[ WP ] A thousand years in the future , human space colonists lands in a planet outside the solar system for the first time . To their surprise , they find a 25-feet crumbling statue of a man wielding a sword and shield .

The statue was something of heated debate among our panel of scientists, archeologists, and anthropologists that had accompanied our expedition. It was decided that this discovery was to be kept a tightly held secret from the public, so as to control any hysteria that might arise from this `` monumental'' finding. The ears and the eyes were all but gone, having been eroded away. Upon further examination, the statue though in very bad shape, resembled every sense of a modern cro-magnon, from the domed head and the proportion of limbs to the body. How a statue found itself 8 billion light years from Earth is incredibly mind boggling however. The material appears to be of the new unique metal found on this world which has been durable enough to survive the countless sandstorms, and it's dating exceeds the limit of our sensors, indicating that it would have to be at least 4.5 billion years old or older. 
 
 The statue was but one of many. More were found scattered all across the dusty desert world, many housed in what seemed like gigantic underground tombs. Like the first, they were of similar human features, all bearing the same sword and shield. From what our panel could deduce, these statues were obviously built in reverence, but the lack of any recorded contact of humanity and these so called artists has proved to give our team only more questions 
 
 Not only are there statues, but massive looming spires made of an incredibly durable black stone which extend all the way up into the upper mesosphere. They appear to have been covered in carvings at one point, but they have evidently all but faded now. 
. 
 
 Who was this civilization that built these monuments? What happened to them? And what happened to us so many eons ago? 
 
 Finally, after 3 weeks of constant searching and head-scratching we came upon a solid answer. On the 23rd day of our search, our buggies came across an impossibly massive structure that loomed over the grey sand that covered this world. 
 
 This structure was different from the elegant spires and statues that littered the planet, this one was short, squat, and almost arachnid in style. 
 
 Upon entering the structure, a deep chill took all of us, and we wandered through the looming tunnels of the structure. We shined the light on the walls and saw that they bore carvings in a yet undiscovered language. The incredibly intact carvings showed that this world was actually once covered in a diverse set of biomes with an equally diverse amount of fauna and flora at one point. Mountains, deserts, forests, and plains were among the settings discovered. Creatures that were yet unknown to mankind many were humanoid in shape were also depicted. Some were elegant, others were short and squat. As we examined these pictographs further, it was evident that a type of black shadowy creature began to show up on the carvings. Unlike the other creatures, these new shadowy ones were obviously predatory, bearing a wide variety of claws and spines. 
 
 The next panel showed a massive almost piglike monster towering over all these shadowy beings, and to the right of them depicted a mound of corpses of these creatures from before. The shadowy creatures now bore a wide variety of wicked weapons now, such as pitchforks, scythes, and hammers. It was evident that this hoglike monster was the leader of these shadowy monsters, judging from his size and presence in the carvings. The next several panels featured scenes of widespread destruction and chaos. Burning cities and farms, as well as countless bodies, all the while presided over by the shadow monsters and the giant pig-thing. Finally there came an image of what appeared to be a fortress surrounded by the shadow monsters and their giant leader, who seemed poised to strike down the seemingly pitiful fortification. We all concluded that whatever led to this planet being in the state it was in right now, was because of these shadow things. 
 
 Yet on the next panel, it showed a lone man standing against the horde of black monsters and their leader, a young man who bore a sword and a shield just like the statue we had discovered. Alone he appeared to turn back the waves of monsters in the now heroic carvings with his sword. In the final panel the man was depicted standing over in triumph over the slain giant pig monster. The same man from the statue, only this time, the carvings showed that this man was clad in green. 
 
 The next hundred panels depicted the same theme, the rise of these monsters and their eventually casting down by this heroic figure, all the way down until the end, where the last panel at the end of the tunnel unlike the many others from before simply ended in pitch black darkness.
