the hub at ninet project/the expeditions

The Expeditions

The Hub connected more than Ninet to an alien structure. It opened passages to entire worlds, each more mysterious than the last. First came Zamani, discovered when a researcher activated a tower no one believed still functioned. Decades later, another researcher working on a forgotten, low-priority tower opened a passage to a second world: Feren. These are the stories of those who ventured into the unknown, mapped the impossible, and sometimes never returned. From Zamani's first activation to Erzbet Feren's doomed expedition, the discoveries changed everything we thought we knew about the Hub. But every answer revealed deeper questions, and every passage opened led somewhere humanity wasn't prepared to go.

The First Tower

For years after the Hub's rediscovery, researchers mapped its structures on Ninet, documented its artifacts, and studied its impossible architecture. The towers were everywhere, iconic and mysterious, but after decades of failed attempts to understand them, the consensus shifted: whatever purpose they once served, only partially disassembled shells remained. Checking them was still necessary, but it became low-priority work. The finest minds moved on to other technologies. Nobody expected breakthroughs anymore.

Zamani, called Zani by those who knew him, was one of the few who refused to give up. Reserved and somewhat distracted in daily life, he transformed when discussing the towers. His eyes would light up as he expounded theories about manifold representation and the symbolic inscriptions carved into their structures. He spent countless hours at the largest tower, the one they called the Axis, testing ideas that linked a peculiar room filled with what resembled a miniature city (Otto, his closest friend, called it the Maquete Room) to the towers' encoding. Most thought he was wasting his time.

One day, during a meal, a casual comment from Emma, another member of his bond, sparked a sudden realization. Zamani stood up mid-meal and left in a hurry to test his idea. He was last seen alive minutes later, entering the chamber of the Axis. What happened next haunts everyone who was there: his helmet lying outside the tower door, their frantic attempts to force it open, the helpless vigil. For one hundred and thirty-nine agonizing seconds, they waited. When the door finally yielded, they found him beyond saving. Hypoxia had taken him. But in those final moments, before the air ran out, Zamani had scribbled notes on his recording gear. A hastily written message: he had found a new world, and the tower was the gateway.

The discovery was astounding, but grief and fear paralyzed the Order. Some tried to apply Zamani's clues to other towers with no success. The Axis itself, the machine that had killed him, worked, but who would dare enter it again? The silence stretched. Then Otto, the one closest to Zamani in their five-person bond, volunteered. Silently, he kissed his bond members on the forehead, donned a full environmental suit with extra breathing tanks, and stepped into the metal chamber. They watched. They waited. When the door closed, his suit registered a brief spike in heat, then a slow drop in pressure. Near-vacuum set in within minutes, but the suit held. One hundred and thirty-nine seconds later, the door opened. Otto was alive and unharmed.

He had arrived at a mountain complex on a frozen dwarf planet not unlike Ninet, unpressurized but shielded from radiation. The sun was just a dot in a dark sky above a city-wide complex of structures grander than anything on Ninet. A single valley housed most of them: twin mountains with an excavated structure between them (which would become the Library), a sprawling complex of domes and buildings (Downtown), and an impossibly tall structure overlooking it all (Hightower). The place was empty but preserved, like its inhabitants had simply walked away and never returned. Otto explored alone while waiting for the Axis to reactivate, then returned with proof: the towers were gateways, and Zamani had unlocked the first one. He had made history, the first to visit another star system and return since the Troubles.

They named the new world Zamani, by tradition of honoring the discoverer. But Otto never celebrated. He had done what he felt he owed his friend, proven Zamani's theories correct, but the cost was too high. He stepped down from his role as an advanced researcher and requested transfer out of the Hub. The bond was over. Zamani's discovery opened a new world and changed everything, but for those who knew him, the memory that remains is simpler and darker: his helmet outside the door, and one hundred and thirty-nine seconds of helpless waiting.

Erbet and The Third Expedition

By the time Erzbet Feren activated the Globe Tower, Zamani had long been integrated into the Library's operations. The Axis was routine, convoys traveled between Ninet and Zamani regularly, and researchers mapped the ancient structures of Library Valley as part of standard work. Most believed all functional towers had been found. Then Feren, working on a low-priority tower with a chamber so small it could barely fit one person, discovered it was active. The passage opened not to Zamani, but to somewhere entirely new: a second world beyond the Axis. They called it Feren, by tradition of the discoverer, though it would later earn grimmer names: Lovecraft, or Limbo.

Feren was similar to Zamani in some ways (desolate, toxic, requiring full environmental suits) but profoundly different in others. The tower exit opened inside a half-destroyed building in the middle of a vast, empty plain. In the distance, structures were visible, but impossibly far to reach on foot with limited oxygen. The First Expedition established a basic survey. The Second pushed as far as oxygen reserves allowed, marking a midpoint and confirming the distant structures were reachable with proper preparation. But logistics were brutal: the tower's tiny chamber meant only one person could transport at a time, and the Axis took time to reactivate between passages. No vehicles could be sent. Every tank of oxygen required a separate trip, every supply cache built one journey at a time.

Erzbet led the Third Expedition with two companions: the veteran Farad and a third member whose expertise would prove crucial for the long trek. The mission was meticulously planned to reach those distant structures. Oxygen was stockpiled at the base and midpoint. The route was mapped. Everything was ready. Two came back with stories so different they seemed to describe separate realities. One never returned. Then Erzbet herself vanished days later while under observation, and her suit (required for survival in Feren's atmosphere) was found untouched in her quarters at Ninet. How she left without it, and where she went, remains one of the Hub's deepest mysteries. Even now, decades later, Feren remains barely explored, its distant structures still waiting.