Saint Vasrayi's chapel

I visited our wormhole system yesterday, in order to bring the relic of Saint Vasrayi to the chapel there. The nameless chapel will now be named after the saint whose relic it how holds, the Chapel of Saint Vasrayi of the Wormhole.

We brought the in procession from the docks to the chapel, through Pilgrim's Rest park. The service was nice, and well attended by the Amarrian baseliners of the station and the new industrial zone.

The relic is placed in a beautiful reliquary, in a small side-chapel next to the high altar. The sleeve of the saint's palm-leaf robe can be viewed through a glass window. I hope that it can inspire the 'voidlanders' as the inhabitants of Seclusion call themselves. 

Like the Saint, they choose a life away from the noise and tumult of the Imperial worlds. Vasrayi did this initially to escape from his pursuers, those that burned down his village and killed his parents. Perhaps also among the voidlanders, some came to the wormhole to escape a persecutor. I suspect many came to seek wealth by exploiting the abundant natural resources of the place. But regardless of his initial motives, saint Vasrayi stayed in his own 'seclusion' because he found that he could be closer to God when he was away from worldly distractions. 

Preparations

Preparations are going ahead for the translation of the relic of Saint Vasrayi the Anchorite to the chapel in Seclusion. I also have plans to enlarge that chapel; with the new influx of workforce in our wormhole dominion, the old one has definitely become too small. 

I am glad to see that we still use regular people and none of these Upwell clones to man the growing mining and industrial space complex there. Among these baseliners there are very few slaves though. It seems as though the "voidlanders" as Isidorus calls the capsuleers of Anoikis, prefer commoners (and non-Empire citizens). Anyway, we do need to let the light of faith shine more strongly in the wormhole darkness, for all.

As I am going over to Seclusion coming Saturday, I am using the occasion to take along curious capsuleers who want to experience the wormhole worlds. I am preparing a lecture on the history of the wormholes as well for that occasion, and I believe Rael will tell them a bit about life there.

A difficult conversation

((ooc note: Uncharacteristically, this log entry is encrypted and only readable by LUMEN officers. Usually -and unless noted differently- Theo's log entries are shared on a public server, since he thinks research notes should be publicly available. But today is different, and non-LUMEN folks would not have in-character knowledge of this unless told by a LUMEN officer.))

I talked to ms. Yubari's slave, and explained her the situation.

As expected, she did not take it well. She had a full-fledged panic attack and we needed to do breathing exercises for a while. I assured her we would not turn her over to the Heretic, but she only looks half convinced.

I had to dissuade her from running away - that option would be much less safe than staying under our protection. She agreed, but I think that has more to do with her needing the Vitoc antidote from the Lamp's medbay...

When she was owned by the Heretic, he used the Vitoc method, by which slaves are exposed to an ever changing toxic drug. Their masters control the antidote. It is very hard to wean anyone off the chemical, and the Societas has traditionally been running detox programmes (especially for the Heretic's slaves) and provided replacement drugs that have less side-effects. But that also means that she is stuck with us - we are in effect her new Vitoc dealers.

I told her to take some time off, on sick leave, and stay in her quarters for the moment. I will have her medicine delivered to her. The fewer people see her, the fewer can snitch on her to get a reward from Sedevacantists.

This may last for a long time as ms. Yubari is recovering slowly. So, I have been hatching another plan. Now that we are extending the chapel in Seclusion, our wormhole colony, it will need more hands. I am very confident that Seclusion is out of reach of the Sedevacantists. Putting two and two together you can see the obvious solution.

You've got mail

((ooc note: Uncharacteristically, this log entry is encrypted and only readable by LUMEN officers. Usually -and unless noted differently- Theo's log entries are shared on a public server, since he thinks research notes should be publicly available. But today is different, and non-LUMEN folks would not have in-character knowledge of this unless told by a LUMEN officer.))

The day starts bad, when the first mail in your inbox comes from the Empire's most despised and feared heretic. Well, perhaps I exaggerate - after all there is no shortage of despised and feared heretics. But certainly Nauplius is ranked prominently among them.

He wrote to me directly, to inquire about a slave that he once gifted Yun-Hee Yubari. Miss Yubari is now in medbay. She was found, injured, and suffering from severe cerebral damage for which she is getting treatment. She has memory loss and no recollection of what happened before she was found, let alone of the slave. 

But I know where her slave is. 

Miss Yubari entrusted her to me, about a year ago, right before she vanished. Her disappearance left the slave in some sort of legal limbo, and in order not to let her starve, I gave her some stipend in exchange for doing chores at the Chapel. Just until I could find time to figure out what to do. 

To be honest, I must confess that I had somewhat forgotten about her, until this mail from the heretic.

I think the slave got used to her new situation soon, and enjoyed the relative freedom that came with it. She was smart enough not to try leaving the station. A lone slave without her holder would not have passed the security checks at the interbus terminal without alerting the MIO. So, she kept doing her work at the chapel, and I think she did her best not to draw attention.

That will change now that the Sedevacantists (Nauplius' heretical cult) are looking for her. I am afraid that they will find out about her location and kidnap her. The heretic may even want to use her to perform experimental surgery to find a way to heal miss Yubari faster!

Luna calmed me somewhat, and told me to trust the Lamp's security. She also advised me to discuss it with miss Yubari, as soon as she is healthy enough. Of course I must also talk to the slave, inform her of what is happening...

Entropic signatures of advanced civilizations

Time to conclude my short study on the entropic limits to advanced civilizations. 

In the first part I argued that life, including consciousness, is neither a state of extremely high entropy nor a state of extremely low entropy. Rather, it exists in between, somewhere in the middle of a big stream of entropy from low to high. In the second part, I theorized that even advanced beings that consist only of information, i.e. disembodied consciousnesses, must create entropy purely by the act of thinking and must dump this excess entropy into the big stream.

Without temperature differences, there is no net current of heat - in other words, to have an entropy stream requires a temperature gradient. For us, the source of the stream is the star around which we live, a high temperature object. Deep space is our cold reservoir, at the chilling temperature of the cosmic background radiation, barely 2.7 degrees above absolute minimum. 

It is the temperature at which the civilization operates that sets the physical limits, rather than the temperature of the star. The maximum "bits per second" rate at which entropy can be dumped (and thus thoughts generated) is proportional to the operating temperature squared. The minimal power (energy consumed per second) that is needed for that is proportional to the operating temperature cubed.

The trick to keep the total number of thoughts infinite, while keeping the total amount of energy consumed finite is to let the operating temperature decrease with time in a very specific manner: it should go down faster than the inverse square root of time, but slower than the inverse cube root of time. 

In addition, the operating temperature must be higher than the cold reservoir. So, that means that it should be higher than the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and that could pose a problem at some point. But, I speculate that if that temperature is not low enough, a highly advanced civilization can turn around the heat flow, and use its own star as the cold reservoir. An (artificial) black hole will do just fine - its characteristic temperature can be controlled by its radius, and can be brought extremely close to absolute zero. Excess entropy can then be dumped into the black hole. Manipulating spacetime and creating artificial black holes is something the Talocan could do - perhaps not (yet) the Jove. 

So, one can hypothesize that the hallmark of a sedentary hyper-advanced civilization would be a cold star or black hole with a very specific and rather unnatural power law dependence of its temperature over time. 

PS. I am writing down the calculations in a more orderly manner, and will link them here later for the mathematically inclined.

[[ooc attribution: this builds on Freeman Dyson's speculations. In Science 131, p.1303 (1960), he considers a Dyson sphere's infrared radiation as a signature. That is the radiation that corresponds to its operating temperature.]]

In the news today

There was a bone-chilling current-events documentary on Amarr Certified News today, warning of yet another new threat. 

I quote: 

New Deathless ships are believed to be in development. These ships are capable of fitting breacher pod launchers that include the infrastructure needed to run small virtualities. These virtualities can house a team of infomorphs who then transfer to clone bodies launched in SCARAB Breacher Pods. Dubbed “Shriker clones”, they are a specialized iteration of the Upwell Consortium's workforce clones.

The ink on my previous log entry was not yet dry, or the spectre of disembodied teams of informorps is in the news. Here, the substrate on which to run the infomorph's consciousness seems to be a "shriker". Whatever that is, it does not sound cuddly. The word has the same root as the "shrike". That is a species of small songbird, known to impale their lifeless quarry on sharp twigs.

There was another interesting thing in the news. A short item, under the heading "Minmatar, Gallente, and Caldari militaries pledge to provide further assistance in Pochven." Here, the Empire is conspicuous by its absence. I cannot recall that we recently renewed this pledge. 

