Black Hole Stars
Well these are monstrosities. I’ll link to Kurzgesagt’s video down below, but the tl;dr on Black Hole Stars is exactly what they sound like. Super, supermassive stars with black holes at their cores are also known as quasi-stars.
Black hole stars could only have formed early on in the universe’s history — gases in the modern universe are too dispersed to create one. Doing so requires enough gas that the star’s gravity holds it together when it would normally go supernova, which both terrifies and excites the scientist inside me. Eventually they do die in explosion, with the massive energy generated from the black hole’s accretion disk ripping it to shreds, but not before burning very hot and very bright.
So I know at the practical level that this is just a really, really big star, but something about it unleashes glee from my inner GM. Duality of the life-giving start and the destructive black hole is one easy theme to play with here. So is the inevitability of doom or the lurking terror of knowing something dangerous is hiding in plain sight. If life develops around one of these, it is likely some of the first in the galaxy. How did they deal with such a volatile solar system and the awesome forces at work in their sun? Did they realize what would happen as the internal accretion disk continued to grow? And are there any remnants of their civilization floating in space?
While locked in battle, the USS Pearson and IKS D’Takn are thrown through a temporal rift, stranding them billions of years in the past. The Klingon and Federation crews must work together to overcome their mutual battle damage in the radiation ravaged backyard of a quasi-star — all before its black hole core causes it to detonate! The mission is complicated by a science officer who recklessly obsesses over the opportunity to gather readings from the ancient star and the Klingon first mate who is willing to destroy the Federation ship even at the cost of his own crew.
Even within the impossible physics of the Astral Plane, the multiverse is far too old for black hole stars to exist — but demiplanes are a different story. The shattered remnants of the Illithid Empire retreated to their own personal universe after the Gith uprising, biding their time while hiding within a quasi-star’s corona of radiation and gravity. These conditions have transformed the mind flayers into psionic extremophiles who wield psicrystals made from exotic materials not since in this universe for billions of years.
A victory for the scientists working with the James Webb telescope! They have discovered the first known quasi-star, a monstrosity from the earliest millennia of the universe. Unfortunately for them, they got quite a bit more than they bargained for, as the black hole star is Azathoth’s grandchild, meaning it is both alive and aware of them — despite the readings from the telescope being billions of years old. Now the team is fracturing apart as everyone struggles to cope with these revelations, even as black-suited government officials try to keep the entire thing under wraps.
