...And So It Begins Again

I spent a year in Darwinism, which started out well, but then over a period of time I became spiritually adrift and rudderless. I took a sabbatical. Two years planetside, away from the capsule, all my assets in deep storage across three systems, living another life, an actual life, far away from the quixotic pointlessness of killing the unkillable. Two years of distractions, interests, lovers, businesses, and a rediscovery of my Amarrian faith. Two years during which I saw the holovids about them.

Not Drifters, who are no longer a thing, no longer a threat.

This Triglavian Collective, who showed up in New Eden as if from another dimension of reality; scratchy, mutated monochromatic holovids appearing to show them owning the Drifters asses and making mincemeat of them. Taming them. 

One of the Triglavian ships arrived in Yulai, right outside CONCORD's front door. The ship was battered, on fire, and had a thing hanging out the back of it like a hernia - its power source, as near as damn it an artificial black hole. Nothing good can come of that.

Then they started broadcasting stuff: hijacking the fluid routers with bizarre, pompously-delivered impenetrable nonsense about clades.

Then this Collective starts occupying and seizing systems throughout New Eden and concentrating on systems with blue stars and converting those stars into something horrific.

The power to do that; the will to do that; if our Amarrian forces had 100 divisions with this power then our problems with the Minmatar would very quickly be over.

Then this Collective went even further and took their new region of systems, called it Pochven and walled themselves off behind collapsed stargates, the sight of which is utterly terrifying. 

Because New Eden has now changed forever and will never be the same as it was. 

The vision of this shattered stargate in the Madirmilire system was revelatory to me. God's will informed me at this exact moment that the time was right to end my sabbatical and fight for the integrity and continuity of the Empire.

I had already left Darwinism as I knew for some time my path was taking me elsewhere. I now knew where I had to go.

The Imperial Society of Scepter and Crown.

SFRIM

I am now part of a group of Amarr loyalists working to preserve the sanctity of Amarr, the Empire, its interests, its citizens, its territory.  

From now on you can reach me in the warzone.

Amarr Victor!

All Roads Lead to Khanid, Part I: Manifest

The Yulai System, Sanctum Constellation, Genesis. Directive Enforcement Department Logistic Support Station - Yulai VIII (Deck 4, Section 8 - Licensing Dept.)

Weary-looking middle-management-filing-clerk-type enters what back in the day might have been called a 'Records Room', where, back in the day, millions of hard copy files might have been kept in reverent seclusion in a warehouse-sized space, with an army of people tending them in silence like a form of clergy. These days, it's just like a bunch of terminals in a small, under-lit office where no more than five people sit, day after day, performing the never-ending task of updating the DED Starship Registry Database. It's nowhere near as visually impressive. There aren't even any windows in here.

Weary-looking middle-management-filing-clerk-type sits down at his assigned terminal for the day (for hot-desking is a thing at the DED), and logs-in. The second thing that happens during the login process is that The System asks the person logging-in a question. This time it's 'Does your work at the DED fill you with a sense of purpose?'

Middle-management-filing-clerk-type reads this and gets a gigantic flashback to the fork-in-the-road-of-life that was the time when he got chopped after Year One of capsuleer school; an event that caused the kernel of a lifetime of bitterness to form within his then-young soul, a soul too young to recognise that kernel for what it was: the poison of thwarted ambition.

His response to getting chopped was a few wasted years of oblivion spent in bars and pleasure hubs. When the hangover wore off, the opportunity to move sideways into being a regular starship meatbody had kind of passed him by or not even occurred to him (because the glamour of pseudo-immortality is everything!); so the only remaining choice was to return planetside from whence he came, or embark on an oxymoronic 'career in admin' with the DED.

Thus it was, or is, that middle-management-filing-clerk-type reads the question that The System is asking him, here in the present moment, and he sees the abyss of failure encoded within it. He clicks on 'Skip To Main Menu'...

Then the swoosh of the door opening behind him announces the arrival of a boss/leader type, whose name he doesn't even know, because it doesn't really matter. This boss person approaches his burning hot-desk and its expectant terminal and hands him a sheaf of printouts and says: 'Here's today's updates for The System. There's a new one for the Watch List.'

