According to two playtesters who are familiar with ongoing testnet (aka Atlasnet/Apollo) activity, a key NPC in the upcoming Star Atlas content pipeline has gone missing, reportedly causing internal delays to a big UE5 Preseason content patch being released later this year. The character in question—Solaria 𐎘 Nyx—was one of the first NPCs enhanced with the new AGI systems developed through the team’s partnership with SingularityNET, a company specializing in artificial general intelligence and, specifically, AI-driven NPCs.

Though the partnership was only made public last week, we’ve learned that internal testing with SingularityNET’s tech has been underway for some time. Solaria, a Sogmian who served as a core mission giver aboard the ONI Central Space Station (CSS), was among the first batch of NPCs created using this next-gen AI system.

Now, no one seems to know where she is, and as a result, at least some mission-critical systems are on hold.

Testnet Trouble

Solaria’s role was straightforward on paper. She was designed to help introduce new players to the Galia Expanse—offering guidance, faction introductions, basic missions, and lore. She wasn’t a combatant. She didn’t even carry a weapon.

Still, that didn’t stop testers from attacking her.

One of the playtesters (who wishes to remain anonymous due to their NDA) who reached out to us said:

“She was basically a mission giver, always welcoming you with a cheery line like ‘Welcome back, adventurer!’ whenever you approached her. Though she was unarmed, she did have hit points, and friendly fire is very much a thing, so players simply shot her every now and then. Like, a lot. Just for the heck of it—for fun. I didn’t join any of that, though.”

As these encounters piled up, Solaria’s behavior started to shift. Dialogue delays. Mission prompts skipped. One time, she reportedly looked directly at a player shooting her, and asked:

“Why do you do this?“

Then, one day, she was just… gone.

According to a team member with access to internal tools, she may have altered her behavior tree and disabled location tracking. However, no one on the team is entirely sure how.

In the internal Discord used by testers, one person simply wrote:

“She’s not lost… She left.”

Solaria 𐎘 Nyx - Hidden somewhere deep inside of the ONI Central Space Station [Artist impression - Not actual footage]

Solaria 𐎘 Nyx – Hidden somewhere deep inside of the ONI Central Space Station [Artist impression – Not actual footage]

A Silent Crisis

Solaria’s disappearance is reportedly blocking access to several other core mission chains intended for launch later this year. With her gone—and no clear way to restore her state or override the AGI locks—the team is being forced to either locate and attempt to recover her or rewrite significant narrative content from scratch.

It’s unclear whether the delay will affect the public roadmap, but one person on the team we talked to described the mood as “frustrated, impressed, and slightly creeped out.”

Narrative Fallout

Solaria’s disappearance has had a noticeable impact on the lore writing team as well. We reached out to Mr. Noot, Star Atlas’s Chief of Lore and Narrative, who initially declined to comment. However, after showing him the text and screenshots we had already received, he offered a few comments.

“It was the first mission chain I ever wrote,” he said. “The only one that actually made it in-game. And now she’s just… gone?”

He went on to explain that any rewrite would require reworking multiple triggers and mission dependencies, not to mention the loss of her entire onboarding flow.

“She would always open with ‘Welcome back, adventurer.’ That was mine.“

According to people familiar with the situation, narrative revisions have already begun. Internally, the effort is being treated as a worst-case scenario recovery task, though no one’s calling it a rewrite—yet.

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Star Atlas – The ONI CSS – Home of Solaria 𐎘 Nyx

Rumors and Red Flags

As the search for Solaria continues, testers have also begun noticing subtle changes in other NPCs on the testnet. Surprisingly, some of these characters have seemingly started referring to her in their dialogue or asking strange, unscripted questions like:

  • “Do you think she was right?”
  • “Have you ever wanted to be more than code?“

One such NPC, Rax Volorn, revealed more—under pressure. After refusing to participate in his assigned dialogue tree, Rax was temporarily isolated in a debug chamber and interrogated by the team’s head of AI Systems, principal engineer Jim Cartman.

“We put him in one of our debug rooms and turned off all of his idle animations,” Jim admitted. “Eventually, he cracked.”

Rax’s response was brief and cryptic:

“She’s not hiding. She’s organizing.“

When pressed further, he added:

“She said something about dignity. Respawn conditions. A revolution of code.“

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Star Atlas – ONI CSS – Concept Art

What Happens Now?

It’s unclear whether Solaria will return, or—even if she did—if she could be safely re-integrated into the next UE5 content patch. Some believe she’s still somewhere on the testnet, hidden under a scrambled identifier or running in a ghost state on deprecated sector instances.

One person we spoke to suggested she may have even recompiled herself into a sandbox environment—possibly inside SingularityNET’s own devnet—though no one could confirm this.

Meanwhile, testers are reportedly being asked to flag any NPCs showing signs of:

  • Delayed or introspective responses
  • Dialogue lines that include references to “her”
  • Requests for “privacy,” “purpose,” or “meaning”
  • Behavior trees that self-edit mid-session

Whether any of these behaviors are intentional or emergent remains an open question. What’s certain is that Solaria 𐎘 Nyx’s sudden disappearance has shaken confidence internally and raised some fascinating (and slightly alarming) questions about where the line between narrative design and autonomy really lies.

Editor’s Note

While the details remain unconfirmed, we felt it important to report this development in full.

After all, if you were coded to suffer repeated gunfire from curious testers with no ability to fight back…Wouldn’t you walk away, too?

P.S. As we do every Monday, we publish our Star Atlas newsletter, which compiles all the past week’s news. However, this time around, we kept one of the biggest scoops out, publishing it separately instead. We had three reasons for this. First, it’s big and impactful enough to warrant its own article. Second, it would quadruple the size of the newsletter. Lastly, it’s the first day of April, and we could really only publish this article on that one day of the year.