Where next?

The engine tests came out fine. Personally, I had preferred it if they'd found something so they were able to fix it.

We've continued exploration, and the ever changing network of links reminds me of the vastness of Anoikis. It's unlikely to get linked to the same place twice. Our expedition just scratches the surface... Perhaps I should do a 'deep dive', without the crew. Just keep on jumping from wormhole system to wormhole system for a long period of time, to see, as they say, how deep this rabbit hole goes. 

However, duties for the moment prevent a long absence. Jason is having his hand cut off in the Ardishapur ceremonial rite, back home...

Fire rekindled

News of worrisome developments reached us in Seclusion. I heard it while taking some time off in Pilgrim's rest, awaiting the results of the stress tests of the engines of the Indagatrix III. 

The Empire and the Republic seem to have rekindled the battle for Floseswin and the Eugidi constellation in the war zone. Messages to the respective militia call for immediate action. Yet, for the moment, the constellation appears well secured in the hands of the Empire.

But, this comes on the heels of a conflict between the militia and LUMEN, less than a month ago. The Empress calls on the militia to defend and fortify the constellation and while this does not involve LUMEN I think some of our capsuleers will feel the urge to heed the call. Especially our friends in PIE may feel some honor-bound obligation. And, our foes may use this call to beat their chest and push others to join the warzone.

I would advocate leaving the warzone for the militia, we are not welcome there anyway. In stead, let us keep our focus on Arshat and the stellar transmuter device. It is quiet now there, but I don't think we should keep our eyes away from it. In fact, Societas, PIE and KHPER have been diligently patrolling it, and seeing from time to time some scouting from the Triglavians and other reds.

From lines to circles

The scanning tip that I mentioned before for lines also works for circles. If the results of your scan yields a circle - meaning just two probes picked up the signal - then swivel around to find the point on the circle that lies farthest from your probes.

Once you found it (from the first to the second frame in the figure above, I just rotated to get a better view) move the probes to this farthest point and you can zoom in at least two levels. It will yield a much better pinpointed source and save you additional scans.

A stone in the shoe

A new ship is always a bit like new shoes - doesn't quite fit as comfortably yet as the old vessel. I have to get used to it a bit before I can fully merge myself with the ship. I don't know quite how to express this differently, capsuleers will know what I mean. Explaining to baseliners what it means to become one with the ship... well it's like explaining what the color red is to a blind person.

But the Indigatrix III turns out to be a shoe that has a little stone in it, and I can't get it out. 

The engine doesn't feel quite right. Crew has remarked it too, the sound of the engine is different and there is a periodic hum that intensifies and ebbs. Techies can't find anything wrong with it, it attains nominal speed without problems. 

Perhaps I should bring it back to the manufacturer? We're going to run some tests while overheating the engine first - in close orbit to Seclusion station in case things go wrong.

Scan probe line result

Another tip. 

This happens regularly: the anomaly is only picked up by three of your scanner probes, and you get a line, the intersection of the three signals. Where to scan on the line? Many capsuleers will reposition the probes in the middle of the line, not gaining any resolution, and scan again.

But there is a faster way. Find out which of the ends of the line, as in the figure above, is farthest away from your current probe scan location. Sometimes you'll have to swivel the view around and turn it to see. The view in the left panel shows that the lower right end of the scan line is farthest from the probe location. The stuff you're looking for is there.

So, in that case, don't hesitate! Put your probes on the farthest end of the line and narrow it down. Close in on it, two zoom levels even, as shown in the middle panel. You'll get a ping close up on its location every time - as in the right panel.

Minmatar clothing

The crew quickly adapted to the new hull. Most things are the same, but there are some tiny differences. The visuals are sharper, better. A new generation of video probes circling the craft, I guess.

There appeared some Minmatar data sites. Probably some lost exploration, rust buckets must have buckled and failed in the end. 

