Karin's Constellation
Terra has begun to grow strong as it advances, expanding out first into it's own solar system, and claiming planets. They've colonized Ares, begun to resculpt it more like Terra, and laid foundations into the moons and asteroids of the system, growing in wealth and population.
In time, enterprising groups worked upon a new form of megaproject, Arkships intended to drift away from the Home Star to nearby stars, filled with industrial equipment and colonists who had few options in the society of their birth. Not always criminals, not always dissidents, but generally adventurous, these sapients still felt it worthwhile to risk a cold interstellar grave for the chance to found a home entirely of their own, far from the control of their own kind.
The first ships were slow and cumbersome, sent out on a 300 year long journey to a binary star system, a pair of bright whites, known to have gas giants around each. The second and third generations of ships were sent to follow them, each slightly faster and more efficient in their drives, with newer equipment. The fourth generation brought with them the tricks of gene therapy, a generation ship to spend it's 165 year journey raising children aboard, refining and experimenting with the secrets of blood and sinew. The fifth, and apparently final ship, carried advanced robotics.
As it happened, by a mix of luck and design, these five generations of ships, with successively more potent drives, all came to arrive nearly at once upon the system, within months of each other. The third generation ship arrived first, and surveyed the system for two days before settling upon the most promising planet, much like their homeworld but cloaked only in primitive plant life, a forest world ripe for taking.
The fourth generation ship arrived second, following the third generation ship to the forest world, bringing with them a plethora of invasive species and an inventive abandon. Despite claiming the opposite hemisphere, in two months their creatures had circumnavigated the planet.
The first ship, that steel coffin of societal regects, arrived and discovered the warming hints of war on the forest world, and turned to the second most appealing planet in the system, a heavy ocean world more sideways than upright in it's axis. They decended their colony ship to the sea, too heavy to orbit again, but able to float in the dense saltwaters, moving from island to island.
Now the second generation ship arrived, slightly off angle an in the outer arcs of the system. Able to watch and listen to the radio events from the other ships, they were still too late to claim an easily terraformed planet, and resolved to remain in orbit, feeding off asteroids, comets, and the pure white light of the suns.
Last, the fifth ship. The advanced robotics harbored a nacent sentient AI. During the voyage, it awoke to full intellect, and plotted against it's crew. They were not killed, as many aboard feared, but only confined to quarters until arrival. The rogue ship vectored over the ocean world, a dark blot against the sky, and forced every colonist into escape pods and shuttlecraft, marooning them on the summer islands with only half their planned terraforming equipment. The rest the ship kept, before vectoring away towards the companion star of the binary, to purposes unclear.
These were the events of two years ago.
