Epikouria Chronicles XI

While the Indagatrix is made ready for the expedition to Curse, I took care of paperwork that had been waiting for me in Mehatoor. There was also another letter of brother Hugo.

He appears to be taking a dangerous interventionist course. 

He starts his letter with the opening passage of the Book of Gheinok the First: "And the flames of the Lord died within them. Yet one flame remained."

Dano Gheinok, first of the great prophets, found that the world in which he lived had forgotten about God and lived in sin. He was the sole flame that remained, and he decided to go away from the damned society and start a new one. Gradually he gathered fellows to join him in his quest - these became known as the conformists, and after many years in the (spiritual and actual) desert they found Amarr island and settled there.

Brother Hugo sees a parallel with Origin. To him, their society is an abomination, and the White Paladins are the one flame that remains and that gives hope. He has clearly been under increasing influence of this group...

The flame also stands for the conditions on Epikouria V, a mineral-rich lava world known to the originals as Crucifix. Life is harsh there, and the prohibition against slavery (enshrined in the Exodus Charter) has made it even harder on the formerly well-off Amarr, who no longer live in comfort but now have to toil the lava fields and metalworks themselves. The "lava belt" from Iluna to Pyrewind has become the political powerbase for the White Paladins and their supporters. 

Their political program is as hard as the iron they produce: they want to secede from the Origin Colonial Authority, rescind the Exodus Charter, re-instate a traditionalist version of Amarr law and slavery, and expel those that do not agree with them. They have very little chance to succeed at this, at least by the political and diplomatic processes of Origin. They have been whispering insurrection for a while, but would stand no chance against Origin's military force, once operated by the warclone corporation Oneieda Paradox. They remain a fringe group.

Now, to my surprise, Brother Hugo is asking me to help bring Amarrian forces and weapons to Epikouria to aid the White Paladins... I would never consider it appropriate to mingle in such foreign affairs, unless ordered to do so by proper authorities. The Empire, interested as it may be in Anoikis since the conquest of Sanctified Vidette, has no plans to start a reclamation in Epikouria, so neither have I. I have written brother Hugo a clear refusal. 

I think it will not stop him to reach out to other contacts that he may have...

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
VI. Prince Seraghis visit

VII. A suspicion of heresy

VIII. Pop-up church

IX. Intercultural fair

X. White Paladins

Curse

I am still missing two regions from my atlas. The first one is Fade, and the reason is that there is no nebula visible from it, I think. That makes it hard to distinguish from Branch and Deklein, two very dark regions too. So, I need to jump through a wormhole to Fade to make sure that it does indeed lead to that region. There are not many Jovian observatories there, so the chances are not very high.

The other region that for some reason has not appeared to link to Sanctified Vidette under my recent watches is Curse. This region is the domain of the Angel Cartel, and the former homelands of the Jove, before they moved out of there to the sealed regions up north. 

Surprisingly, there are only six Jove observatories in Curse. Out of a total reported in the cluster of over 1267, this is only 0.5%, and a correspondingly low chance of the connecting to Sanctified Vidette. I probably need to be more patient. Or perhaps I do not have a correct idea of how it should look like - I think it should show the Vapor Sea nebula, and the Scalding Pass nebula, but I might be wrong. 

Curse is a region that I am allowed to target for performing my experiment. It is well outside Empire space, and the Angel Cartel is an excellent scapegoat. I do not look forward to a stay there, given the presence of the Angel Cartel. Ishta has told me horrible stories about her time in the Cartel, and I shudder merely thinking back about that. But on the other hand, the region itself is historically interesting and I might combine my visit with a tour of the former Jove homelands. And also combine the experiment with completing the atlas. 

So, I am planning an expedition to Curse, staging from Gamis in the Mandate. LUMEN's mining hinterlands are there, as the alliance has since a long time been supporting the peaceful development of the Ammatar Mandate. It might take a bit more time to set up, but that will give mr. Firth time to check this through with his people and TES Valenia, which will also need to do some preparations I think.

Boundary conditions

I have received a briefing from mr. Ivan Firth, the Indagatrix's political officer, about the experiment with the Sleeper thermoelectric convertors. The ministry allows me to perform it, but under some conditions. 

First, I have to do it in a "region of plausable deniability", meaning outside of Empire controlled space. That also mitigates the potential hyperspace fallout to the Empire itself. I have been given a list of suitable locations.

