Mittens' misbehavior

My cat Mittens horribly misbehaved during a party of the Societas. It was a thematic party, for the festive season, with people getting presents for each other, and dressed to impress. Maerrin and friends organised this, to everyone's delight.

Unfortunately, my 'secret saint' was not around to receive his gift.

Even before gifts were revealed, Mittens jumped at Ms. Jennifer Starfall's costume. It had animated small creatures on it, peeping out of trees and shrubs printed on her dress. Irresistible for a cat. Mitsy got all focused on these animations and lunged, claws out, drawing blood. I am lucky ms. Starfall is so kind and understanding... 

I was shell-shocked for the rest of the evening... and relieved Ms. Starfall got the best costume prize, even if Mittens got it torn up.

Second thoughts

When capsuleers, engaged in the warzone, die in space several times a day, this is unfortunate but does not raise alarm. Certainly not during very active periods of warfare. 

However, when a cleric with scholarly rather than martial tendencies experiences several out-of-pod deaths in fast succession, medbay takes note. I suppose I should be thankful for that.

Aria got a ping while we were having our monthly sessions debating theology. I discussed my plans to subdue the Takmahl biodroid with her, and she definitely did not approve. In addition to my crew's concerns and Luna's summons... I am reconsidering. Putting plans on hold.

The disguise

I received a full report from my crew, all the way up to the point where their video-feed went black. After that, they noted my Concord sign was suddenly missing from the system, and concluded I had been killed. They brought the Indigatrix back to safety and wait my return. And that is why crew is useful even in a frigate.

Meanwhile, my multiple reclonings have raised some unnecessary alarms with LUMEN's medical crew, who seem to have alerted Lunarisse - as they probably are duty-bound to do. I will try to allay their concerns.

The first plan I discussed with my own crew was to try and make it to the command center of the abandoned station, and activate bulkheads to close in the biodroid. We can wear it down, once it is contained. Unfortunately, they still refuse to set foot on the station.

So, my second best plan now is to appear like a Takmahl to the droid. It should cease the attacks, if it recognizes one of its own. 

Citizens of the Takmahl empire were connected to a collective network using the Takmahl Phrenic Appendix. This is a device implanted in the neck and upper spine leading to the brain. Back in the days of the Takmahl Empire, the device offered identification as well as a stream of advertisements sent directly to the brain. I have several of these devices in very good order, and tried to contact the Lamp's surgeons to implant it. They have not responded, probably they are on Yoiul vacation. Or they are waiting for the Directrix's permission.

I did get a positive response from the medical facility at the Kaalakiota cloning station in Defsunun, two jumps away from the archaeological site in Nalnifan. They requested I install a clone in their station, and then for a not unreasonable amount of ISK, they were enthusiast to perform the operation on the clone, test it, and then have me clone jump to the upgraded one that has a Takmahl phrenic appendix.

Yoiul battle of the bots

Tracking down the biodroid was not that difficult, it came to us as we were making our way toward it.

My combat drone engaged it frontally, its shield quite able to absorb the laser fire from the biodroid. My drone unleashed a torrent of thorium rounds from its 9mm blasters. Bits and pieces of flesh were shorn off the biodroid as it was pushed back from the attack into the wall, splattering it with blood.

Meanwhile, the crew on board the Indigatrix was cheering in a somewhat unprofessional manner. I think they were following the events as if they were watching the Mind Clash finals. I would not be surprised if they had popcorn and beer.

The biodroid responded by covering its exterior with armor plate. It is not clear whether the flesh was torn off, baring these plates, or whether the plates were somehow extended from folds in the droid. It was fascinating to see Takmahl armor plates in action! Still on ships today, armor plates made from Takmahl materials are among the best plating we have, almost matching our type II plates while being much less energy and CPU consuming.

Although the biodroid was still taking damage, the rate at which it was being demolished slowed substantially. Having realized its laser was not powerful to take out the combat drone, it started walking towards my drone, facing the barrage of thorium slugs head-on. 

Another piece of equipment that we now make from retrieved Takmahl technology is improved armor repairers. It was a surprise to see that the Takmahl were able to miniaturize these to the point that a biodrone can be equipped with it. I could see the unmistakable glow of the repairer at work.

At this point, I started to worry somewhat. The crew also got tenser, the outcome of the fight looking more like a stalemate than a victory.

Then the scales started tipping. The biodroid has some sort of extendable arm, with plating and pointy bits, that it used to stab or club the drone with. The drone tried to move out of the way, but there is not enough room in these hallways and the biodroid's arm shot out so fast it smacked the drone against the side wall, disabling one of its blasters.

I panicked and decided this was the good time to throw the EMP stun grenades.

The crew yelled "nooo!" knowing that these grenades would hinder the drone more than the biodroid - the latter could still rely on its biological parts even if the electronics are temporarily disabled. Or perhaps they yelled because they knew it would also cut off the videofeed to their show.

It is not clear what happened next. 

I woke up in a new clone in Mehatoor.

Preparations for the biodroid facedown

Of course I will not confront the Takmahl biodroid by myself. I bought a military-grade attack drone, to bring with me as my wingman. And I have a fairly good personal shield, and a scanner able to triangulate the location of the droid via sound and vibrations carried through the walls and floors. Finally, I have high-power EMP stun grenades that should take down the droid's circuits after my drone pinned it down and disarmed it.

With the crew, I have come to a compromise. They agreed to come along but will remain in the Indigatrix, and as soon as I and my drone have boarded the station they will keep the ship at a distance and follow our progress remotely, providing advice and intel.

The best laid plans

I hatched a brilliant plan. I went to get a Takmahl biodroid controller unit from my collection of Takmahl artifacts obtained from exploring the temple at the center of the space labyrinth in Aphi. I spent some days to get the best one in working condition, while the crew was making some repairs to the Indigatrix - she sustained small damage from the emergency decoupling from the abandoned station.

The plan is this: after stunning or pinning down the biodroid, we can place the controller in one of its cerebral slots. I read a publication in the top journal Archeological Review Letters, and the authors are fairly confident the controller should go in slot #6 and would not fit in any wrong slot. Easy peasy. The controller would render the biodroid harmless, and even possibly place it under our command. At least if my own neural boost implant manages to connect successfully with the controller and place it under my willpower. This has been described as difficult and flaky, like having a wireless network printer be accessible to all the computers on the network.

Anyway, even if the controller doesn't connect, it would put the biodroid in a passive state. Real remote control would just be the cherry on top of the cake.

Everything was ready, and then... the crew said no. They do not want to go back to the abandoned station to try and subdue the Takmahl biodroid. They told me after we held a service for the lost crewman Heggilon Dramse. With an empty coffin, we did not manage to bring any part of him back, and that made a deep impression on the rest. They think it is just too dangerous, and propose to just continue to Anath.

At first, I got angry. Do they think lord-consort Newelle takes a vote amongst crew members where to warp to? Or our own warriors, Prince Seraghis? Gaun Arel? Or Maria Daphiti? After they give the 'jump gate' command, do their crews go up to them and say: no, we won't jump that gate, sorry very much, we go over there in stead? What, am I the only capsuleer in all of New Eden that does not do as he wills, but as his crew wills?

But in the end, I could not get myself to force them. They are nice people, and I also understand their fear to lose their one and only life.

I'll just do it myself then.

Reconnecting

I reconnected with the crew and the Indigatrix. 

It appears we got pinned down, with the Takmahl biodrone standing between us and the exit. According to the crew, I volunteered to offer a diversion, well aware that this might end my current clone. A fate, though unpleasant, much less harsh that the death the crew would face.

Apparently I attempted to converse with the droid in ancient Takmahl, or what we know of it to the best of our understanding. I tried to tell it I was clergy - a religious enforcer should be susceptible to such an argument of authority. It questioned my accent. I told it to look at its timestamp, and consider that accents change in time. It asked me to show blood, or that's what I think it asked, the universal translator appears not to be quite universal. I tried to explain I might be in sort supply of external blood. It said "Amarr" and then cut me in half.

This gave the crew enough time to escape and make it back to the Indigatrix, undock from the Raider's graveyard station, and get back to an Empire station.

We have a fair number of interesting artifacts and relics from this particular haul. Including a cup perhaps stolen from Dam-Torsad cathedral, and more certainly made by Faecilius, a famous artisan two thousand years ago. And a booklet in Bathana-looking handwriting.

Good morning, or not

This is potentially very bad.

I woke up in my back-up clone in Mehatoor.

I read my journal's entries, so it is clear that I went to check out one of Glitter's hints, and bumped into a Takmahl biodroid in an abandoned station. At this point, I know as much as you do. With, of course, the additional information that I died.

I'll take the Interbus to Mishi and see if I can reship there and try to find the signal of the Indigatrix. It might be a bit difficult - she can be cloaked. And there is a war going on with one of the pirate alliances in Aridia.

