The Quest To Find Raxxla

Jaiotu

Jaiotu
Well. My copy of Tour of the Universe by Malcolm Edwards and Robert Holdstock has arrived. Sadly there is no index but I'm still hopeful that I'll find a reference to Raxxla somewhere among the pages. I flipped it open and on the second page found a reference the the Galactic Co-Operative (GalCop). I'm increasingly losing hope that finding Raxxla in Elite: Dangerous will somehow rely on digging through Holdstock's fiction to find the path but I'm also becoming more interested in untangling the path that led Holdstock to writing The Dark Wheel then I am in actually finding Raxxla inside the game universe. I guess I'm engaged in 'literary archaeology' to try and understand what Robert Holdstock's original concept of Raxxla was.

I'll, of course, pass on anything I find that appears relevant.
 

Jorki Rasalas

Jorki Rasalas
Jaiotu said:
Well. My copy of Tour of the Universe by Malcolm Edwards and Robert Holdstock has arrived. Sadly there is no index but I'm still hopeful that I'll find a reference to Raxxla somewhere among the pages. I flipped it open and on the second page found a reference the the Galactic Co-Operative (GalCop). I'm increasingly losing hope that finding Raxxla in Elite: Dangerous will somehow rely on digging through Holdstock's fiction to find the path but I'm also becoming more interested in untangling the path that led Holdstock to writing The Dark Wheel then I am in actually finding Raxxla inside the game universe. I guess I'm engaged in 'literary archaeology' to try and understand what Robert Holdstock's original concept of Raxxla was.

I'll, of course, pass on anything I find that appears relevant.
Click to expand...

And that sums up exactly the problem. ED is a great game let down by the narrative reveal process which constrains the way players can interact with this multimedia experience, to the point that the actual game is less interesting than the related media. For me it’s these forum threads that keep me invovled. Hope things start to improve with ch3 and ch4- weren’t these needed to implement “the personal narrative” concept?
 

Scytale

Banned
S
Right, Pa. As I said, perhaps we need to know exactly what Raxxla is in ED for us to find where Raxxla is in ED.
We mostly assume it's a door that is also the key and a place that isn't a place. A celestial body obfuscated in the outer rim. I hope it still is so.
The RH's definition is very clear. A planet inhabited by people (a TDW schismatical party) with a portal..etc... (Rafe Zetter's stuff)
Hopefully you can find the thread between both, Doc. Otherwise who will ? ;)
 
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Han_Zen

Han_Zen
Scytale said:
Right, Pa. As I said, perhaps we need to know exactly what Raxxla is in ED for us to find where Raxxla is in ED.
We mostly assume it's a door that is also the key and a place that isn't a place. A celestial body obfuscated in the outer rim. I hope it still is so.
The RH's definition is very clear. A planet inhabited by people (a TDW schismatical party) with a portal..etc... (Rafe Zetter's stuff)
Hopefully you can find the thread between both, Doc. Otherwise who will ? ;)
Click to expand...

If we assume that Raxxla actually is a celestial body, is obfuscated on some 'outer rim' and has been possible to access/see/discover since launch, we don't have that many options.

- Raxxla is a regular planet in a far away system that is hard to spot. The system is what is obfuscated.
- Raxxla is a planet orbiting one of the mysterious 'Exotic stars'. Exotic stars are apparently a star class in ED, that no one has found.
- Raxxla is a very smal planet. Stellar Forge seem to have a 100km radius minimum size. It could still be possible to manually insert smaler bodies. These may not be detectable by discovery scanner.
- Raxxla is a comet. Comets are in the game and have been since launch. They exist as a point with gravity. Some stations orbits them, but they are invisible.

Please add more options, that are compatible with what we know about the game engine.
 

Jorki Rasalas

Jorki Rasalas
Han_Zen said:
If we assume that Raxxla actually is a celestial body, is obfuscated on some 'outer rim' and has been possible to access/see/discover since launch, we don't have that many options.

