Sketches...

The pilots of the Courier Guild were said to be all mad, minds apparently altered by the quantum forces of Rift and Rope travel. They though were the only ones that could be depended on when the Companies lost interest.

The probes were dropped to stand like sentinels, watching over alien landscapes that were familiar and foreign at the same time.

The origins as to where reports of lifeforms found within the Sub Orbital Machine being benign remained unclear. What was known as hard fact though – the singular reports from crews of something attacking them were abundant.

That none of said crews were heard of again lent more than enough weight to the argument the lifeforms were anything but benign.

There were playful moments with the technology they discovered.

So deep into the SOM, and with no discernable way out after the gatepoints had closed behind them, many crews made the best of it by making home with what they had.

There was always the feeling that they were being watched.

Countless crews were lost to the Masses, as their unpredictable positioning meant they never seemed to remain in the same place. Only the lucky few were found again by chance, and the stories they told should have acted as warnings to be heeded.

The resources demanded by the exploration of the SOM were so immense that the scramble to find hardware to do what was required was a free-for-all. Regardless of the age, if it ran and could be kept running, it was shipped through the portal and put to work.

And the exploitation began.

The structures they found were bleak edifices, cast in place and lifeless.

They optimistically set up outposts to monitor and observe. Never sure of what they would find, it was agreed they never would have thought of what they did.

For reasons unknown, there were Masses where the hulls would not fly and the ground vehicles stopped dead in their tracks. Exploration was reduced to foot and the scale changed, amplifying the strangeness of these alien places.

They dove deeper into the White Silent, beginning to explore spaces between the Masses. Spaces that begged yet more questions with answers that had very little chance to be understood.

The plains of grass seemed so familiar, it was easy to forget the strange devices that seemed to communicate with the past.

And they started to pull apart what they found, hoping to find the secrets within but only finding dust.

The fields of the Mass’ were strewn with artifacts, scattered like children’s toys. Universally agreed their alien nature was disturbing, there were no shared thought as to their strange behaviour that defied known physics. And the company men? All they saw was potential profit.

A staple of slabside crews for close to 50 years, the A372 “Sloan” was used for everything from mine surveying through to general light transport. Eventually the Sloan saw a rebirth as a fueller in League Raid teams, where its durability and simplicity made it much sought after.

As if out of nowhere, the objects appeared. Inert and motionless, they could unexpectedly come to life with an eerie glow and occasionally a low drone. It was not until much later in the SOM’s exploration that it was found these were just the fingertips of unknown technology.

Despite being scattered like confetti throughout the white Silent, there was a commonality to what was found on each Mass discovered; becoming clear that at some point, there had been something that had been here… everywhere, and it was greater than they could imagine.

The Blank Industries M92 was the backbone of many mining survey teams during the mid SOM exploration period. One of the few automotons not to have gone rogue, it remained viable late into the Fleischemaschine era.

When they looked hard enough, they began to find structures in the formations. Old, weather beaten, their scale was not human, their forms even less so. Most jarring of all? Their purpose in no way could be defined.

Driven by insurmountable greed and desperate for the things they could not, would not find, they travelled deeper into the White Silent. Only to find the horrors that waited for them within.