Deeper into the holes

Today, we decided to push deeper into the wormhole network and explore beyond Seclusion by jumping through the Ursus wormhole. First, we checked that it had not reached end of lifetime, and that it did not have its stability degraded by the amount ships going through it. The information that we called up on the hole showed it was still nice and stable, at least for another day.

After jumping through, there follows a choreography that I trained the crew to handle. First and most importantly, without breaking cloak, the wormhole entrance leading back to Seclusion is bookmarked (I usually just label it "-> home"). 

Then, a "new bookmark" window (ctrl-B) is opened and I select a celestial to warp to at 100km. In close sequence, I then 1) initiate the warp, 2) launch the scanner probes, 3) cloak my ship, and 4) bookmark a safe spot between the entrance hole and the celestial. After arrival at the celestial, I warp back to my safe spot, cloaked all the time.

Only then I relax a bit, and evaluate the system. If there's other probes or ships on d-scan, or a history of recent kills, I would bail out. Luckily, there was no activity in J102734.

Unluckily, there were also no relic signatures...

Celebration

I have been tempted by feelings of vanity once more: it appears I won a prize in the New Eden Writing Competition. I submitted a poem about the demise of our astrahus station, Farthest Shore, located at Eve Gate. My vow or poverty prohibits accepting the large monetary prize so I will distribute it to LUMEN members who want to buy a skill book with it. As librarian, I feel the need to give books, even if they are of the injectable kind.

Crew members felt the need to celebrate, and threw a party in my honor, during which they also exercised their poetic talents by reciting rhymes of dubious content, mostly involving large chested Amarrian ladies, goats and cheese. After some libations, they decided I should sell the rubble that we collected in relic sites rather that throw it back into space. After some more libations, they argued that I should upgrade to a Stratios exploration cruiser, assuring me that they'd crew it most excellently and not many additional hands should be hired, and that they would take care of the hiring process.

It appears that not much exploration will be done after these celebrations.

Deep space particle accelerator

People leave all sorts of junk in space. 

Today, after performing the morning's scan to bookmark wormhole exits, probes picked up a strange matter signature, emissions of exotic elementary particles not known to appear in natural phenoma. Upon our arrival in the deadspace pocket where the signal was from, we found an abandoned particle accelerator, not even powered down. There was no sign of struggle. The science outpost had been abandoned and someone had forgotten to turn off the reactor on the thing.

The outer two acceleration rings were already sparking, and a high-curvature spacetime deformation was glowing in the center ring. It seems whoever built the station attempted to make gates or open up wormholes on demand. 

Right after Anoikis connected to Eve cluster, there was a flurry of enthusiastic exploration, and a lot of grant money flowed to learning about the wormhole worlds. The Arataka Research Consortium played a major role. This abandoned structure did not belong to them, it appears to be from a private Gallente research institute. Often, after projects from this initial exploration wave were completed, researchers returned, leaving their infrastructure behind in the hopes of coming back. But after the initial rush of excitement, grant money levels dropped back to normal as yet another topic became fashionable for science agencies to pursue. 

And so, we have functioning abandoned particle accelerators in wormhole deepspace pockets...

Comparative study of Amarr space cathedrals

Continuing our search for relics in Seclusion, LUMEN's wormhole system, scanners picked up a signal corresponding to an abandoned small space colony. Warping the Indagatrix over, we found that not much was left, except for the ruins of a large cathedral complex.

 

Figure 1: Ancient space cathedral, Seclusion

The structure was definitely Amarrian. Even from far away, the gold ornaments on ivory white hull revealed its link with our beloved Empire. Closer inspection confirmed this, as the structure contained inscriptions quoting scripture. In the cloud of space debris, we found and collected liturgical objects, altar fragments, cloth, chalices.

What is striking, however, is the shape, size and layout of this cathedral. It is a cruciform design, typical for many of the ancient architectural designs of our cathedrals. In this particular ruin, both the nave and the transept were still preserved, as was the domed roof at the center of the cross. The structure emphasizes the vertical, with pillars several hundred meters high connecting roof and floor. 

Imagine for a moment visiting this ancient cathedral, standing on its floor. You would feel humbled in this enormous space. Your gaze will be pulled up, following the lines and the perspective of the pillars directing your eyes to the roof, vanishingly high above you. The architecture leaves you devoid of pride, and with your sight towards Heaven, prepared for prayer and adoration of God. This style of cathedral cropped up on Amarr as well, and can still be seen in ancient pictures, such as the one below.

 

Figure 2: Inside view of an ancient land-based cathedral, similar in architecture as the space cathedral of figure 1.

