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…”

For Everything There Is A Season

I can tell you exactly when it happened; when the decision was finally made.

When I finally called time.

I was doing my regular freight run from [PHP1]'s heartland in Rilera, my Impel station-keeping next to a silo waiting for its contents of exotic metals to be loaded into the hold. I was passing the time: a cutting-edge playlist on the audio, multiple comms channels open, a seriously ancient Aridian literary classic on quickscan. None of this existing in physical form since I'm jacked-in.

The NEOCOM chimed (in my head again, because I'm jacked-in) with the arrival of a message from the boss. It was a sitrep, a rallying morale-booster for the troops. For me it was the fork in the road.

A signal.

[PHP1] has multiple POS silos in Rilera so I visited them all in turn, emptying them, ensuring a full hold because unused hold is wasted ISK. Quantum Leap's stately progress between POSes gave plenty of time to think about how it's been for the past year-and-a-bit. 

When I first joined [PHP1], I was horrendously inexperienced, even naive. I was recruited in unorthodox fashion, by being ganked in Tegheon by Gettosmurf, who operated on the premise of 'if they can't beat you, invite them to join you'. Later on he gave me a Daredevil frigate and asked for nothing in return.

I still have that Daredevil.

Between then and now, with Outdated Host Productions, I learned how to actually function as a capsuleer instead of how the books tell you to. I now know that I was incredibly lucky in the sense that the first independent capsuleer corporation that I joined after graduating from Hedion University was a fundamentally good one. I hear so many horror-stories of inexperienced capsuleers being robbed, shafted, exploited, ruined by badly-run outfits with criminal agendas.

I have had no bad experiences in [PHP1].

None.

Being a pacifist in a combat-focused corporation and alliance was always going to be problematic in the end though, and I can't justify it anymore. Khanid space has evolved, [PHP1] has evolved, and so have I. Our paths have diverged in what is just the normal cycle of capsuleer evolution and the way of the universe.

Somewhere between Rilera II and III, I made the call.

Time to move on.

I already know where I'm going. I've heard the signal...

So from now on the journal will be less about regional capsuleer politics and more of a return to exploration, discovery, and documenting the weird and wonderful sights of the cluster with Signal Cartel.

Here's the thing: change is constant and nothing ever stays the same. To any newly-qualified capsuleers reading this: a year from now you won't be doing the same thing that you're doing now, and it probably won't be with the same group. You won't be living in the same place because the life of a capsuleer is semi-nomadic. You won't even realise the change is happening.

I didn't know this time last year I'd ever contemplate living in the northern part of Genesis where Signal Cartel has a base. In fact I didn't even know last month.

This is how it is.

Now I've got a big move op to coordinate...

The Traumark Installation

The last time I tried to visit this place was the first time I died.

That was well over a year ago. I've died several more times since then and a lot more has changed besides, both to me and to the owners of this relic of an ostentatious past.

The Traumark Installation is in an isolated part of the Saminer system, which is at the southern extent of the Tash-Murkon region and at the end of a 'pipe' of low security space. The system is one of the southern extremities of the Amarr Empire and beyond here is nothing until the wastes of southern nullsec.

It is seriously remote.

House Tash-Murkon built the Traumark Installation ages ago as a monument to their legitimacy as a ruling family and as a visible demonstration of wealth; a self-indulgent exercise in vanity with no expense spared. Why House Tash-Murkon built it out here in Saminer though, instead of in the heart of their region where it would have been more visible, is not clear. Perhaps it was in part a form of holiday resort, a gigantic luxury villa for tens of thousands of favoured House acolytes and business partners, populated during an earlier period of overt prosperity and calm here in the Anidaza constellation, before Sansha moved in. 

Information about the facility and its exact fate is restricted, as is common with anything in the Amarr Empire that constitutes visible evidence of failure. We know the official version: the Installation had its time, its pomp and ceremony, but at some point in the past this remote part of the Tash-Murkon region was overrun by Sansha's Nation and effectively laid waste. The system was downgraded to lowsec, the Traumark Installation was evacuated; and wrecked, looted and destroyed by Sansha, leaving these massive derelict husks behind with visible evidence of conflict scarring their outer hulls. Time froze for them then. House Tash-Murkon withdrew, and orchestrated a collective forgetting.

 
On the evidence that I found when I arrived, there could still be some pockets of Sansha fanaticism hiding in there, handfuls of undead, stalking perma-dark corridors in zero-G like wraiths, never understanding what their flashbacks of a former life actually mean. On the other hand those towers probably are as dead as they look, but the handful of Sansha's Nation vessels hanging around them, waiting to prey on passing trade, at least raise the possibility of it.

The Saminer system is deep lowsec. As I said at the start of this, the last time I tried to visit the Traumark Installation, I was fresh out of Hedion University and totally clueless, doing everything by the book. I didn't even get to Saminer; I got ganked in the Sagain system next door by a frothing, foaming-at-the-mouth boostered-up scumbag in a Gnosis, who sent me back to Conoban by the pod express, where Taltha regenerated me. For bringing me to Taltha, I should probably thank him.