Perhaps this is the start of diplomatic relations and negotiations with the Triglavians? What will this mean for Raravoss? Are we abandoning that system, and the brave resistance forces there fighting under the command of commander Arline Kley to its sorry fate in the hands of the Triglavians? 

Entropy of thought

Back to my speculations about hyper-advanced races sealing themselves off from the rest of the universe.

In his masterpiece "History of the Jove", commonly used as an undergraduate textbook, the capsuleer Uriel Paradisi Anteovnuecci states that there existed a branch of Jove that

lived long lives in perpetual cryogenic slumber, developing a shared virtuality in which the conscious infomorphs of the inhabitants could mingle and conduct research.

It seems to me that in the end they would not even need their physical body, or their brains. Let us for a moment consider a very reductionist view, and ignore the important question of the soul. In that view, the neurons are merely a substrate on which to run an algorithm that changes the state of the infomorph to go from one thought to the next thought. Silicon or other physical substrates could be used to perform the manipulations of informorph data, perhaps faster, or consuming less energy.

There is however a fundamental constraint that can not be circumvented. Every algorithmically computed thought, regardless of the substrate, must create a tiny bit of entropy (I have added a technical note below).

In order to live even a virtual life, also disembodied infomorphs must dump their generated entropy in the big entropy stream that flows from their star into the universe. This fundamental limit does not represent a lot entropy, the bar is pretty low: it will be more than about one picojoule/kelvin for one terabyte of thoughts. But it is not zero.

The question up next is: is it possible to think an infinite amount of thoughts, if you only have access to a finite amount of energy (namely, the energy in the star around which the pure-information beings have secluded themselves)?

Technical note: Information theory tells us that there is entropy being generated by manipulating information. Many types of computational operations can in principle be made adiabatic, but the process of erasing one bit of information always must generate a given (tiny) amount of entropy. Eating up information (erasing it) can power a little heat engine! 

Using qubits does not rescue you from the curse of increasing entropy. There, it is the proces of observing one qubit which breaks the entanglement and turns entanglement entropy into 'thermodynamic' entropy. Again, not all types of operations on qubits generate entropy, but some do, and are inevitable in the course of computation. 

Using trits - or three valued bits - does not help either: while it is true that you need less of them to store a given amount of information, erasing a trit generates more entropy in the same proportion as you gained, leading to the same outcome. 

Sansha collections

A strange thing happened today, while I was checking out Sansha data sites. 

There is an incursion in and around Thebeka, and mr. Ivan Firth suggested that we contribute by gathering intelligence. I think we share this trait, that we are averse to battle, and anyway the Indagatrix is not geared for it. There were plenty of data relays and even a backup server. But in all of them there were Talocan or Takmahl artefacts. Well, apart from the occasional chunk of carbon... 

The things we found are not that unusual in themselves, like Takmahl cohere cords or Talocan mechanical gears. But what is unusual is that the Sansha seem to be stocking up on them, at least in this incursion. Mr. Firth thinks it is just coincidence, but I suspect this has got to do with the recent events involving Drifter, Triglavians and the Deathless. 

Perhaps the Atavum devices set the trend, but ancient civilization artefacts are hot items nowadays... 

Firewall

In the margin of the ICC symposium, I have negotiated for interlibrary loan arrangements between Caille University and our library. I thought it would have been difficult, since we have censorship. We do not want our readers to have access to books on the Index. So any access to collections for our readers should be filtered beforehand.

I had expected fierce opposition to censorship, as something that limits freedom. Politically, at least, it is important for them the emphasize that censorship is bad, and people should be free to read whatever they want. 

So I had prepared my case, using the Sanist subculture in the Federation as an example. They have a Sani Sabik music genre - Midna Lyre is the primary exponent of it. It is banned in the Empire, and frankly, I think also most Gallente think their Sanists are weird if not outright harmful.

It turns out I was naive. There is censorship also in the Federation. Not for Sanist music, but for things their courts think is libel, or for propaganda from the State. Moreover, following the general theme of the conference, trade motivations trumped ideological motivations. They made no problem of installing the firewall. 

ICC Symposium

Today I attended a conference promoting Empire-Federation economical relations. It had been organized at the LUMEN embassy in the Aideron building in Luminaire, a very appropriate venue to bring us together.

The main part of the program were keynote speeches. It started with some short and to-the-point talks, by Luna and by James Syagrius. There was also a talk by Kriv Aldent, who offers to facilitate trade, I think a hauling service? I'm afraid I dozed off a bit during the talk, I had spent a long time traveling from Amarr to Luminaire, and did not get my coffee yet.

Lord Garion Avarr also took to the lectern to give a speech. It was quite rousing! He talked about Itzak Barah and his  magnum opus Cathedral of Oceans, and how its translation formed a bridge to the Federation. Books as diplomats. He also outed himself as someone advocating the end of slavery. The Gallente loved it, they had little stars twinkling in their eyes when they heard an Amarr noble talk about ending slavery. Yet, I do not think he did it to butter the Gallenteans up. He meant it. 

He did not say anything unbecoming, he did not advocate revolution. It was all in line with Imperial policies set out by Heideran the Good and continued by the Empress Jamyl and by our current Empress. Nevertheless, outing yourself as a abolitionist is still a courageous thing to do and not without its dangers. There may be a lot of resistance to his stance, and not only outside of LUMEN.

Finally, Isodorus Orissus talked. He was certainly the odd one out. Unsurprisingly, he gave a speech about his knife. All in all, it reinforced the image of favoring trade and money over tradition in order to overcome the hurdles between the Empire and the Federation - that is the "vibe" I got from this conference, overall. 

I do not agree. I mean, I understand that trade can be a good first step to normalize relations between empires. But as an ultimate motivator, profit is a false prophet. It has appeal for a while, but in the end all these possessions stacked around you cannot fulfill the existential need of giving meaning to your life. 

After the presentation, I had an interesting discussion with mr. Kalodote Lafisques in one of the meeting rooms. He is advocating cooperation between capsuleers, in a way that is disconnected from loyalty to our empires, and motivated -again- by profit of some kind. At least, that is how I understand him at this point - I think there was a bit of a cultural barrier and some things got lost in translation...

Entropy and life

Motivated by thoughts about the fate of the Jove, I seem to have dived deep into a rabbit hole. With the help of the Lamp’s library assistants, I have been digging up books about the physical constraints that would apply even to hyper-advanced civilizations. 

In that discussion, entropy plays an important role.

Entropy is a measure of missing information or chaos. That sounds like a vague concept, but physics manages to give it a mathematical definition that allows to put a number on it. The sort of chaos that can be captured by the physical concept of entropy is not about political chaos and not really about the mess of books and papers on my desk. Rather, it is chaos at a microscopic level, in the arrangement of atoms or other (sub)atomic building blocks of life.

Maximum entropy would occur when everything is completely mixed up, a uniformly mixed soup of all sorts of atoms. Low entropy, by contrast, occurs when these atoms are perfectly sorted, for example when they are arranged in a perfect, infinite crystal, frozen down to the lowest temperature.

Both extremes represent death. 

Life, with its complex arrangements of atoms, is neither maximum entropy nor extremely low entropy. It exists somewhere in between the two. It requires complexity and structure, which is neither maximal chaos nor maximal order at the microscopic level. 

The main and most intriguing property of entropy is that it always grows over time. That is known as the second law of thermodynamics. As you live your life and think your thoughts, the processes that occur while doing that will increase entropy. The atoms get knocked out of their original formation, and the chaos and loss of in-formation increases. If you get locked up in a closed box and one waits for a very long time, you will ultimately turn into a nasty, bloody, high-entropy structureless goo. 

This tendency of entropy to always grow certainly is depressing.

But there is also hope! The second interesting property is that entropy can be transported. To maintain your atoms in their formation, you must expel the entropy that is being generated by the processes in your body to somewhere else. Entropy is the ultimate waste that we will always need to get rid of, no matter how advanced we become.

As it turns out, we live on a big stream of entropy coming from our star and going off into space [*], and we can dump our little excess entropy waste into that big stream! As a civilization becomes more advanced, it can perhaps manage its energy consumption or harvesting in a more efficient way, but it will always have to get rid of its entropy. That is true even if we become virtual beings, as manipulating digital information also produces entropy. 

To clarify that, I’ll have to look at the entropy associated with manipulating data next.

[*] Technical details: The stream starts at Amarr's star, which sends us low-entropy radiation characteristic for 4436 K. The higher the temperature of a celestial body, the lower the entropy associated with some flux of energy coming from the celestial body (in fact the entropy is inversely proportional to this temperature). The light from our star powers life on Amarr, and gets re-radiated out back into space at the temperature of our planet, about 300 K. Incoming energy needs to balance outgoing energy to get a planet in thermal equilibrium, but that is not true for entropy. Our planet radiates out high-entropy, mostly infrared radiation. So, we have a low entropy stream coming in, and turning into a high-entropy stream as it moves out. Part of that higher entropy comes from us doing our thing on the planet, and maintaining our microscopic structure, by dumping waste entropy into that stream. 

