Community Event / Creation Log Entry Updates

[Zarkon]

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Due to a recent incident, all my flight data and log entries have been lost. Here is a brief summary of events leading up to today. A lot of this is from memory, so please don't quote me on anything.
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Alpha 1
It's only been a few months since the storm devastated this region of space, but to me it feels like decades. The ionic plasma storm that raged through this sector lasted almost a month and knocked out everything. Plasmic emissions neutralized all power sources except for solar, which was scarce during the entire ordeal. The Zelada government declared a state of emergency. Most of us wondered if we'd ever see the stars again.
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When the storm was finally over, it felt like technology had been thrown back into the console age. Re-establishing subspace communications with other star systems helped to boost the morale of everyone. Thankfully the BBS link-ups allowed pilots to at least let family and friends know what was going on, and gave us all hope. Hard working engineers finally figured out how to purge some of the main power cores. Progress has been slow. Many of the ship's power grids were still non-functional, but the in-system hyperjumps finally came back online.
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The few commanders who had enough credits to afford the reinstatement fees were permitted to return to their ships. The rest of us lived vicariously through the video feeds and bulletin posts made by active pilots on the local event channels. Regular newsfeeds and engineering diaries went a long way in easing the anxiety of countless grounded commanders. A lucky break came my way while doing side work for a Zelada merchant, and the earnings helped to reinstate my flight permit. I wasted no time racing to the hangar to board my sidewinder.
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Though we had no hyperdrive, no frame-shift, ship comms were still out, and suffered from constant onboard system crashes, it felt good to be back in the black once more. After spending a week doing some questionable work for the Mastopolos corporation, problems in the Zelada system started to escalate. Chaos broke out everywhere. Raiders and pirates started running incursions into Mastopolos' local operations. Too many in fact. Bands of marauders assaulted anacondas along the standard shipping lanes daily. Bounty work was plentiful, but pay was meager at best.

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[Zarkon]

Alpha 2

The interference from the storm eventually cleared enough that we could hyperjump to the Iato Cruxis system, which was only one light year away. Since the trading network was still down, Zelada station, under Federal Rule, enforced a pay-to-fly tax, requiring pilots to pay an increased rate when selecting ship load outs. Commanders also found the hyperjumps to be unstable. Many good pilots were lost to hyper lock, their ships spinning forever into the abyss. Mastopolos sent every miner they had into the Iato asteroid belt, while other pilots fought for any resource they could scoop up. Trapped in a Federal system for over a month, Imperial loyalists fled to the Iato system and started organizing their numbers. Many battles between the different factions raged across several areas of the system each day. The conflicts seemed to be endless.

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I spent most of my time battling enemies in open combat and protecting innocent miners throughout the Iato system. Zelada station did finally get their hangar operations back online, but with limited shop supplies. At least the tax hike was dropped and prices improved. First week was hell though. Port authorities kept cancelling docking requests, re-issuing pad numbers and destroying innocent pilots for double parking. New upgrades became accessible in the shops, so when I had earned enough, I retired old Betsy and bought a slightly used Cobra Mk III. The cobra is sluggish compared to a sidewinder, but it has awesome acceleration and top speed. I just needed more credits to pimp it out. Eventually I was able to upgrade my lasers and armor, so I decided to change my tactics, and began helping Federal cruisers being attacked by rogue pirates.
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I think we will all go stir crazy if the remaining storm interference doesn't clear soon. The fighting has gone on too long for me. I even heard reports of commanders doing summersaults through the bay doors whilst standing on their heads and reciting old folk songs. I knew if I didn't do something to break up the monotony I would end up wedging myself into the outside structure of Zelada station again, so I headed off into deep space and spent a few weeks exploring. That was most relaxing, and potentially a very profitable venture, but soon I was ready to re-equip my ship and get back into the fray.

