Probably just some lazy copy-pasting of planet definitions when setting up that cluster of systems, since they don't form much of any sort of hexagon, but an interesting find!
The Quest To Find Raxxla
- Thread starter Macros Black
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No but they do surround a engineers system.
Only in as much that any arbitrary set of six systems where at least one contains an engineer can be said to "surround" one.
I don't see why it would, since
a) procedural systems in the same boxel don't have that property for their planets
b) hand-crafted planets are hand-crafted planets and can have whatever properties FDev wants anyway
but you don't need to reverse engineer the system IDs, just count in 10s from a known boxel corner.
(so trivially, they aren't all in the same a-mass boxel because their total separation is >10 LY across two of the three axes)
Boxels aren't uniform but they do often repeat elements almost exactly due to how the procgen works.
Kind of hard to know if something is hand crafted or not the vast majority of systems are simply just a procgen system with a new name.
There's lots of copy paste in the game so it's likely it is just hand crafted copy paste.
Feels more complicated than just plugging a couple of numbers into a spread sheet and looking at the output. It's something easy and quick to check if you know enough to get the system IDs.
They are, but five of those six (the old worlds systems themselves) have been moved to very specific coordinates and given at least some specific planets they wouldn't otherwise have. Gurney Slade might well be a genuine procedural one and when whoever was setting up the ELWs for the Old Worlds was doing so they copied the planet from there.
You search for my posts here fdev explained in a support ticket that there is no difference
uhhh , anyone know what the heck this is ---> https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...gend-multilingual-subtitles-available.639667/ ... ??
typical "Raxxla" troll thread or something legit?
typical "Raxxla" troll thread or something legit?
Looks legit. Seems to me that T.J summarizes the chapters in the novel the Dark Wheel.
Wouldn't say its nothing new cause anyone's interpretations of the novelle's is still a new theory and look at the situation the lore presents itself. Maybe there's something they will introduce that has been missed by others. I await their next episodes. They also have some interesting music choices based on key figures within the game.
An Omphalos Rift - alternative
What follows is a speculative reflection upon the codex’s use of the term of an Omphalos Rift.
Many may presume, and likely correctly that this could relate to a centroid point, much like the Delphic Oracle, in part because of the presence in game of numerous references which could correlate linguistically, such as the Oracle station in Delphi, or the presence of systems named Axis Mundi, or Hyperborea (mythic land of the founders of Delphi) to name but a few.
But what if it is not? What if the term means something else?
An Omphalos can represent a mound, as navels do protrude in some cases, and in antiquity it was probably more common. So one term could possibly be hill or mountain.
This has more relevance with Raxxla than say Greek lore around Delphi, as the themes surrounding it are more akin to liminal boundaries, or a passageway to an alternative plane. In this respect mountains and hills were in Celtic tradition thus considered so.
A rift may also be a physical rift in a mountain.
One such example I was drawn to was the spaccatura, meaning split or crack. In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, the term appears in Purgatorio, referring to the split or opening that the protagonist Dante must pass to enter the Earthly Paradise.
Please note that in Dante’s work paradise sits atop a mountain, with a spiralling set of several terraces, which rises out of hell.
So one potential interpretation for Omphalos Rift - could be, the opening to paradise, atop the mountain !
What follows is a speculative reflection upon the codex’s use of the term of an Omphalos Rift.
Many may presume, and likely correctly that this could relate to a centroid point, much like the Delphic Oracle, in part because of the presence in game of numerous references which could correlate linguistically, such as the Oracle station in Delphi, or the presence of systems named Axis Mundi, or Hyperborea (mythic land of the founders of Delphi) to name but a few.
But what if it is not? What if the term means something else?
An Omphalos can represent a mound, as navels do protrude in some cases, and in antiquity it was probably more common. So one term could possibly be hill or mountain.
This has more relevance with Raxxla than say Greek lore around Delphi, as the themes surrounding it are more akin to liminal boundaries, or a passageway to an alternative plane. In this respect mountains and hills were in Celtic tradition thus considered so.
A rift may also be a physical rift in a mountain.
