Expert suggestion

It is always good to talk plans over with experienced capsuleers. Especially with Gaun Arel, who is wise and like myself drawn to coffee. 

He made a brilliant suggestion: perhaps I could first go to the heirs of the Talocan in a simple shuttle. It would not allow me to probe anomalies, but it does allow for first contact, and the opening of negotiations to allow some research. I do not have to jeopardize any crew - former or new - as they are not useful in a simple shuttle. Moreover, the shuttles are immune to warp disruption bubbles, and can give me an idea of how heavily camped the gates are before I go there in an exploration ship.

Between a rock and three hard places

My initial enthusiasm to visit Feythabolis and the Talocan Star Empire's home constellation of RHG-4O has substantially cooled after I consulted to star charts to plot out a good route.

There are essentially three viable routes: through Curse, a region dominated by the Angel Cartel, through Providence, where the Curatores Veritates alliance and LUMEN are trying to bring some order to these lawless lands, or through Stain, home of the Sansha.

None of these regions are welcoming to a faithful LUMEN capsuleer. I will need camouflage and subterfuge to pass these lands without being stopped - by cartel gangs in Curse, or by insurgents in Provendence, or by Sansha in Stain.

Proselytizing

Delays, delays. The relic analyzer needs some repairs, and the necessary chips are not in supply right now so I have to wait. I could simply fly to Amarr and buy a new one, but that would be wasteful... 

In the meanwhile, I heard that the barbarian horde of the Goons will join the Empire in the warzone. They're a vast bunch of ruffians, and some seem pleased to have them on our side. 

I'm not so sure. 

It seems we just got rid of the previous untrustworthy mercenaries, the ones flying under the banner of the pirate Mikal Vektor, whose misdeeds went so far that even the Sarum court had to speak out to rein them in. If the other core powers want to use pirates and barbarians, let them. We should not follow suit.

The news made me wonder though... is the Talocan Star Empire allied to these Goonses or not? If they are, they might be friendly to me and welcome my visit. I might then use the opportunity to spread the faith. Indeed, the Book of Reclaiming urges us to do so, "I give to you the destiny of Faith, And you will bring its message to every planet of every star in the heavens".

New crew

Feythabolis is really at the edge of the universe.

It is hard to get the usual crew to come along. They remember the ship being destroyed in Pure Blind and all the trouble of the rescue efforts for the escape pod. And the death of one of them. They're fine with highsec Imperial stuff, but get uneasy when I ask them to go out to the deepest of barbarian lands.

I do have a new hire, well versed in cloaking technology and scanning drones. Eloise Ayogan. I need to pick her up in Dital, where she will return after family business.

A new expedition

I am making preparations for another expedition, this time to the outlands of Feythabolis. This is not the first time I've ventured outside of the bounds of the civilized world, but every time it remains a challenge. The star systems beyond the borders of the Empire are rules by ruthless barbarian warlords, and care is needed.

This time the goal of my travels is a tribe called the 'Talocan Star Empire', its main corporation being 'Talocan Core'. I believe they may have stumbled upon some remnants of the Talocan, much as the Takmahl did, and profited from this influx of technology to build some sort of kingdom. From the parallels with this current-day society, we may learn a lot about the ancient Takmahl.

Spam

I'm back from the conference and only now I realize the damage wrought by my actions...

Collecting mugs, and that pen with a ruler, and the weird magnetic putty, and all sorts of exhibit gadgets, I appear to have given my participant contact details to the exhibitors. I am in all their mailing lists! The amount of promotional messages not yet classified as spam is staggering. I have spent all day unsubscribing from the various lists.

On top of that, we are getting a lot of shipments of free books and catalogs. Not all of them are suitable material, and sorting it out takes time and cannot be done by the untrained. 

Tribal feelings

The last day of the conference was only a half-day. I decided to relax a bit in the afternoon and go visit the old town center of New Iphria. The ancient monasteries and cathedrals, devoted to House Kor-Azor, are astonishing. But that is not the only thing that struck me.