We retrieved capsuleer clothing from them, and the crew seems to be intent on selling it, they claim it will get a decent amount of isk. I checked the market and I am aghast as how much a piece of fabric is worth. It must be absolutely revolting to baseliners, at least when they can't make a profit from it themselves. I advise the crew to wait with the sale - probably the Minmatar rebellion celebrations are not a good time to sell this kind of apparel, as the market gets flooded...

Maiden flight of the Indigatrix III

It was pretty quiet on the Indigatrix III today, as the crew took hold of this new yet familiar hull. We scanned down some standard anomalies, and investigated a relic site that did not offer much new insights. But I could still feel a tense atmosphere from my crew. Trigger fingers on the cloak and the warpout, and d-scan spamming even during hacking. 

I do feel safer when they're around, but I'm not sure that is reciprocated...

Help line

I've had a bit of explaining to do to the crew, for showing up with a brand new hull. They reacted with a mix of relief - that they hadn't been aboard the lost ship - and dismay - that they could have been aboard. There was general disbelief that this wouldn't have happened with them on board and that my wits were the only thing to blame. And a general worry about what they should do should they find themselves in an escape pod. In Seclusion their emergency beacon will be picked up by the station. But if they are in another wormhole, perhaps one without stations? 

Actually, not all hope is lost. The Signal Cartel provides rescue caches in most systems - a little refuge and a little help in the form of scanner probes. If that's of no help to you, then it is possible to contact the scout rescue team, who will send a search and rescue party. No wonder LUMEN has set the Signal Cartel blue and supports them with docking rights. The technicians have been making sure that also the baseliner rescue pods can contact this wormhole search and rescue folk.

The price of hubris

Bad news: I got podded.

Mitigating circumstance: nothing of value was lost.

I got greedy, and reckless. Yesterday evening, I saw a relic site on d-scan that I hadn't seen before. I decided to go at it alone, the crew was already off for the day. I was tired, but I felt I didn't need the additional split seconds that their interventions grant me. I was wrong. 

An Astero was laying cloaked, waiting. When I warped in and approached the first relic can, it grabbed me, and as I do not carry any DPS and did not have the split second reflex that my crew grants me, I stood no chance. 

I'll have to explain it to them tomorrow. The usual chain of events was set in motion: I recloned, and my agent used my funds to purchase and fit the Indagatrix III. At first, the crew will think I just went off to Nasreri again, to do some personal stuff like feeding Mittens. But I'll have to tell them eventually and I am worried about their reaction. Truth is, I got too complacent, too blasé and relaxed about doing those sites, while in reality danger is always lurking in Anoikis.

Pathfinder

A good galnet tool for wormhole explorations is pathfinder. It allows you to map the wormhole connections, yielding a chart that can be used by all in the alliance, 

Here, you see seclusion, and how it links to several other systems. There are two wormholes, and one link (our static) to highsec. I've been exploring and found that the Ursus, the C1 hole connected to home, is a dead end, leading to a nullsec and a highsec system. The additional wormhole lead to further exploration, and I haven't finished to complete that branch. Every jump is registered. You can even see where I am, the C4 hole. I tend to log anomalies, and pathfinder shows you an overview like this

but only after someone uploads it. But, the most useful part of it is the list of killmails from the wormhole system you are in. If you warp in, check it. It will reveal active hunters will kills on their name. In that case, just warp back out. But if the system has been dormant, you know you can stick around.

The Antiquarian

The Antiquarian has been spotted in Tanoo!

This is so exciting - many believe him to have disappeared, retired! And yet, there is now visual confirmation that he is spaceborne, flying through Tanoo towards Sashta. I have received footage and d-scan of his shuttle from staff I befriended in Tebu Amkhiman, I'm glad I shared these stories about the legendary capsuleer with them.

