Created by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane on Aug 16, 2016 @ 2:52pm

THE END OF DAYS CAMPAIGN

The END OF DAYS campaign was a series of interlinked stories written by the crew of the USS Discovery in 2005-2006 during the time of the 1st edition FRPG. It was the first attempt at integrating a metaplot into the ongoing storyline of one roleplaying unit (previous metaplots, such as the Seventh War and the Romulan Incursion, had been fleet-wide events).

Set in the year 2420, while the USS Discovery was in the middle of its five-year exploration mission through the deadworlds of the Beta Quadrant, the End of Days told the broad story of the Discovery's hunt for mysterious artifacts called the Celestial Tears. These ancient artifacts were reputed to have been created by an angelic race of beings in order to give eternal life to whoever ingested one, and stories of the power of the Tears had woven themselves into the fabric of many warp-capable species of the Beta Quadrant.

First encountering the story of the Celestial Tears after a terrifying away mission aboard a deserted drifting starship ("Space Hulk"), the Discovery's crew gained more concrete information when they made First Contact with the Sislek Solar Commonwealth and its primary species - the serpentine Sislek. The friendly and inquisitive Sislek had been conducting their own research into the Tears, noting that the locations of their reputed appearances over the centuries were now deadworlds littered with traces of long-extinct chronoton fields.

Travelling to the mysterious jungle moon of Enkadus, the Discovery made First Contact with the Enkadi, a race of small lizardines who were mighty telepaths ("Under A Blood Red Sky"). The Enkadi possessed one of the Celestial Tears that was housed in a strange jungle ziggurat. After successful diplomatic efforts, the crew of the Discovery managed to see the Tear - contrary to the legend, the Celestial Tears were small chronoton generators, capable of being remotely programmed to open up holes in time. The Enkadi's entire culture was based around waiting for the return of the angelic aliens who deposited the Tear in their jungle ziggurat, and they were struck by how closely Humans resembled these beings. They directed the Discovery towards the Danus system, where the Tears were said to originate, but warning them that the area was ravaged by bloodthirsty Norlak pirates.

Reaching the Danus system, the Discovery found that Danus V was hidden behind a powerful planetary shield. Shortly after their arrival, they were detected by the Norlak, who began to amass a flotilla to attack the Federation starship. The crew of the Discovery raced against time to penetrate the planetary shield before being attacked, and finally unlocked the secrets of the Danusian civilisation, gaining one of the precious Tears in the process. The Danusians were the 'angelic aliens' responsible for creating the Celestial Tears. They were masters of time, using the Tears to create timeholes into the pasts of many worlds where they influenced the development of many proto-species across the galaxy. Unfortunately for them, a cataclysm had sundered their civilisation millenia ago, and those Danusians who survived it used their timeholes to escape throughout history.

Soon afterward, the Norlak pirates attacked the Discovery. After a fierce battle, the starship was crippled and her crew abandoned her for the relative safety of the planet's surface. Unfortunately, the Norlak did not take prisoners, killing every last one of the crew of the Discovery who managed to escape.

There was one sole survivor, however. Captain Kane had remained aboard, intending to go down with his ship, but as the self-destruct sequence counted down its last seconds, he managed to interface with the Celestial Tear they had recovered and created a timehole somewhere into Earth's distant past. As the Discovery was destroyed in a fireball, he threw himself into the timehole.

The END OF DAYS campaign had come to a tragic end with the loss of the Discovery and the deaths of almost all her crew, but the story was not yet over...