The Quest To Find Raxxla
- Thread starter Macros Black
- Start date
I have never shared any of the things I will share with you below until yesterday.
And since I shared them with one cmdr, I guess it is only fair to share them with all of you.
Hard to start this thing (and it is going to be a very long thing).
So let's start why I'm driven to search for Raxxla (R for short):
In my personal lore I got warped to this universe from the Jodorowsky universe and therefore since I found out about the existence of R it seemed necessary to find it in order to find my way back to that universe. So I have been searching for it for years now (actual years). But since the codex that search intensified. In fact it gives me something to do
since I do not care much for ranks or ships. It might have become a kind of obsession though: parent't grief no so much, lover's woe probably yes and a yearning most certainly being a vagabond of some kind IRL.
Many of the tracks below are based on a multitude of information: in-game, out-of-game, historical, canon, lore or not. It will only make this even longer trying to argument everything based on that, so I won't and will assume you will see the links.
Prologue:
Before the codex, my search was largely based on the information in the books on the elite universe, many of which i don't even remember the names of.
I ran so many queries on a personal version of the systems database to fact check these books, however, didn't take any notes hence forgot much about it. One thing that I can remember was based on the story called "Mutabilis". There, I went looking for a system that had no system within 7 Ly around it, within 21 Ly from Lave. I found four such systems, however could not find any crashed ships within. Ultimately, I gave up on these books as a ground for finding R.
So, then I considered thinking like the developers of the game would have thought. Given that R is something from 1984's elite and from still "the" earlier "alien world" I assumed that its construction is based on that. Obviously, it refers to the race Oisir-Raxxla in "the alien world" and in that context it has to be related to the "Talmor Lenses" and what they stand for. It seemed to me (and still does) that these lenses refer to black holes. The reference to stabilizers which is related to pyramids is confusing though. First and foremost, how can pyramids on a spherical earth point to a (single) star (possibly the text that I read was not accurate on it since I do not have the original book) let alone considering that the earth is revolving around its axis and the sun. Then, considering they were built in "the easy way" with the points towards the star, ruled out the center of earth as well. Sol or any other star given the above reasoning are ruled out as well, unless maybe Polaris or any other north/south star, but even then it would only be by approximation and they are not pointing rather they are aligned. Considering the latitude of these pyramids and others would make their foundations point at about 1.2 mega-meter above north which is unlikely since that would not be an orbit now would it.
Of course I went to the many stars of the Orion constellation as represented in the layout of the pyramids, found black holes/super giants in some, but nothing more. Still it couldn't be that simple or it would have been found long before. So I went for the polaris theory as mentioned above and tried to access it, like many before and after. Since I assumed many people had searched its vicinity to no avail, I tried finding two stars forming a line with Polaris in the middle and wrote the necessary SQL to find such systems in the systems database. I found two stars that were about 60LY apart that nearly formed such a line and made the jump back and forth a number of times hoping I would get interdicted halfway, which wasn't the case. I do not really believe that it would be that simple once again, so I gave up on that idea. But still if nothing else works I will go back to that endeavor at some point, carrying things in my cargo hold in the hope getting interdicted by Thargoids or something.
Having considered all of that, I though about R as something related to a hack of the universe. Something software related. After all, in my personal view of our universe I link it often to a computer too (let's not discuss that here =)). Since the original game, and later games as well, are mainly programmed in assembler code, and since ORA (Oisir-Raxxla) is a mnemonic for an OR operation and since XX is often used in older BASIC programs as a prefix to variables I looked for a variable xx14 (number to letters geek thing) in an OR operation with the accumulator register (nevermind). And I did find an occurrence of that variable and of several ORA instructions but ultimately gave up on this track since well I do such stuff in real life and couldn't be bothered decoding assembler code to try to find a solution. It would go against this being a game after all.
Still going in the same kind of direction I considered the wormhole bug as a solution to R, but then considered that it was coded out in later versions of the game as it was unintended behavior. Nevertheless this being a 32 bit and not a 16 bit game made me decide on finding such a bug in the game. Trying to jump to systems which were at specific distances from my current position (let's leave out the details of it). This seemed all to crazy too, so I gave up on that as well, even though there are indicators for it, namely the fact that supercruise speed is limited to 2001-ish and that the pointer (left-below on the hud) indicating the selected target is operationally limited to 2001-ish Ls as well (it won't point correctly for any systems beyond). I even accounted for it in the fuel formula as reverse-engineered by some.
When the main developers, I always forget names (really bad at it), were asked for it, one said, "what a silly question, ofcourse it is", the other more importantly:
"At this stage I cannot tell you where it is. It is a journey everyone has to make for themselves. There you go."
Seems to me he was giving important tips (and the only ones) as indicated by the "there you go" and his facial expression seemed to indicate it was a clever statement. It also seems to me everyone is overly focusing on the second sentence, that of the journey, where the first one is more informative, meaning that, so I believe, R's location isn't fixed. There are stages to it, perhaps similar to its behavior as described in the book Mutabilis.
Hence, I considered Lave, with a permit locked moon, and thus went looking for other permit locked bodies and well yeah there aren't many to find patterns in. Needless to say that failed too.
Chorus:
This brings me to the point of the introduction of the codex, the first actual mention of R in the game, disregarding the TDW entry (and their alleged presence on SD) since I believe one cannot be sure that they actually govern/found R, nor that anything regarding them is true or useful.
Let's _not_ start with the alleged toast in the R entry, as that too cannot be considered fact. What can be considered is the mention of Art, and that the myth must have been in circulation before. What also can be considered is the alien artifact found on Mars. Colonization was before that time, and to that end probes were sent to the nearest stars. Expeditions were set up. In short colonization outside of Sol had started. What I got from that is that it should either be found within Sol or in between Sol and these nearest (100) stars. Or in between these nearest stars and sol (given how the game is built that would be harder to find and thus a plausible design choice).
There are many nearest stars however and, furthermore, what would I expect to find on route? My first thought went to Nemesis (something hypothesized in 1984, maybe a coincidence that that was in the same year as the first elite game), a stellar object that might exist outside the Oort cloud (also not proven, but highly likely to exist) with an orbit coming close to that cloud of asteroids causing some of these asteroids to be catapulted into the inner solar system causing mass extinctions believed to occur with repetitions of about 26 million years. Whether this has been proven or not, still makes it an interesting angle.
If such an object exists in the elite universe it could be a location for R. Given that supercruise speed maxes out at about 0.15 lY away from a massive object, and given the period of 26 million years and given the distance of the Oort cloud (about 1ly from the sun), the object should not have moved more than 0.15 lY in the last 1200 years and when I should fare in between Sol and these nearest stars I should see a drop in supercruise speed at some point if it is there.
I have not yet tried all possibilities, well yeah you can imagine the time it will take to verify it for every nearest star. Even if I would let it run autonomously with automated screen shots, I simply feel that that would be too crazy to do by myself. I rather play and try other things first. I did however try it for Sirius and Tau Ceti. I want to try it going from Persephone in Sol towards the Demeter System. Maybe in between Persephone and Mars (Olympus village) given Hermes/Persephone's journey back. Or rather Pluto and Mars, considering Hades in later times became more of a location than a god could be something too. But then given bodies changing locations on orbits would make it a very difficult calculation to see if these relate to some relative fix-points. Anyway, much to be done there, not likely to be fruitful.
At this point I considered the toast. The first sentence assigns R to the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies. The mother of galaxies if you look at it from a physics perspective can refer to globular clusters, black holes, super giants, nebulae/gas clouds, big bang, ...
Well the big bang let's not consider that. Nebulae/gas clouds .. there are many tracks to consider, so I avoided them.
Super giants form all the heavy elements found in solar systems that come after they die. Super giants are interesting in that way as giving birth.
