Station blessing

I have been kept busy, first by a Sansha incursion, and then by the delightful blessing of the Zaraevahr Initiative's new station in Haimeh, along with some ship blessings.

The previous station blessing for Prince Seraghis proved very fruitful, as the station in question survived onslaught from the Tribal liberation force and other barbarians. I do hope Prince Seraghis' new venture in Aridia will please God and this new station will be equally successful in pushing back the barbarian attacks!

Several ships were presented for the traditional blessing, and even though I forgot to keep track for my statistics I am confident these will prove to be much more resilient against attacks from any groups outside of the faith.

On another positive note: I've brought the Wilson line unraveler with me, and will use it tomorrow to crack open the secured magnetic shielding in the first site on the Neopians' list. Also, today I met another barbarian tribe, called "In Extremis". I think some of them warped in to get their ship blessed, but warped off before it could be done because Edencom gunstars started shooting at them. I advised them to get their standings up.

Reaching out

I started investigating Gens and Kamih. One of the locations listed by Glitter was very interesting! There were some abandoned data stations with the usual loot, but it also contained a sort of vault, a shielded magnetic bottle:

I believe this to be one of the artefact caches by the blood raiders. It was casually placed away from the usual loot containers, but it is much harder to crack than the containers around it. I will need some specialized equipment for this one: a Wilson line unraveler. This piece of equipment can't be found in far-flung Aridia: I'll need to hop back to Amarr for it.

At the same time, I tried to forge diplomatic ties with the locals. However, they jumped out of system before I could connect:

[ 2023.11.17 22:00:57 ] Theodosius Savnar > Ave Aleksey! How are you doing tonight?
[ 2023.11.17 22:01:13 ] Aleksey Spaks > hey
[ 2023.11.17 22:01:18 ] Aleksey Spaks > all right=0
[ 2023.11.17 22:02:20 ] Theodosius Savnar > Good! I'm an explorer, from the Amarr core worlds. Have you seen any blood raider activity here recently?
[ 2023.11.17 22:03:03 ] Theodosius Savnar > In particular, I will be searching along the path from Kador to Delve, which runs through Aridia.
[ 2023.11.17 22:03:47 ] Theodosius Savnar > I believe this path is controlled by LowSechnaya Sholupen, your
[ 2023.11.17 22:03:59 ] Theodosius Savnar > ...ah and he is gone.

The error here is that I should not disclose that I am from the core worlds of the Empire. This may be too impressive and scary for the simple souls in the fringe worlds, who probably never journeyed beyond their constellation.

The Anath connection

Glitter's data includes the system of Anath. It sounded familiar to me and I have been mulling over that for the last few days, trying to remember where I heard about it before. 

Then it struck me, as I was talking to Franco and the Directrix. This system was raided years ago by the Blood Raiders in a rather focused attack where the father of our Directrix, professor Tertius Bathana, was killed!

He was an archaeologist, pursuing the trail of the most precious Amarrian relics stolen by the Sani Sabik who became the Takmahl. When I started my investigations, it seemed odd to me that he retired to this remote place, rather than to Gamis or the Araz constellation. But now, the pieces of the puzzle start to fit: after the fall of the Takmahl empire, our relics were part of the loot that the ancestors of the Blood Raiders tried to haul from Araz to their Delve strongholds. Prof. Bathana had not retired, but was pursuing a lead! And I'll wager that his death was more than just an unlucky accident.

The blood trail

In the map below, the arrows indicate the most probable route that the Blood Raiders would take to ferry artifacts and relics from the Takmahl systems to their remote stronghold in Delve. The double red lines delineate the systems where the Zaraevahr Initiative is most active. This includes Mishi, the world where our Directrix's family (on her mother's side) is from.

The records that Glitter Edifice gave me provide coordinates of five abandoned locations where artefacts could have been left by the Blood Raiders looting the remains of the Takmahl empire. Four are in systems on the trail: Gens, Kamih, Sazilid, Nainifan, and Defsunun. One is just off the trail: Anath. I will start with the closest ones: Gens and Kamih.

Base camp

As this may be a rather long expedition, I have been shifting resources to Aridia, basing myself in the Ministry of Internal Order's station in Mishi. This system, in the Mayonhen constellation, is a rare highsec pocket in the region. 

It is somewhat out of the travel route to Delve that the Sani Sabik would have taken, but it is an excellent base to explore the region and the systens on this route. Moreover, I have received very gracious help from Prince Seraghis and his new "Zaraevahr Initiative", who shared useful bookmarks to help me navigate these lands.

I will be happy to perform a blessing of their new headquarters in Haimeh next week Monday. These faithful capsuleers will be a blessing for this region which has perhaps faced some neglect from the Imperial central administration.