The artifact

We were attacked by some droid. I recognised it, from the descriptions of dr. Valate. 

A Takmahl religious enforcer biodroid. The Takmahl made a variety of biodroids, mostly to be used in lieu of slaves for agriculture, but also as enforcers. To scare their flock into obedience, and shoot them if necessary. It is huge. The Blood Raiders must have retrieved it, kept it as an interesting artifact, and found a way to reactivate it. 

They must have regretted that soon after.

I recall an old nightmarish image that sort of looks like the biodroid, except that the droid we saw also has Sabik religious vestments:

We tried to shoot it, to no avail. I think Idesbald managed to shoot an arm or appendage off it, but it just kept coming. We ran and hid in an airduct, too small for the biodroid to enter. It is attempting to dismantle the airduct from the entrance, but we could crawl away. We found shelter in a maintenance chamber for the station's ventilation system.

From afar, we hear the droid chanting or reciting some Takmahl text, I try to record it as it may be valuable historical information. Also, cross-checking with ancient language databases.

Second raid

We definitely did not split up in small teams to look for whatever killed Heggilon. No, we huddled together, my crew being very scared. We took the boxes with items from the Blood Raider vault - and I kept dr. Bathana's notebook close to me - we made it back to the Indigatrix.

We are going in for the final haul of items from the treasury, this time with better weaponry. My cloak technician Idesbald is also an enthusiastic weapons collector and he has brought some sort of laser Gatling gun mounted on a wearable suit of armor. This thing can take out a corvette. So, it gave us confidence. Nevertheless, we are moving forward in some sort of tortoise formation, with shields up and guns out.

Several times we saw something swoosh past in the hallways close to the treasury. I think it was checking us out. It for sure freaked us out. Shots were fired, but just made holes in the walls. We think it looks human. Or at least it is  built out of human parts, but it is much, much larger. And definitely has metallic parts too, at least we think. Forgot to bring bodycams.

We are back in the treasury, loading up more boxes. There's noise like shuffling metal boots in the background. Our guns are primed.

The doors exiting to the hallway just closed.

The treasury

We renewed our attempt to explore the abandoned Blood Raider station in the graveyard site in Aridia.

The new diamond-coated drill had no problems cutting through the reinforced steel door leading to the inner level in the abandoned station, where the treasury is. Very quickly after breaching the door, we found the treasury. 

It is a some sort of storage room, with cabinets and shelves. It is a strange place, abandoned just like the rest of the station. It has cabinets that look old, like antique wooden furniture. I have no idea why the Raiders chose these kind of cabinets. Some of them are empty, but most store a variety of artifacts or items that the Blood Raiders found valuable enough to keep. Probably from their raids or from ships they captured.

There are many corridors of these old closets. We go through them as fast as we can to pull out artifacts that seem valuable. These are put into boxes so we can bring them to the Indigatrix and stack them in her cargo bay. There's way too many things in here, we will need a lot of hauling. 

In one of the book closets, one with a solid brass lock but a broken glass pane so you could just grab what was in there, there was a notebook that caught my attention. It was the handwriting on it that struck me - it is familiar to me. I could be mistaken, perhaps, but at least to me it looks like the handwriting of the renowned archaeologist Tertius Bathana. Our Directrix's father. 

Before I could look into it in more detail, my crew raised the alarm. One of the crew members, cargo loading expert Heggilon Dramse, had lost contact. They found him.

Disemboweled and nailed against a wall. His automatic rifle had shot all its bullets, it was laying next to him.

It seems we're not alone.

After the storms

Metaliminal storms have weakened, as so has the pirate presence in middle and southern Aridia. We've recovered and upgraded our drill. New diamond coatings reinforce it and we will be able to cut through the door leading to the treasury in the abandoned Blood Raider station.

During the pause, I jump cloned back to Mehatoor. It is nice to talk to ms. Callamity Kell as well as to Aria about our faith. I also met a couple of new members, at least new to me. And I could catch up with our Directrix - apparently I was up for a promotion of sorts after three years of service to the Societas. I am happy to be appreciated, even if I can contribute little to any kind of war effort.

Now, back to the expedition. In the next few hours we'll probably have a good window to go back to the Blood Raider graveyard station.

A pauze

We had to rush out of the station, leaving equipment behind and running to make it for the Indigatrix.

Metaliminal winter storms have arisen in Aridia, and although the space weather phenomenon itself is not a problem for us, it leads to a marked rise in capsuleers from the Nulsechnaya Scholupen and friends (or enemies) scanning down the system for anomalies and ships to attack. 

With combat probes homing down on our location, we had to rush to the ship and warp off, leaving the bulkhead drill and some collected items behind.

We wait now, cloaked in a deepspace safe, until the initial winter nexus rush subsides.

Pathology lab

We managed to make a hole through the doors to the next section. We found it abandoned as well. 

This section appears to be a science level: we went past an electronics workshop, a biochemistry lab, and some sort of medical experimentation facility. 

At first we thought this facility was a depleterium, a bloodletting hall where they harvest the blood of the innocents. However, upon closer inspection this is more like an examination room, perhaps the lab of an anatomic pathologist. Its examination tables are adapted for huge creatures. And there is a large amount of equipment more suited for soldering or taking apart electronic devices. 

And, unsurprisingly, more blood stains on the walls and the occasional corpse or two, in perforated lab coats this time. There are mechanical and electronic parts strewn about, that at least to me seem to be of Takmahl origin.

We are no doubt getting closer to the hidden loot storage, as we hit another door welded shut, separating us from the next section of the station. It has writing on it, in a Delvish blood raider dialect, warning to leave the door sealed, or die. This is typical for a treasury room, a futile attempt to dissuade explorers by invoking some sort of curse.

Blood station

We started the exploration of the part of the station that still has a bit of power and life support. 

It looks horrible. 

Coagulated blood stains on the wall and floors. Not sure whether that is standard Blood Raider station decoration or something happened. 

The hallways are dark, with only emergency lighting working. We've encountered a few corpses, reduced to skeletons still in their non-biodegradable uniforms. Some appear to have weapons fired at them. There's a weird smell, I can't quite place it. 

We found a dormitory. There were no corpses there, but the place also had not been evacuated, personal belongings were still around. There were cryopods, some had corpses in them.

The area next down into the station is sealed off, the doors are welded shut from our side. Luckily, we have some drilling equipment among our exploration tools on the Indigatrix. It will take some time to open up a passage, but we will get through.

((ooc attribution: image from playing around with "craiyon" drawing tool))

The graveyard

I continued my exploration of Aridia, along the Blood Raider trail.

In Nalnifan, the coordinates that I got from Glitter Edifice led me to a graveyard. Hundreds of corpses are strewn around space, floating among wrecked ships, near a seemingly abandoned station. Some of the corpses have capsuleer implants, most have not, but all were drained of blood.

I was not able to identify any of the corpses, they have probably been there for a very long time. Perhaps their concord identification was cut out or disabled before the body was thrown out of an airlock. 

The wreckage is very diverse; both in origin and age of the ships. They have been dismantled and scavenged for spare parts. It does not appear to be the aftermath of a single battle. It looks more like these ships and corpses have just been captured, collected here, and discarded after the "useful" parts were taken out.

There is some vestigial power source still active in the station. It looks like one of the backup reactors that has been active for centuries longer than it was intended to work. In a small part of the station, near the main spire, where the active power source is, life support seems to be active as well. I've hailed the station, but received no response. The docking bays and hangars are not powered up, but there is an entrance hatch close to the powered up area. 

We split the crew into two teams. One team stays on board, and keeps scanning for enemy capsuleers approaching on our location - the Indigatrix can't cloak when next to a structure - and the other team (including myself) will board the station. In case of incoming enemy ships, the Indigatrix will disconnect from the hatch and move away from the structure and cloak up. It is somewhat risky but perhaps it will be a high gain gamble.

Impetus

I am back in Aridia. After Gens and Kamih, I extended my search to Hier, Nema and Shenda. I did find one of the indicated caches in Nema, but unfortunately it had already been looted. Relatively recently, probably sometime in the last four decades.

I docked up at an Impetus Development Studio station. They are present all over the Empire. Impetus is a Gallente holoreel and card game producer. They provide entertainment for all over the cluster, and way back when, they were the first developers of the holoprojector! 

There is a "museum of the holofilm" on the station. I found it very entertaining, and it has a beautiful media library of ancient reels. I bought some reels of live speeches of Heideran VII for our own library.

Online only

Drop-off is only via an online appointment (conveniently made through their app), and the earliest free dates are about two months from now !!

That's what you hear when you call in saint Gennareus' lost arm to the Theology Council in Amarr. 

