-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]
