Corrected Date; Launch Day – 0.0.0

[This entry is a recording of the bridge of the Nascent Dawn from its final launch go-check to its arrival in Coress following the successful jump; the transcript follows]

Namarall, via comms: Captain Lapis, you carry the hopes and dreams of us all. May the light of Azal shine distant upon you. Lapis: Thank you, Mr. President. In these last moments, I assure you, Elysria will never be forgotten.
CV: T-minus 10 seconds.
Lapis: All crew, brace for jump. And while I am sure this ship will arrive exactly where it is supposed to- it is an honor to make this journey into the unknown with you all.
[camera static as the inflation drive engages, causing a multitude of fractal static-laden colors and swirls visible out the viewports until there’s a sudden flash of blinding light, the whole bridge shaking as the effects dim]
Navigator Lucan: Captain, navigation computer has successfully located expected pulsars. Four, five.. all six. We’re in Coress, the position around Coress-1 is being assessed.
Comms Officer Razel: Captain… there’s a transmitting probe. It has a time capsule on-board. And an atomic clock.
Lapis: What’s it sending?
Razel: Just the time data and a last little message. Probe computer date is 139 years older than our mission computer.
Lapis: The scientists were only slightly off then. What’s the message?
Razel: “This is the final space vehicle launched from Atlan. The structure is breaking apart under extreme Azalar radiation. The star is so unstable that even radio can’t be used anymore. After the launch crew is returned home, we are abandoning the surface. On-board is the final shipment our world will ever make of real food and drink. We ask that ten years from when you arrive, for you to imbibe of it, and remember us. Remember that we once lived.
Lapis: Let’s get some ensigns to retrieve the probe please. Orbital status?
Lucan: We’re in a stable orbit, but we’re a little closer to one of the moons than we had intended, and some of the data is concerning me. Our orbit projections show a rapid decrease in the time it takes for the closer moon’s to decay fully.
Lapis: We’ll have to assemble a task team to assess th-
Science Officer Calosea: Excuse my interruption, sirs. I already began utilizing the scanners to assess possible landing sites. There are plenty, however… there’s a great deal of evidence in many areas of this world that there is a developed culture present. Caves show large presences of thermal groups and there are paths to simple structures around, camps and the like. Possibly even signs of early agriculture. I’m going to need to calibrate the lenses for the orbit and the atmosphere but it won’t take long to get high-res pictures for verification.
[silence for a few moments]
Lapis: Azal take us, damn the fates…

Corrected Date; After Launch 0.1.6

[This entry is a portion of a copy of the transcript of an official tribunal called to order by Captain Lapis regarding the presence of sapients on Coress-1]
Zeke: I stand by my computer’s log and the testimony of my crew, we took the initial scans, which showed no evidence of the cave dwellings. Or the jungle villages. Or the mountain paths- none of it was detectable from space.
Lapis: Were you not concerned with the rapid pace with which these observations were made? While they met protocol requirements, you had no abundance of patience or caution in order to return to Elysria.
Zeke: After decades of looking, we finally found a habitable world. How could we wait to tell our people of this find?
[Jaroom, Chief of Engineering]: One would think that with such important discoveries and portents that extra scrutiny would have been merited, no?
Zeke: We met protocol. We returned. Now we are here, and.. I do not apologize. Our home is dy- was dying. It’s gone now. This could be a new one.
[Mandra, Chief of Cryonics]: You know as well as any of us that we can’t displace those that already live there. It would shatter their culture, their development, their right to grow.
[Zeke is silent]
Mandra: They have that right just as much as any one of us. If I can be honest, we might have even less. Our home is indeed gone, we have run the gamut of our history, the cannot be denied theirs.
Zeke: So you are to blame me for this mistake? That we wanted our people to live? That the computer did not notice it, nor did my crew.
Jaroom: What is done is done, Mr. Shawson. We are not looking to cast blame. We are looking for the answers to explain how it is we arrived in this situation.
Mandra: You insist your role was performed to the letter. Permit us to be skeptical that all our safeguards and protocols and balances did not prevent that which they were explicitly designed to prevent. It seems a harsh fate that for all that work we would still be in the conundrum we are.
Lapis: It seems that to almost everyone, yes. We cannot put down the landers here. We cannot, for the moment, leave orbit. So Mr. Shawson, please run us through it again, from the beginning, because I for one, am going to need a lot more reassurance of the innocence of this error of not only you and your crew, but all your ship systems and post-mission analysis.

Corrected Date; After Launch 1.4.21

[This entry is the front page of a newly established news publication the Trail of Dawn, formed as more citizens were awoken and the desire for a non-officer flow of information grew; transcription below]

Trail of Dawn, Issue 3; 1.4.21
Nascent Dawn Awakes, Spreading Light to the Horizon

Thanks to the timely actions of the bridge crew and the various departments on-board, the Dawn has managed to awaken roughly 2,000 members of the sleeping community since arriving in Coress. Many of us were shocked to learn that we would not actually be heading down to the plant below, as it already had a fledgling culture there. The aforementioned actions taken on by those in charge were to draft plans and enact changes to the supporting engineering of the Dawn to allow many of us to live on the ship itself; though at this point it’s probably more appropriate to call it a station. While most of the awakened have been from engineering backgrounds to enact those renovations, a handful of cultural experts- ourselves included- are appreciative that the Captain has elected to immediately begin outreach to non-crew careers as well. With more people around, there’s more help to tackle these new challenges.

