Abduction - part 1

So, where to start? Perhaps with a summary: the death threat note I received a week ago was not a joke. I've been left for dead in a space grave, and subsequently rescued by the gracious heroes of LUMEN.

Violent extremists can find very diverse causes to call their own. In the case of my tormentors, they were  elements from a group that believes that even the lowly AI of a drone is sentient enough that it should be given similar rights as humans. I had angered them by using drones as disposable tools, mere space markers, to measure the distances in the Takmahl labyrinth. I have not bothered to pick up the drones afterwards, the labyrinth being a deadly place.

These hoodlum paired up with other extremists, belonging to a cult that believes all capsuleers are abominations, parodies of human beings, and way too over-privileged. So, capsuleers according to them should be eradicated and outlawed. 

I do not know how these two groups met, perhaps there are bars where aggressive extremists meet up. I imagine one of them shouting "they should be abandoned in space too so they know how it feels!" And another answering "Yeah, let's give it to them!" and a third one saying "I know how to do it."

Station security thinks that at least one of them must be a technician involved in the station's "Board-My-Corvette" program. Most stations have such a program: they hand out corvettes for free to any capsuleer. Probably to boost the traffic and income generated by having capsuleers visit the station. But this perk must also have been a thorn in the side of the anti-capsuleer cult. Wealth and resources that could be direly needed elsewhere are just handed out to capsuleers at their whim. 

They appropriated and then sabotaged one of the many "Board-My-Corvette" ships accumulating dust in storage. 

They must have known, or have been tipped, that I like to take coffee at the Café Marlinea. Luna had the bad luck to be around just at the time my kidnappers appeared. We were mugged, I was stunned by some device and have no idea what happened next. Luna, not prepared for any trouble, got a nasty whack from a steel rod. Thank God she was not severely injured. Security was relatively quick to show up, but still not fast enough to prevent my abduction.

Recalling all this saddens and tires me - perhaps I need a bit more time to recover from the ordeal. I'll continue the log tomorrow.

(to be continued)

X marks the spot

The diamond pattern (think of the Takmahl diamond rod) appears from time to time in Takmahl symbology. The sites of the labyrinth appear to make a diamond, but there seems to be a culet point missing. That was the first clue.

Second, I ran the list of points through several AI predictors, using machine learning on Takmahl design. One of the more powerful ones, "chatGPT" suggested coordinates of a hidden room.

Third, I consulted a research group at Hedion that specializes in Takmahl puzzles. 

The different sources suggested coordinates for a hidden room, if any exists. The suggestions match to within about 1000 km. The location is indicated by an "X" in the map.

This point is over 54000 km away from the nearest warpable point. Using a 9 km/sec cap stable (!) Punisher for merely 10 million ISK, such as this one:

[Punisher, *Velocitas]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Overdrive Injector System II
Overdrive Injector System II

50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Small Cap Battery II

Small Ancillary Current Router II
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Semiconductor Memory Cell I

I can get there subwarp in 100 minutes. Bookmark spots. Get back with an exploration vessel. Perhaps with a few implants I can even boost my speed somewhat more. I must acknowledge professor Moriarty, whom I met almost two years ago, for teaching me that punishers can fit an oversized microwarpdrive and be really, really fast in a cap stable way, allowing you to travel great distances in a reasonable time. I am looking forward to set up this next expedition!

Takmahl scout vessel

The Takmahl did explore the labyrinth and encountered resistance doing so. In site 2 of Aphi there is a wreck of an ancient ship, shown here:

Compare this with an ancient cryoship design, from a picture I took two years earlier, at a relic anomaly, in Gamdis:

This is the same ship type! The top one is classified as an ancient scout vessel wreck in the labyrinth, whereas the bottom one is a wreck of a Sani Sabik vessel fleeing Amarr two thousand years ago. That proves it: the Takmahl stumbled upon the Talocan designed spatial rifts and tried to explore it. Their initial explorations failed - the ships even break at the same weak spots. But at the end, they succeeded - as is proven by the remnants found at the central "holy rock". 

