New neighbors

After being released from quarantine, I went back to the Eve constellation, to see the changes. Before going on a biodroid hunt with my LUMEN friends (and being shortly quarantined), I had noticed that the stations belonging to Gjallarhorn Incorporated were under attack from a coalition led by Sedition, without doubt with the blessing of White Sky. Some stations were already laid to waste, with other in reinforced state. The obvious reason for kicking out Gjallarhorns seems to be that they left the No Forks Given alliance. 

Indeed, upon my return, all their stations were gone. The new inhabitants that took their place appear to be a corporation called Cream Popsicles, from an alliance called Churn and Burn.

The updated report on the structures in the Eve constellation can be downloaded here.

As for the Gjallarhorns, it turns out that they have now associated themselves with Purple Helmeted Warriors, who have a presence in Derelik and Providence. 

The Gjallarhorns have headquarters now in Gamis... so, it appears they will become our new neighbors.

Hopefully peaceful ones.

Quarantine meditations

I find decontamination procedures very unpleasant. Especially "deep clean" ones with nanites, first of our suits and afterwards we got them off, also of our bodies. For biohazards this is followed by a quarantine period to test if any remnant entity grows, to a size it can be detected. If that's the case, the decontamination step starts again.

Meanwhile, one has to wait. I made good use of this time to get a first quick view on the biodroid's data. This reveals that the Takmahl used large ocean farms to grow biomass in the form of plankton which would be turned into all sorts of product, from food to cloning to petrochemicals. Barney the biodroid was an enforcer on one of these ocean farms, overseeing slaves working there. 

These farms were truly immense. As they grew, they needed more slaves. Which in turn required more biomass from which to produce new clone slaves, which required larger farms, which... you see where this is headed. It becomes a silly self-sustaining spiral which ultimately grows completely out of control. 

One wonders, why was this growth not capped, or reversed, by Takmahl Imperial decree? I've found some proof in the data that minor holders shared ownership of such gigantic farms via a sort of shareholder system, and they demanded ever more return on their investment. So, growth was purely for the sake of growth. Growth of the ocean farm industry was deemed good, capping the growth was never given any thought, it was economic anathema. Such a system is inherently unstable: when somewhere disaster strikes, the whole edifice collapses. I conjecture that this contributed to the downfall of the Takmahl.

There's a lesson for the modern day to be learned from this, as we are on the cusp of growing our own clone slave cohorts to man new Upwell industry structures. Which extract resources from which we can grow more clone slaves. Which... well, you get my point.

Boarding a biodroid

-continued from July 26th-

Some remaining engineers -now mummified corpses- had locked themselves in the control room and barricaded the door. Ishta bypassed the door to the engineering control room via a service tunnel, and it is a good thing that she did, even though she got a leg injury while crawling through. The door was rigged with all sorts of explosives, including an antimatter device that would certainly take out several floors of the station.

With the Takmahl biodroid controller in place in the control room and activated, Aria was able to transfer her consciousness to the biodroid, much in the same way as we board a ship and gain control over its functions. 

Well, there was a little snag: the biodroid's system identified Aria as being eight years old - the number of years that passed since her infomorph was sabotaged. The biodroid, naming itself Barney, conversed with Aria using children's rhymes. Not visible to us, Barney appeared only to Aria, like the ship's AI "Aura" appears to us when we command a vessel. She managed to pacify the biodroid and steer it to the hangar of the Indagatrix, where it remained inoffensive.

Meanwhile, Prince Seraghis managed to collect a sample of the versipellus entity, as per the MIO's instructions relayed by mr. Firth. We were able to extract from the station. Upon our departure, some instability set off the antimatter device, probably destroying the rest of the fungus, albeit not the entire station.

As we were certainly carrying spores on our suits - and on all material we retrieved from the abandoned station, an unpleasant decontamination procedure was due in the lamp's Medbay. Also unpleasant was that we had to surrender all material to the MIO - I would have liked to study Barney in more detail, even though I was able to download a lot of information stored in its memory. It will take some time to research all this new information but I do not doubt it will shed new light and give new insights into the history and customs of the Takmahl civilization.

Phytodendrite Versipellis

-continued from July 25th-

The Blood Raider station where we hunt for the biodroid was used not just to store loot, but also to develop bionic weapons. That is probably why they brought the Takmahl biodroid there.

