The Quest To Find Raxxla

[simulacrae]

May I suggest reading today's GalNet. The Omphalos is going to be important in a very big way here shortly. Rhea was Cronus' wife.

Someone had fun with Sophia Trevino

Sophia - wisdom

Trevino - “ The surname Trevino is derived from the Spanish word “treviño,” which has its roots in the Latin word “trivium,” meaning “meeting of three ways” or “crossroads.” This linguistic connection suggests an association with a geographical location where three roads converge.”

So earthquakes at Rhea with a reporter named - wisdom of the crossroads ….. They trying to tell us something?

Edit: Also Len Kennelly ….

Len short for Leonard? Lion hearted?

Kennelly - “The original Gaelic form of the name Kennelly is O Cinnfhaolaidh, which is derived from "ceann," which means "head," and "faol," which means "wolf."”

Ya i get a kick out of their name choices

 

[Louis Calvert]

It is hugely suspicious that there just so happened to be an unprecedented earthquake on the homeworld of the incoming president... but...

In the year 3310 where we can manipulate the fabric of reality to travel at superluminal velocity, terraform planets, and have recently fought off an alien invasion, I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible to make an Earthquake device. I assume that at the very least, flying a ship at high Supercruise with the safeties off directly into a planet would cause the devastation we're seeing on Rhea 3 (you wouldn't see it happen, since it's travelling faster-than-light). Especially as Hudson is the military favourite and they blew up a ship back when Jasmina Halsey wanted to cut military budgets. Winters has announced governmental reforms that are similar to the ones Halsey wanted to introduce.

Consider how this event, if you believe it's Raxxla-related, fits with anything else we know about Raxxla:

• How does an Earthquake on Rhea 3 fit with anything in the Codex?
• Is there any previous lore about natural disasters that might be suspiciously linked?
• Any previous lore about Rhea 3 or the Rhea system that might be linked?

Non-Raxxla explanation for this:
I see you examining names and seeing the crossroads reference, and I think: This is a crossroads for the Federation: one path leads down Hudson being a permanent dictator, and another road leads towards the dismantling of the military-state and opening of federal democracy.

I see the Rhea reference and I think: In Greek mythology Rhea functioned as the pivot point in Cronus' total domination, by subverting his ambitions and allowing Zeus to eventually defeat Cronus and establish a new order. The narrative mirroring here could easily be that Winters (Rhea) is challenging Hudson (Cronus) for the future of the Federation - symbolically.

The connection between the Federation and Greek Gods is also vaguely established because the Greek gods live on Mount Olympus. Mars (Federal HQ) has the volcano Olympus Mons.

Not saying any of this is correct, but just that there's non-Raxxla related explanations that fit too so, I feel like if it's Raxxla-related there needs to be a connection to what little we do know from the Codex and lore.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Someone had fun with Sophia Trevino

Sophia - wisdom

Trevino - “ The surname Trevino is derived from the Spanish word “treviño,” which has its roots in the Latin word “trivium,” meaning “meeting of three ways” or “crossroads.” This linguistic connection suggests an association with a geographical location where three roads converge.”

So earthquakes at Rhea with a reporter named - wisdom of the crossroads ….. They trying to tell us something?

Edit: Also Len Kennelly ….

Len short for Leonard? Lion hearted?

Kennelly - “The original Gaelic form of the name Kennelly is O Cinnfhaolaidh, which is derived from "ceann," which means "head," and "faol," which means "wolf."”

Ya i get a kick out of their name choices

Mmm. Could be a Raxxla clue. I'm no longer reading Galnet but I've already pointed out that "trivium/trivia" (i.e. three-way crossroads) is pertinent. From my notes:

