The Clathran Menace: Behind Every Great Man

My final map of the galaxy.

          

I'll return to a slightly more chronological narrative to recount this particular debacle, which put the number of hours for the sequel a little past the original.

    

This entry is very long, and I'm not sure anyone is going to care to read all of this, so here's the summary: I discovered that this part of the galaxy used to be ruled by a race called the Masters who used the Clathrans as their enforcers. The Masters were dependent on a wide Dual Space Interphase, so as it continued to narrow, they decided to retreat to the galactic core, where the Interphase is a lot wider. They took the Clathrans with them. On the planets they left behind, they left various means of impeding technological development and evolutionary progress so that when they returned, they would have an easy time reasserting their control. The latest Clathran advance is the vanguard of that return, now that Dual Space is opening up again. I learned that they hate humans because we have more potential for growth than other aliens and could eventually challenge the Masters for galactic dominance.

     

I continued to acquire personal equipment and ship equipment, visited the rest of the planets, and made several alliances. I made it through the Clathran Survey Line (which did advance across the galaxy) and got quests to visit the Clathran home planets, collect intelligence, and perform acts of sabotage. This culminated with my discovery of the Clathran homeworld and a Dodecahedron Device there that seemed to be causing the widening of the Dual Space Interphase. I constructed a bomb to destroy the device, but the game is set to require all players to participate in the creation of the bomb, and for them to have all completed their personal quests first, so I was stuck, as Corin Stoneseeker had been dormant since Turn 60. In attempting to rectify this, I managed to put the game in an unwinnable state.

    

Here's the detailed account:

                

Turns 297-362: Finishing Up

     

I spent this period trying to visit planets that I had missed on my first pass, made clear when I finally started labeling the actual map. The first one was in the far west of the galaxy, which turned out to be on the other side of the Clathran Survey Line, so the trip was largely wasted, although as I flew, I was busily arranging trades to buy the last few items on my list, including the Automated Repair System for my ship. It took a while to plot out the routes, as I was down to a single unit of phase steel at one point, but as I noted last time, if you have at least one of anything, you can eventually fill your cargo hold. I had to personally visit Dosia for vortex coils; not all trade goods are available in the automated market that the drone can visit.

 

On the way to the next unlabeled planet, in the southeast quadrant, I stopped by Sallion, where I still hadn't earned citizenship, and still managed to fail in the arena battle. How many more items do I need?!

   

The planet south of Sallion turned out to be Mardahl, and its discovery was beneficial for a lot of reasons. First, it is the only source of culture as a trade good, and several items were waiting for that. Second, it turned out to have several personal offense and defense items for sale (Biogun, Gravity Tilt, Call-a-Wall). Third, I had to visit this location to continue the Brotherhood questline. I had worried it would be on the other side of the survey line.

   

The Mardahlians were an avian species, looking a bit like ostriches. They lived lives of leisure while androids did all the work. The androids are humanoid, which Turner found curious. As I spent time on the planet's various activities, I had my drone furiously trying to assemble the goods necessary to buy all the items in the personal weapons market.

     

There was no option to seek the Brotherhood, so I did the only thing available on the planet (other than trade): I went to the amusement park. A couple of Mardahlians named Struth and Phrnk showed Turner around. After getting tossed around by rides called the Omelet Maker and the Wringer, I tried the Haunted House—which mostly had displays of birds being eaten by cats and lizards—and found Brother Mathus impersonating one of the androids, which apparently the Brotherhood builds and maintains.

    

I had to go through the long Dialogue again, to which I learned more lines. After being designated Master of Reason and getting the Geas of Reason, Turner met with the High Council of the Brotherhood and learned more about the organization's history. It began with explorers who visited the planet Golgotha and had an experience so horrifying that they became convinced that humanity should never leave Earth. They told me to go to Golgotha, which I knew immediately had to be on the other side of the survey line.

       

More steps in the Brotherhood's interminable Dialogue.

