Alchemy Engine

"Can you imagine it? Being able to travel from one star to the next as easily as stepping from one paving stone to another? The power must have been... intoxicating, not to mention scattering. Every human deciding to go in a different direction for different reasons. It's truly no wonder that we're still scattered, finding enclaves of ourselves hidden away with some of them not even being aware of what happened to the rest of us."

Once the tool that was going to carry humanity to every edge of the universe, it was also the instrument that would bring about it's fall. The Alchemy Engine, as it was called, was perhaps the first widely used piece of anomalous tech, though it certainly wouldn't be the last.

It operated by punching a hole through the fabric of space, allowing a connection between two points that were otherwise unrelated to be formed and then crossed in an instant. Such rapid transportation facilitated explosive growth across the stars, with Humans rapidly reaching towards the edge of their home galaxy and hungrily eyeing the swirling of others off in the galactic distance. If they reached for those far-off stars, we may never know, for the debt accrued by the Alchemy Engine's use soon came calling.

By punching too many holes in the fabric of reality, and holding nothing back as they did, realspace began to rapidly grow unstable and soon collapsed under its own weight, bringing about what we now call the Visitation. The laws of reality became unmoored, things slipped in, and only after destruction was wrought on a mass scale across the galaxy as a whole did the rules tentatively reassert themselves. Whole planets, even whole solar systems had been consumed by the anomalies, and what had once been a contiguous human empire across the stars was now nothing but scattered grains of san. For centuries, these small little enclaves of humanity existed by themselves, unable to convene with each other even if they wanted to. The Alchemy Engine no longer worked.

After the visitation, to try and spin up the Engine would simply be an invitation for Visitors to appear aboard, or the simple creation of new anomaly fields that would rip the vessel apart. Only in recent years has the Engine been able to be used again, belying a certain amount of healing happening to the fabric of reality, likely in no small part to Thread Engine that was developed to replace the Alchemy Engine.