Vulkanus has always been a mysterious place. Not of this world, literally, as it is thought to have been a former rogue planet captured by the Sun. The atmosphere is veiled in opaque clouds of black dust and some regions are covered in dense, impenetrable jungles. One of its most mysterious aspects are however of Terran origin. Encountered during geological surveys made by private companies are from time to time the radar- and lidar-images of spaceships crashed amidst the forests or desert dunes. Some of these can be accounted for by known accidents from previous expeditions or ships that were intentionally discarded on the planet instead of being expensively retrieved back to Earth. The identity and story of some wrecks remains unresolved, however, and suggests that maybe some rogue private entities or maybe even governments have had access to the planet without the rest of the world knowing.
A prevailing idea among conspiracy theorists that unfortunately dominates the discussion is that at least some of these wrecks are not even of human origin, with Vulkanus being something like a Bermuda Triangle of the universe on which various alien species have crashed. There is no evidence for any such claims, or interstellar visitations of our solar system in general, but they make for good spooky stories to tell in the dark. The most famous one is of course the so-called Parker Report, an allegedly true account written down by a man named Jonathan Parker that was mailed to a journalist. In the account, Parker claims to have worked as a surveyor for the Azuma Corporation when he was tasked with investigating such a shipwreck. There is no evidence of said wreck or Jonathan Parker having ever existed or a man by that name ever having worked for Azuma (the author tries to account for this by preposterously claiming that the corporation assassinates and erases whistleblowers). Together with other irregularities, the Parker Report can be safely dismissed as a hoax. But it is an amusing hoax and so, for the sake of entertainment, shall be recounted here.
According to Parker, the gigantic ship was shaped like 2/3s of a torus, with an architecture, both in- and outside that can be described as looking as if it were made of black, fused rock, clearly inhuman in design. The inside of the ship consisted of large hollow hallways with ribcage-like walls. The interior atmosphere of the ship was surprisingly Earth-like and maintained at an ambient temperature (this is another hint at the story being a hoax, as oxygenated air would most likely explode if it came into contact with the atmosphere of Vulkanus). Deep inside the ship, Parker then allegedly found some sort of “trophy room”, in which were stored various biological relics from the solar system: A diamond-axe of a harphead sealed inside a container, the jaws and tooth-plates of an irsu from Mars, the head of an air-shark from Venus, the stinger of a Jovian Titan-Jelly, mandibles from an Europan IRO, a pyrite-tooth from a lava-worm of Io, what appeared to be a dinosaur-skull and even a few human crania, some with markedly enlarged brow-ridges. There were a few other artefacts, also mostly skulls or mummified heads, but seemingly from alien species still unknown to science.
No complete corpses of the pilots were ever found according to Parker, only a few isolated bones here and there, seemingly fossilized. Throughout the ship were various carvings, which showed noseless but vaguely humanoid, screaming faces, as well as bipedal creatures with skeletal heads, seemingly walking on their hands and holding scifi weaponry with their tentacles/tails(?).
The Parker Report further alleges that the shipwreck was covered-up and salvaged by the Azuma Corporation, for implied nefarious purposes. It furthermore warns that the existence of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences, especially ones that seems to enjoy hunting safaris on different planets, cannot be allowed to be held secret from the rest of mankind.
Perhaps rather tongue-in-cheek, the report ends with the words: “This is dread, man. Truly dread.”