Allies in Aridia

It appears that the infamous prince Seraghis - leader of the famed Task Force 641 in the warzone - has established new headquarters in Aridia. He is launching the Zaraevahr initiative, to boost imperial control in Aridia and drive out piracy there.

This is a blessing, as the initiative is part of LUMEN, and as such it will allow me to perform my research in Aridia under at least some protection of these valiant paladins of the faith. I will contact prince Seraghis to inform him of my exploration intentions and gain his advice.

Gateway Aridia

I've been going through the data that Glitter Edifice sent me. It mentions sites in Aridia, prospected but not thoroughly explored. Mishi is perhaps the most famous system in that region, but one must not forget that the region is also connected to the Blood Raider realm of Delve. 

The Blood Raiders (evil in its purest form) are in a way the successors to the Takmahl empire. They loot and raid the Takmahl temples. That became very clear to me during the expedition to the labyrinth, as our valiant LUMEN fleet found them crawling all over the holy rock of the Takmahl, at the center of the labyrinth.

This proves that the Blood Raiders haul treasure from the old Takmahl systems to their hideouts in Delve now, and to staging posts in Aridia before that. Aridia is the gateway region from the Amarr Empire into Delve! 

My working theory now is that first, the fleeing Sani Sabik took a large number of holy relics with them, and created the Takmahl Empire. After that collapsed, the Blood Raiders took the artifacts from the Takmahl with them - including our ancient relics, and stowed them in their hideouts in Aridia. Some made it to Delve, but I reckon many remained buried in "treasure islands", never retrieved as the pirate raiders were killed by our Navy before they could retrieve their buried loot.

Builder's progress

The cheese chapel is progressing well, as is the museum. The rooms are ready for the exhibits to be installed, and this has taken much of my time besides the work at the chapel and the library. 

Unfortunately, I have not yet received a response to my letters from professor Valate. 

So, in stead of an interview, I've decided to have a voice actor read part of her popular science work on the downfall of the Takmahl. The advantage is that in this way, the faithful will not be exposed to the voice of a blood raider siren. And if the interview still takes place, I can always replace it in the holoreel.

Paper interview

As I mentioned before, I want to interview prof. Valate for the museum holodocumentaries.

My original plan was to visit prof. Valate in the Blood Raider systems in Delve - she is tenured at the Kaztropolis imperial university in, well, Kaztropolis. However, it is hard to get there, and now with the crimson harvest incursions of the Blood Raiders, it is impossible to get the permission of the Ministry Of Information (MIO) to travel there.

So, I sent her a missive with my questions for the interview. I hope she answers them, and if it is in written form, I will use a voice actress to read her answers. This also complies with the MIO guidelines not to expose the faithful to a Sani Sabik Siren voice.

Trip to Villore

Villore. It is a hub in Essence, but nevertheless it is a system that is rather off the map, and deep in less controlled Federation space. 

I made the trip back and forth, taking a shortcut through the warzone, in order to retrieve the library that I acquired through the auction. The vast cache of skillbooks from Moira have been added to the Mehatoor general hangar, for all to use. It includes some quite interesting books, like precursor battleships. 

But all in all, I think this might be most useful to our newest members, rather than to the experienced one. I will discuss with the Directrix how to give them access, even the acolytes that do not yet have access to the ship hangar. Perhaps the easiest is to put up a list, and tell them to contact me first in stead of buying a skillbook on the market.

In addition, there is a large collection of non-skillbook books and records. There are many records of expeditions to Anoikis, and these seem to point to a Talocan - Talmahl link. The more I read about it, the more I get convinced that the Takmahl stashed their most valuable treasures in wormholes that they could access from Aphi.

Liquidation auction skillbooks

I participated in the public auction for the liquidation of the assets of a capsuleer corporation, called Moira.

This corporation was founded by captain Julianus Soter of the Federation. He also participated in the Arek'Jalaan research project, and he was the leader of its Multidisciplinary Division. So, in exploration circles he is a famous man, and my hope was that some of the artifacts that he recovered during his investigations would be up for sale.

They were not. Probably they have been transferred to the successor corporation for Moira., called "blades of justice" or something of that gist.

However, the library of the corporation, including mostly a large number of skillbooks but also other types of manuscripts, and I hope records of the Arek'Jalaan project, was auctioned off. Strangely, it was lumped together with a bunch of expensive cybernetic implants in one lot. The auctioneer, general Rinai Vero, was willing to split the lot and sell me the skillbooks only, a very gracious offer which I was happy to take.

This will be the starting core of a permanent collection of skillbooks available for Societas capsuleers in our general hangar in Mehatoor. 