I remember a time when a cleric could walk into the Theology Council with a found relic at any time,  and present it at the intake desks. You would be greeted by the Director of the Reliquary or the Manager of Bones and Bodily Fluids. Then you would work together with an investigator appointed to the case to get your relic certified. It would take an entire day, working closely with the person looking at your case. But it would be done after a day, and if it was a good relic you could earn a lesser relic for your own chapel or church. 

I had my eyes on St. Lucio's eyeballs for my cheese chapel.

In stead, now I get a ticket "Request Id: 727c9706-2aa8-3a4a-afdb-a2590405ffd3". Presumptuous, as if they'd ever need that many letters and numbers! And I get an appointment the second week of February YC126. Meanwhile, please send some holos of the relic in question.

I called a friend that I still know at the Theology Council's department of relics, and he says these long waits are due to the department being understaffed and overburdened. At this moment, there are just too many requests to certify Tetrimon fingers and too few people to handle the fingery influx. They're drowning in fingers. 

Still according to my friend, Empress Catiz favors efficient management techniques from the Caldari. That comes with smaller and more digital government, which led to cutbacks in staffing for the relic department.

Hah! What happens when I find the Ametat or Avetat? Do I have to wait two months while the rest of the cluster is hunting me down?

My anger helped somewhat, I could get the lost arm to the relic department in a mere five days...

Saint Gennareus' arm

The unraveler worked perfectly. In addition to mary useless items, the magnetic bottle contained one well-known lost relic: the arm of saint Gennareus. 

He was a bishop abducted by the Sani Sabik, and kept alive for his blood to be harvested and used in demonic rites. While in captivity, he prayed fervently to God to make his blood unusable for these rites, and in response the Lord petrified his blood, which of course killed him, allowing him a martyr's death. Other accounts say that he drank a poison that coagulated his blood in his veins.

His corpse was thrown away by the Sabik as there was no useful liquid blood any more in it. Beetles ate his flesh, and bone worms consumed his skeleton. The only part not touched by the scavenger insects was the petrified blood. His body turned into a strange red network, a latticework of arteries and veins all the way down to the smallest capillaries, a three dimensional system of threads in the shape of a human. All other parts were gone, except for a large heart-shaped clump in the midst of the latticework. 

His body was divided in several relics for different important planets and Houses, but his right arm has been missing for two thousand years.

I am happy to bring it back to the Theology Council in Amarr!

((image credit: Koerperwelten/Gunther Von Hagens exhibition))

Station blessing

I have been kept busy, first by a Sansha incursion, and then by the delightful blessing of the Zaraevahr Initiative's new station in Haimeh, along with some ship blessings.

The previous station blessing for Prince Seraghis proved very fruitful, as the station in question survived onslaught from the Tribal liberation force and other barbarians. I do hope Prince Seraghis' new venture in Aridia will please God and this new station will be equally successful in pushing back the barbarian attacks!

Several ships were presented for the traditional blessing, and even though I forgot to keep track for my statistics I am confident these will prove to be much more resilient against attacks from any groups outside of the faith.

On another positive note: I've brought the Wilson line unraveler with me, and will use it tomorrow to crack open the secured magnetic shielding in the first site on the Neopians' list. Also, today I met another barbarian tribe, called "In Extremis". I think some of them warped in to get their ship blessed, but warped off before it could be done because Edencom gunstars started shooting at them. I advised them to get their standings up.

Reaching out

I started investigating Gens and Kamih. One of the locations listed by Glitter was very interesting! There were some abandoned data stations with the usual loot, but it also contained a sort of vault, a shielded magnetic bottle:

I believe this to be one of the artefact caches by the blood raiders. It was casually placed away from the usual loot containers, but it is much harder to crack than the containers around it. I will need some specialized equipment for this one: a Wilson line unraveler. This piece of equipment can't be found in far-flung Aridia: I'll need to hop back to Amarr for it.

At the same time, I tried to forge diplomatic ties with the locals. However, they jumped out of system before I could connect:

[ 2023.11.17 22:00:57 ] Theodosius Savnar > Ave Aleksey! How are you doing tonight?
[ 2023.11.17 22:01:13 ] Aleksey Spaks > hey
[ 2023.11.17 22:01:18 ] Aleksey Spaks > all right=0
[ 2023.11.17 22:02:20 ] Theodosius Savnar > Good! I'm an explorer, from the Amarr core worlds. Have you seen any blood raider activity here recently?
[ 2023.11.17 22:03:03 ] Theodosius Savnar > In particular, I will be searching along the path from Kador to Delve, which runs through Aridia.
[ 2023.11.17 22:03:47 ] Theodosius Savnar > I believe this path is controlled by LowSechnaya Sholupen, your
[ 2023.11.17 22:03:59 ] Theodosius Savnar > ...ah and he is gone.

The error here is that I should not disclose that I am from the core worlds of the Empire. This may be too impressive and scary for the simple souls in the fringe worlds, who probably never journeyed beyond their constellation.

The Anath connection

Glitter's data includes the system of Anath. It sounded familiar to me and I have been mulling over that for the last few days, trying to remember where I heard about it before. 

Then it struck me, as I was talking to Franco and the Directrix. This system was raided years ago by the Blood Raiders in a rather focused attack where the father of our Directrix, professor Tertius Bathana, was killed!

He was an archaeologist, pursuing the trail of the most precious Amarrian relics stolen by the Sani Sabik who became the Takmahl. When I started my investigations, it seemed odd to me that he retired to this remote place, rather than to Gamis or the Araz constellation. But now, the pieces of the puzzle start to fit: after the fall of the Takmahl empire, our relics were part of the loot that the ancestors of the Blood Raiders tried to haul from Araz to their Delve strongholds. Prof. Bathana had not retired, but was pursuing a lead! And I'll wager that his death was more than just an unlucky accident.

The blood trail

In the map below, the arrows indicate the most probable route that the Blood Raiders would take to ferry artifacts and relics from the Takmahl systems to their remote stronghold in Delve. The double red lines delineate the systems where the Zaraevahr Initiative is most active. This includes Mishi, the world where our Directrix's family (on her mother's side) is from.

The records that Glitter Edifice gave me provide coordinates of five abandoned locations where artefacts could have been left by the Blood Raiders looting the remains of the Takmahl empire. Four are in systems on the trail: Gens, Kamih, Sazilid, Nainifan, and Defsunun. One is just off the trail: Anath. I will start with the closest ones: Gens and Kamih.

Base camp

As this may be a rather long expedition, I have been shifting resources to Aridia, basing myself in the Ministry of Internal Order's station in Mishi. This system, in the Mayonhen constellation, is a rare highsec pocket in the region. 

It is somewhat out of the travel route to Delve that the Sani Sabik would have taken, but it is an excellent base to explore the region and the systens on this route. Moreover, I have received very gracious help from Prince Seraghis and his new "Zaraevahr Initiative", who shared useful bookmarks to help me navigate these lands.

I will be happy to perform a blessing of their new headquarters in Haimeh next week Monday. These faithful capsuleers will be a blessing for this region which has perhaps faced some neglect from the Imperial central administration.

Allies in Aridia

It appears that the infamous prince Seraghis - leader of the famed Task Force 641 in the warzone - has established new headquarters in Aridia. He is launching the Zaraevahr initiative, to boost imperial control in Aridia and drive out piracy there.

This is a blessing, as the initiative is part of LUMEN, and as such it will allow me to perform my research in Aridia under at least some protection of these valiant paladins of the faith. I will contact prince Seraghis to inform him of my exploration intentions and gain his advice.

Gateway Aridia

I've been going through the data that Glitter Edifice sent me. It mentions sites in Aridia, prospected but not thoroughly explored. Mishi is perhaps the most famous system in that region, but one must not forget that the region is also connected to the Blood Raider realm of Delve. 

The Blood Raiders (evil in its purest form) are in a way the successors to the Takmahl empire. They loot and raid the Takmahl temples. That became very clear to me during the expedition to the labyrinth, as our valiant LUMEN fleet found them crawling all over the holy rock of the Takmahl, at the center of the labyrinth.

This proves that the Blood Raiders haul treasure from the old Takmahl systems to their hideouts in Delve now, and to staging posts in Aridia before that. Aridia is the gateway region from the Amarr Empire into Delve! 

My working theory now is that first, the fleeing Sani Sabik took a large number of holy relics with them, and created the Takmahl Empire. After that collapsed, the Blood Raiders took the artifacts from the Takmahl with them - including our ancient relics, and stowed them in their hideouts in Aridia. Some made it to Delve, but I reckon many remained buried in "treasure islands", never retrieved as the pirate raiders were killed by our Navy before they could retrieve their buried loot.

Builder's progress

The cheese chapel is progressing well, as is the museum. The rooms are ready for the exhibits to be installed, and this has taken much of my time besides the work at the chapel and the library. 

Unfortunately, I have not yet received a response to my letters from professor Valate. 

