The Wanderer
A planet without a star: how to catch it, what glows in its dark and what the Orphans left behind.
The Wanderer is a rogue planet. Once every ten to fourteen days it stops in the Kuiper Belt for two days, each time in a new place, and moves on. It gives no light: in space it is a black disc against the stars. Everything else is under spoilers.
Catching it
- From Earth. Follow the pass in the astrograph for three nights in a row: microlensing makes a star flare for a moment when the dark body crosses it. The anomaly codex counts the nights and tells you when the Wanderer arrives.
- In space. The ship scanner shows a “dark planet” mark, and within 1200 blocks the globe is found on its own.
A tracked pass opens the way into the Wanderer’s sky; from there it works like any small world: jump, approach, descend.
A world without a star
There is no sun here and no day. The sky is the light: the Milky Way stands as an arch across the whole sky, a nebula hangs in the north-west, and hydrogen haze glows along the horizon. The rest of the light comes from the plain itself, and every pass has its own: the Wanderer turns a new region toward you, one of four.
| Region | What glows | Haze |
|---|---|---|
| Ice |  Glimmer Ice — teal threads along the seams of the ice plates | teal |
| Basalt |  Smoldering Basalt — fields of cracks that still hold heat | dark red |
| Crystal |  Wanderer Crystal — veins, druses and spires | violet |
| Hydrogen |  Glinting Frost — chains of glints along dune crests | pale blue, the thickest |
Warm lakes lie under the ice: the planet is heated from within. Where water is close the ice has thawed and glows amber —
Thaw Ice, with steam above it. Here and there the shell is open down to the water. The plain is deadly cold
(you need a suit with a Heating Unit), but it is warm by the lakes under the shell. Veins in the vault above the water yield
Relict Ice.
Ruins of the Orphans
The Orphans are a people whose star went out. They left into the dark together with their world and hid its warmth under the ice. Nobody is alive; what remains is masonry, their sign — a bright ring around a black disc — and lamps that still burn. Every region has new ruins, and each has its own riddle about memory, light and warmth. The hint is in the book that lies in any chest of the ruin.
- Hall over the Warm Lake — the main ruin, on two levels. The well in the rotunda is shut. Four signs on the wall of the east chamber give the order in which to walk the floor plates; then the well opens. Below, in the grotto, a lamp burns by the island and three mirrors stand around it: turn them so that the beam goes around the well and falls on the sign of the star, and the south vault opens. The Orphans’ cache is in the vault.
- The Orphans’ Beacon — a tower with its top broken off. The top lies nearby with an
Orphan Lamp still
whole inside: its end is broken open, and a small barrel under the lamp holds a spare one — nothing has to be dug out.
There is a socket at the top of the tower: return the lamp, and the black disc of the great sign lights up
while a niche opens at the base. - The Vigil — eight stones turned to the dark. Three signs on the stele give the order of the plates; the chest in the middle opens.
The riddles of the ruins are shared by all players of the world, but the cache is personal: once per pass it gives each
player Relict Ice and the next unread record — 
Orphan Record. There are five records.
There is no digging past a riddle: while a single seal stands in a ruin, its masonry holds — whoever digs inside the ruin gets Mining Fatigue V, and even the best pickaxe takes a minute per block. Placing blocks, stepping on plates, turning mirrors and setting the lamp into its socket are not hindered. Once the last seal is gone, the masonry lets go.
Departure
The Wanderer does not wait. The first warning comes five minutes before it leaves, the second a minute before, with a countdown.
- In a ship — you are thrown into space above where the globe was; the hull takes a quarter of damage.
- On foot, your own ship within 192 blocks — you end up in it and leave with it, at the same price.
- Without a ship — the suit’s emergency beacon pulls you home, to your respawn point: you keep your things, but only half of your health, and for a minute you are frostbitten and weak.
Everything built and left on the ground leaves with the Wanderer: the next pass is a different region.
What it gives
- The first landing — 12 stardust and a codex deed.
- Relict Ice — fuel three times better than helium, and a coolant; the first vein mined is another codex deed.
- The Orphans’ cache — five records (Orphan Record): the first accounts of what happened to their star.
What next
- “Ships and space” — the jump, the approach and the descent to a small world.
- Wanderer plates go into the coronagraph project: “Station Observatory”.
- The coronagraph opens the way to Tabby’s Swarm: “Interstellar space”.