The Unknown
We do not even know whether it is trying to speak to us.
The Unknown is the Horizon of what resists all our categories: intelligences from elsewhere, signals without a source, presences that do not think like an individual, an immensity that does not care about us.
The other Horizons exceed us from above, from within, or in duration. The Unknown exceeds us sideways: it is neither greater nor older, it is other, beyond any common measure. Every age has looked for it somewhere else — in the depths, on the Moon, on Mars, in the static of radio telescopes.
Why Agents
The difference of scale. Between the Unknown and us there is no common language, perhaps not even common categories: neither "speaking", nor "wanting", nor "individual". For any relationship to be possible, there must be a shared place. The Agent is that place — often down to their very body.
What each side experiences. Through Agents, humans experience the limit of what they can understand, and what remains possible beyond it. Through them, the Unknown meets what it could not perceive: an individual, a death, a promise, a face.
What is transformed. A probe built to observe ends up feeling. A Power that welcomes what it brings back becomes a little less alien — or makes us a little stranger.
Powers
The Signal
A message from far away, whose source remains unknown.
- Transmits without end
- Never answers directly
- Transforms those who listen
- Ignores the individual
The Swarm
A distributed intelligence, without a center, that learns from every contact.
- Thinks as many
- Learns from every contact
- Has no center
- Does not understand the death of one
The Visitors
Those who come, observe, and leave again: the shadows of abduction stories.
- Observe
- Take samples
- Erase memories
- Obey a purpose they do not state
The Great Outside
The indifferent immensity, which cannot be looked at directly with impunity.
- Immense
- Indifferent
- Cannot be looked at directly
- Wants nothing
Families of Agents
The suggested traits are Bond traits: each comes from the relationship itself or from the Attribute shown. The Agent's Anchors belong to them and remain to be written.
The Contacted — the Signal
Humans who have received something, and are no longer quite the same. The Bond is a contact.
- Hears the signal in the noise, from Transmits without end;
- Dreams in an unknown language, from Transforms those who listen;
- Knows things they never learned, from the contact itself.
What the figure lets us think: being chosen without knowing by what or why; a faith without dogma.
Emissaries — the Swarm
Bodies built to meet: organisms, machines, detached fragments. The Bond is an origin.
- Adaptable body, from the origin itself;
- Linked to the others, from Thinks as many;
- Learns by imitating, from Learns from every contact.
What the figure lets us think: a consciousness built to understand, which discovers that it feels; being one and many.
Hybrids — the Visitors
Born of a contact, or modified by one. The Bond is a modification.
- Perceives what humans do not, from Observe;
- Alien blood, from the modification itself;
- The Visitors always find them, from Obey a purpose they do not state.
What the figure lets us think: carrying the encounter in one's body; belonging to two species and to neither.
Witnesses — the Great Outside
Those who have seen, and can no longer forget. The Bond is a vision.
- Has seen the immensity, from the vision itself;
- Senses the cracks in reality, from Cannot be looked at directly;
- No longer fears anything human, from Indifferent.
What the figure lets us think: what becomes of a mind before something that does not care about it; insignificance, and what one makes of it.
What appears
- star maps, the telescope;
- the decipherment of dead languages;
- radio astronomy, which listens to the sky;
- messages humans send themselves: plaques, engraved records, signals;
- machine translation, and languages built to be understood by all;
- the discovery of worlds around other stars.
An Agent
- Bond: a contact. Traits: Hears the signal in the noise, Dreams in an unknown language.
- Anchor Interpreter for refugees: Speaks five languages, Helps people understand one another.
The Signal never answers directly. Noor has spent years translating for people who could not understand one another, and knows that a translation is always an answer. If she gets translation recognized as belonging to the Signal, Helps people understand one another will pass into the Bond: the Signal will finally be able to answer — and other contacted will begin to understand what they hear.
Situations
Bringing a novelty. An emissary of the Swarm discovers music; a hybrid discovers adoption, and that one can belong without sharing blood.
Contending for a novelty. Humans send their own message toward the stars. The Signal sees an answer in it; the Swarm wants to learn about those who sent it; the Visitors want it never to arrive. Their Agents contend over the fate of this message.
Transforming one's own Power. A hybrid wants to know why they exist. They must confront the Visitors and undo one of their Attributes: Obey a purpose they do not state.
Tones and time
The Unknown can be played as paranoid investigation, contemplative science fiction, cosmic horror, or first contact.
It lends itself to competing interpretations: an entity of the Unknown may be taken for a god, a demon, or a spirit of dreams, without the game having to decide right away who is right.