Day of the Vara
2956

Star Citizen
Day of the Vara

• Author:

  Watty

• Category:

  Star Citizen

• Date:

  Oct 26, 2026

Star Citizen's spooky season started on 21 October with Day of the Vara 2956, which RSI promised would bring "a creepy contest, petrifying prizes, and other fearsome finds." The event's tagline: "Honor the lost with reverence, revelry, and the comfort of company. There's safety in numbers… supposedly." The holiday itself falls on 27 October, and it comes with one of the better ghost stories in the 'verse.

The ship that never came back

According to the Galactapedia, the holiday began around 27 October 2557, when the exploration vessel Vara was orbiting the second planet of the newly discovered Hades system. Captain Tisiphone Heptane sent back her first impressions of the system's ruined alien cities, and then communications stopped. A few hours later the ship's status reports stopped too. Search and rescue went out the next day, and no wreckage or remains were ever found.

Haulers and travellers started avoiding Hades on the anniversary, because that was the day the Vara and her crew supposedly came back to haunt it. The stories all play on the fears of space travel: an undead crew that secretly boards passing ships to sabotage them, ghosts that drive the living to vent their own ship, scavengers who find an abandoned wreck only for the frozen bodies aboard to wake up at the worst possible moment.

How the UEE celebrates

One popular tale had a traveller disguise themselves as a member of the Vara's crew, which started the habit of dressing as the dead for luck. The first official Day of the Vara was thrown by Terra's counterculture on 27 October 2593, with plenty of attendees dressed as the recently dead Imperator Ivar Messer I. The Messer government spun the footage as support and encouraged more celebrations, and it became an official annual holiday in 2595. Today people wear costumes, swap scary stories, light candles, eat spirit cakes and drink iced wine, and decorate in black and green, the colours of the Vara crew's uniforms.

Vanduul trouble in Nyx

The 21 October Roadmap Roundup added a new card: the Intersec Defence Solutions Mission Pack, now Committed, expands Intersec's contracts in Nyx with new missions "centered on fighting the growing Vanduul threat", plus new blueprints to earn.

And if you are still after the RSI Discovery Month Twitch Drop, the deadline is 27 October: four hours of any Drops-enabled Star Citizen stream unlocks the Phoenix Insignia Display.

Flying with the org

There is safety in numbers, supposedly. Our Star Citizen org UTLAGARNIR is in the Discord, and the Star Citizen hub has more on how we fly. New pilots always welcome.

Further reading: RSI: Day of the Vara 2956 | Galactapedia: Day of the Vara | Roadmap Roundup, 21 October | The Exiles Star Citizen hub