Editing Sun Stealer

'''Sun Stealer''' was an artificial entity created by the [[Shrouders]], named and modeled after the [[Amarantin]] that first led them to space. Its purpose was to subtly guide the recently encountered human species into awakening the [[Inhibitors]], to reveal whether they continued to prowl deeper space hunting for intelligent life.

Circa 2418 Sun Stealer was surreptitiously implanted into the mind of [[Dan Sylveste]], during his attempt to penetrate [[Lascaille's Shroud]]. In 2460, after the human had been kidnapped onto a powerful vessel, ''[[Nostalgia for Infinity]]'', Sun Stealer -- confronted with its host's vulnerability -- decided to hedge its bets, and infected the [[lighthugger]] with a shaved off splinter of its own program. Unfortunately for it, the splinter became trapped in the ship's gunnery control systems by a defensive feature of its computer architecture.

In 2491 Sun Stealer's mental influence began bearing fruit, with the archeologist Sylveste heading an expedition to the [[Delta Pavonis]] system; the same system as the faux-moon [[Cerberus]] which hid an Inhibitor detection device. 

In 2543 the splinter program aboard the lighthugger finally made progress influencing reality outside the gunnery systems. [[Gunnery Officer|Gunnery officer]] [[Boris Nagorny]] was driven insane by its attempts to control him, but the next gunnery officer was infected cleanly -- despite interference from [[the Mademoiselle]], another Shrouder program with directives antithetical to its own. Eventually, after the main Sun Stealer in Dan was brought back aboard the lighthugger in the Delta Pavonis system, the splinter managed to hitch a ride during a [[trawl]] of gunnery officer [[Ana Khouri]], finally gaining access to the ship's main systems.

From there, Sun Stealer and its splinter worked in concert to orchestrate Dan's penetration of the Cerberus object, the former guiding him "on the ground" in a suit of power armor and the latter preventing interruption with ''Infinity''<nowiki/>'s armaments turned against its own crew.

At last, however, the pair was brought down. ''Infinity'''s captain, previously infected with the [[Melding Plague]], was released from [[Reefersleep|cryo-suspension]] and regained control of the ship from the splinter -- albeit through exploiting his disease to merge with the ship; simultaneously, Sun Stealer was destroyed when Dan killed himself -- via an antimatter explosion -- to prevent the activation of the Inhibitors.
[[Category:Characters]]