However, this type of structure is not well suited for space. On a planet, the structure has to bear its weight, the pillars have to counteract the force of gravity pulling beams and ceiling down. That is why structures struggle to reach a height that is easy to reach in space. In space, a very different type of force is prominent: the pressure difference between the inside of the structure - at breathable atmospheric pressure - and the vacuum of space outside. This results in forces not pulling down on walls, but pushing them sideways. You have to design architecture as if it is a pressure cooker that wants to explode outwards. 

The outward force moreover scales with area - this is why the large outer walls of the cruciform space cathedrals are the weak spots, and end up being blown apart when the structure fails. They're no longer present in the ruin that we found, and in many others like it. 

Over the millennia, this has changed the shape of space cathedrals, as religious architecture habits slowly became better adapted to space. The shape that minimizes the area, for a given volume, is the sphere. It is the best shape to deal with pressure differences. However, more things have to be taken into account in choosing the optimal shape. For example, you also want to have a maximum useful floor area, or perhaps fit in landing bays and hangars. So, a compromise between a more rounded shape and optimized floor area and usage led slowly to Amarr's modern design of space cathedrals.

Figure 3: Modern Amarr space cathedral

The emphasis on height, directing your gaze upward is still present in the modern architure; but the cruciform shape with large flat panel walls has been abandond for a more rounded, cylindrical or semi-cylindrical shape. Note that the anchorages - the bottom "claws" where the crypts would be - have been retained, but also adapted to the more rounded shape. Interesting, this change in shape for space cathedrals in turn influenced planet-based cathedral architecture - it takes just one look at the Dam-Torsad cityscape to see the many cathedrals in tapered (semi-)cylindrical form. 

A question may have arisen in the reader's mind: what is an ancient Amarr space cathedral doing out in wormhole space? Anoikis has only become accessible very recently. However, many, often smaller, religious orders in the Empire felt the call to reclaim these strange worlds, and decided to start a mission there or relocate there. I can only surmise that the remains we found were from an order that decided to move its entire ancient space cathedral out to Anoikis. Probably it housed the relics of their patron Saint. Such a move has been done before, even with planet-based cathedrals. Indeed, emperor Doriam II moved the Tal-Romon cathedral from Eclipticum to Amarr Prime, dismantling it and building it back brick by brick, only missing a few bricks.

So, what happened to the missionaries of Seclusion? In figure 1, left of the cathedral, a broken piece of engine can be seen, comparatively large because of its proximity to the camera. It turns out to be of Sansha origin. The religious community living here was brutally raided by the Sansha, who destroyed the monastery and turned the cathedral into the ruin it is today. At least one missionary must have survived the raid, for at the heart of the cathedral's ruin a memorial stone was found, with the inscription:

"In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over our Anoikis home, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive metaliminal storms, space lightning, and fiery comets were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on 6th of January, the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God's church."

I will try to find out who these missionaries were, using as a clue the relics and scans collected. May their souls rest in piece.

 

((ooc attributions: the inscription in quotes is an adaptation to Eve from the medieval description of the Viking raid on Lindisfarne, reported in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. The paiting is the interior of Antwerp cathedral painted by Peter Neeffs the Younger around 1650))

A mystery solved

Yesterday after the ceremonies for the fallen in the battle of Aset, I met up with Jason Statesman. I have been helping him find his father and his origins for a while now, and after hitting a dead end I proposed him to involve a friend at the MIO. 

There is a decayed photograph and some DNA that could be used, and I thought the MIO would have no problems tracking this down. Despite some trepidation about involving the ministry, Jason agreed. The material was forwarded and the request made, and then there was a long wait.

The, yesterday evening, we got summoned. And what an unexpected turn of events was revealed! 

My trusted friend in the MIO, after a very friendly inquisition of Jason - not even a single thumbscrew or pulled nail - revealed that he is the son and possibly only living heir to Lord Hadish Moradian, subservient to House Ardishapur. The affairs of the holding are now in the hands of a regent, Lord Arya Nagad, and will likely remain so while Jason learns more about his heritage and about the faith and his tasks as a future Holder. Of course, it came as a shock to Jason, he'll have a lot to process and it is good that he remains surrounded by the faithful.

This joyous news diverted my attention from the shadows of war that are darkening the cluster, as I made my way back to Seclusion during the night.

War

Tensions between the Local is Primary (LiP) militia and the Edencom aligned alliance of Phoenix Naval Systems (PNS), Electus Matari and LUMEN came to a breaking point. LiP attacked a PNS structure earlier, and now PNS called upon the Edencom aligned alliance to retaliate.

The targeted stations are dens of sin, for the lustful pleasure of the mercenaries. Theologically, these places should indeed have been destroyed. However, the fight over them - after they'd been reinforced - took epic proportions. 

