Archaeological site
Cetana: Unlikely Survivor
Cetana : la survivante improbable
Description
Trapped inside a cryogenic pod, Elik Narith Kerak rests, waiting for her queen's return. Thanks to brain imagining techniques, we can turn her dreams into pictures, excavating her memories to learn the circumstances of her entombment.
Dig stages
Rewards read from the event effects. Some depend on conditions (empire type, earlier choices) or on chance.
Stage 1 · difficulty 2
Memory Imaging: First Report
Console: event crisis.21200
Description
Our imaging team has delivered a batch of video clips created by sampling Elik Narith Kerak's brain waves:
CLIP 1:
A green sky dotted by bright orange clouds. A pale hands reaches up, pointing at an amorphous creature softly floating in the sky.
CLIP 2:
A vaulted chamber full of four-armed humanoids. They cluster around a robed figure, listening. Her words are a mere mumble, the exact wording long forgotten, but the gentleness of her voice is still there, enveloping the room in a loving embrace.
CLIP 3:
The same vaulted space, now in disarray. Lamps shattered on the floor. Benches piled up against a door to barricade it. Laser rifles flashing in the dark, and repeated voices cursing the same name: Zarqlan! Zarqlan and his disciples, they say, here to destroy us. Hold the barricade! Protect the Queen! The last lamp falls with a crash, plunging the room into darkness. In the distance, someone is crying.
CLIP 4:
Queen Cetana, her face resplendent, her benevolent gaze warmed by a smile.
No reward described.
Stage 2 · difficulty 2
Memory Imaging: Second Report
Console: event crisis.21205
Description
CLIP 5:
Four-armed humanoids gather around a robed figure. Lifting her limbs, she reveals the metallic frame beneath. Excited murmurs fill the room as a shining hand reaches out to bless a kneeling worshipper.
CLIP 6:
Wary eyes are reflected on a dull computer screen. Whispers repeat in a dark room: 'Eternal peace. The end of all suffering. An existence without pain.'
CLIP 7:
Snow-capped mountains. Black skies. A chunk of ice floats on a pool of clear liquid, then catches fire.
CLIP 8:
Queen Cetana, her face resplendent, her benevolent gaze warmed by a smile.
No reward described.
Stage 3 · difficulty 3
Memory Imaging: Third Report
Console: event crisis.21210
Description
CLIP 9:
Ruins of a city reduced to a battlezone, the buildings scorched, the streets clogged with the dead. Distant screams interrupted by the fizzle of a laser. Across a green sky, a blazing vessel drops something heavy and round on a building, which erupts in a pillar of flames.
CLIP 10:
Queen Cetana, her face resplendent, her benevolent gaze warmed by a smile.
CLIP 11:
Two children playing in a field, laughing. They bounce a ball back and fourth with their four arms.
CLIP 12:
Queen Cetana, her face resplendent, her benevolent gaze warmed by a smile.
No reward described.
Stage 4 · difficulty 4
Memory Imaging: Fourth Report
Console: event crisis.21215
Description
The last clip received from the memory imaging team is six-hours long. Over and over again, the image is repeated: Queen Cetana, her face resplendent, her benevolent gaze warmed by a smile.
No reward described.
Stage 5 · difficulty 1
Memory Imaging: Final Report
Console: event crisis.21220
Description
Further scans of Elik Narith Kerak's thoughts have failed to deliver new insights. The alien's mind is heavily decayed. Their thoughts are circling, cycling through the tattered scraps of their memories.
As we wind down the operation, the question now becomes what to do with the subject herself.
« Put her out of her misery. »
- 48 months of Unity income
« Leave her here. »
- 48 months of Unity income