The Antiquarian is one of the oldest capsuleers, and a famous collector of rare and precious items. His collection is the stuff of wonder and myth, unmatched by any in the cluster. From the earliest days on, any special item would draw his attention and he would be the first one to grab them. He is reclusive, a hermit, nowadays.

Now that I know he is still active, I do want to speak to him, and learn about the relics he has collected over the years! If anyone can help me substantially in my quest after a single meeting, it is him! Oh, if only I could convince him to be the guest of honor in a convention for rare items I would plan... it would draw out every collector in the cluster, I am sure! 

Perhaps items obtained from more recent activities could raise his interest, as he's been less active? But perhaps this is a mistake, and he has stayed active all along to collect also newer items from events and activities. 

Could this be linked to what it going on in Athounon or Arshat? Is this why he woke from his slumber and did he get caught on camera flying towards Athounon from wherever he is stationed, passing Tanoo?

I must find him.

Earthers

The explorations have thusfar not turned up any evidence of Takmahl -or Talocan- presence in Anoikis. This is not a surprise: Anoikis is immense, and we have only scratched the surface of it, a few systems. Finding any remnant of these ancient civilizations here is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But it also allows for the fantasy to run wild. What if the Takmahl established a colony here, and it got cut off? Could it have endured undetected? Or would it have collapsed, as its parent civilization did?

The "Earthers" believe that we are in a similar situation; that humanity has a common ancestor coming from a single system of origin, and that we essentially got cut off from them. In that scenario, at least us, the colonists, survived. Who knows what happened to the home system, "Earth" ?

In fact, after Anoikis got connected to our cluster, many Earthers through that we had reconnected with the "home cluster", and that our planet of origin lay within Anoikis rather than behind the Eve Gate. They started expeditions, and searches to locate our ancestors - or rather, their descendents, our far-removed nieces and nephews. It did not prove succesful. They did encounter the Sleepers - an offshoot of the Jove, to all likelihood. I don't wish to encounter them - they do not look kindly on explorers as many folk from our cluster plunder their sites, for lucrative loot.

Anomaly scanning tip

Signature Anomalies are strange things.

You scan them down and find all sorts of things hidden behind them. Wormholes, but also relic and data sites. One wonders how it can be that there is a steady daily stream of these anomalies in every system, every day.

Hasn't there been a very thorough search yet of the home worlds? How come these things keep popping up? For the temporary wormholes, it is not hard to understand, but sites that remained hidded for many centuries or even milennia? Why do they pop up? Is it because their cloaking finally failed? Or because the many baseliner vessels that we don't see on our scans came accross them?

No, it's got to do with the fickle nature of solar winds and how they interact with celestials. These reveal disturbances, in a random and ever changing way, leading to this constant stream of anomalies we find. This leads to an interesting tip for scanning. Say, you see anomalies around a celestial like this:

The red spheres are 8 AU wide, and so you think you might need to set your scanners to 8 AU. But in fact, anomalies are never located further than 4 AU from a celestial! So, the best first step to scan down the above situation is to center your probes on the planet or celestial in the middle, and set range to 4 AU. This saves you time and effort in the scan, and will give good pinpointing results for all anomalies close to the celestial.

Deeper into the holes

Today, we decided to push deeper into the wormhole network and explore beyond Seclusion by jumping through the Ursus wormhole. First, we checked that it had not reached end of lifetime, and that it did not have its stability degraded by the amount ships going through it. The information that we called up on the hole showed it was still nice and stable, at least for another day.

After jumping through, there follows a choreography that I trained the crew to handle. First and most importantly, without breaking cloak, the wormhole entrance leading back to Seclusion is bookmarked (I usually just label it "-> home"). 

Then, a "new bookmark" window (ctrl-B) is opened and I select a celestial to warp to at 100km. In close sequence, I then 1) initiate the warp, 2) launch the scanner probes, 3) cloak my ship, and 4) bookmark a safe spot between the entrance hole and the celestial. After arrival at the celestial, I warp back to my safe spot, cloaked all the time.

