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..?

No Sleep 'Til Syndicate

The Tactical Operations Centre of Astrahus-Class Citadel 'LUMEN Cathedral of Syndicate', the XS-XAY system, Intaki Syndicate - 01:00 NEST

As may be apparent already, I'm spending more time in the Syndicate lately. In fact as I type this into my datapad, I'm pulling a shift as duty capsuleer-in-command of the citadel's defensive arsenal. Evening prayers were observed before I signed in, and I have another three hours or so in the chair here. Since it's quiet outside - and at this hour nothing is likely to happen - I'm running simulations, readiness checks and inventory assessments on the weapons with the other personnel here, while intermittently monitoring the intel channel for passing traffic and reading some news feeds, with an edition of Aridia Tonight playing on a holovid in the background. I enjoy these quiet contemplative periods that are as enriching at the helm of a heavy weapons battery as they are in my quarters or in chapel.

Such awesome power that God has given me, from 22:00 to 04:00.

* * *

Syndicate is an interesting place. Cosmopolitan doesn't even begin to describe it. There is a lazy trope in circulation which asserts the Syndicate is a 'wretched hive of scum and villainy'. As trite clichés go it is as bad as asserting that 'all Amarrians are slavers'.

It's there if you want it, of course. This is null-security space. But in I-RED's 'pocket' there appears to be a cordial relationship between I-RED and the various Intaki Syndicate operations and we all get along and do business and repel undesirables wherever they are found. At our base in the Cathedral of Syndicate in XS-XAY, we are free to practice our faith as if we were anywhere within the Empire, and we are free to exert God's will on His behalf on anyone passing through the area who deserves it, and life is generally pleasant. A homeostasis of trade exists here. No big power grabs, no wars. Almost self-policing in a way. 

One's word seems to mean more here. Problems get sorted out on their own. 

Syndicate is also close to the Cloud Ring Nebula. It is to me the most distinctive and aesthetically pleasing of all of New Eden's nebulae. I first saw it for real during my first ever 'roam' into the 'CalGal' warzone as a novice capsuleer when I first joined Outdated Host Productions. No book, holo, immersion sim or anything like that can compare with seeing the real thing through cam drones and the image-intensifying algorithms of a capsule.**

It was first suspected to be a supernova remnant by the Intaki astronomer Alnadil Jouber who also theorised that the supernova had produced gravity waves that had destabilised the EVE Gate. This theory is no longer considered plausible as the nebula's rate of expansion proves it to be ancient. Besides, if it was a related event then there would be documentation of the supernova somewhere in the 'fossil record' that comprises the impenetrable and inscrutable jigsaw puzzle of incomplete paleoknowledge that still exists from before the Dark Ages. Somebody, something would have remembered it. I've spent enough time in Relic Sites to be aware of how much random disparate information still floats out there concerning the period.

I tend to transit between the Cathedral and the trade hub in the Dodixie system a couple of times per month on supply runs. Mostly in my faithful Blockade Runner Motorhead, sometimes in a shuttle. Flying back from Dodixie and the Fed means I have the Cloud Ring on the nose, guiding the way, like a pole star, like a Guiding Light - His Light and His Will, no less. It is no wonder it is starting to feel like a second home.

Syndicate, with its Intaki 'city state' stations and its greater capsuleer influence, is what the Fed could have been if it wasn't for the Fed itself.

Solitude, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. They say the new stargate has ruined it...

 **A nebula is normally so faint that you would barely see Cloud Ring (or any of them) with the naked eye even from right inside it. It is truly a gift to be a capsuleer.

Shadow Serpentis Titan Encounter

 

The Syndicate Region - 10/20/123 15:10 hrs

LUMEN has deployed to Syndicate for Operation Oriflamme Threshold: a series of exercises aimed at asserting Amarrian influence in the region against both the Serpentis Corporation and the Fed; and to demonstrate our ongoing support of our allies in the Intaki Business Logistics Union [I-BLU] and the Ishuk-Raata Enforcement Directive [I-RED], who hold significant interests in Syndicate under the 'SynCo' umbrella.

