Authors: Dr Jone Brown 

To: Department of History 

Subject: The Tragedy of Indic Johns: A Cautionary Tale

Background:

Indic Johns (also known as Indic John or simply John) was an intrepid scavenger and explorer known for his fear of sneegs, disdain for the thresher ethnostate, and his habits of probing abandoned places for treasure. Sites frequently visited by him include wrecked ships from old space battles, abandoned settlements, hidden old structures, and places in Maggdurr territory. John's ship had an unusually sophisticated Jell drive not seen before (possibly originating from one of his exploits), allowing him to quickly and quietly slip through disputed territory and closed borders with few able to pursue him. However, there was one MacGuffin he had always dreamed to recover: The Orb of Jim. Rumored to be created by Jim himself, the Orb was supposedly recovered in the remains of Old Terra in the 3400s and was subsequently lost. However, Johns had apparently managed to triangulate the location of the Orb to Eramius IV in the space of the Calor Khaganate in 4669, and in his infinite wisdon, went to see the Orb for himself. 

The Journey:

Indic John left Propane shortly after confirming the Orb's location, taking his space ship that he kept parked on the roof of his floating apartment block, anticipating a travel time of nine days. However, John's navigational systems were damaged after hitting a Jeer in Jell, forcing him to make an emergency pit stop at Cutos in Venvi. When beginning to travel, John again was delayed after mistakenly traveling to Tamyk in the Krugel System, and was nearly killed by the locals. According to his diary, Indic John was saved when his rival Veedleberg (who had been pursuing John) crash-landed on the planet half a mile from John, the impact distracting the Tamykians long enough for John to re-activate his Jell drive and escape. Veedleberg was never heard from again.

Upon entering Calorian space, John was detected after triggering a space mine and engaged in a dogfight with Calorian strike craft. John's diary states that a boarding party was staged during the fight after a thruster was temporarily disabled, during which John claimed to have beaten up two marines and kicked a third into the vacuum of space. Calorian sources, on the contrary, state that such a boarding party never occurred and if one did, the results would be very different. Regardless, John escaped the confrontation and arrived at Eramius IV, where the Orb was said to be located, but was also the location of J-1, better known as "The Loud One". John assumed the odds of encountering the beast was very low, and landed on the planet.

Initial Exploration:

Indic John initially landed in a crater known as "Mij's Scab" and probed the area for any sign of the Orb using an array of drones and manual labor. An area of roughly 400 square miles was surveyed across a three day period before John gave up and relocated to a series of ridges on the opposite side of the planet in a region known as "The Valley of Bones". In this valley, John came across the diary of a previous adventurer who had come to the planet in search of the Orb. The diary was dated to 4395 and recounts the adventure of Argon Mortar, who had decided to seek the Orb after its location was revealed to him in a dream induced by an unspecified terminal illness. Tragically, scratches on his vacuum-preserved skeleton indicate that Argon appeared to have been violently shredded by something before finding the Orb, but his last diary entry said that he found a lead inside a nearby cave known as "The Jevil's Asshole". Naturally, John ran straight into the cave without at least sending in a drone first.

The Cave and The Bunker:

Indic John's journey into the chasm was marked with the presence of a great many booby traps, which John took as a sign that the Orb was close until finding several cryptic notes by his other arch-rival Herrid Hingel. Unbeknownst to John, Hingel had anticipated John's trajectory and fabricated Argon's diary to lure John into the cave. After standing at the mouth of the cave and monologuing to John for five minutes straight, Hingel rolled a large boulder down the cavern in hopes that it would crush his enemy to death. However, John was able to wedge himself into a crack in the cave wall so that the boulder would miss. John then went back to the top of the cave, only to find his ship stolen by Hingel. 

