Preceptor Archive
This article is focused on Mithorous, the planet with the oldest and largest library.
The heart of Mithorous is the Preceptor Archive - a library so massive the island it resides on is a country unto itself. The content within dates back to the Terran Mandate, with information on even Earth's history. It's thanks to this archive that Mithorous was the first among these planets to recreate the technology for spike drives.
Origins
The Preceptor Archive is a massive and ancient library containing every bit of historical data -- both physical and digital -- its Preceptors could get their hands on. During the first and second waves of human colonization of the galaxy, such archives were built on frontier worlds to ensure access to vital information necessary for growing societies. The Preceptor Archive was started by a group knows as Preceptors of the Great Archive, who were devoted to preserving human history and disseminating it across frontier planets. These archives were present on hub worlds across the galaxy, and at the time of this archive's founding, Mithorous was considered the frontier, having only recently been colonized.Though Mithorous is the most heavily populated planet in the Talos sector, with numerous beautiful vistas, vacation spots, academies, and more, the Archive is what it's most known for, and what most assume you'd visit the planet for
By the time of the Scream, Mithorous was well-established but still lacking in many more advanced technological upgrades. This ultimately served to their advantage -- with only a few collections on psitech-based storage, the Archive was able to maintain most of its data through the catastrophe. Once the population recovered, teams of engineers began work deciphering the requirements for spike drives.
The Ransom
In 2837, a well-meaning Preceptor arrived at work with a thrilling new item: a pre-tech data disk shipped in from off-planet. The Archive is one of the few places with the equipment necessary to assess such items. The Preceptor gleefully connected the data disk, opening its contents to explore... and promptly infected the entire Archive with pre-tech ransomware. Within ten minutes, each of the thousand-plus terminals in the Archive displayed a cheerful green emoticon on a black background, demanding an ever-increasing sum of money to free the data held within.Even if the Archive wished to pay, the person meant to receive the money and thus provide the decryption key had likely been dead for at least 150 years. The services advertised to send the payment had been defunct for at least 200. There were simply no means to comply, and the only solution was to hire computational archaeologists to break the encryption the hard way.
Okay, fine. Maybe I should have scanned it for viruses first. But the entire experience was honestly such a good learning opportunity for everybody.
This article is actively under construction and I'm being daring by leaving published while I make edits. You might see half-finished sentences until my updates are complete.
Timeline
Information
The Incursion
During the Legion Incursion on Mithorous, the Preceptor Archive was one of the Legion took control of. This was very similar to how they took over Rada, and it took several years for Preceptors to recover all data thought deleted.Author Commentary
Killed DarlingA mission to help reclaim the Archive from the Legion (or: genegineered soldiers) was a potential for the Night Knights campaign, but ultimately didn't make it in. I'd still love to run it as a mini-campaign.
Comments
Author's Notes
The Preceptors of the Great Archive have a whole paragraph about them on page 149 of the rulebook. I've enjoyed expanding upon that here and with the Preceptor Institute.