. This would allow them to jump from one point of space to another. There was a heavy consequence for doing so. It was harming the atmosphere causing it to slowly bleed into space.
This also quite explains why Earth was in the current state it was in. I recall the first time I explored it seeing it just a barren wasteland with no atmosphere remaining. All the water and life just sucked right out of the planet itself. Leaving behind some buildings as if they were scares left by humans on the surface of the planet.
The scary thing is the scientist was aware this was going to be the outcome Earth would suffer from his work. He however deemed it a worthy sacrifice to enable humans to be able to settle the stars and explore. Needless to say, not everyone would agree with him about this, so he failed to mention this to anyone working on the project till it was too late to do anything to stop the damage that was already caused.
I also ended up finding him dead in one of the labs while I was looking for further information. I knew the project itself was studying an artifact. I just needed to find a way to get it out of its containment field.
While the place was mostly peaceful. The moment I took the artifact I would discover other Starborns were on their way to collect the very piece I was after. Some of them decided if they could kill me. Not only would they collect quite a few pieces off my corpse, making it worth the risk of an encounter with me. They would only have to kill a couple of other people or bargain with them to move to another universe.
It was like duck hunting season. I started opening fire at anything that moved. They might have thought I was the duck. I for sure ensured they became the hunted. Every corner I'd turn there would be another Starborn I'd blast back into the stars where it came from. Even if they did not imminently open fire on me that was their mistake. I was not going to wait to see who a friend or foe was. Which ended up being the right call as none of them were going to be friendly. Not like any of them have been since the start.
While this had all gone down, I could not help but think about the price that was paid. Destroying Earth just to travel the stars. I must say I still don’t know if that was the right or wrong choice for someone to make.
There is so much possibility that opened from the work that was done. Earth was also never going to be forever for humans anyway. I’m sure by then we had deleted most of anything we could get our hands on. I can only imagine trying to build enough ships to get everyone off Earth would have cost just about everything left to gather from the planet itself.
The clock was starting to tick down. There was just one remaining artifact left out there to get. Along with any remaining artifacts the other two Starborn had already collected in their adventures to get them all. It was either them or me and I rather like living.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Starfield.
Disclosure: Starfield received for free through AMD rewards from the graphics card I purchased.
