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Description
            Threat Level: Unknown

Curator’s Notes:

            My name is Doctor Kayode Nangolo, and I am a researcher working under an extended contract with the ZSV. My original directive was to try and study IPS-014 in more detail and determine means and ways to lessen the threat it poses to space borne traffic. Basically if these things showed up in large numbers it is estimated that there might be little we could do to stop them from ruining interstellar commerce and travel. There are probably nearly a hundred worst case scenario simulations already on the books that cross the entire range of possibilities with IPF-014. Being ready is important and for that we needed more information so I and a team of fifteen others were asked and, paid really well to function as a think tank to study the creatures and see if anything was missed. I’ve taken the step of recording this audio-log for the purposes of documenting our findings in a impartial way because when you get that many academics together from across disciplines and put them in a think tank environment the opinions can be quite divergent. So what we know is that IPF-014 is a species of stellar megafauna that is best described as a cephalopoda-like creature. Officially its scientific name is Polyaltuium horrida and we have of course grouped it as a new and separate branch on the Cephalopod family tree. The largest specimen observed was big enough to be wearing several of what we presume to be large cruisers or battleships as a shell of sorts. In short these creatures can be stupidly massive, but how they live is for the most part a full mystery. We know they are drawn to starships as a food source but, is this because the energy emissions of a starship resemble some huge prey item out there in the wild and crazy cosmos or perhaps they have always fed on ships. But this is more or less a distraction from the results of our months long study.

            You see, of the nine hundred and sixteen sightings only two hundred and seventy seven were credible. The remainder the sightings were just cases of the jitters over a suggestively shaped sensor return or at worse an early stage case of FTL-sickness. Of those credible accounts there were a few that were quite interesting because they were different than all the others. The Sector Guard has to file every report of a possible sighting and that means they deal with a bit of space-crazy they are probably absolutely sick of this ‘space squid’ stuff by now it’s no wonder they filed and forgot. So what is the strange new information you ask? Well, in just nine out of those two hundred and seventy-seven incident reports there is a creature that clearly is NOT IPF-014. The new creature’s description is different, most of the reports refer to it as “a creature seemingly shrouded in darkness and only its gleaming eyes gave away its presence.” While the physical description varies, most accounts agree that it has anywhere from eighteen to twenty six tentacles and that it seems to be a darker color than the space around it. Now at first I thought, well maybe this was IPF-014 out of its ‘shell’ and we had found its spawning grounds or something close. But, the interesting thing is that these sightings are spread out across the borders of Dominion territory. So there is no singular spawning ground and that may be a future problem. I did notice that there is a correlation on the sighting locations though; each of them is an area of space where dark matter for one reason or another has moved into the visible spectrum. The most compelling evidence that we might just be dealing with a different life form is what the crew of the DOSV Carapel, in the eighth report managed to see. The following account is actually from the ZSV files and fills in details missing from the Sector Guard report of the incident.

            The Carapel was out surveying for useful materials in the Choum border region’s furthest reaches. Choum is a somewhat-surveyed region that is on the most galactic-edge facing part of our territory and was only named a year ago. Of course the lack of a name and the lack of the sector being classified did not stop prospectors from rolling out there in droves to seek their fortunes and the glory of hauling back goods to the Dominion. Choum, as the Carapel’s crew quickly found out is home to a fair-sized Dark Matter nebula that is known for its dangerous ionic activity. The Nebula is unsurveyed and generally avoided but the crew of the Carapel decided to send in an Unmanned Remote Operated Vehicle during a lull in the ion activity of the nebula to see if there was anything worth harvesting at the outer parts of the nebula. Now normally most nebula do not mess with sensors, but the Choum nebula was known for throwing out communications interference as well as sensor interference and so the UROV in this case was tethered to the Carapel by a reinforced support cable that provided it with power beyond what it’s battery capacity was. Also this cable allowed the crew of the Carapel to see in real time what the UROV was detecting. This sort of system is in common use for checking the compositions of gas giants and the Carapel had a spooled reel of buoys and cable that specially fitted that was six hundred IMU long mounted in a portside bay that was dedicated to the task of launching and recovering the UROV. The trip in is hours of nothing but near darkness and brief flashes of ion discharges but then six hours and twenty three minutes in there is a brief glimpse of something massive. The UROV is rendered offline a few seconds after and then whatever it is started to pull the Carapel into the nebula. The crew fought the pull but according to their accounts it was a losing battle from the start and Captain Jalloh ordered the tether cable cut. The remainder of the cable was pulled into the nebula and the Carapel fled the location.

