The Tale of the Ampoliros

A pre-Imperial legend appearing on many planets, including Cadia, Mordia, Valhalla, Fenris, Atilla, Catachan, Krieg, Armageddon, and Piscina. It tells me story of the explorator spacecraft Ampoliros, a warp-capable frigate during the Age of Strife.

In the legend's simplest form, Captain Fregonokon and her crew had set off toward the Niushe system in the year 480M29, a significantly difficult journey in those days. About two-thirds of the way to their destination they came upon an abandoned cargo ship adrift in space. Upon returning from examining the empty ship they resumed their journey. Two weeks later the entire crew was stricken by what must have been an anti-cytological microspore. The manifestations were high fever, sweating, dizziness and dementia magnum. In a word, the crew went mad. They experienced the rarest form of psychosis, group paranoia. In a matter of three weeks they became convinced that all of civilization had been destroyed by an invasion force of hideous aliens who attacked with unstoppable weapons from invisible starships. They radioed this information to all receivers using the widest spectrum of emergency bands. The crew told of their decision to strap themselves to their guns and fly until they ran out of stores, searching for the invisible aliens, hoping to attack and destroy at least some of them before starvation or the aliens killed them. The Ampoliros was never found.

It is said to be still searching the stars, ever ready to attack; the time-dilation effect of warp travel making the crew almost immortal.

The legend was often used to explain to children how allowing themselves to be carried away by imaginary fears could lead to real difficulties. It was also used to suggest to adults that too much idle time was destructive to a well-tuned army or skilled work force. "Forever prepared and forever unready" was often a phrase used to deride the crew of the Ampoliros and the state of any tactical force that has waited too long to be tested in a real fight.

The legend was at times embellished by such changes as having some of the crew die of fever or abandon ship alone in deep space. Another version says they went mad not from microspore infestation but from the colossal, crushing loneliness of deep space. In its various forms the legend describes the crew as suffering real or fanciful symptoms such as emotional seizures, tremors of the eye muscles, ego hemorrhaging and brain cell fusion. Often the story speaks of the crew engaging in attacks on other friendly vessels, planets, asteroids, and even imaginary targets such as scanner blips and psycho-projections.

The legend is first recorded as being part of the folk culture of Mordia; from there it was carried to most of the pre-Imperial human systems. Of course, in the Imperial era it spread to scores of other planetary systems.

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The Ampoliros
Tsar Ivan