That last sentence generates a brief flicker of interest in the filing clerk. He says: 'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah,' the boss says. 'Legion-class, recently returned from a long deployment to the Anoikis Cluster. Spent the best part of a year there. '

'What's unusual about that? Happens all the time doesn't it?'

'Yes, but this one, its captain has changed employer at the same time. Left a research-focused pacifist group with no record of criminality and joined - or rejoined a group that's based in low-security space. Thing is, she's worked for them before. It's all there in her history. We've seen this pattern many times. It's a slippery slope, and who knows what the hell she's brought back with her from that place.'

Middle-management filing clerk takes the sheaf of papers and turns to his screen. The boss-type turns and swooshes out of the room.

Filing clerk starts typing...

>DED: A DIVISION OF CONCORD

>STARSHIP REGISTRY ENQUIRY: READY

>WATCH LIST: NEW ENTRY

>Legion-class Strategic Cruiser
>Ownership: Private
>Registration: ARX/O/12883745/III
>Name: Empress of Amarr
>
>Crew Manifest (see appendix for further crew details):
>
>Ship's Master: Cassandra Orizi-Habalu-Dannidaana.
>Security Status: 5.0 (provisional - subject to change - see below)
>Personal Details:

Birthdate: 10/28/90.
Ethnicity: Ni-Kunni.
Homeworld: Kor-Azor Prime IV.
Assessment:
Subject is heiress to the Proxima Direct Shipping Company fortune (status restored after recent Imperial decree clarifying capsuleer legitimacy within the Amarr Empire citizenry). Subject also known to possess interests in the Aridia region where she is a prominent political activist in her role as co-founder of the Ni-Kunni Capsuleer Development Foundation. Also known to possess interests in the Genesis, Tash-Murkon and Khanid regions. Operational track record demonstrates non-aggressive tendencies in general, except towards Covenant interests wherever found. However, recent activity involving a prolonged deployment to the Anoikis Cluster with her previous employer indicates the subject retains a strong interest in Jovian/Sleeper/Drifter culture, with a presumed interest in the acquisition of Sleeper-derived technology beyond that which is already developed as part of the baseline architecture of the Legion-class Strategic Cruiser she commands. 

Subject's addition to the Capsuleer Watch List is therefore based on the subject's recent change in employer within the context of the default operational strategy of her new employer, combined with the presence of a former Amarrian Templar in her bridge crew in the role of Chief Weapons Officer [see appendix for full crew manifest], a combination which requires the DED to assume that unverified Sleeper-derived technology will be used in flight operations in low-security space with her new employer outside the authority, control and jurisdiction of DED/CONCORD.
>
>Status: Expected to change. Watch-listed as of 10:49 NEST - 14/11/119.

>FILE Y/N?

CONCORD and the Yulai Graveyards

“May you live in interesting times”

Unknown - Jovian Historical Codex


Since joining Signal Cartel I’ve been mostly tied up moving some of my stuff to the Theology Council Tribunal station that orbits Zoohen III and serves as one of Signal’s bases. It’s been educational: I never realised how familiar I was with Khanid. I could recite the name of practically every system in Khanid and recite the names of pipe systems in order of transit in either direction. Now I’m up here in the Genesis region, in the northern borders of the Empire and it’s like pressing the reset button as none of it is familiar.

ZOOHEN III - THEOLOGY COUNCIL TRIBUNAL STATION aka THE ZOO

I’ve quickly realised that the Zoohen system was a very wise choice by Signal, as this part of Genesis is close to the borders of five different regions as well as the more significant border with the Fed itself, so there is huge operational (and cultural) variety available within a short travel time.

In fact 'Zoo' is just three jumps from the Fed, so I have available, if I want it, the gigantic culture shock of going from Signal's office in an ultra-orthodox Amarr Theology Council station with its thought police, slave-whippings and its church-on-every-floor design; to the neon lights of Federation stations across the border, where I’m fully exposed to the Gallente and their militarised version of liberalism (“we can do whatever we like and you have to let us or else...”).

