[b][u]Legacy Territory Outer Boundary Icaroa System Proximal to Gas Giant Nemt'urye.[/u][/b] The New Verdant ship appeared within the outer boundaries of the unexplored star system, and found a scene in disarray. Once their sensors were able to sweep the entire system, they would discover the presence of three gas giants, all with numerous moons, and two smaller planets. One of the smaller planets would appear volcanic, but possessing a potentially promising large moon with its own atmosphere. The last remaining planet was simply a barren rock. Elsewhere in the system though, life stirred and buzzed errantly in a foreign manner to the inhabitants of New Prospects. More than eight hundred million kilometers away in orbit above the volcanic planet lay an alien fleet of considerable size; though anomalous energetic signals emanating from the fleet made discerning its exact makeup difficult at that range. More pressing was the abrupt appearance and approach of a lone alien craft that had appeared out of nowhere, as if it had just emerged from faster than light travel as they had. The vessel was made of sleek and darkened metals, with no traces of the organic and plastic materials the Liliate preferred. Immediately, New Prospects was pinged by several consecutive signals from the alien ship - varying forms of radiation, radio-waves, and electromagnetic static - one of which, a tightbeam laser transmission, registered as valid to New Prospects' sensors. The data transmitted by the beam was a simple series of information in binary, ternary, quintal, hexadecimal, octal, decimal, and duodecimal number systems. Each set of information, when converted from one to the other, proved to be equivalent - though the message itself was still incomprehensible, matching no media format known to the Lilliate. [center][s][b]888888888888[/b][/s][/center] [u][b]Irodien Empire Havadar Region System Sector Fortress[/b][/u] The Fortress world that watched over the worlds of the Sanfur within the Havadar Region had, until now, been untaxed by any serious events not pertaining to logistical problems or shipping errors. That changed, however, when an unidentified craft appeared some eighty million kilometers away. Its arrival was heralded by an intense gravitational distortion that every orbital installation detected it immediately, the nearly instantaneous and subtle perturbation of spacetime just significant enough to be register on spatial-coordinate sensors long before luminal sensors had any time to register the new arrival in the system. The craft was a long, oblong structure more than two kilometers in length, seemingly seamless in construction and constructed of a material greatly resembling roughly hewn stone. The only indication that it was a spacefaring vessel were the intense electromagnetic signals it emitted. The craft itself remained stationary and largely inert apart from its passive emissions, and it made no effort to communicate with or so much as scan the surrounding system. [center][s][b]888888888888[/b][/s][/center] [b][u]Unknown Space[/u][/b] The pirates would not remain lost for much longer however. As they crossed blindly through space, a number of distant stars began to abruptly emit signals indicative of the presence of intelligent life - a large number of stars, all clustered together in a relatively small region of space. The arrangement of the stars did not match that of any territory the pirates were aware of, but their only other option if they chose not to investigate was to continue drifting aimlessly.