Black holes, well there are just too many to consider all of them, but there is one that stands out especially given the tourist beacon: Maia. Maia furthermore is the mother of Hermes which is the only god that can travel anywhere. That is interesting too as you can interpret the toast referring to hermes. For one, it would be the favored god for vagabonds. Being a god of thiefs it can relate to parent's griefs, lover's woes. But that is just one track.
Finally, Globular clusters form a network within galaxies and are sometimes referred to as their umbilical cord. When translating umbilical cord to greek it is directly translated back to umblical (omphalos) rift. I did not follow up on this, yet, since most of the known ones are far away. But it is interesting regarding the story of the Oisir-Raxxla as mentioned before, since there it is stated that the focal point of the talmor lenses is the globular cluster in which they dwell.
Now on to Maia, containing a tourist beacon expressing the importance of looking through (around) it to the nebulae and stars. This seems a very promising angle to me. I see people focusing on the nebulae while it is in fact the mention of stars that is interesting, especially regarding the reference to Astrophel and the spiraling stars.
When looking through the black hole at Sol, approaching that point sideways you can see stars spiraling the black hole at an equidistance (10 points in total) consisting of 5 stars. 4 of them are white-blue and one is red. One of these stars is Asterope which I relate to Astrophel. When moving slightly back from the black hole they form an eye, with the black hole the iris and the selection of Sol the pupil.
When moving further back the white-blue ones (determined as Asterope, Glesting, Andoe and HIP 17704) stay in formation (forming a constellation, with three additional ones going up-left, which I considered as a path towards something but didn't follow up on it) while the red one (determined Antares) moves out. Needless to say, I quickly checked the four former ones, and then proceeded to Antares (looking like a jewel burning on the (eye)-brow), since it is the opposite of Ares in naming and Ares refers to Mars, where the relic had been found. Arriving there I scanned everything, dropping into any alexandrite hotspot, considering the planet B8C as a hint for the BBC elite game and especially the moon B8C A where A could refer to the company producing the computer system (forgot the name), since additionally it contains a mountain range really similar to bernard's loop, I spent much much much time there.
At some point a ship spawned on "B8C A" named Al-Qaum referencing the temple at Petra and given that this moon has the same color as the desert around Petra made me spend a lot of time on that moon to find a similar temple (even if I am pretty sure it will not be on a planet since it should be accessible from the start of the game). More coincidense (or not) on that particular moon in the center of that mountain range, around the "iris", there are craters that form a constellation almost exactly looking like the star constellation forming the eye at Maia. I went to all craters, looked for rifts and signs of presence, I went to the largest craters (cfr. omphalos) with the same intent but found nothing. Close to the ship I found 6 manned escape pods and a crashed ship. I lost them when going to close to Antares, the red giant. I made it out but just in time no to loose my ship. Then, I returned to Maia to offer the scan data to the Ryder station as it might have triggered something, but it didn't.
Of course I went back to the red giant, and ultimately did the same thing going there with a Cobra to self-destruct by flying into the red giant at points where the colors seemed to form a rift. Sometimes POIs spawn in Antares, but they just contain destroyed ships with no markings.
After all I had tried I still felt (and feel) Antares is involved. So then I considered the story about the omphalos stone at delphi where Zeus wanted to determine the center of the world. He had sent two eagles, equally fast, towards each other from the outer boundaries of the world. Now considering the story of the Scorpion and Orion, battling and being put at opposite sides as far away from each other as possible to never fight again, I considered Betelgeuse and Antares as both these outer points. Taking their average position, I wanted to find some system close to that point and as it seemed there is nothing around that point within 8 Ly. I thus thought I had found the omphalos rift, well I do not need to explain why, so I plotted a course from the nearest system and flew for 8 Ly straight on in the hope stumbling upon it. This took 35 hours of flight and I didn't. So, like with Polaris I tried finding systems for which a jump would pass through that point and I found some that were really near requiring jumps of about 40 LY and one really near that requires a jump of 90Ly, I do not own a ship that can jump that distance though, so I didn't try or created such a ship. However, what was really strange is that when plotting these courses in the galaxy map, none of them would actually pass through the calculated central point, still my queries to the database were right. The only explanation for it I have is that in some way the systems database is wrong, or something like warping of space is going on in and around that region. So I still consider this track as a plausible one.
Nevertheless I started calculating other mean points between stars of both constellations. From a mythological point of view both Orion and Scorpius are really interesting and often recognized throughout the world since ancient times. I found other rifts but didn't follow up on them. The most promissing is in between the heart of Scorpius (that is Anteres) and the head of Orion (that is ?? I forgot) that is much further out than all the others giving a rift close to Bernard's loop. I will possible check that region soon.
I also considered that R might be jumping between stars from these constellation and considered Raxxla as a way to describe these systems by rho alpha xi xi lambda alpha. I went to all, in any combination, with permutations across both constellations, ..., I calculated weighted means between any permutation of such assignments to find systems, again to find nothing interesting.
Finally, I gave up on all of that too, and considered the alleged toast again.
Now considering that Rhea, Hera or Ananke might be standing for the mother of galaxies (Considering Egypt that would have been Nu and its variations looking for such systems even systems like 'nu andromedae'). I cannot find any reference to Hera in terms of constellations or planets. But Rhea is in our solar system, ofcourse I went there but again, ...
Ananke is more promising, as it are a group of asteroids revolving around Jupiter. Furthermore, there is one asteroid designated LXX but that one was found around 2017, after the game had launched. I tried finding this group but again, ... Also I considered Callisto which is in fact the 8th moon around Jupiter and thus a plausible place for the TDW station, again I could not find anything there.
So, I went on to the mysteries as indicated by guru's post.
I analysed the picture referring to Alexander the Great, considering the Ram as it is correlated to Alexander, considering the macedonian star symbol which sometimes has 6 outer points, and considering that fer-de-lance could stand for fleur-de-lis, a part of the Arietis constellation as named in the 18th century, of which the fourth star (4/4) has a proper name, I can't recall that name, but the numbers are 33, 35, 39, 41 arietis and it is the latter that I mean. I went to these stars too, notably the last one, but found nothing.
I considered that the indication of wing might reference daedalus, the builder of the maze. Tried to find anything relevant at that station in Sol but nothing.
Concerning the mysteries, instead of like the many, I considered the central part of the bubble as a representation for Athens, with Tionisla its cemetary and with the many stars assigned to deities as temples. I looked at old maps for Athens and Eleusis and tried to find appropriate systems. I went to the Athena system and considered the Markham station as representation "home of Ares", followed missions from there on, but nothing. I considered the waters of SD as part of the cleansing ritual, took grain on many of my journeys. Went to all relevant systems as described in the text and tried to find locations that might be involved in some way. Again nothing really interesting or only vaguely interesting I guess. Often I considered Tionisla as the starting point of the journey. In all cases there was no blood on my hands (as in bounties or fines) , etc. etc.
I considered Nysa as a starting point, and there something strange happened: At some point a mission objective spawns. Going there upon picking up the black box I get an assassination mission in bragur. I both completed it and failed it by the way. But what was strange is that the return point (bragur) for the mission changed back to nysa upon completion. Another thing which was peculiar is that the mission giver was named Mayo (standing for god's messenger). Another thing which was strange was that the target was in wing with a ship called lembe (or something really similar to the old woman from the story). I took the changed mission return location as a hint and went to Bragur, more specifically Christian Station. But it seems to be a dead end.
Then, I went to Sol, where I had seen spawn a mission objective given by a ship named Ariel (god's lion). It is a mission objective with a trading beacon, (maybe I got to become elite trader though) which has strange behavior, notably at the instant of dropping into the trader beacon another mission objective will spawn. I considered it as a journey so I went from mission to mission to mission ultimately accepting one such missions when two spawned at the same time. Nothing happened although the mission is given by a guy that sends an encrypted message and has no cmdr id. I might have done something wrong .. still it seems all too peculiar. And I still think Sol is involved, given the history. So I tried to get the mission objective back, but it wouldn't spawn anymore no matter where I went in Sol, no matter how long I resided there.