Hecate: three-faced goddess of crossroads & boundaries (Raxxla's logo asterisk!), key holder of gateways, rulership over earth, sea, and sky, as well as a more universal role as Saviour, Mother of Angels and the Cosmic World Soul, protector of travel and of the crossroads (“trivia” - "three ways"), realms outside or beyond the world of the living. Chthonic and nocturnal character led to her transformation into a goddess heavily associated with witchcraft, witches, magic, and sorcery (whisperer in wktchspace?). Hecate was the muse of all true poetry, the "original" and most predominant ancient Triple Moon Goddess (maiden/mother/crone, crescent moon/full moon/ dark moon, Lucina/Diana/ Hecate, realms of heavens/earth/underworld). Some say that Lucina is the goddess of birth, Diana of growth, and Hecate of death. Diana triformis: Diana, Luna (or Selene), and Hecate? In Lucan's work (LUC. B.C. 6:700-01), the witches speak of “Persephone, who is the third and lowest aspect of our goddess Hecate". Graves explained, "As Goddess of the Underworld she was concerned with Birth, Procreation and Death. As Goddess of the Earth she was concerned with the three seasons of Spring, Summer and Winter: she animated trees and plants and ruled all living creatures. As Goddess of the Sky she was the Moon, in her three phases of New Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Moon...(i.e. Luna- Jewel on brow of Mother (Gaia) of galaxies). As the New Moon or Spring she was a girl; as the Full Moon or Summer she was woman; as the Old Moon or Winter she was hag." Graves said the triad to be Kore, Persephone and Hecate with Demeter the general name of the goddess
- in-game systems Triviatii, Hecate ?

Trivium links to Hecate, which could be the answer toevery line of The Toast, and is pertinent to key/lock (in a door) from the old E/F TDW-related mission.

Edit. I spent some time exploring in & around Hecate- IIRC the megaship there holds the permit ("key"?) To the adjacent system where I also searched. But long before that in my "Raxxla in Sol" hypothesis days I searched Rhea -see the Cronos/Rhea/Zeus/Omphalos stone ancient Greek myth.

Edit2: mm, so there's a system named Rhea? And it's not far from Sol! Wasn't aware! And Felicia Winters hailed from there? Mmm, methinks that system might be worth a search!

Edit3: according to Wikipedia in an obscure temple frieze Hecate assisted Rhea in saving Zeus from being eaten by his father Cronus. The frieze shows Hecate presenting to Cronus the swaddled stone (i.e. the Omphalos)

 

[Bushido Brown]

Upper left corner of the image of the tattoo - can anyone identify this symbol?

View attachment 383589

Artist's signature if I had to guess, but it might be more? Is that a common thing for tattoos like that?

 

[Han_Zen]

This morning I did a SC from Tionisla astroid belt targeting the Fortuna system, but at 0.1 to 0.4 Ly's I didn't find anything.
.

I went for Alpha Cygni. I think it has a connection to the old words. It aligns almost perfectly with the Zaonce - Riedquat line and lies 1489 ly (rearranged 1984) from Tionisla.
The old worlds are very deliberately placed. Lave has a Right ascension: 13h 37m. 1337 is LEET (leet speak for Elite). The systems are also placed to align the original galaxy map perfectly with the current grid. Up on the old map is coreward.

I think the systems might be a map or a compass or something?

Haven't found anything 0.1 ly out yet.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

So many clues are so non-leading to anywhere and so far from any connection to anything else that they leave you spending so much time running around to dead ends while others were gaining $ to buy better ships and find more ELW's . It doesn't take long before people start to say to themselves ' why am I wasting all this time with seemingly endless disconnected clues while everyone else is gaining, $, system discoveries, and rank increases.

The other thing is that the game world is absolutely huge - 20,000 systems in the bubble, for example. So I tend to play fairly "sub-optimally", hop around, see the sights, go from one system to the next rather than stick on the same A-B route forever. I think in all my jumping around visiting the three superpowers and lots of places in between I found very little of obvious interest in the "tinfoil" sense (though of course I was enjoying myself):
- a custom mission template or two at Synteini (this was way back in 1.x, might not have been there exactly) related to Torval's slave-trading operations
- a few lucky finds of rare good generation (beyond the ones which engineer unlocks point you at)
- probably a bunch of other things I didn't even consider significant at the time and have since long forgotten

Sure, multiplied up by several thousand players more things than that got spotted and various groups did aim to systematically document them. But I think this is the first time in several years I've mentioned that Synteini mission on the forums - it was a nice detail, it was apparently just flavour text and the mission itself was just another courier mission, obviously I didn't take a screenshot or anything because "busy playing the game" so I can't even remember now if it was for or against Torval in terms of flavour.