This also means that unless I'm in one of my more neutral ships, I take the risk inherent to docking in a Fed station, in Fed territory, in an obviously-Amarr vessel and, if I'm not extra-careful, walking around its interior wearing traditional Amarrian dress; otherwise I can expect judgemental glances from meathead Fed baseliners who will regard me as a tight-arsed Amarrian who needs to spend a week in one of their 'Pleasure Hubs', when little do they know that as a Ni-Kunni woman I could run one of those places better than they could.

As it happens I do actually prefer Gallente stations on the whole because they're into wide-open spaces which triggers my ancestral memories of the deserts of Mishi IV, but that institutionalised Gallente tendency to prioritise self-gratification above all-else starts to grate after a day or two. I'm not prudish - far from it - but there's a ritualistic elegance to be observed with that sort of thing.

In fact I don't know how the Fed get anything done because of their obsession with leisure.

I'm digressing again...

Anyway it's not that big a deal, because as Empyreans we're supposed to be above this sort of thing.

Supposed to be.

Far more interesting is that 'Zoo' is in an area of space where there are a number of historically-significant star systems that have been host to some of the most seismic shifts in New Eden politics. Orvolle is nearby (where the recent CONCORD/Upwell deal was signed), so is Villore (home of the Villore Accords group and their Assembly), so is the notorious death trap of Old Man Star; Luminaire isn’t far and even the New Eden system is a mere afternoon’s jaunt.

YULAI VIII

Then there is Yulai: the former capital system of New Eden. CONCORD was and still is based here, but it also used to be the cluster's principal trade hub until Jita gradually assumed that role as a consequence of the reorientation of Yulai's stargate connections. 

My father used to go on about how much better it was in the 'Yulai days' when he'd spend ages in his study, staring at volumetric holographs of the commodities trading he specialized in (some of the proceeds of which sent me to Hedion University). He'd manipulate prices and market orders with his hands and to the eight-year-old me it was like watching a magician. The volumetric display would emerge from a device beneath a wide, sunken pit in the floor of his study. I used to stand in it and let the numbers and graphs and squiggly-line things trawl across my face. This used to wind him up, so naturally I did it as often as possible.

Later, I remember how my father went on for months when Jita emerged as the dominant market hub, and how he visibly mourned when Yulai’s stargate ‘superhighways’ were shut down in YC107. This was still a few years before I entered Hedion University.

He would rail against “those damned money-grabbing Caldari corporate bastards who think they can take it all with them. They have no understanding of the artistry of a trade. The ritual of it.  A successful trade - a transaction - is a ritual. The longer it takes, the more satisfactory it is. A week is an absolute minimum. Back in the Yulai days…”

You’ll have noticed that Ni-Kunni are very big on ritual.

Prior to the stargate thing and when Yulai was still prominent, my mother disappeared for a month in accordance with the Ni-Kunni Mourning Ritual when two of her brothers were killed during the Yulai Siege in YC106, when their hauler was caught in Yulai by the rogue fleet of smartbombing battleships that a notorious capsuleer group used to blockade the system in defiance of CONCORD. The Yulai Siege is also how I learned that my father’s business interests included a low-level smuggling operation into the Fed from Syndicate and Placid, as his brothers-in-law were in the middle of a run when they were killed. Yulai was crucial to this quasi-legal operation as the system is only a handful of jumps from Syndicate and Placid, both conduits to the wild west and the frozen north. This event caused a temporary but substantial rift between my parents after my mother returned from her ritual, and I know - although they rarely admit it - they almost divorced over it. It was a difficult period.

You would think an event like the Yulai Siege and its impact on my family would have had automatic negative consequences for my ambitions as a capsuleer (which had not yet formed back then because I was only 15), but they didn’t. My father’s business interests were only affected for a short time by either the deaths of his two brothers-in-law during the Yulai Siege or by the system’s later decline in importance as a trade hub. We Ni-Kunni adapt as per our primary hereditary trait.