I started following all kinds of ships with relevant names in Sol, waking out, did the same in Nysa (notably child, totem, storm, ... NPC names appearing in many many systems and only once I saw queen but couldn't follow thinking it would refer to demeter, never saw that one again unfortunately). In Sol I ended up at Ross 248 and more specifically 248 B7A. I might have gotten delusional by then but considered 248 B7A to stand for R, considering 4 translates to A 7 to L and 2 to R and 8 to X and B to 8. Indeed when taking 2 for R, then 6 characters later you get X, while ROSS might refer to brow. Anyway, too far-fetched, I still looked at that planet thoroughly. At some point I ended up at a station in Bernerd's star, where there suddenly was a guy called Mayo again. He gave out an assassination mission for a guy that had the characters of R in it, so that made me think about guru's post again. Again the name was peculiar, the mission return point was different in the statement than it was upon completing the mission.
So, I related this to Alexander the Great being the only one preventing the mysteries from happening and I had to stop him so that the journey could start again, referring to the beacons in sol. This was a mission to be completed in alpha centauri. Nothing happened after. I seached Alpha centauri but well yeah ...
Returning to Sol the trading beacon mission never came back, until one week later (yesterday) the same objective was there. So I thought again it would provide me with a path and dropped from objective to objective, ultimately entering a loop of locations (I did 38 or so) (none of them containing R) when I just accepted the mission since it seemed to me then that I really needed to do the mission. When returning the goods to the station and dropping into Sol, a new mission objective appeared but I though I will quickly finish this one, thinking it would have been still there when coming back from the station. This was stupid since it was no longer there after, and now these objectives won't spawn anymore like before. I might have misjudged that one, since I might have had to return the goods to that mission objective instead.
Considering the strangeness of it all and since the objectives are indicated as federal congress faction, I went to become ally with them, but .. meh. Still they might be an interesting cover for TDW.
Then, I tried Ariel considering the planet has many rifts, given the Type-9 ship's name from before. Nothing found there.
So back to the alleged toast. Considering that it is about Mercury or rather Hermes. On Mercury I heard the message from John Jameson when driving my SRV near a crash site. Message should not be there though, especially since I heard that message without interacting with anything. This might be a bug or some more R related thing. Still I haven't found anything on Mercury thus far, and it is a big planet. Also Mercury is very close to the center of mass of Sol (omphalos). Reading the myths on Hermes he is a very important personage in many myths being the messenger for Zeus. Hermes can be related to witchspace, the void as a representation for Hades, sirens as the inventor of the lyre, etc. etc. Though one can also relate Zeus to the toast given that he has given a lot of woes to many lovers, and most importantly his wife Hera. There is also one constellation put in the the heavens by Hermes dedicated to Zeus: Triangulum. Furthermore, in some version Hera would have given breast to Hermes, removing him having created the milky way as such. The story with Rhea and the Omphalos stone is similar.
Then there is Orpheus to which the toast can refer. It is related to the Eleusyan mysteries having its own Orphic mysteries. The analogies I will not explain here. But well there are many similarities. There are so many more things that I probably have forgotten to mention. Many possibilities that didn't lead up to main tracks, references, metaphores, .... But this is quiet enough or too much.
Other strange things in game that might be related:
There is a listening post in scorpius referring to a system and a planet with four beacons of which only three work. I wrote it down somewhere That might be related in some way? The fourth beacon that is.
Finally, does anyone know why red giants become obfuscated at about 88kLs when looked at them directly? I can't seem to grasp the physics of it. Might be just a bug. Or something related only to betelgeuse and antares.
Thanks for reading all of this.
I fully understand if this was just too much to spend time on but happy to have shared it after all this time.
Cheers
And since I shared them with one cmdr, I guess it is only fair to share them with all of you.
Hard to start this thing (and it is going to be a very long thing).
So let's start why I'm driven to search for Raxxla (R for short):
In my personal lore I got warped to this universe from the Jodorowsky universe and therefore since I found out about the existence of R it seemed necessary to find it in order to find my way back to that universe. So I have been searching for it for years now (actual years). But since the codex that search intensified. In fact it gives me something to do
since I do not care much for ranks or ships. It might have become a kind of obsession though: parent't grief no so much, lover's woe probably yes and a yearning most certainly being a vagabond of some kind IRL.Many of the tracks below are based on a multitude of information: in-game, out-of-game, historical, canon, lore or not. It will only make this even longer trying to argument everything based on that, so I won't and will assume you will see the links.
Prologue:
Before the codex, my search was largely based on the information in the books on the elite universe, many of which i don't even remember the names of.
I ran so many queries on a personal version of the systems database to fact check these books, however, didn't take any notes hence forgot much about it. One thing that I can remember was based on the story called "Mutabilis". There, I went looking for a system that had no system within 7 Ly around it, within 21 Ly from Lave. I found four such systems, however could not find any crashed ships within. Ultimately, I gave up on these books as a ground for finding R.
So, then I considered thinking like the developers of the game would have thought. Given that R is something from 1984's elite and from still "the" earlier "alien world" I assumed that its construction is based on that. Obviously, it refers to the race Oisir-Raxxla in "the alien world" and in that context it has to be related to the "Talmor Lenses" and what they stand for. It seemed to me (and still does) that these lenses refer to black holes. The reference to stabilizers which is related to pyramids is confusing though. First and foremost, how can pyramids on a spherical earth point to a (single) star (possibly the text that I read was not accurate on it since I do not have the original book) let alone considering that the earth is revolving around its axis and the sun. Then, considering they were built in "the easy way" with the points towards the star, ruled out the center of earth as well. Sol or any other star given the above reasoning are ruled out as well, unless maybe Polaris or any other north/south star, but even then it would only be by approximation and they are not pointing rather they are aligned. Considering the latitude of these pyramids and others would make their foundations point at about 1.2 mega-meter above north which is unlikely since that would not be an orbit now would it.
Of course I went to the many stars of the Orion constellation as represented in the layout of the pyramids, found black holes/super giants in some, but nothing more. Still it couldn't be that simple or it would have been found long before. So I went for the polaris theory as mentioned above and tried to access it, like many before and after. Since I assumed many people had searched its vicinity to no avail, I tried finding two stars forming a line with Polaris in the middle and wrote the necessary SQL to find such systems in the systems database. I found two stars that were about 60LY apart that nearly formed such a line and made the jump back and forth a number of times hoping I would get interdicted halfway, which wasn't the case. I do not really believe that it would be that simple once again, so I gave up on that idea. But still if nothing else works I will go back to that endeavor at some point, carrying things in my cargo hold in the hope getting interdicted by Thargoids or something.
Having considered all of that, I though about R as something related to a hack of the universe. Something software related. After all, in my personal view of our universe I link it often to a computer too (let's not discuss that here =)). Since the original game, and later games as well, are mainly programmed in assembler code, and since ORA (Oisir-Raxxla) is a mnemonic for an OR operation and since XX is often used in older BASIC programs as a prefix to variables I looked for a variable xx14 (number to letters geek thing) in an OR operation with the accumulator register (nevermind). And I did find an occurrence of that variable and of several ORA instructions but ultimately gave up on this track since well I do such stuff in real life and couldn't be bothered decoding assembler code to try to find a solution. It would go against this being a game after all
.Still going in the same kind of direction I considered the wormhole bug as a solution to R, but then considered that it was coded out in later versions of the game as it was unintended behavior. Nevertheless this being a 32 bit and not a 16 bit game made me decide on finding such a bug in the game. Trying to jump to systems which were at specific distances from my current position (let's leave out the details of it). This seemed all to crazy too, so I gave up on that as well, even though there are indicators for it, namely the fact that supercruise speed is limited to 2001-ish and that the pointer (left-below on the hud) indicating the selected target is operationally limited to 2001-ish Ls as well (it won't point correctly for any systems beyond). I even accounted for it in the fuel formula as reverse-engineered by some.
When the main developers, I always forget names (really bad at it), were asked for it, one said, "what a silly question, ofcourse it is", the other more importantly:
"At this stage I cannot tell you where it is. It is a journey everyone has to make for themselves. There you go."
Seems to me he was giving important tips (and the only ones) as indicated by the "there you go" and his facial expression seemed to indicate it was a clever statement. It also seems to me everyone is overly focusing on the second sentence, that of the journey, where the first one is more informative, meaning that, so I believe, R's location isn't fixed. There are stages to it, perhaps similar to its behavior as described in the book Mutabilis.
Hence, I considered Lave, with a permit locked moon, and thus went looking for other permit locked bodies and well yeah there aren't many to find patterns in. Needless to say that failed too.
Chorus:
This brings me to the point of the introduction of the codex, the first actual mention of R in the game, disregarding the TDW entry (and their alleged presence on SD) since I believe one cannot be sure that they actually govern/found R, nor that anything regarding them is true or useful.
Let's _not_ start with the alleged toast in the R entry, as that too cannot be considered fact. What can be considered is the mention of Art, and that the myth must have been in circulation before. What also can be considered is the alien artifact found on Mars. Colonization was before that time, and to that end probes were sent to the nearest stars. Expeditions were set up. In short colonization outside of Sol had started. What I got from that is that it should either be found within Sol or in between Sol and these nearest (100) stars. Or in between these nearest stars and sol (given how the game is built that would be harder to find and thus a plausible design choice).
There are many nearest stars however and, furthermore, what would I expect to find on route? My first thought went to Nemesis (something hypothesized in 1984, maybe a coincidence that that was in the same year as the first elite game), a stellar object that might exist outside the Oort cloud (also not proven, but highly likely to exist) with an orbit coming close to that cloud of asteroids causing some of these asteroids to be catapulted into the inner solar system causing mass extinctions believed to occur with repetitions of about 26 million years. Whether this has been proven or not, still makes it an interesting angle.
If such an object exists in the elite universe it could be a location for R. Given that supercruise speed maxes out at about 0.15 lY away from a massive object, and given the period of 26 million years and given the distance of the Oort cloud (about 1ly from the sun), the object should not have moved more than 0.15 lY in the last 1200 years and when I should fare in between Sol and these nearest stars I should see a drop in supercruise speed at some point if it is there.
I have not yet tried all possibilities, well yeah you can imagine the time it will take to verify it for every nearest star. Even if I would let it run autonomously with automated screen shots, I simply feel that that would be too crazy to do by myself. I rather play and try other things first. I did however try it for Sirius and Tau Ceti. I want to try it going from Persephone in Sol towards the Demeter System. Maybe in between Persephone and Mars (Olympus village) given Hermes/Persephone's journey back. Or rather Pluto and Mars, considering Hades in later times became more of a location than a god could be something too. But then given bodies changing locations on orbits would make it a very difficult calculation to see if these relate to some relative fix-points. Anyway, much to be done there, not likely to be fruitful.
At this point I considered the toast. The first sentence assigns R to the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies. The mother of galaxies if you look at it from a physics perspective can refer to globular clusters, black holes, super giants, nebulae/gas clouds, big bang, ...
Well the big bang let's not consider that. Nebulae/gas clouds .. there are many tracks to consider, so I avoided them.
Super giants form all the heavy elements found in solar systems that come after they die. Super giants are interesting in that way as giving birth.
Black holes, well there are just too many to consider all of them, but there is one that stands out especially given the tourist beacon: Maia. Maia furthermore is the mother of Hermes which is the only god that can travel anywhere. That is interesting too as you can interpret the toast referring to hermes. For one, it would be the favored god for vagabonds. Being a god of thiefs it can relate to parent's griefs, lover's woes. But that is just one track.
Finally, Globular clusters form a network within galaxies and are sometimes referred to as their umbilical cord. When translating umbilical cord to greek it is directly translated back to umblical (omphalos) rift. I did not follow up on this, yet, since most of the known ones are far away. But it is interesting regarding the story of the Oisir-Raxxla as mentioned before, since there it is stated that the focal point of the talmor lenses is the globular cluster in which they dwell.
Now on to Maia, containing a tourist beacon expressing the importance of looking through (around) it to the nebulae and stars. This seems a very promising angle to me. I see people focusing on the nebulae while it is in fact the mention of stars that is interesting, especially regarding the reference to Astrophel and the spiraling stars.
When looking through the black hole at Sol, approaching that point sideways you can see stars spiraling the black hole at an equidistance (10 points in total) consisting of 5 stars. 4 of them are white-blue and one is red. One of these stars is Asterope which I relate to Astrophel. When moving slightly back from the black hole they form an eye, with the black hole the iris and the selection of Sol the pupil.
When moving further back the white-blue ones (determined as Asterope, Glesting, Andoe and HIP 17704) stay in formation (forming a constellation, with three additional ones going up-left, which I considered as a path towards something but didn't follow up on it) while the red one (determined Antares) moves out. Needless to say, I quickly checked the four former ones, and then proceeded to Antares (looking like a jewel burning on the (eye)-brow), since it is the opposite of Ares in naming and Ares refers to Mars, where the relic had been found. Arriving there I scanned everything, dropping into any alexandrite hotspot, considering the planet B8C as a hint for the BBC elite game and especially the moon B8C A where A could refer to the company producing the computer system (forgot the name), since additionally it contains a mountain range really similar to bernard's loop, I spent much much much time there.
At some point a ship spawned on "B8C A" named Al-Qaum referencing the temple at Petra and given that this moon has the same color as the desert around Petra made me spend a lot of time on that moon to find a similar temple (even if I am pretty sure it will not be on a planet since it should be accessible from the start of the game). More coincidense (or not) on that particular moon in the center of that mountain range, around the "iris", there are craters that form a constellation almost exactly looking like the star constellation forming the eye at Maia. I went to all craters, looked for rifts and signs of presence, I went to the largest craters (cfr. omphalos) with the same intent but found nothing. Close to the ship I found 6 manned escape pods and a crashed ship. I lost them when going to close to Antares, the red giant. I made it out but just in time no to loose my ship. Then, I returned to Maia to offer the scan data to the Ryder station as it might have triggered something, but it didn't.
Of course I went back to the red giant, and ultimately did the same thing going there with a Cobra to self-destruct by flying into the red giant at points where the colors seemed to form a rift. Sometimes POIs spawn in Antares, but they just contain destroyed ships with no markings.
After all I had tried I still felt (and feel) Antares is involved. So then I considered the story about the omphalos stone at delphi where Zeus wanted to determine the center of the world. He had sent two eagles, equally fast, towards each other from the outer boundaries of the world. Now considering the story of the Scorpion and Orion, battling and being put at opposite sides as far away from each other as possible to never fight again, I considered Betelgeuse and Antares as both these outer points. Taking their average position, I wanted to find some system close to that point and as it seemed there is nothing around that point within 8 Ly. I thus thought I had found the omphalos rift, well I do not need to explain why, so I plotted a course from the nearest system and flew for 8 Ly straight on in the hope stumbling upon it. This took 35 hours of flight and I didn't. So, like with Polaris I tried finding systems for which a jump would pass through that point and I found some that were really near requiring jumps of about 40 LY and one really near that requires a jump of 90Ly, I do not own a ship that can jump that distance though, so I didn't try or created such a ship. However, what was really strange is that when plotting these courses in the galaxy map, none of them would actually pass through the calculated central point, still my queries to the database were right. The only explanation for it I have is that in some way the systems database is wrong, or something like warping of space is going on in and around that region. So I still consider this track as a plausible one.
Nevertheless I started calculating other mean points between stars of both constellations. From a mythological point of view both Orion and Scorpius are really interesting and often recognized throughout the world since ancient times. I found other rifts but didn't follow up on them. The most promissing is in between the heart of Scorpius (that is Anteres) and the head of Orion (that is ?? I forgot) that is much further out than all the others giving a rift close to Bernard's loop. I will possible check that region soon.
I also considered that R might be jumping between stars from these constellation and considered Raxxla as a way to describe these systems by rho alpha xi xi lambda alpha. I went to all, in any combination, with permutations across both constellations, ..., I calculated weighted means between any permutation of such assignments to find systems, again to find nothing interesting.
Finally, I gave up on all of that too, and considered the alleged toast again.
Now considering that Rhea, Hera or Ananke might be standing for the mother of galaxies (Considering Egypt that would have been Nu and its variations looking for such systems even systems like 'nu andromedae'). I cannot find any reference to Hera in terms of constellations or planets. But Rhea is in our solar system, ofcourse I went there but again, ...
Ananke is more promising, as it are a group of asteroids revolving around Jupiter. Furthermore, there is one asteroid designated LXX but that one was found around 2017, after the game had launched. I tried finding this group but again, ... Also I considered Callisto which is in fact the 8th moon around Jupiter and thus a plausible place for the TDW station, again I could not find anything there.
So, I went on to the mysteries as indicated by guru's post.
I analysed the picture referring to Alexander the Great, considering the Ram as it is correlated to Alexander, considering the macedonian star symbol which sometimes has 6 outer points, and considering that fer-de-lance could stand for fleur-de-lis, a part of the Arietis constellation as named in the 18th century, of which the fourth star (4/4) has a proper name, I can't recall that name, but the numbers are 33, 35, 39, 41 arietis and it is the latter that I mean. I went to these stars too, notably the last one, but found nothing.
I considered that the indication of wing might reference daedalus, the builder of the maze. Tried to find anything relevant at that station in Sol but nothing.
Concerning the mysteries, instead of like the many, I considered the central part of the bubble as a representation for Athens, with Tionisla its cemetary and with the many stars assigned to deities as temples. I looked at old maps for Athens and Eleusis and tried to find appropriate systems. I went to the Athena system and considered the Markham station as representation "home of Ares", followed missions from there on, but nothing. I considered the waters of SD as part of the cleansing ritual, took grain on many of my journeys. Went to all relevant systems as described in the text and tried to find locations that might be involved in some way. Again nothing really interesting or only vaguely interesting I guess. Often I considered Tionisla as the starting point of the journey. In all cases there was no blood on my hands (as in bounties or fines) , etc. etc.
I considered Nysa as a starting point, and there something strange happened: At some point a mission objective spawns. Going there upon picking up the black box I get an assassination mission in bragur. I both completed it and failed it by the way. But what was strange is that the return point (bragur) for the mission changed back to nysa upon completion. Another thing which was peculiar is that the mission giver was named Mayo (standing for god's messenger). Another thing which was strange was that the target was in wing with a ship called lembe (or something really similar to the old woman from the story). I took the changed mission return location as a hint and went to Bragur, more specifically Christian Station. But it seems to be a dead end.
Then, I went to Sol, where I had seen spawn a mission objective given by a ship named Ariel (god's lion). It is a mission objective with a trading beacon, (maybe I got to become elite trader though) which has strange behavior, notably at the instant of dropping into the trader beacon another mission objective will spawn. I considered it as a journey so I went from mission to mission to mission ultimately accepting one such missions when two spawned at the same time. Nothing happened although the mission is given by a guy that sends an encrypted message and has no cmdr id. I might have done something wrong .. still it seems all too peculiar. And I still think Sol is involved, given the history. So I tried to get the mission objective back, but it wouldn't spawn anymore no matter where I went in Sol, no matter how long I resided there.
I started following all kinds of ships with relevant names in Sol, waking out, did the same in Nysa (notably child, totem, storm, ... NPC names appearing in many many systems and only once I saw queen but couldn't follow thinking it would refer to demeter, never saw that one again unfortunately). In Sol I ended up at Ross 248 and more specifically 248 B7A. I might have gotten delusional by then but considered 248 B7A to stand for R, considering 4 translates to A 7 to L and 2 to R and 8 to X and B to 8. Indeed when taking 2 for R, then 6 characters later you get X, while ROSS might refer to brow. Anyway, too far-fetched, I still looked at that planet thoroughly. At some point I ended up at a station in Bernerd's star, where there suddenly was a guy called Mayo again. He gave out an assassination mission for a guy that had the characters of R in it, so that made me think about guru's post again. Again the name was peculiar, the mission return point was different in the statement than it was upon completing the mission.
So, I related this to Alexander the Great being the only one preventing the mysteries from happening and I had to stop him so that the journey could start again, referring to the beacons in sol. This was a mission to be completed in alpha centauri. Nothing happened after. I seached Alpha centauri but well yeah ...
Returning to Sol the trading beacon mission never came back, until one week later (yesterday) the same objective was there. So I thought again it would provide me with a path and dropped from objective to objective, ultimately entering a loop of locations (I did 38 or so) (none of them containing R) when I just accepted the mission since it seemed to me then that I really needed to do the mission. When returning the goods to the station and dropping into Sol, a new mission objective appeared but I though I will quickly finish this one, thinking it would have been still there when coming back from the station. This was stupid since it was no longer there after, and now these objectives won't spawn anymore like before. I might have misjudged that one, since I might have had to return the goods to that mission objective instead.
Considering the strangeness of it all and since the objectives are indicated as federal congress faction, I went to become ally with them, but .. meh. Still they might be an interesting cover for TDW.
Then, I tried Ariel considering the planet has many rifts, given the Type-9 ship's name from before. Nothing found there.
So back to the alleged toast. Considering that it is about Mercury or rather Hermes. On Mercury I heard the message from John Jameson when driving my SRV near a crash site. Message should not be there though, especially since I heard that message without interacting with anything. This might be a bug or some more R related thing. Still I haven't found anything on Mercury thus far, and it is a big planet
. Also Mercury is very close to the center of mass of Sol (omphalos). Reading the myths on Hermes he is a very important personage in many myths being the messenger for Zeus. Hermes can be related to witchspace, the void as a representation for Hades, sirens as the inventor of the lyre, etc. etc. Though one can also relate Zeus to the toast given that he has given a lot of woes to many lovers, and most importantly his wife Hera. There is also one constellation put in the the heavens by Hermes dedicated to Zeus: Triangulum. Furthermore, in some version Hera would have given breast to Hermes, removing him having created the milky way as such. The story with Rhea and the Omphalos stone is similar.Then there is Orpheus to which the toast can refer. It is related to the Eleusyan mysteries having its own Orphic mysteries. The analogies I will not explain here. But well there are many similarities. There are so many more things that I probably have forgotten to mention. Many possibilities that didn't lead up to main tracks, references, metaphores, .... But this is quiet enough
or too much.Other strange things in game that might be related:
There is a listening post in scorpius referring to a system and a planet with four beacons of which only three work. I wrote it down somewhere That might be related in some way? The fourth beacon that is.
Finally, does anyone know why red giants become obfuscated at about 88kLs when looked at them directly? I can't seem to grasp the physics of it. Might be just a bug. Or something related only to betelgeuse and antares.
Thanks for reading all of this.
I fully understand if this was just too much to spend time on
but happy to have shared it after all this time.Cheers
Word has it Guru found magic space mushrooms at Burnell station... Consumption is not recommended commanders.
-Void
-Void
-deleted-
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I have never shared any of the things I will share with you below until yesterday.
And since I shared them with one cmdr, I guess it is only fair to share them with all of you.
Hard to start this thing (and it is going to be a very long thing).
So let's start why I'm driven to search for Raxxla (R for short):
In my personal lore I got warped to this universe from the Jodorowsky universe and therefore since I found out about the existence of R it seemed necessary to find it in order to find my way back to that universe. So I have been searching for it for years now (actual years). But since the codex that search intensified. In fact it gives me something to do
Many of the tracks below are based on a multitude of information: in-game, out-of-game, historical, canon, lore or not. It will only make this even longer trying to argument everything based on that, so I won't and will assume you will see the links.
Prologue:
Before the codex, my search was largely based on the information in the books on the elite universe, many of which i don't even remember the names of.
