The Formidine Rift - Part 2

[Belthize]

Errm, I kind of draw the line at scouring the entire internet for random clues that may or may not have anything to do with anything. If LA Kings seating charts are a hint to some postal code in England that leads to a geocache in Whitehall that has a plastic box with some coordinates in it then I'm pretty much done. It'll be faster to just check all the stars, even the ones outside the rift.

If folks haven't done so already you might want to read Drew's blogs on his site, particularly the ones he wrote around May of last year. The advent of Power Play kind of threw a monkey wrench in his plans for Kahina so I think some of the galnet articles were just staging. He and Kahina went dark at the same time right after PP started and Patreus took over Prism (which gave rise to Loren's Legions), and now they've come alive again. There may be a new wave of clues in May probably after his Reddit AMA.

One thing that folks seem to overlook is that Drew is a very avid astronomer, much more than merely a hobbyist. It's pretty clear that he knows more than just constellations and bits, he understand the physics at some level as well. Something to ponder.

 

[Jaiotu]

At the risk of being run out of this thread on a rail I am going to bring this up once more... but before I start know I have good reason.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=135529&p=3693927&viewfull=1#post3693927

Drew says "There might be hints on social media/forum/reddit etc"

This gave me a flashback to the only tinfoil theory that had a social media connection.

"Section PR5 row 2, seats 5&6 - Dead center ice perfect viewing height"

In short there is an "Eye" message that has appeared to several commanders including myself that contains a message that is also when googled found to have been made on the L.A. Kings subreddit.

Here is the log that started showing up randomly on certain commanders ships. -
https://i.imgur.com/7Hl7i9R.jpg

Here is the post made on the /r/losangeleskings subreddit -

https://www.reddit.com/r/losangelesk...r_in_a/cwmb7pf

This connection has been dismissed but I feel Drew making a post specifically telling us there may be hints on social media and even calls out "Reddit" as a possible location is him responding to this connection having been brought into the light and then we dismissed it and he is saying "not so fast".

Maybe Kahina went to earth to look up old seating charts for historical sports stadiums. Maybe the person who wrote the hint was a big fan of classic Hockey and knew when he saw the "Rift" it was like those old holovids simulations of the L.A. Kings games he would attend. Remember Deep Space 9?? If Sisko needed to convey a hidden message about location and perspective I would not put it past him to hide it in a baseball seating analogy that only his son would put together. Drew is an author after all... twists, misdirection, and hints only Batman would put together would be the goal of any writer trying to hide a treasure map in his work.

This Reddit post about hockey tickets is in-game and we have still not received a reply from anyone at FDev stating what this message is in relation to or if there is some algorithm pulling random internet posts and turning them into Elite messages.

Interesting.

What would happen if someone superimposed the L.A. Kings' stadium seating chart over the Galaxy map? Rotate the seating chart so that the rink matches the angle of the central bar of the Milky Way? Where in the Galaxy would that place PR5 row 2, seats 5&6?

Stadium seating chart:

Spoiler

I'd do this myself but I'm not at a place where I have access to the right image manipulation software.

 

[crushdepth]

I think everyone is reading too much into things. E.g. trying to see if there is some sort of code in what has been said. I am sure that when the answer is eventually found, you will all be doing lots of face-palms and kicking yourselves for being too complicated in the analysis.

The only other points I will add are:

If you get lost on your quest or journey, go back to the start point.
Confucius: Life is really simple but we insist on making it complicated.

Absolutely agree.

And I don't think there are any hidden coordinates in the old lady's message. She said that the coordinates were given at the end of her message, in a piece of text that is not disclosed by the book. If there are some additional clues available, they lie elsewhere. Drew has told us to watch Galnet, and that we don't yet have all the clues we need to solve the puzzle.

All we can do is watch, and wait IMHO.

 

[Jaiotu]

Absolutely agree.

And I don't think there are any hidden coordinates in the old lady's message. She said that the coordinates were given at the end of her message, in a piece of text that is not disclosed by the book. If there are some additional clues available, they lie elsewhere. Drew has told us to watch Galnet, and that we don't yet have all the clues we need to solve the puzzle.

All we can do is watch, and wait IMHO.

Meanwhile Drew is busy deep into the editing of his latest book. I personally doubt that we'll get too many new clues in Galnet until sometime after the 2.1 release. With only a few weeks until Beta Frontier might not be too keen on presenting an entirely new storyline to compete with the tension between the Empire/Federation, the Unknown Artifacts and the coming competition for the new Power Play faction.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'll just throw out another though.

Drew tells us "CMDRs may wish to consider the, ahem, core of the problem."