     

On the way out of the area, I tried Sallion again, and fortunately, my new upgrades allowed me to finally win and gain citizenship on the Hadrakian colony. And it turned out to have another weapons market with things to buy with batches of trade goods, plus a guy named Lonner gave me the recipe for a Stasis Field Generator.

    

I finished assembling and buying items—the Automated Repair System, the Stasis Field Generator, a Disintegration Gun, Propulsion Caps, Muon Glue, and so forth—and bought an extra vortex coil for Keros, the planet where some alien cube was keeping the population at low levels of intelligence. When I took the vortex coil to the cube, I learned about its history. It had been created by an advanced race that relied on a wide Dual Space Interphase to live. When the Interphase started shrinking, the race packed up and moved to the galactic core. "Our plan," it said, "is to take the Clathrans with us, and return when we have found some remedy to address the constricting Interphase." These aliens must be the unknown Masters that the Clathrans worship.

 

The Masters left the cube with the power of "Fiorenza," the ability to control the minds of individual creatures. I acquired it from the cube. 

   

As this phase ended, I received a radio broadcast that the Clathrans had captured the Hadrakian colony of Adafa, so that answers one question: the Survey Line does move over the course of the game.

     

Turns 363-373: Crossing the Survey Line

       

Having upgraded my ship as much as possible on this side of the Clathran Survey Line, I decided to try to cross it again. I reached it a couple of trisectors inward from where I had encountered it last time. I was curious how all the options played out, so I backed up my save (since the game automatically writes over the saved game at the end of each turn) and restored it often enough to figure out the proper sequence of events. The chart below shows the outcomes. Crossing the line requires you to have gone to Ghorbon (to get the password from the Clathran base) and to have upgraded your ship enough to win one combat. You also must have obtained the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers from the Hadrakians.

   

Turning off my systems in Stage 1 got me through the automated drones, but the game said then that I encountered a scout ship with an x-ray scanner. The solution at this point is to contact the ship and give the password learned on Ghorbon. It causes the drones to back off, but the captain remains suspicious, so in Step 3, the only way to deal with him is to blast him. This causes a dreadnought to approach, at which point the only option is to flee, which causes the Anti-Clathran Evasive Maneuvers to kick in.

      

CRPG Addict's official guide to crossing the Clathran Survey Line in Star Saga: Two.

     

Fortunately, I only had to go through all of this once. From the first success forward, the game automatically moved me across the line with a slight time penalty. Oddly, my drone never had any trouble crossing the line. Surely its cargo bays are big enough for a person.

   

Once across the line, Turner radioed success to the Institute for Space Exploration, who immediately dropped another quest into his lap: Find the Clathran world of Morikor, infiltrate it, and get intelligence.

       

The final choice in crossing the survey line.

       

Turns 374-510: Strange New Worlds

       

I had no idea what planet was Morikor, but I had a dozen new worlds to explore. I started at the "east" and made my way roughly west, finding the planets in this order. I'm going to elide a lot here because otherwise I'll be writing for days. A lot of these planets had Clathrans on the surface or in orbit, but the books talked about how I and the computer figured out how to sneak in under the radar and maintain a low profile.

    

1. Golgotha. This planet was the origin of the Brotherhood, and wow, was it crazy. By the time I left, I didn't want to explore space anymore, either. The basic setup is that the planet offers the widest Dual Space Interphase in the area (the variometer just reads "***"), so everything behaves bonkers. The character's perception shifts constantly from one possible universe to another, and his thoughts manifest in reality. It started on my approach, as I noticed we were leaving the planet. The computer claimed that we had already landed and I ordered it to take off. After some more confusion and near-accidents, I finally landed, but things didn't get any better: "There is a planetary crust of rock and iron, water and winds, sometimes vegetation and sometimes none. The physical surface is hard and would be impossible to travel on foot, except that there is always a different Golgotha nearby in the Interphase that has a path leading in the direction you want to go." Faced with multiple places to explore and multiple ways to explore them, Turner ended up exploring all of them in multiple realities.

