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Celestion

1.

The Fall of Grismara, Part 1

Lore

[This is the first in a series of oral histories about the night the Contagion broke out on the Mordesh homeworld.]

I was in one of the larger cities on the night the Contagion exploded across the surface of Grismara. The fall happened so fast. It’s hard to believe now. If I hadn’t been a child at the time I’m not sure I could have stood the shock and horror, but when you’re a child, you don’t think about what’s right and what’s wrong. What’s supposed
to never, ever happen suddenly does, and you see it right before your eyes.

No one tells a child that your mother isn’t supposed to kill your father with the broken edge of a bottle, driving the glass into his neck and chest over and over again.

No one told father either, but when she turned, she turned so fast. He was holding a wine glass out, waiting for her to pour. She started to slur her speech, and the hand holding the wine bottle shook, clenched,
and suddenly flailed. What she did to him was so savage that he didn’t return – a minor mercy. Then she turned on me. No one had told me what to do then, but I knew. I ran as fast as I could.

An out-of-control hovercar slammed into our home and brought the upper floor down on mother, but she wasn’t my mother by then. She was Ravenous, though I didn’t know that. We didn’t have the word yet. I just knew she was dead, like father.
I saw the light go out of her mad eyes.

I almost gave up. I was so close to letting go. Then I saw the light. It was a ship. She was called the Arovolkin, and if not for the Ekose who commanded her, I would never have made it to the Exile Fleet.

– Yashka Rovu, Survivor of Grismara

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Celestion

1.

The Fall of Grismara, Part 2

Lore

[This is the second in a series of oral histories about the night the Contagion broke out on the Mordesh homeworld.]

My co-pilot was the one who figured out something was going on first. Heck, I might never have figured it out if I was on my own. A Longhaul-class freighter doesn’t just fly herself, and I had dials, sticks, and gages to manage. But ol’ Mikee, he saw the way people on the ground weren’t walking around like they usually did. Some of them were, I suppose, but we
later figured out those folks were probably dying. Most of them were running in groups in erratic ways.

He’d gotten me watching ’em too when we saw the killing start. Now the runners were biting and beating and dismembering any living creature they could find, which included their fellow Mordesh and some really unfortunate pets and livestock.

If we hadn’t just unloaded most of our cargo, I probably wouldn’t have done it, but something about the violence –
the sheer madness of it, you understand, the sudden horror of it – compelled me to act.

Mikee pointed out I should have listened to the news on the wireless band. Today, the Everlife Elixir was supposed to turn the Mordesh immortal. Victor Lazarin was gonna be the biggest hero the universe had ever seen, the man who killed death. Guess it went bad, huh?

So we swung the Arovolkin in low, looking for people who weren’t crazy. Just to make sure we
didn’t regret leaving for the rest of our lives, you know what I mean? That’s when we saw the girl, must have been six or seven years old if she was a day – screaming, crying for her parents, confused, terrified. But she wasn’t running at anyone, just from a half-collapsed building. I hit the landing lights, and we touched down just far enough away not to send the kid running away in terror.

Yashka didn’t say much once she came onboard. I’m kind of surprised she did, in the end.
Two strange blue guys show up out of the sky and try to take you into space after watching your parents kill each other? Brave kid.

Of course, we all had a chance to regret it not long after that. No sooner had we gotten our new passenger settled in and restrained – just in case – than the biggest fleet I’ve ever seen dropped into orbit from out of nowhere.

And they dropped in firing. We took three hits before I even had time to raise the
defensive screens. I had just enough time to apologize to little Yashka before we crashed, and she just nodded.

– Captain Barbio, Ekose Freighter Arovolkin

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Celestion

1.

The Fall of Grismara, Part 3

Lore

[This is the third in a series of oral histories about the night the Contagion broke out on the Mordesh homeworld.]

I witnessed the crash of the Arovolkin. The ship came down calamitously, but the Ekose at the helm – Captain Barbio – brought her in without losing his co-pilot, their petite passenger, or anyone on the ground who hadn’t already turned.

I was especially grateful for that final fragment of fate. Like little Yashka, I too had lost many people already, but unlike her, I was not alone.
My wife had, at my insistence, taken our first dose of Everlife – the only one we could afford, to be truthful. She was transformed within minutes. My loving bride, a doting mother who spoiled our son at every opportunity, tried to kill him almost immediately. I was merely acting on instinct when I killed her. I was more deliberate when I killed the others on the way to the ship crash.

I don’t know what I expected. An escape pod capable of escape velocity, maybe? A cache of killbots to repel the
Ravenous? Instead, I found a pair of Ekose – a freighter captain and his shiphand first mate – along with little Yashka.

The next several days were a blur. The city was a charnel house, but our little group – me, the Ekose, my son, and the girl – somehow held out. The ship was largely intact, serving as a surprisingly sturdy shelter against the Ravenous hordes – the ones who made it past our weapons fire.

The Arovolkin had been a weapons smuggler. An
amazing stroke of luck. But even their stock began to run dry on the evening of the fourth day. Despite the corpses everywhere, the number of Ravenous seemed unchanged. We wondered if we were the last people truly alive and conscious on the planet – or possibly the universe.

A call answered those final desperate questions just as we loaded in the last of our ammunition. A stealth shuttle from an Exile blockade runner was en route. They had the security codes for passing
the blockade courtesy of someone they only identified as the Widow. Of course, I now know who it was, and I’m amazed at her ability to organize what was left of us before it was too late. Had she not kept the mob from slaughtering Lazarin, let alone arranging for evacuation to the Exile Fleet, the Mordesh would never have survived.

Now Yashka is grown and a soldier. My son Ulyn is a talented alchemist. Like me, their flesh is dead, but the Vitalus keeps us going. I do
not keep in touch with them as much as I should.

I still see Captain Barbio and Mikee from time to time. They offer to buy me drinks, but I always decline. Remembering the hope of rescue only causes the pain of reality to sting this cold, dead flesh. Let Grismara remember.

– Ulik Yunkev, Survivor of Grismara

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Celestion

1.

Junction Zeta Prisoner Procedures

Lore

BY ORDER OF AXIS PHEYDRA of the Imperial Corps of Intelligence, all ICI assets within the Celestion region are hereby commanded to assist any and all efforts to retain Exile prisoners for forced labor purposes at Junction Zeta.

THIS IS NOT A NO-KILL ORDER. The ICI recognizes that not all Exiles or non-Exile insurgents can be taken alive. Though all reasonable attempts to take prisoners should be made, ICI assets are expected
to protect themselves and other ICI assets with lethal force, if necessary.

OPERATIONAL OBJECTIVES include control of all [REDACTED] in the region via the use of expendable forced labor and [REDACTED] technology. The location of Junction Zeta has been chosen specifically for its close proximity to both [REDACTED] and [REDACTED].

METHODOLOGY includes placing false messages at certain sites, including possibly this
one. Any Exiles able to decrypt this information should not, in their vulgar vernacular, “get too cocky.”

Any further questions regarding these objectives and methods are not recommended, but may be made in person to the nearest available ICI Axis.