The Conflux Stalactite

It is not that obvious to find the Drifter homes that are not monitored by the Empire. Conflux Eyrie is controlled by the State, and since our alliance cooled down they are not that forthcoming with information. 

I did not receive a direct answer to my request about the location of an entrance wormhole. Mr. Firth took some notes and looked annoyed, even though he says this is to be expected. Nevertheless, on our own we did find an entrance, and proceeded to scan down the system and investigate.

What I found there is deeply disturbing.

Contrary to what I saw in Sanctified Vidette, there are plenty of bands of roaming Drifters in Conflux Eyrie. We located the stalactite asteroid, and when I went over to scan it down for detailed telemetry, I found a host of Drifter ships at the small station at its foot.

They appeared to be interacting with the disabled sentry guns around the abandoned station (or colony, or prison, who knows what it used to be). Luckily, the Indagatrix was cloaked and I could observe undetected. Several battleships and many cruisers were present:

And then it happened. The entire stalactite asteroid seemed to phase, or rather, to be enveloped by some sort of Drifter overshield shimmer,

They must be drawing energy from this rock, interacting with it, using it in some way that the sensors on the Indagatrix could not make out. I have not seen this before in the other stalactite asteroids. Does it contain some hitherto unknown ore, providing a kind of radiation they can use? Are these rocks more than just ancient relics of a bygone Talocan religion? Is this really a rock, or could it be some camouflaged mothership or station?

After the "powering-up", some sort of entrance tunnel lit up, in the middle of the rock:

At this point, I am not allowed to share anything else since mr. Firth wants our full report with telemetry to stay under wraps as it gets sent to the Ministry. But let there be no doubt - the Drifters are far from vanquished in the systems that we have conquered. The Empire may have a firmer grip on Sanctified Vidette than the State on their hole, but the Drifters are up to something.

This has strengthened my conviction that I need to revisit the Takmahl Stalactite asteroid. I also want to keep a closer look on the Conflux Eyrie artefact, and perhaps try to enter the asteroid via that tunnel. I could not approach it too closely with the Drifter fleet patrolling it - any accidental uncloaking of the Indagatrix would mean its immediate demise at the hands of the nearby Apollo Tyrannos. Finally, I also need to figure out what sites the other Drifter homeworlds still hold, perhaps there are more of those asteroids or related objects.

Stalactite asteroids

Something at the edge of my memory kept nagging me, and kept me from sleep. Something I had seen in a Drifter home system. Unable to catch sleep, I started looking through the image database of the Indagatrix. Drowsy browsing goes slowly but in the end I found the corresponding log, and the monstruous rock formation I saw during the Drifter war.

Compare the Drifter rock (left) to the Takmahl holy rock (right): 

There is to me a striking resemblance. The asteroid singled out by the Drifters for special treatment (with a station in the small round rock just before), and the rock at the center of the Takmahl are both "stalactite asteroids". They have spikey protrusions pointing to melting and resolidification in a strong uniaxial field. This strengthens my conviction that these particular types of stalactite asteroids held a particular significance for the Talocan, as this ancient race is the only common link between Drifters and Takmahl!

I have to find this rock back - it was not in Vidette, but in Conflux Eyrie according to the logs. And I also have to head back to the Takmahl, for better scans and probing of their asteroid. 

But first I have to catch up on sleep.

Talocan rocks and labyrinths

The Jove are thought to have found the ancient Talocan wormhole control network and gained access to the wormhole cluster Anoikis via it. The Jovian wormhole settlers are believed to be the forefathers of the Sleeper civilization. And many experts (including authorities in the field such as Uriel Anteovnuecci) theorize that the Drifters are, in turn, offshoots from the Sleepers. This is a reasonable assumption, given that they live in Anoikis. In addition, technology such as the thermo-electric convertors that the Drifters use to power their structures clearly bear the hallmark of the Sleepers.

The start of the chain of knowledge transfer for advanced spacetime engineering seems to be the Talocan, and this begs the question of whether the Drifter's Nexus superstructure is also based on Talocan spacetime engineering. And since the Nexus appears to influence spacetime also in our own cluster (via the appearance of phased fields), I would conjecture that it could influence other structures in our cluster as well, namely structures built with the very same Talocan spacetime technology.