I ran so many queries on a personal version of the systems database to fact check these books, however, didn't take any notes hence forgot much about it. One thing that I can remember was based on the story called "Mutabilis". There, I went looking for a system that had no system within 7 Ly around it, within 21 Ly from Lave. I found four such systems, however could not find any crashed ships within. Ultimately, I gave up on these books as a ground for finding R.
So, then I considered thinking like the developers of the game would have thought. Given that R is something from 1984's elite and from still "the" earlier "alien world" I assumed that its construction is based on that. Obviously, it refers to the race Oisir-Raxxla in "the alien world" and in that context it has to be related to the "Talmor Lenses" and what they stand for. It seemed to me (and still does) that these lenses refer to black holes. The reference to stabilizers which is related to pyramids is confusing though. First and foremost, how can pyramids on a spherical earth point to a (single) star (possibly the text that I read was not accurate on it since I do not have the original book) let alone considering that the earth is revolving around its axis and the sun. Then, considering they were built in "the easy way" with the points towards the star, ruled out the center of earth as well. Sol or any other star given the above reasoning are ruled out as well, unless maybe Polaris or any other north/south star, but even then it would only be by approximation and they are not pointing rather they are aligned. Considering the latitude of these pyramids and others would make their foundations point at about 1.2 mega-meter above north which is unlikely since that would not be an orbit now would it.
Of course I went to the many stars of the Orion constellation as represented in the layout of the pyramids, found black holes/super giants in some, but nothing more. Still it couldn't be that simple or it would have been found long before. So I went for the polaris theory as mentioned above and tried to access it, like many before and after. Since I assumed many people had searched its vicinity to no avail, I tried finding two stars forming a line with Polaris in the middle and wrote the necessary SQL to find such systems in the systems database. I found two stars that were about 60LY apart that nearly formed such a line and made the jump back and forth a number of times hoping I would get interdicted halfway, which wasn't the case. I do not really believe that it would be that simple once again, so I gave up on that idea. But still if nothing else works I will go back to that endeavor at some point, carrying things in my cargo hold in the hope getting interdicted by Thargoids or something.
Having considered all of that, I though about R as something related to a hack of the universe. Something software related. After all, in my personal view of our universe I link it often to a computer too (let's not discuss that here =)). Since the original game, and later games as well, are mainly programmed in assembler code, and since ORA (Oisir-Raxxla) is a mnemonic for an OR operation and since XX is often used in older BASIC programs as a prefix to variables I looked for a variable xx14 (number to letters geek thing) in an OR operation with the accumulator register (nevermind). And I did find an occurrence of that variable and of several ORA instructions but ultimately gave up on this track since well I do such stuff in real life and couldn't be bothered decoding assembler code to try to find a solution. It would go against this being a game after all
Still going in the same kind of direction I considered the wormhole bug as a solution to R, but then considered that it was coded out in later versions of the game as it was unintended behavior. Nevertheless this being a 32 bit and not a 16 bit game made me decide on finding such a bug in the game. Trying to jump to systems which were at specific distances from my current position (let's leave out the details of it). This seemed all to crazy too, so I gave up on that as well, even though there are indicators for it, namely the fact that supercruise speed is limited to 2001-ish and that the pointer (left-below on the hud) indicating the selected target is operationally limited to 2001-ish Ls as well (it won't point correctly for any systems beyond). I even accounted for it in the fuel formula as reverse-engineered by some.
When the main developers, I always forget names (really bad at it), were asked for it, one said, "what a silly question, ofcourse it is", the other more importantly:
"At this stage I cannot tell you where it is. It is a journey everyone has to make for themselves. There you go."
Seems to me he was giving important tips (and the only ones) as indicated by the "there you go" and his facial expression seemed to indicate it was a clever statement. It also seems to me everyone is overly focusing on the second sentence, that of the journey, where the first one is more informative, meaning that, so I believe, R's location isn't fixed. There are stages to it, perhaps similar to its behavior as described in the book Mutabilis.
Hence, I considered Lave, with a permit locked moon, and thus went looking for other permit locked bodies and well yeah there aren't many to find patterns in. Needless to say that failed too.
Chorus:
This brings me to the point of the introduction of the codex, the first actual mention of R in the game, disregarding the TDW entry (and their alleged presence on SD) since I believe one cannot be sure that they actually govern/found R, nor that anything regarding them is true or useful.
Let's _not_ start with the alleged toast in the R entry, as that too cannot be considered fact. What can be considered is the mention of Art, and that the myth must have been in circulation before. What also can be considered is the alien artifact found on Mars. Colonization was before that time, and to that end probes were sent to the nearest stars. Expeditions were set up. In short colonization outside of Sol had started. What I got from that is that it should either be found within Sol or in between Sol and these nearest (100) stars. Or in between these nearest stars and sol (given how the game is built that would be harder to find and thus a plausible design choice).
There are many nearest stars however and, furthermore, what would I expect to find on route? My first thought went to Nemesis (something hypothesized in 1984, maybe a coincidence that that was in the same year as the first elite game), a stellar object that might exist outside the Oort cloud (also not proven, but highly likely to exist) with an orbit coming close to that cloud of asteroids causing some of these asteroids to be catapulted into the inner solar system causing mass extinctions believed to occur with repetitions of about 26 million years. Whether this has been proven or not, still makes it an interesting angle.
If such an object exists in the elite universe it could be a location for R. Given that supercruise speed maxes out at about 0.15 lY away from a massive object, and given the period of 26 million years and given the distance of the Oort cloud (about 1ly from the sun), the object should not have moved more than 0.15 lY in the last 1200 years and when I should fare in between Sol and these nearest stars I should see a drop in supercruise speed at some point if it is there.
I have not yet tried all possibilities, well yeah you can imagine the time it will take to verify it for every nearest star. Even if I would let it run autonomously with automated screen shots, I simply feel that that would be too crazy to do by myself. I rather play and try other things first. I did however try it for Sirius and Tau Ceti. I want to try it going from Persephone in Sol towards the Demeter System. Maybe in between Persephone and Mars (Olympus village) given Hermes/Persephone's journey back. Or rather Pluto and Mars, considering Hades in later times became more of a location than a god could be something too. But then given bodies changing locations on orbits would make it a very difficult calculation to see if these relate to some relative fix-points. Anyway, much to be done there, not likely to be fruitful.
At this point I considered the toast. The first sentence assigns R to the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies. The mother of galaxies if you look at it from a physics perspective can refer to globular clusters, black holes, super giants, nebulae/gas clouds, big bang, ...
Well the big bang let's not consider that. Nebulae/gas clouds .. there are many tracks to consider, so I avoided them.
Super giants form all the heavy elements found in solar systems that come after they die. Super giants are interesting in that way as giving birth.
Black holes, well there are just too many to consider all of them, but there is one that stands out especially given the tourist beacon: Maia. Maia furthermore is the mother of Hermes which is the only god that can travel anywhere. That is interesting too as you can interpret the toast referring to hermes. For one, it would be the favored god for vagabonds. Being a god of thiefs it can relate to parent's griefs, lover's woes. But that is just one track.
Finally, Globular clusters form a network within galaxies and are sometimes referred to as their umbilical cord. When translating umbilical cord to greek it is directly translated back to umblical (omphalos) rift. I did not follow up on this, yet, since most of the known ones are far away. But it is interesting regarding the story of the Oisir-Raxxla as mentioned before, since there it is stated that the focal point of the talmor lenses is the globular cluster in which they dwell.
Now on to Maia, containing a tourist beacon expressing the importance of looking through (around) it to the nebulae and stars. This seems a very promising angle to me. I see people focusing on the nebulae while it is in fact the mention of stars that is interesting, especially regarding the reference to Astrophel and the spiraling stars.