The wreckage in the labyrinth is not a modern ship, it is an ancient vessel! I must go back to board it and explore it further. Even if it is looted, the parts that do not hold value to graverobbers might still have a major academic value!

Death threat

I have received a paper letter, with a death threat. In cut-out print magazine letters, no less:

First I though this was a threat from Boulette, who might think I have found the legendary Takmahl lost treasury. He still thinks the cogwheels are part of a vault door, rather than the map I've used to navigate the labyrinth. What more proof does the man need?

But then, the message is weird. And come to think of it, a threat letter is not consistent with Boulette's mode of operations, either. He just kills me without threats. I'll ask Aria to look into it when I see her next.

Connections

I am still mulling over the shape of the labyrinth. I've been looking through the literature to see if the shape resembles anything else from the Takmahl, imagery in temples, icons, sculptures. The labyrinth itself and the central holy rock feature prominently in art and remaining texts. But apart from the cogwheel artefacts that tell the connections between the rooms in the labyrinth, I have not yet found anything about its layout. 

The diagram above shows the locations of the rooms, but this time has arrows between them to indicate the connections. Red dashed arrows represent restricted gates, to battlecruisers or lower. There's something annoying about the link between 4 and 7, but apart from that the structure of connections also does not appear to contain what I'm looking for.

Wreckage

Interesting things are stuck in the labyrinth. In site 8, old wreckage can be found close to a warp gate. Scattered rocks are present right around the gate, but they did not seem to block its entrance. 

On the scattered rocks close to the gate, the remnants of an ancient exploration vessel are present. It has been stripped of loot a long time ago, and only its outer hull seems to remain there to withstand time. It does not match any of the known hulls, nor in shape nor in composition.

Could this be the first Takmahl ships that ventured into the labyrinth? The hull segments have things in common with the ancient cryoships that they used. So, it does not look too improbable to hypothesize that these are the wrecks of early Takmahl vessels close to the time where they arrived in Aphi.

Shape of the labyrinth

Linear algebra is a most beautiful thing. Some mathematical number crunching turned my list of measured distances in a nice list of coordinates (in km): 

Now, it is important to keep in mind that the list of distances is invariant to any translation or rotation of these coordinates. In other words, you can shift the origin of the coordinates to any point you want, for example center it on the gate. You can also rotate everything however you want, for example to have the line between the gate and "site 0" correspond to north direction on the map. So, the numbers themselves matter less than the relation between them. This spatial relation is shown by visualizing the sites in a three-dimensional plot (again, coordinates in km):

Note that the labels have been given by capsuleers exploring the place, without knowledge of the spatial layout of the labyrinth. The rooms of the labyrinth are almost laid out on a plane. But a two-dimensional map can not get the distances right, the 3D map does (to within 20 km, i.e. an error not visible on the scale of the plot), proving that the sites are not exactly on a plane. The holy rock and the entrance gate are "highest". There's an upper level, with sites 3,4,8,9 and a lower level with the other sites.

What is already clear about the connections between the sites, is:  

• the sites are not always connected to the closest nearby sites. Although site 0 is indeed connected via ancient warp portals to 6,4,1,2, for example site 5 is connected to 1,4,7,8.
• the orientation of the warp gates on the octagon of gates is not related to the orientation of the connections in real space (this could also be seen from the direction your ship warps to).

These data hold more mysteries, I am certain of it. There is no obvious glaring hole in the labyrinth that would hint of a hidden room, but perhaps I need to play more with the visualisations, and turn this thing around in my head. 

Distance matrix

I am tired but grateful. I completed the matrix, and even added some columns. They are, from left to right (and up to down) "entrance to the labyrinth", then rooms 0,1,2,3,4,6,5,7,8,9 (yes, 6 and 5 are swapped because that is how they are most easily traversed), and finally the "holy rock". Twelve rows and twelve columns giving the distances (in km).

The error bar on these are about 50 km - probably due to the fact that the drone was not always put right in the middle of the octagon of warp gates.

I will start the analysis tomorrow - for today I am too tired and stressed out from running away from blood raider battleships.