The main "suspect" for me is the Takmahl labyrinth. There is a link from the Talocan not only to the Drifters but in parallel also to the Takmahl. The Drifters chose wormholes which have certain rock formations that are of particular ritual importance to the Talocan. Those are very much different from the asteroids found in belts in common Anoikis systems. Also the Takmahl incorporated most unusual rock formations in their cult.

The Talocan must have liked labyrinths too, and both Drifter and Takmahl cultures indebted to them have inherited this peculiar penchant for mazes. Although they are very different in nature, spacetime engineered labyrinths have been found in both Drifter and Takmahl home systems.

This makes me wonder whether the current changes in our spacetime allegedly due to Nexus tinkering may have induced changes in the Takmahl labyrinth too. I am planning to revisit it, but will need to enlist the help of SFRIM pilots to keep the Blood Raiders that infest that labyrinth at bay...

Pinning the blame

As I predicted, foreign news commentaries are trying to pin the blame on the Empire again - however this time we are not the only scapegoats. The phase anomalies appearing in spacetime have a similar energy signature as the Drifter Nexus superstructures, and so their appearance seems connected with the experiments that the five powers occupying Drifter wormholes are performing on those structures.

From my own observations, the Empire is dealing with the Nexus with great precaution and care. We have no doubt learned from the Turnur sabotage disaster. 

Dr. Cornelius thought that EDENCOM was not so careful, and went out to set up watch there expecting something bad to happen, but I have not heard from him since. It does seem suspicious that ORE - who is in an industrial partnership with EDENCOM - all of a sudden possesses the technology to anchor down these phase anomalies and exploit them for mining.

Personally, I think the Triglavians are behind this. They do not seem to mind much about our spacetime - that is the least you can say after the creation of Pochven. They must have the same disregard for the integrity of our spacetime when it comes to prying around into the Nexus superstructure. 

Library services

It is nice to see that the library's databases are well used. We have a state-of-the-art search engine for the Book of Records, with three-dimensional visualization of the genealogical links between the faithful subjects of the Empire going back millennia. We are also linked to the databases of the Amarr Trade Registry and the Amarr Civil Service bureau of information, and can do cross-linked searches.

A question that seems to come up regularly among capsuleers is to find some long-lost relative. Recently, I was asked to find the whereabouts of the parents of a former slave, an acquaintance of one of our pilots. All that the pilot had to go by is a name, and an approximate date of the raid when the former slave was separated from her parents. She was not an elite slave, and so we did not find any mention of her among incident reports of that time in the Amarr Civil Service database.

But we found a way! Noting that her family name was rare, we looked for transactions of slaves by that name (not all slaves have family names even!). We could identify one trade that fits the timeline (and name) for a parent of the slave. The transaction allowed us to find the Holder who now owns that parent, and that gave us finally something to go on in the Book of Records! Indeed, any Holder not stricken from the Book is listed with links and holdings, and we could find where the holding is and presumably where the parents are!

That is yet another example of a -quite satisfying- positive result and of what we can achieve by doing research using the library rather than flying about in space firing beam lasers and battling pirates.

Marriage at the Lamp's Chapel

It is nice to be on the other side for once! We had a marriage in the Chapel, and this time I could relax as part of the congregation. I did not have to worry about everything going perfectly, since I was not the one officiating. 

That duty was for the Directix Emerita, founder of the Societas, Nicoletta Mithra. I was in awe to finally meet her. She had always remained but a familiar name I encounter, an author of theological treatises. My favorite one is an essay on sin and redemption that she wrote, expanding and commenting Lord Gaven Lok'ri's earlier work on the "Rejection of the Recent Concept of Forgivable Generational Inherited Sin".

But I digress into academic considerations, so let me get back to the marriage of Neferure Giergali and Thulla Icin. It was a magnificent ceremony, imbued with symbolism. First, Neferure and Thulla approached the altar and each other carrying a torch. The fire of their hearts and hearths was conjoined in a central brazier, and it shone more brightly than the separate fires. From there candles were lit throughout the congregation bearing witness. 

