What do you think is happening at the outer edges of the solar system as the Dreadnaught passes? Are they already harvesting beings to form their army? Destroying everything they can reach? Are they running silent, with seething rituals preparing Oryx for conquest? Tell us what you think, even better, maybe give us a glimpse of how those ideas might take shape! Here's an idea of mine, involving an enclave of Awoken who have avoided the war through distance, until now. [b]Neutral Parties: The Fall of Sedna[/b] When the darkness came, we fled. We didn't wait for stragglers, we didn't help others who were struggling, we watched ships break and burn. When the light of the sun had faded, and the last red sensor echoes were distant memories, it finally seemed safe. Strange things happened out there, not always the same for everyone, but with the same results, we became something more than human, more than terrestrial life, some say. The Awoken thrived in isolation, building small empires around trans-Neptunian objects of little previous note, but some of us preferred the way things were when the ships had first arrived, quiet and still, we made our home on Sedna. In history, Sedna was an academic footnote, discovered and disregarded in a relatively short period, the only remarkable thing about it being its extremely distant but stable orbital path, during the "Golden Age", plans existed to use the dwarf planet as a pitstop for ships leaving the solar system. We used the data from their probes to choose this place, its rocky composition was rich in frozen water and hydrocarbons, which made achieving sustainability easy. Once our physical needs had been met, and Sedna had been completely colonized, we dismantled our ships and settled into quiet lives of meditation and study. Mara Sol came to us, war drums beating, but no one answered her call, was this the right choice? She destroyed Ceres, killed a fallen Kell, and conquered the asteroid belt, but I wonder what she will do when she faces a being that calls itself a God. It has haunted our dreams as it draws closer, some have been consumed by madness, others have taken their own lives rather than see another vision of horror. Worst are the screams, whenever you're alone, whenever its quiet, you can hear the victims, all of them, fearful and utterly alien. The ghosts of a thousand worlds claw at the edges of my mind and tell me there is no hope, and as the hours pass, I find myself whispering back to them, "I know." The ship is almost here, a catacomb, a charnel house, a cesspool, and a temple all at once. It is larger than Sedna, larger than anything I have seen since we passed Neptune so long ago, and it doesn't seem to drive forwards as much as it seems to... [i]ooze[/i]. I am the last, the others are all gone, by their own hands or mine they greeted silence with relief, but when I tried to join them, I found I could not. My blood drained away, my flesh tore, my heart stopped, but I did not die. The last thing I remember feeling, was fear. I don't remember how Sedna looked as it died, I don't remember kneeling for the first time before Oryx, all that remains is the knowledge I have gained, the true meaning of life. [b]It ends.[/b] Extras: For those who aren't astronomy geeks, Sedna is a dwarf planet far beyond the orbit of Pluto, with an orbit around the sun that is measured in thousands of years, depending on who is interpreting the data, it is either a "scattered disc object" or the first confirmed body belonging to the theoretical "oort cloud". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna