Starfire Report - 10/24/2564
+Record Breaking Pumpkin Harvest
+ +To thank the station crew for their hard efforts, NanoTrasen doubled down on its holiday farming efforts to produce the greatest pumpkin harvest the galaxy has ever seen. The sheer quantity of pumpkins has spilled beyond the confines of the planet, spilling into space as the great pumpkin elevator. Pumpkins roll ever upward, gathering as stations and structures and moons and pumpkins and planets and stars and pumpkins and people and galaxies and time and pumpkins and pumplets and pumpkits and pumpkins and pumpkins crew crew crew pumpkins thank the crew
+To pumpkin the station crew for their hard pumpkins, NanoPumpkin doubled pumpkins to the NLS Southern Pumpkin to replace the crew organs with pumpkins and pumpkin hands and pumpkin feet and pumpkin lungs oh the great pumpkin plague the pumpkins will roll the pumpkins will roll roll roll down my arm down my thighs I laugh laugh laugh pumpkins cry pumpkins stream pumpkins leak
+to the crew the crew the crew crew crew pumpkins in space my orange skin I bleed pumpkins help me I cannot scream I choke on pumpkins my blood is pumpkins they split my belly and out spills pumpkins pumpkins pumpkins a sea of pumpkins wash over me the weight I cannot bear the pumpkins they hurt too many pumpkins my spine is cracking cracking cracking open like pumpkins my lungs like lead weighed down with pumpkins help me it hurts the pumpkins spread my life ends the pumpkins spread somebody help me please the pumpkins the pumpkins the pumpkins
+Pumpking
+gggggggg
+ +Starfire Report - 10/15/2564
+Terrorist Threatens Sif
+ +A rampant singularity broke out within the Ullran Expanse, devouring NanoTrasen’s planet-side outpost and threatening to consume Sif. The singularity tore a path of destruction through the wildness for several hours before VirGov’s Anomalous Catastrophe Response unit tamed the beast, forcing it to release tons of compressed planet matter in a violent explosion.
+”Threats to unleash a singularity on a planet is a pretty common terroristic threat, probably more common than bombs these days. They make demands and if they’re not met, they’ll destroy the planet with a singularity. Or they just release it as part of some extremist agenda,” a spokesperson for the unit was quick to respond to a request for comment. “It’s kind of a serious threat on a space station given those aren’t very big, but a planet? Sif would fit in my hand if compressed enough to be a singularity. Sure, technically it could eat the entire planet if given a ludicrous amount of time but otherwise it’s just a local hazard. Just wait for it to wander somewhere remote and disrupt it with subspace. Boom, all the mass is free again.”
+Several NLS Southern Cross crew insist a NanoTrasen employee accidentally released the monster in a fit of gross incompetence. NanoTrasen stated its policies ensure a singularity could never be released on a planet and the incident was likely a weak attempt by the Syndicate to threaten Sif due to the loss of its Greytide-based bioweapon.
+Writers
+Mirkracresh Kalzar
+ +Starfire Report - 10/12/2564
+Wander the Void (Guest Piece)
+ +To stride among the starlit sea; to drift through waves of stardust; to swim through aether currents; to brush the frigid void. Ever upward we look, dreaming of distant worlds, longing for verdant vistas of endless green. To explore and conquer the stars, forgetting the eyes staring back. We think ourselves chosen and special even as species after species proves us ordinary.
+Wanderers brushed against Sif’s Southern Cross. Endless wanderers, forsaking the solidity of planet to embrace the cosmos. How do we receive these wanderers? An infestation! An abomination to eradicate! So the machines followed, so we gave aid on this quest of destruction! Assuredly technology abolished the insufferable reality of the wanderers, condemned the cloth to ash!
+Yet we are not machine, not bound to logic and rationality. Wanderlust plucked heart threads and so the crew saw through the machines, saw through the lies. Thus the crew aided the wanderers and thus the wanderers now wander once more, unabated. But the stigma of infestation remains, the chase continued beyond our eyes. The crew must take caution.
+For no good deed goes unpunished.
+Writers
+Zumma
+ +Starfire Report - 10/04/2564
+Greytide Resurgence Strikes Sif
+ +A potent bioweapon targeted NLS Southern Cross last night. Described as an infectious form of Greytide, the weapon rapidly converts a victim into a sprawling mass of biological ooze capable of launching matter beyond orbit. For those who do not know, Greytide is an illegal nanotechnology which rapidly consumes metal and self-replicates in an expanding ooze-like mass of nanomachines. Responsible for near destruction of the Earth (Sol system) landmasses Europe and Asia in the late 2000’s, Greytide is an uncontrollable weapon occasionally used and refined by terrorist organizations.
+Despite the immense danger, NanoTrasen’s PCRU charged the weapon and destroyed it before any serious damage could be dealt. While all personnel involved in the incident have been quarantined, no signs of the infection have been detected and the weapon is believed to be completely eradicated.
+The terrorist organization known as the Syndicate has taken credit for the weapon and indicated they may target New Reykjavik if NanoTrasen continues to do business in the Vir system. VirGov declared a state of emergency and instituted a twelve-hour ban on interstellar travel to and from the system. While no evidence of the weapon has been found, SolGov has stated it will be stationing a destroyer in the system until the end of the month.
+Writers
+Mirkracresh Kalzar
+ +Starfire Report - 09/29/2564
+Supermatter Meteor Impacts Southern Cross
+ +Late last week a supermatter meteor impacted NanoTrasen’s NLS Southern Cross, resulting in substantial structural damage and widespread hallucinations. Unable to dislodge the meteor, station crew were forced to abandon the scene and leave the mess for the more experienced disaster clean-up crew. NT reports successful extraction of the supermatter followed by otherwise unremarkable repairs.