So it's not just "everyone was min-maxing" - some of us were playing too casually to consider "oh, this mission has slightly different flavour" as potentially being a major clue to something big that should be reported on the forums.

Also, it became obvious early on that this game is about combat and fighting. It's not really a discovery and exploration game. It just so happened to have a great stellar forge because some dudes had that in their skill set and got paid to implement it. So it created a huge galaxy of never before visited star systems that people could wander around in... aimlessly as they would soon find out.

It very much depends on what you call "exploration", I think. The original Elite was very much a space combat game in terms of "what you spent most of your in-game time doing". The trade was just there as a justification for why you were out there getting shot at, and there was no exploration at all in the stereotypical "Elite Dangerous" sense because every system was inhabited. But in the sense of you travelling across a game world larger than most players would ever systematically explore, there was certainly still exploration from a personal perspective [1].

Similarly in Elite Dangerous there's a full-scale galaxy (regardless of gameplay use) because David Braben is a big astronomy fan - but the actual designed "exploration" gameplay is mainly in or close to the bubble and doesn't resemble what the [long-range] exploration communities think of as exploration very much. (A lot of the Thargoid Titan content is what I would call exploration, for example, just not Exploration)


[1] Which I didn't appreciate so much until I started playing Oolite: it has a few minor variations from Elite - while keeping the point that travelling 100 LY from one end of a chart to the other is still a big journey - which make the exploration aspect much more obvious.

 

[Louis Calvert]

Speculative question since there's a lot of talk today about expectations:

If Raxxla were finally discovered, or even revealed by Fdev, but it isn't what the majority here had expected, would you:

a) want to know everything anyway
b) want to only know that it definitely can be found, but nothing else
c) not know of the discovery at all so that you can retain the full fun of the mystery, including the speculation over whether it even exists, for as long as possible

 

[Ian Doncaster]

One of my (unserious) theories holds that we discovered Raxxla years ago but it was so unimpressive that no-one noticed, and Frontier haven't wanted to break the news to us.
I don't have any particular expectations for what it is, and certainly don't expect it to be a game-changing discovery, so I can't really be disappointed if it isn't that.
I'd find reading about how someone did find it (and what'd they'd tried/thought of that no-one else had) to be interesting regardless.

 

[D7]

The other thing is that the game world is absolutely huge - 20,000 systems in the bubble, for example. So I tend to play fairly "sub-optimally", hop around, see the sights, go from one system to the next rather than stick on the same A-B route forever. I think in all my jumping around visiting the three superpowers and lots of places in between I found very little of obvious interest in the "tinfoil" sense (though of course I was enjoying myself):
- a custom mission template or two at Synteini (this was way back in 1.x, might not have been there exactly) related to Torval's slave-trading operations
- a few lucky finds of rare good generation (beyond the ones which engineer unlocks point you at)
- probably a bunch of other things I didn't even consider significant at the time and have since long forgotten

Sure, multiplied up by several thousand players more things than that got spotted and various groups did aim to systematically document them. But I think this is the first time in several years I've mentioned that Synteini mission on the forums - it was a nice detail, it was apparently just flavour text and the mission itself was just another courier mission, obviously I didn't take a screenshot or anything because "busy playing the game" so I can't even remember now if it was for or against Torval in terms of flavour.

So it's not just "everyone was min-maxing" - some of us were playing too casually to consider "oh, this mission has slightly different flavour" as potentially being a major clue to something big that should be reported on the forums.


It very much depends on what you call "exploration", I think. The original Elite was very much a space combat game in terms of "what you spent most of your in-game time doing". The trade was just there as a justification for why you were out there getting shot at, and there was no exploration at all in the stereotypical "Elite Dangerous" sense because every system was inhabited. But in the sense of you travelling across a game world larger than most players would ever systematically explore, there was certainly still exploration from a personal perspective [1].

