You decide to play it safe and leave. Alyssa doesn’t show it, but you can tell she looks a bit relieved. You manage to leave the building without any incident. There are lots of dead tentacle creatures, but where the Sentinels are you have no idea, and you’re not really in any hurry to find out. When you get outside you see some dead bodies of Elojin and a few of your own team members. Apparently the Elojin were waiting in ambush and underestimated your numerical advantage. You hope the rest of your team made it back to the village safe.

When you get there, they look relieved to see you. You all begin to exchange information. You all are pretty much in agreement, that you all were overcome by something during this whole “quest”, whether it was some sort of ancient mind control device that is still operational, or the Xont themselves, you don’t know. You do know that you were driven there, yet when you broke the “hold” you were being driven away, as if you were perceived to be more of a threat. Something in there is important and the place does bear more exploration, but its not going to be your team that does it. Too much has been lost and it’s obvious you aren’t really equipped to explore the place without placing yourselves in unnecessary danger.

You and your team spend the remaining time in the village, where you can stay within a safe proximity to the Xont structure, without getting too close. The rest of your stay passes relatively quietly. When the Empire ship comes, you explain everything to your superiors, with the exception of shooting Salo which you change the story a little bit. You state he was over come by whatever madness the structure was emanating and drew his weapon on you, causing you to have to defend yourself. You go on to explain Xont structure and severely warn of the dangers of the place.

Your superiors have a mixed reaction to your tale. On one hand they’re pleased that you discovered this find of the millennium, but are suspicious of this “mind control business” you’re reporting. Some wonder if you still could be influenced, and shooting an Empire Indoctrinator doesn’t really help either. They don’t really want to execute you for mere suspicion though, not to mention you still might have questions they need answering.

Ultimately you’re taken off duty and put in a military hospital under observation for months. The rest of your team is as well, but they make sure to keep you all separated from each other. It’s a relatively unpleasant time for you. While you spend your time under going tests and interrogation, the Empire sent a better prepared team to the Xont structure to extract whatever they could find inside. Unfortunately even with the preparation, something still goes wrong. Chaos starts to ensue throughout the Empire, and how it spreads so quickly is unknown. You hear things every now and then, but you’re kept mainly in the dark, but even you hear about the civil war that erupts.

It’s during this time that someone comes for you as you sit in your cell. It’s Alyssa!

“Sir, the place has been abandoned we should get out of here and try to find a ship, I’ve located a few of the other members of our team as well.” She says as if you’ve never lost contact.
“Well I can see you’ve thought out the escape plan. You have any idea what to do afterwards though? I’m sure you’ve heard that there’s a civil war going on.”
“That’s up to you Captain, I’m just here to set you free and follow you.”
“Well I don’t know if I’m still a captain, Alyssa, you can probably call me by my given name. No need for formalities anymore. As for what we’re going to do, well I suppose we can figure that out on the escape, maybe we should just go find a quiet part of the galaxy and get the hell away from all this shit.”
“Whatever you decide, I’ll be there.” Alyssa says. There’s something definitely comforting about that.

As you make your way to your first steps to escape, you think if the Empire had had more soldiers like Alyssa there wouldn’t have been a civil war.