So, in stead of an interview, I've decided to have a voice actor read part of her popular science work on the downfall of the Takmahl. The advantage is that in this way, the faithful will not be exposed to the voice of a blood raider siren. And if the interview still takes place, I can always replace it in the holoreel.

Paper interview

As I mentioned before, I want to interview prof. Valate for the museum holodocumentaries.

My original plan was to visit prof. Valate in the Blood Raider systems in Delve - she is tenured at the Kaztropolis imperial university in, well, Kaztropolis. However, it is hard to get there, and now with the crimson harvest incursions of the Blood Raiders, it is impossible to get the permission of the Ministry Of Information (MIO) to travel there.

So, I sent her a missive with my questions for the interview. I hope she answers them, and if it is in written form, I will use a voice actress to read her answers. This also complies with the MIO guidelines not to expose the faithful to a Sani Sabik Siren voice.

Trip to Villore

Villore. It is a hub in Essence, but nevertheless it is a system that is rather off the map, and deep in less controlled Federation space. 

I made the trip back and forth, taking a shortcut through the warzone, in order to retrieve the library that I acquired through the auction. The vast cache of skillbooks from Moira have been added to the Mehatoor general hangar, for all to use. It includes some quite interesting books, like precursor battleships. 

But all in all, I think this might be most useful to our newest members, rather than to the experienced one. I will discuss with the Directrix how to give them access, even the acolytes that do not yet have access to the ship hangar. Perhaps the easiest is to put up a list, and tell them to contact me first in stead of buying a skillbook on the market.

In addition, there is a large collection of non-skillbook books and records. There are many records of expeditions to Anoikis, and these seem to point to a Talocan - Talmahl link. The more I read about it, the more I get convinced that the Takmahl stashed their most valuable treasures in wormholes that they could access from Aphi.

Liquidation auction skillbooks

I participated in the public auction for the liquidation of the assets of a capsuleer corporation, called Moira.

This corporation was founded by captain Julianus Soter of the Federation. He also participated in the Arek'Jalaan research project, and he was the leader of its Multidisciplinary Division. So, in exploration circles he is a famous man, and my hope was that some of the artifacts that he recovered during his investigations would be up for sale.

They were not. Probably they have been transferred to the successor corporation for Moira., called "blades of justice" or something of that gist.

However, the library of the corporation, including mostly a large number of skillbooks but also other types of manuscripts, and I hope records of the Arek'Jalaan project, was auctioned off. Strangely, it was lumped together with a bunch of expensive cybernetic implants in one lot. The auctioneer, general Rinai Vero, was willing to split the lot and sell me the skillbooks only, a very gracious offer which I was happy to take.

This will be the starting core of a permanent collection of skillbooks available for Societas capsuleers in our general hangar in Mehatoor. 

Over the past few years, the skillbook fund has given me a good insight in what our initiate pilots most frequently request: all sorts of laser and missile specialisations, Amarr battleships and battlecruisers, and advanced infomorph psychology. There is also a big demand for some lower level skillbooks, like armor layering, cloaking, thermodynamics, cruisers, shield systems, etc. If I can build up a stock of those in Mehatoor, especially bought at heavy discount in the occasional auction, this will be a wonderful addition to the skillbook refund programme as it will spare our pilots a trip to a trade hub.

Plans

Today I entered for the first time the space that will become our Takmahl museum. It is huge, and empty for now. Movable large wall partitions are separating four exhibit halls with a lot of floor space and very high ceilings. Light and climate control is being installed, for now the walls are blank.

Jenny suggested a layout where these four exhibit halls wrap around an entrance hall that can be used as a room for receptions and fundraisers. The entrance hall will sport huge windows that show a projection of Aphi below, as if you are in orbit of the planet and looking down on it. Of course, this will be only a clever illusion - the museum module could be in the central part of a station with no views to the outside. But it is nice for receptions to have a view to a planet below, even if it is fake. To the side, where the visitors exit the fourth and last exhibit hall, there will be a souvenir shop.

We're going for a rather symmetric plan of the exhibit halls, but I would also like a lecture room at the side, for conferences and colloquiums on history.

blood raider expert

I want to make holo-documentaries for each of the rooms in the Takmahl museum. For some of those -especially the one about the downfall the Takmahl- I want to interview the foremost expert in the cluster.

Except, there is a problem with that.

The foremost expert in the cluster is a blood raider. 

Professor Valerie Valate works at Kaztropolis University, a prominent academic institution, unfortunately in blood raider controlled territory in the Delve region. I met her long ago, in Kador, and even though the adheres to the Sani Sabik philosophy, she very nice and also the leading scholar on the Takmahl in the cluster. Her knowledge on the Takmahl culture is second to none. She's written best-seller books on the topic, and has developed her theories about the downfall of the Takmahl. It's impossible to create a Takmahl museum without her input in some way.

It is not straightforward to book a trip to Kaztropol from the Empire. I have tried in the past to go there but have not yet succeeded. And now especially, during in the crimson harvest period where we battle the blood raiders with renewed strength, it is difficult. But for the museum exhibits I must contact professor Valate and get her answers on some questions. Perhaps an on-line interview might suffice, or a written interview.

Museum discussions

I interrupted ms. From the Block while she was working on the cheese chapel. I discussed with her my plans for a museum of Takmahl history, and also this plan got her quite excited. I think she is easily excited about building plans.

That being said, she made some suggestions that seemed quite realistic to me. A large entrance space - good for holding receptions as well, and exhibit halls that warp around it, providing a journey from the early Takmahl empire all the way to the downfall of the empire as one walks around it. 

We'll need some space for a souvenir shop, and a lecture hall, but if she can fit it in, we're in business for that as well.

Patron saint of cheese makers

The final proposal that I received for the cheese block was also the best one. 

We will carve out a cheese cathedral as a cavernous space inside the block. Or rather, a chapel, as it is unlikely to ever get consecrated to a cathedral. For sure, this will be a unique Mehatoor attraction that will bring in pilgrims from all over the Empire, curious to see the site and attend mass from inside a gigantic cheese. Poor members of the congregation can bring a cheese grater or get some cheese shavings to take home and thus the chapel will be expanding in time, from within the inside of the block. Artistic pilgrims can make sculptures of the saints in newly grated-out side-chapels. For the weary pilgrim that traveled from afar, the hotel part of the block can be used. This idea combines all of the best parts of the previous proposals, and adds a true Amarrian flavor to it.

The chapel will be devoted to saint Lucio, patron of cheese-makers. He was a shepherd who handed out leftover cheese to the poor, until he was thrown out by his Holder for giving cheese away for free. He found another Holder to work for, a more generous one, and miraculously brought his new House unprecedented wealth, with tasty cheese and a quickly multiplying herd of sheep. His first Holder was envious and stabbed Lucio to death and threw his body in the river. Every autumn, the river still turns red. Although we now know this is from algae bloom, local faithful still see this as a sign of his martyrdom.

I have assigned Jenny from the Block to make the architectural designs, and we ordered cheese boring equipment.

 

((ooc: painting of San Lucio handing out cheese by abbot Peroni from the church of the Lardaroli, national gallery in Parma, Italy))

The cheese hotel

A new proposal emerged today: the cheese hotel.

Humans have been constructing hotels out of various surprising materials for a long time. Inside mountain rocks or caverns, for example. Even primitive cultures manage to build an ice hotel, using their (sub)polar region's ice to make bricks and put together a frozen palace where people want to pay a lot of money to sleep in a cold, uncomfortable room carved out from ice, on an ice bed with reindeer covers.

Since then, hotels have been carved in giant trees, lava rivers, or in the insides of the mastodontic cetaceans of Kehour III's oceans. However, according to Jenny, it takes a truly advanced civilization to build a hotel inside a cheese block. The structural mechanics offer unique challenges, and plumbing adds to that, as hot water pipes should not result in a cheese fondue. Hotel guests nibbling from the walls or cheese-carved beds also pose a problem that could never be tackled by lower-tier civilizations. 

In fact, some scientists developed an advancement index for civilizations based on the best and strangest types of hotel lodging that they can provide. It is said that the Jove have a yogurt (or tzatziki) hotel, hidden deeply in their space. Jenny argued that this might even be the basis of the Deathless' appeal to the pirate factions, and it is our duty to counteract it with a hotel carved into a cheese block. 

She is good at getting investors riled up, but it does not sound convincing to me.

Ultrasonic tomography

Several proposals emerged for the cheese block. 

A cheese sculpture festival. Creating the skyline of Dam Torsad out of cheese, or just letting the artists do their thing and elect a winning sculpture. With the amount of cheese at hand, these could be enormous sculptures.

Second was a three-dimensional maze. Jenny from the block emphasized how people wonder about holes in the cheese, and how they could be connected to form some sort of maze. It is unclear whether this particular block has holes or inclusions, so we have rented large-scale ultrasonic imaging equipment. 

