The Great Wastes blog - mangosofdoom

The great Wastes are located in the Gemini cluster, this cluster has a large number G2 Main sequence stars or yellow dwarf stars. This has made the region an area of almost uniform agricultural and allowed for massive population centers, except however in a region roughly 100 light years across where almost all the worlds that fit the profile of being habitable have in fact been the complete opposite. Many of the worlds in the sector have been declared barren or uninhabitable, many having no liquid water and caustic atmospheres, thus rendering colonization attempts unlikely. For many years the reason for this was overlooked, this was until scavengers investigating XQ-345 found an massive alien warship buried half into the abrasive silicate sands of it the global deserts. This caused a flurry of activity amongst the scientific community and the finally scientists began to unravel the mystery. The mystery wasn't actually on the radar of scientific community as most of the effort was dedicated to investigating the ship for the possibility of new technological breakthroughs. This pursuit was fruitless however as the silicates in the sand had long since rendered anything inside the ship defunct over its five thousand year burial. However this is where the mystery began to become as scientist where able to determine that the ship had been launched almost six hundred thousand years earlier. The method in which they dated the ship was by taking a core sample and discovering a layer of small glass beads, this indicated the date at which the ship crashed, however on a hunch the scientists took a core sample from another part of the planet, there they once again found a layer of glass beads. These ones however were much coarser indicating that rather then being an impact these where caused by a sustained energy blast. With this realization science teams set out and began to unravel some of the mystery. All the worlds that showed the strange state of bareness had a layer of these glass beads all over the planet. This has given rise to a theory in which a massive war was fought between two races that predated even the eldar or perhaps where wiped out by the eldar (Who have been rather tight liped about the whole affair) and that during the war these planets where scorched by energy weapons until all life was extinguished and any ability for the world to naturally heal itself was removed as the water was evaporated by the intense energy and blasted of into space. This tragedy has presented the T.E.F with an opportunity to begin research into terraforming effectively barren worlds into fertile ones. What makes these worlds so unique in this regard is that they are in the exact right location in their respective solar systems to support life again with just a little help. As of yet success has been limited with water now being present on most worlds but attempting to adjust the atmospheric conditions is fiddly at best, with the air still as of yet being toxic to almost all known forms of life.