The actual idiom though is "the root of the problem"

Did Drew deliberately say core in order to mislead? Or to highlight? If its "root", then what root? The tip of the arm where the rift is supposed to be? Or a region with "root" in the name. A search of the galactic map for "root" didn't reveal anything though.

 

[Judge Rhadamanthus]

I have read all 152 pages to this point and it is clear why there is never any tinfoil for sale on the commodities board of any station I visit. It seems to me that many of the solutions posited, while clever, are solutions for a mystery set by a different man.

Drew himself said “I am primarily a 'character' writer, I like twists and misdirection” This is an artist, a story teller, a word smith who weaves tales of mystery told through the experiences of his characters. His stories have an arc that follows protagonists as they journey through a vast and compelling universe.

Consider this type of person given a huge universe in which to set a mystery for the CMDRs in Elite Dangerous. Given this opportunity would he write a story about a lone commander, penniless and lost; who starts his journey in a beat up sidewinder in a system that was not his home. This pilot looks into the void and at the directions he can go and decides…. to grind smuggling missions by menu swap stacking so he can rush a Splorconda and jump to the rift to brute search systems for a POI? I think he would go deeper and spread wider than this.

As was pointed out way back deep in this thread there are some key clues that I think are the essence of this quest. Quote “All you need is wanderlust, patience and an ability to read between the Lines”. in other words: All you need is a strong desire to travel, and the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious plus an ability to follow the hidden trail”.

I seems to me that such a man would consider us, the players, as a character in this story, perhaps even the main protagonist. The rift, at this point, seems to be where the mystery is; there be dragons so to speak. As a story would that be the start or the end? I think the latter. Would a story teller given this scope limit himself to one region or set an arc that traverses the galaxy ending in fear and dread in the rift? Quote “CMDRs may wish to consider the, ahem, core of the problem”. I think this is an honest and literal clue. Start in the core. The story will weave outwards from there ending with the start of another story in the rift.

Even if the rift is the start and we are right now in the correct location we should still look at the developers’ ethos. They want everyone to be able to access the whole game. The community goals they set can be played by anyone. The treasure hunts are mini mysteries accessible to all, not locked behind rank or allegiance barriers. The puzzles are not set so only those with knowledge of logarithmic algorithms can decode them. FDEV aim to be fully inclusive. If you own the game you can play all within.

With this ethos and Drews works I think the breadcrumbs will be dropped by characters and we should focus on following a story rather than cracking a code.




p.s Do you think we can get the devs to add a new rare 'Tinfoil' to the station closest to the rift?

 

[Kulin]

I come back to the forums to read about the new addon. And the first thing i see is that the search for the formadine rift ist still going on from time to time. I was there myself for a few days. The last time i came to the conclusion all Frontier is caring about is putting out action oriented combat updates because they seem to think they can lure some more customers into the game that way. Why should they care for something like this? However: this still was the best part of elite: user generated content that brings some true mystery flavour to the game. Even if it did lead to nothing.

Has anyone found anything up to date?

 

[Legacy_LuckyLuke]

p.s Do you think we can get the devs to add a new rare 'Tinfoil' to the station closest to the rift?

Yes! It is a rare commodity indeed. We love a bit of tin foil

All sensible and salient points made above though.

 

[Legacy_LuckyLuke]

"Section PR5 row 2, seats 5&6 - Dead center ice perfect viewing height"

In short there is an "Eye" message that has appeared to several commanders including myself that contains a message that is also when googled found to have been made on the L.A. Kings subreddit.

Here is the log that started showing up randomly on certain commanders ships. -
https://i.imgur.com/7Hl7i9R.jpg

Here is the post made on the /r/losangeleskings subreddit -
https://www.reddit.com/r/losangelesk...r_in_a/cwmb7pf

The comments on the reddit are hilarious. This is the first time I've seen this. When did the eye message start appearing?

Is there a connection between the CMDRs it appeared for or was it random? What were the CMDRs doing when they got the message?

This is precisely the kind of thing I have been looking out for. Which is why I scanned every system in Cassiopeia, and every system that Kahina visited, thinking it might trip some kind of message like this.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Interesting - do you know since when? And do you need a certain rep level with Pilot's Federation or Dark Wheel to be able to access them?

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=199551

 

[Crom Dubh]

This is precisely the kind of thing I have been looking out for. Which is why I scanned every system in Cassiopeia, and every system that Kahina visited, thinking it might trip some kind of message like this.

Me too - though I'm now going back to the 'core' systems and checking their local Galnets for any missed breadcrumbs. Haven't found anything yet though ..

 

[Muetdhiver]

Has anyone located WR157 / HD 219460B in the rift region ?

 

[PeachingTony]

I'll just throw out another though.



The actual idiom though is "the root of the problem"

Did Drew deliberately say core in order to mislead? Or to highlight? If its "root", then what root? The tip of the arm where the rift is supposed to be? Or a region with "root" in the name. A search of the galactic map for "root" didn't reveal anything though.