As we reported in Issue 1, the Dawn has no jump fuel remaining after Launch and no way to make more. While the scientists argue about ways to create a jump fuel synthesizer, focus has instead shifted into outfitting the docked fleet in the hangars into short-range explorers, relying on some older sub-FTL drives to take a deep look at the other planets here in Coress. The Bridge reports that some of the ships never had their conventional drives removed and are already being deployed for the initial surveys. Captain Lapis was quoted as saying, “there is going to be a vital need of minerals and nutrients for any large-scale hydroponics effort.” Thankfully, conventional chemical and ionic reaction mass is easy to produce, and scans from the Dawn have detected plenty of raw material already for production.

Some of the vessels do include small amounts of jump fuel from their previous tasks in the Pathfinder Initiative. Nothing that could ever hope to move the Dawn in any meaningful way- but for the moment the orbital team is most concerned about correcting our entry orbit to ease the gravitation strain on Coress-1a, which had a decaying orbit initially that was predicted to result in tidal and ecological impact in several thousand years. The presence of the Dawn has accelerated its decay, and every moment in this position ticks the clock ever closer to disaster. It was a problem we had relied on having many generations- and the promise of advanced cities and the full unity of every Elysrian on-board- to solve. Now however, the Bridge can only hope to use either the explorer fleet or some kind of miniature jump to push our orbit out further to stop further damage. The science department is uncertain on either plan’s feasibility- the Dawn is just too big. In the meantime, these still slightly fueled skiffs shall bunny-hop in the nearby star systems looking for unique features or rarer resources.

Corrected Date; After Launch 2.6.11

[This entry is a security recording of an engineering crew on a sub-deck of the Dawn, which were working hard to dismantle un-needed landing and empty cryogenic support systems in order to collect enough material to make even a small jump fuel foundry, transcript is below]

Engineer 1: Okay, purge that manifold. The coolant should be stored in the interchange to the next sector, though it might throw a pressu-
[sounds of a sharp alarm sounding]
Eng 1: Yeah, just override that until we can re-route to the storage they’re setting up in that bay we cleared yesterday.
[alarm stops]
Eng 2: Which units do we need out of here first again?
Eng 1: Micky, I love ya, but you gotta take a memory class or something. Do those still exist? Is it in the Archive? Whatever… We’re after the control conduits for the coolant distribution.
Micky: Ah yeah, the promethium in the boards can be used to make jump fuel, I guess, at a really low rate.
Eng 1: How is it you remember that little tidbit and not the actual thing itself?
Micky: It’s a curse sir.
Eng 1: Okay, the piping here is clear.
[camera is blinded briefly by plasma-cutting on a pipe section, followed by the clanging of it falling to the deck floor]
Eng 1: Yeah, there’s unit DE-0451. The eggheads wanted four at least today, -52 should be 15 paters down. Then we can just tear it all out in the next week.
Micky: Chief, do you think we’ll ever see a sky again?
Chief: Come on now Mick.. just look out the windows. There’s a sky down there.
Micky: Yeah, but from.. down there.
Chief: Well the faster we get this done the less years we’ll have to ask about it, yeah?
Micky: Yes sir.

Corrected Date; After Launch 3.5.7

[This entry is an operations recording of the Bridge of the Dawn during the retrofit launch of the former landing sections of the craft, which would be the future bases of various needed constructions and labs in order to free up room in the Dawn for living quarters; transcript below]

Lapis: All right Engineering, Platform 1 target is reached and orbit is stabilized. Crews are clear to begin stripping the thermal shielding. You may begin the launch of Platform 2.
Eng [through comms]: Copy Bridge. Stand-by crews free to begin work. Platform 2 thrusters firing in 3, 2, 1.
[sound of muffled shaking for roughly two minutes before it fades away]
Eng: Platform has cleared the berth, awaiting corrections.
Lapis: Go ahead, Ms. Cal.
Calosea: Last few verifications completing. … Okay we need, point-one-five degree microburst on the three-o-clock array, offset by the eight and tens after six-point-three seconds then brought to neutral vector. Sequence uploading to the Engineering crew.
Eng: Copy, Sci. Guidance team reports clean receipt.
Cal: Spending a few weeks reprogramming the computers on the landers would ease my anxiety over this archaic manual positioning…
Lapis: We need to shed the mass and it’s getting crowded in here. Couple of extra weeks might not have hurt to our perspective, but every second we don’t fix our orbit is another that 1a becomes a bigger issue.
Eng: Corrections are complete, Bridge. Confirm three hours until high orbit.
Cal: Confirmed, Engineering.
Lapis: All right, all ship. [beep]. Prepare for full vessel roll. [beep] Start the roll please helm.
“Pilot” Aryne: Aye sir. Rolling for starward ventral release vector.
[sounds of much deeper but softer vibrating]
Lapis: All right, at ease everyone. Reconvene for the next phase in two hours.

Corrected Date; After Launch 4.5.28

[This entry is a copy of a small address made by Captain Lapis following a loss of communications on the Dawn; transcript below]

Crew and residents of the Dawn; I would like to take this time to reassure all of you that the anomaly in the Operations Center today has had its root cause identified and corrected. Hardware degradation in the connections between our primary radio dish and the Ops Center created a temporary, but total, loss of ability to receive or distribute signals from our deployed fleet or outlying outposts. Some of you raised alarm when conversations with loved ones or project partners were suddenly cut, though now we’re getting word that for many of them, they could still see and hear us. Our transmitters were not affected. All functions are restored, and preventive measures shall be taken to ensure the issue shall not occur again. On that note, we have two updates:

Firstly, we have confirmed that almost all data lost to this incident was able to be re-transmitted, so nothing of any value was lost. Secondly, we have also acquired the status reports of all but one vessel in the fleet. The Nirad, under the command of Zeke Shawson, was not at its assigned holding position while waiting for jump permission from Command. Coordinating with the other supply and survey vessels currently in-system, logs seem to show that several minutes after our receiver blackout, the Nirad did indeed make a jump out of system without clearance. It’s sister ship, the Bemoch, attempted to follow, assuming jump permission had been given for their mission. The Bemoch have since returned, not finding the Nirad in the target system C0-Y21. As of this moment, we have no way of knowing where the Nirad is as the automatic data burst on the vessel was not received by the Dawn. We do not believe the two events are inherently related, more likely, that the Nirad somehow realized our situation and actively took advantage of it.