Similarly in Elite Dangerous there's a full-scale galaxy (regardless of gameplay use) because David Braben is a big astronomy fan - but the actual designed "exploration" gameplay is mainly in or close to the bubble and doesn't resemble what the [long-range] exploration communities think of as exploration very much. (A lot of the Thargoid Titan content is what I would call exploration, for example, just not Exploration)


[1] Which I didn't appreciate so much until I started playing Oolite: it has a few minor variations from Elite - while keeping the point that travelling 100 LY from one end of a chart to the other is still a big journey - which make the exploration aspect much more obvious.

I appreciate your perspective - sorry if I was a little a bit of a rag the other day. I don't know how or why I got into that mode.

When I first started playing the game I stayed in the bubble only long enough to do the grind and get some good ships. I soon after left it years ago because I couldn't land at a star and SC to the planets without getting interdicted over and over and over. I soon decided that doing missions or carrying cargo meant constant interdiction's and sometimes combat just to solve puzzles - which annoyed me, and frankly puzzled me. So I have spent years exploring mostly outward systems at all ends of the galaxy. Pretty much out of shear boredom I recently came back from my main stay (a triple earth-like system I discovered) which was 60,000 LY from Lave because I saw the Codex and decided I would try to find the keys to getting a DW contact.

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

Consider how this event, if you believe it's Raxxla-related, fits with anything else we know about Raxxla:

• How does an Earthquake on Rhea 3 fit with anything in the Codex?
• Is there any previous lore about natural disasters that might be suspiciously linked?
• Any previous lore about Rhea 3 or the Rhea system that might be linked?

1: Omphalos Rift in connection to TDW
2: Mythology: Rhea is Cronus' wife. Cronus fearful his children will take over attempted to swallow them. He is tricked into swallowing the Omphalos Stone.
3: There are notable cases of orbital bombardment. Anlave being a key example. I am not sold on this was natural. The orbital bombardment bit is covered by both Guardian codex entries and Guardian Data logs. Further, all 3 Earth-like are less than Earth's mass with a gravity of ~0.7g and atmospheric pressure of ~1.25 - 1.36 atmospheres. In other words, literally perfect for Guardians. The Guardians notably were known for shielded cities to guard against this eventuality. Also, per Peregrina and the planet Undine (see Undine mythology) the children of Guardians look human but can shapeshift at whim taking any human form they need. The Undines are what the siren and mermaid stories are based upon. Sirens of the deepest void...

So, to review, the Titans, though humanity calls them Thargoids appears to potentially be the traditional branch of that civilization. Humans apparently got their technology from the progressive branch that live amongst us. Anyway, those giant portals on the Titans may be the traditional branch version of the Omphalos Rift. Cracking a Titan (if it were to work - a big if) may grant humanity something like Omphalos Rift. I am not even sure the Thargoids as envisioned by humans even exist. I suspect the Guardian/Thargoid War was the result of some of the fellows being left behind and developing separate from the main group for centuries or millennia (covered in Thargoid and Guardian codexes). In short, humans may have misinterpreted the history here (see what happens to species when a population is separated long-term per Charles Darwin). This grew into what was later known Guardian Civil Wars. In reality, we are dealing with a species at war with itself for many millions of years.

I suppose it is kind of fitting our base of operations is Darwin Research Facility asteroid base.

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

The connection between the Federation and Greek Gods is also vaguely established because the Greek gods live on Mount Olympus. Mars (Federal HQ) has the volcano Olympus Mons.

The capital of the Federation on Mars is Olympic Village.

