The Kepler Project

The Kepler project is a convergence of story lines set in the Kepler solar system. and an exploration of environment, separation, culture and evolution.

[keplerprojectofficial]

Kepler01 – Fragmented Narrative

Segment-HS01.txt

We are alright, up in the sky  We see the light, from our world up high  The storms below us shiver and roar And we watch our suns to see what's in store We aren't great, up in the sky As we toy with machines as the years pass by Machines that we made, but don't know how to work  For a world that we made, while our memories lurk A memory of us may arise from the ground But we can't cross that line, so we push it back down We crossed the line once, we shall not again And we know what we were, we can never mend

Segment-VMD02.txt

We see you on the other side You captors of our throne We see you standing oh so high Oh gods of fire and stone A bridge now burning, fire and smoke You watch us from the smog A land of heat you burn our feet To show we don't belong

We see them on the other side The gods their saintly throne  at the end of a bridge, deathly high Gods of all we've ever known We burnt the bridge, we failed your test You see us from above A land of cold and loneliness But we still can feel your love

We see you on the other side Gods on the other shore May we someday reach your tide Stand with you, forevermore

Segment-SM03.txt

Death in our eyes our hearts in our throat We lie on the brink of the end  The world our tomb on fire we choke  It heals what we could not mend May heretics lie beneath the ice May they miss this saviors glare The earth drinks our blood, we've paid the price As we're taken from all that's unfair As worlds collide our bodies fall We've fulfilled our oblivion’s prayer  We've reached our promised end of it all Our suffering fades into thin air 

Segment-NV04.txt

Do you hear the ringing?  Better Pretend you do not Do you hear stranded souls singing?  Feel them fleeting from your thoughts Do you see the remains of what we were Falling through the deep below?  Machines now broken crank and wirr And we lose what we cannot know Do you hear the screaming?  It's too far away, you'll pray Do you hear homesick heros bleeding?  We don't know them at all today  All we are or have been has been forgot  Left in rubble, left to rot

Segment[NULL]05>[ACCESS REDACTED]

Fear coats the hollow of our throats now Here is where the concepts of our  hopes drown The darkness creeps along our veins  And we can't hear death beat his reins For even noise as sharp as death is sentence of a final breath  Fear is more commonplace than love here Tears only carve away your face here  So toughen up my solemn friend  And run until your gruesome end There is no love, no hope no light We simply starve in fatal night

[keplerprojectofficial]

Caught between the wind and parts of the unknown

[keplerprojectofficial]

-recreation-Testimony 13[NULL]-lightless

I apologise to you all, but this is the last piece of information you will receive about this mission. This place is not somewhere you want to ever go to. It is not just another place to be explored. When we began the landing sequence, I watched the darkness on the surface swallow the stars alive in its grasp. Something like that should always be taken as a warning. The things that make home here, they listen, and they feast upon our terror, as well as our very souls. I can hear this place as it whispers to us in the back of our minds, to go back and find it, to give in to the fate of oblivion. It knows as well as we do that we will all die here, that we will all eventually succumb to its clutches. 

You all, who have faithfully awaited our word, you can still be saved. You can still be innocent as long as you remain where all is right. This place is a corruption and a mockery of the natural order. There is no hope for survival here, and there will be no time for grief. There is only inevitably and surrender. There are creatures that stalk for the sound of your breath upon their ears, to crush you alive, and bask in the taste of your blood. The algae here still begs me to come home to it, to lie in its soft grass and accept the love of such a parasite. Every single thing that claims this world as home intends to find you dead and corrupt.

We are creatures of the light. We see and learn; we feel and we are alive. We were never meant to tread into a place that only serves to harbour the dark. Truly what difference is an alien lifeform to a monster? And how long will we continue to feed ourselves to the jaws of what we were never met to uncover? There are monsters hiding in the plains, and in the forests of moss and decay, in the deserts of rock. Was the darkness here simply a misfortune? Or a damnation to all those that should never be? Is our research enlightenment? Or self sacrifice? Consider this carefully, as I have now for many days. Consider what we have done.