One such example I was drawn to was the spaccatura, meaning split or crack. In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, the term appears in Purgatorio, referring to the split or opening that the protagonist Dante must pass to enter the Earthly Paradise.
Please note that in Dante’s work paradise sits atop a mountain, with a spiralling set of several terraces, which rises out of hell.
So one potential interpretation for Omphalos Rift - could be, the opening to paradise, atop the mountain !
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I agree, in the past I did a lot of searching for ideas connecting any dots between the 'rift' connotations in the codex entry. Things like a cave or chasm, or even a narrow pass like the mythical strait in the Odyssey, or zeus' reported birthplace such as Psychro Cave or the Lasithi Plateau.
It led me down a rabbit hole (more akin to a gaping chasm) in the form of crystallography and the structures of atomic lattices which can form dislocations in their structures whose directionality is determined by their Burgers vector
The geometric arrangement of the atoms and structure of certain crystals is also categorised into space groups
The graphical systems of describing these spatial groupings has some interesting visual coincidences
Source
Which also got me into attempting to find some kind of system to "decode" the raxxla logo into some kind of 3 dimensional crystalline form.
Source
A handy Crystal Systems guide.
There are also the critical points within the Brillouin zone which got me thinking of reconstructing a shape based on the R A X L points listed.
And the diffraction patterns of atoms using xrays.
This is all far too abstracted from the game source so naturally I don't think it would reveal anything, it was just more of a curiosity... but the shapes were certainly tantalising
and not to forget there is an entire ancient civilisation in Elite that was built around the precise nanoscopic control of crystalline structures to build their vast galactic empire.
It certainly got me wondering to what degree of complexity has FDev designed this enigmatic puzzle
It led me down a rabbit hole (more akin to a gaping chasm) in the form of crystallography and the structures of atomic lattices which can form dislocations in their structures whose directionality is determined by their Burgers vector
The geometric arrangement of the atoms and structure of certain crystals is also categorised into space groups
The graphical systems of describing these spatial groupings has some interesting visual coincidences
Which also got me into attempting to find some kind of system to "decode" the raxxla logo into some kind of 3 dimensional crystalline form.
A handy Crystal Systems guide.
There are also the critical points within the Brillouin zone which got me thinking of reconstructing a shape based on the R A X L points listed.
And the diffraction patterns of atoms using xrays.
This is all far too abstracted from the game source so naturally I don't think it would reveal anything, it was just more of a curiosity... but the shapes were certainly tantalising
and not to forget there is an entire ancient civilisation in Elite that was built around the precise nanoscopic control of crystalline structures to build their vast galactic empire.It certainly got me wondering to what degree of complexity has FDev designed this enigmatic puzzle
This is an interesting interpretation, I think it's overthinking it a lot though (not that overthinking is bad!).
I think a good strategy for approaching the Raxxla Mythology is to Imagine that you are someone in-game, rather than someone playing the game; Imagine that you find "something" and give it a name. I think the question is "what must that thing be for you to name it 'Omphalos Rift'?", not "What cryptic name should a game developer give to something to present a clue to the players?"
Let's consider that approach:
The Rift part is pretty unambiguous; It speaks of some sort of tear or fold or something like that. So we can assume that the "something" that was found was in fact, a "Rift". Either geologically speaking, or metaphorically, but some sort of 'tear' in something else, and given the context of the Raxxla myth, a 'tear' in space/reality/universes is more likely than a geological tear. A DS9 style wormhole or something then.
We must assume it was someone versed in ancient myths - as clearly they were - making a discovery of "something" in the galaxy and reaching for an appropriate name thinks not of the name of a legendary city, a god, a structure, a famous figure, a constellation, a monster, or a comedy name, but specifically the word Omphalos... why?
