[Cyrien]

The thoughts of the crew were in confusion. They had passed through this warp point as they had others in the past. But on through this one lay not just another system with planets, moons, asteroids and a star or two. Through this one lay a fundamental change in their view of the universe.
As they warped into this system the minds of those responsible for scanning the system reached out. In a few moments their minds had found all the large bodies, each catalogued with orbital paths and various other important data(Note the Alteri do not possess or use technology that scans, their own inherent psychic abilities are used to scan their surroundings and this is a basic skill all Alteri possess though a few excell at it and can extend their thoughts to scan vast areas at once, this would be considered basic Alteri scanners). Next they moved their minds to smaller things and lower and lower... a ship?
"Captain...?" The scanners thoughts wavered as he called out to the Captain in confusion.
"There is a vessel here. It is of our size but... different. Sir... there should be no ship here."
The Captain was stunned, unlike the scanner he was in contact with the Captains of all the other ships of the Alteri and knew where each and every one was. Yet as he stretched out his own mind he could not account for what he found. It was a ship, very much like their own yet... different. For starters he could not detect the minds of any others on there... this was troubling. He hastily made contact with other minds in the chain of command on the homeworld, requesting orders for what actions to take next.
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Several days later they had more complete information. It was a simple ship in orbit of a planet. Not a planet they had any expectations for either. It possessed an extremely dense atmosphere of Oxygen (dense to creatures that live in a vacuum) and was quite hostile to them. Despite that their most advanced scanner crew had detected what could only be considered signs of life (Note that the Alteri expect no life anywhere and as such when they do find it would have no differentials for sentient versus not sentient and as they are the only comparison they have would initially view any life as sentient once they come to grasp with the possibility of other life). Construction, manipulations of what was around them, modification. And the faintest of mental signatures, though once you knew what to look for it was quite pronounced. The mental signatures seemed to come in many types though, some stronger and some very weak. There was only one type of signature on the ship though. It was of the strongest type.
The Alteri had tried to reach out to these minds, but with no real success. A few of the strongest minds had managed to gain conflicting images and other perceptions from the minds but it was mixed in and strongly influenced by senses the Alteri could not understand. For a race that had never experienced sound, or taste or smell and always had a constant mental awareness of everything around them that which comprised environemntal awareness in this new species thoughts were beyond comprehension.

A decision was made, they would continue to try and contact and understand this new life. They would also reevaluate existing procedures for scanning a system. Some argued for going back and rechecking all the old systems, but most felt that even without the presence of the ship they would have found this other life based on the unusual surface alterations they had made to the planet. Others argued that some other planets had had similiar features on a smaller scale. They warranted new scans aimed at finding the strange mental patterns given out by this other life. In the end compromise was reached. A colony ship was already headed for one of the planets with one of these unusual smaller scale scan patterns similiar to what was found with this new life. It would also be the first colony ever formed on a planet with an atmosphere. Other studies could be conducted alongside the search on that planet. In time they would get around to each of the others. For now they must understand that which they had already found. To understand that which could also possibly reach them based on what the new life ship possessed for technology.
In the end the exploration ships continued on as they had. With new guidelines for scanning each system they entered.
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At the time little seemed to change that affected the average Alteri. Much later though those who looked back would see this as the time when everything changed.