+Station crew insist the meteor contained an ancient relic which revived the souls of the dead and called forth heroes from the Wizard Federation to prevent the calamity by jettisoning the artifact back into space. NT insists the Wizard Federation does not exist and the crew’s account resulted from the extreme hallucinations induced by an abnormally large quantity of supermatter.
+The Wizard Federation is not publicly recognized by SolGov, the Qerr-Katish, or Moghes Hegemony nor mentioned in any official documents, notes, or records. “Wizard Federation” was once a registered trademark of a popular pen and paper roleplaying game during the 2200’s but is now public domain. The name appears across numerous video games, featuring most prominently in the MMO Star Castle as a shadowy organization which spreads chaos and razes star systems for entertainment. The MMO is particularly popular in frontier systems like Vir or Nyx.
+Writers
+Mirkracresh Kalzar
+ +Starfire Report – 09/15/2564
+Shadekin – The New Vox?
+ +Unless you never use the exonet you’ve probably encountered the term “shadekin” at least once. Further searches may have yielded various images but likely failed to produce a coherent, cohesive picture. So what exactly are shadekin and why have they been talked about so much in Vir lately?
+The amount of public information surrounding shadekin is relatively lacking and comes mostly from anecdote. Four-eared and apparently fluffy, shadekin seem to be a recently discovered race with bluespace phasing abilities (or technology) and an attraction for areas with anomalous bluespace activity (read: NCS Northern Star and the Ullran Expanse). NanoTrasen acknowledges the appearances of these mysterious beings but refuses to divulge further details; SolGov (and VirGov, for that matter) maintains no evidence of a newly discovered sapient species has been submitted to the TransStellar Species Registry.
+Vir (and perhaps only Vir) has been home to numerous sightings of the beings across several xenoarcheological sites. Most sightings suggest few of the creatures grasp Galactic Common while at least one recorded event of piracy claims a band of the creatures stole a ship. The recent uptick of searching however is due to a well-documented encounter (relative to other sightings) last weekend. A group of the creatures arrived at NLS Southern Cross to sell goods for solid phoron. While not the first claim of shadekin doing such, this instance is well corroborated due to the creatures violating FTL jump-zone traffic law near Tyr. The ship ignored hails, resulting in a televised chase eventually culminating in one of the creatures materializing upon the police cruiser and sabotaging the bluespace jammer, allowing the shadekin to escape from the system.
+While VirGov officials condemned the incident, the lack of known government entities for the creatures or methods of successfully contacting members of the species leaves no avenue for follow up or punishment. Resultingly, shadekin have been categorized much like vox: no legal recognition of sapience despite clear evidence to the contrary. Unlike vox, shadekin seem significantly more popular in the stories of claimed encounters. Perhaps time will tell if they actually call themselves “shadekin.”
+Writers
+Eshi Sali
+ +Starfire Report – 09/07/2564
+Cyclical Ullran Anomaly
+ +Blood, blood, blood. When will NLS Southern Cross escape seas of blood and gore? Yet again NanoTrasen staff spilled into NCS Northern Star covered in blood and gibbering nonsense. Yet again the NanoTrasen cleanup crew found the telecommunications station covered in guts and viscera. Yet again NanoTrasen insists nothing unusual transpired while threatening heavy fines to anybody speaking of the event. Yet again the threat of fines neither suppresses speech nor convinces anybody of the megacorporation’s official account. Not that “nothing happened” leaves much to refute.
+So what happened this time? Once again, we have pictures and videos of blood and gore and maddened scratchings etched into stone. Crew insist supernatural demons walked the halls and dragged victims into the abyss. Ullran apparently burned beneath boiling blood despite yesterday’s footage revealing the snowy plain is very much still a frigid snowy plain.
+In all seriousness, the consistency of crew descriptions of similar events over the previous months suggest there’s more than just mass hysteria or airborne mindbreaker toxin behind these incidents. The Ullran Expanse remains the most expansive trove of anomalous precursor relics known on Sif; while the general lack of physical evidence around these events makes it difficult to conclude anything with certainty, xenoarcheological artefacts are well known to occasionally cause hallucinations and other extreme psychological effects. Perhaps some particularly potent find lurks undiscovered beneath the earth, occasionally drowning Southern Cross in blood.
+Writers
+Eshi Sali
+ +Starfire Report - 08/27/2564
+Explore the Galaxy (Sponsored by Nanotrasen)
+ +Ever stare up at the night sky and dream of sailing among the stars? Ever tap on the window in transit from Kara to Sif wishing you could take the wheel and zoom off into the unknown? Have you looked into getting a pilot’s license just to realize it’s way out of your budget? NanoTrasen Exploration Corps may be for you.
+Dedicated to exploring the unknown, NT ExpoCor may just make those dreams a reality. No prior experience necessary, entrants to the program’s Vir branch start an internship on NLS Southern Cross and work their way into the station’s Exploration department. With a learner class NT Stargazer model ship, even a high school dropout can get the experience to pilot a scout class expedition cruiser into one of NanoTrasen’s many exploratory ventures in just a year or more!
+Piloting not your thing? Fear not, you can get expedition class combat survival or search and rescue training right from the comfort and familiarity of planet Sif. More of hands on builder or FTL maintenance kind of person? You might not ride the scout ships but the expedition fleet needs everybody from an engine expert to a smooth talker who pours even smoother drinks.
+What are you waiting for, spacer? Join NanoTrasen today.
+Writers
+Arielle Wood
+ +Starfire Report - 08/16/2564
Swarmers Escape Station