Only then I relax a bit, and evaluate the system. If there's other probes or ships on d-scan, or a history of recent kills, I would bail out. Luckily, there was no activity in J102734.

Unluckily, there were also no relic signatures...

Celebration

I have been tempted by feelings of vanity once more: it appears I won a prize in the New Eden Writing Competition. I submitted a poem about the demise of our astrahus station, Farthest Shore, located at Eve Gate. My vow or poverty prohibits accepting the large monetary prize so I will distribute it to LUMEN members who want to buy a skill book with it. As librarian, I feel the need to give books, even if they are of the injectable kind.

Crew members felt the need to celebrate, and threw a party in my honor, during which they also exercised their poetic talents by reciting rhymes of dubious content, mostly involving large chested Amarrian ladies, goats and cheese. After some libations, they decided I should sell the rubble that we collected in relic sites rather that throw it back into space. After some more libations, they argued that I should upgrade to a Stratios exploration cruiser, assuring me that they'd crew it most excellently and not many additional hands should be hired, and that they would take care of the hiring process.

It appears that not much exploration will be done after these celebrations.

Deep space particle accelerator

People leave all sorts of junk in space. 

Today, after performing the morning's scan to bookmark wormhole exits, probes picked up a strange matter signature, emissions of exotic elementary particles not known to appear in natural phenoma. Upon our arrival in the deadspace pocket where the signal was from, we found an abandoned particle accelerator, not even powered down. There was no sign of struggle. The science outpost had been abandoned and someone had forgotten to turn off the reactor on the thing.

The outer two acceleration rings were already sparking, and a high-curvature spacetime deformation was glowing in the center ring. It seems whoever built the station attempted to make gates or open up wormholes on demand. 

Right after Anoikis connected to Eve cluster, there was a flurry of enthusiastic exploration, and a lot of grant money flowed to learning about the wormhole worlds. The Arataka Research Consortium played a major role. This abandoned structure did not belong to them, it appears to be from a private Gallente research institute. Often, after projects from this initial exploration wave were completed, researchers returned, leaving their infrastructure behind in the hopes of coming back. But after the initial rush of excitement, grant money levels dropped back to normal as yet another topic became fashionable for science agencies to pursue. 

And so, we have functioning abandoned particle accelerators in wormhole deepspace pockets...

Comparative study of Amarr space cathedrals

Continuing our search for relics in Seclusion, LUMEN's wormhole system, scanners picked up a signal corresponding to an abandoned small space colony. Warping the Indagatrix over, we found that not much was left, except for the ruins of a large cathedral complex.

 

Figure 1: Ancient space cathedral, Seclusion

The structure was definitely Amarrian. Even from far away, the gold ornaments on ivory white hull revealed its link with our beloved Empire. Closer inspection confirmed this, as the structure contained inscriptions quoting scripture. In the cloud of space debris, we found and collected liturgical objects, altar fragments, cloth, chalices.

What is striking, however, is the shape, size and layout of this cathedral. It is a cruciform design, typical for many of the ancient architectural designs of our cathedrals. In this particular ruin, both the nave and the transept were still preserved, as was the domed roof at the center of the cross. The structure emphasizes the vertical, with pillars several hundred meters high connecting roof and floor. 

Imagine for a moment visiting this ancient cathedral, standing on its floor. You would feel humbled in this enormous space. Your gaze will be pulled up, following the lines and the perspective of the pillars directing your eyes to the roof, vanishingly high above you. The architecture leaves you devoid of pride, and with your sight towards Heaven, prepared for prayer and adoration of God. This style of cathedral cropped up on Amarr as well, and can still be seen in ancient pictures, such as the one below.

 

Figure 2: Inside view of an ancient land-based cathedral, similar in architecture as the space cathedral of figure 1.

