GM: Paige Andrews
PlathCo is a minicorp with time at the OG Pandora gate. They sent a group of ten settlers to the desert world of Cancri 4 a year ago. They were in regular contact every week when the gate could reach that world. Four months ago, the gate stopped linking to Cancri 4 and PlathCo assumed the colony was lost forever.
Just under one week ago, the planet linked back up to the gate, but there was no immediate contact. PlathCo sent a drone in to look around and saw no evidence of the colonists besides their empty buildings. It did not risk connecting to the local mesh.
In two days the gate will open back up to Cancri 4 and PlathCo has hired some madmen investigators (you) to check out the colony in person. The mission: find out what happened and pack up everything that remains for shipment back to Sol system. You have one week.
One week later, and United Division has returned with boxes of material and no colonists. It looks like someone went rogue – probably Kehsia – and everyone perished while the gate refused to open.
United Division has secrets, though, and they’re big. The Cancri 4 colony didn’t just collapse, and it wasn’t the work of Kehsia. The colonists found extensive xeno constructions on the planet, including an aquifer and a semi intact research facility. Four of them went mad from fungal spores they inhaled inside the facility, and the rest perished during a rescue attempt.
The last colonist, Theo, was fully infected and wearing a xeno-made nanotech endoskeleton. He fought zealously for what he believed was the betterment of transhumanity, but the group took him out eventually. Before death, he shoved an astounding technical package into Heidi’s brain via the mesh: a xeno device that could force a Pandora Gate shut.
Thanks to the enormity of that discovery, and the extreme risk posed by the aggressive fungus, United Division decided to scuttle the water reservoir and lie to PlathCo themselves about what was on Cancri 4. Their secrets are now in Firewall’s practiced hands.