Relic Worlds - Lancaster James & the Lost Scepter of the Kings

"Lost Scepter of the Kings is in the Altar of Obedience. Location – Ministry building in town surrounding spire. Expedition sent to recover. We are still in our craft. Nestled safely inside mouth of the spire near canyon wall. Will leave and return when expedition returns...Beware the dragon."

It was a rough translation, to be sure, and one that had been decoded by students at Sabereaux University. But it was likely the closest anyone could come to getting a true understanding of what the words in the 150 million year old transmission meant. Some of the more descriptive words, like "dragon" had been shortened translations of longer descriptions.

Little was known of the mysterious species xeno-anthropologists named the Trag. None of their worlds had been discovered, but their occasional signals had been picked up in deep space in various parts of where humans now called the second quadrant. Whenever scientists had followed a signal to its source, they had found no Trag ruins nor any sign they had ever been there.

The transmissions that were detected were used to piece together what scientists currently knew about the Trag. The presentsignal had been intercepted by a passenger liner, and thus had been recorded along with everything else that happened on board.Luckily for scientists trying to understand the Trag, the ship's sensors commander had taken enough interest to locate the source of the signal and found that it had come from the Vinithra system. She then sold the information and the communication to the school for a hefty profit.The price was worth it, however, as it provided scientistsanother lead to try and find a Trag world, or at least one on which they had settled for a time.

The Trag themselves had vanished, as had every other species in the known galaxy, many centuries before humans ever took to the stars. What had happened to them and why they disappeared remained a mystery; one that came closer to being solved with every explored world. The Trag had been one of the first space faring races, traveling first in sub-light spacecraft which took them decades or even centuries to ventureinto outer systems. When they later developed spacecraft that got around the light speed barrier, the newer explorers set out to reconnect with the older colonies.

Researchers at Saberaux theorized that this most recent intercepted signal was a later expedition that had gone to examine one of the older settlements. A Scepter of the King was the symbol of the seat of power in the early days of Trag exploration. If one was to be "recovered" it meant that the government had fallen, or everyone in the colony was dead, and so they were going to bring it back.

This could mean that the human expedition could find nothing except for some empty buildings and whatever the Trag left behind, but this would at least provide an insight into how they once lived. The expedition may also find the remains of the recovery ship itself. After having discovered the signal, the sensors operator of the passenger liner had kept a line open toward the star system from which the signal had come. Nothing more had been picked up, and therefore it was concluded that the ship may never have taken off.

This was what Lancaster James was hoping as he climbed the giant spire on the rocky world of Vinithra 2. (The world did not yet have a name as it had not been explored by mankind yet, despite being in the habitable zone of its solar system.) This was the best match to the short description in the intercepted communication. It rose in the shadow of a tall canyon with a gaping hole approximately three quarters of the way up. The hole in the spire was large enough for a ship to fit inside, and even resembled an actual mouth. It would be a tight fit for a vessel to slide into, (it was too tight for his partner's ship, Odin's Revenge,) but this was alien technology after all, and might be able to make the tight turns. Why they would land up here was another question, but he supposed that would be answered once he knew more about the Trag.