However, this type of structure is not well suited for space. On a planet, the structure has to bear its weight, the pillars have to counteract the force of gravity pulling beams and ceiling down. That is why structures struggle to reach a height that is easy to reach in space. In space, a very different type of force is prominent: the pressure difference between the inside of the structure - at breathable atmospheric pressure - and the vacuum of space outside. This results in forces not pulling down on walls, but pushing them sideways. You have to design architecture as if it is a pressure cooker that wants to explode outwards. 

The outward force moreover scales with area - this is why the large outer walls of the cruciform space cathedrals are the weak spots, and end up being blown apart when the structure fails. They're no longer present in the ruin that we found, and in many others like it. 

Over the millennia, this has changed the shape of space cathedrals, as religious architecture habits slowly became better adapted to space. The shape that minimizes the area, for a given volume, is the sphere. It is the best shape to deal with pressure differences. However, more things have to be taken into account in choosing the optimal shape. For example, you also want to have a maximum useful floor area, or perhaps fit in landing bays and hangars. So, a compromise between a more rounded shape and optimized floor area and usage led slowly to Amarr's modern design of space cathedrals.

Figure 3: Modern Amarr space cathedral

The emphasis on height, directing your gaze upward is still present in the modern architure; but the cruciform shape with large flat panel walls has been abandond for a more rounded, cylindrical or semi-cylindrical shape. Note that the anchorages - the bottom "claws" where the crypts would be - have been retained, but also adapted to the more rounded shape. Interesting, this change in shape for space cathedrals in turn influenced planet-based cathedral architecture - it takes just one look at the Dam-Torsad cityscape to see the many cathedrals in tapered (semi-)cylindrical form. 

A question may have arisen in the reader's mind: what is an ancient Amarr space cathedral doing out in wormhole space? Anoikis has only become accessible very recently. However, many, often smaller, religious orders in the Empire felt the call to reclaim these strange worlds, and decided to start a mission there or relocate there. I can only surmise that the remains we found were from an order that decided to move its entire ancient space cathedral out to Anoikis. Probably it housed the relics of their patron Saint. Such a move has been done before, even with planet-based cathedrals. Indeed, emperor Doriam II moved the Tal-Romon cathedral from Eclipticum to Amarr Prime, dismantling it and building it back brick by brick, only missing a few bricks.

So, what happened to the missionaries of Seclusion? In figure 1, left of the cathedral, a broken piece of engine can be seen, comparatively large because of its proximity to the camera. It turns out to be of Sansha origin. The religious community living here was brutally raided by the Sansha, who destroyed the monastery and turned the cathedral into the ruin it is today. At least one missionary must have survived the raid, for at the heart of the cathedral's ruin a memorial stone was found, with the inscription:

"In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over our Anoikis home, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive metaliminal storms, space lightning, and fiery comets were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on 6th of January, the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God's church."

I will try to find out who these missionaries were, using as a clue the relics and scans collected. May their souls rest in piece.

 

((ooc attributions: the inscription in quotes is an adaptation to Eve from the medieval description of the Viking raid on Lindisfarne, reported in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. The paiting is the interior of Antwerp cathedral painted by Peter Neeffs the Younger around 1650))

A mystery solved

Yesterday after the ceremonies for the fallen in the battle of Aset, I met up with Jason Statesman. I have been helping him find his father and his origins for a while now, and after hitting a dead end I proposed him to involve a friend at the MIO. 

There is a decayed photograph and some DNA that could be used, and I thought the MIO would have no problems tracking this down. Despite some trepidation about involving the ministry, Jason agreed. The material was forwarded and the request made, and then there was a long wait.

The, yesterday evening, we got summoned. And what an unexpected turn of events was revealed! 

My trusted friend in the MIO, after a very friendly inquisition of Jason - not even a single thumbscrew or pulled nail - revealed that he is the son and possibly only living heir to Lord Hadish Moradian, subservient to House Ardishapur. The affairs of the holding are now in the hands of a regent, Lord Arya Nagad, and will likely remain so while Jason learns more about his heritage and about the faith and his tasks as a future Holder. Of course, it came as a shock to Jason, he'll have a lot to process and it is good that he remains surrounded by the faithful.