            After the Carapel fled the ZSV detected their panicked transmissions and initiated a small regional communications black out and then surrounded and boarded the Carapel. In the process of determining what happened the ZSV confiscated all logs sensor data and anything verifying what the crew encountered but most importantly the sensor recordings of the UROV before the cable was cut were also confiscated. The entire crew was given amnesia-inducing compounds, possibly forcibly, and then they were sent off towards the Sector Guard to frantically file a report that is far less detailed then what I have reported in this recording. To this day the crew of the Carapel are still not sure what happened and that is for the best. The Image included with this file is not an artist’s reconstruction, it is a still image from the barely three seconds of clear sensor recordings of the Carapel’s UROV and moments after that still was recorded the UROV was attacked by the creature and destroyed. Oh, and it has to be mentioned that three months after the incident the damaged remains of the Carapel’s UROV along with about fifty kilometers of cable were found covered in a carbon-like substance on the side of an asteroid. The remains were quietly brought in for study by the ZSV. Every inch of the remains have bite marks in them as though some kind of massive rasping and crushing mouthparts tried to smash it all up.

            In summary, what we have here is a related but clearly different species of stellar megafauna that may or may not pose a threat to the stellar resource collection aspects of our nation. For now a set of advisories have been issued to keep folks away from the locations of sightings and away from other probable regions where a sighting may occur. I know that it will only be a matter of time before another encounter happens.

Description
            Threat Level: Unknown

Curator’s Notes:

            My name is Doctor Kayode Nangolo, and I am a researcher working under an extended contract with the ZSV. My original directive was to try and study IPS-014 in more detail and determine means and ways to lessen the threat it poses to space borne traffic. Basically if these things showed up in large numbers it is estimated that there might be little we could do to stop them from ruining interstellar commerce and travel. There are probably nearly a hundred worst case scenario simulations already on the books that cross the entire range of possibilities with IPF-014. Being ready is important and for that we needed more information so I and a team of fifteen others were asked and, paid really well to function as a think tank to study the creatures and see if anything was missed. I’ve taken the step of recording this audio-log for the purposes of documenting our findings in a impartial way because when you get that many academics together from across disciplines and put them in a think tank environment the opinions can be quite divergent. So what we know is that IPF-014 is a species of stellar megafauna that is best described as a cephalopoda-like creature. Officially its scientific name is Polyaltuium horrida and we have of course grouped it as a new and separate branch on the Cephalopod family tree. The largest specimen observed was big enough to be wearing several of what we presume to be large cruisers or battleships as a shell of sorts. In short these creatures can be stupidly massive, but how they live is for the most part a full mystery. We know they are drawn to starships as a food source but, is this because the energy emissions of a starship resemble some huge prey item out there in the wild and crazy cosmos or perhaps they have always fed on ships. But this is more or less a distraction from the results of our months long study.