- Raxxla is a regular planet in a far away system that is hard to spot. The system is what is obfuscated.
- Raxxla is a planet orbiting one of the mysterious 'Exotic stars'. Exotic stars are apparently a star class in ED, that no one has found.
- Raxxla is a very smal planet. Stellar Forge seem to have a 100km radius minimum size. It could still be possible to manually insert smaler bodies. These may not be detectable by discovery scanner.
- Raxxla is a comet. Comets are in the game and have been since launch. They exist as a point with gravity. Some stations orbits them, but they are invisible.

Please add more options, that are compatible with what we know about the game engine.
Click to expand...

From front page “A certain celestial body. Place that isn't a place, door that is also the key. The myth."

well a “door” is also a “gateway”, and there are plenty of stations in-game that are named “xxxx gateway”, and since a station exists in/moves through space while orbiting its parent body, then it could also be viewed as a “celestial body”; so I don’t think we should ignore the possibility of “Raxxla Gateway” orbiting away somewhere in a system that has an obscure name. Especially if it orbited a black hole since that would fit the “Place that isn't a place” bit, as would the station orbiting a comet idea. Come to think of it I dont remember ever having encountered a comet in-game.....

edit: TDW appear to be a particularly bloodthirsty lot. I got a secondary mission yesterday to assassinate some “pirate lord” after merely delivering a load of businessmen (admittedly for 5.5MCr) from Shinrarta to a system only 11ly away. So maybe this is part of the “personal narrative”? Unfortunately I’m getting too old and slow for much combat, although I’ve now got a second Krait set up with mil composite a d weapons which got me a few bounties very quickly when I tried it out, so I sold off the old Vulture and fitted ithe Krait out with cabins for said passenger missions....
 
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Han_Zen

Han_Zen
Jorki Rasalas said:
From front page “A certain celestial body. Place that isn't a place, door that is also the key. The myth."

well a “door” is also a “gateway”, and there are plenty of stations in-game that are named “xxxx gateway”, and since a station exists in/moves through space while orbiting its parent body, then it could also be viewed as a “celestial body”; so I don’t think we should ignore the possibility of “Raxxla Gateway” orbiting away somewhere in a system that has an obscure name. Especially if it orbited a black hole since that would fit the “Place that isn't a place” bit, as would the station orbiting a comet idea. Come to think of it I dont remember ever having encountered a comet in-game.....

edit: TDW appear to be a particularly bloodthirsty lot. I got a secondary mission yesterday to assassinate some “pirate lord” after merely delivering a load of businessmen (admittedly for 5.5MCr) from Shinrarta to a system only 11ly away. So maybe this is part of the “personal narrative”? Unfortunately I’m getting too old and slow for much combat, although I’ve now got a second Krait set up with mil composite a d weapons which got me a few bounties very quickly when I tried it out, so I sold off the old Vulture and fitted ithe Krait out with cabins for said passenger missions....
Click to expand...

Sure. The old 'on Raxxla there's an alien construct that's a gateway to other Universes' could well mean 'In orbit around Raxxla there's an alien construct that's a gateway to other Universes'.

Rafe Zetter was not well enough informed to make that distinction.
 

Jah'bastah II

Jah'bastah II
This thread doesn't appear to go places, so let's break it down a bit....

--------------------------------PART ONE-------------------------------------

"A certain celestial body. Place that isn't a place, door that is also the key. The myth."

A certain celestial body

A certain vague description. Not much to go on. The whole game is comprised of celestial bodies. However, body could refer to 'corpus', in which case "star-map" and celestial body aren't that far off.

Place that isn't a place

Utopia (Greek: οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place") and means "no-place" or a more loose translation: "nowhere". (Often misunderstood, due to its pronunciation in English, is that Utopia is derived from eu- (eὐ), "good", and "topos", which would mean "good place".) Now, it is commonly used to describe an idyllic, imaginary society. Does this Raxxla story not talk of an elite class wanting to preserve their 'kingdom of heaven' on the other side of the gateway or some such?