However, a biodroid running amok was not the reason the station was abandoned, or lost. It was one of their other weapons which got the better of them. They developed a lifeform looking like an orange fungus, the "phytodendrite versipellus". It consumes those it infects and grows quickly when hydrated, spreading out some sort of tendrils. It weaves it to mimic the form and voice of that which it consumes. It releases spores that spread it to new hosts. It can survive for a long time in a dehydrated form. The biodroid awoke it by watering it using the fire suppression system, in an attempt to stop us. 

We planned to bypass it altogether (it was concentrated on the medbay level), and our suits would keep us free from contagion. However, at that point, mr. Ivan Firth, used his prerogative as political officer of the Indagatrix to order us to take a sample back. It appears the MIO is interested in the fungus as well as the biodroid.

I saw my hopes vanish of keeping the biodroid for academic study... we'd have to hand it over at the closest MIO station. Still, I planned to learn as much as I could from it in the little time that it would be under our control. 

For that purpose, Ishta still had to get to the engineering control room in our sector.

-to be continued-

Return to the Takmahl biodroid

Our operation in the abandoned Blood Raider station in Nalnifan was a success. 

Of sorts.

We did capture the biodroid, but I had to hand it over.

But let me start at the beginning. The plan was to make our way to the command center in order to locate and confine the biodroid remotely from there. The command center was in a part of the station that no longer has power, in a sector rather far away from the biodroid. We could access that dark sector via an elevator shaft that connected to the ship hangar. 

The team, led by Aria Jenneth, had all the necessary expertise. Prince Seraghis was able to decipher the ancient Aridian glyphs to find our way. We did not encounter many obstacles - the lack of gravity in this section of the abandoned station allowed us to bypass the use of the elevator. There was a short skirmish with a dormant sentry drone that woke up - Ishta took it out with a programmable missile we found in an armory. The timing of the missile was in 'heartbeats' - this must be a nod to the Sabik obsession with blood.

As we diverted power from the lone working reactor to the command center, the biodroid noticed our presence. It went to an engineering control substation in its own sector of the station, and took over what station services that it could. Gravity, emergency electrical (including the elevator), fire suppression, maintenance drones... it tried to use all of it against us.

This also offered an opportunity - with the biodroid connected to the station's mainframe we did not need to plug in the Takmahl biodroid controller directly into its cerebral slots. In stead, we can use the connection with the station to link the controller to the droid. This could be done via the engineering control substation in our own sector.

At that point, the MIO interfered.

-to be continued-

On the way out

On my way out of the Eve constellation, I noted a large fleet present in Promised Land. A fleet from Sedition - an alliance working for the Federation in their war zone. What are the Gallente doing so deep inside the Empire? 

I noticed that they have some Metenox moon drills in the constellation, in Exit and Gateway, but as you can see this is not a mining fleet (note Eve Gate in the background: it can be seen from Promised Land as well),

Stealthily, I followed this Loki fleet around, and found that they are the ones attacking the structures of Gjallarhorn Incorporated. I caught them in the act:

After the Fortizar "Midgard" was turned into rubble, and most of the fleet had cynoed to where they came from, I asked stragglers what was going on, but they were very tight-lipped. As to my question who will now take control of these systems, they answered "who knows", suggesting that they are only here for vandalism.

And so, my three-day old scouting report is already outdated. After the mission in Aridia, I'll head back to see if the Sedition moved in and placed their own structures. And I'll update the scouting report.

Opportunity

An opportunity presents itself, for which I need to return with haste to Aridia.

A while ago, I found an abandoned Blood Raider station in that region, apparently used for collecting Takmahl artifacts and loot. The station was on the blooder highway towards Delve, and in it I encountered a functioning Takmahl enforcer biodroid. I know of no other functioning unit, so this represents a truly unique opportunity to learn more about this doomed civilization.

However, I had no luck capturing the biodroid. Several attempts resulted in my clones expiring, and the frequent awakening in medical clones at the Lamp raised some red flags. Friends advised to wait until I could get help to tackle the problem. So, I postponed further attempts, and as the matter was not urgent, it was put on the back burner and dropped from my attention. 

However, my friends remembered their promise, and as it turns out now there is a short window where all members of an elite team are actually free in their otherwise busy agenda.

Aria and Ishta from our Societas, and Prince Seraghis, pacifier of much of the Aridia region, have agreed to help me capture the Takmahl biodroid. The plan remains the same: use a Takmahl biodroid controller to either power down or control the droid. This time however, we plan to avoid direct confrontation (which did not work out well) and try to enclose and then incapacitate the droid remotely using the station's command center.