First, a battleship blast pitted our Typhoon fleet against their assorted mish-mash fleet. It appears that we were winning, when the fight escalated to dreadnaughts. It was a slaughter on both sides...

So, today I am hopping back from Seclusion to Nasreri, to hold some memorial masses and comfort those who lost loved ones among our many baseliners. The crew and the Indigatrix stay behind, I am shuttling back and forth.

All this is taking place behind the backdrop of another escalating conflict, of larger magnitude: the Federation and the State are openly fighting in Athounon...

Statics and bookmarks

Wormhole space is different from known space in that there are no fixed jump gate connections. Rather, the set of links between the wormhole systems gets randomized all the time. Any wormhole link stays open only for a few days, at most. This is due to the unstable nature of the wormhole, and makes mapping of Anoikis impossible. How would one map a continuously changing random network?

Some of the wormhole links connect Anoikis to known space, to our gate-connected cluster, and that is how we can access this region. Many explorers that jump into a wormhole to get to Anoikis subsequently get lost, especially if they do not carry scan probes and forgot to bookmark the wormhole after jumping. Luckily, they can contact the Signal Cartel, who have made it their business to rescue wormhole explorers.

So, can the constant metamorphosis of the map ever lead to systems being completely disconnected from the network as a whole? No, there are "static" wormholes in every systems. It's a confusing name, they move around and there's really not that much static about them, except in the sense that there are a minimum number of wormhole entrances that are present at any time in a given system. 

Our wormhole has two statics: one that will always lead to some highsec system, and one that will always lead to another wormhole system. We call the highsec connection "Nexus", and the wormhole connection "Ursus". Some days there will be more wormholes in the systems, but never less than these two.

The entrance of these two statics does move about every day within Seclusion, without leaving the system though. So, it needs to be bookmarked over again every day, for fellow explorers to use. The exit of Nexus hops around in highsec, and also needs to be bookmarked. Joy when the connection happens to pop up close to a trade hub, disappointment when it leads to a backwater system.

It is an unwritten gentlemen's agreement between explorers to keep the bookmark folder up to date, especially for Nexus. It is the wormhole itself that should be bookmarked, not the anomaly. If you jump to the anomaly, you'll land some ten kilometers off the wormhole and need to approach it. This makes you vulnerable, and a proper bookmark will let you land at zero, able to jump immediately. Also I plan to keep up with this courtesy of keeping the bookmarks up to date (and set them with an expiry of 2 days for wormholes). Today, scanning and probing was our first task, but some good soul had already preceded us and the bookmarks were up to date. At least still for a couple of hours...

 

PS. For reference, this is how the bookmarks in the seclusion folder are formatted:

The green ones are in the same location as we are, Seclusion. They start with the identification code for the anomaly, and then a description. QED-968 is the Nexus, the portal to highsec. The other side of that is denoted by "Seclusion - Nexus", and today it is in Keba, in Aridia. If you'd go to Keba, and warp to that bookmark, you'd land on the wormhole entrance to Seclusion. By the luck of the draw there appears to be a second highsec hole still open, to Polfaly.

Edencom woes

Today, we did some simple scouting in Seclusion itself, to get the crew acquainted and removed their fears of space monsters in wormhole space.

Meanwhile, the growing tension between LUMEN and the "Local is Primary" militia is causing me worries. Here in Anoikis, I should not be bothered too much by this conflict, but it affects my friends back in Nasreri and Mehatoor. 

The militia have never forgiven LUMEN's participation in Edencom alongside Electus Matari, even though the Empress sanctioned international collaboration in the framework of Edencom in order to fight the Triglavian menace. 

Edencom itself is under fire. Our State allies seem to suspend their collaboration with Edencom and even with Concord in the Athounon system, in order to obtain technology from a cloaked station there. Never since the Elder fleet have the Yulai accords been under such strain.

Luckily, the Empire will not fall behind in the arms race, and has fortified our position around the Stellar Harvester. However, all this goes not without causing incident with the other powers.

Docked in Seclusion

We arrived yesterday in Seclusion's station. I'd been here before, but it had been a while. The station has been much expanded since my last visit, the upgrades allowing for more inhabitants, more cargo hangars, and better defenses. The park is still there: it's known by travellers as Pilgrim's Rest. It is underneath a cupola that opens up to space, and allows for daytime sunshine from Seclusions small yellow star. At night, the unfamiliar sky shows none of the known constellations.

Scattered between grassy meadows and forested patches, the park is home to temples and churches devoted to of various faiths of New Eden. No heretical sects, but also not just our Amarrian faith - there is a small Achur temple, for example. Probably this is because Anoikis is a refuge for people of all over New Eden, who want to disappear in wormhole space and build a new life there. Seclusion wants to be welcoming and inclusive.