So it would seem the Captain and crew of the Nirad, responsible for our precarious position above this already developed world- have elected to flee their shame and responsibilities befitting any officer of this expedition. Depending on how far their ship jumped, we may pick up the radio bursts in a couple of years or a couple of decades- there’s simply no point waiting, and, the Bridge and the department heads of the Dawn have agreed that a search is simply unfeasible as well. Space is vast and empty, and without any clues as to their destination any attempt to find our misguided and errant deserters, and the large amount of outpost framework and supplies they carried for their mission, would be a waste. If ever should another member of the Dawn mission encounter the crew of the Nirad, it is commanded to not treat with them. They have proven their intentions have never been aligned with the rest of the memory of Elysria.

Thank you all, and may the stars watch over us.

Corrected Date; After Launch 5.2.21

[This entry is a copy of a “podcast” from a private journalism group that freely provides small updates between issuances of news from the official sources on board of the Dawn; transcript below]

MAW MATTERS – 5.2.21 Radio chatter between Command and off-Dawn sources today confirmed that the third mining outpost, this one on Coress-4c, was brought online to process the high incidence of gold found on the surface of the moon. Conditions are rather harsh out on 4a, as the moon sits within the radiation zones of its host gas giant, but apparently the outpost has a new kind of magnetic field oscillator that allows them to generate small amounts of power from 4’s intense EMFs, the radiation included. The moon has an average balmy temperature of -120*, so we’re all rooting for the duty roster on that one.

But moving on, there’s been no sign of Zeke Shawson and his crew since they allegedly eloped from Dawn operational areas last year. The timing and attitude of the folks in charge have given pause to a lot of us out of the loop, especially as it was later discovered and reported- by yours truly- that several prominent members of the economic and financial divisions are just… gone. No one has seen them since before that comms incident and there are no computer logs about their persons ever leaving the Dawn. So at least to me, it’s pretty clear that Captain Lapis and the rest of the Bridge elite are hiding something, yeah? What did they do to our free thinkers and entrepreneurs? Those guys ran huge industries back on Elysria and know they’re just missing. Something to think about for sure…

Last for today, though, is the news that ol’ Blue-Hat Lapis finally approved some of the scientific community’s requests to establish very carefully managed observation sights on the planet below, Coress-1. Though from the talks, they sound more like hunting blinds and hidden lairs. The environment there does still hold a treasure trove of biological and evolutionary discovery, according to the scientists, and some of them are more than eager to surreptitiously observe the society down there. They talk up the benefit of being able to actually record early societal development instead of trying to interpret triangle scratch on clay. They’re spending all this time identifying sites that aren’t habituated or traversed by the locals, for general studies, and the best places to observe the locals directly without exposing themselves, up on cliffs, or under the water, whatever. The risk of contamination has been discussed highly, and it almost seems like the Bridge and their exalted officers care more about the creatures below than they do us normal folk. But I’m not accusing anyone of anything. Until next time, Dawn. Stay informed.

Corrected Date; After Launch 8.9.1

[This entry is from a security recording in one of the Dawn’s massive hangars, between members of the cargo crew; transcript follows]
Crew Member 1: What’s that last one in the way?
CM2: Uh.. this one’s tagged for that new farming facility. Out in -28. Rough time out there. Heard it rains glass or something, but wouldn’t you know it, that makes for great soil.
CM1: Okay the crew requested the construction supplies in the rear, farming equipment in front. Which we got?
CM2: This is all habitation material.
CM1: All right, guess that goes in the middle.
[sounds of machinery whirring, boxes clanking or hitting the deck]
CM1: Well now the ramp is clear, manifest says the critical find is the seed collection? It’s been out of cryo a bit and the chiller box needs to be hooked into the ship’s power.
CM2: I.. do not see a chiller box here.
CM1: Yup. Neither do I. Let me, do a trace.. on this serial.
CM2: Two drinks at VRC [Verity’s Recreational Club] that it was scanned and never loaded from the hold.
CM1: I’ll take those odds.
CM1: Actually, it was transferred. It’s sitting at the dock for Platform exchanges.
CM2: Uggh.. how do you even… now I have to walk down there and owe you two drinks.
CM1: You sure do. I’ll keep organizing these for now so at least when you get back we can just load up this first transport.
CM2: Be crew on the Dawn, they said. Live a brand-new life with a new future, they said.
CM1: And we just move boxes in space instead of in town.
CM2: I guess at least we can see green out the window. Not quite purple, but it’s more comforting than brown.
CM1: Get going you lay-about.
CM2: Yeah, yeah… all the way down to Platform docks…

Corrected Date; After Launch 11.8.6

[This entry is a portion of the text of the Protected Entities Treaty, detailing the exact legal code and operations required when members of the Dawn encounter other species, created after exposure incidents began on Coress-1; text below]

X.VI.II Whereas; an entity of a species or group of species not previously present in the complement of the Elysrian collective, present at the time of Nascent Dawn’s launch, is unintentionally exposed to members of the Elysrian collective, their constructions or technology; the individual or group of individuals shall not be harmed in any bodily fashion; and all effort shall be made to attempt to communicate, with whatever established method is most appropriate for the circumstances of this exposure, the nature of Elysrian culture in meaning no harm. If deemed appropriate by the authority present at such exposure or meeting, passive measures to attempt to prevent the individual or group from returning to their home or culture to spread word of Elysria can be undertaken, until such time the authority feels an understanding was reached. If a member of another culture flees or is otherwise unable to be communicated with after a contact event, the corresponding operation that was detected must disband as quickly as possible, and prevent the exposed culture from verifying the contact.