All week we have operated fleets against intruders into SynCo's territory, and against Serpentis ships, eliminating whole squadrons of them, bases, flotillas, 'Forsaken Hubs' with fleets of battleships, probably killing tens of thousands of Serpentis personnel. I have no problem with this as it is God's will that brings us to Syndicate to perform this Inquisition.

Earlier today I was patrolling a few of the asteroid belts in Empress of Amarr in one particular system and generating a considerable amount of Serpentis salvage.

Then this thing showed up:

I couldn't believe it: an actual straight-up Shadow Serpentis Titan.

It was spellbinding. I had just a few seconds to break that spell it was holding over me and engage my cloaking device before it would inevitably blow my ship away.

I sent cam drones over to it. I mean, my God, look at the size of it.

It just sat there. 

Waiting. 

Not even that. 

It just sat there, because capital ships are more like political weapons than actual military weapons. Something about the concept of the 'fleet-in-being' - namely that big ships just have to exist; that you don't have to actually do anything with them in order to force your enemies to respond.

It's the implication of them.

Perhaps our work in the region over the last few days had been registered by the Serpentis Corporation and this was their response. A message, if you will. 

Perhaps this was their response to me.

In that case, I am honoured that they sent the biggest ship they've got.

I watched it for a while, then requested advice from leadership on the comms channels. The bounty on it was 240 million ISK.

The considered opinion was get the hell out of there now... 

Thirteen Shots of Exploding POCO Gantries

 Operation Divine Order

It has become a thing in New Eden where some corporations looking to wage economic warfare engage in a somewhat passive-aggressive tactic of blockading planets and impeding normal trade with them by establishing POCO installation gantries - the temporary structures that are used as a base from which a full-sized POCO structure is built - around a planet and leaving them there: not upgrading them, not building a full POCO out of it, just leaving the empty gantry in orbit around the planet; so anybody running a planetary interaction system and indeed any other form of trade at all to and from the planet is basically blocked. Impeded. Throttled.

Our friends and allies in PIE Inc. (having recently joined LUMEN - you can read the press release here) organised a campaign to eliminate such a blockade in the Zemont constellation, a blockade established by a single-member capsuleer front corporation that is so insignificant I will not deign to name it. Whoever is behind it though, I do not know. But somebody is.

The order was simple: bring maximum firepower. I brought my Legion, Empress of Amarr. 

The results were spectacular:

The operation is ongoing as of the time of this writing. Our mission is to purge Holy Amarr territory of this nuisance. 

It won't take long...

Amarr Victor!

Polaris Legatus Frigate

 

Another of LUMEN's events commemorating Foundation Day YC123 was Brother Theodosius Savnar's tour of several of the Empire's most important in-space landmarks. The first tour he ran was so successful he ran a second tour later the same day, which I was honoured to join.

The tour was not limited to LUMEN members; it was publicised in advance on various media outlets as one of the many events commemorating Foundation Day, and it was open to any capsuleers who wished to join us (within reason...). It was very noteworthy then that our 'tourist' fleet was joined by Thalhack Dalhar, a member of the Interstellar Services Department, in nothing less than a Polaris Legatus Frigate - the allegedly-indestructible Jovian design that is one of the rarest sights in New Eden, especially now that Jove space is inaccessible and the Directorate has apparently ceased to exist in any meaningful form.

This is the first time I've ever seen one of these ships, ever. 

I may never see one ever again...

Fleet of Charons

 Back when I variously and at different times lived in Khanid and Genesis, a fleet of freighters was a rare sight. Now, living in a highsec 'pipe'** system, I see this sort of thing all the time, although it's no less spectacular for it:

**This pipe being what became, after the Triglavian Invasion and their 'Final Liminality' event, the new principal artery between Amarr and Jita that was for a time called the 'Silk Road' after some obscure and ancient cultural reference that is lost on me.

Sarum Tormentor

Somewhere in the warzone and on the Republic side of the border, in a system that is nevertheless under Amarr control:

Amarr Victor!