Fictional and real places related to the Utopian legend/myth are: Eden, Atlantis, Arcadia, Acadia, 'The New World' aka America, renaissance period Europe,

Door that is also the key

DOOR
  • a means of access or participation
  • the critical part that, when opened, creates an entrance

KEY
  • the key to a riddle (yay, more obscurity?)
  • a system of tones and harmonies (a sound-bite is the gateway?)
  • the set of instructions governing the encipherment and decipherment of messages (if the door is also the key, that would be some state of the art encryption)
  • a keystone in an arch (no idea here)
  • the key to a map (legend or instruction set to find RAXXLA?)
  • a literal key to open a door (find the RAXXLA and it will open itself!)
  • a key in a dictionary (system list? celestial body list? RAXXLA is an abbreviation?) giving an explanation of symbols or abbreviations
  • an arrangement of the salient characters of a group of plants or animals or of taxa (taxa, raxxla? close enough :p) designed to facilitate identification
  • a clue (but a certain someone promised no clues, I'm confused)

Any other input from the rest of you? More thoughts on this? What doors are keys and what keys are doors? List all of the theories and then we'll see what's applicable to our Elite galaxy.

The myth

Alright, a mythical door-key non-place. Great! [haha] Myth might point back to that Utopia bit or it might be another piece of the puzzle. Or 'non-place' and 'myth' are really just there to say: 'stop looking, the dude was mad and got in a fight with some nasties in his quest for Raxxla. Not much else to it..' I hope the latter isn't the case.

--------------------------------PART TWO-------------------------------------

"on Raxxla there's an alien construct that's a gateway to other Universes"

"On": It can't be a star if this is canon. It might be a celestial body

"an alien construct":

Either an alien (non-terrestrial) or exotic (strange, supernatural, ...):
  • complex idea resulting from a synthesis of simpler ideas
  • concept, model or schema
  • assemblage, structure, building

--------------------------------THOUGHTS-------------------------------------

Gimme your thoughts, I have pennies.
 

Scytale

Banned
S
That Guardian thing finally isn't the Portal. Just another pewpew puzzle to get more lethal pewpew stuff to pewpew even more lethal Thargs. :eek:
 

Stinja

S

Han_Zen

Han_Zen
xNicoyAx said:
Still couldn't help but immediately think of Raxxla when those Guardian Beacons gave a "Ancient Key".
Click to expand...

It's interesting.

Using the word 'key' for this thing and calling the Guardian AI 'Constucts', are deliberate choices from FD.

It could be a deliberate hint or a deliberate decoy. We don't know?
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
Han_Zen said:
If we assume that Raxxla actually is a celestial body, is obfuscated on some 'outer rim' and has been possible to access/see/discover since launch, we don't have that many options.

- Raxxla is a regular planet in a far away system that is hard to spot. The system is what is obfuscated.
- Raxxla is a planet orbiting one of the mysterious 'Exotic stars'. Exotic stars are apparently a star class in ED, that no one has found.
- Raxxla is a very smal planet. Stellar Forge seem to have a 100km radius minimum size. It could still be possible to manually insert smaler bodies. These may not be detectable by discovery scanner.
- Raxxla is a comet. Comets are in the game and have been since launch. They exist as a point with gravity. Some stations orbits them, but they are invisible.

Please add more options, that are compatible with what we know about the game engine.
Click to expand...

Hmm, the thing for me is that if we’re going off TDW, then Raxxla isn’t just something that’s difficult to find, it’s something that is being actively concealed by people with a great deal of power and influence. Hence, I’m not sure to what extent we can consider it discoverable.

But it must have been accessed at some point in human history, since which point it’s had it’s accessibility artificially reduced.

Do we actually know what the story is with Beta Phoenicis?