.III Whereas; in order to ensure the long-term health of any society still developing on the technological evolutionary path, any exposure to technology more advanced than their naturally developed use MUST BE curtailed. When an entity of non-Elysrian society has a culture with significantly less technological utilization and engages in communication with Elysrian representatives of any kind, the representatives shall attempt to impress upon them the need to prevent the spread of knowledge of the Elysrian people and their technology. If the individual is assessed to be of sound mind and logic that assurance of their discovery of Elysrian culture can be kept secret, or sufficiently accepts non-technological payments of materials or boons to ensure silence, Elysrian representatives can engage in a higher degree of surveillance on the individual to monitor the possible spread of knowledge to their peers. In the event the representatives feel the affected individual is incapable (either through deceit or a lack of discretion) of preventing the spread of the news of contact, efforts shall be made to downplay their discovery as fictitious, convince the individual or group of supernatural, mystical, or divine encounters, or otherwise distort their perception of the reality of exposure through trained methods of reverse psychology or other social manipulation. Methods learned in first contact handling courses are heavily discouraged of being used in any situation that is not first-contact. ONLY if the individual is actively hysterical or hostile to the idea of keeping contact surreptitious shall representatives be authorized to detain the individual pending a solution to the situation by the ruling body at the time.

.IV Whereas; in all circumstances, representatives are authorized to offer a permanent solution in terms of being “uplifted” to the individual or group. In exchange for effectively being abducted from their home, completely removing all chance of contamination, the individual or group can be resettled onto any Elysrian structure, habitat, or vessel with the assurance of being educated in Elysrian technology and culture. This solution effectively integrates the individual or group into Elysrian society. The individual or group shall be offered to take any family or cultural equivalent with them. These uplifted members shall have all needs be taken care of, and have all rights and protections afforded to members of the Elysrian collective extended to them. Written consent must be obtained by the individuals or groups in question, either in sufficiently understood methods of their culture, or in Elysrian standard.

.V Under no circumstances are any individuals of any species ever to be harmed from a contact event. Psychological damages resulting from exposure are unfortunately impossible to fully prevent, particularly for secondary effects on friends, families, and equivalents. It is forbidden to attempt to contact any individuals secondarily adjacent to the primary victims of exposure.

Corrected Date; After Launch 15.3.8

[This entry is a portion of the text of a report made by the sciences division of the Dawn giving a full detailed prediction of the course of Coress-1a; text below]

… while the micro-jump of the Dawn to its least influential position beyond high orbit of Coress-1 was successful, the damage done to the orbit of 1a cannot be undone by any positional change of the Dawn. The length of time the satellite experienced a heightened pull towards the planet because of the low-orbit presence of the Dawn effectively cut off any actions we could undertake to arrest the orbital changes. Our estimates of the previous orbit place the crossing of the Roche limit at 11,216 years. It was a problem we easily could have solved in 10 millennia, probably, but now our models predict a partial impact on the order of 2,594 years. While that’s still an unthinkable amount of time for us, it would thoroughly prevent the sergal cultures below from forming any meaningful response. For anyone not fully familiar with gravity, there’s an inverse square relationship there, which is why the effect is so drastic- every tiny pater the moon moved closer meant the square of that difference more gravity affecting the moon. Its spiral into the planet is now so fast that the computer predicts even the Roche effect won’t fully shred it apart by the time it hits the ground- there will be a gigantic mass collision that will completely annihilate the surface.

For now, we have utterly no realistic recommendations for how to address this issue. Maybe in the future we can devise some form of mitigation to allow for a greater time frame to actually solve the problem, but it’s something that just has to weigh on our minds into the future. As for the unrealistic plans, we could dedicate a force to dismantling the moon by mining as much material as we can and collapsing the rest, hoping its new size and mass will allow it to have a stable orbit when we’re done. Estimates for that process placed it on the order of 367 years. If we started today, that is. While a higher population and available labor could speed that up, it’s still a wholly gargantuan effort that we do not really recommend. Some of the folk down in Jump Mechanics suggested creating a jump drive that could jump the moon, but the cost in materials just to create a drive that size is staggering, and even if we tried, with our current jump fuel manufacturing capacity it would take 289 years to get enough fuel. Most importantly though, a power source to actually power the drive at that scale is currently beyond imagining. A fusion reactor like the one that powers the Dawn would itself need to be roughly 6 times the size of the Dawn itself to achieve the output required. We had one guy suggest doing both plans until the two could meet in a feasible center, but even that would take something like 80 years.

To put it simply, and depressingly, our presence here has created, or at least accelerated, the same kind of disaster that brought us here. This moon is going to impact the planet at a time, assuming the sergals follow a similar pace of advancement we did on Elysria, right when on the cusp of their breach into spaceflight. It’s tortuous knowing the irony of it all.

