The Scream
THE SCREAM
“The Scream” is one of many names used for the catastrophic event that took place shortly after the Greenbriar colony expedition made initial planetfall on Gudrun. During the event, anyone with psychic abilities not in cold sleep manifested out-of-control and dangerous uses of their abilities. Most were put down by security forces for the safety of others.
After this event, contact with the universe beyond the local system went dark.
EFFECTS
Many were injured by out-of-control psychics during the Scream, and some of their injuries were very strange. Two people were injured by manifestations of grasping, ghostly hands and the scratch marks left on their bodies had not been healed by conventional medical treatment even a year after the event. Others kept alive on a hospital ship after the event were maimed by dangerous manifestations in close quarters, and reported a number of different horrible phenomena.
POSSIBLE MYTHOS
During the Scream, the power of the affected psychics manifested many terrifying images and phenomena, including chain lightning, fire, swarming locusts, and skulls and hands of bone pulling at people. One psychic who was able to speak with some coherency during the event described “visions of a nightmare future” and “entire planets full of skeletons.” The phenomena manifested and visions described seem to speak to a doomsday event.
To better understand these visions, Doona has been asking various groups about doomsday myths. The Piggen don't have a doomsday myth per se, but believe one day all those they've lost will return to them. The Taros believe in something similar, called the Winnowing, when their greatest warriors will return. However, these warriors will return to take the worthy on to a new and better planet, leaving those undeserving of it to suffer in hopes of their suffering making them worthy enough to go on.
THEORIES
Doona’s initial theory is that a very powerful psychic or gestalt of psychics somewhere in the universe was first affected by the Scream and projected their pain outwards across the universe for reasons unknown.
Doona’s current working theory, after receiving some new information about telepathic contact between aliens and humans and the damage it can do, is that something very powerful and potentially very alien made contact with everyone awake with psychic ability to convey a message of some kind. There was, to her mind, a clear sign of intelligence behind the event because of the visions some psychics had. She believes if the Scream were just a weapon, there would be no point in nightmare visions that haven’t substantively scared anyone else. The Scream seems to have been a catastrophic warning, though the possibility can’t be ruled out that it was an advance attack.
New Evidence
An Interview with Xu'Ganara, Prophet of the Veil
"Three years ago, a bit over, perhaps, my academy here, and academies across Tenebrian AND Black Sun space had been in communication. Both sides knew the value of the psionic arts, and that only if the two sides could continue to share information, could humanity as a whole advance. Clear sighted of both of them, wasn't it?" "Since we could speak, information was being passed around between the different schools. There was some kind of echo, or call, or cry, or voice. All of us had heard it in our trances at one point or another during training. So easy to discard, something so small, taken individually. It was only once we began to put these small, individual, easily brushed aside incidences together, that we saw the greater whole"
"Something was out there, something that was trying to make contact. Contact for good? for ill? Did it carry a message of hope?
"We needed to delve deeper, we had a duty to understand, and to determine which of these things it may be"
"We believe, here, that for some reason, these cries and sounds were being heard louder, and with more clarity. We devised a....gosh. I hate this term. We devised a ritual, channeling power not just from here, but from dozens of other academies around the galaxy, all sending their power through MES Space. We had an agent in almost every academy helping in their own way"
"We....We made that contact. It is a warning, a hunting call. Something terrible is coming. There is a shadow, very, very far to the galactic south. It is slow, it will take years to get here, but it is coming, and we know nothing about it"
"This presence did not welcome our contact, and the backlash from it, it sundered our galaxy. Tenebrian. Black Sun, whatever has risen after......It's like it knows....It knows that just enough light is all you need to see its suffocating darkness. "
"If we seek further answers, we must head south. VERY far south, to the wraith nebula."
The tale comes to an end, though Xu'Ganara shows no sign of relinquishing Yan's body back to him.
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