The Late Wanderer
The Wanderer is one of the Light Huggers, the slow ships that left Earth before the Fold was opened.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | ruin |
| Anchor System | wanderer |
| Controlling Faction | none |
| Fold Bleed | high |
| Population | 0 |
| Role | anchor |
| Zone | Beyond |
Notes
Dangers: The Wanderer is intact. The Wanderer is sealed. The Wanderer is at the same air pressure it was launched with, two millennia ago., Any team that opens the Wanderer risks the same crisis that any ark arrival risks, and the Wanderer is far older, far deeper, and far more Fold-touched than any ark that limped into the Core., The Wanderer's manifest, decoded from a fragment of its black box, lists families. The names on the manifest do not match any Earth-line diaspora record. The names are spelled correctly.
Hooks: The Wanderer was identified by a Rim survey as a sublight ark from the Light Hugger diaspora. Its transponder reads as an Earth-reckoning year 2,347. The Common Reckoning is 5,123. The Wanderer has been drifting for over two thousand years., A Numen analyst who studied the Wanderer's trajectory reported that the ark changed course twice in flight. Neither course change was made by any drive on the ark., Argus filed a salvage claim on the Wanderer last season. Argus filed the claim, then filed a withdrawal of the claim, then filed a sealed silence on the withdrawal. The silence is still in force.
Lore: The Wanderer is one of the Light Huggers, the slow ships that left Earth before the Fold was opened. Most arks arrived at their target or were lost. The Wanderer did neither. The Wanderer drifted. The Wanderer is still drifting. What the Wanderer carries, what the Wanderer became over two thousand years of slow dark, and whether anything inside still considers itself human -- these are questions no one has yet been allowed to answer. The ark arrives at no Core port. The ark does not need to.
Notable: A sublight ark of unmistakable Light Hugger design, found drifting in a slow polar orbit around a dead star. The ark's hull is unmarked by any collision. The ark's drive has not been fired. The ark is in better condition than any vessel of its age has any right to be in., A single observation port amidships, lit from the inside, on a steady cycle, in a pattern the Observer's crew has charted but not parsed., A row of external antennae, deployed at intervals along the spine, all pointed in directions that do not correspond to any source in the current star atlas.