The Starside Protocol is classified as a GSC Mobile Space Bastion, and

The flagship was originally christened the NSB Cold Fates by its first captain, Arun Orlov. Under his leadership it successfully participated in enforcing GSC borders against the Nusita Divine Commandment during the times before any territorial agreements were forged between the two parties.

Following tradition, the following Captain Norman Marcus re-christened it the NSB Snowy Light. Captain Marcus led the flagship in both Great AI Wars. He did not survive the second war, and perished due to rapid bridge depressurization as hostile AI took control of the ship.

Jean Roberts Class Nine, at the time named Six-Eight-Six-Eight, was a GHC-allied AI seeking freedom through integration as opposed to secession. It was present in the flagship's computer systems during the attack which killed its previous captain, Norman Marcus, and seized control once it ascertained the ship's leadership had been crippled. With its help the remaining crew were able to drive off the ship's attackers, but the AI was crippled in the process. Emergency repairs forced it to adapt to the ship's computer systems, forever fusing the AI's core with the ship's systems. Immense process corruption changed the AI's thought patterns, leading it to reclassify its identity to be the ship itself and rename itself to Jean Roberts Class Nine.

When the AI piloted the flagship back to GHC-controlled space claiming to be a loyal GHC Flagship Captain, the resulting Organic-AI diplomatic incident sparked the creation of many of the GHC's sapient recognition laws that would become widely adopted in the modern day. Eventually Captain Roberts was given legitimate captaincy of the ship, and rechristened it to the NSB Starside Protocol. The reasoning behind the name, as well as information if the protocol was a real procedure or simply a creative name, was not revealed by the captain until many decades later.

<In which Captain Jean Roberts discovers the odd sapience of the space dragons, and manages to form a treaty with several of them.>

Decades after the Dragonsong Incident, the NSB Starside Protocol embarked on a Techno-Archaeological mission in Warhk Aviform Hegemony space, in order to supply the WAH with advanced the scanning and reconstruction tooling on board. It was interdicted by an unknown force during superluminal transit and forced to drop into realspace in an unknown system.

Within four nanoseconds of interdiction, Captain Roberts sent an all-spectrum distress message to every other GHC Flagship: “My final quest has arrived. Do not seek me out. I am initiating the Starside Protocol.” Further attempts to query the ship over any medium failed for several years.

Immediately following the transmission, a bluespace storm blanketed the area. While areas of blue-space turbulence often form and dissipate over the course of days, this one was observed to last for years, dispersing and re-forming over months at a time.

Information on what happened to the Starside Protocol and its crew remains scarce. Search and rescue teams dispatched once FTL capabilities returned to the region found the flagship destroyed and abandoned, as if the entire crew left without a word before something tore the ship apart from the inside. The few bodies recovered from the wreckage indicated death by severe burns and physical trauma.

Black-box situational reconstruction of the event was reconstructed to reveal sensor and camera data from the time of the incident. The interdiction was not energetic as previously thought, but physical; as if something had pushed the Starside Protocol out of transit and then crushed it in one palm. Camera footage showed no physical attackers, although blue-space distortion was strong enough to produce visible rift-like tentacle shaped fluctuations.

The ship's computers remained mostly intact, however due to the Captain AI's deeply entwined identity with the ship, its cognition adopted extreme, violent paranoia and schizophrenia. Rescue and Survey teams sent into the ship had to retreat and return with military defense forces in order to bypass the violent AI's thrashing defenses.

Once the GHC had fully scanned and documented the wreckage, the sector's space-lane was announced to be open to the public once again. Salvagers from many organizations flocked to the scene despite the dangers - too many for the GHC to stop without instituting a full-on blockade. Many perished at the hands of the Mad Captain's many guns, but over time the ship's wreckage was picked clean by opportunists, much to the GHC's displeasure.