Exploration Date: Month 6, Day 17, 10:18

Location: Unknown

     "Oi, Blast! Wake up. You didn't kick the bucket already did ya?" I felt a light slapping against my face. My whole body hurt, and I felt cramped. My head was pulsing with pain, every heartbeat sending a signal to my brain to remind it of how badly I must have hit my head. I tried to stretch my arms out, only to hit a metal wall in front of me with my right arm. I slowly opened my eyes so they could adjust to the bright light from outside. Wait, outside? What about the Skylark…

     "Come on, dude. I said, WAKE UP!" Just as I remembered the situation I had been in, I felt an open palm smack right against my nose. I cried out in surprise and sat up, wide awake now. Tears sprung to my eyes, a mixed reaction of the impact to my nose and the sudden glare from outside the escape pod's opened hatch. "Oh jeez, are you crying? I didn't hit you that hard!"

     "I'm not crying, you freaking… " I replied, shoving my brother away from me. I wiped the tears away, my nose still stinging. "You just hit me in the nose! What do you expect, Zimthose? Such a moron..." It took a second to get my bearings; we had obviously made it to the planet’s surface, and my brother had already opened the pod's door. I stood up and almost tripped on a large chunk of metal. Picking it up, I remembered my genius solution from right before we entered the atmosphere: taking off my chest plate armor, boots, and gauntlets in order to squeeze myself into the storage box behind the single seat in the escape pod. "How long was I out?"

     My brother shrugged, tossing my gauntlets towards me. "Heck if I know. Not long I guess? Longer than me, at least. I woke up a few minutes ago, took a look outside. We managed to crash through a bunch of trees, by the look of it. And we somehow landed right side up. Probably why you didn't break your neck or anything from the crash."

     I finished putting my gear back on and hopped out of the escape pod. We'd managed to make a small crater, and branches were scattered around us. Looking around the area, it seemed Zimthose was right: just behind the escape pod was a tall and dense tree line, hardly a few meters between each trunk, and even less room between the dense bush-like tops of each tree. Scores of branches and piles of green leaves were scattered about, while stretching out in the other direction was a large barren field, no bushes and hardly any grass as far as the eye could see.

     "Glad to see you care about my well being,” I muttered. “You chose a good spot to land I guess. Not that you had a choice... What’d you do with our equipment and rations?" I heard some rummaging from inside the pod and caught a moderately sized beige pouch my brother tossed from inside.

     "We got whatever is in there, and let's see… eh, just a calibur and a blaster. Standard supplies crap. Oh, and a basic defender's shield. Dibs on the blaster!" My brother tossed everything but the gun out of the pod, disregarding my safety completely. I slung the pouch over my shoulder and went to pick up the sword and shield. They were as simple as it got in regards to equipment: an evenly balanced short sword, the blade a dull grey with some blue markings on it, and the shield was 10 millimeters thick throughout, and slightly more thick along the edges. My brother hopped out of the pod and walked over to me, gazing up at the sky. The blaster he now holstered had a plasma battery powering it, and could recharge itself as long as it wasn’t overused. Even though there were two of us and we had our standard equipment, I wasn’t confident we would be alright on our own in uncharted territory.

     “Hey… the Skylark…” my brother mumbled, pointing in the direction he was looking. It was impossible to miss. The Skylark, the Spiral Knights’ massive ship and home for the last six months, was billowing smoke out of gaping holes in its port- and under-side, slowly plummeting from space. We both stared, dumbfounded, wondering what could possibly have caused this.