This joyous news diverted my attention from the shadows of war that are darkening the cluster, as I made my way back to Seclusion during the night.

War

Tensions between the Local is Primary (LiP) militia and the Edencom aligned alliance of Phoenix Naval Systems (PNS), Electus Matari and LUMEN came to a breaking point. LiP attacked a PNS structure earlier, and now PNS called upon the Edencom aligned alliance to retaliate.

The targeted stations are dens of sin, for the lustful pleasure of the mercenaries. Theologically, these places should indeed have been destroyed. However, the fight over them - after they'd been reinforced - took epic proportions. 

First, a battleship blast pitted our Typhoon fleet against their assorted mish-mash fleet. It appears that we were winning, when the fight escalated to dreadnaughts. It was a slaughter on both sides...

So, today I am hopping back from Seclusion to Nasreri, to hold some memorial masses and comfort those who lost loved ones among our many baseliners. The crew and the Indigatrix stay behind, I am shuttling back and forth.

All this is taking place behind the backdrop of another escalating conflict, of larger magnitude: the Federation and the State are openly fighting in Athounon...

Statics and bookmarks

Wormhole space is different from known space in that there are no fixed jump gate connections. Rather, the set of links between the wormhole systems gets randomized all the time. Any wormhole link stays open only for a few days, at most. This is due to the unstable nature of the wormhole, and makes mapping of Anoikis impossible. How would one map a continuously changing random network?

Some of the wormhole links connect Anoikis to known space, to our gate-connected cluster, and that is how we can access this region. Many explorers that jump into a wormhole to get to Anoikis subsequently get lost, especially if they do not carry scan probes and forgot to bookmark the wormhole after jumping. Luckily, they can contact the Signal Cartel, who have made it their business to rescue wormhole explorers.

So, can the constant metamorphosis of the map ever lead to systems being completely disconnected from the network as a whole? No, there are "static" wormholes in every systems. It's a confusing name, they move around and there's really not that much static about them, except in the sense that there are a minimum number of wormhole entrances that are present at any time in a given system. 

Our wormhole has two statics: one that will always lead to some highsec system, and one that will always lead to another wormhole system. We call the highsec connection "Nexus", and the wormhole connection "Ursus". Some days there will be more wormholes in the systems, but never less than these two.

The entrance of these two statics does move about every day within Seclusion, without leaving the system though. So, it needs to be bookmarked over again every day, for fellow explorers to use. The exit of Nexus hops around in highsec, and also needs to be bookmarked. Joy when the connection happens to pop up close to a trade hub, disappointment when it leads to a backwater system.

It is an unwritten gentlemen's agreement between explorers to keep the bookmark folder up to date, especially for Nexus. It is the wormhole itself that should be bookmarked, not the anomaly. If you jump to the anomaly, you'll land some ten kilometers off the wormhole and need to approach it. This makes you vulnerable, and a proper bookmark will let you land at zero, able to jump immediately. Also I plan to keep up with this courtesy of keeping the bookmarks up to date (and set them with an expiry of 2 days for wormholes). Today, scanning and probing was our first task, but some good soul had already preceded us and the bookmarks were up to date. At least still for a couple of hours...

 

PS. For reference, this is how the bookmarks in the seclusion folder are formatted:

The green ones are in the same location as we are, Seclusion. They start with the identification code for the anomaly, and then a description. QED-968 is the Nexus, the portal to highsec. The other side of that is denoted by "Seclusion - Nexus", and today it is in Keba, in Aridia. If you'd go to Keba, and warp to that bookmark, you'd land on the wormhole entrance to Seclusion. By the luck of the draw there appears to be a second highsec hole still open, to Polfaly.