Specifically, and perhaps just to prove that physics can put numbers on it: our star provides 450 Watt/m^2 of energy flux to Amarr prime, which must be radiated back out to space. This corresponds to about 1 J/K of entropy that is dumped into space per second, per square meter of planet surface.

Stellar spheres

It was nice to recall the story of Saint Khafkan foiling the Sealer's plot. I picked up a book about this bit of history, because I could not shake the idea that in Jove society, their version of the Sealers may have been more successful. Perhaps not with an attack, but by gaining political power.

What happens next? A very advanced civilization will ultimately control all matter in its (sealed-off) star system, and futurists have theorized that they would reorganize this matter into a giant spherical shell surrounding their home star, to capture all the star's energy and let none of it escape into the dark depths of space.

If we add up all the mass of the planets circling our star, from Mikew to Derdainys, and redistribute it evenly on a shell of 1 AU - twice the distance between Amarr Prime and our star, we have about 7 tonnes of material to work with per square kilometer of shell. Enough to build a shell sturdy and thick enough for people to live in.

However, such a sphere would be inherently in danger of colliding with its central star. If the star is not completely at rest with respect to the sphere, it would just keep on cruising towards the sphere's inner surface. Gravity's pull from the spherical shell cancels out inside the shell, so there is no restoring force. 

To create a potential well for the star, one would have to rapidly oscillate the center of mass of the shell around its geometrical center. This way, a (time averaged) potential well can be created to keep the star in place. This would require the sphere to be augmented with rings around its circumference, along which planet-sized masses are rotating at tremendous speed. Angular momentum ought to be conserved, so some counter-rotation by the sphere itself would be needed.

Yes, it would be a sight to behold.

Such a construction is claimed to optimize the amount of energy that can be used by an advanced civilization when restricted to a single star system. All of the fusion energy from the central star can be harvested.

However, it has been argued that ultimately, a civilization does not need energy. It needs to shed entropy. I need to look up another book about that...

ooc: the spherical shell idea was put forward by Freeman Dyson (Science 131, 1667 (1960)), and is called a Dyson sphere. 

The gatekeeper - part 3

Back in AD 21304 it took quite some time for a dinghy to cross the distance between the gate hangar and a freighter thirty-odd kilometers away. Khafkan, mightily angry that someone had gone over his head, was determined to use this time to apply the full might of his administrative prowess to unearth other possible objections against approving the jump.

He sifted through the web of holding companies to find that the owner - the one who must have contacted his superior - was the chapter master of the Order of The Promised Planet, currently under investigation by the Council of Apostles. They were against Amarr's expansion to the stars and advocated that everyone should stay on our home world, the promised planet where the prophet Gheinok led us to. While he found it very ironic that exactly these folk are now in a hurry to get to Hedion, this was not a cause to deny the jump authorization.

Another thing that caught his eye was the ship's manifest. It had not raised any concerns that they were transporting pluche toys, interior house decorations, cosmetics from a line of a famous singer, and class II industrial waste. The paperwork for that was perfectly in order. But they had claimed to be on an emergency. Khafkan failed to see how these items could constitute an emergency shipment. At the very least an inspection was in order.

That is why, after landing his dinghy in the freighter's docking bay, he did not follow the droid to the bridge to get the signature, but took a sudden turn and headed towards the cargo bay. 

What he saw there, was not in accordance with regulations.

The cargo bay was stocked from floor to ceiling with crates of explosives. 

Khafkan did not make it back to his dinghy. Before a blaster blew a fist-sized hole in his chest, he was able to message the gunner the correct codes of the various infractions committed by the terrorists. With his last breath, he added "Jump request still denied". 

When the freighter made a run for the gate, the gunner drew the correct conclusion, and opened fire. The exploding ship damaged the gate, but it did not achieve the ultimate goal of the conspirators: to destroy our first and back then only stable wormhole connection to another star system. They had hoped to permanently seal off Amarr from the rest of the universe. The order, henceforth known as the Sealers, was outlawed and purged.

As for Khafkan, to this very day he is venerated as patron saint of bureaucracy.

The gatekeeper - part 2

Khafkan did not like unusual events at all, they invariantly caused him emotional distress.

When distressed, he found relief by carefully scrutinizing paperwork. There was something about administrative details that put his mind in flux and his thoughts at rest. After two and a half hours, he had finished meticulously checking all the travel documents, and communicated his conclusions to the waiting freighter.

"Your JA-319 form is not in order. Jump request denied."

The ship messaged back "This is the Spirit of Good Fortune. It's a three-hundred page document. What's wrong with it?"

"That question should be addressed to the helpdesk, not to the chief jump officer. You can open a ticket via helpdesk@hediongate.info, or online via the HediHedi app. Thank you and good night." 

Khafkan felt a wave of satisfaction based on the knowledge that no-one is more professional than he. He had noticed that the signature on page 189 was not entirely inside the box that delimited the space provided for it on the document. 

The ship's reply came in an angry voice. "We're in a hurry, it's an emergency delivery, we can't wait for a helpdesk. Why can't you just tell us what's wrong with it?"

Gone was Khafkan's feeling of satisfaction. "Because that is not in the stated list of the duties of a chief jump officer, as per the officer's handbook version 37 point 3." He added pre-emptively "That is the latest version."

The discussion that ensued was recorded and logged by the gate's communication array. It was long and not pleasant - it varied between negotiation, attempts at bribery, and threats. None of that worked to change Khafkan's mind. 

The one thing that did work, was a direct order from Khafkan's superior officer, woken up in the middle of the night by a call from the owner of the shipping company. 

"For a f***ing signature that is partly outside the F***ING BOX?" he screamed after Khafkan explained him the reasons for denying the jump. "Are you mad, Khafkan? You ARE! Go bring them a new form to sign if you need it and THEN LET THE F****** SH*TSHIP through. That's an order!" After another string of expletives, interspersed with some thrashing, the line was suddenly cut.

It was rare for Khafkan to receive such an unambiguous order. He filled in a request for an unscheduled undock of a space dinghy, and then he formally approved his own request as he had the authority to do so. As per regulations, he alerted the gate gunner, who had to be woken up, so he could dutifully stand guard and track the dinghy. He then undocked, taking with him a new copy of the JA-319 form, with a blank unsigned page 189.

-to be continued-

The gatekeeper - part 1

Lord Khafkan Knivet, not yet a saint, was chief jump officer at Hedion gate during the night shift of November 5th, AD 21304. 

Hedion Gate was still brand new, it had been opened only fourteen years earlier, and the post of chief jump officer was a very prestigious one. House Knivet was no obvious choice - it certainly was not one of the grand Houses. The choice had been a compromise between rivaling grand Houses, at least one of which dearly hoped house Knivet would fail badly at the job.

Khafkan knew this, and was out to prove that he would not just do well, but excel at the job. He had always been intensely passionate about rules and regulations, and he knew the jump flight codices even better than scripture. He was determined to apply them to the letter.

That night of November, a large freighter arrived at Hedion gate, immediately requesting to initiate the jump procedure. That was unusual - interstellar jump travel was young and the traffic through the gate was not as intense as it is in our time. There were only a few freighters per day using the gate, and those jumps usually occurred during Dam-Torsad timezone office hours. At night, civilian ships would just be moored somewhere on the gate's grid, waiting for the next day to wake the crew and continue their way. 

Khafkan, gifted with good memory and attention to detail, knew the identification number and name of every single interstellar freighter that had crossed the gate before. 

This was a new one.

-to be continued-

Single-system civilization

Today I kept mulling over the disappearance of the Jove from their own sealed off region of space.  I have been thinking about the possibility that they retreated to just one world in their region. Even if they could, it would be a dangerous thing to do. Putting their entire population in one place is putting your survival at risk: a single cataclysm or invasion may mean extinction. 

It seems unimaginable now, but there was a time when we were restricted to just one planet, Athra, and this was more than enough for all Amarrians alive then. For millennia, living anywhere else than on that planet's surface was just not something that anyone gave any thought. Athra was the obvious home, a given, and only futurists and dreamers longed for the unreachable stars.

Of course, there were far fewer people back then, and just one planet could sustain this small population. To return to living in a single system is unthinkable today, with uncountable trillions of souls scattered over a vast interstellar empire. But there was a short window of time in our history when leaving Amarr or not was indeed a point of discussion. 