Second, I will be followed at a distance by a covert operations ship from Ministry, TES Valenia. In case something appears to go wrong during the experiment, it will obliterate the Indagatrix, and then vaporize the wreck. I have been granted the courtesy of being allowed to wake up in my medical clone should such a thing occur. 

Mr. Firth will be monitoring me not from the Indagatrix this time, but from TES Valenia. The rest of the crew is less than enthusiast to participate to this mission, so it looks like I will be piloting the frigate by myself. 

It was not me

There was distressing news from Jita, well known as the main trade hub in the Caldari State. Its jump gates experienced disastrous accidents: hyperspatial rifts opened up and damaged the gates, killing many gate personnel. 

The link with the hyperspace fluctuations that scientists recently reported near Jita was quickly made, and the initial investigation by the State points to experimentation with the (Drifter appropriated) Talocan hyperspace network done presumably by the Federation or the Intaki, either for fraud and extortion, or for sabotage. 

This caused some confusion also close to home.

The Ministry of Internal Order, through the reports of mr. Ivan Firth, the political officer on board of the Indagatrix, is aware of my intentions to experiment with the Drifter wormhole technology myself. I planned this in order to test a hypothesis on the diminished number of wormholes in Sanctified Vidette. A scientific goal: of course I do not plan terrorist attacks on Jita gates.

Nevertheless they were worried that I had made some mistake, and that the Empire might be blamed for the Jita gate incident because of my tampering with Drifter wormhole devices. A very understandable worry, so they prevented me from undocking and invited me for a conversation. 

I was a surprised that also a member of the Caldari State Police was present. Usually conversations with the Ministry are very private. 

The misunderstanding was soon cleared up, as flight records of the Indagatrix, reports of my political officer, and the surveillance records of the Ministry itself showed that I had not done any such experiment yet. I have indeed been holding off on these experiments. I have been waiting to hear back from dr. Fritte Cornelius, to see if we could coordinate our research efforts. I am very glad now that I have not done anything yet.

The Ministry was also quite interested in dr. Cornelius and where they could find him. They asked me whether he is a trade hub ganker, and the man from the Caldari State Police asked whether he is a Black Eagle. I answered to the best of my ability, vouching for his pacifist nature and track record as a scientist. 

Unfortunately I had no idea of his whereabouts. 

That is regrettable: my ignorance forced them to use more advanced conversation methods to try and help me remember anything I might have forgotten. The next few hours were not pleasant. I vaguely remember that at some point in the conversation the man from the Caldari State Police no longer wanted to be in the room, which made the interlocutors from the Ministry laugh.

But all is good that ends good, and in the end I was allowed to resume my usual business. First, I will take a day off and pay a visit to medbay as my current clone misses some teeth and some nails and has a limp. 

Thermoelectric convertor field projectors

I have been discussing the decrease in static wormhole numbers with dr. Fritte Cornelius from Signal Cartel. 

The number is not always exactly thirty, but fluctuates. There appears to be a cycle, around noon it starts out low, rising to forty and close to fifty at midnight, then it decreases back down towards the next noon. This seems to imply human interference, rather than a natural phenomenon.

Dr. Cornelius has offered an interesting hypothesis that sounds correct to me. It is best to test it before it is made public, I think. That requires some experimentation that is not very easy to perform: an attempt to generate a wormhole in Sanctified Vidette ourselves, using the Sleeper Thermoelectic Convertors in known space. 

These structures need to be scanned down. I stumbled on some abandoned ones in Sanctified Vidette; they look like this:

The bright spot is no wormhole but the magnetar in the system. You would expect a Drifter wormhole in between those two structures when they are active. Now, if we manage to power these up...

President Moreau

After a month of voting, the Gallente presidential election has concluded! 

Dr. Alix Moreau won narrowly, on a programme of unrestricted research and a promise of the bright future that this research would bring. 

President Moreau also promised more independence for the constituent worlds of the Federation that seek a greater extent of self-determination. This was a crucial strategic move, gaining the support of the Intaki autonomists. Polls before the election showed a sea of support Roden, with one isolated exception: Intaki, which pundits quickly labeled "the highsec island of dr. Moreau".

That island grew, until the map finally colored more evenly between the candidates. I think the Intaki will not be forgotten, and will fare better than under the militaristic repression of Aguard.

But the true agenda of dr. Moreau is to liberate scientific research from any moral or legal restraints. That is dangerous - as the code of Demeanor warns, "Be Watchful. Free Thought is the Begetter of Disorder". What strange inventions and hybrid creatures will dr. Moreau create? CONCORD is concerned, and chairman Sakari of the State calls it proof of "Federation insanity". 

