Greetings!
It's been a while since I last checked in. And by a 'while' I mean something approaching 150,000 ly. Last time I checked in I was at Livingstone Point on the southern Meridian. It's been several months since then and it's been an eventful, if episodic trip, as i've started burning out. Picking up where I left off, after leaving Livingstone Point I proceeded westward along the outer arm, until discovering an rare ELW binary south of Vig's Beacon!
Not being willing to let this tag go unclaimed, I rushed almost 10,000 ly north to the closest inhabited system, Farsight Expedition Base in the Heart Nebula. Handing the legacy to my alternate account one last time for safe keeping I sold my data at Farsight and tagged my ELWs.
Collage: ELW #166-214, all of which found with Achievement in my hold:
After this last pit stop, I pushed southwest through the Formidine Rift, stopping at one of the
settlements, passing just above the POI
Maia's Jewel, flew past the black hole at "
Opposites" and stopped to explore the S
pongou Nebula. I zigged north to "
Explorer's End" (it wasn't mine!) then zagged over to land on the unusual "
Little Trojan" planet, surprisingly co-orbiting with planet 1 in its L4 or L5 point. After tip-toeing over the
Bovomit permit-zone, I continued northwest for the better part of 20,000 ly.
I decided not to stop at the western-most point on the '0 north' meridian, "
Manifest Destiny", and instead continued north to Wagar's Reach and the
Osprey Stellar Remnant.
I then made a hard turn westward and curved over to the westernmost star in the galaxy,
Erickson's Star. I discovered a few Jumponium rich "Green" systems surrounding Erickson's Star itself, which is good because it took mover 40 jumponium jumps on my 53.5 ly Asp to reach the POI itself! This is easily the most difficult of all the distant stars to reach by that measure.
After Erickson's Star I headed due east to
Mount Glenn, one waypoint on the Mercury 7 expedition, and made a decision - after 120,000 ly of travel since the last pit stop, and so few interesting sights in the outer arm, I decided to take a break from exploration and head back to Colonia. I'm simply burning out and need to save some energy for DWE II! I'll have to finish the Grand Spiral someday, but it won't be this trip. The final sprint has been 20,000 ly directly SE from Mount Glenn to the Colonia area.
Here in Colonia I wanted to take Achievement on three challenges. First is
The Mighty, where I managed to land safely with the Legacy
I then climbed a ~200m hill, The Mighty's 10g equivalent of a great mountain, with Achievement onboard my SRV.
Next up, I wanted to land on the planet
Monde de la Mort - this is the "World of Death" that has an orbit that extends INSIDE the exclusion zone of its parent white dwarf. Unfortunately, this was a successful failure - a failure in that I didn't get to land on the planet (only enter orbit) but a success in that I survived at all.
When I approached it appeared the planet, which was at aphelion at the time, was clear of the star's jet. It wasn't. Just before touching the planet I entered the jet and got pushed around as you do - causing me to hit the planet a bit too fast for OC - in turn causing an emergency drop, into realspace, in the middle of the WD jet. I very nearly died right then and there, with Achievement in my hold. Instead, I was able to log ot (waiting the 15 seconds so it wasn't a 'combat log'), and log back in 45 minutes later, when the planet's orbit had taken it outside the jet. With a ~1-2 hr orbit you don't have to wait that long.
That brings me to today - the last day with Achievement. I tried and failed to find any NS-ELW despite searching over a hundred NS, so instead I took Achievement on three laps around
The Running Man course, on Eol Prou RS-T d3-509 B 2 a. My lap times were terrible of course, cautiously flying an exploration outfitted Asp, but nevertheless Achievement has been around a canyon race course for the full three laps
Tomorrow, the plan is to hand over Achievement to another commander, in the general Colonia area, for one last time. I like to think I've given it a good run. I've taken Achievement to four galactic extremes, around 2/3 of a Grand Spiral and around nearly an entire Galactic Circumnavigation; its visited alien bases, abandoned human bases, and living aliens; it's landed on the Mighty and climbed its mountains, it's run the Running Man canyon race, and survived a trip to the World of Death; and seen just about every kind of wonder the galaxy can provide from WR hypergiants to Neutron primary WW-TFCs and everything in between. I've done everything I can to make Achievement live up to its name, and the spirit of the legacy itself, and hope that it's just the beginning for our tasty barrel of brandy
On a personal note, DWE was one of the highlights of my entire gaming career and a bright spot in a dark time in my life. it's been a true honor to be able to carry the legacy for so long and to so many places and to keep the spirit alive. Thanks, Olivia, for the great idea and carrying the legacies to Beagle Point, and thanks everyone who has taken part in this great experiment! I look forward to DWE II and hope to see all of y'all out in the deep black once more. Fly safe my friends! o7
PS: Imgur album with these and some other pictures, from my last 150k ly:
https://imgur.com/a/anNWi