This is a rough sketch of an origin whose basic concept is that your civilization had sent out slower-than-light ships to nearby stars decades or centuries before the start of the game (a little bit like the Lost Colony origin as applied to the UNE's backstory). The idea is that, as you begin spreading throughout the stars as a FTL-capable empire, you'll find out what happened to some of those early colony ships.
You start out with no guaranteed planets. Instead, you start out with a narrative Situation that will eventually lead you to one of several possible outcomes. After a short delay, you will receive a second narrative Situation, and after another delay a third Situation.
The first narrative Situation will be chosen from one of the following (and centers around providing an early-game boost):
The second Situation will be chosen from one of the following (and centers around providing a potential world for habitation):
The third Situation will be chosen from one of the following (and centers around providing some sort of high-risk high-reward outcome in terms of a habitable planet + some small number of pops):
The potential outcomes described above are just suggestions, and can be modified, added to, or removed to taste.
You start out with no guaranteed planets. Instead, you start out with a narrative Situation that will eventually lead you to one of several possible outcomes. After a short delay, you will receive a second narrative Situation, and after another delay a third Situation.
The first narrative Situation will be chosen from one of the following (and centers around providing an early-game boost):
- Your species sent out sleeper ships into the void long ago. At the end of the Situation, you discover the location of one of those ships parked in a barren system. That ship failed to find a habitable planet, and its captain eventually made the decision to place it into a parking orbit, power it down, and hope someone would find it in the future. You get a special colony ship that can either settle a planet, or can be 'scrapped' onto a colony to give you a small amount of alloys, consumer goods, and one additional pop.
- You follow the beacons left behind by one of your colony ships to a system containing an ancient, extremely advanced space station! After a bit of investigation, you eventually discover that the colony ship was lured to the station, where all the people on board were digitized and stored within the station's computational matrix, joining many other such victims! However, they have retained their individuality, and once you figure out how to communicate with them they offer to fetch and decode the vast amounts of data stored within—a centuries-long slow process, to be sure. (Once you take the system you get basically a mini-megastructure that produces a substantial but not game-breaking amount of research, something like a micro Science Nexus. Maybe +20 of each?)
- You follow the beacons and arrive within a barren system, where you find the wreckage of the colony ship. Within the system are a bunch of abandoned asteroid bases. A little bit of investigation reveals that the ship was captured by pirates, who brought their prisoners here to their stronghold system in order to sell them off as slaves. The pirates are long gone, having been wiped out by some other empire...but there is still loot stashed away within their bases. (Receive some choice between a small amount of resources, pirate ships, or technological progress.)
The second Situation will be chosen from one of the following (and centers around providing a potential world for habitation):
- At the end of a chain of hints, you end up discovering a system containing a half-terraformed barren world. A colony ship had landed upon the planet centuries ago (as it was the best option they had). The colonists had split into two factions, one wishing to terraform the planet, one wishing to adapt to it. The first faction eventually released a terraforming microbe that spread out of control and destroyed both colonies; the microbe has been working on the planet ever since. Receive a special project to finish terraforming the planet for a nominal amount of energy, as well as the option to research the Planetary Sculpting tech and some progress into it.
- The colony ship you were looking for remains missing, but data from one of the survey probes they launched reveals a system with a beautiful, uninhabited planet! However, once you claim the system and investigate the anomaly upon the planet, a fleet arrives, led by a 'mothership' of sorts. The aliens in the fleet reveal that they are returning to that planet, their homeworld, after being exiled from it many years ago, and it was not until your ships arrived that they were able to narrow down its precise location. Depending on your choices you can blow them up, allow them to join your people on the planet (gaining a small number of additional pops), or grant them the planet, turning them into your vassal.
- The colony ship you were looking for is in orbit around a habitable planet, and there is an abandoned colony on the surface, but everyone is missing! If you settle the planet, you eventually discover that the missing colonists were long ago lured into the dark caverns below the planet by a psychic, world-spanning plant of sorts, which uses its spores to force its victims to obey its dictates. Your colony is going to suffer constant attacks until you deal with the problem: flush out the caves, killing everything; find a way to destroy the plant, freeing the colonists to rejoin your people; coming to an agreement with the plant and, in return for some cost, gaining its thralls (i.e. you get a few pops of a subspecies of your main species, but with the serviles trait and perhaps some others).
The third Situation will be chosen from one of the following (and centers around providing some sort of high-risk high-reward outcome in terms of a habitable planet + some small number of pops):
- You discover a system containing a perfect colony world settled by one of these STL ships, having successfully developed and grown in the intervening years into a civilization that is on the cusp of discovering FTL travel! Unfortunately, the planet is bitterly divided into two factions locked in a cold war, and each sees your arrival as a way to gain the upper hand over the other. Will you convince them to put aside your differences and join you, or will you inadvertently spark a nuclear war that will reduce the planet to a Tomb World? Perhaps you'll screw up so badly that the two sides put aside their differences...and become a new empire that has a significant opinion malus towards you.
- You discover a nebula system containing a habitat, as well as an ancient debris field and an 'alien shipyard'; system is rich in minerals and energy. You find out that one of those STL ships ended its journey here, and its people decided to use the shipyard and the scrap to build their ship into a habitat rather than press onward to find a new planet. They've become a warrior society and will require you to prove your toughness before joining your empire. Good outcome: annex the system and gain the habitat, as well as a small fleet of warships. Bad outcomes: habitat 'self-destructs' and destroys all the resource nodes in the system; habitat becomes a one-system Marauder empire and gets ships to match.
- You discover a system containing a planet with a medieval age primitive civilization, but of your species. It seems the descendants of the colony ship that settled this planet eventually gave up their advanced technology. The planet's Zro-rich ecology has affected its denizens, and they now wield strange powers against each other that a more superstitious age would have called 'magic'. These psi-enabled pops could be a potent addition to your empire, but you will have to tread carefully to gain their allegiance—a brute-force approach might turn the planet itself against your forces.
The potential outcomes described above are just suggestions, and can be modified, added to, or removed to taste.