SOL NIGER’s story begins with a mothership-class spaceship fleeing Earth. On the planet’s surface hunter-killer drones prowl the burning cities for prey. The long dead occupants are all that is left of the once - mighty civilisation. Months of orbital bombardments has finally brought Earth Command to its knees.

Ki’an frigates are soon in hot pursuit of the Ark. From their bases on Mars and Luna - the aliens launch hundreds of pulsar missiles, many of which hit the spaceship’s deflector shields - to intercept the fleeing humans. The spaceship’s shields, however, hold, and the vessel continues in its escape out of the Terran system.

Near Jupiter the situation turns critical as two Ki’an destroyers appear from behind the moon Europa, launch their fighters, and begin emptying their main lasbatteries on the spaceship’s stellar engines and field generators.

The Pentavus, however, is no ordinary stellar vessel. It is the largest and most advanced starcraft Humanity ever constructed. Originally intended for deep space exploration & colonisation, during its construction near the core it was befitted with top-of-the-line system engines, armoured neutrinium hull, and more importantly, the new, and still very experimental, gravitywave drives. A revolutionary new science and way of interstellar travel.

There was no time to make the proper calculations. The Pentavus had to escape or be destroyed. The positronic brain of the android behind the navigation computer simply plotted a course on speculation and pressed ‘enter’.

For a split second nothing happened. The Ki’an vessels kept on firing. Next, suddenly, the universe oscillated – all time stopped, and with a blast of starlight the Pentavus was slingshot out of the Terran system, across the galaxy – where it crashed right into an undiscovered black hole.

This collision, however, didn’t bring about the destruction of the spaceship. Shielded as it was by the gravitywave drive’s temporal graviton field. The black hole swallowed the ship whole to spit it back out through the white hole on the other end. On the receiving side of a white hole, opposite to the black’s, everything (especially energy) is pushed out with range-decreasing force, giving the entity a nova-like appearance.

The Pentavus flew onwards until the human crew awoke from their stasis sleep. When they did a full engine stop was in order. Technomages went to work analysing the ship and its surroundings, and the data from the bumpy journey they’d been through. Their findings were startling. The ship’s computer couldn’t pin-point down their location. It was nowhere in the known galaxy.

When they opened the heat shutters and took a look outside, to their surprise there were no stars to be seen. What they saw was a blue sky surrounding their spaceship. A breathable atmosphere that spanned the entire system. Orbiting Sol Niger – or so the technomages named the black hole sun phenomenon – was a large gaia-class planet with seven moons.

More careful probing of the planet revealed that it was a thriving world home to two alien civilisations. One inhabiting the surface, the another subterranean.

Months of debate followed. What were they to do next? Positions inside the community hardened as arguments intensified. Eventually the once Unisom group of human survivors fell apart into seven fractions. They became not divided by nationality, religion or race, but by ideology. Each fraction had its own beliefs on which future strategy to use in their upcoming struggle for survival.

Eventually, food and water resources became scare onboard, and finally a plan was set into motion. The Pentavus, having built for this purpose, would split up into eight different parts: seven Pentavites, each carrying a likeminded group of humans to a colony site of choice, and the gravitywave engine core, which would stay behind in orbit of the planet. It would become Sol Niger Prime’s eighth moon.

Drones were sent to the planet and its moons and their data on return carefully studied. Then, after a week of preparation, modifications and re-grouping, the first Pentavite detached itself from the mother body. Then another, and another, until only the gravitywave engine core remained with its artificial inhabitants.

Wherever a Pentavites landed, it nested itself within its surroundings to form the core of a first city, and around it new towns soon blossomed. With the new towns, new commerce and trade routes were established.

Sol Niger calls upon you, great leaders of the future, heroes, soldiers, adventures and humans of all kind, to put your hands together and create new hope. For, against all odds, we might not make it, but it is our sacred duty to try!

Intro story: The Journey from Earth World Rules Message Board