I have watched crewmates under my command suffer. I have watched souls who trusted me to save them die, swallowed whole by the darkness, while I could do nothing to save them. Not even I know the state of every crewmate, nor their whereabouts. Our ship is gone, and our bodies will not make it home to be put to rest.

With the last of our beings, as a final favor to our doomed souls, I beg of you that our stories will not be told. I know that it is counterproductive to our nature, to wish for ignorance. But to wish to understand something is to thrust yourself a brand new playing field, and hope it does not find you dead. We assume, when we wish to learn, that the field is not a trap; that if we simply proceed with logic and caution we will be safe. But what if I told you this is illogical? How do you proceed? Do you make a mountain of bodies hoping to learn the rules? How many would have to perish for you to stop? I beg of you to let ours be the last bodies to never make it home from here. Leave the monsters confined to the darkness, to their prisons, leave the damned to their damnation, and let it rest.

 Once this message has been sent, I will wipe all system data of this mission. Everything pertaining to this dreaded place will be erased for certain. I'm sure that you could try again, could succeed again.  Nothing I do now can stop you forever, and we are so very industrious. But for as long as we can pertain, I beg you to forget. We will stay, and we will survive, though certainly not for long. I fear as much as I have survived for now on these plains, I can hear something approaching from the silence; and I believe it is death coming to end this suffering.

-Your captain, [FILE REDACTED>NULL]

[keplerprojectofficial]

MessageSM2.draft

-Till the end-

From:syril.taryone (undelivered)

To:cawrie.asemtos

Hey bug, I know this will never deliver with the Einya so close, I guess it's crazy to be writing at all then. But at least now I can feel like it's somewhat off my chest. I don't want to tell you what I've seen. I honestly don't even know if I'd know how to, but I do know that it wouldn't do us any good. I know it would hurt you. So this is the closest we're going to get.

When I was rather small, I fell under the throughlines. It was just a normal dredging day, but it was the first time I had been trusted with the drill. While my parents were out dragging whatever food hauls they had found onto the ice, I found my way to what I now know would very nearly be my grave. I walked up to what I thought had been a nice place to dredge myself up something, and immediately stuck my drill into the ice and began cranking with all the night my little arms had.I couldn't really have known at the time that not only had I not tested for proper thickness, but that I had also happened to choose one of the thinnest iced areas possible, likely an old hole that had just iced over again. of course you could say that I did manage to find out when there was a sudden, resounding cracking underneath me and I fell into the water with a dull splash.the cold of the water as I sunk into the down below punched me in the gut, as the water seeped into my airways, and almost immediately everything around me went black.

I don't really know how long I was under the water honestly;all I can really remember is what I saw while I was down. I don't know how to explain it, but one second my vision goes black as I hit the water, and the next I'm watching these scenes in front of me, like staring in on a dream. There were these beings, I think they were our ancestors way far back? They looked similar but slightly wrong, like someone shifted them and then took away a few parts. I saw them arrive on a small ship, I saw them have families and grow a whole civilization all in the span of a blink. And then I saw everything fall apart, I saw them clutching their heads, writhing in pain, and even I could faintly hear the ringing. But the most important part of this episodic fever dream was before that; I saw them writing the prophecy. I saw them call it a warning. And then, after the ringing, I saw them begin their worship.

