036 - The Krechet-94 of Grinin Yakovich

Artifact: The Krechet-94 of Grinin Yakovich

There are many conspiracy theories about the deaths of unsuccessful cosmonauts during the space race, which were allegedly covered up by the Soviet Union to avoid negative publicity at the height of the Cold War. Even that just prior to the Apollo 11 spaceflight they launched a disastrous last ditch attempt to beat the Americans to putting a man on the moon. That last part isn’t entirely untrue, it just didn’t happen by way of the space program. Grinin Yakovich, Russian adept, was the real first man on the moon. Put there by a tiny military research unit that was the pet project of a secretive member of the politburo he just didn’t survive to tell the tale. The rest wasn't so much covered up as lost in the fog of history.

Power: Major.

Description: A painstakingly upkept and complete antique Soviet space suit, the kind intended for lunar excursions. Covering the off-white fabric is a complex mathematical rubric written in blue ink which has been erased and updated many times, staining the suit a bluish grey colour. Included in the equations are a number of religious and mystical symbols apparently somehow worked into the reasoning of the script. Someone with a modern mastery of both quantum physics and religious semiotics could decipher the patterns and their intention (it’d be an intense milestone for any relevant objective to do so) - perhaps even alter them - but it is gibberish to anybody less educated. The knuckles of the right glove are studded with polished fragments of Alexandrite. The worn but still legible name tag reads ‘G. Yakovich’.

Effect: If a major charge is spent by someone wearing the suit it will instantaneously transport them to the surface of the moon. Hopefully the suit is sealed and provisioned with enough oxygen for the occupant. What’s more, although there’s no way to make this immediately clear, is that their time of arrival is July 3rd, 1969 at 23:09. Nearly two weeks before Neil Armstrong’s first lunar steps. Laying in the dust in front of them is the soon to be mummified corpse of Grinin Yakovich.

The suit will return to where it came from after 19 minutes, becoming permanently useless as anything other than a historical curio. With a second major charge the person wearing the suit can return too. Otherwise they’re left behind with Yakovich to be pounded into space dust by the extreme swings in temperature on the moon’s surface, forgotten and uncelebrated.