The Nesburrow Plaque

The Nesburrow Plaque is one of many artifacts found on asteroid G888887, a minor rogue planetary body surveyed by Foundation mining teams in A.Y. 2377. The Plaque and associated articles are of particular scientific and historical note, as they represent the only known artifacts of a relatively advanced civilization, artifacts that arrived in a highly unusual place.

Discovery

During the early Second Age the Foundation explored the prospect of short-term, high-yield mining ventures, particularly targetting extra-solar and outer-solar bodies. The point of the project was largely a search for new sources of raw materials, but had the advantage, in one foundation representative's words, of "offering a venue where particularly invasive methods of extraction can be used, with little concern over environmental impact" (it was difficult to get environmentalists to care about lifeless rocks in the voids between stars).

Mining fleets were deployed to different regions and operated in a two-fold program. Small, fast, lightly-crewed prospector ships would locate, catalogue, and designate targets, and a large task force would later extract after any materials of value. In order to turn a profit, fleets would need to remain afield for years or even decades at a time, while standard Foundation work contracts limit time in space to no more than six months.

During the eleven years the project was in operation, G888887 was visited only by a single prospector ship. The small, rocky body was initially scanned from a distance, and immediately designated too small and too light to have any value. The prospector ship, however, operating with a six-man crew, decided to visit the site anyway. Their motivations were simple: the team was ahead of schedule, had a long way to go before their next target. Every member of the crew would later state there was no draw other than: "Hey, let's all go walk around on the surface of a tiny rock and makes jokes".

The team landed their small vessel and began an unscheduled EVA to explore the surface. The asteroid was not quite small enough to walk around in a few hours, and without specialized thruster packs, the crew members would not have been able to "stand" at all (escape velocity was roughly a good jump).

While exploring on his own, crewman Larson Wells spotted something peculiar in a deep crevasse and descended to investigate. He broke off several fragments and returned them to the ship, where he and his companions discovered several artifacts, including the famous plaque, caked in dust.

Lacking proper equipment or expertise, the crew simply packed the find in a sample container, figuring they had stumbled upon a minor curiosity. The pieces were eventually given to their commanding officer, who turned them over to the geological survey, then later the archaeological. It would take close to 75 years before anyone would properly clean the items and recognize their importance.

The Plaque

The artifacts proved to be pieces of a spacecraft, though few could be definitively identified at the time. Later work determined they belongs mostly to a landing strut. The plaque itself was in a then-unknown language, but images and the arrangement gave a clear context. After some headway was finally made on the translation, it was determined the plaque commemorated the date upon which its builders first set foot upon their planet's own moon. The plaque was very brief and stated that it had been a peaceful mission, and included several symbol groups that were either names of the astronauts or world leaders.

Further Discoveries

Most historians were ready to dismiss the find as a harmless curiosity. Space junk is common enough, and it was not unheard of to find lost bits of flotsam. This idea was challenged by a few troubling facts: the discovery was made on an irregular body deep in in the interstellar void, hundreds of light years from any known inhabited star system. The information on the plaque was very brief, but clearly stated it commemorated the landing sight on an inhabited planet's moon.

An expedition was launched to locate and excavate the site further, and during this mission hundreds of other artifacts were retrieved. Most notably, large remnants of the landing stage from a very primitive, chemically-fueled spacecraft. Very little riding could be deciphered, and the historians who studied it could mostly determine groups that represented the names of various pieces of the craft. A tiny, micro-printed disk was also discovered and found to be readable, though the text was never deciphered.

Perhaps the most important find was the remnants of a small, very simple computer. The method of data storage, which held very little information, had survived. It contained only numbers and equations, but it still told volumes about its creators' understanding of mathematics.

Finally, a massive search began with the goal of determining exactly where these artifacts came from. The civilization who made them was utterly unknown, but the items were found at a site that could not possibly have been reached without faster-than-light propulsion. Further, a study of the astroid suggested it was a fragment of a much larger, possibly spherical body, and that the cravace where the artifacts were discovered was probably relatively near the surface.

Tracing the asteroids course back, they discovered the remnants of a solar system. Precious little remained. There was no star; only a collection of asteroids and several small nebulae that had once been gas giants in the outer solar system. The debris pattern indicated that the sun, for reasons that remain as-yet undetermined, had suddenly and violently exploded. The destruction was complete, and could be explained by no natural phenomena. Estimates indicated the event happened some time around B.G.A 4200.

The inhabited planet would have been in the inner solar system, within the stars habitable zone. This one fragment of the moon, containing one monument to it's people's effort, was the only surviving piece. Not one single trace of of this lost civilization was ever discovered, though speculation persists that unmanned space probes in the outer solar system may have escaped destruction.

The plaque has never been fully deciphered, and the letters could not be read at all. The pieces sit in a Gudersnipe Foundation museum dedicated to lost civilizations, a solemn testament to a people who will never be known.