Star Trek Hyperion
A Star Trek Adventures 2e game about the USS Hyperion.
The year is 2382. After the Dominion War, after the Battle of Sector 001, after the Nemesis incident. Starfleet is finally catching its breath and shifts some focus back on what it mostly wants to do: peaceful exploration.
This includes looking over some older reports that got ignored during all the mayhem, just gathering dust on the isolinear shelf. Cross-referencing and comparing those, there are hints that there's something going on with ancient ruins all over known space. A stray subspace signal from an ancient device in one sector of the Alpha quadrant, a door opens in the ruins somewhere in the Beta quadrant. And more like that. Much more. Seemingly random events from malfunctioning ancient machines. But if you put them all together and compare the timing… It all just seems a little bit odd.
Somehow, it seems as if several unexplained phenomena across the Alpha and Beta quadrants are linked. But what for? How? And why does it appear to be increasing in frequency?
These were the kinds of questions a team of researchers asked at the Daystrom Institute. Initially their questions were dismissed by their superiors. We live in a very weird universe. Look at enough data about space phenomena and you'll find coincidences. Just because some ruins display residual activity doesn't mean there's something big going on.
But the reports kept coming. And when a Tal Shiar attempt to steal the team's data was only narrowly thwarted, it became clear that this was a matter they could not afford to keep ignoring.
After investing a lot of political capital and dealing with obstructionist admirals (aren't they always?), Starfleet dedicated a vessel for the purpose of looking into the matter, serving as the eyes, ears, and hands of the Institute.
To explore strange old worlds; to seek out extinct life and ancient civilizations; to boldly go where no one ever thought possible.