I am lucky with such a truly stellar team, and confident that we will succeed.

The Black Chapel

The New Eden system is a dead-end star system with a single, barren, moonless planet orbiting its sun. So, there is not much mining or colonization going on. Yet it is often a busy system as explorers, pigrims and adventurers have been traveling towards Eve Gate since time immemorial. There is something mesmerizing about these dancing wisps of plasma, something enticing and inviting like a siren's song that draws you near.

During the capsuleer age, possibly the "Goners" are those that got the farthest using subwarp propulsion. They are pilgrims, who use corvettes to slowboat towards Eve Gate in complete solitude for the rest of their lives. They reached spots just under thirty AU away from the closest celestial body. When there are Goners around to continue their journey, anyone with decent enough scanning skills to probe down their corvettes can make a bookmark. 

The Death Korps of Krieg. must have gotten hold of such bookmarks.

At about 20 AU from Promised Land Gate, in a straight line towards the last recorded Goner locations, they built a secret outpost. This places the outpost outside of d-scan range for visitors to the system. 

It is a hidden Athanor refinery without a moon in sight - suspicious to say the least. And it is named "The Black Chapel", which also bodes ill for visitors. I would not be surprised if it turns out that they have been corrupted by some heresy and built a place to hold demonic rituals and blood sacrifices...  We ought to destroy it.

PS: My survey of current structures in the Eve constellation can be found via this link. I will make a new version when the dust settles down after the conflict between White Sky and Gjallarhorn Incorporated.

PPS: Updated version can be downloaded here.

Scouting Eve constellation

The Eve constellation is rather quiet - nothing unusual there. Eve gate - the Mouth of God - is still as radiant and beautiful as I remember it. I took a picture from a spot near the Kor-Azor and Sisters of Eve research complex orbiting New Eden I.

But perhaps the quietness is just a lull between periods of combat. I saw many stations reinforced or being unanchored on my way here. The focal point seems to be the system of Promised Land. There is a stellar observatory, and a joint Edencom - Imperial Navy fleet patrolling the system. This provides a certain security for miners, and leads to improved mining yields. 

Most operations belong to "Gjallarhorn Incorporated". They have three Athanors, a Fortizar and a Raitaru in Promised Land. All of these stations are reinforced, facing shield timers two days from now. This corporation describes itself as "farmers during the farming season, and fighters during fighting season", and base themselves in low security space. They used to be part of the "No Forks Given" alliance, up to, well, yesterday! While their stations are reinforced in Promised Land, the stations closer to Exit are being unanchored.

The culprit is likely to be our former nemesis in Genesis, the "White Sky" vandals. Nowadays they are represented in the constellation by a group that calls itself "The Death Korps of Krieg.". The dot at the end of the name is important to distinguish them from some other barbarian alliance. Here is what little information we have about them:

The Death Korps of Krieg are Imperial Guard Regiments raised from the world of Krieg. Notoriously grim and fatalistic warriors, they seek to atone for their planet's past rebellion by dying glorious deaths in service to the Imperium. For this purpose, Death Korps regiments routinely request to fight in the galaxy's deadliest warzones, grinding their enemy down through long battles of attrition and siege warfare.

Charming. 

Also, I have not heard of any planet called Krieg in the Empire. At first I thought it was a nickname nickname, or some dialect? But, more likely, they do not refer to the Amarr Empire. Rather, I think Krieg is a world controlled by the barbarian kingdom that calls itself "the Imperium".

Return to the Gate

Mozzidit is a few jumps away from the Eve constellation, which has the New Eden system where Eve Gate can be seen. It has been a while since my last visit. 

I used to spend quite a bit of time there, trying to reach the Gate or at least triangulating it to get better idea of the distance to the Gate. Sadly it lies too far away to reach at subwarp speeds. There is a Kor-Azor led scientific station in the system to study the Gate, as well as an outpost belonging to the Servant Sisters of Eve. 

The theory that I was investigating at that time was that Ilash Toth's expedition was taking the Ametat and Avetat to the Gate in an attempt to unlock it and enter the supposed paradise that lies behind it. The expedition stranded on the way to the Gate or was intercepted by the Jove - both versions of the story go around. 