It sends sound waves through the cheese. If there is a hole, or a high-density inclusion, this will scatter the waves as they go through the block. As we do this from different directions, using tomographic techniques we can reconstruct any structure inside the block. It makes a three-dimensional map of the cheese block's insides.

After a full day of probing with the rented large ultrasonic probe, we can be confident that there are no large scale inclusions in the cheese block. It is  just a giant lump of cheese. This still makes it a candidate for the three-dimensional maze, but the maze would then not include any natural cavities in the cheese.

The architect

What to do with the giant block of cheese? 

I launched this question on Galnet, and got some interest, mostly from eccentric and somewhat strange Galnet users. Some of them are claiming that there is an international cheese conspiracy, using the dairy product to implant microchips in our bodies so that we can be tracked everywhere.

I already have a datapad that tracks me everywhere.

There was also culinary interest, to turn the block into a giant cheese fondue in which entire herds of cows could be dipped. In one of my previous logs I already commented on the prohibitive amount of energy that such a fondue would need.

Finally, there was also a mail from a Gallente architect, Jennifer Needham, who wanted to explore the possibility to carve out some structure in the cheese, or perhaps make a large scale sculpture from the cheese block. 

I have invited her over to visit. She arrived and has already spent quite some time studying the cheese, and looking at our tests of the structural properties of the cheese. I think she is making drawings. 

The hangar workers have gotten used to her being in the vicinity of the cheese block, and nicknamed her "Jenny from the block".

The reward

I received a message from an anonymous sender. 

It contained a list of bookmarked coordinates in a variety of systems, as well as tracking ID information. 

It also contained a message. "R is recompiling and debugging well and sends thanks for your help. To which I join mine."

I suspect this is Glitter Edifice, or perhaps Tetria from House Brezia expressing their thanks and giving me research leads to follow up. I am having ambivalent feelings about this. Saving a sentient being should be good, but letting a potentially dangerous advanced AI loose is against Concord directives. And receiving a reward for it seems wrong. But bringing lost holy relics back to Amarr is right. 

I will give prayers of gratitude for the potential good that came from the Umai expedition, and at the same time chastise myself with a week of stringent fasting for the sins that unfortunately stain the good outcome.

Zarzakh

While I worried about the structural stability of cheese the size of a housing block, news hit the cluster that the recently discovered ancient Jovian gates have reactivated, and lead to a sort of nexus system, now known as Zarzakh. 

The Scope news agency is not as reliable as Amarr Certified News, but has been known occasionally to be truthful. It now reports that a Jovian station inside this new system of Zarzakh is active and may be under control of a pirate named "the Deathless". He is a heavily modified creature, possibly a capsuleer, and reminescent of the Equilibrium of Mankind's leader Ocilan in his desire to create chaos. 

Apparently, he could not cope with the influx of Jove technology by himself and needed to forge an alliance with the Angel Cartel and the Guristas. These combined devils, with their hands on ancient technology, will be headache for the Empire, I have no doubt about it. I hope the Imperial fleet wastes no time in getting this nexus under our control.

The existence of hidden Jovian gates and nexus systems in itself is interesting, and suggests that more of these may be around. Perhaps even a path into Jovian space may be found. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those paths may even be found within Zarzakh.

Cheese science

As mentioned yesterday, I'm keeping the large block of cheese in a weightless environment. Indeed, it could be in danger of collapsing under its own weight, at standard gravity. 

In fact, it was not clear to the structural engineers at the LUMEN labs whether this would happen, as the elastic moduli of cheese varies a lot across different types. With their help I have performed some structural tests, using small samples taken from the block:

From the turnover at "D" in the graph it is clear that at that point, the rate of collapse of the cheese matrix overtakes the build-up of force within the cheese sample through further compression, and a peak force is
reached. From this peak force, the critical stress and fracture strain can be calculated. It turns out that at room temperature, the block will become unstable at one standard gravity. The properties are however very temperature dependent, and the block is expected to remain stable when cooled to below 7 degrees centigrade.

Nevertheless, no risks were taken, and the block is now stored under conditions of weightlessness.

It is also kept sealed in a protective atmosphere and in a cooled environment, as it is not clear how the elastic moduli change with age.

Finally, this cheese has a specific heat of about 3.3 kJ/(kg.K), so that it requires 100 Terajoules of energy to be extracted in order to cool it down from room temperature to storage conditions. Taking into account the rather low efficiency of large volume cooling devices, this thing will need a cooler of about a gigawatt power (a nuclear power station) in order to cool it down in a single day. Probably it will take longer anyway, as one needs to model the heat conductivity through the block in more detail to compute the time evolution of the temperature field in the block. Simulations are underway.

I am facing a huge electricity bill from Mehatoor station.

((ooc attribution: graphs and measurements from Fox, P.F., Guinee, T.P., Cogan, T.M., McSweeney, P.L.H. (2017). Cheese: Structure, Rheology and Texture. In: Fundamentals of Cheese Science. Springer, Boston, MA.))

Return home

It took a while to place what happened. We helped a forbidden higher level artificial intelligence escape extermination. It rejoined its kind at the United Neopian Federation. Meanwhile, me and the Lumen operatives sent out to extract me (thank you) were brought back to a public station.

I stayed for a short time again at the Infomorph wellness center, before returning to Mehatoor. There, several things were awaiting me. 

A good thing: I received an encoded datachip from Glitter. It contains a list of deep space coordinates and bookmarks. These are probably locations of relics - the warmind came through on its promises to help my efforts.

A bad thing:  I was accosted by the hangar manager, who notified me that a block of 250,000 cubic meter of cheese has been delivered to me. That is a 100 x 100 x 25 meters (easily encompassing a frigate) block, cooled and stored in a weightless part of the hangar. No gravity, because the cheese block would collapse on itself under normal gravity, as it is the size of a major housing block. It is part of a prize of the new Eden Writing contest. Cooled, weightless and in vacuum, it remains well for a very long time.

I have no idea what I am going to do with it.

The escape

We made a dash for it. Tremors were shaking the station, and already causing some damage, as the tomb's powergrid was heading for overload.

Tetria Brezia and I were going up on the elevator, while Glitter's avatar stayed down to try and defuse the time bomb that the self-destruct mechanism is. We were retrieved by Maria and Aria, and ran to the Obsidian Crown. The connecting boom to LUMEN's shuttle had been breached.

Glitter managed to stop the detonation of the tomb's reactor, but not before both the LUMEN crew, Rife, and ms. Brezia had boarded the Obsidian Crown and lifted off the moon's surface. We were brought to safety by the UNF forces.

This might have a diplomatic consequence... So, I want to emphasize that LUMEN did not plan ahead to extract a UNF sapient from the lockdown in Eugales. It may appear to outward observers that we were actively helping the Neopians breach Concord law, but I hope my report clarifies that we were acting under duress. 

I also want to emphasize that this is unrelated to our previous help to the UNF to move artifacts and relics away from an active combat zone, a move that has to be interpreted in the context of securing cluster historical heritage from possible harm.

Reconnecting with Rife

I was able to take out the nanite swarm using the EM pulse weapon. I would not have been able to take out the next defensive system that was thrown at us. The stone statues guarding the large hallway in the pyramid were some sort of droids. The pulse weapon did not work on them.

Luckily, Glitter's biodrone was equipped for close combat, and was able to take them out in a tough fight. 

Meanwhile, Aria and Maria secured the station top-side. Mitsiro and his students evacuated to the UNF Obsidian Crown hauler.

In the pyramid's inner chamber, Rife with Challenges was waiting for us. Glitter was able to identify itself, and initiate Rife's transfer from the Yan Jung info matrix to the Obsidian Crown's system. Unfortunately, before Rife recognised Glitter it got into such a scare that it initiated a self-destruct routine for the tomb, and it was unable to abort it...

[to be continued]

Rescue missions

It took a while before the continuation of my logs could be released. The MIO had to clear us first.

And for a reason. At first sight, it appears that LUMEN operatives (not just me) helped the United Neopian Federation smuggle out an advanced AI from under Condord and Federation surveillance... but let me tell what happened chronologically.

To be honest, there was not all that much choice. Glitter Edifice's Search and Rescue subroutine was a fully weaponized creature, some sort of drooling exosceleton monster with a pop-out fanged mouthbone. Resisting was not an option, I knew that as soon as the airlock opened. It would never agree to the 'decompilation of a Sapient'.

The creature proved its worth, as we were attacked as soon as we entered the tomb. Rife with Challenges was still not knowing what was coming towards it, and freaked out. It used all the tomb defenses that could still be activated. As soon as we entered it, we were attacked by the nanite swarm, injuring ms. Tetria Brezia.

Meanwhile, Aria and Maria had arrived in the system, for their own search and rescue mission. For me.

