Vanguard

After the insurgency in Mehatoor has been quelled, the Angel Cartel gangsters have taken their racketeering and piracy to Eredan, and their corruption is now endangering freighters journeying between Amarr and Jita.

At the same time, Upwell convoys are targeted by a group of warclones, calling themselves the Vanguard. More lawlessness! 

This latest scourge is the result of the unholy and unnatural experiments of the Deathless, meddling with Jove artefacts out in his Fulcrum station in Zarzakh. In blatant disregard of the laws of God and humankind alike, these warclones exist as infomorphs without a body. They are stored (and perhaps live) in a virtuality they call "the garden of souls". If this sounds to you a lot like the sleepers in Anoikis, then you are right! The technology for both is similar, Jovian. 

The Deathless' pirate haven, Fulcrum, probably had an old store of these infomorphs, left in the freezer so to speak. The Deathless uses these disembodied infomorphs as a personal army, incarnating them into clone soldiers when and where he needs. That is the essence of the breacher pods that he developed for his ships.

Creating a disembodied or "ghost" existence is unnatural and sinful. It reminds me of the complaints of brother Hugo about the Originals in Epikouria, about the freedoms they take altering their bodies and minds. And not only the Deathless, but also Upwell is guilty of this sin. Upwell does not want soldiers, they wanted a controllable and easily transferrable workforce, via the so-called "Upwell workforce clone transfers". You can find them for example in Metenox moon drills. Many unlucky subjects of the Empress who chose "a new life with Upwell" ended up in a work clone in some forlorn factory, stored in infomorph stasis in between different jobs...

Now, both the Deathless and Upwell face retribution for their sins. A group of infomorphs -the Vanguard- appears to have fled from the Fulcrum, stealing a ship that stores the garden of souls and can be used as a basis of operations. This mobile operating base is their home, and they call it "Avalon". From there, they are raiding Upwell structures and convoys.

I will write to brother Hugo telling his about this development in Imperial space, as he might not have heard about it out in the wormhole. He can hold this up to the Originals as an example of how such sins lead to disaster ultimately. Divine justice cannot be escaped.

The Deathless: a biography?

There is a buzz in the archeologist community about recent logbook fragments that were found by capsuleers. These are logbook entries written by a Society of Conscious Thought archeologist called Yosef Okada. The community is divided over whether these are real or a hoax. 

There did exist an archeologist of that name, but the dean of the Archeology and Paleontology School of Hedion University is sceptical about the logbook. She points out that this Okada fellow has a very poor publication record so he is not a "serious" academic and certainly the claims in his logbook would not stand up to peer review.

From these logs, two stories seem to emerge. The first one is from before Yosef Okada joined the Society of Conscious Thought. He was an assistant archeologist investigating a dig site that dates back 15'000 years, on Caldari Prime. The site and the expedition were destroyed during the Gallente-Caldari war, collateral damage just before the dig would reveal its secret. That secret would have been some sort of evidence corroborating the existence of a common ancestral world for all of the peoples of the cluster. The dean remarks "The louder someone supports this evergreen feel-good myth, the weaker is the body of proof that they can present. In this case, any proof was conveniently destroyed by fusion bombs."

The second part of these logs recalls how the archeologist turned his back on the State and joined the Society of Conscious Thought, helping them with the investigation of the Jove. During his new expedition, he gained the trust of the Hrada-Oki clan, part of the nomadic Thukker tribe, and joined them in their travels. During Amarr's own age of exploration of the seas by sail ships, it was not uncommon that a scientist -often a botanist or geologist- would voyage along with the explorer to collect samples and then bring their collection back home to a major Scientific Society, hoping to become famous. Okada seems to have fulfilled such a role for the Hrada-Oki wandering clan, with the distinction that he never brought his collection of artifacts back to his masters, the Society of Conscious Thought. He turned rogue.

Again, according to these unverified logs, the Hrada-Oki caravan (perhaps with Okada's help) eventually hit an archeologist's grand prize: a passage to an abandoned Jovian nexus system, Zarzakh. It seems that both the Society of Conscious Thought and the Drifters were searching for this valued place. The prize is more than a functioning Jove station, now known as the Fulcrum. There are also ships of Jovian design - or based on it. And who knows what other Jovian technology can be extracted from it!

While two dogs are fighting for a bone, a third one runs away with it. Neither the Society of Conscious Thought, nor the Drifters got their prize. The Deathless and his Hrada-Oki friends did. There are hints in these retrieved log entries that the Deathless is none other than Yosef Okada himself, transformed by the Fulcrum into whatever being he is now, straddling (I quote:) "a world of substance, a world of dreams, and a world beyond." Clearly, humility is not his strong suit. Anyway, another hint that the Deathless is Yosef Okada comes from Okada's life: his disappointment with the State, and his connections with dubious clans in Molden Heath would explain the Deathless' association with both Angel Cartel and the Guristas.

Now that I suspect that the Deathless is a struggling archeologist, I have a strange new appreciation for him, although I still strongly disapprove of his career choices.