 

[marx]

Similarly in Elite Dangerous there's a full-scale galaxy (regardless of gameplay use) because David Braben is a big astronomy fan - but the actual designed "exploration" gameplay is mainly in or close to the bubble and doesn't resemble what the [long-range] exploration communities think of as exploration very much. (A lot of the Thargoid Titan content is what I would call exploration, for example, just not Exploration)

Depends on the personal definition, of course: there isn't really a "standard" definition of exploration in real life anyway. However, in ED, a lot of the enduring allure of exploration gameplay was I believe unintended by the original game designers, and never really examined much by the developers either. (Hence the common complaint that they don't understand exploration.) These would be:
1. The feeling and experience of isolation and solitude, and there's also the aspect of journeying together with a group of people: the developers by their own admission didn't expect people to head far for long amounts of time (and were surprised when people made it to Sagittarius A* in the gamma headstart already)
2. The possibility of finding things nobody expected to exist, not even the developers: the unintended outliers made by the Stellar Forge
3. Even if it's something you knew could exist, you wanted one of your own: "yeah, I know there are ringed Earth-like worlds, but I want to find my ringed Earth-like world". (Don't forget that the First Discovery tags were added to the game after launch.)
4. Lots and lots of photos (again, the developers added the camera tools reactively), and of course...
5. "Showing off my ship in front of a cool thing" (by the way, David Braben said he flies an Asp Explorer in ED)
6. The sights of the galaxy itself. How does it look from the opposite edge? From the center? From above, or below?

Other than the very last one, I don't think they were designed intentionally - they certainly don't look that way. These above either can't be done by sitting in the bubble(s), or can't be done nearly as well as out in the galaxy. But to me at least, it looked like the game was released with a somewhat-rushed Forge and entirely barebones exploration gameplay mechanics (there was time pressure, after all, and this wasn't core gameplay), and the developers were actually quite surprised that so many people engaged already with what was essentially a placeholder to be fleshed out later. Which is of course not what they should have expected. After all, give folks a huge galaxy, which no other game at the time did, and the means to traverse it and to stay out there for long (possibly indefinitely, even), and it should come as absolutely no surprise when some people do exactly that.

Back to motivations a bit: there's also that in the bubble, you always know what you can expect to come across. The one exception to that is whenever developers silently add something new without any hints to it before, but well, that's all over the news five minutes after its discovery, and it's pretty much guaranteed to be Thargoid content anyway. Don't get me wrong, that's fine, and I do like that they aren't an entirely clichéd species... but Thargoid content isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Of course, the things I wrote above aren't everyone's cup of tea either. Most people tend not to put up with the monotony of interstellar travel in ED ("JJJJJJJJ"), or with the grinding of the FSS, or how many systems you need to discover to find rare stuff.
Meanwhile, there are hand-authored puzzles to discover and solve. Whether that's exploration is a matter of personal opinion, but it certainly is intended gameplay. Said puzzles include all the Thargoid and Guardian content, and of course Raxxla. Maybe it was originally just a fun reference in ED at launch, but later on, it certainly became something people were meant to be curious about.


So, finally back to the topic (sorry ): if Raxxla ever gets discovered - or hey, maybe it already has, but the few people who did it so far have all decided to keep it secret from everyone else - and publicly known, then the people who'll care about the discovery will generally be the ones whose gameplay would be affected by it. That of course includes the people whose gameplay is the puzzle solving of Raxxla. Otherwise, to the others, it'll be a curiosity.

 

[D7]

I tried the 0.1 Ly (actually 0.1 to 0.14) SC from the Tionisla sun pointed towards Fortuna, Tyche, Moirai, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropso, Fates, and Wyrd. I also targeted Fortuna from 1/2 way between the Tioinsla Sun and the first planet.

None of these turned up Rafe Zetters Anaconda / home.

I have a few more to try but, am starting to think it's either not there or The Lady of Fate is not a clue for a marker. Time to think more like Rafe than like Alex?

 

[Planewalker]

View attachment 382151View attachment 382152

After some deliberation i have decided that i think the image is that of the "Guardian Galaxy", here depicted on the left.
(the right one being the "Thargoid Galaxy" as evidenced by the markings found on barnacles)

Here's the thing: On the launcher are those very galaxies above, and as literal some clues are in the game, i am absolutely certain that is no coincidence.


What implications or significance there is, i have no idea. I do know that the two galaxies have grown in size over the years.
(they were barely visible in the beginning, and much less pronounced)


Raxxla is in the launcher.