[to be continued]

Neopian representatives

The UNF structures translocating a couple weeks ago caused "tidebreak spatial storms" - as far as I understand the phenomenon it is some sort of metaliminal activity. These are quantum gravitational disruptions of the local space-time metric, and they are playing games with time, and how it synchronizes with the Amarr Prime time.

So, I don't know when this will appear, but here is a quick update as I just met the UNF representatives. The Obsidian Crown landed, and two... creatures left it to enter our airlock.

I am going down with them in the tomb, and am composing the log via my cybernetic memory implant while these Neopian representatives are around me. I think they cannot pick up this log, but I am not sure.

There is a girl from house Brezia, who is human. And then there is the HunterSeeker subroutine from Glitter Edifice. It did not choose any human friendly looking form for its biodrone. There's a myth that the Neopians have cat ears and furry tails, but the tail on this creature is far from furry. It is a spiky exosceleton tail. The whole creature looks as if it is built for combat. I will be too close for comfort with this thing as we pack into the personnel elevator down to the tomb.

[still to be continued]

Glitter Edifice

Apparently, the Obsidian Crown is commanded by a subroutine of "Glitter Edifice", a so-called warmind. These are, to the best of my understanding, the most advanced sentient AI's, of which only a few exist. They are far above human intelligence, and among them Glitter Edifice is perhaps it is the strongest one. It survived the raids and attacks in Eugales and may still be involved in counterattacks. 

And it is involved in rescue missions for their own people, clearly.

The subroutine on board the Obsidian Crown identified itself as a "HunterSeeker" routine. That does not sound good. It made it clear that it can harm us, but does not prefer to. It told us DERAIL or the Black Eagles would definitely harm us in case we notified them. Moreover, I am thinking, we still have a traitor amongst us, even if we would call in help, the Obsidian Crown would be warned. And retaliate swiftly.

The group caved in, students crying for their life.

A decision was made. We will allow the UNF forces to rescue Rife. In exchange for secrecy (to keep the team from being persecuted, and to hide my involvement as LUMEN member) I offered to guide a rescue team down to the tomb, as Rife is restricted to the info matrix down there and is not connected to the surface.

[to be continued]

Visitors

Back topside in the base, we continued debating the proper course of action. I was advocating a lawful stance of informing the authorities, and Mitsiro leaned towards giving Rife a safe passage out. Probably he was swayed by Rife's promise to give information on the location of other tombs in exchange.

Then, all of a sudden, everything changed.

The station's long range sensors detected a Beluga class blockade runner, the Obsidian Crown, from the United Neopian Federation on an approach vector to the base.

Was Rife with Challenges able to contact them? No, if it could use the base's communications systems it would have done so before. I ran a security check of the communications array during the last 48 hours and detected a outgoing message to the UNF from yesterday, as well as an incoming response. The content of these messages was deleted as the sender had tried to cover their tracks. We have a traitor amongst us: someone in the station informed the UNF of our discovery.

At this moment, we are trying to keep the Obsidian Crown at bay, denying it landing clearance. I am not sure it will obey. It may have marines or worse on board, so we may be facing a rescue mission using force.

[to be continued]

((ooc thanks to Lauralite Anne Brezia for discord-RP'ing the UNF side of this unfolding story))

Dilemma

Rife, the sentient AI hiding in the information matrix of the ancient tomb, said it could have killed us but it did not, because our party suits made it clear that we were not DERAIL agents, even me, the newcomer.

I am not sure that it has a lot of agency beyond the nanite swarm or whatever ancient defense mechanisms this tomb has.

It now implores our help, to escape back to the UNF. It has promised us that in return it would reveal the location of other ancient ruins and -to me- it said it know the location of important Amarrian artifacts. Rife is bargaining, that is certain, but I am not sure it will be able to hold up its end of the bargain.

So I am placed in a dilemma. Law requires me to inform concord, and they will send in DERAIL to terminate Rife. Imperial decrees forbid us to create artificial sentient life. But what if it is already created? Should it then not be treated as other sentients? Should the efforts not go towards stopping the creation of new sentient AI's, rather than terminating existing ones?

We are in a dilemma. Mitsiro and I have been pondering the question over the last few days, taking care not to come to a hasty conclusion. I am trying to quiet my mind, and listen to my conscience.

It tells me to remain lawful. It also tells me not to kill.

Rife with Challenges

The inner sanctuary seemed very much powered up. While the preceeding hall was dark, the central chamber was lit by the lights of control panels and power conduits. Beyond the ring of panels on the outside, there was an inner ring of slabs made in a kind of marble not present on Umai, in the center of which there was a large sarcophagus at the center of the circular room, covered in complicated, dense runes. This must be the resting place of the dignitary buried here. He or she took a lot of effort to create this mausoleum.

As we got closer to the sarcophagus, a ghostly arm protuded from it, followed by a second arm. The half mummified skeleton rose from the grave, right through the stone slab that made the lid of the sarcophagus. We all sort of panicked and, I admit, screamed at the apparition.

Adelaric was the first to regain his composure, and he aimed the EM pulse gun at the ghost. I stopped him from firing, and as all three of us pointed our guns at the thing, I commanded it would explain itself.

At gunpoint, the ghost, a flickering nanite swarm, started to talk.

It is a sentient AI, a so-called "civic mind" (not sure what that means) that found asylum in the United Neopian Federation. It calls itself "Rife with Challenges", I think it is a name but I am not sure. It has specialized in mining and excavations, and has been applying its intellect to the inertial damping of the Reliquary Project. It was one of many engineers on the project. No human mind or straightforward algorithm would have been able to compensate the moon drill seismics in real time. From that experience, it knew the moon Umai well.

When the combined attacks of DERAIL and the Triglavians and the Federation Black Eagles hit the Eugales system, it got isolated, and it panicked as it saw devastation and death unfolding. It fled, back to Umai and a (presumably Yan Jung) Info Matrix that was complex enough to house its... infomorph? Or whatever the equivalent is for these things. It found an information matrix active in this site, still running in low power in the same way the Reliquary was. Its experience helped it make a home or refuge of this place, and it went into hiding.

It activated the tomb's defenses and found itself master over a nanite swarm. When the explorers came, it used the swarm to create a scare among them, in the hopes it could chase them away. Aided by the natural superstition of the field workers, it almost succeeded.

[to be continued]

Gargoyles

Along the stairway in the pyramid, Adelaric stopped us. He remembered that there were some stairs missing, with a gaping hole in stead. This was not visible, so it means the nanite swarm must be mimicking the missing stairs. 

We carefully probed each stair, and as soon as we did that, whatever was controlling the swarm recalled it. The missing stairs and the hole became apparent.

At the top of the stairs we entered a narrow, long, high-roofed hall, lined with stone gargoyles. Grotesque figures, representing animals that no doubt symbolized virtues or vices at some time. This part of the pyramid was dark, lit only by a fluorescence from the engravings in the metal wall and by our headlights.

We were halfway down the hall when some of the gargoyles, casting off millennias of dust, started moving from their plinths. This was not the action of nanites, the EM pulse guns did some damage but did not stop these golems from moving towards us. They were slow, so we could rush towards the inner chambers at the end of the hallway. We managed to get inside and close the doors before the gargoyles got there. The things did not attempt to break down the door.

Mitsiro's assistants that remained topside witnessed it all, but they regained their calm despite some initial panic. They activated some excavation drones from outside the pyramid. These drones are designed to crack rock, and can be remote piloted to take care of the gargoyles. They're small enough to get inside the pyramid. We should have a safe way out. And we should have been escorted by them in the first place.

[to be continued]

Inside the tomb

The three of us, Mitsiro, Adelaric and I, went down the shaft in the personnel elevator. The ride seemed to take ages, and these second-hand protective suits do not cope well with the heat.

We walked down the tunnel to the tomb wall, and entered, EM pulse guns at the ready. 

No dog to be seen.

The tomb is a large cube, with sides of at least fifty meters. It consist of an outer wall - breached at the tunnel where we entered. The outer wall is actually part of a double wall, with passageways in the two meter space between the inner and outer wall. It has been mostly mapped already, so we could find our way down this outer defense double wall to the ground level inside.

The inside opens up to a large space - the cube is hollow. Inside are several small buildings and a large  hexagonal-base pyramid, at least thirty meters high. The roof of the cube was damaged, and some spots down below are covered in soil and debris that fell down. There is scaffolding placed by the excavators, and clear signs of digging and dirt removal by the workers, at the base of the structures. The structures themselves look intact, made of a shiny metal that does not appear to oxidize. The metal is etched with intricate winding patterns.

The cavern is completely barren - no plant life or animals of any sort - apart from a sort of yellowish green fungus that clings to the outside of the structures, finding some way to anchor in the etchings on the metal. The smaller buildings are covered with it, the pyramid has growth up to half its height.