I was helped at the time because LUMEN owned a station in that system. "Farthest Shore" was the perfect base of operations for me; and in fact it was because I was allowed to use the station that I started to trust the Societas as a force for good. However, these investigations were cut short when our station was destroyed...  

Being in the neighborhood, I feel compelled to go back there and see how the constellation is faring now, and who its current inhabitants are.

Booking

I quickly found the offices of Galactic Tours; the Eve Travel station is well organized. At first, the salespeople at Galactic Tours greeted me very warmly, and gave me a ton of brochures. 

When I told them what I was interested in, they were surprised, to say the least. And they got very nervous.

"It is not a usual cruise for an Amarr priest, are you from the Tetris Order?" (firstly, I am not a priest, but a friar; and I assume they meant Tetrimon in the second part). Even though they did not appear to trust me, in the end they booked the cruise for me. They made very sure to tell me their paperwork is in order, and showed me the permit.

I asked for a simple cabin, but they only have a luxury suite available on the next cruise which, by the way, does not leave very soon. Perhaps they thought the price bump would deter me? Before I became a  capsuleer, it would have been completely impossible for me to pay for this; but for a capsuleer it is loose change...

Anyway, I now have a ticket for the Mezagorm cruise.

Mozzidit

The Eve Travel agency - named in honor of a travel blog by a famous capsuleer explorer - is a hub for tourism agencies and travel companies that cater to the (rich) beyond-borders interstellar traveler. The station itself is a rare one not built by Upwell or the empires:

Here you see it, orbiting above Mozzidit VIII, one of three beautiful oceanic world in this system. In the background, a large cyclone can be seen raging on the southern hemisphere of the planet. To its left is a storage pad and to its right is a shipyard with several tour vessels and a research vessel. 

The station is close to a strange object also in orbit around the planet: a rock arch with a broken asteroid  geode containing bright orange crystals inside. A dust cloud is present around this structure, giving it a mysterious air. This location was chosen for the station, no doubt to put the potential customers in the mood for exploration.

The dust cloud is due to the tidal forces of the planet, that very slowly break up the formation and over many millions of years will reduce it all to rubble. This means that the megalithic structure is probably a young(ish) formation, certainly less than a hundred million years old. But how could two very different types of asteroid be captured by the planet's gravity in exactly the same location, immobile with respect to each other? 

Also, the composition seems somewhat deliberate to me, like an eye under an arched eyebrow or a pagan symbol. So, who knows, it could even be much younger and has been placed in orbit by a civilization that has now vanished.

Let me dismiss a cynical impulse in me that whispers that it could have been placed there by Eve Travel Agency's marketing department though they deny knowing its history...

A billion beats

Amarr is on the way from Mehatoor to Mozzidit, where I am headed to book myself the cruise to Mezagorm. So, I took the opportunity to visit the Imperial History Museum again, and in particular its extensive library. Being surrounded by the embrace of old bookshelves, filled with books from floor to high ceiling, gives me a sense of safety and inner calm, a feeling of comfort and belonging. 

Unfortunately, there is not much available to the general public about the mad emperor or his megalomania. This lack of information stands out, like a stain that has been removed with a detergent that is so powerful it leaves behind a conspicuous bleached-out spot.

In such a magnificent library, I cannot help but being distracted by beautiful tomes and browsing them, even if they have nothing to do with my current interest (or if, as today, I cannot readily find the information I look for). I came across an old book on mammalian biology, and there is a table that struck me; I put it into this little graph:

I think I had heard about this before, but never given it much thought. It appears that the heart has about one billion beats before it gives out. 

This is true across most species - whether you look at a mouse, with a short lifespan at a hectic 600 beats per minute, or a whale, that lives 90 years but with a pulse averaging only 20 beats per minute. This countdown clock ticking away in our chest is a potent and constant reminder of our finitude: beasts and humans alike have been given a Divine life-gift of one billion beats.

Well. We humans are a bit of an exception. At 50 beats per minute, our expected lifespan according to this rule is about 40 years. We live much longer, as we have learned to mend, maintain, and ultimately replace our heart with cybernetics. But even within our own species, there is a correlation between pulse rate and lifespan - those that live stressfully with high pulse rate tend to live less long that the sportive type with a low pulse. Of course, correlation is no causation, and your heart may be good up to a couple of billion beats... but not that much more.

Space Cruise

I went to the website of Galactic Tours, and found the following flyer (I diligently censored names that should not be spoken nor written):

Explore the Mysteries of Mezagorm! 