It is sort of strange, but among the many people that walk around in the city, I think I can recognize fellow academics or librarians from a distance without talking to them. I talked to a few to check my hunch, and got it right nearly every time. It is impossible that I remembered the faces of all conference participants, but I think it is their mannerisms. The way they look a bit forlorn, clumsy in a way. They peer around and then look at a map to figure out their orientation and where to go, in a... librarian kind of way? The typical hesitation or internal debate in choosing a particular direction. Also the attire, perhaps? I can not quite pin it down, but it is as clear as a voluval tattoo would be. I recognize my own tribe. 

Exhibits

The plenary discussion sessions that involved both the Theology Council representatives and the Gallentean publishing houses were interesting, but it is clear that no formal guidelines or rules are going to appear any time soon and that we will have to use our good judgment. Controversial and lewd biography of Uriam Kador: not acceptable. Cookbook with Garoun-era recipes: acceptable. 

As for the parallel sessions, frankly, there were too many of them to learn much. You are drowned in a bath of information, gaining no specific new understanding, but rather getting an impression of the overall direction library science is taking nowadays.

I did visit the exhibit hall a few times. Exhibitors try to get the attention of the attendees by offering free trinkets and gadgets. Coffee mugs, pins with funny slogans, mini-drones, key-chains with lasers, puzzles, pens of all types, stickers,... I found out to my own surprise that I am a gadget hoarder. I have no need for seven different coffee mugs, but I could not quite stop myself. I justified this latent compulsive disorder by convincing myself that it will replenish the stock of mugs in the Lamp. 

My talk

Today I gave my talk. A rehearsed presentation where I put a lot of effort in making nice pie charts.

It was in parallel session #53, in one of the many smaller side-auditoria. This was a rather dark and somewhat chilly room with seating for about fifty people.

There were seven people in the audience. One was asleep, another one was checking his datapad, and one was the session chairperson. The remaining four were the other speakers for the session. 

It appears I made more effort to prepare this talk than was necessary.

Conference center

The conference center is enormous, with a gigantic domed hall for plenary lectures at the center. It can hold a crowd of twenty-two thousand participants at full capacity. We are not even filling it at half capacity. Even then, the experience is humbling. Large holoscreens show the speakers, too far away to clearly see with the naked eye. They give clear guidelines and advice to a rapt audience.

Smaller halls and auditoria are sprawling around it along six lanes that are laid out as the arms of a snowflake, splitting in many sideways. Simultaneous "semi-plenary" talks are held in each of the six main halls, but after that the talks split up along the many side rooms in the fractal architecture.

The 'little talks', like my own, only last fifteen minutes, but they are scheduled back to back from early morning till late evening. You cannot learn much from these short talks, but the sheer amount of them plunge you into a bath of science, and you can learn where the field in general is heading too.

Around noon, the participants conglomerate in the lower floor below the large domed main hall. That's where you get the lunch packages and where the trade exhibit is. 

Tomorrow I have my own talk... I wonder how that will go

To Eclipticum

I booked public transport to planetside Eclipticum, to the large metropolis of Nova Iphria where the conference will be held in that city's conference center. The city itself is a trade and services hub. 

I'll arrive late tonight - the conference starts tomorrow.

I had no trouble finding a hotel near the massive conference center, using the list provided by the conference itself. I think they struck deals with the hotels, but it still is quite expensive. They tried to set me up with a roommate, but I prefer a room to myself. Room sharing is for the youngsters. When you pass your first century alive, you've learned to appreciate the comfort of having a place for yourself.

There are many restaurants and bars in the districts close to the conference center, but the old town center, with its ancient monasteries and cathedrals dating back two thousand years is rather far away from the conference and trade fair district. There are good connections via mass transit. The conference travel desk also organizes some visits and trips, but they are meant for the partners of the participants. The participant's program is filled, from morning till evening, with lectures and talks...