When I was first pulled up from the down under all I did was sit. My father says I didn't say anything for three cycles afterwards. The trauma of nearly dying aside, the prophecy was a mistranslation. Our entire lives and our culture was a lie. Of course nobody ever believed me, other kids only wanted to hear about whether or not I saw the blubberbeast, and adults just thought I was a poor traumatized kid making things up to cope. I know what I saw was real though, Cawrie, and I know you'd believe me if I told you. That’s exactly why I can't. I do want to tell you, I want someone to finally believe me, and I don’t want to have to keep things from you. But all this would do is bring you despair, no matter what truth I may know, it is far too late already. Truth has no real value when you know you’re doomed to the narrative, does it? By not telling you, I know you’ll be okay, and then hopefully I can make your death as peaceful as possible. I know there are some people who fled to the downunder to try and live through the Einya, I know that your brother was one of those people, and I'm sorry. But I also know that fleeing will never really save us. I can’t devote myself to the prophecy anymore, but you believe in it, so I'll devote myself to you instead. I now have a deity of my own all in you bug. I will be your acolyte, and I will stay right beside you as we die, just like I've always stayed with you. And once all we are is dust, we may find some part of ourselves finding something more, or we may not. We may just be little pieces leftover of the dust in our bones floating through the cosmos.But either way I know we’ll be together. And that will be enough.

[keplerprojectofficial]

[keplerprojectofficial]

Storm serpents are medium sized (1-1.5 meters in adulthood), grey-blue eel-shaped creatures, with eight limbs with wide flippers. They are native to and live exclusively on planet one. They live in packs of approximately fifty to four hundred, and spend most of their time in the stratosphere. When it comes time to hunt, the serpents dive to nearly the bottom of the vesperosphere. Once there, they change the polarity of their bodies and flare their flippers. They begin flying in a sphere, trapping and compressing a storm cloud. The charge of their flippers keeps the vapors contained. The pack then flies upwards, bringing the storm back to the stratosphere. There, a couple serpents leave formation and scout for prey. The scouts call back to the pack, and the pack brings the captured storm. The pack moves toward the prey, trapping it in the storm. Because strong storms and lightning are uncommon and avoidable in the stratosphere, most of the life there is unequipped to deal with the storm and die quickly. From there, the serpents let the storm disperse and descend on the now dead prey.

Scorcine are another species native to planet one. They are leech-like creatures, about four inches long, that depend mostly on winds for movement. When they get close enough to a plant, most often cloudpads (large, green platforms that float through the sky photosynthesizing), the scorcine latch on with their ring of teeth. They remain as long as they can, slowly draining the cloudpad's nutrients. Due to their relative abundance, scorcine can often overwhelm cloudpads, hundreds of scorcine dangling from a single platform, giving the impression of a layer of fur. Scorcine come in a varienty of colors and patterns. Juvenile scorcine even less in control of their movement than adults, so parents often carry their young until they are large enough to fly alone. Mating occurs almost exclusively on cloudpads.

[keplerprojectofficial]

Splintered and broken, a distant explosion.

[keplerprojectofficial]

Testimony S4

-As we await-

-begin spoken log-

Cawrie Asemtos

Entry 16

Approximately one cycle left

They keep saying it's okay to be afraid. I'm not afraid.Being scared is for the ignorant cowards who tried to spread lies about the Einya, brutishly ignoring the thousands of years of the faith and trust our ancestors have exercised. Fear is for the ones who decided they'd rather attempt to tunnel into the waters, those idiots; those people I once looked to as sensible, and they really thought that feeding themselves to the world down under the throughlines was a good idea?! The throughlines are a lifeblood, yes, but only so in the sense that they’ve sourced the sustenance we need so desperately. We can entrust the throughlines to provide us with food, so we tunnel our small holes,until we reach the current of the downunder. But we all know that the downunder is not to be entrusted with any more than that, or at least i thought we did. We all hear the stories of the downunder, of our ancient ancestors who tried to go beneath, only to discover just how ruthless it really was there. We were all children when our parents told us of the blubberbeast from down there ,the devourer of those poor kids who got a bit too invested in the dredging holes and dared poke a finger in. A blatant kids story, yes, but a necessary one. To dredge food from the downunder is our nature, and our life.but the downunder is a ruthless place. To attempt to survive under there, well, I can't imagine they met a pleasant outcome. It just bothers me, i guess.what could have them in such denial that they thought going against our every way of life was better than meeting our imminent saving? Syril says that everyone has their reasons, and that I really shouldn’t let it bother me too much. She’s probably right of course, Syril always seems to know what to do. Yet another one of the many things i love about her. Speaking of Syril, she's beside me right now, asleep i think.She really is so cute when she sleeps, and it makes me want to kiss the death out of her, especially with such little time left to do so.but I won’t wake her up, I know how she’s been struggling to sleep, and of course we’ll wind up together after we finally meet the gaze of the Einya.the Einya, she stares from the skyline's immensity as we so speak. She is so finally closing in, it is about time for when it shall finally see us all and free us from this wretched place.I am not afraid to meet the final view of the Einya. I have kept my truthfulness. Me, and Syril, and all of us have kept true. I just wonder, as we wait, what the gaze of the Einya will come to present itself as.