Over a year has passed since then. I never tried to return to the Traumark Installation during that period, but since I moved most of my personal affairs to Tash-Murkon Prime, the Traumark Installation has appeared on my radar again and its proximity - six jumps - has taunted me as a piece of unfinished business.

This time I used my Astero, which was built for this sort of op (lowsec tourism). The principal risk in Saminer now is not Sansha, but nullsec capsuleers that use the system to bring jump freighters into Empire space by the backdoor. On this occasion though, Saminer was deserted apart from me and those Sansha ships, to which I was invisible and undetectable. 

On seeing it now, for the first time, I understood how massive the Traumark Installation really is. It actually dwarfs anything in the Throne Worlds. Three full-sized stations, totally inert, still retaining bits of their gold armour plate, long-since dulled by the sleet of cosmic radiation and tarnished by the arrow of time. Fragments of shattered metal drift around it as if gravitationally-bound to this edifice to thwarted ambition. You really wonder what it might have become if Sansha hadn't purged its soul forever.

As usual with places like this, I departed with more questions than I'd had when I arrived, which is the torment of every explorer. If only I could dock, unjack, suit-up and go inside that huge central dome where it would be as cold as the surrounding vacuum.

As cold as Sansha's heart.

Who the hell knows what relics are left inside there.

Or horrors...

A thought occurred to me while I was speeding back to Tash-Murkon Prime: it is timely that I returned to Saminer and finally got a look at this epic ruin, with its spellbinding backdrop of the Domain Nebula - the heart of the Empire - because later this year, Empress-elect Catiz Tash-Murkon will ascend the Throne of Amarr and all of what lies within (and without) that nebula will be hers. Perhaps she will look favourably upon this forsaken relic of her family's past and restore it.

This Is Your Nightmare Scenario

Long story/short version: our Citadel in Ashmarir was attacked again, this time by a combination of CVA and Volition Cult and some other stragglers/bit-part players whose names are basically irrelevant, because they're all singing from the same hymnsheet that never ends.

CVA/Volition's fleet was much larger than last time, and their tactics included positioning some of it on the Ashmarir - Claini stargate in an attempt to intercept us lot as we were inbound from Gehi. It was a disturbing sight:

This abomination is a fleet of Nightmares. Hideous ex-Sansha's Nation battleships, designed to instil horror in the onlooker and normally crewed - although unlikely in this case - by Kuvakei's minions whose lifestyle makes Amarrian slaves appear spontaneous and unpredictable. This fleet will have been crewed by capsuleers and God-knows what else. It's an indication of how far removed from baseline some capsuleers must be.

Twice I saw neutral vessels arrive in-system through the stargate and be confronted with this situation. I empathised with those ships' crews, because there are gate camps and there is blatant overkill. This is why I have no future in piracy.

The worst bit was witnessing this obscenity depart the stargate en-masse, the entire fleet aligning simultaneously with millisecond precision, as if the ships were not even manned; as if they were relentless automata controlled by a hive mind with the patience of geology:

This sort of thing is liable to turn one religious again. I must be cleansed of this sight. Does anyone know what the plural noun for Nightmares is?

Party in Ashmarir: Darwinism vs CVA

Curatores Veritatis Alliance, well-known Amarr loyalists and self-styled Gatekeepers of Providence, came out of nowhere this week and attacked our new Citadel in the Ashmarir system.

This wasn't all we've had to put up with this week, what with the ongoing personal vendetta of Musashibou Benkei - the Renegade of Khanid - and his ex-Bergmann/ex-Darwinism followers that all have the attention spans of children.

Politics...

Back on topic: Ashmarir is one of the gateway systems to the soon-to-be-established Independent Empyrean Republic of Khanidistan. It is at the 'east' end of Khanid Lowsec and is otherwise an unremarkable system with no mainstream stations, three uninhabited terrestrials (uninhabited as far as can be determined, although you can never rule out uncharted pockets of madness, survivalism, religious extremism and hermitry), and token capsuleer industry based around a handful of resource-poor moons.

Ashmarir is not that big a deal, or at least it wasn't until we put our Citadel there.

Earlier this week, a CVA fleet manifested in Ashmarir and attacked our Citadel. We left them to it because of the Citadel's ability to withstand an initial assault. CVA made their statement and left.

We had 24 hours to prepare for their return.

When they returned, we were ready in ways we've never been before. In other words, we put some thought into it instead of winging it. The ultra-reliable Lowsechnaya Sholupen also showed up to assist us on the premise of any excuse for a party.

We were outnumbered at least 2-1 by CVA , but we still repelled them because we had Dreads and they didn't. Check out the cam drone stills and telemetry below.

FACE-OFF!

