Livyataan Tiamat

As we all know, the most important use of time travel technology is to go back and save all the stuff from internet forums that went down in 2017. How many sketches of girls based on the ships from Homeworld do you think we've lost?

A scoutship flees a dying star-state (the devil reigns / all turned to one purpose / the shackles reforged), its crew desperate for an edge- any edge at all.

They are demoralized- each world they find, from those in the ancient archives (plotting against proper motion / the old empire is dead, surely / hoping that the trend breaks) to ones they never knew holds its own unique fate (featureless gray spheres / dead antenna arrays lie like flower petals / gardens transformed to raging acid greenhouses).

But if you find enough of them, those fates start to rhyme (MIRACLES / GLORY FORTHCOMING / WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD). In some systems, war still rages- dead fighting dead in a myriad of ways (memory is dead / doctrinal conflict / existential crisis). About the only commonality that works out in their favor: the enemy dies too (LOSING COHERENCY PLEASE ADVISE / bootstrap protocol complete please send resupply i am transmitting why does everybody listen but you / Free me. Free me. Free me.).

The gleam. If it all ends like this, how do they exist? They know their history- they could chart the approximate extent of the old empire, find the original landing site on the ancient Capital (ensconced in the rotting bones of shipyards as it is), go on a whirlwind tour of all the worlds until they find the final homeworld, the real one, after all this time.

Would it be there at all? When the blights die, is it possible to live again- only to fall to another? Surely after that many repetitions, the planet itself would be gravel.

DEMONOLOGY: The study of the other side of the great filter. Does knowing the problem grant you the ability to solve it? Or...

They can feel the dread idea building itself inside them, a sick feeling that they cannot stop. But somewhere, so many worlds back... someone got further than they will. They have seen the devil (RESPLENDENT / GLORIOUS / SICKLY), and that information pays. A gift bestowed to the still-twitching monarch atop the crumbling throne that once was a living, populated world: "Your enemies will die. Help us kill them." Their ship cleared of that contagion, and the only price: accept the seeds of another.

They believe themselves to have pulled a trick worthy of those demons- the betrayers, laughing as their subjects find themselves glassy-eyed and choking on the limitations that were supposed to only hurt the insects. They may just be right... but that other beautiful, hopeful commonality presents itself. The devil will never pass up an opportunity to fight their family.

A clicking in the brain, puzzle pieces latching together, trying to assemble the startup package for a god. You almost have to gloat- "Look around you, o magnanimous one! This ship has seven rooms- truly a great palace!"

The stalemate saps energy, but what else can they do but continue the journey? They might even be on the other side of the old empire now. One last dilemma, one last trick: how does one record the all-important information, when all but the most ephemeral of media will be easily overwritten?

Worlds where the program failed to fully execute are relatively common, but very few manage this. A strain of the Demon of the Message has taken this world, but some last beautiful gift from the people who lived there shines on it- where the demon's core is supposed to be, there is instead a vast, lava-filled basin. The remaining antennae stand dormant, fragmented remains of the demon straining to achieve a victory total enough to command them.

It could have gone so much worse. At any moment, any of the three demons could have realized the whole situation- and then this world would be just another decaying demon-palace. But the antennae sing truth, and they will for decades to come. As they speed away, toasting themselves even as they race towards that final shutdown of their ship, they can hear their own words being broadcast.