-End entry-

[keplerprojectofficial]

Captain’s Log HS - 1

Arrival

0 days since arrival

Oh, what a day! We’ve finally arrived! I'm almost too restless to sit down and write. Where to begin?

I woke this morning with the shining pearlescence of our new home filling my windows. I called a meeting after everyone ate, and we prepared to enter the atmosphere by separating our ship into five smaller vehicles. If all goes to plan, they should stay like this for the rest of their existence.

The descent… oh the descent! I’ve been in a descending ship twice before - once on a small mission above Nuevis, and once landing on Mraz on our way here - but this was unlike either of those by far. For both the other two we dropped near vertically into water, but here we slowly lowered our orbit, each ship expanding a set of wings to keep gliding above the clouds.

This seemed to be the safest way to descend, and fortunately no one encountered any issues on the way down. However, it's a bit hard to stick to a precise location while gliding at over a thousand kilometers per hour. Most of the ships decelerated far apart, and we spent about an hour over radio finding each other.

For the first time, I was able to take a moment to look out the window and appreciate the ‘surface’ of the planet. It was breathtaking - as figuratively as literally.

Golden-white clouds glowed under the rising suns, moments later purple as a cloud of atmospheric algae passed in front of the suns. The clouds were pretty level, creating the illusion of a foggy surface, but I knew if I were to take a step I'd fall for the rest of my life.

But what felt like all together too soon, we had more tests to run. The crew that had designed these ships had built them with inability to land specially in mind. Each ship has a wide membrane that can open to capture the atgae (a strange abbreviation for atmospheric algae the same crew came up with), inspired by some of the native species!

One of which we actually saw! The fauna of this planet is truly like nothing else. Fistrua, as they're called, look like long orange floating tubes. They're about a meter or two in diameter, and three or four long; while the outside of the tube is only a centimeter or two thick. The length of the tube is pocketed with holes going in at an angle - all the same angle, pointing towards the slightly larger end of the tube.

When eating, a membrane closes through the inside of the fistrua in a similar manner to the aperture of a camera. The fistrua can then use the membrane to filter feed on the atgae. When startled (though sound, air vibration, or its limited sight), the fistrua will open the holes of the side of its body and blow air through them, propelling it away.

Anyway! The membranes on our own ships function in a similar way, and according to the scientists back h- back on Nuevis, we should be able to power our ship on just solar and atgae, but without atgae of our own there, we weren't able to test it until we got here. And it works!

But the suns set now, and I must set to bed as well.

Captain Log HS 2 - Column

[keplerprojectofficial]

Captain’s Log HS - 2

Column

31 days since arrival We lost a ship today. I still don’t totally understand what happened but hopefully writing it down will make things clearer.

