Fear the Dark Forest, for its depths cannot be fathomed. - The Tale of a Trinacornagon

"The gaze of the Watchful Eye still tracks beyond the Inner Boundary, but it is weakened. Hyperspace changes from its smooth stable flow in the core worlds, ripples and waves more common. If you travel further out still the turbulence only increases until the chaos would rip apart any material vessel that dared trespass into its treacherous waters, disintegrating it into a shower of anti-matter that promptly ceases to exist entirely.

Those pampered children frolicking in their gardens at the centre of the galaxy have long since forgotten the true nature of space. They say that they guard the Watchful Eye from those that dared tamper with it, as if it were even possible for such a thing. Lecturing from their high horse of their solemn duty and the heavy burden of responsibility.

Perhaps once they too were predators in this Dark Forest, hunting for scraps lest they be hunted themselves. But they have withered and atrophied into something far worse. Something terrible. Puppets of the Forest itself, consigned to its bidding. Stifling the development of those who come after, strangling this entire galaxy, sentencing it to a slow death.

They are no better than scavengers and ruin-hunters, relying on relics of a bygone era to uphold their transparent tenets. A bygone era they claim to have ushered in themselves. They lie. Their fortune shall be their downfall, for the Dark Forest has no need for the weak and passive. False kings who wear crowns of rust and proclaim it gold.

The Watchful Eye, in its apathetic benevolence, grants them a bubble of serenity and they believe that it shall last an eternity. Fools, the lot of them. There is no such thing as absolute power, no such thing as absolute technology. The only absolute in this universe is the malicious intent of the Dark Forest itself.

Whether in ten thousand years or a million, even their indestructible utopia shall fall. A thousand Empires have called themselves eternal, yet to ask of where they went is to question the dust that floats between stars.

For all their hubris, we would leave them to such a fate. It is far less than they deserve. But when apocalypse comes for them, and it will, it shall come for us all. I cannot accept such an outcome, as mere casualties to the idiocy of those prideful fools. Higher races who claim to have ascended past the barbarity of war.

What a pathetic ideal. More than pathetic, it is perhaps the most dangerous ideal of all. It is the ideal of those who have languished and rotted at the top of the food chain for far too long.

Their scientists speak of the absolute certainty of the protection of the Watchful Eye, of the infinitesimal chance of its failure or its sabotage. What they fail to comprehend, or perhaps what they have long since forgotten, is that all things are inevitable.

Nothing lasts forever, preserved in its original state. It can only change, adapt to the times, or be swept away by the inexorable power of the tides of extinction. It may be that one has changed oneself to such an extent so as to be completely unrecognisable from what one was before. Mutant in shape, character, function, perspective. Something entirely new.

Perhaps that is no different from extinction after all.

But it is not in our nature to give up. Even a fish flounders when taken out of the sea, so are we to simply close our eyes and accept our demise? Acceptance is the first step on the path to stagnation. And stagnation is the greatest sin in this galaxy. That is what they are guilty of, not just stagnation but its enforcement on the rest of us.

They would never admit it, but they fear us. It is the fear of the usurper, who knows the illegitimacy of his power and so is perpetually paranoid of it being taken away. They cover that paranoia with pomp and splendor, parades of the marvels of their technology. But polishing a statue over and over will not build it anew. They have had no progress in hundred thousand years.

The stories of old, of Starships whose very names echoed with the weight of their destiny, are long gone and forgotten. But we are not ones to take that same fate of oblivion lying down. If the flame has waned, then we shall ignite it with the very embers of our being, sacrificing everything in our bid for survival and prosperity.

No-one, not even they, have the right to take it from us. And so we leave the hollow paradise behind and venture forth into the Dark Forest. This is to be our last transmission.

We do not expect to convince you to join us, to take up arms in a hot-blooded crusade. This final message is nothing more than a whim on our part. That perhaps, among the myriad peoples, there may even be a few who understand. This message is for them.

Utopia is a lie. The only truth is annihilation. And that the stars speak in riddles, for those who listen."

- Last official transmission from [redacted] of the [redacted]

This was not, in fact, the last recorded transmission from the [redacted]. Almost half a century after their abrupt disappearance from the galactic stage, a garbled transmission so weak as to barely be able to be distinguished from the cosmic background was picked up by several autonomous deep space probes as well as a Station 47-Delta.

The deep space probes merely logged it in their data banks as a potential anomaly to be reviewed, while the actions of the crew of Station 47-Delta are more pertinent here. As a disclaimer, the subsequent events that are described have been forensically pieced together from available data. An accuracy of 99.999% has been estimated for this recreation:

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