I'm back baby
Prelogue
Ever since the dawn of mankind, they have seeked to explore and conquer lands beyond there own. From simple rafts, to massive sea borne fleets of wooden vessels, to strapping kilo-tonnes of high explosives together to conquer the body they called the moon. Then they're seeking led them to invent bigger and better rockets, sending manned and unmanned craft deeper and deeper into their own system, to discover what riches may lie there.
By the year 2100, humanity was experimenting with technologies which allowed them to take a huge leap into the universe, FTL technology. By exploiting and bending the laws of physics themselves, humanity soon began exploring worlds they hadn't even dreamed of seeing.
By the year 2500, this exploration has gone further than the milky way once called home. Whole systems were their domain. They began to discover millions of new species, and dozens of alien races. Factions formed, societies grew, empires formed. However one thing has always stayed the same. The strongest desire to continue to explore, the attribute that made humankind humankind.
Ok, now the part that matters
A small scouting expedition of a few human and alien astronauts entered a new sector. The sector was the domain of a small red dwarf, barely large enough to ensure fusion. A few rocky planets orbited the star, accompanied by an extremely dense asteroid belt. The crew quickly began scanning and logging the information about the sector, and formed a name. A short debate ensured, in the various alien dialects of each being's native speech, before the system was given the name "Theta". Theta, of the Xivia starcluster.
However scans quickly started showing some interesting anomanalities. The thick asteroid belt contained some molecules you'd normally find in complex life forms. A transmission was sent back to the nearby colony, Colony Xivia the the run down of the findings. Colony Xivia recieved the news and were incredibly excited by this news (discovering a new life form rewards a government grant), and so asked the explorers to get a closer examination.
The ship never returned.
It's likely something very tragic happened to the ship, such as a malfunction of some kind, as it's incredibly rare for there to be any sort of attacks so far out. The crew is now all M.I.A, and someone needs to find out why. That's where you come in. Colony Xivia has placed a 25,000 Credit reward to aquire the scout's black box flight recorder, and return it to the colony. It has an onboard transmitter, so finding it should be relatively easy, but it's battery life is limited.
RULES
This is realism RP. You have to obey the laws of physics at all times.
You cannot partake in the event if your faction is currently at war
Your factions government cannot directly influence this event. Thereby, no military deployment or usage of government assets
Partakers in this event will only have limited resources (no fleets/military hardware). Any sane faction probably wouldn't care if a small scouting expedition went missing, especially with such a pitiful reward.
You'll have to visit the colony first to get a certified exploration pilot. Under intergalactic law, an unexplored sector cannot be entered by vessels who have not got any personal with an exploratory pilots licence.