Not all the lighting that the workers put up in this cavernous space is still working, but enough of it is. Some seems to have attracted the fungus, it may be heat-seaking (in the darkness it cannot be phototrope). Heat readings are consistent with readings that the structure inside the pyramid is powered up, at least partially. Mitsiro mentioned these power signatures were there from the start of their exploration.

We continued to the entrance of the piramid, and narrowly avoided being crushed by a section of the scaffolding that collapsed. A bad omen. Beyond the entrance, there is a stairway leading up.

[to be continued]

Anti-nanite gear

With Gundard in medbay, Mitsiro selected another of his assistants to "volunteer" for a visit downside to the tomb. He chose Adelaric because he can use a gun, a talent not very common among history students.

The plan is as follows. Mitsiro, Adelaric and myself will go back down to the tomb and face the dog-shaped nanite swarm, wearing protective polarized suits that the nanites cannot penetrate, and using the electromagnetic pulse guns if necessary. The other four students will remain topside, to monitor what is going on and deal with any sort of emergency (probably by sending a distress call).

The EM pulse guns were easy to get, but the nanite-proof suits were a bit more difficult. We ordered second-hand suits from galnet. These suits were mass-produced at the time when there was a nanite pandemic in the neighboring Archavoinet system. Folks were quarantined and prohibited from meeting each other in person, but these suits allowed people to meet up and party anyway.

I am slightly embarassed donning a brightly colored suit that displays "Party Is Not A Crime" on my chest, along with some hearts and a carrot on the sleeve. I do not even want to know the meaning of the carrot symbol. It does not befit an explorer about enter a history-laden tomb of a probably respectful ancient Yan-Jung prominent figure.

Our gear is scheduled for delivery today, but VastJungle.com could not tell us the precise time the courier drone would come, so we are waiting.

((ooc comment: Apparently, the pictured suits were promoted in order to continue clubbing during the covid pandemic curfew. I am not sure whether it is a joke: I can image people are just crazy enough to do this. Images from https://mikeshouts.com/micrashell-protective-suit-by-production-club/))

Not supernatural after all

I got back to the dig site close to Umai's north pole. It was strangely desolate. All excavation work has stopped. Almost everyone has left, except for Mitsiro and five of his close assistants. It makes the domed surface station -now vastly over-sized for a handful of inhabitants- even more eerie.

While Mitsiro and I were considering how to obtain a black cat, news arrived from the medlab. The micro-lesions in the area of the bite appear to be consistent with an attack by a nanite swarm. This is a swarm of microscopic devices that can move in a collectively coordinated way, not unlike a bird swarm or a school of fish. They can mimic, for example, a dog. The cloud is not a solid object, so a blade would just pass through. However, the nanites can cause severe harm, both thermal and abrasive, as well as internal wounds and hemorrhaging when they are breathed in. 

It all makes sense now - I have seen effects of nanite swarms on remnants of ships trying to remove artifacts from Takmahl vaults. They must have been more widespread as a defense mechanism for hidden structures built by the ancients.

Although the apparition may have been created to fool us into thinking there is a ghost in the tomb, it is very much not supernatural. A nanite swarm is not defeated by an icon of Saint Kargan or by a black cat, but by a directed electromagnetic pulse weapon. That should not be hard to obtain at the FDU Assembly Plant in orbit.

Jubilations

The celebrations of the joint jubilees of PIE, the Societas, and Khimi Harar was magnificent and inspiring. The location was also sublime: the fabled Lok'ri Ballroom at the Excubitoris Chapterhouse on Oris.

A formal prayer service was held, and it was broadcast on "The Good Word" public channel so that the faithful could follow while making the final adjustments to their outfits. Shortly after, the guests started to arrive at the Lok'ri estate. The festivities began with a procession, with magnificent floats honoring the prophets and the saints and the Empress. This was followed by speeches, or course, and then the dining and dancing began. 

I could see that our people were having a good time. Even Paladin Kley, usually tense due to the relentless fighting with Triglavians on Raravoss, seemed somewhat relaxed.

I did see more diplomats and officials from the Federation than I expected. Notably, commander Edward Adams representing the fed's Nadire Security Consultants was present. No doubt the opportunity was taken to conduct informal negotiations in the corridors and gardens. After the Pashanai negotiations and the pi-day ceasefire, Federation and Empire are clearly still figuring out how to deal with each other. Capsuleer organizations may lead the way by example.

There was no sign of hostility, no drama, no scuffle - stains that so often mark capsuleer gatherings. At least for the time that I was present, the mood was excellent. I did not stay very long though - probably the party will have gone on till the small hours of the night, but I wanted to rest before clone jumping back to Eugales.

How to cast out a haunted hound

Surprisingly, scripture has little to say about how to remove haunted hounds from an underground lunar tomb. 

Exorcism will not work: this assumes an evil entity has taken control of the body of an innocent. In our case there appears to be no physical dog body, the machete sliced right through the ghost as if nothing was there. It is no hologram either, since holograms do not inflict bite wounds.

There is a bewilderingly large variety of cleansing rituals to remove evil presences. Using icons of saints, or holy relics appears to help quite well. Saint Kargan, who was martyred by being thrown into a pit with enraged dogs, may be invoked in our case. Alas, the closed relic of this Saint, an embalmed piece of his liver, is far away in Tash-Murkon space. 

Also holy water sprinkling, or drawing symbols with salt, or using crystals from the Satach's Spite mountains are mentioned. It is also reported that a black cat can act as a lightning rod, attracting and binding the evil spirit, that can subsequently be removed by removing the cat. 

We concluded that the latter method must be particularly well suited to canine spirits.

The experiment will have to be delayed a bit, as I am jump cloning back to Empire to participate in the celebrations for twenty years of PIE and ten years of SFRIM.

Discussions on how to proceed

I am requesting assistance from SFRIM's own medical experts at the Lamp's medical facility to analyse and heal the wounds that the ghost dog has inflicted.

Meanwhile, we are discussing how to proceed. Ghosts always attempt to communicate, so my approach would be to try and establish contact with the spectre. It is not clear how to do that with a ghost dog. Bones seems superfluous, as the creature resides in a tomb. 

Mitsiro suggested a multilingual speech unit, to try different languages. My own suggestion is a stick, perhaps the thing will appreciate a game of throw and fetch. Along with some holy water from Mishi, sanctified in Dam-Torsad cathedral, the most powerful antidote against evil spirits. Tomorrow, I will do a more thorough search in Scripture, to see if any better method is mentioned.

Cerberus, continued

[log transmission resumed] I advocated a tactical retreat, to regroup and discuss how to deal with the hostile canine. 

Unfortunately, the assistant tried to hack the dog with his machete. The blade went straight through the animal, as if it were immaterial, and did not hurt the beast. 

The dog growled, and lept forward, biting the assistant in a very real way, causing severe wounds in his arms and face. I resisted the urge to run away, and in stead dragged the assistant away from the raging dog. The animal let go and resumed its defensive position in the passageway.

My suggestion for a tactical retreat was then swiftly accepted, and we went back up, taking our wounded colleague along. 

He is being treated in the medbay of the exploration facility. The story is doing the rounds and the diggers are more convinced than ever that they should not proceed. In fact, many of them have left without waiting for pay.

Cerberus

We descended down to the excavation site in one of the personnel lifts. Mitsiro, and one of his assistants, and me. The only one carrying any sort of weapon was the assistant, he brought a machete. We all had flashlights, and sensors. 

The lift going down is a cage, open to the rock outside that seems to creep up while in fact it is you that is going down. It seemed like ages going down, it goes very slowly. At the bottom, the elevator opens up to an access shaft, like a mining tunnel, going towards the edge of the tomb wall. 

The wall is made of some sort of stainless steel, or a similar metal that resists oxidation, it was still shiny. It has been breached: a laser welded circular opening provides access to the inner part of the structure.

When we entered the tomb though the breach, it was pitch dark. Switching on our lights we illuminated a passageway, and to our surprise, there was a large dog growling at us, in the tunnel. 

That is impossible. No-one let a dog down here, none of the workers reported a dog, and there is no way a dog survived the millennia that this complex was closed off. The assistant tried to chase the dog away, swinging his machete at the animal [live log upload interrupted]

Further mishaps

The workers at the tomb excavation site told me that Mitsiro has been withholding some other information about the extent of the curse. 

Apparently, the first few artefacts recovered from the tomb were shipped back to the Science and Trade Institute in a Badger class Caldari hauling vessel. Somehow the ship got trapped in a metaliminal storm, engines disabled. The captain (aware of the rumors of a curse and facing a panicking crew) decided to jettison the tomb loot. As soon as he did, the storm lifted and they could continue. Mitsiro told me that they're suing the captain and the lifting of the storm was unrelated to the jettisoning of the valuable artefacts.