     

Turner then extended his mind to explore past and future.. He saw Vanessa Chang's arrival on the planet in Fool's Errand. He saw the Brotherhood arrive on The Archangel and see future possibilities that horrified them. He sought out those visions himself and saw three paths: one in which the Clathrans completely destroyed humanity and drove all other alien races back to their home worlds; one in which humans, having mastered Dual Space, have completely populated every corner of the galaxy, keeping small populations of other races in zoos; and one in which humans have evolved to a higher stage and serve as stewards to the galaxy, keeping it in balance. It's this vision, Turner realizes, that led to the Final Church of Man.

   

Golgotha is a place in which all possibilities happen at once.

       

Finally, he thought about humanity itself and why the Clathrans are so afraid of us. He perceived that of all the races in the galaxy, humans have the greatest capacity for change. They take other species' strengths and graft them onto themselves. Hence the Clathran's horrified statement about humans having "no limits." There's something in here I don't understand about bringing the Message to the core of the galaxy. Anyway, I completed the quest for the Brotherhood. The game noted that I don't need to go further on their questline, but that I may want to.

   

2. Knapt. This is an enormous planet the size of Jupiter but with a mass equivalent to Earth thanks to a colossal network of caves creating mostly empty space within the planet. It is occupied by cloud-like plasma energy beings. The Clathrans visited some time ago and set up a beam weapon that shoots down any object that tries to leave the surface, including the creatures themselves. I shut down the system and incorporated its technology into my own ship, getting a new ability called "Track-Aim."

   

Below the surface, I met a plasma alien who contacted me telepathically and introduced himself as Fred, "one of the Tenscore True Names, from which all others are derived." (I'm reminded of Brandon Sanderson's discourse on "Doug.") I learned that the Clathrans hate the creatures because they tend to "clog" their equipment. They're not native to the planet; the Clathrans just drove them here.

    

3. Geefle. Geefle is a Zyran colony conquered by the Clathrans. The Zyrans are a nasty cannibalistic species who have attacked me several times in space already and refused to let me approach their home planet of Zyroth. The first time I visited Geefle, my ship still wasn't strong enough to break through the Clathran blockade. I had to visit again after visiting all the other worlds on this list.

   

After I had upgraded my ship some more, I returned and managed to break through the Clathran blockade and land. I met my first Zyrans, multi-headed, tentacled aliens with voracious appetites. I had to win a personal combat to avoid being eaten. They bristled at the Clathran occupation, and when I proposed a truce, they said to visit their king on Zyroth.

      

Surviving a Zyran mob.

      

4. Wythym. A green and pleasant planet occupied by intelligent amoebae who are fanatic about ecology and environmental protection, such that after my arrival, they hold a funeral for the lichen killed by my landing. The planet is a source of unlimited food and, more importantly, Flame Jewels. The natives fly away from me when I try to talk to them, leading the computer and I to devise a "smart net" to catch and hold them for short periods.

   

I learned that the Wythyms originated on a planet called Tayzha but were guided here by an unknown race who encouraged them to replace the native mammalian species. Turner noted that they were largely uninterested in growth and innovation. "The result is the same stagnation of development that you have seen throughout the galaxy," seemingly the work of the mysterious Masters.

   

5. Innermost. This is a Hadrakian colony, horribly polluted, recently conquered by the Clathrans, but still maintaining Hadrakian customs. These include the need to win an arena battle before doing any serious business on the planet, which fortunately, I did, defeating a dragon! The market was shut down, but there was a local office of The Battle, Inc. We had a celebration in honor of my getting through the survey line before they gave me my next mission: find the location of the Clathran home planet, Karnossus, and destroy Clathran military facilities and/or assassinate their leaders. No one knows where Karnossus is, but I got a command (which requires 2 weeks of time every time I use it) to search any trisector for the planet.

         

A rare sci-fi RPG in which you fight a dragon.

     

From the native species on the planet, the Wesmlots, I learned the "Chameleon" ability, which lets me disguise myself as anyone. My other attempts to explore the polluted surface just damaged my health.

