Miskatonic University Galactic Expedition 3303 - Day 22
10 Sep 2017LCU No Fool Like One
Have have spent the past few days searching for city remnants on the planets of Betelguese. Nothing can prepare you for the unimaginable size of the main star. Emerging from hyperspace the vast ancient dying star completely fills the cockpit. Vast tendrils of coronal ejecta reaching out as if to pluck the unwary space traveller from the ether and devour them in its fiery embrace. I actually thought my fuel scoop had malfunctioned because I was still scooping a thousand light seconds from the sun. 
The ancient battleground in which the Elder Gods and the Great Old Ones fought their apocalyptic and unfathomable war, the system of Betelgeuse – rendered “Glyu-Uho” in Naacal – contains innumerable worlds pocked with the scabrous remnants of ancient and often non-Euclidean cities scarred with the uncanny wounds of primordial conflict. The principle inhabited world of the Betelgeuse System is Yarnak, a shattered world rebuilt by initially optimistic if perhaps foolhardy settlers.
Though I didn't find the non euclidian cities of Yarnak I found the scabrous remains of unwary fellow travellers. A surface vehicle still smouldering its cargo spilled across the surface watched over by the silent roaring of the angry star. No sign of its driver other than a blackened silhouete on in the chair.
I fancied I could hear the baleful star screaming at me. I could get no sleep on the cursed planet without the dull pounding hate of that star. I would wake sweating and see a vast tendril of hot gas hundreds of light seconds across withdraw back into the star as if startled by my gaze.
I was drawn to a distant ridge by what I fancied to be a light shining on a distant hill. Could it be one of the fabled cities? Perhaps a beacon welcoming the weary traveller? Alas it turned out to be another traveller foundered on the planet. Perhaps the fickle light of Betelguese playing on the cockpit is what drew me there. No sign of the pilot or escape pods just ash.
I salvaged what I could and turned back towards the ship, but something seemedwrong, the hairs on my neck stood on end. Then I realised,
The sun! The sun! Was it possible? That vast angry ball of seething fusion was growing before my eyes. It filled the sky behing my ship. I made haste, my SRV rattling itself to pieces on the heavy planet as I pelted at full speed towards the ship. I felt certain that if I didn't leave the system immediately that vast hateful sun would hungrilly consume me planet and all. I reached the ship and waited impatiently to be loaded back into the hold. As soon as the SRV was stowed I threw myself into the pilots seat and hit the launch button I was barely strapped in before I had set a course to my next destination and jumped.