PS: the distance matrix is shown below as a heat map:

Preparations

Mission preparation. Supplies, check-ups of the probes, engine maintenance. 

I restocked on simple T1 small drones, eleven different kinds including a mining drone and civilian mining drone. They're quite disposable and just have to hover around somewhere without drawing too much attention. Hopefully they will not be eaten too quickly this time by the blood raider labyrinth patrols. 

Over the weekend, even a backwater like Aphi can get a bit crowded, especially with explorers. So, the next attempt at measuring the distances sometime during the week.

A first attempt

My first attempt at getting the distance matrix was marred by several problems. Firstly, the labyrinth was not empty at all this time, the rooms teeming with blood raider minotaur battleships. Probably they have notices our earlier incursion and sent in reinforcements. I had to slip through their defenses to deploy the different drones in the different rooms.

However, there is another problems. The enemies tend to destroy the drones I leave around. I didn't make it to the central theatre, the ten drones I left in the the ten rooms started the get whittled away so that I could not take all measurements. 

I am left with a woefully short matrix:

The rows (and columns) go from room 0 to room 9, and the last row (and column) is for the central theatre. It should be symmetric (the small differences of the order of a few dozen km come from the positioning of the drone within the room. I could remove some question marks by symmetrizing the matrix, but it is clear that at this point I only have enough information to determine the relative spatial locations of rooms 0,1,2,3,4 and 6. Perhaps not too bad for a first try.

Real-space map

So, on to plans to map out the labyrinth. I have a "topological" map, that tells me which room is connected to which other room via the ancient acceleration gates. However, what I want is a three-dimensional, real-space map of the locations of each room. 

To obtain this, I have a plan. 

I'll leave a different drone in each of the ten rooms. I can then combat scan the drones to obtain their locations.

The distance between the different rooms in the labyrinth is too small to see the layout of the labyrinth from the solar system map in the scanner. All the drones will simply appear to be on top of each other, even at maximum zoom. So, I'll need to triangulate it, using the recorded distances in km between the various sites/drones. In any room, when you point the ship to a drone in another room, you can read off its distance, even if you can't warp to it.

Mathematical handbooks provide algorithms that take the distance matrix Dij between room i and room j, and return the coordinates of the set of points that satisfy the distance matrix. Those points will reveal the geometry of the labyrinth! Note that my distance matrix (being symmetric, and having zeroes on the diagonal) contains 45 distances to be measured; and if I include the central point, the holy rock, this goes up to 55. I'll be busy for a while!

Flares

I returned to the labyrinth, for a more in-depth study.

First, I tried to see if the key could be bypassed. I dropped a drone in the first room of the labyrinth, the one you access after entering the labyrinth via the warp accelerator at its entrance.

The drone was visible and warpable after being probed down by combat scanners. So, I did scan it down, and tried to warp to it. Rather than landing on the grid of the first labyrinth room, I landed on the warp accelerator at the entrance of the labyrinth - regardless of having the key or not having it in my cargo hold. I could not warp to the dropped drone, over 73 thousand km away.

After the drone study, in the first room, I remarked something I had not noticed before. Flares! 

On the image above you see the Aphi sun below, the octagonal warp gate complex in the middle, and above: flares. These give bursts of energy, about every ten seconds. Something appears to explode at the base, and a vertical pillar of fire erupts from them, and after the eruption the flare dies down and goes quiet for a couple of seconds, only to repeat the cycle after that. They are not solar flares, as they're clearly disconnected from the sun. 

There are more flares than there are labyrinth rooms; I count seventeen of them. They seem to be located on a plane, and they are static - they flare up periodically but always in the same place. Perhaps some of them coincide with the location of other labyrinth rooms? Perhaps they indicate hidden rooms in the labyrinth? I do not know. I will explore.

Prophecies

Studying the artefacts I've stumbled upon authors that link the "holy rock" at the center of the labyrinth to a prophecy about the apocalypse - by a Gallentean, nonetheless. In the prophecies of Macaper, the third disaster that befalls the world before the apocalypse is “roaring stone that silences the world.”