After yesterday, when we discovered the giant ‘lily pads’ that float throughout the sky, we decided to spend today looking for more. Since the cloudpads (as the crew has taken to calling them) are rigid, they’re very valuable as a way for us to land our ships and save resources. So, this morning, when the suns shone through the shifting mist on the horizon, we started heading west, rising a bit higher than where we’d found the cloudpad last time, and all the windows of our five ships were crowded with people looking for a flash of lime green among the fog and clouds. We spent at least half the day - which are nearly 50% longer here - gliding around before we found anything new, and still no cloudpads. Now, up until this point, there seemed to be a layer of clouds that almost acted as the ‘ground,’ remaining at relatively the same level everywhere. We had no point where you could descend further into the planet without going through dense, visibility-limiting clouds. We still didn’t know what type of predators lived here, or if it was safe to try to go somewhere we couldn’t see more than a couple meters. But rounding a cloud, we saw a big… I’m not quite sure how to describe it… sink hole? An area, about 300 by 300 meters, dipped down lower than any of the clouds around. It looked kind of like if a blanket had been laid down on a table with a hole cut out of it - everything was mostly flat except this dip. We had all stopped to look at this point, but now one of the ships, Erin’s, started moving towards the sinkhole. I radioed their ship, demanding to know what they were doing, but they just laughed, told me I was always too cautious, and cut the signal. The other ships hovered just to the side of the sinkhole, watching as Erin and their crew descended lower. Erin radioed back, saying the bottom of the pit seemed to be getting even lower. I started pacing anxiously in my own ship, until only a couple seconds later one of my crew got my attention, pointing out a deep rumbling I hadn’t noticed. I couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from, but it was definitely loud, it looked like all the ships were vibrating. Looking out at the sea of clouds, I could actually tell where the ripples of the soundwaves distorted the patterns of the clouds - concentric circles… centered on the pit. The rumbling was getting louder, uncomfortably loud. I tried to radio Erin to get them out of the sinkhole, but the vibration of my ship and sheer volume of the rumbling meant I couldn’t hear their response and I doubt they could hear me. I looked up from the console just in time. In less than half a second, the deep pit exploded. An impossible geyser erupted, three hundred meters across, instantly swallowing Erin and their crew. The roaring white covered my whole field of view, and looking up from the window the column of vapor and liquid just kept ascending. After what felt like hours, the roaring stopped, and the vapor started slowly drifting down. Only then did I notice how hot it was - the column must have been boiling and heated up our ship from meters away. Erin's ship had thirty people aboard. And now they’re gone. Their ship must have been torn apart by the force of the column, if it wasn’t instantly melted. I’m writing this as we fly east, on careful look out for any lower points in the clouds.

[keplerprojectofficial]

Snapshot VD-1

Helping Hand

[keplerprojectofficial]

Recovery #7

-From the rubble-

What was it like when the sky all fell down

When the stars caved in and our suns died

We rejoiced, we wore our angelic crowns

None of us scared, not a soul even sighed

The eye of heaven draws near, we sing forth

As the flames lick our faces, the sky warms

I hold your hand tightly, walking due north

Towards our dooms in their angelic forms

We waited and now the time is so near

It’s hope and its faith, the death in our eyes

We know we've held true, there's nothing to fear

We write, we draw of the truth in our skies

What was it like when the sky all fell down

Is that what they'll ask, seeing our shattered crowns?

[keplerprojectofficial]

Circuit Script and languages in the Kepler system

Across the solar system, a variety of languages are used by the intelligent species of each planet. However, wanting this project to be done entirely in English, we chose to use English scripts - ones that have one symbol for every English letter - to represent the presence of other languages without using anything other than English. The scripts used for planets two, three, and four (five uses plain English) can be found online, so which exact scripts are used won’t be stated just yet. However, planet one uses a different system made by me (pawsome38) so you won’t be able to find it anywhere else online.

This is Circuit Script, an English phonetic alphabet, meaning there's a symbol for every phoneme in American English. I know it's confusing to look at and hard to read – I made it to look nice not to be useful. It’s called Circuit Script because it’s vaguely inspired by circuit diagrams. Letters are written connected but other than that it pretty much follows English rules.-paw

The second phonetic script we've recently added is finchscript! It functions very similarly, but features more loopy shapes with less variation. Punctuation is almost entirely similar to english, while straighter. Numbers are either spelled or represented with tick marks for quicker computing. Finchscript is also a little bit easier to read and apply, because it was made with the Kepler project in mind.-finch