In the early years of our space age, there was a group called the Sealers. These heretics rejected what is now recorded in Book of Reclaiming,
"I give to you the destiny of Faith,
And you will bring its message to every planet of every star in the heavens:
Go forth, conquer in my Name, and reclaim that which I have given."

It is sometimes claimed that the words "to every planet of every star in the heavens" was not yet there during those early years, it would have been "to every land of every continent on Athra". The Tetrimon say that the wording was changed after the Empire was purged of the heresy of the Sealers, to clarify the correct interpretation. 

The Sealers argued that Prophet Gheinok led us to Amarr to live there, in our promised land, and nowhere else. This put them at odds with the Council of Apostles (which back then had theological authority just like the Theology Council now) and of course the Emperor, who argued for expansion into the heavens. 

The dispute was not settled without a fight...

Footage analysis

The footage offered by yuanshenqidong confirms the tale of the other capsuleers that claimed to have visited the Jove regions. Their space - or more precisely the TO21-U system - seems to be devoid of any Jovian activity. The specialists at the Lamp's image analysis lab think that the footage is real, and offers a true glimpse of what happens in this sealed-off region of space.

Capsuleers are seen prancing around this seemingly abandoned space, and warping to unused Jove stations. No other signatures appear. The footage does not have a high enough resolution to see if the planets are inhabited, but from what we can make of it, it looks like the planets do not have large cities.

Where did they go? 

Did they succumb to the Jovian disease? Leave their physical bodies to upload their mind to a virtual world? Move to a different region? Perhaps they concentrate now on fewer systems, as they do not need two full regions of the cluster to support their shrinking population? Why then abandon their stations rather than move them, or at least strip them of all functionality?

I find it hard to believe than they went extinct so quickly - last contact was only a eight years ago, in YC118. Perhaps the activity of the Deathless may stir them once again into action, and cause them to reveal themselves again.

ooc acknowledgment: Thanks to yuanshenqidong for sharing the videos of their exploits; the links are to a Chinese version of youtube: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Z142167HY  and  https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19T421X7cQ/  . The low-res versions can be viewed without any subscription. The images of the previous blog post were taken from stills of the low-res version of the videos.

First footage

The Lamp's security are proceeding well with their analysis of the links that I was sent by yuanshenqidong. It turns out to be footage from their incursions into Jove space. 

A trait often found in capsuleers is vanity; part of that is bragging about their famous exploits. In order to prove their trip into Jove space, yuanshenqidong recorded it. And mounted some sort of compilation of this footage, in two films of about ten minutes each. They are without narration, but one of them has a soundtrack with music which can only be described as previous-millennium soothing shopping mall music.

I have only obtained parts of the footage from our computer scientists - at a very low resolution unfortunately. To gain access to higher resolution, some sort of subscription is necessary which the security people think is either a Jita scam or an attempt at espionnage on LUMEN. Still, from the first low resolution images, the capsuleer is seen clone jumping from a Fraternity Building Management station in 4-HWWF (in Vale of the Silent) directly to a Jove station in TO21-U. This offers some tantalizing view inside the Jove station. It is mostly dark, a sign that it is no longer inhabited.

There, a covette is boarded, which undocks. The hangar force field appears to be active:

After a little while, a view of the entire station becomes visible.

The timestamp of the footage has been verified, YC126/05/06 . More analysis is to follow.

SoCT Scandal

The logbook fragments of Okada -meanwhile I have found a couple more as we scour specific wreck signatures- have caused a bit of an outcry against the Society of Conscious Thought. 

They are famous for their schools. I have visited one before, and used its library. 

These schools are integral parts of their enclaves, called 'kitz'es. The schools are originally meant to educate their own enclave members. They became famous for their top education and now offer programs to selected children all over the cluster. These seemed to be selected more or less at random, and it was thought that this was some sort of way to ensure equality of opportunity among humankind.

Now these logbooks contain accusations that the children are selected to be brainwashed and become spies for the Society of Conscious Thought. Indeed, it is notable that these graduates often get important posts, also here in Amarr. Whether there is truth to this accusion or not, the press coverage in the Federation has turned it into the scandal of the day.

Here, Amarr Certified News is not so quick to jump to conclusions and does not comment on the matter. But, regardless of that, or of the authenticity of the logbook, I am convinced that there will now be quiet purges. In particular in the Amarr Civil Service where many Amarrian SoCT alumni end up getting influencial posts.

Also regardless of the truth or falsehood of the accusion, I believe that we should remain wary of those who worship the Jove in stead of our one true God, and question what it is exactly that they indoctrinate our children with.

Second battle of Zinkon

When you chop off one of the heads of the mythical hydra, it grows two more. The same goes for piracy: if you remove one set of pirates, others come to fill in the void left by their deposed predecessors. It is not different in Aridia. After the defeat of the previous bunch of LowSechnayans, a new horde of them came in to take the place of their fallen comrades and stake their claim on the Aridian spacelanes. 

The two heads that grew from the one chopped off were Parallaxis Alliance and the new LowSechnayans. It did not take long before war broke out again between this pirate alliance and Prince Seraghis' pacification forces. We mustered the fleet once more, and set out to destroy the newly built headquarters of the LowSechnayans, again in Zinkon. The logistics wing was well staffed, and the battle wing consisted of Typhoon battleships. 

However, it did not go as well as last time...

The enemy fleet consisted mostly of Leshak battleships, and -another proof of the close links between the LowSechnayans and the Blood Raiders- a Bhaalgorn, along with Nestor logistics. Unfortunately, they forced us to our knees. They used electronic warfare - ECM's - to have our Guardians lose target lock. We had to make a tactical retreat, and took heavy losses. 

We learn and grow through the hardships that we face. Indeed, scripture tells us that we are closest to God when "only through many hardships, [...] a man [is] stripped to his very foundations". We're certainly not at that bleak point, but Book of Missions does remind us that there is purpose not only in victory, but also in the occasional defeat.

Dangerous links

Several months ago I explored the possibility of entering into Jove territory. God must have been guiding me then, as I had no idea of how Jove passages would become important now. I had not heard yet about Yosef Okada and how he had been searching for the same, a passage into their space. I confess that I am just a tad jealous that Okada succeeded where I failed. Granted, he tried for a longer time, and made much worse friends along the way. 

Well, strange friends... back in the Vale of the Silent, I did make some new acquaintances. People that claimed to have ventured into the forbidden Jove regions of space. I got in touch with one of them, and they told me that Jove space is now abandoned, but there are still stations around. These can not be commandeered like the Fulcrum, and are smaller. The passage that they used, according to that contact, has been closed.

Today, months after my attempts to get in touch with various contacts, I received a coded message by another one of them, yuanshenqidong. She did not hide her name, nor ask me to hide it, so I do not think I will put her in danger by recording it. 

In contrast with the other contact, yuanshenqidong does not speak Amarrian or Gallente (even though she is on record as Intaki). The universal translator is not of much help, multiple strands of dialects seem to be applicable. But I did figure out that her symbol of the Jove is 朱庇特.  Her message was concise, and merely provided some links. The Descendants of Shen Nong (as her clan is called) use their own version of galnet, probably out of distrust of the central powers. So, the links she offered are darkweb locations on some unknown alternate galnet. 

Right, I'm not going to click on that. 

I'll have the Lamp's ICT security team figure it out.

Fragment

From time to time mr. Firth's ambition proves useful. He suggested we go back to the Gurista wreck where we found the Atavum device, to see if we can find any logbook fragment of Yosef Okada. It was not a bad idea.

The wreck had deteriorated since our last visit. Looters -or perhaps Gurista search and rescue- had clearly come by. They tore some holes in the hull of the wreck, and left a data relay satellite, perhaps used as a beacon. The site had been reclassified as a data site, perhaps because there was nothing left to be considered relics. 

As could perhaps be expected, we found a logbook fragment. Now that I knew what to look for, it was actually not too hard to find, after using standard hacking procedures. It was not hidden well; even though the original file was deleted, it was easy to reconstitute. This fragment is an entry that dates from just after the destruction of the dig site on Caldari Prime, and just before Okada got evacuated. 

Unfortunately, this is a fragment that is already known and documented. It offers a small insight into a pivotal moment, when his disillusionment with the State and with the central powers started to crystallize into open rebellion. 

I wonder why these fragments are showing up so often on ships or data satellites of the associates of the Deathless. I fear there might be a cult forming around his person now, and this logbook has become scripture for his followers.

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.

Veterans

It seems I have not been alone in my concern about Drifters being active in Amarr space. The Drifters attempted to set up a base in Turnur from which to launch an attack on Zarzakh, but failed. The impunity with which they just appeared with large structures in an Empire system shocked me, and I was happy to have been able to provide some intelligence on their bases.