Usually this is associated to an asteroid impact on Rumida a while ago. This low-angle impact resulted in a blast so loud that it deafened most of the planet's population - hence the silencing of a world. So, commonly, this part of the prophecy is considered fulfilled. 

However, there are some that claim that this part of the prophecy is related to the space rock worshipped by the Takmahl, and that it will still do something. Something that the Takmahl knew, and worshipped it for. The believers in this theory tend to be conspiracy adepts - many of whom also link the lost Takmahl civilization to the Triglavians. If that sounds wrong to you, that's because it is. The space rock was first considered special by the Talocan, and they -or the various Jove offshoots- are much more likely to be linked in some way to the Triglavians.

Bio-engineering and cybernetics

Many of the texts and remnants from the Takmahl space temple point to the importance of cybernetics and bio-engineering in their civilization. When we think of cybernetics, we think of augmenting a human with implants, nanocoatings, perhaps artificial limbs. But the core of the system remains the human.

From the recovered pieces it appears to me that it may have been a two-way concept in the Takmahl empire. Robotics and machinery based on rudimentary AI were "augmented" with biological grafts, such as nerves and ganglia for fast preprocessing of sensory inputs, or organs for the careful control of enzyme reactions turning plants into food. Biodroids could be anything from a mere 10% to 95% biological and were designed for specific tasks mostly related to argiculture on barren or ocean worlds. 

The blurring runs in both directions. Just as mechanical systems are mass produced nowadays, biological bases for the biodroids were mass produced in clone factories. As the Takmahl inherited the blood religion from the Sani Sabik ancestors, one cannot help but think that also the sacrificial victims were factory produced...

Money musings

One of the three vows that I took at the onset of my quest to retrieve holy relics of the Empire, was a vow of poverty. 

I shall not accumulate wealth or ships beyond what is necessary for my quest. That is why you will not find me at the helm of a Victorieux luxury yacht any time soon. A few well chosen exploration vessels, some ISK to replace them if they get destroyed, and some ISK to organize expeditions, that should suffice.

Nevertheless, I feel that I have splurged a bit in extreme luxury now that I bought a Stratios-class exploration cruiser. Sure, it was necessary to survive in the Takmahl labyrinth, the Indigatrix would not have made it out in one piece. But still, including the (non-blingy) fittings the thing costed 400 million ISK.

The latest addition to my fleet, and the Aphi expedition itself, depleted my balance down to 15'531'950 ISK. Despite the fact that I returned plenty of overseer's personal effects found during the ice storms in and around Nasreri, I had to dip into my ship replacement fund. I'll need a bit of work to get it back up to its usual level (75 million, the replacement cost of the Indagatrix).

Oh, there is still 549'707'500 ISK on the skillbook fund, but I do not consider that money mine. It belongs to the library. Perhaps I should remind my fellow lumeneers of the possibility to buy skillbooks with this fund, it has been underused the last few months.

Also, I have by now a fine collection of artefacts from the ancient races, mostly Takmahl. This should be worth quite something on the market, but I will not sell them. After I finish studying them, I'll put them to good common use in a museum.

Moving back in to Mehatoor

We're back in Mehatoor. The move of the Lamp went well, although there is still a lot of unpacking to do for the library. The chapel seems OK, but there hasn't been any stress test yet.

I'll miss being close to the Amarr Civil Service bureaus, but then again it is nice to see café Marlinea again and the other places I got used too.

Mittens doesn't care - our quarters look exactly the same. However, she is absolutely thrilled by the presence of a large amount of cardboard boxes to jump into and sit in.

A holy rock

At the center of the Talocan labyrinth lies... a rock. A large, somewhat elongated and spiky asteroid made of minerals that are worthless to mine.

