The Arrival of the Zenith

Their voyage lasted nearly a full millennia, and at some point towards the end, contact with Nadir was lost. Alone, Zenith finally arrived in the Dabaran system to assess the conditions for colonization. They found that the system definitively could support human life – and that it already did. Mankind had already colonized the systems around the red giant more than five hundred years earlier!

What the astounded crew of the Zenith discovered were thirty-six linked star systems, homes to a myriad of scattered outposts and colonies. The cults, orders and tribes that lived across the Horizon were largely without interest in communicating with each other, or lacked the technology to do so. The occasional contact that did occur was mainly in the form of repression or outright war. The crew of the Zenith, called the “Late-come” by the old colonists and “Zenithians” by themselves, traveled the Third Horizon for a long time while trying to agree on what to do next, eventually putting their ship in orbit above Kua as the discussion intensified. The heart of the issue was what to do now that their colonization directive seemed pointless. The crew kept the colonists in stasis as they debated their future. The captain family, the Quassars, proposed to carry out the mission despite the new situation, while others, led by the Yriedes family, argued that everyone should be free to decide for themselves – the directives were redundant and thus, the contract void. A third faction within the crew lost patience as the discussions dragged on, and woke the colonists from stasis on their own. The traitors, now called the Draconite faction, left the ship in the chaos of the awakening.