In fact as Jita assumed its dominance, his business did better than ever because of the Empire’s alliance with the Caldari and their capitalist fervour, which saw my father conveniently set aside his prejudice against ‘those money-grabbing corporate bastards', because, as he would put it, "Adapt or die Cassie, adapt or die, because back in the Yulai days…"

* * *

So with this family connection to Yulai in mind, I took some time out from the hauling and logistics and flew the short distance from 'Zoo' over to Yulai in The Aridia Express. As soon I arrived in the system I found that today, the Yulai system is a shadow of its former self in terms of activity, with only a handful of capsuleers in the Local channel and not much else.

Those capsuleers were probably all here to see the same thing I was.

The Yulai system may be diminished as a market, it may still be politically as important as it ever was, but there is also a dark side to it in the form of the Yulai Graveyards site. This is another mass of starship wreckage that, like the Mekhios Graveyard at Sarum Prime III and the Kor-Azor Battle Site orbiting Eclipticum, all represent the aftermath of the same event: the Elder War of YC110. In Yulai’s case it was the Minmatars’ successful attempt to shut down CONCORD while trying to headshot the Amarr Empire and liberate all the Matari slaves within it.

The fierce battle that took place here in Yulai resulted in dozens of wrecks and a destroyed station. Wrecks on both sides too, with CONCORD battleships rendered inert where they are supposed to be infallible. It escalated when the Matari - Thukkers - brought dreads through an illegal cynosural beacon and it became a Dread Ball. Records show the whole exchange lasted less than fifteen minutes.

CONCORD was defeated. This site is a monument to a defeat. To an organisation that is so impenetrably secretive and arguably hubristic, there isn't much logic in that.

I crept around this 'monument' in Express for a while and took some cam drone stills as the blue giant of Yulai itself painted its cold, judgemental, hard ultraviolet wash over everything. Why do blue giant stars seem so cold when they are among the hottest of the hot?

The Matari dread wreckage was just the shrapnel that it is (because since when is a Matari vessel anything other than a collection of organised shrapnel?). The CONCORD ships appeared mostly intact; some even still evidently under some sort of internal power. Batteries? After eight years? There were no life signs - why would there be?

The derelict station over a hundred kilometres from the wrecks is further visible proof of CONCORD's moment of defeat; the station bisected - decapitated - by the Matari fleet. Thousands died in here, and out there.

For what? The Elder War ultimately failed (Jamyl!), and the status quo was preserved.

A Catalyst showed up here while I inspected the derelict station, so even though it was a hundred kilometres away, I left the field because the 'C-word' tends to trigger an automatic response (call it Explorer's Instinct). I decided to get right to the heart of it all and flew over to the CONCORD Inner Circle station - the new one - and docked in it.

The lack of capsuleer activity in-system meant that Express was the only non-CONCORD vessel in the Inner Circle station’s docking bay. After I unjacked from the pod and cleaned up, I took a walk along the viewing galleries and tried to examine the Jove-influenced spindly battleship-sized vessels up close - I’d never been this close for this long, and if you are ever this close, it’s usually because you’ve done something wrong and are about to be shown the error of your ways, which is down to that peculiarity of CONCORD doctrine where they’re into punishment rather than prevention, which is how gate camps proliferate like they do. Why does that doctrine never evolve? Why does CONCORD never comment on the Drifters? Why is CONCORD content to maintain a status quo rather than moving to shut down edgelords like CODE? Remember the bit about the 'Yulai Convention' in the pro-forma standard wardec notifier? This station is where it came from. 

It was the earlier Yulai Siege that led to the ‘Jove Upgrade’ that manifests in CONCORD’s vessels today and their ability to one-shot anything - which did them no good in YC110 - along with the ability to insta-warp anywhere in a system in seconds apparently without recourse to the combat scan probes that we Empyreans are stuck with. What is that tech? Why can't we have it?

By looking at these ships with my own eyes instead of through the filtering firmware of cam drones, I realised that it’s true that their colour - that green/black combo - appears to shine as if it’s wet when it can’t possibly be so. It’s like you can’t bear to look at them for too long lest it induce nausea, like your brain can’t process the colour properly. Given the amount of Jovian influence on these ships, I have to assume they are also largely automated and crewed by a single capsuleer, unlike mainstream ships of similar size.