We are at war with the drifters since YC117, and veterans of this war have been very concerned about this new development. Societies representing the veterans have been requesting audiences with the Empress and with the Ministry of War's Chief of Staff, divine general Perimum Amyn. 

For reasons unclear to me, the CEO of the Caldari megacorporation "Lai Dai" thought it was good to call these veterans "a distraction from the real threat" - which for them would be the Guristas affiliated with the Deathless, presumably. It is bad business to insult your Amarr trade partners. The State does not like others prying into their internal affairs, and its high representatives should in my opinion therefore refrain from such comments when it comes to our internal affairs.

Perhaps the Deathless and the Drifters are two sides of the same coin. To me, there is some similarity between the physical appearance of the Deathless (in what little footage we have of that criminal mastermind) and the Drifters. I would not be surprised if the Deathless was a rogue Drifter. If that would be the case there is all the more reason to heed our veterans!

No parade

The Atavum that I found earlier is no longer a complete mystery - in fact these objects have been all over the news. The Scope - unreliable as they are in comparison to Amarr Certified News - had a feature on the Deathless and how he is collecting these objects to unlock, well, something, in Zarzakh. Guristas and Angel Cartel are helping him transport these Atavum devices to his stronghold, so it was not surprising that I found it in a Guristas wreck.

Strangely, there is not much talk about how these devices work or what they do, the entire news coverage is about how this criminal kingpin wants them for himself. The Scope is not known for its focus on science - they find it boring and prefer sensation.

I did not get much time to investigate these objects at the library, as mr. Firth insisted we turn them all in to the MIO as soon as possible. I think he expected a medal. We went to the Ministry of Internal Order logistics station orbiting Mehatoor I, it is their closest station. 

When handing in the artifacts, the clerk said "Oh, we've already had a lot of those lately. Thanks. Put them on the stack in room 15/06. Fill in how you found them on an RF-09I." Noticing my confusion, he handed me some sheets of paper, "That's this form. In duplicate."

Naturally, Mr. Firth was disappointed with that lackluster response. I tried to reassure him by suggesting that the clerk's response may have been bluff, to make us believe the find was not important. There was no big stack of these things in room 15/06, just an empty table.

Now Mr. Firth wants to earn more credit by having us hack into Blood Raider communication nodes that were put up for the annual blood fest that is the Crimson Harvest. This does not help my own research for relics along, but seeing that Mr. Firth is in a bad mood about the reception of the Atavum I will best indulge him.

Strange object

During exploration today, I stumbled upon abandoned Guristas ruin, at one of the sites classified as a relic site. The ruin could be boarded after hacking, as usual in such sites. Inside, I found artefacts that I have not seen before, labeled "Atavum", or "ancestor device".

It looks to be of Jovian design, but I am not completely sure. To be honest, I think it may just be a Jovian casing around something else. What seems to be a latching mechanism suggests it should be fitted into another device. It does not appear to be powered up, but it still has a weak warping effect on spacetime. It might be a containment device for some spacetime knot or rift. 

I have not found it in the Society of Conscious Thought's libraries, at least the part accessible through the Interlibrary Exchange Programme. 

I will bring it back to Mehatoor to the lab for investigation. I'm not allowed to keep it for very long; it must be brought to the MIO as soon as possible. Mr. Firth was elated with this find, he is convinced it will increase the prospects for his promotion even more.

The battle of Zinkon

"I will not hesitate when the test of Faith finds me, for only the strongest conviction will open the gates of paradise" - Prophet Kuria

Amarr fleets have an unwavering dedication to the Empress and put their full trust in God. That is why -as the prophet Kuria says- they do not hesitate even when facing almost certain death. It is a trait I witnessed during the famous battle of Wirashoda, a turning point in the first Pochven war, and I witnessed it again today in the war against the Lowsechnaya Sholupen pirates and rebels. 

I came to Aridia to join the LUMEN fleet under command of Prince Seraghis. The Leshak/Damnation fleet headed out for  a crucial battle in this war. We struck right at the heart of the enemy, at their headquarters in Zinkon.

I was part of an understaffed logistics wing with four Guardian class vessels - and soon it became clear that we would not be able to keep the fleet from taking damage. Moreover, the pirates were helped by their unholy alliance with the Blood Raiders. A Blood Raider combat wing was at the station, targeting our logistics. The combination of Lowsechnaya Sholupen's battlecruiser fleet, the Blood Raider elite frigate fleet, and the stations's batteries, were too much to tank. We did as best we could for much longer than I thought possible, thanks to the outstanding wing command of Meja Lirnix from Zaraehvar. 

Our fleet stayed right on the enemy station, fully exposed to enemy fire, knowing that it would be decimated but the goal of destroying that demonic station would be reached. The sacrifice was warranted: these pirates have been attacking many other stations in the region, threatening to kill potentially hundreds of thousands of baseliner station workers and inhabitants, if not more. The bravery paid off: we succeeded. 

I will stay in Haimeh tonight, to organise a service for the families of fallen crew members, many of whom were recruits from that system. Their sacrifice must be honored - they helped ended this war. It is through their devotion to Amarr that now the rebellious pirates are either dead or in disarray. For now. We must remain ever vigilant lest they regroup.

Trouble in Aridia

Being chaplain to the sprawling empire that LUMEN has become, you have to keep many plates spinning. My attention has recently been going to our expansion into wormhole space, but also back in Aridia there is need for capsuleer ministry. 

Prince Seraghis is working hard to pacify the region near Mishi, and bring prosperity to the Mayonhen constellation and beyond. Mishi IV is the home system of the Ni-Kunni people that have spread to every corner of the empire. They are a prime example of successful reclamation!

But now Prince and his merry band of Zaraehvar warriors have a tough nut to crack: a pirate faction called "NullSechnaya Sholupen" started causing trouble in the region. The conflict has grown into a regional war.

Prince Seraghis has been very gallant and helpful when I was exploring Aridia. Moreover many members of his Zaraehvar team are quite fond of books, and I appreciate that. They have been avid users of Gottin's Lamp Library Skillbook programme, with "Gas Cloud Harvesting" an absolute bestseller. Personally, I never really considered that one a page-turner. De gustibus non disputandum est.

Anyway, I want to help them in what little capacity I can, in gratitude for Prince's help and in recognition of the worthy goals of Zaraehvar. I am traveling over tonight to assist them, offering both spiritual help and remote repairs.

New kitchen knife

The industriousness that I saw in Seclusion is rapidly transforming the place - our outpost in Anoikis is turning into an industry hub, with new stations and factories popping up all around the old space fort. This calls for station blessings, something that I plan to do in the near future. I will combine it with the translation of the relic of Saint Vasrayi to Pilgrim's Rest chapel.

Unsurprisingly, the impending embellishment and enlargement of the chapel met with distrust from the local Matari that apparently also come and go freely in Seclusion. Thukkers - space nomads that often spend their life in wandering trade caravans. I can imagine they feel at ease in wormhole space, ever changing as it is, and unbeholden to any Empire. 

One of them, a capsuleer by the name of Isidorus Orissus, told me in no unclear terms that his clan can never be forced pray at an Amarr chapel. Surely this is some sort of allergic reaction, as if the mere presence of the chapel brings with it a threat. I tried to reassure him that even though I regret that his clan does not see the light we do not do forceful reclaiming in Pilgrim's Rest. 

I do not think the message got through: He threw his knife. 

It landed into a cutting board at the Lamp's bar. After which Isidorus left. Not being an expert in Thukker culture I am uncertain whether this is to be interpreted as a sign of disapproval, or approval through the gift of a new kitchen implement. 

Promotion Exam

Mr. Ivan Firth, the political officer on my exploration ship, has filed an application to be promoted within the ranks of the MIO. His new rank would be Itinerant Frumentaris Second Class. Right now he is third class of the same title. Mr. Firths recent successes - the intel we gathered on the Zarzakh siege, and the retrieval of a biodroid - made it possible for him to apply. 

I have no idea what those ranks mean. And that is as it should be, because the specifics are not disclosed to the public. Nor are all the details known even by Mr. Firth himself. It appears to be customary in the MIO that you only get full disclosure on the duties and perks of a rank when you have the clearance that comes with that very same rank. That is meant to test your dedication. As for mr. Firth, he looks forward to discover exactly what new powers he will have. Nevertheless he assures me that he would still continue to serve as my political officer after his promotion. 

The promotion is not automatic: he still has to pass an exam to get promoted. He is studying hard for this.

I hope it will only be a theory exam...

A Saint for the Hole

I have found a suitable Saint for Seclusion. I figured it ought to be a hermit, someone who enjoyed seclusion. This might resonate also with the ones calling our wormhole colony home.