 

[Zarkon]

Alpha 3

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Things had escalated while I was off on my expedition. Because of ionic contamination in all ship transponder wiring, the Elite Federation of Pilots temporarily discontinued accepting status updates. Periodic purging and recalibration of the transponder data was expected until validation was restored. This may have been the main cause of all the mayhem and anarchy exhibited by many pilots. Reports of unprovoked attacks by fellow commanders in and around the Zelada station had increased exponentially.
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The honest, hard working people still outnumbered the renegades, and I am proud to be flying among them. I had the chance to see many of these commanders in action. There's been numerous times I have wanted to hail these gallant warriors during missions, but ship comms were still non-functional. Here are but a few names that I have encountered during my travels.

 

[Zarkon]

I spent most of yesterday hunting pirates and trying to earn enough credits to upgrade my Cobra once again. I had sold most of my gear so that I could finance my little expeditions into deep space. During one of the combat missions, I spotted two pirate ships huddled close together on the radar. It looked like they were exchanging cargo, turns out it was just their mating season.

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Upon returning to Zelada station I ran into the Unknown Commander again. This makes the third time I've seen this mysterious pilot. He's never made any aggressive moves, but I have kept an eye on him during each encounter. I don't know if he's using some type of scan blocking device, or if his transponder is simply defective. If such a device did existed, it could give pirates a way of masking their identities from authorities, and make bounty hunting an extremely difficult task.

 

[Zarkon]

News is that more pilots have been commissioned by the Zelada government. This is great as it means many more commanders will get a chance to fly again. Unfortunately it also means fewer bounties and combat bonds to make a living off of. Rumors at the Spacer's Bar and Grill is that the trading network may be coming back online in a few weeks. There's a lot of money to be made as a merchant in this sector, but big revenues require a big ship. Several people have witnessed Commander Blackley piloting an Anaconda into Zelada station, and many of us wonder how he managed such a feat. Access to cargo ships is restricted to official personnel only.
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With the station's auto-docking system still offline, most attempts at trying to berth such a large vessel typically ends in disaster, which I witnessed around a month ago. Mr. Blackley was less than successful in his endeavor. Come to think of it, that was also the first time I saw the Unknown Commander, his unregistered Cobra Mk III lurking just inside the bay doors of Zelada station shortly after the Anaconda was destroyed.

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[Zarkon]

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After docking at the station I decided to exchange my pulse lasers for a set of class 3 beams, but I can't afford the armor upgrade yet. Insurance for my current load-out is almost 3000 credits. The scuttlebutt around the station is that the EFP may be offering pilots a reward for helping the Zelada government with their relief efforts. This would be most welcome, but may not take affect until the entire ion storm disaster is over. Every little bit would help though. Running bond missions and bounty hunting doesn't pay as well as one would hope. It's become obvious that the commanders preying on innocent miners in the Iato asteroid belt are making out like bandits. Cargo canisters sell for a high price in Zelada station's black market district, but I just can't bring myself to attack any law bidding miners. Things aren't that desperate, so no pirate's life for me. Well, not yet anyway.

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I needed to visit the Federal Mining Office this morning to check up on a claim I'd made last month, so I decided to book a suite in the station's Rama Inn last night. Renting a room with .7 Gs was a bit pricey, but I had the best nights sleep I'd had in a long time, filled with dreams of fortune and glory. This morning I was informed by the mining office clerk that no evidence of my claim could be confirmed. When I returned to my hangar, I found that all of my ship's flight logs had been corrupted. Bob the engineer thinks it was caused by a feed back of residual ionic particles that must have surged while the new weapons were being outfitted. I've had to wipe the entire data base and reinitialize everything. Those moons I had discovered were going to be my ticket to EZ Street, but now I have no data to back up my claim. I may never find that area of space again.

 

[Zarkon]

Being an explorer at heart, I wasn't going to give up until I found out more about those moons, so I've been searching around contested space for the wormhole that first deposited me into that unknown region of the Zelada system. This morning I awoke from my sleep cycle to discover I had once again found the three mysterious worlds. Something was different however. The moons were in different locations. The sun was now behind me, and the smaller moon was much farther away this time.

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The anomaly that lead me here seems to be tied into the REM training programs of my ship's sleep inducer. Not sure how this is possible, but running various missions during REM cycles has produced different results. Another attempt landed me in yet a different spot, with a view of the other side of the smaller moon, but it was still far away.