Given the Jovian influence, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if CONCORD ships were in fact piloted by a transhumanised disembodied brain in a jar; a brain with a serial number instead of a name, the serial number of the ship itself. Ship and brain merged into one. Maybe not even a brain but an uploaded mind like everybody says the Sleepers are. Capsuleer tech came from the Jove, and a brain in a jar is the ultimate evolution of the capsuleer - the non-corporeal clone-free endgame. Is this where we’re going? Is this why the Society of Conscious Thought have assumed the Jove’s seat in CONCORD? That seat - those Inner Circle seats - are right here somewhere in this station, with its humourless white strip lights, airless corridors painted in Standard Government Sterile, nameless doors, proscribed no-go areas and no shops. None. Not even a café. No Fed Mart, no nothing.

Pure bureaucracy.

All those conspiracy theorists who allege that CONCORD is the visible part of a collective that steers humanity’s evolution from the shadows of Anoikis by maintaining that status quo that I‘ve referred to above: they may have a point. I may be about to join their ranks.

If you try to speak to any of the suits in here, their faces go blank for a fraction of a second, as if their answer is being puppeteered to them from elsewhere.

It's the CONCORD party line: "No comment".

A baseliner wouldn’t notice it; it’s only my headware that gives me the enhanced intuition that makes it detectable. One might say it’s also made me totally paranoid, but think about what’s happened over just the last few months: the Society of Conscious Thought becoming part of the Inner Circle; the formation of the Upwell Consortium from out of nowhere and the ultra-rapid development of Citadels; the thing with the Fed vs. the Serpentis Corporation and the stolen tech that has burst out into the open this last couple of weeks, with militant Caldari groups that may or may not be getting in on it; the legalisation of combat boosters. Have I missed anything?

Somewhere on this station is an event horizon behind which exists smoke-filled rooms where bribes, backhanders, secret deals, favours, plots and machinations are formalised. CONCORD is about as clean as a fedo burrow cluster.

There are two New Edens: ours, and the one inside this station where the members of the Inner Circle sit around a table and speak to each other without actually speaking. I don't believe for a second that The Scope is truly independent now either. There's no such thing. In New Eden, every man/woman has their price.

All this calm and peace and tranquility here in Yulai is deceptive. A storm is brewing all around it and the most significant event of all is yet to come: Empress Catiz Tash-Murkon's coronation.

Later on, as I prepped Express to leave and head back to 'Zoo', I messaged my father about the superficial lack of activity in Yulai in the modern era and his reply began with: “Back in the Yulai days…”

War's Over So I'm Going Planetside

I bought another Venture and ferried it to our new base in [classified], with the idea of doing some mining in the deep lowsec in Southern Khanid and basing this Venture there permanently.

I fitted it to a sort-of ninja speedy Venture spec: combat drones for defence, microwarpdrive for high-speed getaways and a cloaking device as a last resort.

A few problems materialised:

- all that lovely exotic lowsec ore is pointless if nobody will buy it. I have to ferry the bloody rocks light-years to bring it within range of others' buy orders.

- my Ninja Venture was defenceless against what NEOCOM classified as a 'Blood Raider Clone Soldier Cruiser' that I caught lurking in a belt in Gousoviba (0.1). A Maller, no less, that lit me up from 80 km away and one-shot me with pin-point accuracy. Seriously. A sniper job. The damn thing carried a bounty of 1.75 million ISK. Clearly it's been operating there for some time. If you see it, say hello from me before you kill it.

So my lowsec mining strategy needs work. I need something more substantial than a Venture.

In the meantime, the nuisance over the 'wardec' reached farcical levels with no less than eight alliances/corporations wardeccing us at the peak. Intel reached us that 'Space Warriors', the instigators of this thing, started losing members at around the same time for some reason - an exodus by all accounts, and that all the other war declarations were some sort of bureaucratic consequence of this, so it meant nothing. Then a mass of messages from CONCORD arrived that stated all the 'wardecs' were invalidated and cancelled due to an unspecified violation of the Yulai thing. In reality, they'd all failed to pay the fee. Some of these 'wars' lasted less than a minute...

So now we can go to Amarr and Jita again, and life in Khanid is, er, exactly the same as it was before.