Saint Vasrayi the Anchorite lived with his parents in a garrison town in Southern Ves-Udor during the reclaiming of Athra. Fortunes turned against Amarr and the town was overrun by a pagan army. His parents were killed, and Vasrayi fled into the great interior desert, taking with him only a book of prayers. He found a cave, at the desert's edge, in the foothills of the ancient mountain range of Satach's Spite. He lived alone there from the age of ten to the age of one hundred and thirteen years old. 

In the cave, there was a clear spring, and near his hermitage there was also a palm tree. Its leaves provided him clothing, and its fruit provided him with the only source of food until his forty-second birthday. Then, a golden eagle started bringing him half a loaf of bread daily. 

From time to time, people made the difficult trek through the desert to visit the Saint, and asked him for advice or answers to existential questions. The first visitor to reach his cave and find out about Saint Vasrayi was a cleric who asked him what he learned from being all this time alone in the desert. Saint Vasrayi answered: "No matter how far in the desert you think you are, there is always someone who finds you". This is typical for the sayings of this Saint: they are at the same time seemingly trivial remarks about what is literally happening, and a deep allegorical wisdom. I think this one can also be applied as a warning to people who think they are safely cloaked in Anoikis...

The particular item of worship that I found in the rent-a-relic catalogue is a sleeve of the palm leaf robe of Saint Vasrayi. I have filed the application (in triplicate) at the Bureau of Outer Rim Consecrations. I'm also ordering a beautiful reliquary to put it on display in Pilrim's Rest chapel.

Rent-a-Relic

I've been thinking about a good relic for the chapel in Pilgrim's Rest in Seclusion. Relics always raise the prestige of a sacred building and they draw in new worshippers. 

In order to promote the construction of new churches beyond the frontiers of the Empire, the Theology Council's Bureau of Outer Rim Consecrations has a rent-a-relic programme. For a small monthly fee, you can host a holy relic in your chapel. They have a catalog where you can choose among the saints and their body parts or attributes. Of course, there is just a limited offer, but for example there are quite some Tetrimon fingers.

Now, a relic may seem morbid to those not of the faith, and sometimes they even think it is a magical object used to cast spells. Nothing is farther from the truth. A relic serves as a strong memento of the life of a Saint. In its presence, the faithful reflect on how the Saint has lived in service of God and Empire. The faithful find courage the emulate the example that the Saint has set.

So, the choice of Saint is important. The Saint's life and struggles have to be relatable to the faithful in Seclusion. However, the discovery of Anoikis is so new that I do not know off-hand of any Saint of the Hole... This requires a bit more research.

Fire in the hole

From time to time I go to Pilgrim's Rest, in our outpost in wormhole space. The station boasts a very pleasant park with walkways, under a dome with a view on the wormhole system that we call Seclusion. Scattered around the park there are chapels and temples of many denominations, not only our own Amarr faith. I suppose that is because wormhole space is a refuge for lost souls and wanderers from just about every corner of the cluster, and we want to welcome them, and offer them a place to rest and pray or meditate.

Of course I want our Amarrian chapel to be the nicest and most attractive of them all. So, from time to time I make a supply run, with new copies of the Pax Amarria, and freshly blessed candles and holy water. Perhaps more than these supplies, it is my unannounced inspection visit that keeps the chapel at its best. The chapel personnel knows it can not slack.

They might be tempted into slothfulness because the chapel remains severely underused. It is meant for capsuleers, as the station's baseline personnel have their own church. When I went to Seclusion before, the place was very quiet. Apart from the occasional curious visiting pilot, only a handful of capsuleers called Seclusion home. And these were a ragtag gang of reclusive hermits each pretty much doing their own thing. Many of them have some sort of criminal record which keeps them from going back to known space.

"Seclusion" lived up to its name.

So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I during my latest visit I found our wormhole dominion bustling with fresh capsuleer activity. Standing fleets for defense were obliterating Sleeper hotspots and chasing out unwelcome trespassers. No more lone ninja-mining: now a mining fleet was crunching asteroids in an orderly manner under the oversight of a mining foreman. Wormhole connections were being either guarded by watchmen or "rolled out" - a process of controlled collapse of an unwanted wormhole. New colonial towns are appearing on the planets, mostly serving factories and mines extracting the bountiful resources of the wormhole planets. There is a busy coming and going of freight vessels to bring Seclusion's exotic products back to Amarr.

The whole system is filled with the air of industriousness and the zeal of colonists at a new and uncharted frontier. 

This recent expansion into the wormhole frontier is the work of the Comitia Centuriata, a new chapterhouse of the Societas, organised by Publius Cornelius Felix and his associates of House Ghassan. It fits in our alliance's overall programme of peaceful reclamation and of bringing the faith to all the stars in the universe. We have our long-standing and multi-constellation operations in Syndicate, with the Heitil Bairviit corporation as part of Khimi Harar doing God's work. More recently, Prince Seraghis' Zaraehvar corporation joined the alliance, reinforcing our presence and development efforts in Aridia. I hope that this newest chapter in our expansion will become as succesfull as these other glorious enterprises!

A special medbay patient

Noise coming from the direction of Nauplius' hangars in Mehatoor never signifies anything good. 

At least this time it is not the grunting of yak herds bestowed on unsuspecting LUMEN capsuleers as courtship gifts. In stead, upon my return from the anti-drifter mission, I was greeted by shrill prayers loudly shouted by a vast crowd of slaves. 

Sound dampeners keep these yelled prayers from propagating as vibrations through the beams and structural elements of the Lamp. But from some of our own hangars not equipped with such devices, the ruckus can be heard.

I inquired as to the reason of this auditory assault. To my great surprise, it appears related to Yun-Hee Yubari being treated in our medical facility. Nauplius has ordered his hangar slaves to pray for her. Yun-Hee's presence in the medbay is news to me. It was clearly kept confidential (as medical records should be), but that sort of privacy is no longer possible due to the yelling slave horde. 

The news affects me deeply. I have known Yun-Hee as a kind soul, one who could not bear the cruelty of the world we live in. The last time that we met, now over a year ago, she informed me of her decision to end her life. We said our farewells and I never heard back from her. I assumed... but apparently, I was wrong.

I will try to visit her, to find out what happened. Perhaps I will not be allowed in, for medical reasons. In any case, I will pray for her.

In silence.

((ooc: Today's blog touches on a topic that may evoke emotions and affect you, even though Yun-Hee is a fictional character created by an EVE roleplayer. If you are struggling with dark thoughts, please know that there are always people you can turn to. In EVE's community we have "broadcast 4 reps" and on their resources page your can find links to professional help and programs.))

MIO debrief

A debriefing from the MIO is always more pleasant when you are considered an informant rather than a suspect. That being said, no-one is ever not a suspect. 

But, at least in this case, they were quite happy to hear all about the ARC mission against the Drifters. I was surprised that they knew exactly our fleet composition, and how the ships had been fitted out in Jita. Well, perhaps it is not all that surprising, all the core empires (and probably the barbarian kingdoms too) have eyes there. It did interest them though how the Drekavacs were refitted during the mission to enhance the drone effectiveness, and how the pilots reacted in combat. The sensor logs and records from the Indagatrix were copied, rather than confiscated, as I am allowed to share them with alliance strategists.

This is the second big success for Mr. Ivan Firth. First the recovery of biodroid technology, and now this intel. He should be up for promotion soon. That might keep him busy while I plan to go and visit Anath again with Luna.

Battering the battering ram

The Drifters are building disc-like structures in Turnur. These are some sort of battering rams that can impact the Fulcrum's event horizon wall protecting Zarzakh against intruders.

After a cycle of attack on the Fulcrum's lock, the breaching device shown above hides in a spacetime shell until it is ready to redeploy. 

Under the command of DutchGunner from the Arataka Research Consortium, the fleet did something that is not very research-like. They must think R&D stands for Research and Destroy. The fleet not only defended itself against the Drifters attacking it, but it launched an counterattack on the event horizon breacher structure. Staying true to my vow of non-agression, I did not take offensive actions but I concentrated completely on providing remote repairs for the fleet. It was one of the most challenging "logi" jobs I have done thusfar, as the large enemy fleet was spreading out damage and neuts all over our vastly outnumbered flotilla: three Guardians to keep eight other ships (and themselves) alive.

It worked. Not one ship was lost during the ten long and grueling waves of attackers. 

The technology that we retrieved appears based mostly on gravitoleptonic field manipulation. In addition to well known electron spin resonance devices, also muon cosmic resonances were found - signal beacons containing wormhole resonance frequencies. The device uses these as scripts to be loaded into a "phryctorian generator" that creates a wormhole. Below is an image of the generator: it is the small dark structure with five control centers connected to it; it is hovering right above the central emitter port of the disk (you can also see it in the first image of this log entry).