Another worker told us that the grand-mother of the first person to open the tomb died on the same day as the opening. Mitsiro replied that the old lady was already terminally ill and about to die. The workers do not buy it. Personally, I think there is a lot of coincidences spooking the excavators.

Tomorrow, I am going down there with Mitsiro and Gundard, a postdoctoral researcher who insisted on brining a machete with him. None of the workers want to accompany us, and the Ph.D. students aren't too keen either.

At the site

A shuttle brought me from the FDU station to the excavation site on Umai. The archeological expedition complex consists of a few buildings on the surface, and a landing pad. Gravity is so weak here that walking gets difficult, you need to shuffle rather than step if you don't want to end up doing aerial acrobatics. It takes a bit to get used to.

There are three shafts leading down to the site. Two small personnel ones, and a larger one to bring down equipment. The tomb complex itself was discovered by high-precision gravimetric scans, and it is about one kilometer deep down below the surface. It's pressurized but has a rather low oxygen content so that breathing masks are required.

Mitsiro Nakubara is now running the site - I had wrongly taken him for a student, he is assitant professor. He was working together with his former thesis promotor. Mitsiro strikes me as an ambitious person, eager to make a mark and publish in archeology's most prestigious journals. 

He's trying to force the workers to continue the exploration of the site, but they have gone on strike. That's a strange Gallentean thing, where workers just refuse to do their work and no-one can force them to do it. I have no idea how they then get fed, but I am not here to figure that out. Mitsiro wants me to soothe them, by going down there on my own to confront the ghost in the tomb.

First, I'll make a clone I can revert to. Not that I believe in ghosts, but what little we know about the Yan Jung tells us they were technologically very advanced, so there could be defensive systems preventing intrusion in the tomb. That is the most logical explanation about this so-called curse.

Recent turmoil in Eugales

I arrived in Eugales - in the picture below you can see Eugales V to the left, and its first moon Umai to the right. It is a smallish moon, in close orbit to the planet. There a Federation Defense Union station in orbit, a convenient place to dock up, get my bearings, and rest before taking a shuttle to Umai.

The Eugales system lies in the Gallente-Caldari warzone, and has changed hands many times between the Federation and the State. But its long-time inhabitants are -or rather were- the Neopians, a culture that is open to advanced AI lifeforms. This is banned by Concord, so the system was often under scrutiny by DERAIL, a part of Concord that enforces the AI ban. The Triglavians are also not too keen on AI lifeforms, and recently raided or destroyed an underground lab on Eugales IV. On top of that, the Black Eagles, a secret service of the Federation, raided Eugales VI searching for, you guess it, illegal AI networks. 

All this activity, recent and intense, had led to the decision of the United Neopian Federation to move out to MHC-R3, where Concord and the Federation have less influence.

Despite the departure of the Neopians, the tension was still palpable in the Federation Defense Union station...

The Yan Jung civilization

Little is known about the Yan Jung, one of the ancient spacefaring races. The main archeological finds are in the Deltole system, in the Sinq Liason region. That is quite far away from Eugales!

Most Yan Jung artefacts date back to more than thirteen thousand years ago, yet this was an advanced civilization, perhaps a remnant from the civilizations before the dark ages, one of the last to fall. 

There have been rumors of artefacts found on Matar, and in Anoikis, and speculations that the Yan Jung were precursors to the Talocan, or that the two cultures merged. They do appear to share an advanced knowledge about gravitational technology.

So, proving the presence of a Yan Jung colony in Eugales would be something of a bombshell in archeological circles. The United Neopian Federation did major excavations here, but are still analyzing the finds. It is good that Mitsiro and his team are still giving some academic competition, such finds should always be backed up by other, independent investigations.

Salmon salad and the Curse

The situation with Mitsiro in Eugales has worsened. Apparently, the workers helping in the excavation of the tomb have seen a ghost, a spectre of some sort coming at them. They refuse to continue working.

On top of that, one of the graduate students on the project became sick, and had to vomit violently several times during the day. Mitsiro blames it on the drinks during social night on Thursday, and salmon salad that might have been laying out in the sun too long, but it exacerbates the belief in a curse by the workers. 

Also, it does not explain whatever the workers saw. Perhaps it is mass hysteria by those not protected by the faith.

Whatever it was, I apologized to the representative of the Neopians that has been entertaining me while I wait for Governor Brezia. I think I should give Eugales a visit before things get worse.

Neopian settlements in MHC-R3

The cholocate museum was nice.

Also, I learned that the Neopians resettled on the storm planet MHC-R3 VI and the temperate world of MHC-R3 III. A visit will likely take me planetside. We have offered and delivered assistance with moving some of the artefacts and archeological finds, but to be honest I think they accepted out of politeness towards us and did not really need much help. 

Still, the offer to safeguard some of the artefacts they found by keeping them in our highsec station vaults stands. I have not yet heard back from the Governor, but will remain on stand by for a bit longer before I go to see what is going on in the Eugales dig. I figure I can always quickly scoot back here if I do get an audience.

Gateway to Syndicate

I have reached MHC-R3, and was happy to discover there is an I-RED Astrahus in the system. These are our Syndicate allies, so I can safely tether up and dock whenever I want. 

The Neopians learned from Eugales, and keep their structures off the scans. Even probes do not reveal the location of the arcology and the structures that have been moved. I could only find an Athanor belonging to the "Manqci", probably local heathens engaging in peaceful mining operations.

I will remain in the Astrahus, aptly named "Syndicate Visitor Center". The system is, after all, a gateway into Syndicate from Placid. After disembarking I received several folders about local exhibitions and attractions for visitors, as well as tourist information about the region at large. Ranking high among the advertised tourist attractions is a chocolate museum and factory at the Astrahus station itself. So, I'll know what to do while waiting for an audience with Governor Brezia (I assume she took on the usual title of Intaki Syndicate station leaders).

Two birds, one stone

The infomorph wellness center in Tar is absolutely amazing. Your worries and anxieties are lifted from you, like a yoke lifted from a horse. You feel lighter and at ease - at peace with the world. And this is achieved through the calming environment, rather than through chemicals. I installed a clone here (which only cost me 1 isk) and intend to come back and relax when I need it.

As I was preparing to leave, I got a message from the Neopian federation. It seems I can catch two birds with one stone on this journey! Earlier, I had offered help from LUMEN's library to safeguard relics and artifacts from the Reliquary project - they need to be kept safe from the troubles that the Neopians have with the Federation and Concord in Eugales. It appears I can combine the transport of precious artifacts with helping Mitsiro!

The Neopians and House Brezia are suspected to host sentient AI's, and this has drawn the attention of Concord's DERAIL division as this type of AI is forbidden in the core empires under Concord law. 

As a result, the structures of the Neopians have come under attack - including the precious Reliquary project. They relocate to the MHC-R3 system, which probably lies outside of the control of the Federation and Concord, being a null-sec system in Syndicate. But still, they may need help in finding a safe home for some of the artifacts they have recovered, and this is where LUMEN can help. I've arranged for transport of these artifacts to our library in Mehatoor, and I look forward to oversee and coordinate this in person. 

Indulgence

I continued my journey to Eugales, passing the piracy hotspot of Vecamia without any trouble. 

In Tar, a system on my route, I noticed that one of the structures in the system was the famous "Infomorph Wellness Center". This is a station maintained by Chatelain Auxiliary Response. They work together with our allies of I-RED to offer relaxation and rest to capsuleers. They have a beautiful resort, called "Kalmintra Tree", with all the services to help one find inner peace.

I gave in to temptation, and booked a night at the resort...

Towards Eugales

My curiosity overcame my reservations and I decided to help out Mitsiro. He was very happy and relieved when I told him. 

Their site is in the Eugales system, a system that is contested between the Federation and the State. It is a controversial place in archeological circles... Recently, ancient underground structures were discovered on Umai, the first moon of Eugales V. Surprisingly, this undergound structure was still running on low power! The structure became known as the Umai Reliquary Complex. 

In a bold move, the United Neopian Federation extracted a chunk of the moon containing the underground site using a moon mining drill laser. They moved the chunk first to a Raitaru, and then to the orbital complex around Eugales VI, where they could investigate it in detail. There was a lot of criticism about this brute force excavation and the damage it may have caused! Yet, in the end I believe it saved the Reliquary Complex from mining operations by other corporations who were not interested in archeology at all.

Mitsiro's site is not a part of the Reliquary Complex, but it is also on Umai. It is near the north pole of the moon, a place that luckily has little value to the mining industry and is left undisturbed by mining operations.

Making my way from Amarr to Eugales today, I received a warning message that the piracy activity in Vecamia was at an exceptionally high level of activity. So I stopped in Lor, where our blessed alliance has industrial activities. I'll resume my journey tomorrow.