There was also a touch of Mishi - as the Ni-Kunni focus on life-giving water in most of their ceremonies. Neferure and Thulla washed each others hands, symbolizing the purification of the soul and washing away any obstacles left from the past.

Finally, after signing and sealing the marital contract, they pronounced their vows, hands bound together with a ribbon, representing the unbreakable bond that now ties them together, just as their unbreakable faith binds them to God.

In our vast Empire, we have many different variations of the marriage rite. Speaking somewhat disrespectfully one could say that there is a big portfolio of Theology Council approved customs from which a priest can choose. In today's ceremony there was such a nice balance between the three parts! One that puts the light and the warmth of the hearth central, one that revolves around the water cleansing the past and preparing them for the future, and one that "ties the knot" and expresses their bond. It is a wedding I will remember very fondly. 

And I do hope it has given incentive to the Directrix Emerita to grace us with her presence more often.

Epikouria Chronicles VI

A month ago, in Gottin's Lamp we have had a state visit from queen Synthia of Kaztropolis, but now it appears that also the wormhole colony of Epikouria got a state visit, from Prince Seraghis.

Brother Hugo writes about this visit in his latest letter - as before, this letter took time to reach me so it is relaying events that are several weeks old... Anyway, brother Hugo did not get to see the famous Lord himself, but he knows about this from the janitors and lower deck workers who had to work triple shifts to make sure the station was in perfect order for this high-profile visitor.

Prince Sergahis has had an illustrious career as military commander. He was a high-ranking officer (tribunus colonel if I remember it right) in the Amarr-Minmatar warzone. He unified Amarr capsuleer ranks and led Task Force 641, an elite group of pilots. After a long and arduous siege, known as "Operation Winter Sapphire", he managed to wrest Huola from Minmatar control, and purge their seditious influence from this rebel stronghold. This cemented his fame as the Hero of Huola.

I personally met Prince later, after he retired from the warzone and handed over command there to Cyrelle Aurilen from the Praetoria Imperialis Excubitoris. He went back to his native Aridia, and formed the Zaraehvar corporation to bring order back the Mahoynen constellation and boost trade and industry in the region of Mishi. During that time, I was exploring in Aridia, following the historical Sani Sabik routes that connect the old Takmahl constellation of Araz to the Delve region. My goal was to learn more about the reach of this ancient civilization, and to prove they were able to venture outside Araz. Prince offered me hospitality and protection, and even joined me and several LUMEN members in the exploration of an abandoned Blood Raider station. I was happy to help out in turn, doing logistics during his policing operations against the pirates of Aridia.

After that, I sort of lost track of Prince Seraghis - I do remember that his plans to pacify the entire Aridia region got frustrated by the so-called LowSechnaya pirates. He went back home, to his ancestral Holdings in Soliara, and there founded the "Knights of Soliara". I think he has been mostly tending to his Holdings and businesses, and his relations to the Holders of other systems in the Helan constellation.

After Prince left, the Zaraehvar group command passed to Cardinal Umbian, who chose to start a colony in the wormholes. They call themselves "Ghosts of Aridia" and named their wormhole system "New Huola" in honor of Prince's most well known military victory. They are the very same Ghosts that got evicted from New Huola and were taken on as refugees by Publius and his colonists.

So, given their joint past, it is not surprising that Prince Seraghis would visit his old brothers in arms here in Epikouria. Brother Hugo does not discuss the purpose of the meeting, probably this is not known publicly. In between the lines I can read that the Knights of Soliara came out to help the Ghosts during the battle that took place in Epikouria as described in Brother Hugo's previous letter. I surmise that probably trade discussions were also on the table, as wormholers are always looking for a market to sell their rich harvests.

PS. Links to keep track of the letters of Brother Hugo:
I. First Contact
II. Diplomatic Talks 
III. Refugee crisis
IV. Setting up a new home station
V. Epikouria under siege

Scan probe mathematics

It appears I am in a mood for mathematics and spacetime geometry lately. This time, I try to answer my own curiosity as regards scanning down anomalies. Doing that in Sanctified Vidette has taught me a lot about the connection between scan probe strength, scan deviation and how fast one can scan down an anomaly. It is a long log entry, but it will serve me well to write down in detail what I learned.

