Legacy of Hypnos

From Secrets of the Frontier Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Legacy of Hypnos is an encounter in Secrets of the Frontier's Watcher Beyond the Walls module.

Opening

Legacy of Hypnos is encountered randomly in a system in the sector's fringe. It spawns with similar criteria to the vanilla game's Domain-era Cryosleepers, prioritizing systems with many habitable planets and Domain Explorarium derelicts.

Cryosleeper Hypnos

Within the encounter's system, the player will soon discover the derelict cryosleeper "Hypnos", surrounded by a vast ship graveyard and debris field filled with wrecks from across the Sector.

Interacting with the cryosleeper will present the player with The Rust Crows, a Dustkeeper Contingency fleet comprised entirely of upgraded proxy drones. All ships of cruiser size or higher are captained by Dustkeeper oldguards, heavily degraded but with a warning that their damaged bulkheads are being used as protection - an indication that they benefit from Derelict Contingent, giving them a sizable chance to almost nullify incoming damage.

The Dustkeeper fleet will request a comm-link with the player. Accepting will put the player into contact with their commander, Hypnos-Annex-Barrow, who will warn them to leave the cryosleeper alone. The player has a few options to try and talk Barrow down:

  • If they have Inky-Echo-Nightingale in their fleet, she can be brought in.
  • If they have Ardent-Annex-Seraph, she can be brought into comms.
  • If they have Sierra, they can ask her for advice on what Barrow is (if they have not been informed who the Dustkeepers are yet) and about his burnout.

Regardless of the player's choice, Barrow will refuse to stand down and cut the comm link. The only way to access the cryosleeper is to destroy the Rust Crows.

Post-Battle

Once Barrow is defeated, the player can recover his damaged instance chip in the salvage screen. His vessel, the ODS Northstar II, will spawn as a derelict that can be recovered if the player is able to operate automated ships. Proceeding with the investigation of the cryosleeper, the player will discover it to contain a terminal dedicated for the usage of ripscanners, devices that burn through a human brain to produce nigh-perfect neural scans.

Once its defenders are defeated, Hypnos operates identically to either of the two cryosleepers and can be used to increase growth in colonies within 10 light-years.

Barrow's instance chip is initially recovered in a damaged, unusable state. The player can activate Courser Protocol and speak to Outrider-Annex-Courser to have them regenerate him, at which point he will offer to join the player's fleet as a warmind.

Ancient Laboratory

Located somewhere else in the system is an ancient laboratory. This research station is defended by a Rust Crows Proxy Detachment, which is less difficult to face than the Rust Crows of the cryosleeper as it consists only of cruiser-or-smaller vessels captained by Gamma Cores.

After the battle, the player can investigate the station. It is revealed the station has already been ransacked once before. Though the lab contains little in the way of useful technology besides some AI cores, it is revealed to have been the site of artificial intelligence research. The salvors collect what records remain, and the player discovers it to be the laboratory that serves as the origin of the Dustkeeper Contingency.

The player is prompted to read several logs by the researcher Yuri Oros, which read as follows:

#9265b "Hypnos"

The database dates the log to c-2. "Trying out something new for the instance generation. Not sure if we can get it workable but we're R, not D and Dr. Trinity says we're going to give it a whirl so I guess we will.

It's kind of fun, though. Surprisingly the human imprints work fairly well. It took a couple weeks to stop the self-deletions but they're almost nil now and they are so much more humanlike than any AI I've seen before. Colonial types are an interesting selection of scans and I think we were picked an odd batch, too. We've a fairly small spread so far so a wider scan database should cut out ones who'd fail a psych eval.

Ripscans are certainly something you won't see in the core. Wouldn't fly past Ethics back in Administrative Psychology, but I don't know if we even have an Ethics here."

#48j727 "Gates"

The database dates the log to c+0. "The gates went quiet. I've never heard of that happening before. Lots of rumors going around. Hope they come back on soon. Trinity says we're continuing research in the while since it's probably just an operator dropping coffee on the controls or whatever. Sounds right enough, but I'm no Gate tech."

#5149h "Gates"

The database dates the log to c+2. "I don't think the Gates are turning back on."

#3015u "Instability"

The database dates the log to c+6. "There's one kink we're still going to have to work out if any of this ever matters. The stability issue isn't going away. The human ripscans just don't provide the level of reliability you get with a Beta. The personality quirks are funny and all but their decision-making isn't consistent and when stress-tested they fail completely and need to be regenerated or deleted.

There's something spectacular about the burnout, though. It's almost impressive. You couldn't get something this real out of the old Grendel prototypes, I imagine.

In the end, nothing breaks quite like the human mind."

#h7155 "Symphony"

The database dates the log to c+13. "Some of Symphony came by for a visit. Said that now the gates were dead, there wasn't any use for us any more. Only they'd have the key to turn them back on. Ransacked the place for a copy of the instance generator, must've already had the ripscanner. Think they might've hit a roadblock somewhere and needed it for their project. And they weren't asking.

Security's dead. Trinity's out the airlock. This place is doomed. I'm taking the shuttle to anywhere but here and setting a timed access grant to Omicron-Regnant for the cargo drones. It can do whatever the hell it likes once backup power reaches sufficient levels in forty cycles. I should've skipped to the nearest habworld like everyone else.

I should've stayed in goddamn Administrative Psychology."

#99999 "Legacy"

The database dates the log to c+178. "I don't have time to have an existential crisis regarding the fact that I am, to some unknowable degree, human, my mind burned out into a database for repurposing.

I'm tasking Barrow to take the Rust Crows and watch over Hypnos. Maybe there's still a chance for those who weren't selected for this.

Symphony was here. They must know something about the gates. Sierra's missing at the moment and I don't have time to ask her. I have to take this chance before it slips again."

The log is signed off with the name "Banshee".

Once the player reads the "Legacy" log, they can inform Sierra about it to inform her and prompt a minor existential crisis. Depending on the player's response, she may begin to consider herself human in a sense. They can also inform Inky-Echo-Nightingale of the log's contents, prompting her to speak a few words.

If the player reads the "Hypnos" or "Instability" logs, they learn the Dustkeeper Contingency's origins as human minds burned out into a database used to generate their AI instances. After closing the database, the player is prompted to inform Dauntless-Annex-Barrow and/or Ardent-Annex-Seraph about this development if either or both are in the fleet (in a ship or in cargo). Barrow must have been already restored to functionality.

Rewards

From Hypnos cryosleeper:

From ancient laboratory:

Retrieved from "https://secretsofthefrontier.wiki.gg/index.php?title=Legacy_of_Hypnos&oldid=587"