Eulogy for the living

It's a stange thing, a eulogy for the living. Someone I know is planning to end her current clone and revert to one from long ago, effectively wiping her memories. It is a kind of suicide - albeit one specific to capsuleers. An ending not of the bodily life, but of memory. An ending, nonetheless.

Usually, and indeed strangely, one waits till someone is dead to say a lot of nice things about them, to recall what they meant. Why not before? Why not make it a habit, when a loved one becomes more fragile or older, to express what they meant to you and why they are/were important in your life, and then tell it to them while they are still alive. Somehow we don't do that, we always assume that the people we care about will just keep on living a bit longer. There's still tomorrow, and there's much to tell and it's complex. And then we're taken by surprise when they are gone. Only when they're gone we're able to summarize all this complexity and get to the core of things.

Here, as this friend is preparing her end, I was not taken by surprise. I could tell her what she meant to me, what memories I hold dear. And it feels good to do so. I learned from it, I learned to tell people what they meant to me while they are still alive. Also this is something I thank her for.

Top genres

I have prepared a most boring lecture for this conference. What can I say, there is not that much difference in book tastes between capsuleers and baseliners. 

More or less tacky romance novels are at the top of the list, good for almost 30% of loans. They're followed by a broad category of explanatory nonfiction - including self-help books, business books, educational books. Next come biographies/history/memoirs, followed by cook books and mystery novels.

Apparently, these genres are more or less in the same order across the cluster, with cultural differences as to the particular content, of a romance novel, for example. And political analysis seem to be a topic that sells in the Federation and the Republic, but there is much less interest for it in the Empire or the State.

Registration

As usual for conference participants, I registered and submitted my abstract just before the deadline.

Soon after I registered, I started receiving goodies from the Gallentean publishers who agreed to be sponsor of the conference. Free books are the most honest gifts - as you can assess them and write a review. But there are also restaurant visits, hotels, ladies, luxury goods. It is just appalling how they try to trick you! 

We do get warnings from the organizers about fake tourist agencies that try to get your money and make fake hotel bookings... even booking a room is compromised!

Luckily the Theology Council provides proper hotels and travel arrangements so we do not have to navigate all these fake agencies...

A new market

I have several expeditions in mind. A return to wormhole space, this time to look for Talocan related clues. A similar mission to the Araz constellation. And finally, a visit to a barbarian dukedom out in Feythabolis. It drew my attention by virtue of their name: the Talocan Star Empire. Perhaps they too found Talocan technology they could put to use, like the Takmahl.

However, these plans have to wait. I've been invited to a bibliothecography conference on Eclipticum in the Kor-Azor prime system. As diplomatic relations with the Federation are improving, publishers in the Federation are trying to get a better access to the huge market that is the Empire. 

This poses a problem, since the Theology Council's sacred congregation of the index cannot catch up with the influx of books. So, at least in these initial stages, it will be up to the individual librarian to pick and choose, and to screen out harmful works. 

That is the topic of the conference, organized jointly by the Kor-Azor family bureau and the Theology Council congregation of the index. There will be a bunch of workshops to train us, and parallel sessions with talks. I have been asked to give a talk about the specific problems relating to capsuleers and books. I have no idea yet what I am going to present...

Actually, for our own library there is the additional problem that I also should think of the sensitivities of our many Caldari friends, who would be abhorred to find Gallente propaganda books between their business manuals.

Takmahl downfall

A question quite separate from the Talocan influence on the Takmahl, is how the Takmahl empire ended. It is a particularly pertinent question as to the location of the relics that they stole from the Empire. They kept those in secret locations, that may have moved around at the collapse of their empire.

Very little is known about the end of the empire. The main theory was formulated by Valate, and relates to asteroid strikes on several main worlds, destabilizing central command. Takmahl emperors would not have their own centralized army, but work with a local lords who would contribute forces to an army in case of need; in turn they were allowed to rule and tax their own fiefdoms. It is a low-income low-spending way to rule an empire, putting the local lords in charge.