1/ Astrometric pinpointing 

I believe an example works best to explain this. Let us stay that you start out as usual with your scan probes at 8AU, centered on the current guess for the anomaly's position. The scan will refine the position of the anomaly. The base number goes one notch down: so the maximum deviation between the indicated position after the scan and the real position goes down to at least 4AU.

The Anathema is one of the ships boosted for scan deviation, giving you a reduction factor of 0.75 , which brings the maximum deviation after scanning down to 4 ✕ 0.75 = 3AU. 

If you've installed a pinpointing array I, you get another factor 0.9 (it is 0.8 for the T2 version, but let us stick to T1). Combined with the Anathema, you now have 3AU ✕ 0.9 = 2.7AU maximum deviation.

You have trained astrometrics perhaps to level IV, it gives you another factor (1-0.05✕level) = 0.8, so now we're at 2.7AU ✕ 0.8 = 2.16AU 

Finally, say you have trained astrometric pinpointing to level III. This corresponds to yet another factor (1-0.05✕level) = 0.85, bringing the maximum deviation down to 2.16 ✕ 0.85 = 1.84AU. 

Hurray! You can skip right down to 2AU for your next scan, since the number dropped below 2. 

In all of the above, I assumed that the signal strength (the percentage shown each time you scan the signature) is still at 0%. If you get it to say, 55%, this gives you an additional factor (1-0.55)=0.45, and you get down to 1.84 ✕ 0.55 = 0.83 , which is great news because now you can skip three notches and go straight to 1AU for your next scan.

2/ Scan probe sensor strength

You need to bring the signal strength up to 100% before the anomaly becomes warpable. This is where your probe strength comes in - that is the number you see when you hover over the scan probe loaded in the probe launcher. It can be boosted by the astrometric rangefinding skill, a scan rangefinding array, a gravity capacitor rig, ship bonuses, some boosters and implants, and better core scanner probes. Note that for combat probes, the number is halved but for the table below, you should double it, as if it is a core scanner probe.

The table below gives you, for anomalies of class I to V, as a function of the probe strength, the deviation you need to get down to in order to get to 100% signal strength on your next scan and thus lock down the anomaly.

probe strength	Level I	Level II	Level III	Level IV	Level V
40	0.46976	0.23488	0.11744	0.05872	0.02936
50	0.5872	0.2936	0.1468	0.0734	0.0367
60	0.70464	0.35232	0.17616	0.08808	0.04404
70	0.82208	0.41104	0.20552	0.10276	0.05138
80	0.93952	0.46976	0.23488	0.11744	0.05872
90	1.05696	0.52848	0.26424	0.13212	0.06606
100	1.1744	0.5872	0.2936	0.1468	0.0734
110	1.29184	0.64592	0.32296	0.16148	0.08074
120	1.40928	0.70464	0.35232	0.17616	0.08808
130	1.52672	0.76336	0.38168	0.19084	0.09542
140	1.64416	0.82208	0.41104	0.20552	0.10276
150	1.7616	0.8808	0.4404	0.2202	0.1101
160	1.87904	0.93952	0.46976	0.23488	0.11744
170	1.99648	0.99824	0.49912	0.24956	0.12478
180	2.11392	1.05696	0.52848	0.26424	0.13212
190	2.23136	1.11568	0.55784	0.27892	0.13946
200	2.3488	1.1744	0.5872	0.2936	0.1468

So, what this means is that if you have a level I anomaly, and your scanner probes' strength is at 70, you need to bring down the probes to the 0.5AU notch to get to 100% signal strength with certainty - the 1AU notch will not be good enough. However, if you have 90 strength, you only need to be at 1AU resolution to get the anomaly with certainty. If you are all the way up to 180, you do not even need to get closer than 2AU before locking it down. Combining good pinpointing (as explained above) with probe strength of at least 170-180 is the "secret" to scanning down level I anomalies in just two rounds of scanning, first 8AU and then 2AU.

Now note that some numbers here are even smaller than your smallest 0.25AU resolution. You can get those by either getting lucky on your positioning, or by tightening the probe formation closer (control-scroll down in the solar system map).

