As the research vessel SIS Darwin nears the first stellar body in the Tacborpal system its sensors start to pick up strange readings... structures, almost impossibly natural, litter the surface of the moon Tacborpal IVa. Studying these structures would take a long time, and the oh so appealing Tacborpal II lay within reach. Lead scientist Yihua Meng decided to postpone research into the origin of these structures, and the government decided to withhold any information of them from the general public for the time being. They made their way to Tacborpal II, and the results were startling...
Alien life was found on the planet! Biological beings different to our own life yet still remarkably similar littered the surface and the seas, yet the presence of intelligent life lacked. The news of extraterrestrial life however spread like wildfire on Meat World, proving all those wrong that once thought our planet was one of a kind. The evolutionary marvels renewed a long-discarded hope of first contact with intelligent outworlders.
Soon after this monumental discovery the team aboard SIS Darwin came across artefacts of some kind upon the dwarf planet Tacborpal I...
By now the Scummers were ecstatic. A popular newsnet post reads "Intelligent life taunts with most pointed absence". It is beyond doubt we are not the first to have roamed these stars, a both thrilling but terrifying prospect to people of Meat World. Encouraged by these breakthroughs Cheetory6 funded the creation of two more research ships, each to be sent to neighbouring star systems. A construction ship was also sent to Tacborpal, and within a year the first outpost within another solar system was built.
Further funding was also released to study the mysterious structures located by SIS Darwin a year ago. Tacborpal IVa was found to be uninhabitable and uninhabited, yet these structures were carved from a material not native to the moon, evidently placed by some artistically-inclined spacefaring lifeforms, perhaps the Irassians? Translation of murals upon the monoliths charted a timeline so fantastical it must surely be fictional. Surely.
The research vessel SIS Leif Ericson funded by the Scummer Assembly dispatched to Lidor also swiftly made a breakthrough, albeit relatively speaking less exciting. Exotic gasses were found upon a dwarf planet within the system, as well as a planet that too hosted simple biological lifeforms. The gasses were found to be highly volatile, yet also held strong hallucinogenic properties as swiftly discovered by the team in a rather... happy accident. Although we have no utility for these gasses as off now, the existence of materials before unbeknownst to our people is fascinating.