Lore

The following text below is the current lore to Cosmodread. Please keep in mind these are **SPOILERS** and it is recommended you play through Cosmodread yourself to learn the story as you progress

**Background:**

Cosmodread takes place in the year 2060, in an alternate timeline. In this timeline, early Apollo astronauts discover water on the moon, and an international effort is launched to colonize it. As a result, the settlement of "Luna" is built in 1972, and over the next decades it becomes the key stepping stone that allows human exploration of the entire solar system. Most of this exploration is done by the MOSS Corporation, a private space company based on the moon that overtime grows to become a near monopoly, thanks to their control of this key chokepoint.

**The Phobos Discovery:**

In 2051, MOSS discovers an anomaly in the Martian moon of Phobos, and sends a manned mission to explore it. The mission ends in disaster when astronaut Joseph Santos becomes deranged and murders a crewmate, but it still proves the existence of alien vestiges and that Phobos itself is of artificial origin. As a result, MOSS decides to send a research ship to uncover and salvage the alien artifacts, with the aim of commercializing whatever new technology they can find.

**The MCS Nectaris:**

The research ship "MCS Nectaris" is where the game takes place. MOSS sends this ship to Phobos in 2058 to act as an orbital laboratory. They promptly set up a dig site on the Martian moon and begin excavating and transferring artifacts back to the ship, researching them and building prototypes of new technology (such as the teleporter grenade or the invisibility cloak the player can find and use). One of these artifacts is the "Phobian Drive", a device that could allow a ship to instantaneously "jump" across space and achieve faster than light speeds.

**The Accident (*SPOILERS*):**

In 2060, the Phobian Drive activates on its own and sends the Nectaris to an unknown location, next to a floating space creature of giant proportions. This causes major damage to the ship and to the drive itself and results in the death of part of the crew, and the release of an alien biohazard. The player, an unnamed MOSS employee, is approaching the ship in a shuttle at the time of the event, and is dragged along with it and hurt in the process. They are placed on an hibernator for a few days.

Meanwhile, the surviving crew works on fixing both the ship and the drive, and on containing the organic infestation that has started to spread through the unpowered areas. A medical officer discovers that the infestation tissue is vulnerable to UV light, but because of the critical energy levels in the ship, and the need to prioritize the work on the drive, they can't keep the lights on everywhere in order to stop it. Soon, they start receiving attacks from unknown, strange creatures coming out of the infested areas, and more crew members go missing. To fight them off, the survivors activate defense turrets and security drones. They also discover that the alien infestation is repurposing the dead and missing crew's organic tissue in order to expand and create more creatures.

By the end of it, it's revealed that the engineer responsible for fixing the Phobian drive has been sabotaging the repairs and removed its fuel cells, due to her believing that the drive itself is alive, that its activation was intentional, and that taking the infested ship back home wouldn't be safe for the people there. It's implied that the ship's captain kills her for it, but the remaining survivors aren't able to complete the repairs before succumbing to the alien creatures.

The player (patient 247) wakes up at an indeterminate time after all the other crew are already dead, and manages to fight off the creatures enough as to complete the drive repairs, jump the Nectaris back to Earth orbit, and escape the ship onboard a shuttle. This, however, proves to be a bad idea, since the giant space creature follows through the jump, and it's shown attacking and possibly destroying Earth at the end of the game.