Lore

Entry One

It works! Katja was right! We’ve folded space… entered a dimension that no one but Katja has ever dreamed of! Soon we will emerge, free from the tyranny of the Dominion and its accursed blockade.

Entry Two

The chronometers are not functioning. Time does not go by as it should. It seems as if days have passed, yet within this strange dimension we remain imprisoned. Katja says it is only a matter of time before the Shade will arrive at its destination.

For the sake of us all, I hope she is right.

Entry Three

Weeks of this purgatory have eaten away at my wits! I will not speak to her, for she knows as well as I that our days are numbered.

Ever was I a fool to listen to Katja! A fool!

Entry Four

The Vitalus reserves are gone. Already some of the crew are showing symptoms of the Contagion unchecked. Unless she finds a solution, the lot of us will be lost to mindless rage and animal instinct.

Entry Five

Katja has a plan. She always does, doesn’t she?

I will take no part in it, regardless of the cost. Our people, even those who have been overcome by the Contagion, are still Mordesh… are they not?

Yet she proposes to experiment on them… to take from them so that we may live for a time, free from the madness that inevitably claims us when the Vitalus runs dry.

Entry Six

The tell-tale warning lights shine, foretelling my doom.

I have, perhaps, two hours of Vitalus left to me. Two hours before madness takes me… two hours before I descend into cannibalism and prey upon my brothers and sisters.

Yet Katja calls to me over the intercom. She insists she has made progress, and has a solution to our plight. What can I do? I cannot ignore this chance. I must go to her!

If I do not return from the abattoir her laboratory has become… know that she is the cause of it all.

She needs healthy test subjects. So long as my warning lights shine true, I will be healthy… for at least another two hours.

We are, all of us, damned. I go to her now. Slim hope is better than no hope at all.

Lore

Here I am, and here I stay.

That which should not be, is. I fear I have had no small part in its creation. I can only hope that my attempts to assuage my own existence will succeed, for I cannot bear to languish in feral madness as the rest of the crew does.

The doors have been sealed, the defensive protocols have been applied. She cannot turn them off. In time, oblivion will take her.
Let us hope that this infernal conveyance remains in the nothingness of the void long enough to consign her to the fate which she most assuredly deserves.

For my part, I make no excuses. We began our flight in an attempt to flee from the Dominion’s blockade of our world. In that, our intentions were as pure as a eulogy. Yet things have gone awry as no one could conceive, and now we are locked in a prison of our own production.

The Vitalus in my reservoir depletes. Sanity will not avail me much longer. I will end it now – fire will be my undoing. Should any come here and find the remains of Zarkhov’s Shade, remember the name of Bolav Yaktin.

Lore

Entry #1, Date Unknown

Zarkhov intimated the transition would be quick. She said we would emerge in an instant, bypassing distance and time with equal measure.

She was wrong.

Now we are confined to a dimension where the passage of time is perceived only by our dwindling Vitalus reserves. The chronometers no longer function. Some of them even run backwards.

Entry #2, Date Unknown

Is it a quest for sanity that drives me to record this? Or has my mind already slipped away? I cannot say. I have naught else to do but sit, and wait, and watch my serum slowly spend itself.

Entry #3, Date Unknown

This place, wherever it is, is a home of horrors. Infernal figments flicker in and out of existence like pyreflies, and one of the crewmen has been killed. Perhaps it is only fitting.

Even in death he could not find peace. We survivors fought over his corpse like jackals, thirsty for what little Vitalus remained in his reservoirs.

Even I squabbled for my own meager share of his serum.

Entry #4, Date Unknown

Lack of Vitalus has begun to take its toll, and the sweet respite of death proves no cure for our condition. Whatever compels the Contagion is fortified by the alien dimension we find ourselves fenced within.

Those who have been physically killed soon rise from their repose, as ravenous for the blood of their brothers as those who are driven to depravity by the Contagion alone.

Soon it shall be my turn.

Entry #5, Date Unknown

The Vitalus is gone. So, too, are my chances. Even now I can feel the fetid fever as it fills my form with fatigue. Yet I am comforted, but by what… I know not.

I shall secret away this story of my time aboard Zarkhov’s Shade. If any should find it, they will know the horror that befell us…