Cassandra Tyrannos

 

Somewhere in Khanid...

There is a Drifter ship that appears to bear my name.

A couple of years ago - possibly before the Triglavian Collective appeared dramatically and cryptically out of nowhere/higher dimensions/abyssal space with those scratchy holofeeds that appeared to show them owning Drifter ships with complete impunity - a new class of Drifter ship appeared in New Eden, classified by CONCORD/DED as a 'Drifter Cruiser'.

I saw one a few months ago. It was doing the same thing that other Drifter ships seem to do, which is loiter around stargates or stations or whatever, indifferent to anything until you try to interact with them. This one was close to one of the Jove Observatories that were so sensational and fascinating seven years ago but are now almost completely ignored by humanity.

We ignore them at our peril.

'Cassandra' and 'her' ship also seemed to function the same way as the battleships do - moving by interacting directly with spacetime through those prongs; the free-floating weapons turrets; the shield thing where it seems to phase in and out of some other state.

The godless ex-Jove/Drifters are playing some kind of long-term waiting game. They were put back in their box by the Triglavians who were, at the end of the day, more proactive about their agenda.

Because I remember all those years ago when the Drifters started their invasion in the system I was based in at the time - Nandeza. I witnessed huge face-offs between the Navy and fleets of Drifters, then they just stopped. A stalemate developed. Then they came and stopped the Drifters and changed the nature of stars and pulled all those systems into abyssal purgatory. For which only God will pass final judgement when the time is right.

Now, today, the Drifters are still fighting them in that place; Drifters are still in Anoikis and their Hive systems, obviously; but there are recent reports of them hitting Upwell structures in nullsec and generally interfering with capsuleer operations, with no obvious endgame. It's like an ongoing harrassment policy towards us.

Testing us.

Waiting...

The thing is, I remember how the 'Autothysian Lancers' (as they're now known), would harvest frozen and hard-vacced capsuleer corpses from dead ships by tractoring them into their abominable insides and taking them off to God-knows-where. The speculation at the time was that they were doing this on the ex-Jove/Drifters' behalf because the godless Drifters were using the corpses to make more Drifters.

Actually reanimating them and producing multiple copies!

So if any of these things have found my podded corpses...

For the love of God, does this mean that all the Cassandra Tyrannos are actually me??!!

No, no, it's just a coincidence. 

I've been out there too long...

It's just a name some intelligence analyst in the DED gave them, like a codename, for a category of hostile ship...

Right..?

The Apex Predators Of New Eden: Update On The Initial Drifter Incursion in Nandeza

"May you live in interesting times."

 Unknown - Jovian Historical Codex


There are several new and distinct patterns of tactics emerging from all sides since the Incursion commenced.

- as well as the incursion sites themselves, the Drifters are maintaining their previous tactic of 'benign station camping' where they ignore 'independents' and wait for the Navy to arrive.

When the Navy shows up in an invariably larger fleet, they are summarily wiped out by the Drifters who experience minimal losses if any. Large clouds of wreckage are left behind, which become prime looting targets.

That loot seems to be comprised mostly of smartbombs, Navy-spec frequency crystals and energy turrets. Mostly 'Large' stuff. When looting and salvaging that wreckage, the Drifters will just sit there and let you do it, right under their noses.

[NB: I witnessed at least one example of anomalous behaviour where an engagement ended by seemingly being called off on both sides with combatants still on the field. So for a moment, we had 'dogs and cats living together' see below]

- the favoured capsuleer response to these skirmishes is to launch a Mobile Tractor Unit to hoover everything up. I assume that the key target among this wreckage is not necessarily the Navy stuff, but the exotic, mysterious and highly coveted Antikythera Element that is to be found in Drifter wreckage.

- this in turn is causing capsuleers to either engage looters on sight (caveat: this is still in deep lowsec so that may only be coincidence) or to attack the MTU itself, as I witnessed last night.