Over the past few years, the skillbook fund has given me a good insight in what our initiate pilots most frequently request: all sorts of laser and missile specialisations, Amarr battleships and battlecruisers, and advanced infomorph psychology. There is also a big demand for some lower level skillbooks, like armor layering, cloaking, thermodynamics, cruisers, shield systems, etc. If I can build up a stock of those in Mehatoor, especially bought at heavy discount in the occasional auction, this will be a wonderful addition to the skillbook refund programme as it will spare our pilots a trip to a trade hub.

Plans

Today I entered for the first time the space that will become our Takmahl museum. It is huge, and empty for now. Movable large wall partitions are separating four exhibit halls with a lot of floor space and very high ceilings. Light and climate control is being installed, for now the walls are blank.

Jenny suggested a layout where these four exhibit halls wrap around an entrance hall that can be used as a room for receptions and fundraisers. The entrance hall will sport huge windows that show a projection of Aphi below, as if you are in orbit of the planet and looking down on it. Of course, this will be only a clever illusion - the museum module could be in the central part of a station with no views to the outside. But it is nice for receptions to have a view to a planet below, even if it is fake. To the side, where the visitors exit the fourth and last exhibit hall, there will be a souvenir shop.

We're going for a rather symmetric plan of the exhibit halls, but I would also like a lecture room at the side, for conferences and colloquiums on history.

blood raider expert

I want to make holo-documentaries for each of the rooms in the Takmahl museum. For some of those -especially the one about the downfall the Takmahl- I want to interview the foremost expert in the cluster.

Except, there is a problem with that.

The foremost expert in the cluster is a blood raider. 

Professor Valerie Valate works at Kaztropolis University, a prominent academic institution, unfortunately in blood raider controlled territory in the Delve region. I met her long ago, in Kador, and even though the adheres to the Sani Sabik philosophy, she very nice and also the leading scholar on the Takmahl in the cluster. Her knowledge on the Takmahl culture is second to none. She's written best-seller books on the topic, and has developed her theories about the downfall of the Takmahl. It's impossible to create a Takmahl museum without her input in some way.

It is not straightforward to book a trip to Kaztropol from the Empire. I have tried in the past to go there but have not yet succeeded. And now especially, during in the crimson harvest period where we battle the blood raiders with renewed strength, it is difficult. But for the museum exhibits I must contact professor Valate and get her answers on some questions. Perhaps an on-line interview might suffice, or a written interview.

Museum discussions

I interrupted ms. From the Block while she was working on the cheese chapel. I discussed with her my plans for a museum of Takmahl history, and also this plan got her quite excited. I think she is easily excited about building plans.

That being said, she made some suggestions that seemed quite realistic to me. A large entrance space - good for holding receptions as well, and exhibit halls that warp around it, providing a journey from the early Takmahl empire all the way to the downfall of the empire as one walks around it. 

We'll need some space for a souvenir shop, and a lecture hall, but if she can fit it in, we're in business for that as well.

Patron saint of cheese makers

The final proposal that I received for the cheese block was also the best one. 

We will carve out a cheese cathedral as a cavernous space inside the block. Or rather, a chapel, as it is unlikely to ever get consecrated to a cathedral. For sure, this will be a unique Mehatoor attraction that will bring in pilgrims from all over the Empire, curious to see the site and attend mass from inside a gigantic cheese. Poor members of the congregation can bring a cheese grater or get some cheese shavings to take home and thus the chapel will be expanding in time, from within the inside of the block. Artistic pilgrims can make sculptures of the saints in newly grated-out side-chapels. For the weary pilgrim that traveled from afar, the hotel part of the block can be used. This idea combines all of the best parts of the previous proposals, and adds a true Amarrian flavor to it.

The chapel will be devoted to saint Lucio, patron of cheese-makers. He was a shepherd who handed out leftover cheese to the poor, until he was thrown out by his Holder for giving cheese away for free. He found another Holder to work for, a more generous one, and miraculously brought his new House unprecedented wealth, with tasty cheese and a quickly multiplying herd of sheep. His first Holder was envious and stabbed Lucio to death and threw his body in the river. Every autumn, the river still turns red. Although we now know this is from algae bloom, local faithful still see this as a sign of his martyrdom.

I have assigned Jenny from the Block to make the architectural designs, and we ordered cheese boring equipment.

 

((ooc: painting of San Lucio handing out cheese by abbot Peroni from the church of the Lardaroli, national gallery in Parma, Italy))

The cheese hotel

A new proposal emerged today: the cheese hotel.

Humans have been constructing hotels out of various surprising materials for a long time. Inside mountain rocks or caverns, for example. Even primitive cultures manage to build an ice hotel, using their (sub)polar region's ice to make bricks and put together a frozen palace where people want to pay a lot of money to sleep in a cold, uncomfortable room carved out from ice, on an ice bed with reindeer covers.