When looking through the black hole at Sol, approaching that point sideways you can see stars spiraling the black hole at an equidistance (10 points in total) consisting of 5 stars. 4 of them are white-blue and one is red. One of these stars is Asterope which I relate to Astrophel. When moving slightly back from the black hole they form an eye, with the black hole the iris and the selection of Sol the pupil.
When moving further back the white-blue ones (determined as Asterope, Glesting, Andoe and HIP 17704) stay in formation (forming a constellation, with three additional ones going up-left, which I considered as a path towards something but didn't follow up on it) while the red one (determined Antares) moves out. Needless to say, I quickly checked the four former ones, and then proceeded to Antares (looking like a jewel burning on the (eye)-brow), since it is the opposite of Ares in naming and Ares refers to Mars, where the relic had been found. Arriving there I scanned everything, dropping into any alexandrite hotspot, considering the planet B8C as a hint for the BBC elite game and especially the moon B8C A where A could refer to the company producing the computer system (forgot the name), since additionally it contains a mountain range really similar to bernard's loop, I spent much much much time there.
At some point a ship spawned on "B8C A" named Al-Qaum referencing the temple at Petra and given that this moon has the same color as the desert around Petra made me spend a lot of time on that moon to find a similar temple (even if I am pretty sure it will not be on a planet since it should be accessible from the start of the game). More coincidense (or not) on that particular moon in the center of that mountain range, around the "iris", there are craters that form a constellation almost exactly looking like the star constellation forming the eye at Maia. I went to all craters, looked for rifts and signs of presence, I went to the largest craters (cfr. omphalos) with the same intent but found nothing. Close to the ship I found 6 manned escape pods and a crashed ship. I lost them when going to close to Antares, the red giant. I made it out but just in time no to loose my ship. Then, I returned to Maia to offer the scan data to the Ryder station as it might have triggered something, but it didn't.
Of course I went back to the red giant, and ultimately did the same thing going there with a Cobra to self-destruct by flying into the red giant at points where the colors seemed to form a rift. Sometimes POIs spawn in Antares, but they just contain destroyed ships with no markings.
After all I had tried I still felt (and feel) Antares is involved. So then I considered the story about the omphalos stone at delphi where Zeus wanted to determine the center of the world. He had sent two eagles, equally fast, towards each other from the outer boundaries of the world. Now considering the story of the Scorpion and Orion, battling and being put at opposite sides as far away from each other as possible to never fight again, I considered Betelgeuse and Antares as both these outer points. Taking their average position, I wanted to find some system close to that point and as it seemed there is nothing around that point within 8 Ly. I thus thought I had found the omphalos rift, well I do not need to explain why, so I plotted a course from the nearest system and flew for 8 Ly straight on in the hope stumbling upon it. This took 35 hours of flight and I didn't. So, like with Polaris I tried finding systems for which a jump would pass through that point and I found some that were really near requiring jumps of about 40 LY and one really near that requires a jump of 90Ly, I do not own a ship that can jump that distance though, so I didn't try or created such a ship. However, what was really strange is that when plotting these courses in the galaxy map, none of them would actually pass through the calculated central point, still my queries to the database were right. The only explanation for it I have is that in some way the systems database is wrong, or something like warping of space is going on in and around that region. So I still consider this track as a plausible one.
Nevertheless I started calculating other mean points between stars of both constellations. From a mythological point of view both Orion and Scorpius are really interesting and often recognized throughout the world since ancient times. I found other rifts but didn't follow up on them. The most promissing is in between the heart of Scorpius (that is Anteres) and the head of Orion (that is ?? I forgot) that is much further out than all the others giving a rift close to Bernard's loop. I will possible check that region soon.
I also considered that R might be jumping between stars from these constellation and considered Raxxla as a way to describe these systems by rho alpha xi xi lambda alpha. I went to all, in any combination, with permutations across both constellations, ..., I calculated weighted means between any permutation of such assignments to find systems, again to find nothing interesting.
Finally, I gave up on all of that too, and considered the alleged toast again.
Now considering that Rhea, Hera or Ananke might be standing for the mother of galaxies (Considering Egypt that would have been Nu and its variations looking for such systems even systems like 'nu andromedae'). I cannot find any reference to Hera in terms of constellations or planets. But Rhea is in our solar system, ofcourse I went there but again, ...
Ananke is more promising, as it are a group of asteroids revolving around Jupiter. Furthermore, there is one asteroid designated LXX but that one was found around 2017, after the game had launched. I tried finding this group but again, ... Also I considered Callisto which is in fact the 8th moon around Jupiter and thus a plausible place for the TDW station, again I could not find anything there.
So, I went on to the mysteries as indicated by guru's post.
I analysed the picture referring to Alexander the Great, considering the Ram as it is correlated to Alexander, considering the macedonian star symbol which sometimes has 6 outer points, and considering that fer-de-lance could stand for fleur-de-lis, a part of the Arietis constellation as named in the 18th century, of which the fourth star (4/4) has a proper name, I can't recall that name, but the numbers are 33, 35, 39, 41 arietis and it is the latter that I mean. I went to these stars too, notably the last one, but found nothing.
I considered that the indication of wing might reference daedalus, the builder of the maze. Tried to find anything relevant at that station in Sol but nothing.
Concerning the mysteries, instead of like the many, I considered the central part of the bubble as a representation for Athens, with Tionisla its cemetary and with the many stars assigned to deities as temples. I looked at old maps for Athens and Eleusis and tried to find appropriate systems. I went to the Athena system and considered the Markham station as representation "home of Ares", followed missions from there on, but nothing. I considered the waters of SD as part of the cleansing ritual, took grain on many of my journeys. Went to all relevant systems as described in the text and tried to find locations that might be involved in some way. Again nothing really interesting or only vaguely interesting I guess. Often I considered Tionisla as the starting point of the journey. In all cases there was no blood on my hands (as in bounties or fines) , etc. etc.
I considered Nysa as a starting point, and there something strange happened: At some point a mission objective spawns. Going there upon picking up the black box I get an assassination mission in bragur. I both completed it and failed it by the way. But what was strange is that the return point (bragur) for the mission changed back to nysa upon completion. Another thing which was peculiar is that the mission giver was named Mayo (standing for god's messenger). Another thing which was strange was that the target was in wing with a ship called lembe (or something really similar to the old woman from the story). I took the changed mission return location as a hint and went to Bragur, more specifically Christian Station. But it seems to be a dead end.
Then, I went to Sol, where I had seen spawn a mission objective given by a ship named Ariel (god's lion). It is a mission objective with a trading beacon, (maybe I got to become elite trader though) which has strange behavior, notably at the instant of dropping into the trader beacon another mission objective will spawn. I considered it as a journey so I went from mission to mission to mission ultimately accepting one such missions when two spawned at the same time. Nothing happened although the mission is given by a guy that sends an encrypted message and has no cmdr id. I might have done something wrong .. still it seems all too peculiar. And I still think Sol is involved, given the history. So I tried to get the mission objective back, but it wouldn't spawn anymore no matter where I went in Sol, no matter how long I resided there.
I started following all kinds of ships with relevant names in Sol, waking out, did the same in Nysa (notably child, totem, storm, ... NPC names appearing in many many systems and only once I saw queen but couldn't follow thinking it would refer to demeter, never saw that one again unfortunately). In Sol I ended up at Ross 248 and more specifically 248 B7A. I might have gotten delusional by then but considered 248 B7A to stand for R, considering 4 translates to A 7 to L and 2 to R and 8 to X and B to 8. Indeed when taking 2 for R, then 6 characters later you get X, while ROSS might refer to brow. Anyway, too far-fetched, I still looked at that planet thoroughly. At some point I ended up at a station in Bernerd's star, where there suddenly was a guy called Mayo again. He gave out an assassination mission for a guy that had the characters of R in it, so that made me think about guru's post again. Again the name was peculiar, the mission return point was different in the statement than it was upon completing the mission.
So, I related this to Alexander the Great being the only one preventing the mysteries from happening and I had to stop him so that the journey could start again, referring to the beacons in sol. This was a mission to be completed in alpha centauri. Nothing happened after. I seached Alpha centauri but well yeah ...