So it's potentially not about defeating an enemy that, let's face it, few of us have any real chance against, but it's about scavenging around in the mess left behind for personal profit.

Summary: the Navy may have overestimated the level of capsuleer interest in their war with the Drifter Faction. At least they have down here in the remote border regions of Khanid.

[UPDATE: 28/08/117 - according to the Crossing Zebras channel, intelligence reports indicate the strong likelihood that the Drifters' incursions - wherever they occur - will persist and spread until they are prevented from spreading no more by either us or the Navy. In other words, the semi-passive policy exhibited by capsuleers and described above will not work in the long term and could conceivably result in the Drifters spreading across the whole of New Eden with a degree of impunity. My guess is that the proliferation won't stop until it starts to affect the large 'null blocs', because at the moment, it doesn't]

Eye-Witness Report Of The Amarr Navy Engaging The First Drifter Incursion in Nandeza

[note: this entry refers to what is an ongoing event at the time of publishing. The exact outcome of the Incursion is not yet known.]

I've been up in Southern Aridia doing some covert reconnaissance in the [classified. Regards, PHP1 Legal Dept.] system and the [classified. Regards, PHP1 Legal Dept.] system.

I'd finished the tasking and was about to return to our base in Nandeza when I caught sight of World News announcing the first confirmed evidence of the anticipated commencement of regular, organized, openly-hostile Incursions into Amarr space by the Drifter faction - in Nandeza!!!

Right on our front door!!!

Now it didn't take long to return to our place because the Anathema I was using on task - Shoot Them Later - has highly-modified engines which facilitate a Vmax(warp) of 12.78 AU/s, so I didn't have much time to think about how I was going to address this because this was technically the opportunity of a lifetime; to witness this event, to be here, in-situ, to record the beginning of what will inevitably become an extremely long, costly war of attrition that I fear will be won by the side that brings the least emotion into it - the cyber-hive-mind itself. Ask any lecturer on military strategy: the battle is won before it even starts etc.

According to the databases, the Incursion was in three systems in the Homroon constellation, that Nandeza was a 'staging system' so the presence would be relatively light, with the map revealing two Amarr Navy defensive positions and a 'Drifter Influx'.

I arrived in Nandeza and headed to one of the Navy defensive installations. This was not about engaging them in any ship, even my Prophecy, because at my levels of skill and experience, that would be an irresponsible waste of a ship and a pointless waste of time and ISK.

No, this was about observing. Watching them. Recording them.

I arrived in their vicinity, stood off at 60 km range and waited to see what would happen next.

They did their thing. Six of them: sitting there, waiting. Five of one and one of the other. The Outpost appeared intact. There was some wreckage in the vicinity. Capsuleers had been here. NEOCOM/Local and the Defense Of The Throne Worlds Incursion channels saw comments implying swift, belittling responses in the form of action without language.

Words...

 Drifters...

Speak to me...

Why do you wish vengeance upon the Amarr Empire? Why do you ignore the other lot?

Why did you assassinate Jamyl? 

Do you not care to communicate except with weapons?

Are you capable of emotion or are you not burdened so?

WHAT DO YOU WANT??

Then the Navy showed up, and it started. I had a grandstand seat. Popcorn was not an option while jacked-in:

Answer me...

Why did you select the remote border regions of Khanid to start this?

Are you a hive mind?

Do you feel?

Do you love? 

 Do you fear?

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared... 

"They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms...

"And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure...

"And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly...

"You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us."

Unknown - Jovian Historical Codex

Knowledgable capsuleers will read more into these cam drone images than I can. Tactical doctrine may even be modified as a result, and if so, this report has done its job.

Three Drifter battleships were destroyed, while at least 20 Navy vessels - all of them - were lost. This is a kill ratio of nearly 7:1 in favour of the Drifters. They started from a position of numerical inferiority and still won. This is a war of pure attrition, in which the strongest weapon is the will to wait it out - to just keep on going, relentlessly, until time has the final say.

The Drifter Faction appears capable of extraordinary patience..