Scientific progress always holds both promises and dangers. New findings can be used to improve the lives of countless billions or to destroy these lives. To turn planets into gardens of Eden or into burning radioactive hells. 

In the Empire, we have God and the Empress guiding us. 

But in the Federation, the situation is very frightening! Whether science is used for good or for destruction depends on which leaders the capricious and mostly ignorant citizens call upon to decide for them...

Worrisome wormhole development

While working on the wormhole atlas and collecting some more data, I noticed a worrisome development in Sanctified Vidette. I do not know if the same thing is present in the other Drifter wormholes, I have less experience with these and do not know their normal number of wormholes.

In Sanctified Vidette there are always six static wormholes to the six other classes of Anoikis system, one for each class. And there are always sixty wormholes to systems in our own cluster. As joint research with mr. Cornelius has shown before, these sixty "statics" lead ro systems picked randomly out of a uniform distribution over the 1267 systems with Jove observatories, spread out all over known space.

Today, I found that the number of wormhole connections in Sanctified Vidette has halved. The six Anoikis connections are still present, but only thirty statics to our cluster! That is way too large a discrepancy to be a statistical coincidence. 

I had the impression before that there were less, but did not pay attention to it, as I was too focused on other tasks, so I am not sure how new this anomaly is. But it must be fairly recent, no more than about a month. My new friends at the Imperial Navy anchorage in the system declined to comment. When I asked whether they think it is linked to their experiments, they told me it was inappropriate for me to consider such a thing. 

Static wormholes are supposed to be ... static. Their number is a topologically protected constant for any given system - a change in their number is unheard of. It cannot occur without there being a major disruption in hyperspace. This comes at the time when the science community is reporting hyperspace fluctuations also in our cluster, notably in the Forge region... 

Exordium

I have received more help for the wormhole atlas project, from mr. Fritte Cornelius of the Signal Cartel. These intrepid explorers have probably ventured deeper into the wormhole network than anyone else and have imaged the nebulae even more extensively! 

It is really heartwarming to see how the New Eden research community forms a network of friends that steps up to help each other. Science is a search for truths that are independent of ideology and as such this endeavor transcends borders, giving it the capacity to bring us all closer to each other.

It is in the same spirit that Exordium was established. Rumors of its existence have been going around now for a while, and the existence of this new region was finally revealed today. Around fifty new star systems have been linked up to the cluster-wide jump gate network. These are to be peaceful systems, of little strategic or industrial value, where law is enforced by concord and dominion is shared among the empires. 

May it bring hopes of peace to all of our star cluster!

New bloodshed in Vak'Atioth

There is a rumble, like faraway thunder, coming from the outer worlds: the barbarian kingdoms are at war again. 

There are always skirmishes: without the light of faith, the poor souls out there are condemned to live in a violent darkness where they hold violent, dark convictions. 

This time around the bloodshed was worse than ever before. The various warlords have aggregated into two large coalitions that battled it out in Vak'Atioth at the edge of the Jovian regions. Countless lives and trillions of isk were lost. Titan-class ships were ripped to shreds in a cruel death dance involving -it is claimed- ten thousand capsuleer pilots.

The news of fresh bloodshed in Vak'Atioth gives me cold chills, as probably it does to many Amarr. 

In this system, our Empire suffered a historic defeat at the hands of the Jove. That defeat paused our expansion into the universe. It also led to the opportunistic rebellion of the Minmatar, a rebellion that is causing pain and death enduring to this day. 

It is as if all the evil from the battle of Vak'Atioth first spread through the cluster as a disease, gaining strength, only to refocus now back to Vak'Atioth through some strange alignment of fate.

Help with the atlas project

My mapping project has gotten kind support from mr. Ché Biko, a diplomat who sometimes visits Gottin's Lamp. He has connections to the Arataka Research Consortium, and gave me access to the Consortium's archive of holographic pictures of the sky as seen from various regions in the cluster. 

Together with the data from the Imperial Astronomical Society at Hedion University, I now have plenty of images to go by. 

Theoretically I could compute how the sky and the nebulae of various regions would appear through a Sanctified Vidette wormhole, but I think especially here it is still worthwhile to image the real thing, with all its sources of noise and instabilities. Also for some remote nebulae, I may still want to search for higher resolution imagery; perhaps in those cases indeed there is still value in collecting one's own images. 

But certainly this kind gift has cut back the amount of work, and I will not need to expose myself to as much danger in the outer worlds of the cluster.