As the crew had never been to Anoikis, and the Indagatrix needed supplies and checkups of the scanner systems, I gave them the rest of the day off. Idesbald went straight to Seclusion's most famous bar, "Two Shots Minimum". I do not think he stopped at the minimum.

Heading for Seclusion

Now that our charity in Mycena is operating smoothly again, I can embark on the expedition to Anoikis that I had planned a while ago. One of the technicians has found other employ, I guess she was restless, or scared about the space monsters supposedly living in wormhole space. 

I know I could fly the ship without crew, but I do like to take them on board to relieve me of some tasks. However, I'm not going to replace the techie now, six crew is more than enough. 

We leave in a couple of hours, heading for Keikanen in State space where the wormhole entrance to LUMEN's wormhole base called "Seclusion" was last seen. 

The wormhole to our base is short lived, so the entrance system changes every day, and hopefully it will still be there by the time we arrive. Otherwise we'd have to wait for someone in Seclusion to explore where the new entrance is: when the old hole dies, a new one appears connecting Seclusion to a seemingly random system.

Start-up troubles

The clinic in Mycena experienced some trouble - it was even inaccessible for a while. The front door was jammed, of sorts, and the medbots were missing. 

Luckily, things are back to normal out now, and the clinic is resupplied and back in shape. It's very busy, there's clearly a need for this type of medical care in the district. As soon as it re-opened, there were again queues.

The local authority, mr. Ignis Phage, has been strutting outside and taking credit for this development in the neighborhood, much to my dislike. He had little to do with this LUMEN initiative.

After the disruption of a couple of days ago, now everything seems to run smoothly, and I can go back to the Lamp, and look at my duties there. Apparently, there's some yak handbook that everyone wants to read and I have to figure out how to order it.

Yun-Hee's home

I had a most pleasant evening visiting Yun-Hee Yubari - she had invited me to see her new home. 

Her home itself is minimalistic and spartan. A bit like a monk's cubicle, which I approve but at the same time find strange for a young woman of marriageable age. There's also a martial arts training building called a dojo, and a tea house that is still being installed. 

But the most magnificent part is the garden! It encircles the house and meticulously reconstructs a beautiful achuran landscape, in miniature. As the eyes wander toward the horizon, larger trees complete the illusion of a house in the middle of rolling hills and nature. There are dwarfed trees closer in, like the one I have, but with needles rather than leaves. There are elegantly arranged stones, and raked sand, and a beautiful pool. It is a place that invites for meditation and calm. 

The only downside is that there are no benches, except for sitting down right on the floor at some low table. I'll need my cyberlegs to avoid a screeching pain in my knees.

I brought her a plant for her garden, without knowing the design of the garden. Wild garlic - you prepare its leaves rather than a clove of garlic, it is a medicinal herb and grows well under trees. However, as a flowering plant it is probably unsuitable for her garden.... a faux pas of a gift, I'm afraid. 

Anyway, this makes me yearn for a little garden of my own, a herb garden. An aromatic place. A place to let the mind come to rest and stop thinking. I don't want to take up more space than I do, so I'll look for some publicly available grounds. More accurately: I'll put that on my ever growing to-do list...

A day on Oris

I had the honor of meeting the Praetoria's chapter master again. It took a while to get a proper appointment and to find a time where Lord Lok'ri could find a spot for me in their busy agenda. I do not think I know anyone who works as hard as his lordship does, perhaps with the exception of Lunarisse.

So, I went back to Oris, this giant of a planet, and the Oris Chapterhouse of the Praetoria. After an interminable wait, I was brought to the Chapter master's office by an orderly.

Lord Lok'ri took an interest in my work in the Societas, I was pleased that time was made to inquire about that and about how I had settled into my ministry there.

But once I came to the point, and asked about the operation of the Tetrimon order to retrieve their relics from the blood raiders now sixteen years ago, I had the impression the tone changed. Not only did the mention of the Aegis Militia and the Verisum family left a sour taste in the Chapter master's mouth, his lordship also held a devastating opinion about grand master Horm and the Tetrimon Order. There was no room for the subtle arguments that Horm was fighting the Blood chancellor, or that Horm challenged his own order to support Empress Jamyl, at least according to the records shown to me by the Tetrimon themselves...

Lord Lok'ri was quick to tell me that no member of the Praetoria participated in this operation, even though at the same time they claimed not to have much recollection of this operation. I was refered to the Praetoria's archives, and given permission to consult those. I'm not sure what to think of all this, to be honest. Is it the old wounds caused by the Aegis Militia that were opened up again, or is there something to hide?