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I was finally able to recreate the sequence that placed me back at the original location where I first encountered these worlds.

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This entire region seems to be in some sort of spatial flux, and soon I may not be able to return to this place, so I've decided to stay and investigate while I can. I've plotted a parabolic course around the first moon (which was causing my systems to crash last time) in the hope of reaching the center moon. If successful I should hit high orbit in a couple of hours.

 

[Zarkon]

Gazing out the window, it appears that I'm in the Zelada system, but my ship's sensors indicate that I'm still in the Iato system. Perhaps this phenomenon is a visual distortion being caused by a small black hole passing at near right angles along the edge of the two star systems. Maybe this is some form of temporal overlapping of cosmic space, with pockets of galactic eras manifesting due to the strong gravitronic properties emanating from the smallest moon. Could this be an alternate universe? Am I looking through space-time into a reality that doesn't exist on our level of perception? What if everything I'm seeing and recording are just phantoms, streamed from my ship's training data, amplified by the storm's influnces on this region of space, and projected by a defective sleep inducer.
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I had plenty of time to speculate about the possibilities, as the journey to the smaller moon took much longer than I had originally estimated. The following vid-shots were taken about 7 hours apart during the approach. I'll be one happy spacer once the super-cruise is functional again.

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Just as I reached the center moon, my directional compass jumped from Moon-C to Moon-B.

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I'm no worldologist, but this cool.

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The features of this moon are fascinating. There's a lot of diversity in the surface topography. Some of the dark craters are completely covered over with sediment, but the strange ring formations have remained. Could the rings be organic in nature? The moon does have an atmosphere, so this might be a very harsh but habitable desert world. I'm still betting that it's rich in minerals. A couple of mining machines in the right locations and this old rogue would be set for life.
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There's no way of proving any of this though, except for a few vid-shots. Exploration equipment and mining rigs aren't available yet, and this whole region of space might vanish by tomorrow. This may not have been a profitable venture, but rediscovering this location and getting this close to a new world has been an enjoyable excursion.

 

[Zarkon]

I decided to trade in my cobra and bought old Betsy back. Though I'm very impressed with the Mk III's power and virsatility, the sidewinder seems more suited for the current work Zedada is offering at this time. I have to admit combat feels much faster. I've been helping out the Imperials in contested space and really enjoy hunting cobras the old fashion way.

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I've already had several unusual events occur. First my windshield was blown out and I barely made it back to the station. The hangar engineer said the window he used for the repair was new, but I could see the micro cracks and sure enough, as soon as I left the station the canopy blew out again. Luckily I had the apparent foresight to hook my Remlok up to the spare O2 supply before taking off. It was fun hunting pirates with no windshield. Solar winds in my hair. Now that's real freedom.

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After an engineer working in a different pad hangar fixed me up with a proper windshield, I headed back into space to jump to another mission. There was a strange device floating not too far from the station, and as I approached it, the object vanished. I turned back towards the station, locked on to the Iota Cruxis system and started my hyperjump sequence, when suddenly another pilot's hyperspace tunnel opened around me. I just barely escaped collision with the other ship by strafing away.

 

[Zarkon]

Premium Beta 1

Stellar winds blowing through the region helped to clear a large part of the Ion storm from around Zelada space. The Corp of Engineers ordered a massive recall, having all pilots return their current ships so as to purge the Hyperdrive and FSD systems. With these functions restored we're finally able to leave Zelada and Iato Cruxis.
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I set course for Hecate, but during the jump something happened and I have been hurled over 86 light years away into the Eranin system! I'll head for Azeban City and see what jobs I can pick up.

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[Zarkon]

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[SzaryWilk]

Ariel...This is a NPC trader ?? I remember that I met him.

 

[Zarkon]

@SzaryWilk: Thanks for reading! Yes, I ran across a few Lakon vessels in some of the signal source locations, both legal merchants and wanted traders. When I had an Eagle I tested out my combat skills against some of them, including a little pirating.

 

[Zarkon]

Premium Beta 2

 

[Zarkon]

Standard Beta 1

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