John cursed at Hingel, but noticed an odd structure nearby, too unnatural in design. Instinctively, John went to the structure and found a vent, which he shoved himself through, soon finding himself in a storage room. Some of the objects in the room were dated to very, very recently, indicating that the structure was still inhabited. John was forced to evade detection by maintence workers looking to see the source of the vent blockage by hiding under a cardboard box and crouching his way through the halls of the building, occasionally stopping when people drew near. By overhearing conversations and snooping through paperwork, John discovered the bunker was a Calorian monitoring station, established to keep track of J-1. However, John was confronted by security, who John fought off with a lasso for fifteen minutes until alarms started blaring.

The Loud One:

Turns out, Hingel had fired a space missile into the surface of the planet to attract the attention of J-1, who had barged into the bunker and was now causing a lot of ruckus. Standing at 13'4 and boasting a roar loud enough to rupture eardrums, local security was no match for the beast and had the facility evacuated. John stayed behind during the evacuation to look for any signs of the Orb, discovering a detailed log of recorded anomalies detected on the surface of Eramius IV. The Loud One was approaching though, and John soon realized he probably should have joined the evacuation while he could. Muttering his catchphrase, Indic Johns fled into the cafeteria of the facility and prepared an attempt to trap J-1 there should it pursue him. However, a sudden earthquake caused floor to crumble and John fell into a large labyrinth of maintenance tunnels under the facility. With the Loud One hot on his tail, John ran through the pipe-lined halls and eventually discovered a fork in the path, one end leading to the outside and another to a cave known as "Rectal Reckoning". Wondering if the facility was perhaps built on top of the Orb's location, John went into the cave, weaving his way past stalactites and "do not enter" signs.

The Bridge and the Box:

John went down the cave, still under pursuit and eventually coming across a gap, bridged only by a single thin sheet of metal, below which lay a massive pit containing a juvenile sneeg. At the sight of the massive creature, John began to have a panic attack, but with the Loud One approaching rapidly, John had no choice but to run across the sheet of metal. The Loud One soon followed and John promptly removed the sheet so that it may not continue its chase, letting gravity do the work. John made his way down the cave before reaching a chamber containing a strange box at the other end. The box was covered in Jimnistic runes and looked Old Terran in origin, but between John and the box was an imposing figure carrying a hydralic sledgehammer and wearing jury-rigged space marine armor. It was none other than Herrid Hingel, who had come to take the Orb for himself, and John wasn't going to have that. The two engaged in a climatic battle after exchanging monologues, Hingle attempting to bash John with the sledgehammer as the latter attempted to strangle the former with his lasso. During the scuffle, the box was knocked over and out came a pile of Jibles, not the Orb. The box itself being ancient was good enough for John though, so he took it and ran.

The Escape and Epilogue:

Making his way back the way he came, John leapt the gap he had produced and ran to the outside. Hingle attempted to follow John, but his armor proved too sluggish and bulky. John found where Hingle had parked his ship and climbed in, taking off as suddenly the entire ridge the bunker was built into violently exploded, likely the facility's self destruct systems going off. John was able to avoid being caught in the blast and debris, being airborne. However, from the crater, the Loud One crawled its way out, dragging the sneeg from earlier by its tail. As John attempted to fly away, J-1 swung the sneeg around as though it were a ball and chain before hurling it towards John's ship, the creature coliding with the ship and crashing it. Fortunately, the low gravity of the planet allowed John to escape relatively unharmed. John went for his damaged Jell drive and hastily opened an emergency transient portal to Jell as a last resort escape. To date, Indic John's fate remains unknown. 

The Calorian government abandoned what was left of the surface monitoring station, instead opting for a safer orbital space station. Overall, J-1's incursion into the station resulted in 5 casualties, four of whom were unlucky enough to be too close to where the Loud One breached, while the fifth was a notoriously heavy sleeper who had napped through the incident and was killed in the facility's self-destruction. The disappearance of the Eramius IV surface anomaly log was but a minor setback, as a relatively up-to-date copy had been previously backed up to the cloud. Protocols on those trespassing on Eramius IV are reportedly being updated to prevent such a thing from happening again.

All information in this article originate either from John's recovered diary or firsthand accounts from Calorian researchers.