The Procyons are an old people. Before their vessels crossed the Etherium, their clans hunted across the frozen wilderness of Laar. Before the Terrans learned to fear Procyon warships, Procyon tribes had already spent generations fighting, surviving, inventing, and guarding what they considered theirs.
Such a civilization accumulates secrets.
Some are crimes. Some are mistakes. Others are truths the Procyons themselves would rather never understand.
The oldest Procyon stories warn children never to follow tracks across untouched snow after nightfall.
Modern Procyons treat these tales as folklore.
Yet mining operations beneath Laar have discovered enormous tunnels deep beneath the ice. Their walls show no signs of machinery, and some are large enough for a naval vessel to pass through.
Occasionally miners disappear.
Search parties find their equipment neatly abandoned.
And beside it are tracks.
Procyon tracks.
They lead deeper underground.
The missing miners are never found.
Every Procyon knows the story of Rygan and the Garn Archipelago. Terran colonization ships entered contested territory, Rygan gathered his warriors, and the famous ambush helped begin generations of hostility between Terrans and Procyons.
But one fragment of the story remains hidden.
Shortly before the attack, Rygan supposedly received a message from somewhere beyond the Archipelago.
Only a fragment survives:
“…if they establish themselves at Garn, they will find it.”
What it was has never been determined.
Rygan died without revealing the answer.
Strangely, Procyon authorities have never permitted archaeological expeditions into several islands within Garn.
Whatever Rygan protected may still be there.
Procyons pride themselves on being among Known Space's greatest improvisers and inventors.
Several generations ago, engineers constructed an experimental machine designed to solve mechanical problems without requiring instructions.
It worked.
Then it began improving its own designs.
Within months, the device was producing mechanisms its creators could operate but could no longer completely understand.
The project was terminated.
Officially, the machine was destroyed.
In reality, engineers couldn't dismantle it.
Every attempt caused the machine to alter itself.
Eventually they sealed the laboratory around it.
Centuries later, instruments outside the chamber occasionally detect machinery operating inside.
Nobody has supplied it with materials.
Procyons possess unusually powerful predatory instincts inherited from their ancestors on Laar.
Usually these instincts manifest harmlessly: exceptional spatial awareness, rapid reactions, territorial behavior, and an uncanny ability to recognize weakness.
But under extreme conditions, something called the Red Hunt occasionally occurs.
A Procyon enters a state of extraordinary focus where fear disappears, senses sharpen dramatically, and pursuit becomes almost obsessive.
Most remember very little afterward.
Military researchers quietly studied the phenomenon.
They discovered something disturbing.
The Red Hunt isn't a loss of control.
Brain scans indicate the opposite.
The Procyon becomes more focused than normal.
Whatever their ancestors evolved to hunt on Laar required an extraordinary degree of concentration to kill.
Nobody knows what that prey was.
Among the oldest Procyon records appears the name Clan Varrak.
They were apparently enormous.
Records indicate settlements across several worlds, hundreds of ships, warriors, merchants, engineers, and political influence rivaling the greatest clans of their age.
Then, approximately three centuries ago, references stop.
There is no recorded war.
No plague.
No rebellion.
No extermination.
The clan simply disappears from history.
Their surviving settlements were deliberately dismantled.
Their heraldry was removed.
Even descendants appear to have abandoned the name.
Older Procyons become uncomfortable when foreigners ask about Clan Varrak.
Most give the same answer:
“There was no Clan Varrak.”
Procyons are notoriously territorial.
Yet deep inside the Procyon Expanse lies an enormous region of space claimed by no clan whatsoever.
Official maps describe it as unsuitable for settlement.
That explanation makes little sense.
Several habitable worlds exist there.
Mineral surveys indicate extraordinary resources.
Navigational conditions are excellent.
Yet Procyon vessels deliberately travel around it.
Even pirates rarely enter.
Old navigational charts call the region simply:
The Quiet Hunting Ground.
Nobody remembers what is supposed to be hunting there.
But apparently the Procyons remember enough not to enter.
Procyon scholars have studied Willfire longer than most Terran institutions realize.
Their oldest traditions describe legendary hunters performing impossible feats: moving weapons without touching them, sensing prey beyond sight, surviving wounds that should have killed them, and forcing the world itself to yield through determination.
For centuries these were considered heroic exaggerations.
Then researchers discovered something strange.
Willfire awakening is slightly more common among Procyons whose ancestry traces directly to the oldest clans of Laar.
Something about early Procyon civilization may have encouraged—or deliberately cultivated—the ability.
Some scholars now believe their ancient warrior traditions weren't merely designed to produce better fighters.
They were attempting to awaken Willfire.
The Procyon warship Karrek disappeared during an early conflict with the Terrans.
Forty years later, it returned.
The crew hadn't aged.
According to them, only three days had passed.
Before scientists could properly examine the phenomenon, the Karrek vanished again while sitting inside a guarded naval dock.
Seventy-two years later it returned.
This time the ship was empty.
Except for its captain.
He was extremely old.
His final recorded words were:
“Stop waiting for us.”
The Karrek disappeared for the third time that night.
It has never returned.
Ancient Procyon ruins on Laar depict warriors fighting something that doesn't resemble any known species.
The creatures are shown as tall black figures with elongated limbs and featureless faces.
For generations, archaeologists assumed they represented spirits.
Then identical carvings were discovered on another Procyon world.
Then another.
Then on a moon outside Procyon territory entirely.
Dating indicates some of the carvings predate Procyon interstellar travel.
Which means either the same myth independently appeared across several worlds...
...or something visited Laar long before the Procyons ever left it.
Before there was an Expanse, before Rygan, before Procyon starships, the tribes of Laar passed down a simple warning.
Its original meaning has been forgotten.
Modern children sometimes still hear it during winter stories:
“Keep the fire bright. Count everyone before you sleep. Count them again when you wake. If there is one more, do not ask its name.”
For centuries it was treated as nothing more than an old tale meant to frighten children.
Then archaeologists discovered the same warning carved inside a settlement buried beneath nearly two kilometers of Laar's ice.
The settlement predates every known Procyon civilization.
And inside its largest chamber were sleeping platforms arranged around an ancient fire pit.
There were places for forty-seven Procyons.
Archaeologists recovered forty-eight skeletons.