The darkness between worlds has teeth.
In the year 1913 Ralph Neville made an ill-fated Icelandic expedition to explore what he believed to be a possible Viking archaeological site. Believing he'd discovered some sort of port on the edge of the mountains on the Snæfellsnes peninsula, he hired a local team to excavate the site. After digging for several weeks he made a final radio communication about the onset of a strange storm, and then contact with his expedition ceased.
In 1930, a team led by Neville's sister, Rose, undertook an expedition to return to his last given location. Upon arrival they discovered the half excavated site but no trace of Neville or his expedition team. What they found at the dig astounded them — a set of stone buildings carved into a mountainside covered in Viking runic inscriptions.
Within the subterranean rooms was a grand hall with murals depicting strange beings using magical Items of Power to change the alignment of heavenly bodies around a square sun. On an altar in the room they found a set of metal artefacts that appeared to be related to the calculation of the position of objects in space. They realised to their amazement that this was an observatory. Incredibly, the objects seemed to be set up to calculate the position of Deimos, one of the moons of Mars — an object that was only identified by modern astronomy some fifty years prior to the dig.
Further down the corridor, the images and runes became more troubling. Along with more images of objects of power were warnings depicting hideous creatures being unleashed upon the world. It seemed that the Vikings believed the artefacts were once stolen from a powerful daemon called Dagon and then used against him to banish him and his army of ghoulish creatures. The runes warned that in the wrong hands these tools could be used to summon him and release his hordes on the world once again.
Finally, in the last room was the remains of a large vessel, like a longboat but fully sealed and with unusual metallic fins in place of the sails. Alongside the ship they found intricate diagrams describing the method for building these ships and claimed they were able to sail to the stars.
Rose Neville returned from her expedition and immediately gained a patron in Sir Benjamin Eccles, a wealthy businessman who claimed he wanted to be the first to lay claim to the bounty that the space trade had to offer. They set to work restoring the starship from the remains and designs, naming her Inertia and putting together the crew she needed to explore the cosmos in search of the source of the alluring power depicted on the walls of that sinister star port in Iceland.
Expedition leader. Sister of the lost explorer Ralph Neville.
Engineer. The first to join the crew.
A famed ocean navigator.
Ex-army captain.
Professor of antiquities and expert in the supernatural.
Wealthy patron and businessman.
The night before departure, the deeply spiritual Amelia performed a simple tarot reading for each member of the expedition, to reveal their innermost desires. During each reading, the member of the expedition experienced a vision of one of the Items of Power seen in the murals in the observatory.
Inertia set off on her maiden voyage to Deimos, but was thrown wildly off course by a strange celestial storm. The crew was all rendered unconscious by the incident, and awoke to find themselves in an unfamiliar solar system orbiting a square sun.
Taking one of the artefacts from the dig each, the crew decided to split up to search for more evidence of Viking exploration and the artefacts detailed at the site in Iceland.
Using the exploration pods included in the ship's design, the crew split up to investigate and search for a way for them all to get home safely. But privately, each member of the team burns with desire for the object shown to them in their vision, and knows this is their opportunity to claim it.