Join Galactic Tours on an unforgettable space cruise to the abandoned city of Mezagorm, built by the mad Amarrian Emperor Zaragram.

Highlights:

• Exclusive Access: Step inside the haunting ruins of Zaragram's celestial wonder!
• Guided Tours: Expert-led explorations of the city's fascinating history and secrets!
• Luxury Travel: Travel in style and enjoy top-tier comfort aboard our state-of-the-art Victorieux Luxury Yacht!
• Free Time: Enjoy personal time to wander and discover the ruins at your own pace! 
• Unique Photo Opportunities: Capture breathtaking scenes of the abandoned city and the stars beyond!

Book your adventure today and journey to a place where history meets the stars!

Galactic Tours – Making the Impossible, Possible.

Call your travel agent now or book in person at the Eve Travel Agency in Mozzidit!

It sounds rather unimaginative as cruise ship advertisements go, and it has an annoying overuse of exclamation marks. The colors of the flyer were also screaming and painful to look at. 

But since the DGCHP does not seem to hand out permits to individuals to visit the ruin, I might as well take the only "official" tour that exists.

Galactic Tours

The Amarr Civil Service is perhaps not the natural biotope of a friar of a comtemplative order, but nevertheless I do not dislike being there. I do not feel ill at ease among the vast registries and archives, and I think I have a bit a knack at navigating administrations.

So, the point-blank refusal for a permit was not going to deter me. As I could no longer get in touch with anyone at DGCHP (due to lack of staffing you can only submit requests once every three months), I started searching in the records whether anyone had gotten a permit before. This can help me give a valid reason to get a permit at the next application round.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not) there is no record of any Amarrian ever getting a permit. 

However, in recent times, one permit has been issued. It went to a Caldari company, Galactic Tours, affiliated loosely to the Nugoeihuvi Corporation. 

The amount they paid for it is censored, but the length of the black bar shows that it must have been rather astronomic.

Inaccessible

The Amarr Civil Service information center in Riavayed looks unsettlingly like the city of God. Except that it is of course a fully operational station, and does not have quarries and workers habitats nearby.

It turns out to be not so easy to get in touch with the Directorate General of Cultural-Historic Patrimonium. You cannot drop by or call to make an appointment to meet someone in person. First, you should submit your question via a website, at which point an 'expert' will decide whether it can be answered via mail or whether it warrants a call or even an in-person appointment. How they decide is not explained. They claim -like many services- to be understaffed and overburdened, and these hurdles are the result.

The problem is that their website does not work, it is down for maintenance and it is impossible to submit any question at this point. I think it has been down a while. I tried calling them, but only got a low-level AI on the line telling me to use the website to submit my query. 

I found one loophole, while questioning the AI chatbot. Apparently, if you are unable to use the website because you are blind, then you can record your question via the call. A strange way to define exceptions, as now also the seeing cannot use the website? Anyway, I told them I had trouble seeing the correct website (using a very broad definition of 'seeing'), and could record my query.

After several days, I got a call back, telling me flatly that my permit is refused. Exploration or scientific research is not a valid reason to go poke around in Mezagorm. When I asked why, I was told that since it has already been completely explored and documented, there is nothing left to find there any more. All objects of any scientific or historic value have been taken, studied, and purged a long time ago. There is no reason for any faithful to visit the site. Case closed. Mezagorm is inaccesible to the public.

The DGCHP

I returned to Mezagorm, and waited for a quiet moment when the Blood Raiders were not present. I will definitely have to deal with them if I ever want to do a long exploration of the ruin, as the Indagatrix cannot stay cloaked in close proximity of the ruin.

But for now, there is another hurdle. As I approached the structure, I received an automated message "Access forbidden without DGCHP permit".

My political officer Ivan immediately insisted we should get this permit first.

We had to look up what the DGCHP is. It turns out to be the Directorate General of Cultural-Historic Patrimonium, one of the many agencies part of the Amarr Civil Service. 

Their website says: "The Directorate-General of Cultural-Historic Patrimonium oversees built architectural and archaeological heritage and performs conservation, exercising a normative, regulatory and supervisory function, defining and disseminating methodologies and procedures for intervention in Cultural Heritage, monitoring, technically supervising and adopting, whenever necessary, the measures provided for by law."

The universal translator was of no help to understand what this actually means. Luckily, there is an Amarr Civil Service information center around Riavayed XI, just two jumps away.