Weeks ago, military authorities at (the new) Fort Bent sent out a small party of six cavalry soldiers to punish raiders for stealing sheep, kidnapping women and children, and murdering men from American settlements. But it’s been too long, and the cavalry soldiers have not returned. It is your job to find them, or at least find out what happened to them.

You emerge from hyperspace with your fuel tanks empty. Expecting to simply refuel and leave, you instead find a dead station, spinning powerless and silent in the eternal void.

Word has reached the street of Redpoint that a lost artifact of great power lies to the southwest, in an obscure vale in the ancient Seawatch Mountains.