The Scream

The Scream refers to the catastrophic event in 2665 which eliminated most psychics throughout known space. It is considered the end of humanities Terran Mandate throughout the known systems and the severing of most communications between sectors. The Scream also eliminated the use of jump gates, cutting off travel and trade throughout most of space.

## History

Later reconstruction of the event places the origin of the scream near the Veil Nebula, in a section of space known to the Terran Mandate as Sector Four. Further investigations have not been deemed practical, due to the rapid collapse of interstellar travel and ensuing chaos.

A massive wave of metadimmensional psychic energy washed over known space in the span of several seconds. Spike drive craft in interdimmensional space were annihilated instantly, while every psychic immediately suffered massive psychic burnout. The majority died instantly from this event, though a recorded handful lingered for days to years in the grip of an incurable madness.

The Scream resulted in the almost immediate collapse of the Terran Mandate. Without the massive reserves of psychics to run the jump gates, each system was instantly cut off from its neighbors. Trade and transportation ceased to exist. Colonies, habitats, and even worlds which relied on the bulk product of the agricultural belt in Sectors One and Four were left starving within months, while shipyards broke into chaos over fighting for the remaining commissioned (and decommissioned) spike drive ships, then an almost-obsolete technology.

The three hundred years following the Scream is known as the Silence. Frontier regions on the edges of known space were forced to supply themselves without shipments of vital trade from other worlds. Habitats, dependent on other systems, went dark. Communication outposts and relays lost all function, and the systems largely went silent. Countless humans died as the human space empire collapsed. The lack of trade and almost complete loss of metadimmensional professionals rendered most efforts to rebuild higher technology useless. Those few worlds that were able to self-sustain or construct spike drive ships began the slow process of rebuilding and reconnecting to other systems. Most found silence where once were allies. Others found new voices besides humans. New psychic were born, though without people to train them.

The Silence was largely considered to be ended in Sector Seven (without the Terran Mandate, now referred to only as the Sector) in 2989 with the contracts created between the leaders of Venoa in the Emissary System and the engineers in the Aether System. The former offered large archives of pre-tech knowledge and the largest population of surviving humanoids in the sector, while the latter offered the largest known fleet of spike drive ships and the knowledge to maintain them. This began a halting reconnection and expansion throughout the sector with other surviving segments of humanity.

Cause

No cause is known for the origin of the scream. The enormous space between it's origin point and the current sector make research impossible, as all those affected by it are all long dead. Expeditions have been proposed towards the direction of space previously known as Terran Mandate Sector Four, but the extreme amount of time required to navigate that space, even with a spike drive, would need multiple generations. Research is ongoing.

## Ongoing Cultural Effects

Venoan mandates require at least one non-psychic human involved in the planet's record retention and metadimmensional physics research teams to prevent catastrophic loss of knowledge and technology from occurring should the event repeat itself.

Due to the impacts cause by maddened scream-affected individuals during the Silence, the culture of the Aether system is highly aggressive towards psychics. According to internal records, most are ejected from the system or, in previous times, culled. While the systems contact with other locations, such as the Emissary system, have slowly reduced this sentiment over time, the anti-psychic bias is still very strong.

## Effects on Other Sentient Species

Cetaceans located on Venoa were also effected by the Scream, though mortality was much lower due to the proportional ratio of psychics in its population.

Aandrisk, unable to develop MES or any known form of psychic abilities, reported no knowledge of the event. However, several small populations of prey animals nearly went extinct during the known timeline on Hashkath in the Reskit System. Ecology studies are ongoing.