I'm going offline for a few days as I've got a trip to the sand dunes of Danera V arranged. Since I've been based here in this system I've found out that Dan V is an unexpectedly interesting world:

- it's classed as temperate, so you can walk around outside without a pressure suit. You'll need a breathing mask if you're outside for more than half-an-hour or so as the pressure is lower than standard, but gravity is only slightly lower. The climate is even stable too as its year is 4.7 standard years long with no axial tilt. Not much changes except on a cosmic timescale that may see the large ocean sublimate away in the low pressure. At 11.2 AU, Dan V should be an ice ball, but it generates a lot of internal heat through tectonic activity associated with the tidal effects of having previously had two moons, so the average ambient temperature is only slightly lower than standard, hence the liquid water.

- there's not much in the way of vegetation because of the thin air and that tectonic activity, combined with what in the past must have been a period of bombardment from the remnants of the shattered moon that created Dan V's asteroid belt at only 90,000 km distance. So today it's mostly tundra, some mountains, large flood basalt traps and desert; with the remaining moon exerting weaker tides than before, resulting in a more benign environment. Liveable.

- here's the interesting bit: there are loads of archaeological remains spanning several thousand years. It seems that in the deep past, starting before the Dark Ages, Dan V had a human civilisation that dated from the Terran era that may have persisted on some basic level up until the time of the Reclaiming. Unearthed temples, relics and other artefacts have been found on Dan V that indicate the planet was known as 'Al-Kaukab' for a long time; that the Danera primary was, during the same period, known as 'Said al-Akbiyah' and that the two nebulae visible from the planet - the Cauldron and the Vapor Sea - were called 'Al-Khiba' and 'Al-Udhi'.

Fast-forward a couple of thousand years and the star was known as 'Dhanab al-Asad', by which time the population had almost died out. Then sometime around the arrival of the Amarr, the name 'Danera' appears for the first time and the standardised 'Danera V' designation sticks.

Today, it's a relatively unspoiled and underpopulated world that is away from a main trade route and home to various strict religious retreats and temples, amid small low-rise cities that are a product of the tech and personnel pipeline to the three Khanid Navy facilities elsewhere in-system. If I was describing Dan V in a tourist brochure I'd say it was a 'compelling fusion of ancient architecture and modern high-tech amenities - cave dwellings with holovids".

Time to go planetside and breath some real, albeit rarified air instead of oxygenated capsule fluid. Here's where I'll be for a few days - I'll send you a holopostcard:

In fact if the ongoing thing with the Drifter faction, the Sleepers and the Jove keeps on escalating, Dan V will be the perfect place to ride it out for a few years.

May you live in interesting times...

The Corporate Dividend, Luminaire and the Aftermath of Operation Highlander

Outdated Host Productions [PHP1] is one of the minority of capsuleer corporations out there that pays a monthly dividend to its members. The flat tax we pay on those bounties and other transactions actually comes winging its way back to us at the end of the month, so we share the goods equally. This corporation is therefore the socialist workers' paradise that the Caldari State is supposed to be, but isn't, and never will be, despite Tibus Heth's tiresomely endless rhetoric.

My novice status also meant the dividend I received last week tripled my net worth overnight, so now I know how Heth felt when he assumed control of Caldari Constructions in a day.

I'm digressing...

This influx of cash-ola relieved me of the need to do any mining, or anything at all, for a few days. In fact I was no longer bothered about my Maller, and all those lost Ventures became mere footnotes. At the same time this was happening, the 500 IR freq crystals I had on sale in rookie land - Conoban - were selling out unexpectedly quickly with people buying batches of 50 at a time. Somebody on the alliance channel said something about 'Jita selling out of everything' at around the same time. Was that true? Was there a connection? No point in wasting time worrying about it: I did another run of crystals, then loaded up the Sigil with them and headed straight over to Conoban.