            You see, of the nine hundred and sixteen sightings only two hundred and seventy seven were credible. The remainder the sightings were just cases of the jitters over a suggestively shaped sensor return or at worse an early stage case of FTL-sickness. Of those credible accounts there were a few that were quite interesting because they were different than all the others. The Sector Guard has to file every report of a possible sighting and that means they deal with a bit of space-crazy they are probably absolutely sick of this ‘space squid’ stuff by now it’s no wonder they filed and forgot. So what is the strange new information you ask? Well, in just nine out of those two hundred and seventy-seven incident reports there is a creature that clearly is NOT IPF-014. The new creature’s description is different, most of the reports refer to it as “a creature seemingly shrouded in darkness and only its gleaming eyes gave away its presence.” While the physical description varies, most accounts agree that it has anywhere from eighteen to twenty six tentacles and that it seems to be a darker color than the space around it. Now at first I thought, well maybe this was IPF-014 out of its ‘shell’ and we had found its spawning grounds or something close. But, the interesting thing is that these sightings are spread out across the borders of Dominion territory. So there is no singular spawning ground and that may be a future problem. I did notice that there is a correlation on the sighting locations though; each of them is an area of space where dark matter for one reason or another has moved into the visible spectrum. The most compelling evidence that we might just be dealing with a different life form is what the crew of the DOSV Carapel, in the eighth report managed to see. The following account is actually from the ZSV files and fills in details missing from the Sector Guard report of the incident.

            The Carapel was out surveying for useful materials in the Choum border region’s furthest reaches. Choum is a somewhat-surveyed region that is on the most galactic-edge facing part of our territory and was only named a year ago. Of course the lack of a name and the lack of the sector being classified did not stop prospectors from rolling out there in droves to seek their fortunes and the glory of hauling back goods to the Dominion. Choum, as the Carapel’s crew quickly found out is home to a fair-sized Dark Matter nebula that is known for its dangerous ionic activity. The Nebula is unsurveyed and generally avoided but the crew of the Carapel decided to send in an Unmanned Remote Operated Vehicle during a lull in the ion activity of the nebula to see if there was anything worth harvesting at the outer parts of the nebula. Now normally most nebula do not mess with sensors, but the Choum nebula was known for throwing out communications interference as well as sensor interference and so the UROV in this case was tethered to the Carapel by a reinforced support cable that provided it with power beyond what it’s battery capacity was. Also this cable allowed the crew of the Carapel to see in real time what the UROV was detecting. This sort of system is in common use for checking the compositions of gas giants and the Carapel had a spooled reel of buoys and cable that specially fitted that was six hundred IMU long mounted in a portside bay that was dedicated to the task of launching and recovering the UROV. The trip in is hours of nothing but near darkness and brief flashes of ion discharges but then six hours and twenty three minutes in there is a brief glimpse of something massive. The UROV is rendered offline a few seconds after and then whatever it is started to pull the Carapel into the nebula. The crew fought the pull but according to their accounts it was a losing battle from the start and Captain Jalloh ordered the tether cable cut. The remainder of the cable was pulled into the nebula and the Carapel fled the location.

            After the Carapel fled the ZSV detected their panicked transmissions and initiated a small regional communications black out and then surrounded and boarded the Carapel. In the process of determining what happened the ZSV confiscated all logs sensor data and anything verifying what the crew encountered but most importantly the sensor recordings of the UROV before the cable was cut were also confiscated. The entire crew was given amnesia-inducing compounds, possibly forcibly, and then they were sent off towards the Sector Guard to frantically file a report that is far less detailed then what I have reported in this recording. To this day the crew of the Carapel are still not sure what happened and that is for the best. The Image included with this file is not an artist’s reconstruction, it is a still image from the barely three seconds of clear sensor recordings of the Carapel’s UROV and moments after that still was recorded the UROV was attacked by the creature and destroyed. Oh, and it has to be mentioned that three months after the incident the damaged remains of the Carapel’s UROV along with about fifty kilometers of cable were found covered in a carbon-like substance on the side of an asteroid. The remains were quietly brought in for study by the ZSV. Every inch of the remains have bite marks in them as though some kind of massive rasping and crushing mouthparts tried to smash it all up.

            In summary, what we have here is a related but clearly different species of stellar megafauna that may or may not pose a threat to the stellar resource collection aspects of our nation. For now a set of advisories have been issued to keep folks away from the locations of sightings and away from other probable regions where a sighting may occur. I know that it will only be a matter of time before another encounter happens.