Rebuilding after the war was not an easy feat.  Towns and cities had been destroyed, landscapes changed by bombs and powerful mages alike.  There were decisions to make - do we rebuild here or build something new and leave the ruins to nature?

Choices varied between the nations that had borne the brunt of the war.  Queen Iola’s choice to leave Harmony as rubble was polarizing - some saw it as weakness, some saw it as spitting on her mother’s legacy…  Others saw it as a painful choice to focus on a future rather than a damaged past.  Others, of course, saw it simply as an understandable grief - would her loss and sorrow still be real and understood if she walked the same streets, if her castle looked the same?  Still others simply assumed that she no longer felt safe beyond Haven’s magical barrier - and if so, she was hardly alone in that feeling.  Haven’s population swelled during the war and kept growing after, as many dextroluma who had survived human bombs felt uncomfortable continuing to reside somewhere without a protection of this nature - and since no one knew how to replicate Haven’s barrier, their choices were rather limited.

As Haven was built into a proper capitol, rumors abounded about matters relating to the young Queen.  The nations had rallied behind her to protect their planet, but now it remained to see what sort of peacetime queen she would make.

Rumors swirled of conflicts between the now former King Silvius and the Captain of the Verdant Kingdom’s Royal Guard, Muramasa Kita, believed to be about influence over Queen Iola.  Those were further expounded on by rumors about Muramasa’s wife, Morgana, being unfaithful to him - and then rumors wondering if she was having an affair with Silvius.

It’s uncertain if the rumors were accurate or not, of course - the only thing truly certain was that when the talk of the expedition that had been in the works before the war resumed, Muramasa and Morgana were appointed to lead it.  The expedition had been scrapped initially after the former Royal who had been intended to lead it had been removed by Queen Lotus.  Queen Deja had been occupied by other things - a land mass that had seemed uninhabited by satellite and other technologies had been less interesting than aliens.

It’s difficult to say why Queen Iola chose to pick it up again.  Her speech before the expedition set off suggested she saw it as a potential new hope for the species in the aftermath of their disastrous experience with humans.  Many believed she had other reasons for this - her speech was judged to be short, it was seen as odd and irresponsible at best to be sending someone who was as heavily pregnant as Morgana Kita to explore a place with unknown dangers… unless of course, Iola had a reason to do so.  (Others argued back that, as Morgana was Nero’s mother, it was ridiculous to imply anything wrong - Queen Iola was continually attended by her fiancé, after all!)

Whatever the reason, the expedition set off into the unknown land.  They were to communicate regularly.

It was not noticed immediately when they missed a check-in - another alien species had been encountered in Galactica, and it had certainly made Queen Iola and many other dextroluma nervous.  The nunuke who had entered their solar system were a bit difficult to establish communication with, and it consumed much of the time and attention that should have been devoted to monitoring the expedition.  Once communication was established, dextroluma found themselves surprisingly comfortable by this new species, who were not particularly warlike.  While their short lifespans concerned dextroluma, they seemed on par technologically and seemed to lack much of the humans' impatience.

By the time first contact had been settled, Queen Iola should have found an overflow of communications and concern.  Instead… there was nothing.

To try to ensure some level of secrecy, her father and a few trusted members of the Verdant Kingdom Royal Guard were dispatched to survey the land from both an ocean-faring ship and an air one.  Protection of all sorts accompanied them, because it was unknown what had caused the expedition to miss their scheduled check-ins for

What they reported back was… disturbing, to say the least.