   

6. Sirissi. A very technologically advanced, overpopulated planet inhabited by small aliens with numerous sensory organs on their heads. The Clathrans have a presence but do not interfere with the Sirissians. The planet is so overpopulated that the Sirissians have created technologies to deal with it, including a Corporeal Decompressor to reduce dead bodies to protoplasm in a second, although I discerned how to use it as a weapon. I also obtained a Dimensional Transducer, a component of a system that the Sirissians use to briefly phase buildings and vehicles to other dimensions to avoid collisions.

    

I made contact with a resistance group called the Golden Triangle, but they wanted me to prove my hatred of the Clathrans by attacking one openly. For some reason, Turner decided to do this on the Sirissian colony on Takata instead of here. Once I did that (see below), I had to return to Sirissi. It took a couple of turns; the two colonies are on the opposite sides of a space wall. When I returned, I was allowed to watch a movie that taught me how to make a Cloaking Ray and a Stasis Field Generator (which I had already gotten elsewhere).

    

7. Qualathara. A barren planet with a single highly sophisticated spaceport run by lizard-like cousins of the Clathrans. Like the Mardahlians, they leave most of the planet's work to automatons, preferring to spend their time at libraries and museums and in religious meditation. Despite this, they are extremely prone to violence, reacting to any insult, never backing down from a fight, employing any tactic to win. The Clathrans have no presence here, and there's a suggestion that the Qualatharans may have killed a Clathran envoy.

   

There was more stuff to buy here—a Tight Beam Laser Pistol and a Stunner Shield—which of course involves another flurry of trades.

   

Finally, I visited the Shrine of Space, which had a bunch of questions to ensure that I was a Qualarathian. I had to use what I learned about the race from my readings and experiences to answer the questions correctly. I learned from visions there that the Qualatharans are Clathrans, left behind when the Masters left this part of the galaxy for the Core, taking the Clathrans with them. The Qualatharans evolved into their own sub-species. I never found anything to do with this knowledge.

        

The answer was a resounding "no."

      

8. Takata. This is a Sirissian colony with a shipyard with yet more stuff for my ship, including Energy Bolts and a Multiphasic Laser Torpedo. The market sells tools. For some reason, Turner had decided he had to prove himself to the Golden Pyramid by attacking a Clathran here, so I did so, defeating him in combat just before a Sirissian vaporized him with an atomizer.

     

9. Ululu. Another Sirissian colony so lush that vegetation thrives in orbit around the planet, providing a limitless source of food. They use teleporters to get ships and cargo through the vegetation barrier, and I was able to acquire a copy. They offered a unique item called Diamond Cloth, for which I assembled the right amount of cargo. It was a necessary component for the Cloaking Ray for which I got the recipe on Sirissi. Because of my visits to the three Sirissian colonies, I was able to convince the race to join the alliance against the Clathrans.

   

10. Morikor. Finally, I found this key Clathran planet, and it's a good thing I didn't come here first because I needed the Sirissian Cloaking Ray to get through the defenses. However, after landing, I immediately got into a fight with Clathrans and had to take off, leaving both my personal and ship's health at 20 (fortunately, my automated systems heal up to 80). I don't know why "Illusion" or "Chameleon" didn't help me here. I had to get "Concealment" from the next planet I visited.

        

Various options on Morikor.

      

With that ability, I was able to sneak onto Morikor and infiltrate their central computer room, intelligence office, war room, and research and development offices. It took a lot of phases, but I learned about the Clathran plans to wipe out humanity; I blew up their main computers after first sending all their battle plans to the Institute for Space Exploration; I learned how to make a Dual Space weapon called an Interphase Reflector; and I learned the location of the Clathran home world at Karnossus: trisector 773, although I accidentally wrote it down wrong as 783.

        

Later building an Interphase Reflector.

       

As I blasted off from the planet, I contacted the Institute, which was going through the data I sent. They gave me the next phase to the mission: Stop the Clathrans. I think that this moment signaled the end of M. J. Turner's personal mission.

