Like Strange, another man felt that life had gone dark. His name was Peter Quill, better known as Star-Lord. He was a Ravager.
In the language of his homeworld, Ravagers were equivalent to thieves, pirates, and bandits. They were drifters who scraped out a living in dark domains that major civilizations either could not spare the attention for or were unwilling to dirty their hands with.
They generally accepted jobs through the Black Market, handling disgraceful troubles for certain civilizations and powerful figures, or serving as auxiliary forces in certain wars.
Because of the wars between civilizations and the chaotic, mad universe, the Ravagers were still a force that could not be ignored, even if they were not exactly respectable. Of course, most Ravagers with any reputation had bounties hanging over their heads from the major civilizations.
Star-Lord had left his Ravager group to strike out on his own. Through Yondu's Ravager Group, he had accepted a highly difficult mission with an absolutely generous reward.
He was to find a magical Cosmic Orb for a mysterious buyer.
Finding things and coming up with crooked schemes had always been Star-Lord's strengths. He spent a great deal of time gathering intelligence, then worked backward from what he had collected, painstakingly determining the era and final location bit by bit, like an archaeologist.
Hard work paid off. After wasting several years, he finally found the Cosmic Orb's final hiding place.
It was a planet that had once housed a civilization but had now fallen into ruin. Its crust seemed to be constantly undergoing violent activity. Slight tremors struck from time to time, while fountain-like jets of water erupted one after another.
The Cosmic Orb was inside an ancient ruin resembling a temple somewhere on the planet. The passage of time had rendered its