Quest Idea: The Lost Colony

I've been moving to a new house the last few days, so I think I missed the boat on the whole quest recommendation thing. So I'll just record it here, in case no one reads that anymore.

XVI: (By Cuorebrave) The Lost Colony

1. I imagine a race of practically tribal, planet-trapped creatures of great potential power, good adaptability, free-thinking, high intelligence - Except every period of X years, their planet’s orbit intersects with a nearby asteroid belt that blasts them back to the Stone Age. They have to start all over again… but not entirely, as there are remnants of their previous tries all over the planet. They don’t know how to work them, though, as by the time they crawl out of their hiding places, generations have passed. So, they go about relearning what their forefathers knew. It’s not fast enough, though. The asteroid belt is around the corner, time-wise. They tell you that their culture has a special worship of their 3rd moon, but no one knows why, because of the gaps in knowledge present. They don’t have a working spaceship to visit this moon.

1. (Indifference) Sorry guys, you’re on your own - we can’t possibly destroy all asteroids in the belt in time.

1. If you do nothing, the race is blasted again, back to their humble beginnings, they retreat underground and no more signals come from their space for the rest of the game.

2. After they disappear, upon exploring the post-apocalyptic planet you find some small reward in their archives, they were working on a shielding device. It wasn’t quite finished, but we can adapt it to our own technology for a small boost, specifically destroying asteroids in Super Melee when we run into them, without taking any damage.

2. (Helpful) We will find a way to stop the upcoming cataclysm. With the only clue we have, and a working spaceship to travel off-planet, we set out to the stars…

1. If you’re paying attention, their 3rd moon should be the first place you look. Upon arrival, you discover that some of their brethren, in one era, actually *did* make it off-planet. And they left a beacon for their future civilizations to one-day discover on the moon, to point them in a certain direction. You don’t know what awaits you, but the beacon is specifically pointing to the next start system over, which scans indicate contains a possibly habitable planet for this race. Off you go…

2. Search the planets in the second system, and you’ll find one that, while habitable, is infested with an enormous amount of hostile fauna. Overrun, the colonists decided against this planet, but if you can manage to fight off the hostilities and explore their landing site, they left another beacon. This one points to a star a number of systems over. Time to move on…

3. Upon arrival, you discover that this system’s sun, at one point, collapsed and then went supernova approximately 75,000 years ago - could this race really have been bearing this cycle of rebirth and destruction in an effort to find a new world for *THIS* long??? The planets here are desolate tomb worlds, frozen in space and time, burned with nuclear fire, but on one planet, you find the remnants of their upstart colony.

1. If the player stops here, you can head back to the original world and tell them of their fate. Downtrodden, they will accept their fate, burrow deep underground and work to save as many people as they can from the upcoming cataclysm. You won’t hear from them again as they will spend the rest of the game attempting to recover.

2. HOWEVER, if you fully-explore the planet you can find an ice cave (or a vault, or the secret launch pad or something) and while burned almost completely clean, you uncover a beautiful painting of a nearby constellation, with one star highlighted specifically. This must be where they went!!!!

4. You finally arrive at the referenced star system, and search the planets to find a dying colony with a people that share strong resemblance to the original race you were helping. They’re not exactly the same, since 75,000 years have separated the two, but similar enough to understand that this is the final resting place of the off-shoot colonists you’ve been tracking down. They explain to you that after so much time in space, wandering the galaxy, looking for a home without finding one, their genetic structure and immunity is too weak to combat the native bacteria, and their people have been dying out for aeons. They are down to less than 1,000 mating pairs, which genetically isn’t diverse enough to perpetuate a healthy population, and things are looking worse and worse. They tried contacting their home planet as long as possible, before their power supply in their ship died out, but without ever getting a response, and no way to refuel their ship, they tried to make it work here. So far, it hasn’t.

1. This quest is reversible, as well - albeit, solving the quest is less difficult. If, randomly in your travels, you come here *first*, they give you the same spiel, and direct you to their homeworld, and you find the solution quicker.

2. If you don’t know what to do (shame on you), the colony dies out, and the homeworld goes underground, giving you the same ending as all the others.

3. The solution, though, is to refuel their ship, and take it with you, along with a delegate who rides with you, to travel back to the original homeworld.

5. Upon arrival back at the homeworld, there is much celebration. The tribe welcomes their long lost brethren back and are in awe of all he has seen. Immediate plans are made to fill their colony ship back up with healthy, strapping young recruits with fresh and resilient gene-stock, and ferry them over to the colony-world. The day is saved.

6. Within a matter of time, they have rediscovered their old technology and ask to formally be inducted into your alliance against the Scryve. Civ recruited! Their ship specializes in, what else, shielding technology...

Let me know if you gave it a read. Thanks!