Setting Seeds: Dead Space
There are a limitless number of galaxies out there, but they are still but specks in the vast infinity of the void. If your hyperdrive burns out while you’re traveling from one galaxy to another, you’d better hope you can fix it or you’re as good as dead. Hell, if you’re far enough out, it may not even matter. At some point, even the strongest beacon signals will be attenuated beyond recovery and overwhelmed by cosmic noise. Maybe that’s why they call it dead space.
Pirates, corporations and governments alike set up stations in the dead space around galaxies; they’re essentially impossible to find as long as you’re smart and don’t give your position away. They just drift out there in galactocentric orbits and without knowing their location finding one would be like finding a pin encased in the sea bed on a random planet: impossible for all intents and purposes, and damn-likely to get you killed.
Nonetheless, there are those who see something else in dead space: opportunity. The Eitandur, a fabled worldship of the long-extinct Coronathi, was discovered when some archaeologists uncovered some old Coronathi databanks. They told of the Eitandur’s last voyage, where it started and its intended destination. By checking historical records and adjusting for stellar expansion and drift, they got a basic idea of where to try and look.
Of course at the time, given the sheer size of the search area, they estimated it would take 300 to 500 standard years just to have a 5% chance of finding it. No one in their wildest dreams would have imagined that they’d find a chunk of it in just 40 years. We all know how that story turns out, though; first contact with the Scourge, a sixty-year war, and the Daimler Prohibition Edict outlawing any attempt to recover anything from dead space lost for more than twenty standard years.
That doesn’t stop some foolish entrepreneurs (or enterprising fools), though, and quite the black market has developed for ancient artifacts. Coronathi technology may be impossible to reproduce, but it’s easy enough to use and makes even our best attempts look like primitive baby steps. Luckily, no one’s stumbled onto another Scourge infestation since that chunk of the Eitandur. Not yet, at least.
Such a good campaign hook: the PC’s are travelling through hyperspace, and just happen (ah coincidences) to stumble upon some large source of Coronathi technology (perhaps a light ship that could be towed back to somewhere.) Then, pursued by the “mafia” for this new source, the PC’s must utilize the new technology to escape.