Nevermind

Quarantined World 4437T0, better known as **Nevermind**, is a planet located in the central southern portion of the Spur Trinity in the Milky Way Galaxy. Though it appears to be nothing more than a barren rock world, Nevermind has gained a large reputation in the Coalition of Intelligent Organisms thanks to a very strange and very dangerous anomalous property.

## The "Nevermind" Mental Degradation Anomaly

In the late 7600s, Coalition media started to become saturated with reports of large amounts of missing spacecraft in an area of space frequently traveled by traders, explorers and field agents working for the Department of Galactic Sciences. At first, nobody thought anything major of it, as such disappearances were very common during that time. Marauding space pirates, hostile space-borne alien lifeforms or enigmatic Technomage cults were all frequent encounters outside of core Coalition territory, and any unprepared traveler could fall prey to them. As the reports continued, however, they became more precise and detailed, centering the disappearances down on the unremarkable Planet 4437T0. At this point, the Authority Sector had become very interested in these events, and even attempted to send a few scouts to the planet in question, believing it to be some sort of pirate base or other haven for troublemakers. When none of their scouts reported back, the Authority Sector contacted the DGS to help them with the investigation. A large science team was sent to the general region of the planet, with orders to carefully monitor anything that could cause any sort of ship to go missing. Only a single research vessel managed to make it back to Coalition space. The ship itself was mostly intact, but its crew was in an awful state. Most of them seemed to have regressed to a state of primitive aggression, acting like wild animals and killing other crew members. A single crew member, who had just barely hung on to their ability to talk, stated that the ship's entire crew had started to slowly lose their capacity for rational upper thought the moment they drew close to the planet. The crew member that gave this report, somehow, experienced these symptoms slower than the rest of the crew, and, in a last ditch effort, activated the ship's Fold Drive and made it back into Coalition space before they forgot how to use the ship's navigation consoles. It was determined that the missing ships had all fallen victim to the same strange effect, having their crews reduced to brainless savages and left to drift aimlessly in space. The world was quarantined, and a public announcement was released, informing the entire Coalition populace about the dangers of the area near the planet and urging them to avoid it at all costs. It was officially classified as a quarantined world, though by that point, rumors and legends about the planet that turns people into beasts had already culminated to give it a different name; Nevermind.

From what the DGS was able to discern through multiple short and poorly-controlled experiments, Nevermind projects some sort of field around it that affects the mind of any intelligent being within 4-5 light-years of the planet, withering away their capacity for higher brain function and eventually reducing them to a primal state of mind through unknown means. Many Coalition scientists agree that Nevermind's area of influence is slowly growing with each passing year. This effect tends to vary from person to person, and acts slower on races that are generally more intelligent to begin with (such as Syluxians or Nyuuvians). AI and other artificial beings are affected, as well, though not in the same way as biological beings. While they do experience mental degradation, this is mostly to the end of making AIs useless pieces of dead code that can't perform any real functions, rather than reverting them to their bestial instincts like organics. These effects become stronger the closer a person is to Nevermind itself. Regressing to animal-like behavior can take a week or more at the furthest extent of Nevermind's influence, while taking only a few hours within a light-year or so near the planet. This has made it very difficult for researchers to do any major study of the planet itself, as its effects manifest too quickly (in matters of minutes, usually) when strikingly close to the planet for data to be collected.

## Interactions With the Coalition

Even after it was quarantined, the DGS (and many hapless explorers and thrill-seekers) still tried to learn more about Nevermind and its effects. Research ships were occasionally sent near the planet in attempts to measure and analyze its anomalous properties, though most of these excursions ended in either total failure or, if they did succeed, didn't provide any helpful information. Nevermind's anomalous effect couldn't be detected or measured by any scientific equipment, and testing its effects using the crews of research ships was dangerous and difficult to control, especially since restoring a person's old state of mind after they had experienced Nevermind's effects proved to be almost impossible.

The creation of ILMs during the Galactic Revolution was the turning point for the Nevermind investigations. While still not immune, ILMs were much more resistant to Nevermind's effects than any other being the Coalition had tested previously, making them perfect for more detailed observations on the planet. A ship containing a network of interlinked ILMs was sent to Nevermind's orbit to take pictures of the planet's surface. They were only able to spend an hour in planetary orbit before the ship had to retreat, but what they found was very astonishing to the entire Coalition scientific community. Nevermind was a fairly plain rock world, but it was dotted with several extremely large, black sphere-shaped objects that appeared to be artificial in design. A second observation confirmed this, and made many Coalition scientists theorize that the spheres (which were most likely the source of Nevermind's anomalous effects) were the creation of the Tuoctlo, built as a sort of superweapon. Alas, even with the help of ILMs, further investigation of Nevermind (including actual planetary landings to study the spheres up close) was impossible, causing the actual inner workings of the planet to forever remain a mystery.

Shortly after its anomalous effects were confirmed and the quarantine was put into place, the Bedlam Society became interested in Nevermind. Being a Zetylian-run organization, the Society was always looking for potential threats to the safety of their species, and an alien superweapon was no exception. They used their influence to encourage further investigation by the DGS, even despite the inherent danger the planet posed to researchers. The Bedlam Society, in fact, sought to reverse-engineer the Tuoctlo technology so as to secretly develop their own weaponized version of Nevermind's anomalous properties. Unfortunately for them, the effects proved too potent for any serious reverse-engineering to take place, preventing the Bedlam Society from ever exploiting it for their own purposes.