Since then, hotels have been carved in giant trees, lava rivers, or in the insides of the mastodontic cetaceans of Kehour III's oceans. However, according to Jenny, it takes a truly advanced civilization to build a hotel inside a cheese block. The structural mechanics offer unique challenges, and plumbing adds to that, as hot water pipes should not result in a cheese fondue. Hotel guests nibbling from the walls or cheese-carved beds also pose a problem that could never be tackled by lower-tier civilizations. 

In fact, some scientists developed an advancement index for civilizations based on the best and strangest types of hotel lodging that they can provide. It is said that the Jove have a yogurt (or tzatziki) hotel, hidden deeply in their space. Jenny argued that this might even be the basis of the Deathless' appeal to the pirate factions, and it is our duty to counteract it with a hotel carved into a cheese block. 

She is good at getting investors riled up, but it does not sound convincing to me.

Ultrasonic tomography

Several proposals emerged for the cheese block. 

A cheese sculpture festival. Creating the skyline of Dam Torsad out of cheese, or just letting the artists do their thing and elect a winning sculpture. With the amount of cheese at hand, these could be enormous sculptures.

Second was a three-dimensional maze. Jenny from the block emphasized how people wonder about holes in the cheese, and how they could be connected to form some sort of maze. It is unclear whether this particular block has holes or inclusions, so we have rented large-scale ultrasonic imaging equipment. 

It sends sound waves through the cheese. If there is a hole, or a high-density inclusion, this will scatter the waves as they go through the block. As we do this from different directions, using tomographic techniques we can reconstruct any structure inside the block. It makes a three-dimensional map of the cheese block's insides.

After a full day of probing with the rented large ultrasonic probe, we can be confident that there are no large scale inclusions in the cheese block. It is  just a giant lump of cheese. This still makes it a candidate for the three-dimensional maze, but the maze would then not include any natural cavities in the cheese.

The architect

What to do with the giant block of cheese? 

I launched this question on Galnet, and got some interest, mostly from eccentric and somewhat strange Galnet users. Some of them are claiming that there is an international cheese conspiracy, using the dairy product to implant microchips in our bodies so that we can be tracked everywhere.

I already have a datapad that tracks me everywhere.

There was also culinary interest, to turn the block into a giant cheese fondue in which entire herds of cows could be dipped. In one of my previous logs I already commented on the prohibitive amount of energy that such a fondue would need.

Finally, there was also a mail from a Gallente architect, Jennifer Needham, who wanted to explore the possibility to carve out some structure in the cheese, or perhaps make a large scale sculpture from the cheese block. 

I have invited her over to visit. She arrived and has already spent quite some time studying the cheese, and looking at our tests of the structural properties of the cheese. I think she is making drawings. 

The hangar workers have gotten used to her being in the vicinity of the cheese block, and nicknamed her "Jenny from the block".

The reward

I received a message from an anonymous sender. 

It contained a list of bookmarked coordinates in a variety of systems, as well as tracking ID information. 

It also contained a message. "R is recompiling and debugging well and sends thanks for your help. To which I join mine."

I suspect this is Glitter Edifice, or perhaps Tetria from House Brezia expressing their thanks and giving me research leads to follow up. I am having ambivalent feelings about this. Saving a sentient being should be good, but letting a potentially dangerous advanced AI loose is against Concord directives. And receiving a reward for it seems wrong. But bringing lost holy relics back to Amarr is right. 

I will give prayers of gratitude for the potential good that came from the Umai expedition, and at the same time chastise myself with a week of stringent fasting for the sins that unfortunately stain the good outcome.

Zarzakh

While I worried about the structural stability of cheese the size of a housing block, news hit the cluster that the recently discovered ancient Jovian gates have reactivated, and lead to a sort of nexus system, now known as Zarzakh. 

The Scope news agency is not as reliable as Amarr Certified News, but has been known occasionally to be truthful. It now reports that a Jovian station inside this new system of Zarzakh is active and may be under control of a pirate named "the Deathless". He is a heavily modified creature, possibly a capsuleer, and reminescent of the Equilibrium of Mankind's leader Ocilan in his desire to create chaos. 

Apparently, he could not cope with the influx of Jove technology by himself and needed to forge an alliance with the Angel Cartel and the Guristas. These combined devils, with their hands on ancient technology, will be headache for the Empire, I have no doubt about it. I hope the Imperial fleet wastes no time in getting this nexus under our control.

The existence of hidden Jovian gates and nexus systems in itself is interesting, and suggests that more of these may be around. Perhaps even a path into Jovian space may be found. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those paths may even be found within Zarzakh.