Sadly after the attack, the generator was damaged beyond repair. Near the control towers for the phryctorian generator, we found neurovisial input matrices in the debris. These specialized Drifter controllers allow operators to process large amounts of sensory data. To me this suggests that the spacetime tunnels that the device initiates must then be steered manually by Drifter operators through spacetime towards its target. It would hit Zarzakh's horizon wall and attempt to pierce it.

All these finding are very worrisome: from what I can gather here, the Drifters possess the technology to weave artificial wormholes to anywhere they want. It looked as if this is also how they brought reinforcements to attack our fleet. That is quite unlike jump gates, that require a long process of building, and must be positioned at specially selected quantum entangled resonant points. It is also unlike jump drives that can transport only one (or a few) ships over a relatively short distance of a few light years and require a cynosural beacon on the other side to anchor the jump tunnel. Even the shipcaster devices -needing a huge amount of power- require a beacon in their target system. But the Drifters appear able to steer a wormhole exit to a point of their choice, not bookmarked or visited before, without the presence of a gate on the other side. Weaponized wormholes.

Who knows, used for peaceful purposes this technology may help repair Eve Gate...

Drifters in Turnur

The system of Zarzakh - where the pirate calling himself the Deathless is holed up - is a black hole system. Not a usual one: it has some sort of defensive double-wall event horizon that can be put up around the system. The wall is an impressive feat of spacetime engineering by the Jovians: it is able to effectively seal off the system in four dimensional spacetime. This defensive system has recently been activated from deep within the Fulcrum, the Jovian station in system, occupied by the Deathless. Now nothing can enter or leave the system without being granted passage by those inside the Fulcrum. 

The Drifters, enemies of the Empire, are laying siege to Zarzakh. Like a siege of a fortified town during the Udorian wars, they need siege engines to breach the town walls. The Drifters deploy devices to breach Zarzakh's protective event horizon wall in the systems with a gate to it. They want to punch their own holes through that defensive wall and perhaps capture Zarzakh to use it for their own evil purposes, and/or prevent the Deathless from obtaining more Jovian technology by evicting him from his fortress.

Most of our capsuleers just sit back and happily watch how our two enemies, Drifters and the Deathless, kill each other. To others, a Drifter foothold in the Empire, in Turnur, is an unbearable insult. I feel a bit of both these emotions, and in addition I am curious about what artifacts and new technology can be retrieved from those event horizon breaching devices. 

We can not let outsiders alone investigate this. I will join a fleet by the international Arataka Research Consortium, and will be providing logistical support and remote repairs from a Guardian-class vessel. My political officer, Mr. Firth, was inclined to find this mission too dangerous and best left to the Navy, but in the end agreed that these foreign agents should be monitored while in Turnur.

The fleet is assembled in the Jita trade hub, and will use the auspicious appearance of a wormhole connecting Turnur to a system just a few jumps from Jita. Certainly, this is a sign that God approves of this mission.

Cruise aftermath

The return flight of the cruise was rather uneventful, apart from the expected visit from the Ministry of Internal Order. As soon as we left Megazorm, we were joined by these officers, under the command of an Deacon Inquisitor. There were interrogations of everyone involved, but these interrogations were suprisingly painless, probably in order not to cause international incidents. 

Lady Adelath demanded that mister Maulus and I would be given medals, and given her status the Inquisitor did not make fun of that request, but politely said he would certainly look into that. I am afraid that mister Maulus will miss out on his medal after biting the Inquisitor in the legs - now that I have become his friend, he has to look for other targets for his favorite pastime.

I cut short my stay on the cruise, taking my leave from lady Adelath and mister Maulus, for an urgent matter. It appears that the Drifters are setting up some sort of outpost in Turnur, and there is an opportunity to join a exploration fleet from the Arataka Research Consortium.

This system has been the center of an immense tragedy recently. Minmatar attacks caused a stellar transmuter to malfunction, leading to a huge coronal mass ejection from Turnur star, scorching the inner planet. Perhaps this accident was also caused in some part due to the presence of a hidden and powerful Jovian star gate in the system; a gate leading to the system of Zarzakh, home of the Deathless.

And now, the Drifters took an interest in Zarzakh...

The crime fighting furrier

-continued from September 10th- 

Pondering the design of trash compactors, I remembered that there was also a garbage chute, the one from  which mister Maulus must have entered this chamber. Indeed, several holes were present in the ceiling. 

Helped by the raising level of the trash as the walls close in, and piling up long objects, I climbed up and was able to get into one of the chutes, so I did not join Dr. Setun in flatland after all. It occurred to me that perhaps this was not such a good idea, since I might be trapped there for a long time if I am thought to be dead. Being entombed alive in a garbage chute is not a nice prospect either.

Anyway, my fears were misplaced, since a little while after the compaction, the walls opened up again to prepare for the next cycle. I was able to climb out and leave through the service tunnel. Lady Adelath had already called for backup - the ship's first lieutenant, two cooks, and the entertainment crew were there. 

She presented the case against the captain - the evidence clearly pointed at him. And now there would be more evidence: when he knew of my rescue operation, he tried to murder mister Maulus (and me, but Lady Adelath's priorities were obvious) and with a bit more sleuthing could certainly be linked to the activation of the compactor. 

According to Lady Adelath, the first lieutenant is an ambitious man who hopes to replace the captain at some point. Indeed he did not hesitate to relieve the captain from duty and throw him in the brig. No mutiny was needed. 

We are now leaving Mezagorm, in order to turn over the captain (and the evidence) to the authorities. From there on forward it not be our problem. But it will be a diplomatic mess: In Amarr space, a State citizen murdered a Federation citizen who was an admirer of the Triglavian numerical system. 

Unfortunately, I had to abort my explorations of Mezagorm for now, having obtained only an approximate location of the Tetrimon garrison. The rest of this cruise will be spent in celebratory tea and cookie parties for the safe return of mister Maulus, the crime fighting furrier.

Trash Compactor

In the nick of time, we found mister Maulus. 

In a trash compactor. These are large chambers inside the station, used to collect trash. After a certain amount of time the collected garbage is crushed with hydraulics to a small volume to be disposed more easily.

Mister Maulus was alive! The compactor has not been working for ages. It is connected to the scene of the crime via a trash chute - I should have thought about this before. It was not a neutrino signal but a faint twittering sound that led us to the chute! Lady Adelath praised God, the Empress, and all the saints. 

The only way into the compactor was via a service tunnel. It took a bit of time to open the maintenance hatch that sealed the tunnel. And it was quite uncomfortable to crawl through, I have ripped my monk's robe. Meanwhile while lady Adelath was hovering impatiently outside, calling her pet every ten seconds, alternating with calls instructing me to hurry up.

When I finally came through and entered the compactor, mister Maulus lept up at me. At first I thought it was attacking but it merely wanted a hug. I have never seen a happier furrier, or heard happier tweets. Mister Maulus then went to retrieve his trophy: a piece of captain's uniform, torn from the murderer's pants. I had always thought these animals to be stupid, but here I stood corrected...

At that moment, the compactor started working, its walls closing in as it loudly grinded ancient trash into small pieces of debris. Perhaps I accidentally set it off? I clambered back to the service tunnel entrance, which was about to disappear behind one of the moving walls. I was able to pass mister Maulus through, carrying the evidence in his beak, but by then the entrance had become too small to let me through.

Having died and recloned already a few times, this situation did not panic me. I accepted that this clone was doomed. I found myself pondering whether this was an engineering design flaw - one cannot enter the compactor for repairs if the service tunnel is blocked by the wall.

-to be continued-

Race against the clock

I have already scanned many floors around the 344th floor, but there is no trace of a furrier dead or alive yet. Lady Adelath is staying in her cabin most of the time, where she is praying at the deployable home altar that she has installed there. There is a beautiful travel triptych on her altar, in gilded wood carving typical of the rich and exuberant artistic expression style of Danyana II.

At the side of the triptych, at the feet of Saint Benedicta, there are some scratch marks made by mister Maulus, who uses the piece of art as a scratch pole for his claws when lady Adelath is not looking. Now that he is missing these marks are a potent reminder of his absence, and a focus for her prayers.

Meanwhile, the death of Dr. Setun was reported to the nearest Federation consulate, who petitioned their Amarr counterparts to get access to the site of the "accident". That was politely refused. Through a large amount of legal paperwork it was explained that Mezagorm is off-limits to official representatives of foreign governments including most certainly police investigators. The matter will be dealt with once the cruise docks up at a MIO station, from whence the (largely two-dimensional) remains of Dr. Setun will be transferred to the Federation consulate. 