Corrected Date; After Launch 20.6.12

[This entry is a partial recording of an engineering crew in a hallway between two habitation sections of the Dawn; transcript below]
Engineering Crew 1: Hey, hey, careful- the problem might just be the junction box, that cable could still be live. Check it first. Manually.
EC2: Ugh, right.. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in like a week.
EC1: Tell me about it, the mess hall on deck four lost all its power a few days ago and the fix took twelve hours, and of course I had to do it.
EC2: They couldn’t just like, keep it closed for a few days?
EC1: Well wouldn’t you know it the nearest other mess on eight had a fire two weeks ago and they’re still trying to replace all the totaled kitchen equipment, so of course the committees were worried that switching to true rations for too long would cause grumblings.
EC2: I’m already grumbling, and like you. [sounds of satirical grumbling, mimicry of EC1]
EC3: Your grumbling doesn’t matter because you’re a good boy. Gotta work until your blisters pop. I managed to route the power through the other conduits.
EC2: Thanks Cass.
EC1: That’s a pretty comfortable thing to say, eh?
Cass: What, calling him a good boy? Dogs love that kind of thing.
EC2: Yeah, I do, and I love to bury bones i-
EC1: All right that’s enough of that. Keep it to the bunks. And I meant trying to sound like me.
Cass: [snickers]
EC1: I know we all got put under at roughly the same time but I can’t understand why you 3rders [the third generation of crew awoken for a higher crew requirement] are so frivolous.
EC2: How can we not be? Instead of a planet and space to stretch our paws, we got flickering lights and showers that leak.
Cass: If we didn’t laugh at what we can, we’d be just as crusty and bitter as all you Launchers [crew members that were awake for the Dawn’s launch].
EC1: Oh, I’m crusty and bitter huh? Who got you two access to that -actual- shower instead of that compressed air knock-off?
Cass: Hot water makes having to work with you almost worth it, Faus.
[unintelligible grumbling from Faus]

Corrected Date; After Launch 26.6.1

[This entry is from a speech by Captain Lapis announcing both the restructuring of the Dawn’s government and his own retirement, largely due to the former; transcript below]

Crew of the Nascent Dawn, or should I say now, citizens. It has been the greatest honor of my life to lead this ship to its new horizons, despite the surprises, and the challenges. Today the old command structure of this aging but brilliant vessel, like its captain, [general laughter] is being retired. In its place, the Technology, Administration, Industry, and Logistics divisions of our new government shall take over all organization, planning, enactment, and analysis of just about everything we do and encounter out in this fragile flotilla. TAIL, as it were, is a return to the democracy that once propelled our people into space itself from our doomed world of Elysria. There are a few of you, void-born, before me that never saw the old home but through the screen of the Archives. It was beautiful, even when it was scarred and barren, a shining beacon defiant against the scorching rays of Azal in the backdrop of space. It is long gone. But we, its people, survive. The work that our engineers and pilots, scientists and analysts, custodians and pencil-pushers too is what has truly allowed us to reach this point and will continue to propel us to the stars.

That future shall be decided upon by all of you now. I am so proud to say that in the first election held on the Dawn, my own son, Zircon, will head up the mantle as Head of Administration. As part of TAIL’s leadership, Zircon will sit on a council with the other Heads and the four of them shall chart our path ahead. [polite applause] As for myself, politics was something I wish we had left behind on Elysria. [scattered laughter] By that I mean, I am not going to be continuing my career from this point on. I brought this ship to this system, tackled the issues of a reality of being stuck in space, but I’m not going to touch a debate with a ten-pater pole. [more vigorous laughter] But every last one of us still has a responsibility. To this ship, to each other, to survive and thrive in our situation and carry not just our memories and families and the spirit of Elysria but its literal seeds to the places that will bear them. One day we will find our home, even if it’s not Coress-1. Until that day, there’s hull-plating to patch, wires to splice, hallways to clean. There’s laughter to be laughed, discoveries to be made, and the will of our people to push ever on, just as it always has done.

Soon we will see another new generation that is distinctly separated from our old home. They will grow up in corridors and quarters instead of fields and mountains. They will have to learn what it is to be in space, to not have -land- they can call theirs. But I am confident, as I always have been, that we as a people can reach that land. We stick together, and nobody else will ever be left behind. So it is my pleasure to say; Zircon, you have the conn. [much more active applause]

[lots of mingled chatter and shuffling as the podium’s iconography of the old Legacy Project emblems are replaced by TAIL logos]

Corrected Date; After Launch 38.11.26

[This entry is a recording of a speech performed at a funeral held for the first loss by natural causes onboard the Dawn; transcript below]

Speaker: Stang was a dear friend. Through all the challenges of the past few decades, every creak of the structure, every dislodged panel, every jury-rigged plug- I could count on his positivity. He had a way of- He never let anything make him forget why he was here. I would catch him staring out the viewports, smiling to himself and I would have to ask, every time, what he was seeing that made him smile. He would grin ever wider, looking out at the inky black of space, turn to me and say: “That star there has a place where I’m going to build my house.” It didn’t matter what time of year or day it was. It was never the same star. He could just take himself to a future, to a place where he had the happiness he started dreaming about oh so many years ago. And after.. dozens, hundreds, of times of hearing that same reply, you know, I could almost see it too. To look out there, and think about the infinite possibility ahead.

I can’t see it anymore. He’s gone. His excitement, his reassurance, his unassailable will to be satisfied with life and what could be. He has the specific honor of being the first Elysrian to die of old age on this ship. It’s spoken like an achievement of some kind, but there is no achievement in this. He held life in highest esteem, and its joys and adventures, so why are we giving him an honor for dying?

[sounds of shuffling and discomfort in the attendance]

Right, right, I’m sorry..