What is the significance the Talocan attached to this strangely shaped asteroid in close orbit to the sun of Aphi? Is the rock created by a natural process or was it sculpted? Why did the Talocan build this elaborate labyrinth around it? There are no clues I could find from the rock itself, it is absolutely barren. Scans reveal no structures in or on the rock - although I do not dismiss the possibility that the Talocan knew how to fool scanners. There are these strange spikes, rising like a demonic crown at each end. There also seem to be some crevices and caves, as can be seen from this zoomed in image of the rock's surface:

We have no idea what the rock meant to the Talocan, but what we do know is that it became a holy place for the Takmahl. Over the centuries, a vast space industry grew around the rock, centered around a massive space temple where the sacrificial blood flowed day and night. Around it arose a sprawling complex, with libraries, prisons for the sacrifice victims, smaller subsidiary temples and chapels, places for pilgrims to rest and dine, and souvenir shops. 

After the fall of the Takmahl empire thousand years ago, the Takmahl religious space hub around the rock started its inexorable decay. The only thing that now remains of it are twisted fragments of the temple, space ruins and rubble, drifting around the rock, locked by its weak gravity. Among this rubble, you will find library logs from the library chapels and transcript logs from the pilgrims. Pieces of the temple still contain various artefacts and ritual texts. And plastic replicas of the rock inside a snow globe from the souvenir shops can also still be found. Finally, of course, there are profitable remnants of Talocan technology that we still use in applications such as specialized armor plating. 

The ruins and the rubble accrete in a disk around the rock's equator. They are floating in a cloud of dust and also organic particles that turn out to be vaporized frozen blood flakes. Below is a closer look at a part of the debris ring:

I've been able to retrieve a large amount of artefacts and remnants of logs, and they will keep me busy for quite a time to come. Also, thanks the help of the Lumeneers, I now have a key to return to this place at leisure (although I'll need to be careful at the rock, as there are blood raiders who still come here hoping to find something holy to them).

The Labyrinth

Using the key from the curator, we were able to access the labyrinth near the star in Aphi. Each site is shaped as an octagon, with spacetime anomalies at each point: 

The Talocan were master weavers of spacetime. The anomalies act as acceleration gates that warp vessels to other points near the sun in Aphi. However, they do not look like any acceleration gates that I have seen before. Rather, they resemble small wormhole portals. The effects of gravitational lensing can be seen at their outskirts, and a bright central energy nucleus lies at their center. Below is an image that shows a portal in closer view, along with the Stratios for scale.

There are no structures to keep these wormholes stable, like the structures you will find at jump gates or the usual acceleration gates. The portals seem perfectly stable by themselves, although only four out of eight will be traversable. I do not know whether that is because they did actually destabilize over the milennia, or whether they never were meant to work. Perhaps the octagon had a special meaning for the Talocan - as it does for the Takmahl - and the closed portals serve only to complete the octagon.

I find this an absolutely wondrous place, and I can only imagine how much more wondrous it must have seemed to the first Takmahl that discovered this site. It was clearly beyond their own technology - I think it is even beyond ours still. Perhaps the Takmahl realized this was a remnant from an ancient alien civilization, that we now know to be the Talocan. Perhaps they saw it as a sign of their Blood God, left for them near this blood red star. Perhaps they saw opportunity to learn new technology. Whatever it was, they stopped their decade long odyssey in the desert of space to settle here, in Aphi and the surrounding systems, even though the constellation is poor in temperate planets. 

Who knows what other Talocan ruins and artefacts they found? From all the Sani Sabik who fled Amarr after Queron's purges the Takmahl were the only ones to successfully create a thousand year interstellar empire. Some speculate the Talocan technology is the reason for that - although I prefer to believe the power of the stolen Avetat helped them.

We did not encounter any resistance in the labyrinth. It consists of ten sites, interconnected through the portals. For completeness, and reference, I add the map of the labyrinth to his log entry:

((ooc source attribution: This map comes from Eve University,
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Labyrinth ))

There are still remaining questions I want to investigate about the labyrinth in the future, such as the spatial geometry of the labyrinth. Are the sites forming a pattern? Does that pattern reveal hidden chambers in space? Now that I am in possession of a key to the labyrinth, I will be able to visit it again at leisure.

The labyrinth leads to a central stage, where the mystery of this Talocan construction deepens... 

[to be continued]