 

[D7]

View attachment 384010

After some deliberation i have decided that i think the image is that of the "Guardian Galaxy", here depicted on the left.
(the right one being the "Thargoid Galaxy" as evidenced by the markings found on barnacles)
View attachment 384005


Here's the thing: On the launcher are those very galaxies above, and as literal some clues are in the game, i am absolutely certain that is no coincidence.


What implications or significance there is, i have no idea. I do know that the two galaxies have grown in size over the years.
(they were barely visible in the beginning, and much less pronounced)


Raxxla is in the launcher.

Very interesting consideration. Since it is found in the hyperspace jump it makes me wonder if that is a clue that you target it with a jump. That is to say, it's in a line from a star system (for example Sol) to the Guardian Galaxy. It is visible right in the Gal Map, but from manipulating the Gal Map it is very difficult to assess what direction it is in... from say Sol.

However, it is also visible in live in-game play. From in-game play, it is very easy to set a vector straight towards it. Since it is visible in-game, by guess-selecting star systems you can go in and see if the guess-selection target is pointing straight at the Guardian Galaxy.... Very interesting.

 

[Darrack]

Very interesting consideration. Since it is found in the hyperspace jump it makes me wonder if that is a clue that you target it with a jump. That is to say, it's in a line from a star system (for example Sol) to the Guardian Galaxy. It is visible right in the Gal Map, but from manipulating the Gal Map it is very difficult to assess what direction it is in... from say Sol.

However, it is also visible in live in-game play. From in-game play, it is very easy to set a vector straight towards it. Since it is visible in-game, by guess-selecting star systems you can go in and see if the guess-selection target is pointing straight at the Guardian Galaxy.... Very interesting.

View attachment 384030

All those systems are not permit locked for nothing, the answer is in there.

O7

 

[Louis Calvert]

After some deliberation i have decided that i think the image is that of ...

Very interesting consideration. Since it is found in the hyperspace jump ...

What if there's more in the witchspace spectrogram.

 

[D7]

All those systems are not permit locked for nothing, the answer is in there.

O7

I would say the "answer" is what clues outside get you in those systems. Once inside, you're already on your way.

 

[D7]

Very interesting consideration. Since it is found in the hyperspace jump it makes me wonder if that is a clue that you target it with a jump. That is to say, it's in a line from a star system (for example Sol) to the Guardian Galaxy. It is visible right in the Gal Map, but from manipulating the Gal Map it is very difficult to assess what direction it is in... from say Sol.

However, it is also visible in live in-game play. From in-game play, it is very easy to set a vector straight towards it. Since it is visible in-game, by guess-selecting star systems you can go in and see if the guess-selection target is pointing straight at the Guardian Galaxy.... Very interesting.

View attachment 384030

If the lower left white area (in my pic above) is indeed the Guardian Galaxy, then it appears to be at the lower side of the Milky Way galaxy plane. The last star , closest to there is at or around PRUAE DRYAE AI-Q D6-0 an F8 White star at 2,058 Ly from Alpha Centauri. 30 Jumps with my Anaconda.

 

[Han_Zen]

If the lower left white area (in my pic above) is indeed the Guardian Galaxy, then it appears to be at the lower side of the Milky Way galaxy plane. The last star , closest to there is at or around PRUAE DRYAE AI-Q D6-0 an F8 White star at 2,058 Ly from Alpha Centauri. 30 Jumps with my Anaconda.

The two galaxies are the Magellanic clouds. They have always been in the sky box and were added as background for the launcher with the last major release.

Magellanic Clouds - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The clouds are dwarf galaxies and technically part of the Milky way. The are outside of the region we can target in the galmap.
Lore vise the LMC or SMC could well be the original home of the Thargoids. We know the Guardians evolved near the Regor sector. Thy are not form the SMC. Only possibility there, is that some of them escaped there.
In game, we have no way of checking any of this. We don't even know if there are actual systems in the MCs. The could be just images in the sky box / galmap.

It's not entirely unreasonable to think that a portal (alien construct / Omphalos rift) on Raxxla could be a gateway to one or both the MCs. That just leaves us with the problem of finding Raxxla again.