It took two decades for the mystery of KT-39925541-A to be investigated by a manned expedition. The expanding bubble of Human-Majir space contained a multitude of strange phenomena, after all. The expedition, funded by The University of Mumbai (the premier place of higher education for astronomical studies), was a small one. Barely two dozen people in a refurbished transport crammed with sensors and scientific equipment. The crew, mostly composed of tenured professors, graduate students, and a few lucky undergraduate workers were to carry out a series of investigations before reaching KT-39925541-A. It was almost two years before the expedition reached Noviy Moscow - the colony world closest to the object. A young colony world, Noviy Moscow had become embroiled in a civil war. Though the population of the colony barely reached ten thousand people, the divide was bitter. The expedition had been able to take on supplies, but little else.
They made the jump to KT-39925541-A without incident. What transpired after that is a matter of some confusion. What is known was based entirely on the testimony of a few survivors. Unfortunately, none of the expeditions leadership was among them.
On initial scan, the object appeared to be an exceptionally large planet. Though it radiated in the low infrared spectrum, it's emissions were too weak to be that of a star. Further scans puzzled the scientists, as they came back reporting a solid surface, rather than the gases expected. This was extremely unusual - the largest terran world discovered thus far had massed just over eight times Earth. This object was estimated to be about the mass of Jupiter - if the readings were correct, this was a staggering discovery.
The team launched it's entire stock of probes and made a slow approach. Their automated systems confirmed what their initial examination had suggested, and more. The object was solid - at least, the exterior was - and composed of what appeared to be a complex alloy of several esoteric forms of common metals, with a faint dusting of transuranics and unidentifiable compounds.
The first visuals sent back by the probes revealed a massive world scarred by eons of impacts. Massive craters dotted it's surface. Closer examination yielded even more startling results - several of the craters were not craters at all, but massive, incredibly deep tunnels extending into the objects interior. These openings were clearly manufactured - their edges were far too regular, their sides too smooth to be the result of random action. Their spacing was improbably irregular as well - one at each pole, then a series of eight 'rows' of eight tunnels down to the equator. This pattern was mirrored on both hemispheres, and eight more tunnels were arranged along the equator. In total, the team cataloged
nearly one hundred and forty major entries to the sphere, and as many as a thousand smaller ones.
The university team named it Shiva. They sent an enormous burst of data back to Noviy Moscow and made their approach. Unknown to them at that time, the primary receptor array of the Noviy Moscow colony had been destroyed in the fighting, and their message lost.
The first man to set foot on Shiva was Dr. Mohinder Sengupta, a professor of Geology and Materials Engineering. The second and those following were his student assistants. His first words on the surface of the sphere were: "It reminds me of the moon, only less." The surface was bleak, plain, and contained little variation on initial inspection. With samples duly collected, all recoverable probes were used to probe the tunnels nearest the teams landing site. With a diameter of just over a million kilometers to deal with, the team restricted itself to a single major tunnel for investigation.
Gravity on the surface was minimal, just over a tenth of one gravity. The base camp consisted mostly of one of the ships shuttles. No crew remained on the surface for more than eight hours. Recovered journals and other sources indicate a sense of unease among those that visited the surface - a sense of unbelonging.
Nevertheless, when the first probes returned messages indicating that the tunnel itself was safe for human transit (i.e, no lethal radiations or other hazards) the expedition leadership granted Dr.'s Scott and Sengupta permission to lead an exploratory team into Shiva. The probes had not yet found the bottom. There were obstructions - vast pylons that occasionally bridged the tunnel, but they were no impediment.
The first ten kilometers of the tunnel were solid wall, much like the surface. Then came the window. The walls became a massive transparent tube with walls of esoteric polymers. Analysis indicated that the walls were nearly a mile thick with an astonishingly low rate of diffraction - the clearest glass any human had ever encountered. Beyond was a vast, inky blackness - liquid water. A staggeringly enormous sea, without a single source of light. It filled the space beyond entirely. A billion cubic kilometers of water.
Their continued descent revealed yet more wonders. After nearly 4,000 kilometers of descent, they found a floor to this ocean. Another ten kilometers of solid wall followed, before the tunnel revealed another level. Four thousand kilometers of open space. The tunnel reverted to a arc, leaving it open to the vacuum that filled most of the level - but for it's lowest portions which contained, tantalizingly, clouds. A diffuse atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen and methane covered the lower portion of this shell - beneath were mountains and forests, a massive ecosystem stretching as far as the eye could see. Gravity here was still quite weak. The team considered a landing before concerns regarding fuel and safety prohibited it - the issue being that the tunnel became a cylinder once more well outside the levels atmosphere, requiring a lengthy ascent to access it.
It was around this time that the first probe reached a depth of about 120,000 kilometers inside Shiva. It's last transmission before crashing showed a rather abrupt, featureless wall - the bottom of the tunnel, just 30,000 kilometers short of the spheres core.
***
This has been slowly being expanded for about a month now - most of what has stopped or slowed me down is another project (a fantasy story that's weighing in at about 7500 words that I've hit a nasty patch of writers block with, but that I would really like to continue expanding) and being a lazy fuck in general. There is one post remaining before Outrim becomes a 'completed' setting, ready for use in fiction or gaming. References for this bit and places I've stolen from include Iain M Banks' "Matter", Larry Niven's"Ringworld", and Clarke's Rama. Additionally, movies like Camerons "Avatar" and The Abyss has been inspirations in terms of visuals (the biota of Pandora and the terror-wonder of the deep oceans). Games that have provided influence include "The Dig", an old adventure game, and Blue Planet - one of the few roleplaying games where scientific discovery and adventure are given as much attention as the combat system.
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