[the individual walks away amongst murmurs, as another appears]

Speaker 2: Uh.. yeah, uh.. my Uncle did have an unbreakable cheer to him. He was constantly talking to me and my sister about pursuing our dreams. I was born on the Dawn and really found myself interested in botany and it was Uncle Stang that kept telling me that just because we were in space didn’t mean I couldn’t learn and do my own studies. The Archive had all sorts of lessons, but it was really Stang that got me to actually.. head down to Coress and start looking at real plants. Since, I’ve become one of the top botanists in TAIL. I even got to name one of the genera on the plains after him. The flowers reminded me of him. They bloom at night, and are always looking at the stars. When I told him, he cried. I had never seen him cry before. He said he was honored, but I think in some way, he wasn’t comfortable being immortalized when it was his own life he was most proud of. It’s.. hard to describe. We’ve genuinely lost one of the last bright lights in our ship. May you find your star, Uncle.

[after a few moments where its clear no one else is going to speak, there is a noise of a casket being ejected from the launcher, to space]

Corrected Date; After Launch 42.2.23

[This entry is a recording from the independent podcast “Muzzle Matters”, run by the son of the “Maw Matters” pundit; transcript below]

MUZZLE MATTERS – 42.11.26

So what they say is, right, that TAIL has been more effective than ever in finding optimizations in the supply chains and the production loops and all that, to address the resource shortages. Uh-huh. So then the very next thing they do, right, is announce that the ban on all non-research operations on the surface of Coress-1 has been lifted. They’ve dropped some farms down there. Out in the wilderness away from the sergal communities of course, but as you might accurately predict- the rate of exposure incidents to the population has increased wildly. Their vaunted “prime directive” or whatever it is, is kind of out the airlock when they actively ignore it to make up for the shortages that they just told us have been solved by optimizations.

And it’s not like I’m just complaining, there’s actual reports of a huge increase in exposures down there to the sergal folk- if you somehow haven’t noticed how many of them are being brought up to the Dawn. We’re already short replacement parts, food, luxuries and the rest of the stuff to blow off steam, all but VRC I guess- so why are we bringing in what are effectively immigrants? Are they really telling the sergals the true situation up here? That the quarters they’re going to be assigned are probably an old septic tank that was hastily scrubbed out once Heftus was online? And don’t even get me started on the state of the Platforms, you can’t even visit them anymore because of the odds the truss-work will just fall on your head. I guess with TAIL’s thick skulls they don’t need to worry about that. But that begs another question, I suppose, which is why all those foundries are still running. What are they even making? We’re told its maintenance supplies, but I’ve had to personally fix my door three times in the past month.

So which is it, TAIL? Are we finding new and more efficient ways to live and work every day, or are we just faffing around in orbit in an attempt to feel good about our lives on this space junk while having to tear down all the traditions and institutions the previous generation put in place? Stars rest his soul, my late great father reported on all those same decisions back in the day and while he didn’t usually agree with the reasonings, he at least agreed with their results. Now we’re just throwing it all out to lie to everyone about how things are both in and out system. And since TAIL controls pretty much all the ships and outposts, it’s impossible to know what’s REALLY happening out there anyway. So you know, you can access my intrasite and find schematics for homemade receiving dishes and transmitters, so you can hear it for yourself, and talk to other free thinkers.

Corrected Date; After Launch 55.12.7

[This entry is a lounge security recording between two engineers discussing the degradation of cryo systems on the Dawn in this period, specifically a bay named Fang; transcript below]

Eng 1: So did they get the pods transferred on time?
Eng 2: A few were so close to crashing they just pulled pods out of Ground to shove the original error ones in there while the Ground ones went off to the temporary bay.
Eng 1: Oof, Elysria’s mercy. What even caused the failure?
Eng 2: Just.. decades of leaking coolant, the electronics always running. Control mechanisms getting slow, alarms being ignored, motors and servos seizing, pick one. They keep drilling it into these new engineers’ heads that the ship was built great sure, but not literally fifty years beyond tested great. With systems failing all over the TAIL map, maintenance has gotten lax in lots of places. Whoever was in charge of Fang, though, don’t envy them.
Eng 1: Oh yeah the Heads are going to rip them a new one. Still.. almost a thousand lost from just.. decay.
Eng 2: Well a bunch of the pod slots being vacated are other engineering, or well, engineering-like people,to accommodate the sheer number of failures. So maybe the burden will be eased up a bit for us. Not to mention all the salvage from an entire cryo sector being emptied.
Eng 1: Why weren’t they waking them up to begin with?
Eng 2: You want rations cut again? I mean it’s going to happen anyway now. And again, it’s more like engineering adjacent. Component designers, not metallurgists. Architects, not machinists.
Eng 1: That’s going to be a little rough for them to get through all the TAIL maintenance procedures.
Eng 2: At least learning all that stuff is free as can be. I remember before I got put under I still owed a pretty penny to the GU for my schooling, even if they did never actually enforce collection.
Eng 1: What’s a GU?
[brief silence]
Eng 2: You did actually learn Elysrian history right? The Global Union.
Eng 1: Oh, right yes.. of course I did. Guess I just never heard someone use the acronym outside of the Archive.
Eng 2: The unintended side effect of Dawnborn like yourself having to interact with pre-Launchers like, I guess.
Eng 1: Well you got brought out of Cryo late.
Eng 2: Yeah and I kind of wish I hadn’t. At least if I had been brought out right away, I wouldn’t be afraid the viewports were going to just bust out of their sockets and suck me into space.

Corrected Date; After Launch 61.4.28

[This entry is a portion of a recording of an official meeting between Admin Head Zircon (his 4th term, non-consecutive) and a representative of a small coalition of outposts on the very fringes of TAIL controlled space; transcript below]

Zircon: All right Mr. Mochy, I understand. Really. But I beg of you to trust me, that we can’t spare any more food, or parts, or people- we’re strained and stretched thin here. Every outpost is in a similar situation, because the fact of things are, that our ships and supplies just were not meant to last this long. We’re barely scraping the sand’s edge here.