That evening in Conoban I met up with the Ni-Kunni lot again in Hedion U for a bar crawl, some substances, a bit of art & culture in the mosh pit; some fights with passing freighter crews etc. Late on, back in the quarters that I still keep in Conoban, I did that thing where you browse the markets under the influence of booze. I remembered how in an earlier time I had a thing for the Imperial Navy Slicer, resolving to get one when the Navy occasionally releases them into the private sector. According to the market interface, there was a single Slicer for sale over in the Imperial Shipment Storage place in Amdonen. It was relatively cheap, almost suspiciously so, because it was a one-off, not part of a batch as is usual with Slicers when they get retired from squadron use and come up for sale.

I hit 'Buy', then went to sleep. I dreamed of knives, of cleavers, of thin slices of meat on the butcher's slab. Slicer!

Next morning I hatched a plan. I would take the Sigil over to Imperial Shipment in Amdonen, load my new Slicer into the Sigil's hold (because as a ship-for-sale it would still be in its de-rigged and 'cold' state so it would fit easily), and take it to the trade hub in Amarr to fit it out, because whatever I wanted for the Slicer, Amarr is where I would find it.

The Imperial Family Bureau Station @ Amarr VIII/Oris - 18 hours later...

I rented a berth in the trade hub for four days and parked the Sigil. My plan: rig up and fit out the Slicer, call it Sid Vicious after a musical movement one of the Ni-Kunni lot had told me about and that I'd listened to on the way up here (Anarchy in Amarr...); then I'd leave the Sigil parked in the berth and head 'up north' for a couple of days in the Slicer, and explore some of the territory I'd glimpsed on the corporation's roam last week.

I had a good look round the Slicer when it was reassembled. The Slicer was the typical Navy-surplus ship: de-militarised by stripping certain insignia from the outside and removing classified parts from some of the internal equipment racks. I was expecting that - it's standard practice for ex-Navy stuff. Most of the ship's history and log details had either been deleted or redacted with the word classified all over it, which was annoying. I also found that the Slicer had been parked in a hangar for two years as a reserve ship before being sold off in Amdonen, and that its previous name was The Pious Wrath of Lord Falek Grange. Typical Amarr.

When I jacked into the Slicer for the first time though, I didn't expect this:

It took another hour to clear all that disclaimer crap - layers of it. Either I'd bought a hangar queen cobbled together with a load of time-expired parts on it and flogged-off to make room for something new, or I hadn't. Time to find out:

The Sinq Laison & Essence regions in the Gallente Federation, six hours later...

This ship is quality:

 

This ship is mint:

 

This ship kicks Guristas and Serpentis arse:

 This ship looks good even in proximity to the stunning snowball world of Chainelant IX:

In fact this ship looks good in any situation, even among the garbage-infested dump in the Deltole system:

I had no idea how colourful this part of space on the far side of Domain really was. The Verge Vendor nebula is a rival for the Cauldron in my home region.

Later on...

The Luminaire System in the Gallente Federation, 21:00hrs

Note to rookies: the easiest way to find landmarks for sightseeing is by selecting 'DED Agent Site Reports' on the Star Map. This is what drew me into Gallente space and towards the Luminaire system where I planned to dock for the night. If you listened in class, you'll know that Luminaire is the ancestral home of both Gallente and Caldari. The system as a whole is under Gallente administration, with Luminaire VII (aka Caldari Prime) currently administered by Mordu's Legion after the catastrophic events of YC110-115 that reshaped New Eden's politics forever along with reshaping Caldari Prime's surface.

The five-year siege of Caldari Prime by the Heth regime's Titan Shiigeru is well documented, as is what happened to it during what the Gallente called 'Operation Highlander' in YC115. I was in my second year at Hedion U in Sehmy when it happened and I remember us all fearing a return to the - albeit brief - horrors of YC110.

Just a few short years later, the sense of precarious stalemate is expressed in Caldari Prime's status as a 'demilitarised zone', along with the typically-human tendency towards memorialising disaster, which of course is what drew me here in the first place.

There are three major sites. The 'Luminaire Graveyard' is a collection of the floating wreckage of Megathrons in a semi-synchronous orbit that produces its own eclipses.

