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.