What mythology could they know? What informed that decision? We can speculate because we also know that same mythology since Elite is set in our future (sort of):
"Classical legend asserted that it marked the 'navel' (Omphalos) or center of the Earth and explained that this spot was determined by Zeus" [source]
"Apollo was said to have slain Python, a drako (a male serpent or a dragon) who lived there and protected the navel of the Earth." [source]
The Omphalos stone at Delphi was placed at the mythologically determined centre of the world as defined by the gods and guarded by the giant snake Python. Apollo killed the snake and cast the body into a pit (or a rift by another name?). The word Omphalos comes from that myth-stone marking that point, therefore the meaning of Omphalos is most likely 'centre'. You could expand that and say that the temple of Delphi and the entire religion of the Pythia seers was built around the stone long after it was placed there - so that's another way to think of Omphalos as meaning 'centre', it's the point at which Delphi was built, the point around which the religious prophetic visions revolved, etc. Bear in mind that there are many slightly or very different versions of this mythology, but they all feature a basically similar structure revolving around the site being highly significant and giving prophetic visions/madness, and was then 'formalised' around the idea of it being a religious centre.
Note here that the idea that a 'god' killed a snake/dragon, and the rotting corpse fumes are said to emanate from the 'rift'/pit where the body lay, is one of the most common versions.
The structure of the mythology of the Omphalos and Delphi and the Pythia is highly consistent with my theory of the 'story' of Raxxla: That the Omphalos Rift is the site where aliens that vaguely resemble sepents/dragons are sealed away in another universe after being defeated, and 'emanations' seep from there (the Landscape Signal) giving people visions (Romero, FR crew, Halsey, etc.).
Consider this:
"There are many later stories of the origins of the Delphic Oracle... [a goat herder] On entering the chasm... found himself filled with a divine presence and the ability to see outside of the present, into the past and the future. Excited by his discovery, he shared it with nearby villagers. Many started visiting the site to experience the convulsions and inspirational trances, though some were said to disappear into the cleft due to their frenzied state."
Consider Halsey, who had visions of aliens and paradise. Romero left his family after having visions to seek a sort of heavenly place. A Formidine Rift crewmember went mad after having apparent visions of beings calling to them from hyperspace. I speculate that the original Dark Wheel members had similar visions, and this is what started the myth of Raxxla a thousand years ago - this completely explains how the Dark Wheel can know of a place they haven't yet found too. These people are our Pythia.
The Omphalos=centre is also backed up by the 'logo' that's used on the Raxxla Codex, we can all see that it's in no uncertain terms organised around a central point. That central point is a circumpunct (circle dot), which is commonly used to mean "centre" and has been used to represent the Omphalos of greek mythology (see image above). Note here that there's often a 'tripod' associated with the Pythia, and there are those three mysterious lines around the centre of the Raxxa 'logo'.
"Perhaps Delphi is best known for its oracle, the Pythia, or sibyl, the priestess prophesying from the tripod in the sunken adyton of the Temple of Apollo. " [source]
I think that Omphalos meaning "The centre of the world" is applicable to the idea that the 'world' for us is the entire Galaxy, so I still maintain that no other explanation makes as much sense as "Omphalos Rift" simply meaning "The Rift at the Centre of the Galaxy".
I think too that this reasoning still holds up solidly even if you only think about it purely as 'game developers want to give us a clue'.
Consider too that the original ships of Elite were named for snakes (Cobra, Python, Mamba, Adder, etc.), and in the lore the Python was the first 'consumer' modular ship that's credited with essentially starting the Elite universe as we know it today and making our style of sole-trader owned modular ships viable. I don't think it's anything significant really, but I like the idea that Brookes or someone liked that symbolic symmetry there.
Naturally, a treasure hunt/map/riddle in a 3D space would probably involve geometry at some point.
Therefore, a possible approach is throwing random gobs of geometry at a wall of data and see if something sticks.
One such random gob of geometry is an "Omphalos", represented by a Fibonacci spiral projected onto a paraboloid.
Therefore, a possible approach is throwing random gobs of geometry at a wall of data and see if something sticks.
One such random gob of geometry is an "Omphalos", represented by a Fibonacci spiral projected onto a paraboloid.
Mystic Mountain - Wikipedia
Check out the last sentence my current lead im working on 7488ly away in our Elite galaxy - 2296 parsecs bar the decimals versus the 3000 in the Wiki ;-)
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I believe this is a very close approximation of my mountain theory. I have a series of systems I’m still pulling together, I’d like to think they follow a similar configuration… but I’m more hesitant about my current findings to publish just yet…