The Caldari Monument, self-explanatory, and tolerated by the Federation presumably only because of the presence of CONCORD, is a deserted standard Caldari station accompanied by what is very obviously an Amarrian dome icon, which is an extremely bizarre diplomatic statement - openly flaunting Amarrian backing of Caldari, right here, in the spiritual capital of the Federation and over one of the most controversial planets in the entire cluster. It makes zero sense to me.

But the most disturbing 'monument' of all is the visible aftermath of Operation Highlander and the downing of the Titan Shiigeru:

I saw the vidfeeds in Sehmy; I saw it happen live just like everyone else; we all discussed in class what the physics involved in a Titan hitting a planet at orbital velocity would be - that it would be equal to an asteroid strike and an extinction-level event. When all comms on Caldari Prime went down for the hours immediately afterwards, my class were all sick with regret and shame.

We now know that the Titan split into several pieces before it hit, each still with sufficient mass to penetrate the planet's thin crust and cause massive lava pools to form that are visible from orbit to this day, along with scarring that will no doubt persist longer than any human occupation of this world.

Today, a population still attempts to forge an existence on this permanently-changed world; its only reason for staying there being ultimately about power and diplomacy. The Ni-Kunni in me, whose ancestors learned to respect the land and to live with the sparse resources of Mishi IV otherwise they'd have starved, is disgusted by what happened to Caldari Prime.

* * *

After seeing this, I needed a beer. I elected to dock for the night. This is where I realised how very real those political implications of being Amarrian in a Gallente system actually are.

Caldari Prime has several stations in orbit around it and its moons. Some of them are overtly Federation military, so they were out, because I was in a ship that could not be more Amarrian if it tried, and no Fed pod gantry jock would be able to tell the difference between Sid Vicious and a fully-commissioned Slicer, because all the differences are on the inside.

I headed for the Fed Bureau facility - harmless soft-shelled apparatchiks, accountants etc. - and docked without any problems except I swear it took a bit longer than normal to get the clearance...

I got through the indignity of unjacking from the capsule in the prep bay; I showered and dressed OK, but when I went to leave the facility the pod techs were giving me filthy looks. I was in an Imperial Navy ship and wearing a tunic with decorative Amarrian script on it. In their eyes I might as well have worn a crown.

"Aren't you a long way from home? What's one of you doing here?" one said. The pod tech moved to block my exit from the facility.

I thought there are two ways to play this. Either I explain the diplomatic process to him by smashing his face in now, or I lie my way out of this.

"Did you really fly that?" he said.  

Condescending bastard.

I walked right up to him and stood an inch from his nose:

"Get out of the way!" I shouted. "I am an emissary from Her Majesty's Trade Delegation to Luminaire and I am here on a fact-finding mission. Yes, I did fly that ship, and if any of you grunts touch it while I'm gone I'll have your balls for earrings!!"

I stared him out for five seconds, then he glanced at the other techs, moved aside and said: "Yes ma'am...".

The prep bay's door swished open, and I strode off down the corridor towards my temp quarters and started breathing again. I don't like confrontation...

Suite #262 Observation Balcony, Caldari Prime Fed Admin Info Center, 00:25hrs

I sipped a beer while checking out Sid Vicious docked in its berth nearby. The ship looks great. You can't tell from a distance that it isn't a commissioned ship anymore. Back in the lounge I was met by a giant Guristas head on the holovid. Enough to give someone nightmares, that is.

I sat down and watched the news with more beer. It had been a day of days. I've only owned the Slicer for a day and I've already had an adventure in it, and I had another three days to go before I had to get back to the Sigil in Amarr. This was like being on holiday. But seeing the Luminaire system and what it represents brought a sobering end to the day.

The damage to Caldari Prime brought to mind the second reason I became a capsuleer: I remember what it was like during that brief period in -110 when the Elder War came to Eclipticum. I remember the dropships and the bombardment by the Elder fleet that appeared in orbit over my own world. Even though, luckily, my family and I were on a part of the planet that the brief invasion didn't get to, therefore missing the worst of it, I remember the feelings of helplessness and dread that we all still felt. I swore then I would never again be stuck on a planet without the means to get off it when one of these Titans shows up and places an existential threat over the population's heads, because I know exactly what that's like.

I retired for the night and decided that Sid and I are going to get on just fine...