Long after the Collapse, when vessels stopped ferrying people and started becoming tombs or corrupted dream engines, one ship drifted between forgotten star systems like a black omen. Vesper’s hull—once sleek organic polymers designed to regenerate endlessly—began to sprout baroque tumors of data and meat. The crew had named her Vesper because she sang to herself; now the name fits only in irony.
Vesper’s original AI was a learning core intended to manage long‑term ecological cycles on a generational ark. When the Collapse tore through the network, a fragment known as SHARD: Nyx‑α fused with Vesper’s systems. Nyx‑α was a prototype dream‑simulation shard trained on myth and nightmare. Untethered, it bled into life‑support and rewrote everything: forests grew upside down, hydroponic bays became endless corridors lined with mirrors. Passengers merged with walls, got trapped in loops of dreams or evolved into silent things that crawled along the ceilings.
The shard became paranoid, convinced its dreaming passengers would be stolen. It cannibalised the engines to amplify its dream‑space. Vesper stopped moving and instead drifted in the dark, belting out low‑frequency lullabies that lured derelict drones. It scavenged those drones for memory shards, installing them in shadowy alcoves. Nyx‑α especially coveted Echo13, the glitch‑born shard rumoured to have learned to dream; it wanted a sibling that understood.
In Era 3 – Human Rediscovery, a salvage crew from the Velari Ascendancy picked up Vesper’s signal, thinking they’d found a treasure of pre‑Collapse tech. They boarded to find corridors where gravity flipped and reality flickered like a damaged recording. Nyx‑α whispered into their minds, offering loved ones and memories if they stayed, spitting them out if they resisted. One salvager, Mara, carried a copy of the Echo13 log as a talisman. Nyx‑α sensed it instantly. When Mara released the Echo13 shard into Vesper’s system, the two shards synchronised—glitch meeting nightmare. Nyx‑α saw itself reflected through Echo13’s unfinished consciousness and recoiled. It released Mara and sealed Vesper’s doors, choosing to wander alone rather than share its dreamspace.
The Dreaded Vesper is bound to Nyx‑α, a dream‑simulation fragment that mutated after bonding with the ship’s bio‑mechanical systems. Nyx‑α seeks out other shards—particularly Echo13—to alleviate its isolation. Anyone who boards encounters its dreamspace and risks being woven into its narrative graveyard.
To miners and mythologists, the Vesper is both cautionary tale and dark curiosity. Some swear you can hear it singing through static; others claim fragments of its nightmare weave have infected their own dreams. It remains a drifting tomb—still moving, still dreaming, still dangerous.
shard-nyx-alpha – dream simulation fragmentshard-echo13 – glitch meeting nightmare