       

11. Tayzha. This is the home planet of the amoeba aliens that I met on Wythym. It is a source of unlimited warp cores, whatever they are, somehow "drawn" from the gas giants in the system. It is also a source of Insulicon, a necessary component in the Discontinuity Wave Generator, which I was finally able to build. More important for now, I learned the "Concealment" ability from the aliens.

   

12. Darkwhistle. This was the last new planet I explored, and man did it have a lot of options. Its spongy surface originally had no atmosphere but obtained one as I approached. It was occupied by an invisible, incorporeal, omniscient intelligence capable of both answering questions and showing me visions of the past and present in faraway places. The planet took a random item of cargo for every action I chose, so while I was on the planet, I had my drone frantically making as many 3-for-1 trades as possible to keep me stocked up. It gave me a Gradient Filter, a necessary component for some devices, but took it away again almost as fast. Fortunately, I had another source for those.

      

My drone tries to keep me supplied so I can ask questions at Darkwhistle.

    

I learned so much here I should just bullet the key points:

   

• The intelligence that inhabits Darkwhistle once had form, and occupied many planets, but they were driven to this planet by another race that sought to dominate the galaxy, the mysterious Masters.

• Humanity is on the verge of extinction because of the Dual Space Interphase, which is being artificially widened by the Clathrans. We journeyed to Earth briefly and saw it consumed by fire and violence.

• The Clathrans are a slave race to the Masters (who Darkwhistle calls "Archigenitors"), who left this area of space 50,000 years ago, taking the Clathrans with them. They have now sent the Clathrans back with three primary directives: Return to the Arm of the Galaxy, conduct a Survey, and build the Dodecahedron. After the Clathrans met Vanessa Chang, a fourth was added: find and destroy all humans.

• The Masters hate humanity because of our potential: "You have free will. Your aspirations are uncontained, uncontrolled. You threaten them." Because we were so primitive when they left this part of the galaxy, they never inhibited our growth the way they did on other worlds.

• The Clathrans genetically engineered the Space Plague and seeded it in John Silverbeard.

• Vanessa Chang was last seen heading for the core, carrying some kind of message. Her fate is unknown. The Darkwhistler was cryptic when I asked about the message itself.

• I learned how to build an Interphase Reflector, which counters the effects of Dual Space weapons.

• The entity made my ship's computer smarter, giving me an edge in combat.

          

Another ability!

     

I should note that while exploring these planets, radio transmissions and other miscellaneous encounters started happening again during voyages. I think they restarted after I crossed the Survey Line. They painted a grim picture of what was happening on the Nine Worlds. Riots have broken out everywhere; contact has been lost with most of the major cities. The government is basically gone. On Atlantis, officials have built an ark to carry a few hundred sane people "away from the Home Worlds and the madness of SAPS." Later, I heard a transmission of the ark launching but blowing up because it had been constructed in such haste.

    

I also got regular notifications that the Clathran Survey Line was advancing. It conquered the Hadrakian colony of Psorus. And at one point, my computer said that it had found a number at the bottom of one of Vanessa Chang's old maps: 38962. I never figured out what to do with this.

    

Turns 511-570: Back in Friendly Space

        

I knew I'd have to build some of the devices I'd learned about on the 12 worlds, but some of them required special items like vortex coils and probability membranes that I could only get way back on planets like Dosia and Dahl, on the other side of the galaxy. I spent many turns getting back home, again trying to arrange trades on the way. Over a couple dozen turns, I built everything that I had items for.

   

This game is pretty crazy when it comes to equipment. I think the first game maybe had eight or ten devices and abilities that you needed. When I wrapped up this session, I had 32 personal items and abilities, 23 ship items, and 11 non-combat items and abilities, and that's after a lot of things had been consolidated. Just when you think you have everything, you visit a planet and find a bunch of new stuff, as happened when I returned to Zyroth.

     

Some of my many abilities and items. I don't think half of them have ever been called into play.