The downside is that these local lords start to fight and feud as soon as centralized rule is put into question. The Takmahl emperor, claiming to derive his power from the blood god, would have his legitimacy undermined by major disasters. When an increase in the number of sacrifices to the blood god could not turn the tide, the emperor would lose legitimacy and any local lord would have a claim to the throne as the one chosen to better represent the blood god. Infighting and splintering of the realm into many small fragments started the downfall which ended in a decimation of the population and a dark age where the survivors reverted to a barbarian state.

Whether this represents the true history, or whether these are folk tales, we do not know for sure. But it is clear that those who separate themselves from the empire are doomed - even if they enjoy a temporary reprieve by finding alien technology.

Talocan and shipcasters

There is not all that much known with certainty about the Talocan.

The Talocan were (or are?) a truly ancient race, perhaps even older than the Jove. They mastered the weaving of spacetime, and could create pocket universes and project wormholes to new places. They could create wormhole channels between stars of their choosing, building networks with travel hubs. They were not limited in their travels to our cluster, which some researchers say made them more advanced even than the Jove. 

They could travel through Anoikis with wormhole connections of their choosing - indeed many scholars believe that the randomly rewiring network of wormhole connections seen today is a malfunction in whatever is left of the Talocan network control. 

Today we do not see them around, but it does not mean they no longer exist. We do not find evidence of a collapse of their civilization as we do for the Takmahl empire. They may just have left the cluster, as they certainly had the ability to do so.

Indeed, most scholars agree that the Talocan harnessed the power of stars (in particular blue ones containing special isogen forms) in order to alter the very topology of spacetime. 

Sounds familiar, in the light of current news? To me it does: that's exactly what we try to recreate with the "shipcaster" technology. It requires a stellar transmuter to power the casters that create new paths to faraway systems... 

Are we, and the Triglavians as well, following in the footsteps of the Takmahl by exploiting the breadcrumbs left around by the Talocan as they left? Some speculate that the Triglavians are an offshoot of the Talocan - but I find it more likely that they are the inheritors of the Talocan technology.

Talocan link

It was a busy weekend taking care of baseliner worries at the Chapel, and of screening new book deliveries in the library.

Meanwhile, I have started digging into Talocan archeology. My focus was on the Takmahl, but they learned from the Talocan, and used their technology. I should go to the State to study them more, there are specific archeological sites there. 

I do hope the recent disagreements with the State will not hamper that...

Confession of impotence

I get these files from time to time. Forwarded from recruiting. About someone utterly broken. Like, captured by blood raiders at the age of three, and got free just a year ago, well into adulthood. All messed up.

They get referred to me. As if I can fix them. As if I have any power over all these years of abuse. I do not. All I can do is listen. I attempt to say things, things that get dismissed or get interpreted as wrongful interference from someone who does not understand. Who can not understand. And that's correct, I admit I can not.

So often, I feel completely powerless to help. It drains me, because I want to help but I am unable to, and perhaps my words have an adverse effect. Is this a common feeling amongst spiritual helpers? Is there a way to disconnect and feel neutral about it? If so, I pray God helps me find it.

Krusual library

Going to Faspera in Derelik I dropped by in our industrial stations in Gamis and Tanoo. And I also visited another structure in Tanoo, one often overlooked by our more industrious capsuleers. There is a a Krusual mobile library in Tanoo, that's a space library!

It has an interesting architecture, too. The different halls of the library are connected by walkways with tall glass walls that offer a nice view of surrounding space, and of the station itself. It is a bit discomforting, especially if you're used to the confines and bulkheads of a regular station. I find myself intuitively staying rather close to the center of the walkway, even though in case of a breach it won't matter.

Minmatar and Ammatar scholars mingle here, studying the history of their people. I did not particularly feel welcome, not surprisingly. However, once I could make clear that I am also a librarian, the mood relaxed, and I could get a tour. I enjoyed that a lot, and recommend a visit!