Let There Be Light

The Uchoshi system, The Forge, 03/10/126 

On a low-level impulse I rented some quarters in a Tash-Murkonite station in Uchoshi, in The Forge, as it was a good base for field-testing a new project: EDENCOM ships! Why all the way out here on the far side of the State? Because Jita is the best place to source these ships and their incredibly expensive components and ammo (the ammo!). The skill requirements are a different matter - only available from DED and CONCORD stations - but anyway Jita is the place so here I am. 

Ever since the class was announced during the Triglavian Invasion, I've been intrigued by the similarity between the physics of the Vorton Projector, and the divine manifestation of St. Jamyl over Mekhios at the final battle of the Elder War - namely the 'chain lightning' phenomenon witnessed when St. Jamyl brought forth God's wrath against the Elder fleet.

So after a very large investment of ISK I now have a Skybreaker and a Stormbringer, and I've been using them against Guristas installations in the northern part of The Forge. 

My God...

The power of these things...

All I have to do is target one thing to give the Projector an initial starting point, then fire it. It then chains up through the next-closest nine targets on its own - regardless of what they are - and I have no control whatsoever over where it goes. The effect is spectacular - spellbinding - exactly as it was when St. Jamyl appeared and saved the Empire.

But I'm troubled by it. Extravagant levels of destruction always does. I mean I'm still going to use it, but every time the chain instantaneously vaporises an entire complex of pirate hab modules and dock structures with their non-combatant populations, I will pray for their souls, for this is a weapon that doesn't give time to get to an escape pod. It is instant, righteous judgement. I wonder if the Consortium really knows what it's unleashed here.

Things being what they are, EDENCOM considers the Arcing Vorton Projector so secret that it only permits me to know how to use it, not how it works. An engineer told me there's a device in there somewhere that opens a dimensional portal into the heart of a star where it channels quark-gluon plasma as a power source and projects it out through the emitters. Personally I doubt that. Personally I think there is a whiff of the Drifter about it, because those emitters bear a strong resemblance to the 'prongs' on a Drifter battleship.

The tangled web of corporations involved in EDENCOM and Upwell and CONCORD and the rest means that they must be involved somewhere, somehow. 

Who do I mean?

Jovian tech!

A fleet of these things would be incredible. The Stormbringer has the shield capacity of a battleship, so I warp into a complex with it and just float there and unleash the lightning and everything melts before my neuro-linked digital eyes. So much more elegant than missiles.

I wonder if there are any real limitations to the scale of it, considering it was originally developed as a Keepstar defence system. Remember that as capsuleer I think this thing into being:

First, the chain reaction...

Then, a wave...

...of pure light...

...and pure heat.

Turns everything to dust and atoms...

Nothing is spared...

It is...

Divine...

Mekhios Graveyard at Sarum Prime

The first time I went to Amarr I bought something that happened to be residing in the Sarum Prime system, birthplace of our great Empress Jamyl I the Cloned Capsuleer (my title), who always looks slightly weary in the holoportraits I've seen of her, and who I'd love to take out on a bar crawl with my Ni-Kunni lot back in Conoban. I'm absolutely certain she'd be up for it, if I could get near enough to her to ask (at least the alleged peaceful half of her would be). An incognito Empress in a bar - what a coup that would be. The kudos I would get: hi everyone, this is Jamyl. Does she look familiar?

Jamyl's home of Sarum Prime itself is the site of the Mekhios Graveyard, available to visit and marked on the star map under DED Agent Site Reports. The Battle of Mekhios was the climactic event during the brief Elder War in YC110, when the Minmatar Elder Fleet showed up at Sarum Prime with the intention of releasing all the Minmatar slaves and doing some damage at the same time.

Unfortunately for them, Jamyl Sarum arrived - or "came back from the dead" (she had been presumed dead after the Succession Trials at least two years earlier) in an Abaddon and single-handedly laid waste to the Minmatar by using a doomsday weapon of unknown origin. Rumours still circulate that the weapon was derived from recovered Old Earth tech, far in advance of ours. The site of this final battle is memorialised and retained in orbit around Sarum Prime. It's a damn impressive sight - whole battleships ripped in two.

Of course in the eyes of pious and gullible Amarrians, Jamyl used her magical divine power as handed down to her from God. There was an Old Earth cultural figure called Arthur C. Clarke who said: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Look at what the Drifters are doing with the "Prong Drive" on their battleships. It's not magic, it's just advanced tech; but you can make people believe it's magic if they're receptive enough...

Mekhios Graveyard is all the more impressive for having the incredible Domain Nebula as a backdrop: