In a previous post about the Artifact Age, I mentioned that you will be able to play an Entrarchic scientist in the pen-&-paper role-playing game I’m working on, and make momentous discoveries about Mythos civilizations that perished a billion years ago. But you can also be a freelance artifact hunter! It might be more lucrative, but also paint a target on your back the moment you find something valuable.

In the novels, Calis actually is a part-time artifact hunter. She rarely finds the time for it between her various contracts and commitments, but she has accumulated a lot of knowledge through fieldwork and studying, particularly extant sources from the Federation Age ten thousand years ago. The latter’s a whole scientific endeavor in and of itself. Much has been lost over time, but that’s not the toughest challenge. Federation Age sources on Artifact Age archeology are usually hidden, encrypted, or otherwise obscured in imaginative ways. The mere chance of finding Artifact Age technology that could help them fight back the exoentity invasion made this a matter of security, so that almost everything was highly classified.

In the Entrarchic Age, however, emulating Indiana Jones won’t get you far, neither as a scientist nor as an artifact hunter. Even more so than in the Federation Age, the value of anything you find lies in its context. Thus, you can only stake a claim and try to sell it to a legitimate entity, which might be lucrative but will not shower you with silver and gold. Except perhaps if it’s a working piece of technology, possibly even a weapon. Then you might be tempted to rip it out of its context and sell it to the highest bidder. But that will actually paint not one but two huge targets on your back, for entrarchic authorities on one side and every crook in the known Void on the other.