In order to comply, the captain wants to leave immediately. Of course Lady Adelath protested strongly. She played on the captain's emotions by saying that he ought not to leave men or furrier behind again. 

The captain has given us 24 hours before the cruise leaves, "with or without you" as he said. So it is a race against the clock to find mister Maulus. 

Accusation

Lady Adelath has been doing detective work very actively, despite being upset about mister Maulus. She has this effect on people, putting them at ease. They are feeling relaxed confiding to the old lady in the hoverchair. 

That way, she has been interrogating a lot of folks without them quite realizing it. She has spent some effort talking to an actress that Dr. Setun had a particular liking for - she is here with a holofilm crew to shoot a historical movie set at the Amarr court, and they want to use Mezagorm. It is a Gallente movie, so no doubt there will be depravity and mad emperors.

But it was after the captain came by to see how she was, that she turned to me and told me: "He did it." I wondered how she could know. She said, "Elementary, my dear brother Theodosius. Have you looked at his uniform?" 

I had, and I had noticed nothing particular.

"Well, perhaps a ladies' eyes are needed to see this. He is wearing the same old and dirty uniform since the start of the cruise. He clearly does not take all that much care any more in his appearance." She looked at me, and added "You yourself might take a bit more care about that as well, brother."  

I suddenly felt self-conscious about my old monk's gown.

"Anyway, he took a new pair of pants for his uniform."

I still was not quite following.

"Mister Maulus goes for the tendon at the back of the lower leg, when he attacks. He may not be tall, but he is smart and knows where he can best strike a lumbering pile of meat like our captain. He's probably torn the pants. Our lack-of-decorum captain just plucked new pants out of his closet, the rest is still the besmudged old uniform." 

I found this theory a bit far-fetched. But it had seemed odd to me that the captain took a particular personal interest in our search for the missing furrier, and wanted to dissuade us, saying we needed to depart soon to report the death. No police comes here. His motive according to lady Adelath is his hatred of all things Triglavian - the mathematician was a Triglavian admirer, and that must have blown his fuse - the trauma that he had from the war.

Now of course, we still need hard proof for Lady Adelath's hunch.

Furrier Fury

The lady Agatha Adelath explained that the vital sign tracker of mister Maulus showed that he became very agitated and angry; he clearly went into a furrier fury, ready to attack. Just after this happened, Dr. Setun released the furrier from its leash - also severing the link to the monitoring device. 

It is clear to lady Adelath that this was due to the presence of some sort of danger to Dr. Setun. Mister Maulus -who was quite fond of the mathematician- would want to protect the man that took him for a walk, and attack an enemy. Or the enemy's feet, at least, since this was his speciality (in addition to running off with the remote). And since Dr. Setun released him, it means the mathematician felt threathened. Hence the murder accusation.

I find it a bit far fetched, but I am hard pressed to find counter arguments. Lady Adelath instructed me to return my instruments to this side of the Grand Hall, and use them to try and find mister Maulus (or his little corpse, but I dare not mention that possibility out loud).

He cannot have gone very far. You can imagine Mezagorm as a large city or metropolis made out of immense buildings (lining the Grand Hall and along lanes circling outward from it). But all these buildings are abandoned and without power. It is a darkened, dead city - except for one building. The one used for tourism by Galactic Tours, that have brought their own mobile power station and oxygen tanks and life support systems for it. So, mister Maulus must still be in that building if he is alive. Yet that building is as large as a small town in itself, it has hundreds of floors, so it will take time to scan it. And to reconfigure the scanners for that purpose. It may leave me with not enough time to finish my own project.

But the request of a bereaved lady cannot be refused.

Terminal velocity

I should have known something was wrong when Galactic Tours offered me a full refund and free pass on the next cruise to go to Mezagorm. I refused, I have the equipment there now. They daddled a bit too long before getting me finally back.

Sure enough, disaster had struck while I had been away. 

Dr. Setun went for an evening stroll, to walk mister Maulus, the fedo of lady Adelath. The mathematician fell from a 344th floor panoramic walkway offering a view of the Grand Hall, and took mister Maulus with him in his fall. Not much was found at the place of impact but a splatter of blood and gore, along with some personal effects and the leash of mister Maulus. Poor lady Agatha Adelath is inconsolable, and they did not even let the good old dame go to the site of... well to that spot on the Grand Hall where she might say her goodbyes to the blood splat that is all that remains. 

They only knew it was Dr. Setun from DNA that was retrieved from the blood spatter and because cameras had seen him start his stroll towards the panoramic walkway. How this could have happened, no-one could imagine. The walkway is well secured, but something must have failed, or perhaps Dr. Setun turned off the safeties and climbed over the railings.

I vehemently protested to the crew that lady Adelath should be allowed to visit the place where her dear mister Maulus left this world, so that we could pray there together. In the end, the crew relented, and with some trepidation I joined lady Adelath to go to that site. 

She was shaking in her hoverchair, as she saw the scene. To my surprise, she inspected the scene carefully. A crewman that came along showed us where the leash and fedo harness was found. Lady Adelath carefully investigated what is left of the harness of mr. Maulus. It contains something like a black box recording device that keeps track of mr. Maulus' vital signs, something like runners and other competitive sportive types use. 

She then said, "Brother, I have two things to tell you, and I will need your help with both. Firstly, and most importantly, bless God, mister Maulus is still alive. Secondly, Dr. Setun has been murdered." 

Genesis Crusade

I interrupted my stay at Mezagorm before I could finish homing in on the location of the Tetrimon garrison abandoned thousand years ago. That feels like a signature scan being interrupted just before your probes find where that relic site exactly is at the highest resolution. But here, the site will not go away, and I can continue the search where I left it, once I return.

I took a shuttle - of course paying a hefty fee to Galactic Tours - and I will have to be back before the cruise leaves in about ten days time. And no refunds.

What prompted my sudden return to our headquarters is the declaration of the 'Genesis Crusade' that will be waged by our alliance, Khimi Harar, on the pirates and heretics in the Genesis region. The New Eden system with EVE Gate lies in that region, and it is one of my favorite places in all of the cluster. I started my explorations there, and it is where I first got in contact with the Societas, as they offered free docking at Farthest Shore. 

So, I am quite thrilled about this crusade. Just recently, I had complained about the presence of pirate capsuleer headquarters in New Eden. Now, it seems that my complaints reached the ears of the Almightly. Or at least our directors' ears. 

That is why I decided to go back shortly to Mehatoor. I wanted to hold a prayer service for the success of the crusade. As our crusaders are issued armor plates to protect their ships, it is only fair they are also given armor to protect their souls. And I used the occasion to also give a sermon to encourage all to participate.

In addition, I passed by the New Eden constellation and updated and completed the intelligence report on the structures that are present there. The region is still undergoing rapid changes - the White Sky hoodlums seem to be in disarray. God has stricken them, and it is now up to us to complete the task and become his Avenging Angels.

After I quickly pick up some furrier treats for Mr. Maulus, I will return to the cruise (paying another hefty fee to Galactic Tours, to bring me back). 

Mezagorm base camp

The Princess of the High Seas landed near a side-wall of the Grand Hall. This is not the first time that Galactic Tours has brought tourists to Mezagorm, they clearly have their routine. They have built a modern disembarkment platform, and a small domed colony building - all of it dwarfed by the Grand Hall. No space suits needed, you can comfortably go from the yacht to the building via an enclosed, movable connector tube. In the building there is an exhibit, a little restaurant, a panoramic view hall, and restrooms. It also serves as a base camp for tours inside Mezagorm, none of which stray very far from the building though.

I will not participate to the tours, to the great surprise of the crew. And I had them unload some cargo: I brought a planetary exploration vehicle, in which the bulky scanners could be mounted. It is a six-wheel vehicle with limited flight capability. With all this equipment crammed in, it is basically a one-person craft, going at a rather slow pace. It takes an hour to cover sixty kilometers on flat terrain, and it has a range of a thousand kilometers over ground - flight thrusters are to be used sparingly, and strongly reduce that range.

I have already found way more signatures than I thought there would be. Apparently, the Tetrimon were not sticking to a single encampment here, during the centuries that they guarded the abandoned city. 

There is a bit of organic and inorganic stuff from their time in nearly all directions. So, I will just go in the direction where the signals read the strongest, and point to the oldest material. For this I have to pass a part of the Grand Hall, along what a mathematician like dr. Setun might call a chord of the circle. This will cost me about three hours to traverse, before I reach the spot at the Grand Hall's side-wall where I will re-scan for the second leg of travel.