Lastlight Beacon
Lastlight Beacon was the colony's lifeline.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | ruin |
| Anchor System | lastlight |
| Controlling Faction | none |
| Fold Bleed | high |
| Population | 0 |
| Role | satellite |
| Zone | Beyond |
Notes
Dangers: The beacon's battery is the only thing keeping the antenna alive. Anyone who taps it for ship power ends the pinging forever., The beacon's storage was wiped, then re-written, then wiped again. The wipe timestamps are eleven years apart. The re-writes are by hand., The beacon was last refuelled by no one.
Hooks: The beacon still pings. Every thirty minutes it asks the Kadiss grid the same question. The grid does not answer. The beacon asks again., A salvage crew took the buoy contract. They pulled the storage drum off the antenna. Inside the drum: eleven years of unsent colony logs. The logs were addressed to a House shell that does not exist anymore., The beacon has enough fuel for another four years of pinging. After that, silence, by arithmetic.
Lore: Lastlight Beacon was the colony's lifeline. Its logs were supposed to be the colony's voice. The voice still calls, on a fading battery, into a grid that does not know the colony exists. The Confederation has not tasked anyone to silence the beacon. The Confederation has also not tasked anyone to listen.
Notable: A Confederation-built Kadiss relay in a stable high orbit, designed to forward colony traffic. The antenna is intact. The crew quarters are intact., The crew quarters are also locked from the inside, by something that is not the crew., A secondary antenna, never part of the original spec, bolted to the spine by no one whose signature is on file.