Phased fields

I am happy to see that dr. Cornelius published the results of our joint research on a publicly accessible forum. All too often scientific findings remain hidden behind paywalls, as unscrupulous publishers profit from the work of scientists forced to seek a high-impact journal to please their funding agencies.

It turns out that the Signal Cartel's information about some new spacetime anomalies appearing was right. They were wrong in assuming that the epicenter of this would be the Sentinel Military Zone. Rather, these new anomalies pop up a bit everywhere, and it is not clear what causes them. What we do know about them, is that they can lead to phase defects in our universe - and that may warrant a bit of an explanation. 

Apart from the three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension that we can experience, the universe still has a lot of hidden dimensions, usually inaccessible. You can think of phase as one of these hidden dimensions. It differs in two important aspects from our usual spatial dimension (say, left or right on the x-axis). Firstly, it is a so-called "compact" dimension. It is not extended like our usual spatial dimensions, but it is curled up into a circle. So, if we would try to draw a map of one spatial dimension and the phase dimension, it would look like a cylinder, as in the figure below. Moving our usual left-right is moving parallel to the axis of the cylinder, whereas the angle around the cylinder represents the phase. 

The second difference with usual spatial dimensions is that we can move freely in the spatial direction, but not in the phase direction. You can choose where you stand along the line, but in each spot, you cannot choose your phase, it is fixed for you. You have to stay on the red line! The property of having a well defined phase value is also known as phase coherence, and it is very strong due to the large vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field and dark matter. 

There is another important property called "phase rigidity", meaning that the phase remains the same as you move along the line. You can imagine this as tension along the line on the cylinder. Think of it as a rubber band: it will tend to straighten out, and any fluctuations such as in (a) will quickly be brought back to situation (b). That is, we have over our usual space not only a well defined phase in each point, but also the same value of the phase as in all neighboring points.

Some very energetic natural processes (or human messing around with the phase rigidity by weakening the Higgs vacuum expectation value) allow to pull the string around the cylinder, as in figure (c) below.  Imagine pressing your finger down on the rubber band and moving it around the cylinder. It is very had if the rubber band has high tension! You need to keep your finger pressed down on the rubber band if you do not want it to snap back - and that is what the new technology of a phase anchor more or less does. 

By twisting the phase in this way, it is possible to intersect our universe line with a line of another universe, and access matter present in another universe, separated from us in phase space, and thus normally inaccessible to us. 

But playing around with that is dangerous! If you pull too strongly and bring it all around, such as in figure (d), you create two full phase windings around the cylinder: one clockwise and one anticlockwise around the cylinder. These could get separated, and then you would be left with a single winding, as in figure (e). Now there is no way that the tension in the rubber band will flatten this out any more! Pulling on the band no longer results in a straight line. We have created a "topologically protected" phase twist in our own universe. The only way to remove a clockwise winding, is by annihilating it with an an anticlockwise winding, which releases an enormous amount of energy stored in the phase field.

Hence the stark warnings of space-environmental organisations. It may start all good and well for mining, but before you know it we will have topologically protected phase windings roaming all over the universe causing havoc. And... it may also start a new arms race trying to create military applications such as phase recombination bombs. All this may end up seriously damaging spacetime, or rather, further damaging it, after the Seyllin incident already punched wormholes into it.

Materialistic temptations

I received a folder with advertisements for ships. 

This happens regularly, I am sure every pilot has their mailbox flooded with these. Usually I just throw these away.

But this one caught my eye - and expedition command ship? It is a new model, for sure, I have never seen anything like it. And I have to say, I was immediately charmed! This is the first time I have seen a battlecruiser-class hull geared for long-term scientific expeditions that involve camping out in space. And it has a way to boost the decoding powers and data hacking capacity of fleet members. Even d-scan range can be boosted. Ah, and the spatious hangars it has for collecting all sorts of archaeological finds! 

However, it is scandalously expensive. I must not give in to temptation and remember my vow of poverty, by which I also pledge to only keep ships that will aid me in my quest, in stead of collecting endless fleets of ships like most fellow pilots. 

Still, it is tempting.

I guess I will start by studying the skillbooks on the techniques that need to be mastered for these boosts, and we will see from there.