 

IT BEGINS!

APOSTLES!

[DRWIN] & [LSH] KICKS [CVA] ASS!!

CVA WITHDRAWS!

SALVAGE OPERATION AFTERWARDS

I hate to gloat, but we did in fact cane CVA and force them to withdraw.

We won.

Noteworthy: Lowsechnaya deployed some examples of the new Apostle-class Force Auxiliary ship - the new paradigm in capital starship combat. I never saw one in the flesh before so I never appreciated how damned big they are. I mention the Apostle because the Imperial Fleet's naval architects went to the trouble of designing the Apostle with armour that depicts a stylized mural of the 'Martyrdom Of Empress Jamyl At Safizon by the Drifters'.

A design statement like that is only ever about propaganda rather than operational requirement, so there is intense irony here in that we used Apostles against an Amarr loyalist alliance. Few other capsuleers involved in this skirmish would have given this issue a moment's consideration, but I look for stuff like this, which is why the idea of CVA's motivation for this attack was, to use a Ni-Kunni idiom, filling my head with sand.

As Darwinism's media & PR rep, I thought about asking them. I fired off some comms; as and when I get a response from them, I'll update this post. I'm not holding my breath though...

Until then, it's Darwinism 1 - CVA 0.

* * * 

[PHP1] is recruiting! Seriously, we're in a bit of a golden age at the moment and are experiencing a recruitment surge. Not just that, I woke up today and found out that [FCON] are our allies. When did that happen??

Blessed Darwinism's Reclaiming of Querious Begins

Just a short one today.

Below is a segment of flight data recorder holo featuring His Eminence Sul Glass, Bishop of the Seevadin Constellation and our own Amarrian minister capsuleer (whom nevertheless has a Sec Status of -8.4...), delivering a prayer to inspire and motivate Darwinism's intrepid capsuleers during their recent skirmish in Querious against the defunct Phoebe Freeport Republic and other godless heathens. Even the most pious of the Amarr orthodoxy in the Theology Council will be impressed by this:


Sidebar: I'm concerned about His Eminence, because his security status indicates a personal interpretation of Amarrian Scripture that is tantamount to extremism or even doctrinal schism. I say the Theology Council will be impressed, but I actually wonder if the Council really is fully aware of what he's doing?

Size Matters And Don't Ever Forget It

"That's no moon, that's a space station"

Unknown - Jovian Historical Codex

I'm content to play a peripheral role in Darwinism's ambitions for political autonomy in Khanid. However the ongoing incongruity of being a pacifist in an alliance whose principal objective is piracy is a bit problematic. I'm an artist, not a warrior. It will have been noted that I don't do criminality (although there is a slippery slope - more on that anon), but it's not like I do nothing; for example this journal is Darwinism's principal media outlet, plus there are the freight runs I participate in that generate most of [PHP1]'s income - although at the time of this writing that's on hold as we're being 'wardecced' again because PIRAT's clock-face mentality means the hands of their 'clock' are once again pointing at us (a stopped clock is right twice per day). Yesterday, previous seasonal antagonists Marmite Collective even offered to fight the 'deccers on our behalf. What the hell is that all about??

I'm also developing [PHP1]'s trading policy in the Tash-Murkon region, and it seems to be working better than I expected. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's remarkable how much more vibrant and active the region is in contrast to Khanid, which, at least from the capsuleer's perspective, is economically moribund and stagnant. Worryingly so in fact.

It's such a radical difference that I'm in the process of shifting most of my personal interests from the chilled out backwater of Danera to Tash-Murkon Prime. I just can't ignore the possibilities therein any longer. This is the fork in the road I was on about last time. The fact that the incoming Empress is also from T-M  is just a coincidence (no it isn't, not really, I just want some of Catiz's profit motive to rub off on me).

I digress again...

In other news (Ape Daily News: it's a thing now), we've built at least two of Upwell Corporation's new Citadels right here in Khanid. One of them is orbiting a terrestrial world deep within the Khanid interior where the renegade Musashibou Benkei will never find it. What a sight this thing must be from the planet's surface:

Our other Citadel is in a much more prominent location and was ceremonially visited last week by another Avatar that I didn't even know we had. Note to self: keep in touch with leadership more often - get them to send me stuff etc.. The Avatar belongs to [DRWIN] newcomers Local Spike:

So there are at least two Khanid Titans and two Citadels here. This means we've got at least as many Citadels as Lowsechnaya - I've seen two of theirs in Aridia - and because these things are appearing all over the place then it means one's corporation is nothing unless one has one (CE are you reading this?). The fact that the thing is brand new and is so big that vast tracts of its interior will as yet go unused and consequently you could walk for kilometres without seeing anyone else, is irrelevant. It's worth having one just to see the magic tethering beam work. It reaches out and grabs you as if to rescue you from the bleak indifference of the void.

But only if you're on our side...

[PHP1] is recruiting!