Mochy: Oh I understand ye just fine here Mr. Zircon. While the Dawn sits in place, perched above a world that is otherwise a paradise compared to the cold of space and the other stars here, you decide our lives out there don’t be meaning as much. Mowhaus Mining saw the whole Heftus platform retrofitted to spec, every kilobeen of iron that we bled our knuckles down to the bone to get ‘cuz your daddy- memories of Elysria guide him- convinced us of its utmost importance. Now every freighter comes more empty, shipments keep getting canceled, and the support promised us by the TAIL Settlement has been ignored.

Zircon: I cannot give you what we do not have. Even the Dawn is struggl-

Mochy: Then give the far posts the option to come and use all that fertile land out the window there, Mr. Zircon.

Zircon: You know it is one of our most tightly held tenants, that we cannot, will not violate the sovereignty of the sergals. And maybe, Mr. Mochy, just maybe you are right- one day, in some dire need, we may decide that there is no choice but to abandon the void and bring our people- fully, permanently- to the surface. This is not that day.

Mochy: And what of all ye farmers and researchers down there already? Why do they get to live in the bliss of an atmosphere that doesn’t peel your skin or melt your eyeballs? They cause all those “cultural contamination” events anyway.

Zircon: Once again Mr. Mochy, those are tightly controlled facilities that spare no effort in avoiding those events, to the degree that many are constantly uprooted and moved, especially as the sergals prove their hunger for exploration to be unquenchable. It is partially why we have so little food to spare. And I might remind you, the atmosphere of Coress-1 does in fact have toxic nitrogen as its largest component. I do feel for you and the people you represent. As it was in Elysria past, we -are- all in this together, and giving what we can to you has otherwise slowed or canceled projects all their own on the Dawn. We don’t want anyone to suffer, but if anyone must, then we all have to.. together.

Mochy: Ah take your unity and purge it out the airlock, Mr. Zircon. Your father might’ve had us believe otherwise, but the dreams of the Ol’ World died the moment we arrived at this new one cause someone else was already dreaming it.

Zircon: The answer is no. Security will escort you to your ship.

Corrected Date; After Launch 65.9.24

[This entry is a portion of an after-action report made by Administration Division’s elite quick reaction force, the Star Wardens, which had never seen action before the Pioneer incident, detailed below]

Following those phases of the initial incident, many of the “refugees” exited from their vessels out onto the docks and then concealed deployment of various types of junk equipment off the ships, disguised as crates of necessities. Members of the group then began identifying cargo and supplies in the hangar deck and coordinated to hide their movements and efforts to begin loading useful material both onto their own ships and adjacent stand-by freighters. While the crew on duty within the hangar were otherwise misled, the overhead surveillance in the hangar was not. Security officers were confused at first, causing an understandable delay in alarm- nothing like this has ever really happened before.

Once the surveillance team alerted officers on duty to what they believed was just petty theft, the response unit entered the hangar during what we estimate was the midpoint of the Pioneer plan. They had already loaded a number of supplies onto various vessels. We believe the sight of increased security resulted in the acceleration to the next phase of their plan. Roughly one third of the members of the Pioneers rushed the staging area, catching many civilian workers and the security officers off guard and off balance. To their credit, despite never having anything more to deal with than crimes of passion, the rank-and-file security officers of the Dawn acted valiantly and minimized injuries in themselves and in the belligerents, and did eventually detain the assailant group without casualty. We leave judgment to the courts of TAIL, but would like to emphasize that this group did not seem to be striking to inflict injury.

Specifically by 15:07 DST, as the fight progressed, surveillance had heightened their alarm and requested Warden deployment. They reported the other two-thirds of the Pioneer group had fled into the ships and that the vessels were violently breaking docking braces and entering the hangar airlock. Warden Chief Aerite authorized Hornet launch as well, and Warden pilots immediately scrambled. While the Ship team progressed to the hangar to assist normal security, they had the situation resolved before Ship team arrived. By the time Hornet squad successfully launched and maneuvered to the exterior portion of the hangar, roughly half of the commandeered ships had entered the airlock and were cycling it. The remaining vessels returned to deck and surrendered to Ship team. Once the airlock had cycled, roughly half a dozen rogue vessels attempted to scatter and burned hard for atmosphere. Hornet team successfully deployed barb-lance systems (with the exception of four malfunctions, diagnostics in appendix 2) and managed to anchor three of the vessels to the hangar structure. One vessel’s pressure hull was breached incidentally, and all occupants were lost- the vessel was towed directly following. The other two vessels failed to be captured by the Hornet team, and did begin atmospheric entry. Dawn sensors and Hornet team tracked them to the surface, where a retrieval mission enacted by Ship team shortly after the hangar was secured successfully extricated the Pioneer group there. With only two of their planned thirteen ships landing, they realized they could mount no protest. The ships were recovered by Hornet team following a resupply of the lance launchers. Thus concludes the summary, exact details to follow.

Corrected Date; After Launch 66.7.11

[This entry is the front page of the Trails of Dawn, still running from its first issues after Launch Day]

Trails of Dawn – 66.7.11
Pioneer group allowed to secede- to Dawn’s loss?

Last year all members of TAIL and the Elysrian collective were rocked with tragedy and disgust as a large group of workers and settlers from the outermost reaches of TAIL space banded together in a scheme designed to take a stand against the living conditions of the frontier by establishing a settlement on Coress-1, a heinous crime in its own right. In order to achieve their goal, this group, calling itself the Pioneers, landed on the Dawn under false pretenses of an accident on their home and then attacked crew members of the Dawn and attempted to steal several freighters that could carry the supplies they needed to fend off the Dawn’s relatively small peacekeeping force. The attempt- through a combination of factors including a lack of planning, desperate actions, and being arrayed against a genuinely skilled group of pilots- ended in abject failure for the Pioneers.

