Slyth Resurrection

Discovery, Scientific

A discovery in the lake south of Greenbriar.

On a routine exploration dive into the lake, south of Greenbriar, Herb Nieu Rottedam discovered a largely intact shuttle, clearly of alien origin, buried in the loamy underlake bed.   Painstaking excavation work was done to raise it, and after exhaustive de-contamination efforts by Valeria Perez were completed, the first engineering team went aboard. A transponder was accidentally activated, pinging matching transponders in several previously undiscovered alien installations on planet.   The first to be explored was perhaps the most fateful, a walled research complex several hundred miles south of the main colony. A complicated logistical ballet was undertaken, and the first exploration team entered, fighting through automated security systems to reach the master control room.   Logs on the main computer were written in a harsh alien tongue, and with some educated guesswork, one, lone, live sample was raised from the deep storage vault below. Encased in a sealed life support unit, the last known survivor of the Slyth species was kept in near-stasis, though still , incrementally succumbing to the horrible plague he had contracted before his internment.   Deciding to undertake the ultimate roll of the dice, @Silvano Mazzio[char], Charles Trivedi, Seung Whittaker, and Valeria Perez decided to wake him, first spending several days developing a vaccine preventing its spread to humans, and then purging it from the alien with the use of psionic disease cleansing techniques. A cosmic amount of luck was with them that day, and after an initial shock, he introduced himself as Gheist, now taking on the name as he was a ghost of his species past.   Gheist talked at length about a civil war in Slyth society, with the rebels unleashing a plague on their homeworld to weaken its defenses before their final attack on the highly fortified planet. The virus was designed to gutter out after a short but powerful infection period, but it did not perform as intended, and quickly the rebels found themselves likewise afflicted.   The loyalist Slyth set up several installations on this world during their own civil war desperately trying to both hide from the rebels, and develop a cure before the affliction found them on Gudrun too. Their luck ran out when a large rebel fleet appeared in orbit. A quick naval battle was fought, the loyalists losing decisively, their wrecks crashing into the northern polar ocean. Rebel assault teams rampaged through the lightly defended research posts, killing everyone, and leaving behind traces of the disease for those their purge had missed.   Gheist and his research team were passed over by the initial purge, though in taking in survivors from other stations, they had likewise contracted the disease. Believed to be one of the last member of his team still alive, he sealed himself in near stasis and waited. It was later revealed that others had survived, and done an alternate plan, downloading themselves into mechanical bodies. Those others headed north, gaining mastery over the helldivers as their 'Central Processors', turning the robot race into their willing tools.   Later exploration of these research stations revealed another of his species, mind transferred into a mechanical snake like body, but had not been permitted to venture north with the others, as his temperament did not allow him to willingly dominate another sentient species. Left behind, locomotion system damaged, he was forced to lie in state, awake for hundreds of years before Greenbriar research teams found him.   Gheist and Jexad both work for the colony today, serving as confidants, xenotech experts, and exceedingly polite sounding boards for ideas. They've developed an especially close relationship with technical prodigy Charles Trivedi.