One of the oldest and largest living things on the face of the Earth is a fungus – a colony of Armillaria Gallica so vast its hyphae span over 90 acres of a Michigan forest. Its estimated age is 2500 years. Its total mass is around 400 000 kilograms.

Yet, when we think of alien life, we conjure images of predators and life forms similar to us: independent agents with limbs, senses, and their own free will.

The species we know as Chytrids thoroughly tests these assumptions. More related to Armillaria than us, it is nevertheless an extreme threat, born on some distant world where fungoids were the apex predators.

In our several known encounters, it proved intelligent enough to anticipate and pre-empt our moves. Like every good parasite, it can grow through our structures and ships without destroying them – at least not until it means to. Once it begins to grow, it is almost impossible to stop. A single shred of surviving mycelium is enough for the infection to reoccur in mere days. What’s worse, various deadly spores and special, purpose-built drones the Chytrid organism releases proved capable of defeating even the most battle-hardened crews.

All analyzed encounters confirm that, the only things that seemed to tip the scale in human favor were heavy-duty environmental suits and industrial flamethrowers. And while the thought of developing a chemical agent to combat Chytrids is tempting, I would advise caution. Attempting to study them in a laboratory setting might have consequences far more devastating than losing a single ship every now and then…

Everything happened because of a single cat.

It had to get on board during our rendezvous with the Adrastea science vessel, orbiting the DB-198 protoplanet. Soon after, we took samples from DB-198 and made our jump back with everyone tucked away safely in their stasis pods. Everyone, except the cat.

Even its nine lives couldn’t save it. As the ship accelerated up to 1000G, poor critter turned into a four-kilogram projectile that smashed several sample canisters and turned into a thin layer of protein soup on the bulkhead door. Nothing too bad, right? Well, it turns out something weird was hidden in the damaged samples. A voracious, parasitic form of XNA that could attach itself to many different genetic molecules, including DNA, and rewrite them to grow carrier organisms. This strange virus recombined the cat’s remains. Then, it went through all the biomass in our kitchen supplies. Finally, it found us, locked away in our stasis pods; pieces of canned flesh waiting to be opened.

Soon, all hell broke loose. We tried to fight these things, but the more we bled and the more of us died, the stronger and larger they became. The last of us now plan to destroy the ship, but the road to the control room is blocked by the original carrier, now a lumbering hulk of flesh that still has a disfigured cat’s head. I volunteered to fight it with a jerry-rigged flamethrower. I know it’s irrational, but this damn animal has to pay for everything that happened to my crew!

Carnomorphs is a race of quickly adapting monsters that eat everything on their way – it doesn’t matter if those are crew members, bodies, or even their own specimens. The play with Carnomorphs is more challenging than with Intruders – if any player wants to survive this fierce race between achieving objectives and Carnomorphs adaptation, they should consider cooperating a little bit more with others. And, of course, wait for the perfect moment to backstab them.

Every spaceship has a voice; a melody of machinery and subsystems its crew learns intimately during long travels. The problem is, ever since the last mission our ship sounds WRONG. There’s something foul in the way it’s speaking to us. Barely audible murmurs. Strange whispers no machine could make. The dark corridors and vast halls almost seem to SING.

Some of us have tried to locate sources of this interferences, but they always seemed two steps ahead. Stalked by their never-ending presence, we soon started cracking. Our engineer has cut some words on his flesh. When we asked why he replied: ‘Incandescent secrets need to be written in blood. ’ Then, our navigator took a spacewalk without her suit. When we pulled her in, her entire face frozen and cracked, she grinned in a way I will never forget.

Now, it got even worse. Noises turned into voices, sharing tales of slaughter and terror. They do not run from us anymore. They encircle us and herd us through the ship to some dark purpose. I need to UNDERSTAND them before it’s too late. I put my hand on the pistol grip, looking at the backs of my last two crewmembers. I see dark mysteries swirling under their skulls. It would only take two bullet holes to release them…

Void Seeders are strange creatures. Because they mainly don’t exist. Only Lairs, Nest, and their sole guardian Despoiler are there in physical forms. And, what’s more, Despoiler is protected by Lairs, and they have to be destroyed in order to hurt it. Hallucinations and madness sometimes will make you act in irrational ways. You have to care about your mind to screen yourself from these effects.