The details of that tragic attack- though there were only a handful of casualties- are available in Issue 3403 of Trails of Dawn and many other reports around the ship. A few days ago, leaders of TAIL announced that after many months deliberating the fate of these wayward Elysrians, that they would be allowed to take a moderate amount of supplies and materials to establish a colony proper- only in a system that is not Coress. Latest reports indicate the Pioneers have chosen to settle in the star system commonly known as “De Solus” where conditions are, frankly, miserable, but manageable. They have thus far been appreciative of the treatment they have received from TAIL, and several interviews have revealed that many members of the Pioneers had been convinced of the misery of their positions by specific charismatic “criers” that traveled to their homes, calling for the treatment and entitlement of these frontier places in opposition to TAIL.

Following the Warden sweeps of these distant outposts in the last year, these “criers” have since seemingly vanished, or have sufficiently hidden themselves and their rhetoric from Dawn officials. The merciful approach has not been completely well received in the voices of the citizens of the Dawn, however, with many individuals calling for much harsher judgment- particularly in the face of the announcement that the Pioneers would receive supplies to start their own facility. The Dawn has faced shortages of food and materials for many years, and citizens are feeling the strain already. Many feel this wantonly irresponsible gift of goods to what are, arguably, criminals is a massive failure of policy and leadership. TAIL has not yet responded to these complaints.

Corrected Date; After Launch 68.12.2

[This entry is a copy of the automated computer responses from sensors in one of the Dawn’s primary hangars, the same that was attacked years earlier by splinter group Pioneers]

HYDRAULIC PRESSURE LOSS IN VESSEL BERTH 4 SECTION M, E, O, W
BERTH ACCELEROMETER 5D12E ERROR- RATE EXCEEDED
IMPACT WARNING- FORCE PEAK DETECTED- LOCATION; DECK PLATING, DECK WALLS, SEVERAL IMPACTS
RAPID PRESSURE LOSS IN SUB-DECK FUEL SYSTEM /// EMERGENCY CONDITION, ALARMS ACTIVATED
BLACK-BOX RECORDING ACTIVATED
ENGINEERING ALERTED
VESSEL BERTH 4 THERMAL ANOMALY
MONITORING… … … HIGH THERMAL INDICIDENCE ABOVE CUT-OFF, SPRINKLER ACTIVATION
RAPID THERMAL EXPANSION DETECTED, CRITICALLY ABOVE CUT-OFF
ERROR: SPRINKLER MALFUNCTION
VISUAL ANALYSIS: SPRINKLER SYSTEM NO LONGER PRESENT AT LOCATION OF THERMAL EXPANSION, SMOKE CLOUDS, SHEARED METAL
SEVERAL HIGH THERMAL INCIDENCES DETECTED, VESSEL BERTHS 1-6
CONCLUSION: RAPID UNSCHEDULED DISASSEMBLY OCCURED
EMERGENCY BULKHEADS ACTIVATED, EMERGENCY EVACUATION ROUTES ACTIVATED
PREPARING HANGAR AIRLOCK FOR FULL ATMOSPHERIC PURGING
REQUIRES MANUAL OVERRIDE
AWAITING ENGINEER AUTHORIZATION
AWAITING ENGINEER AUTHORIZATION
AWAITING ENGINEER AUTHORIZATION
AWAITING ENGINEER AUTHORIZATION
AWAITING ENGINEER AUTHORIZATION

Corrected Date; After Launch 80.6.15

[This entry is a recording from within Verity’s Recreational Club, the only real “bar” on the Dawn as TAIL doesn’t fully sanction its existence- but is one of very few places to socialize “in the old ways”; transcript below]

Unidentified Man 1: Let me tell you, right? It was never about coming here. I doubt they even wanted to. But it was… about escaping. The monotony. The day to day.. nothing. Nothing changing, nothing progressing, just sitting around and.. surviving. Little did they know, that’s all we’ve done here too.
U Woman 1: All right, enough Liquoress for you.
UM1: Pfft. This stuff can’t even be called alcohol. I remember having wine back on the homeworld-
UW1: Technically you’re over 200 years old, you know.
UM1: And damn I look good. [a sigh] But genuinely, what really brought the Pioneers to do that attack all those years ago? I think it was just sheer despair. They needed to do -something- but around here, there is -nothing-.
UW2: Yeah, can only run down the chores list so many times before it’s just static in the brain.
UM1: And the static just sounds like cosmic background radiation. You ever just sit and listen to it on a radio? I have. For hours.
UW1: That’s.. disturbing. You sure you don’t want to come up here more than once a month?
UM1: What does it matter? Once a month, once a week, every day.. they all just blend together.
UM2: All right buddy, tomorrow we’re taking you to psych.
UM1: You think I haven’t already been? That they don’t feel the same? We live in a bottle, a cage, in limbo, on a brink that never moves, on a fulcrum that has no torque, just… here. Living. To live I guess?
UW1: Look man, maybe back in your day it was all about thriving, but I’m satisfied just knowing I’ll be alive tomorrow.
UM1: And what’re you gonna do with that time huh? Just count the days forever? Live one moment over and over and over again?
Bartender: Hey now. You guys should take him home.
UM2: Yeah, come on man.. let’s go watch some of those Archive videos of the old zoos.
[the group of friends start to half-drag him out of the room]
UM1: [he appears to be starting to cry] Why did we have to come out here? Better to have fallen in the sand, under that sun, and feel some last bits of warmth than slowly fade away into the cold dark…
UW1: You’ll be okay Icor, we’re all here together.