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Light Casts Shadow

a story-driven scenario for single- and multiplayer



What is this?
Exactly 172 years ago, the Empire lost contact with the newly established colony of Volentia. Before this, reports of a spreading illness on the colony’s core world had been received via the then-unreliable interstellar communication systems.
Now, the Royal Research Institute has assembled experts from several High Houses for an expedition. The mission: to uncover what happened to the second colony of the Akhinnae Empire.
Aboard the interstellar research cruiser Nikha III, you are part of this expedition. Establish a base, explore ruins, gather evidence—and wrest Volentia's secrets from its grasp.



This is a story-driven scenario that will include building, investigation, combat and a decent amount of interaction with the world. The goal of this scenario is to find out what happened to the colonists of the world you are orbiting. You will join one of four factions, the Houses, and take a starting vehicle from the science cruiser in orbit down to your designated starting zone. The science cruiser will drop building tasks in the form of drop pods that contain blueprints that you are supposed to collect and build.
You will start with a basic production camp and then proceed to build faction specific bases to help you advance the mission as well as small grid projects.
The scenario is customizable! You can change the settings and add mods at any given time, the scenario should still work with a lot of them.

Who is this for?
“Light Casts Shadow” can be played by up to 12 users but can be played in single player as well. This scenario has a designated single-player mode.
This is a scenario for the experienced Space Engineers player with survival experience. If you do not know how to save GPS coordinates or how to properly manage hydrogen fuel consumption, this scenario might not be (yet) for you.
In the vanilla experience, this scenario is also NOT PVP.
A small trigger warning: This scenario contains a storyline about a pandemic that has to do with death, personal tragedy and things related to that.

How to play it
The AIVR Nikha III. is an Viator Class Science Cruiser that is in orbit around Volentia II. You start your briefing here, join a faction, launch the projects for your faction and take your faction hover craft from orbit to your designated landing zone. The Nikha III. will send drop pods with projectors into your general area of operations from time to time. They are tasks you are supposed to fulfil in order to support you in your mission.
ATTENTION: LEAVE YOUR STARTING FACTION AND JOIN THE HOUSE FACTION YOU WANT TO PLAY IN BEFORE TRYING TO START THE SCENARIO.
You will gather the 8 drop pods that land around your base camp location and construct a fully functional outpost from them. Once your respective faction building is finished, press a prepared button within the building to inform the ship in orbit about your status.



After that you can continue to investigate the nearest former settlement.
Reactivate what is left of the systems, read the screens, find datapads and start to find out more about what happened on Volentia. You will find additional GPS markers that you can advance to in order to find what happened to the colonists – and to a special group that held out longer than anyone else.
Every faction has their own sub-tasks – but this is a wholly cooperative scenario. Share your resources and your intel. For the sake of this scenario, you are free to switch factions as often as you like, they are here as a flavour to the scene.

House Nija
The security specialists will be responsible for keeping the teams safe. They carry hacking equipment to hack the old buildings without lowering your reputation.

House Aforian
The House of engineers and architects will be responsible for mining, building and scrapping.

House Erinienhet
The House of scientists is tasked with collecting relics like important art and the IDENT chips of former colonists. They carry the equipment for other teams and collect texts.

House Licoran
The House of healers is tasked with finding out what befell the colonists. They collect samples from the deceased and analyse them in their laboratory.







you can find the manual for this scenario here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3403485515

The world comes with NON-OPTIONAL mods:
Komorebi by Major Jon
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3309805284

AI Enabled by jTurp
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2596208372

Improvised Experimentation by mz
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2891367014



“How do winning conditions and progress conditions trigger?”
There are none. This is “just” a world with things placed in a story-telling order. The scenario will “start” when you press one of the start buttons. It will be considered ended once you did the final mission.

“Akhi.. Hakhu… what the heck?!”
Akhinnae – it’s my own world, with lore, language, history – I am a nerd, you know?


“DLC split the community, why do you use them here?”
For this scenario, you do not need to own any DLC. Please have a look in the scenario guide under "different ways to play"


I will always publish all my Space Engineers work for free - but you can support me if you want - via
[patreon.com/AkhinnaeEmpire]

Any questions about the Akhinnae Empire or my work? Join the Discord if you want!
https://discord.gg/uvbjFecBtt