Nomai Texts

Lore & Background

Physically, the texts appear as orange-red bricks with black symbols arranged in horizontal lines. They can be found on walls, floating in zero-gravity environments, or embedded within machinery. The translation mechanic allows the player to bypass language barriers instantly, suggesting a universal connection between the reader and the writer across millennia.

In Their Own Story

The astronaut hovers silently near the wall of an ancient outpost, helmet light cutting through the darkness. Orange bricks glow faintly under the beam, covered in intricate black symbols that seem to shift as they are read. A translation forms in their mind, not spoken but understood—a warning from a long-dead engineer about the instability of time nearby. The silence of the station is heavy, broken only by the hum of life support and the distant crackle of static.

Reader's Guide

The ancient bricks chronicle a civilization that arrived in this solar system eons ago, drawn by mysterious energy signatures from beyond their stars. Early entries describe their initial survey of planets like Giant's Deep and Brittle Hollow, establishing outposts to study local phenomena without understanding the dangers. Over millennia, they discovered the Hourglass Twins, realizing sand flowed between them across time itself rather than mere space. This breakthrough led to experiments with temporal mechanics, eventually allowing travel to the past and future for deeper exploration. Their curiosity then turned toward the Quantum Moon, where reality shifted based on observation. Texts from this era reveal intense debates about stability and danger, hinting at a deeper cosmic secret hidden within the universe's structure. The final records speak of constructing an eye-like device to observe the cosmos directly, hoping to find answers beyond their physical reach. Ultimately, these writings document a race that pushed too far into forbidden knowledge. They vanished long before humanity arrived in this system, leaving only silent bricks and tablets behind as monuments to their ambition. The supernova event that now resets time was unknown to them in detail, though some texts hint at cyclical destruction. For the traveler reading today, these words unlock the path forward, transforming ancient warnings into a map for survival against the inevitable stellar collapse waiting above.

Did You Know?

• The Nomai Texts are written in a pictographic hieroglyph language that the player character can read using a translator tool found in their spacesuit.
• The Nomai were a three-eyed, fur-covered, antlered species that wore robes and large masks, as described in the source.
• The Nomai civilization went extinct long before the game begins, killed by a wave of ghost matter from the Interloper comet.
• The Nomai built a probe cannon in orbit around Giant's Deep to fire a probe in a random direction to locate the Eye of the Universe.
• The Nomai constructed a Sun Station in orbit around the star to artificially induce a supernova, but it failed to trigger one.