Returning to Sol the trading beacon mission never came back, until one week later (yesterday) the same objective was there. So I thought again it would provide me with a path and dropped from objective to objective, ultimately entering a loop of locations (I did 38 or so) (none of them containing R) when I just accepted the mission since it seemed to me then that I really needed to do the mission. When returning the goods to the station and dropping into Sol, a new mission objective appeared but I though I will quickly finish this one, thinking it would have been still there when coming back from the station. This was stupid since it was no longer there after, and now these objectives won't spawn anymore like before. I might have misjudged that one, since I might have had to return the goods to that mission objective instead.
Considering the strangeness of it all and since the objectives are indicated as federal congress faction, I went to become ally with them, but .. meh. Still they might be an interesting cover for TDW.
Then, I tried Ariel considering the planet has many rifts, given the Type-9 ship's name from before. Nothing found there.
So back to the alleged toast. Considering that it is about Mercury or rather Hermes. On Mercury I heard the message from John Jameson when driving my SRV near a crash site. Message should not be there though, especially since I heard that message without interacting with anything. This might be a bug or some more R related thing. Still I haven't found anything on Mercury thus far, and it is a big planet
Then there is Orpheus to which the toast can refer. It is related to the Eleusyan mysteries having its own Orphic mysteries. The analogies I will not explain here. But well there are many similarities. There are so many more things that I probably have forgotten to mention. Many possibilities that didn't lead up to main tracks, references, metaphores, .... But this is quiet enough
Other strange things in game that might be related:
There is a listening post in scorpius referring to a system and a planet with four beacons of which only three work. I wrote it down somewhere That might be related in some way? The fourth beacon that is.
Finally, does anyone know why red giants become obfuscated at about 88kLs when looked at them directly? I can't seem to grasp the physics of it. Might be just a bug. Or something related only to betelgeuse and antares.
Thanks for reading all of this.
I fully understand if this was just too much to spend time on
Cheers
In my humble opinion, this is the mindset, commitment and understanding of a CMDR who will find R.
A great read.
o7
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At the risk of sounding obtuse, Guru, did you find Raxxla?
Same thing here, but from Herbert's
We both are vagabonds... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagabond_of_Limbo)
You have been doing a fine Quest, anyway !
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When I find R, we will visit each other's!
Time will tell. Right or wrong, based on my previous statements, I will eventually tell and present you with what has been found.
When I find R, we will visit each other's!
Err.. just let me erradicate the plague that has invaded my Universe and sent me here, before...
Othon, you mentioned that you went about your search as one who did not "have blood on his hands".
I know the Eleusian mysteries were open to all, but that one of the requirements of initiation was that the novitiate had never murdered or have "blood on their hands".
This would lead me to surmise that the path to be followed would have to be from one who had never killed a ship or entity in game, though the contradictory point to that is that there appears to be an assassination mission given at the first hurdle - I find it interesting that you said you had "both completed it and failed it", which suggests you tried to keep your hands clean somehow.
I can't help thinking that this requirement is somehow key, though how this fits in with the raison d'etre of the game as a whole, I cannot yet fathom...
I know the Eleusian mysteries were open to all, but that one of the requirements of initiation was that the novitiate had never murdered or have "blood on their hands".
This would lead me to surmise that the path to be followed would have to be from one who had never killed a ship or entity in game, though the contradictory point to that is that there appears to be an assassination mission given at the first hurdle - I find it interesting that you said you had "both completed it and failed it", which suggests you tried to keep your hands clean somehow.
I can't help thinking that this requirement is somehow key, though how this fits in with the raison d'etre of the game as a whole, I cannot yet fathom...
It does not say that you cannot kill, you cannot murder it says. Meaning that if for some good reason you did (like wanted status, wars) it does not count. In greek times I cannot imagine that there would be no blood on anyone's hands. For example, you being a judge deciding on execution. Murder is what pirates would do. A criminal act for personal gain only. I am really sure that in the 4y I have played this game not once I did such an act.
Maybe you have to repair/refuel/hatch break it with a limpet?
IF the central circle of the Raxxla icon is Sol
How to interpret the rest of the drawing ?
And about Hermes, he also gave his magic shoes to Perseus (as asked by Athena) who then could fly to save Andromeda.
What a mess... But more stuff in the line of Mercury and the witchspace.
How to interpret the rest of the drawing ?
And about Hermes, he also gave his magic shoes to Perseus (as asked by Athena) who then could fly to save Andromeda.
What a mess... But more stuff in the line of Mercury and the witchspace.
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I've been wondering what that could mean.(the circle in raxxla.) BTW, the back image seems to be related to the back of a station interior. The 3 part circumferences are and upside down reticule on the system map or something seen in the front of the interior of a station potentially. The only part I have not found a very blunt equivilant too is the hexagon with 18 dashes. Stations have 18 dashes in some stations with red rear interiors but it's in a circle.
And as to not killing. Do you have to have no combat kill experience. I've wondered this. Because there is an oddity related to combat for explroreres. The only way to max jump range in an anaconda is to get dangerous in combat for the jamison engineer. I was going to do pure exploration but I would need to get that level in combat somehow to get max range. it's weird. I've been wondering if there was a way around this. Or a way to get to dangerous without actually engaging in combat. Like if there is a way to get trader up with side things like exploration(which sadly doesn't happen).
Jameson is the only one to offer level 4 lightweight on life support and here access is exclusively from combat rank. the only alternative is a lv 3 from Bill Turner:
https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineer/19/
https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineer/20/
Oddly enough lori requires access from marco who lives in sirius and is an odd character who is set aside by the company to do work almost like someone in a company who purposely does this to run things from the side in a hidden manner. He also lives on a planet called Lucifer... You would think lori being a jameson would be explorer oriented and not combat.
And as to not killing. Do you have to have no combat kill experience. I've wondered this. Because there is an oddity related to combat for explroreres. The only way to max jump range in an anaconda is to get dangerous in combat for the jamison engineer. I was going to do pure exploration but I would need to get that level in combat somehow to get max range. it's weird. I've been wondering if there was a way around this. Or a way to get to dangerous without actually engaging in combat. Like if there is a way to get trader up with side things like exploration(which sadly doesn't happen).
Jameson is the only one to offer level 4 lightweight on life support and here access is exclusively from combat rank. the only alternative is a lv 3 from Bill Turner:
https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineer/19/
https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineer/20/
Oddly enough lori requires access from marco who lives in sirius and is an odd character who is set aside by the company to do work almost like someone in a company who purposely does this to run things from the side in a hidden manner. He also lives on a planet called Lucifer... You would think lori being a jameson would be explorer oriented and not combat.
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You really do not have to have max jump range to explore - I'm in a 53ly Asp, which is more than adequate and taken me to clusters at the far edges of the galaxy using FSD boosts. I'm an Elite explorer at this point, but a Harmless combat rank.
I've not yet killed anything in game....
I've not yet killed anything in game....
Haven’t fleshed out this idea yet because if it’s connected together I’m not quite sure how. But I think most, like myself, suspect Delphi is connected to Raxxla (with good reason). There doesn’t appear, to me, to be anything within the system to help us find anything outside of it (other than perhaps coordnance from the Thargoid base). If we consider the Delphi system iteself to be the center from which to view things, I’m curious what the Cassiopeia constellation looks like from the point of view of Delphi. I think, as others have said, that the mother of galaxies is referencing Cassiopeia, the parents greif and the lovers woe, I think is the Andromeda constellation (parents had to sacrifice her and her lover saved her). I wonder if viewing these two from Delphi might give us some hints. I also think it’s interesting that the first account of Raxxla was recorded in Tau Ceti, which forms the literal belly of the beast, Cetus (constellation), the sea monster sent by Poseidon to kill Andromeda.
Oort's cloud?
Or perhaps Sol aimed/locked for a jump as seen from the inside of The Portal.