       

Right, Zyroth. I returned and told the intercepting, hostile ships that Lord Ruckel from Geefle had told me to speak to their king. I got an audience with him and convinced him to join the Clathran resistance. I learned that the Zyrans used to be peaceful. A device called the Projector of Peace, set up by the Masters, sent out a wave of positive energies that eliminated the race's inherent hostility. But some alien visited and stole the power source from the projector, called the Stone of Immortality, which made it stop working. This is clearly the stone that Corin Stoneseeker seeks. Her sect was organized around worshiping something meant to keep a powerful race docile so it wouldn't evolve.

         

I think this was my last trade for weapons.

     

I visited The Battle, Inc., on Hadrak, but they just wanted me to find Karnossus. 

  

Back with the Brotherhood, I became Master of the Message and got the ability of "The Ghost," something like the fourth ability that supposedly makes me unnoticeable. I was told to go to the planet Chee in the Paracore and seek out Sage Zantar, but I assume that's for the third game.

    

Turns 571-599: It Takes Two, Baby

    

I was finally ready to go search for Karnossus. I flew to trisector 783 and entered the code that would let me spend two weeks searching for the planet. But because I had written down the wrong location, those two weeks were wasted. I did get an ominous message that I was running out of time.

  
The real trisector containing Karnossus was only three jumps away—except for space walls and other obstacles, which required me to take 24 jumps going around. When I arrived, I spent another two weeks searching for the planet.

      

The Xbox has conditioned me to expect a chime and a little achievement banner at times like this.

     

I finally found it, but when I tried to land, the computer reported so many sensors and orbital mines that it would be impossible, even with all my equipment and abilities. But we did find the Dodecahedron, drawing its power from a nearby star. However, there was nothing I could do with it here.

     

I returned to The Battle, Inc., on Innermost. After consultation, they gave me the plans for an Inversion Bomb, which should destroy the thing. It required 4 munitions, a Discontinuity Wave Generator, a Stasis Field, an Interphase Reflector, and a bombshell. And wouldn't you know, thanks to my diligent building, I had all of those items except for 2 of the 4 munitions easily traded. I set my drone on a course to obtain those last two items and flew back to Karnossus just in time for the drone to arrive. 

      

Lots of reading, culminating in the Hadrakians dropping a bombshell.

     

I entered the code to build the bomb, and that's when the game dropped a house on me: the bomb was defective, it said. I would need to have it inspected by another character. "Your fellow human travelers represent a wealth of diverse talents."

   

At first, I incredulously thought that the game required multiple players. My mind flashed back to "Two Hero Valley" in Rivers of Light. But the instructions were clear that it could be played by one person, and I realized that it must require you to pass the bomb between as many players as joined the game at the beginning. So I sighed, re-activated Corin Stoneseeker, and flew all the way across the galaxy to join her (she couldn't come to me, as she hadn't progressed far enough to get past the survey line). We used the "meet" command to meet in space, and I passed the bomb from Turner to Corin and had her enter the code to inspect it.

     

Trading goods between characters.

      

"You sense that you could contribute to the Bomb project, but that you lack the necessary knowledge at this time," the game said. "Perhaps if you finished more of your personal goals, you would then have the expertise necessary to correctly fix the bomb." The overall outline became clear: every player has to finish their primary goal first. The one who gets to Karnossus first can build the bomb, but the other players have to have "won" their personal games to contribute to it. Corin hadn't played more than 60 turns, so there was no chance of that happening soon.

      

This was a bad idea.

      

I went to the game's main screen and deleted Corin from the game entirely, but that just put me in an unwinnable state where the bomb is incomplete but there's no one around to complete it. The Bomb Shell is a unique object, so I can't get another one to build a second bomb. Entering the code to tinker with the bomb myself does nothing. I'm going to have to restore the backup I made before crossing the Survey Line, delete Corin, do almost everything in this session again, and then try to build the bomb without a second player on the board.

   

At least this game is producing entries worthy of the amount of text I have to read. At 5,000 words, this is probably the longest entry I've ever written.

   

Time so far: 26 hours