Gray Goo

Over millennia, explorers from across the known galaxy pass down fearful tales of a sentient, liquid-like swarm of nanites that can envelop creatures and quickly turn them to dust. Once connected to grays, a mysterious species of abductors who used advanced fringe technology with a similar silvery sheen, these creatures gained the moniker gray goo. However, the term has survived despite there being no corroborating evidence that firmly links the two.
The only solid information about gray goo originates from the scattered reports of rare surviving witnesses. Gray goo attacks its victims by surprise, taking advantage of any hapless beings it comes across as it roams a desolate wasteland. Indeed, another commonality among gray goo sightings is the entity’s seeming preference for places devoid of life—though many argue that the gray goos created such environments. Scientists posit that most gray goo originates with a sapient species’ often well-intentioned attempt to develop an autonomous nanite swarm that can affect technological repairs, perform delicate biomedical operations, or even terraform. However, even a simple error in their programming, or in some cases the malicious introduction of a deadly code hack, can have disastrous effects, especially for swarms that can ingest a wide range of materials and self-replicate. Rumors persist of entire worlds, once prosperous technological paradises, now entirely covered in writhing swarms of gray goo.
When not engaged in the consumption of material, most gray goos seem to have two driving directives: replicate and assimilate. The clouds of nanites have even hacked computer systems and technological constructs of sufficient sophistication, usually through brute force methods, to access and incorporate any useful data within. If a computer system’s countermeasures block it, the goo attempts to dismantle the console and reduce it to its essential components before stripping even those parts to a fine metallic dust.
Because of a recent black-market item derived from gray goo, bounties and attempts at tracking down the swarms have risen dramatically to keep up with demand. Very few parties have successfully obtained more than a handful of viable samples—if they survive at all. While gray goo is more commonly found among abandoned space debris and can survive the coldness of space, instances of the entity have cropped up in low-population spacecrafts and stations, especially among The Diaspora.
The construct-populated Pact World of Aballon has outlawed any work related to the gray goo out of an abundance of caution—including even research projects related to the dangerous entities—and any being found in violation of this restriction receives an immediate and permanent ban from the planet.

Civilization and Culture

Average Technological Level

NANITE CAPSULES Occasionally, an encounter with a gray goo—or even a damaged computer console or wiped drive—can leave behind a significant amount of salvageable, inert nanites. While standard operating procedure mandates the destruction of these nanites to prevent any possibility of future replication, scientists have recruited adventurers to obtain such samples for study in the hopes of recovering data from the parent goo and learning more about its strange abilities.
An ambitious scientist or inventor, their identity lost to The Gap, eventually found a use for the inert goo in the form of ingestible capsules. However, because of the pill’s unpredictable results and the lack of a steady and reliable supply of raw material, it quickly became a hot black market item. Some claim it has the power of transforming the living into constructs, while others claim it simply functions as an expensive placebo.