From Wikipedia:
"In addition to the paradox of youth, there is also a "conundrum of old age" associated with the distribution of the old stars at the Galactic Center. Theoretical models had predicted that the old stars—which far outnumber young stars—should have a steeply-rising density near the black hole, a so-called Bahcall–Wolf cusp. Instead, it was discovered in 2009 that the density of the old stars peaks at a distance of roughly 0.5 parsec from Sgr A*, then falls inward: instead of a dense cluster, there is a "hole", or core, around the black hole."

Sounds similar to a rift. At a guess, and without over-thinking it, Drew is pointing us there.

 

[frostypaw]

From Wikipedia:
"In addition to the paradox of youth, there is also a "conundrum of old age" associated with the distribution of the old stars at the Galactic Center. Theoretical models had predicted that the old stars—which far outnumber young stars—should have a steeply-rising density near the black hole, a so-called Bahcall–Wolf cusp. Instead, it was discovered in 2009 that the density of the old stars peaks at a distance of roughly 0.5 parsec from Sgr A*, then falls inward: instead of a dense cluster, there is a "hole", or core, around the black hole."

Sounds similar to a rift. At a guess, and without over-thinking it, Drew is pointing us there.

Nah he's said it's roughly in the right area on Erimus's map and deterred us from getting too turned around. Which is good, or we'd be back to square 1

 

[Jaiotu]

I come back to the forums to read about the new addon. And the first thing i see is that the search for the formadine rift ist still going on from time to time. I was there myself for a few days. The last time i came to the conclusion all Frontier is caring about is putting out action oriented combat updates because they seem to think they can lure some more customers into the game that way. Why should they care for something like this? However: this still was the best part of elite: user generated content that brings some true mystery flavour to the game. Even if it did lead to nothing.

Has anyone found anything up to date?

Starting from when?

 

[CMDR Argent Steel]

From Wikipedia:
"In addition to the paradox of youth, there is also a "conundrum of old age" associated with the distribution of the old stars at the Galactic Center. Theoretical models had predicted that the old stars—which far outnumber young stars—should have a steeply-rising density near the black hole, a so-called Bahcall–Wolf cusp. Instead, it was discovered in 2009 that the density of the old stars peaks at a distance of roughly 0.5 parsec from Sgr A*, then falls inward: instead of a dense cluster, there is a "hole", or core, around the black hole."

Sounds similar to a rift. At a guess, and without over-thinking it, Drew is pointing us there.

That doesn't exist in the game. Except for the fact that Sag A is actually there the majority of the stars in the core seem to be procedurally generated in a way that does not match the stars that are actually there.

 

[marx]

Has anyone located WR157 / HD 219460B in the rift region ?

Looks like that star isn't in the game. I checked for those two designations and also BD+59 2683. Out of curiosity, how did you come up with this target?
Also, hi! I recently came across an Earth-like world that you discovered.

 

[Tesla3E]

"Section PR5 row 2, seats 5&6 - Dead center ice perfect viewing height"

I just thought I'd toss this into the mix and see whether anyone picks up on it unless it has already been discounted.

The fifth planet in the solar system is Jupiter and it has 67 known moons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Jupiter

Row 2 could be the moons that have collapsed into a spheroid orbit (in the table in the Wiki)
Moons 5 and 6 are Io and Europa.

Is there an event when they are aligned with some other icy body that points to something?

 

[Muetdhiver]

Looks like that star isn't in the game. I checked for those two designations and also BD+59 2683. Out of curiosity, how did you come up with this target?
Also, hi! I recently came across an Earth-like world that you discovered.

Was looking for very luminous stars in the region, in particular wolf-rayets since they discard some of their layers. (7 veils)

Which region was the ELW at ?

=> Io/Europa are in an 1:2:4 orbital resonnance with Ganymede, but they will never be aligned. Europa myth would point to Taurus constellation.

 

[marx]

@ Muetdhiver: it was due West from Sol, not far away. I'll add it to the list of Earth-likes (see my sig) later.
And I see. That could be why the star isn't in-game (yet?), but I think I'll look up some more variations.

Also, about the eye message: that's from the beta, and the mysterious messages have been removed from the live build. Not to mention that nobody else reported seeing the same message. Personally, I wouldn't put much stock in it - even if it was a clue, then it's a clue that can no longer be found.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Also, about the eye message: that's from the beta, and the mysterious messages have been removed from the live build. Not to mention that nobody else reported seeing the same message. Personally, I wouldn't put much stock in it - even if it was a clue, then it's a clue that can no longer be found.

Indeed, we should work with the clues we know are reliable (i.e. clues that we know are clues)