Also on a mild tangent, has anyone else noticed the language shift towards the use of the word ‘construct’ in game to describe things related to the Guardian AI?

(Just a note on the Guardian AI vs Construct situation - in the first set of Guardian logs, the origins of AI are discussed and at that point they appear to be essentially beings of the Guardians interstellar network (and who are there to assist the Guardians in it’s management) but they don’t have their own physical forms except when being hosted by a Guardian with a brain implant. The use of the word Construct then comes to the fore with the second set of logs and generally seems to pertain to them having more of a physical presence, with a separation between those which are military and those which are civilian.)

Edit - somehow managed to miss the post where you mention the use of the word ‘construct’! :)
 
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Jorki Rasalas

Jorki Rasalas
Stinja said:
This is the only comet I've ever seen, and it's a ball-ache getting to it, even when you know exactly where it exists:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-you-can-drop-into-normal-space-close-to-them!

One situated at some random unknown distance, in an unknown system, would be all-but totally obfuscated.
Click to expand...

thanks! I read with interest the close orbit of the station(s) around the comet.
I have postulated in the past that the station shown in the game startup may be a clue, but that was pooh pooed on the basis that it was too close to the small body to be in orbit & therefore must be artistic licence by FD PR department. Well this comet thread seems to contradict that argument, and to have part of the Raxxla clue shown on the game startup would indeed as MB said be “just a little bit obvious”. So can anyone track down the background star field?

my alternative hypothesis is the Elite Griffin symbol shown on startup, which seems to me to be highlighting a spacific star between its wings/horns. how about a star field match on that?
 

Jah'bastah II

Jah'bastah II
Based on my previous post #3310, taking 'utopia' as the 'key', I went ahead and applied decodes in a variety of ciphers (poly-alphabetic, 4 types of vigenère, cipher wheel ("dark wheel"? this one and its reverse are double-starred below)) and these are the strings I came up with:

UTOPIA+RAXXLA DECIPHERMENTS
=======================

OMCEQA
Note: Looked promising. My first thought was a system in the omega sector but I couldn't find a system in there starting with designation 'c-' or 'ce'.

USMMEV
Note: ~550 systems with USM, none with USM M*.

RZVUHV
Note: ~570 systems with RZV, none with RZV U*.

IAUUWA
Note: ~450 systems with IA-U, none with IA-U U*.

**OHGFOA
Note: ~450 systems with OH-G, none with OH-G F*.

**XMFHFA
Note: ~750 systems with XM-F, none with XM-F H*.

DTRSXA
Note: Contains 'star' and 'dx' or 'xd'.
Note: ~290 systems containing DT-R...

XHJIDA
Note: ~290 systems containing XH-J...

LTLMTA
Note: ~580 systems containing LT-L...

These could of course be symbolical representations of systems/bodies as we have seen in other discoveries or acronyms. They could all mean nothing at all, that's possible too. Just decided to throw them on here in case someone else spots something. I've lost my inspiration for today. I do want to stress something, because I might not have been clear enough, I strongly believe 'place that isn't a place' is meant to be Utopia. Any clues?
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
So just in case anyone hasn't seen the news, the PF have locked the system in Cone that the Gnosis is jumping into, citing high concentrations of Thargoid Hydra Interceptors.

The jump is still going ahead.
 

Comandante

Comandante
Jah'bastah II said:
This thread doesn't appear to go places, so let's break it down a bit....

KEY
  • a keystone in an arch (no idea here)
--------------------------------THOUGHTS-------------------------------------

Gimme your thoughts, I have pennies.
Click to expand...

I am not sure who came up with this so it's not attributed to myself; however, there's the Hercules Key Stone Asterism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(constellation)

I checked out one of the stars in it in the galaxy map - it's WAY above the galactic plane, and you'd never be able to reach one of the stars in it. The other stars, I believe are fairly local - in galactic terms.

Apologies, that's the only thought from me, and it wasn't mine :D
 
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