Edit: 15/5/24 - I'm adding this at the top here because on re-reading my OP I realise that I really buried the lead, and that since I was a bit sleep deprived it's a bit hard to read. I don't want to edit my OP because people replied to it so I'll leave it as is, but this short new intro will help (hopefully) summarise what it's all about.
Overview: I discovered that there are hidden images within the audio signal known as the "
Landscape Signal" that originates from near the centre of the galaxy, from a point near the system Stuemeae JM-W C1-5825. Those hidden images are viewable using Audacity, and anyone in any ship, with no other requirements, can right now see them. They depict creatures that resemble dragons/serpents, and other things.
View attachment 384831
However, they are
hard to see. They are deliberately obfuscated by a clever system of dynamically generated noise, and the images are 'weak' in the first place - meaning that they require someone to really study the spectrogram and tune it to get the best image possible - and even then they are hard to see - my assumption is that there are ways to see the hidden image clearly, and this will reveal "Raxxla" fully (or lead to another stage of the puzzle).
Most of the OP below is detailing why this is Raxxla, or rather how this relates to Raxxla as it appears in-game.
- This post is an animation showing the Landscape Signal from 4 different locations, the animation shows the difference between the LS and the Galactic Background Sound, and makes it easier to see the 'bird in the mountain' feature, amongst others.
- This later post explains that Raxxla is an easter-egg made by (as far as we know) one person, or no more than a small team, at a time when the game was being built, so people expecting Raxxla to be massive and complex are sadly mistaken.
- This later post contains a little more guidance on one of the 'creatures' and what it looks like (sort of), to help people get the idea.
- This later post expands on some of the points I skimmed over in my OP trying to be brief, but later I realised I needed to explain a little better, including the connections between Halsey, the FR logs, and Raxxla.
- This later post has more information on tuning Audacity and working with SpaceGoblin to try and get a better image.
- This later post addresses common concerns with this solution, including "why isn't it easier to see" - and goes into detail about the methodology that obfuscates the "Landscape Signal" content, including how the signal is obfuscated by the background sound of the galaxy, and explores my research on how the audio works in the Cobra game engine.
- This later post I remind everyone that Fdev confirmed that the "Landscape Signal" is working as intended, and is where it's supposed to be.
- This post has two videos of sections of the spectrogram containing 'creature images'. They are still hard to see, but it's the best I can do for now.
- This post is my latest attempt to show the 'not-bird' that's the easiest thing to find, and what I assume is the intended entry point into this part of the mystery.
- This post by ipossumx discusses the idea of witch-space as " A place that isn't a place", which is related to one of the (now lost) 'Dark Wheel' missions that sparked Macros Black's investigations a decade ago.
Summary: Raxxla is the name of a myth. The reality is that it's a few different - related - things that all essentially point towards either something in Hyperspace, Hyperspace itself, or more specifically the location near Stuemeae JM-W C1-5825, which seems to be the site of the "Omphalos Rift", which is a thinning between universes (possibly a 'natural' entry to Hyperspace, etc.).
I don't think what I found is the 'end', I think it's what we were always supposed to have found way back. Unfortunately I've hit a dead end, so I'm hoping that others can pick up from here and figure out how to resolve the images more clearly so everyone can se them, as I think Brookes intended.
Disclaimer: I predict that a bunch of people are going to dispute this, and honestly
I might be wrong about some details, but please do read all this before going keyboard-warrior
I encourage everyone to check this out themselves, test, experiment, consider. I'm also predicting that folks are going to wheel out the 'space madness' comments, and all the usual stuff, you bunch of... jokers.
Please be nice, remember I'm a real person with real feelings that's spent a long time working on this to present it to you.
NOTE!!! Remember that Raxxla is an easter-egg that's been in game for a decade, a little hidden secret, it's
not what most people have built it up to be (but it's awesome IMO).
Starting with the BIG question:
Where is Raxxla? ('What is Raxxla?' is a better question)
a) Hyperspace.... with some caveats. I think most of the time when people talk about Raxxla, they mean what we'll discuss later as the "Omphalos Rift", which is a definite location (explained later). The short version is that the Rift it's some kind of tear or 'thinning' in
a specific location in our galaxy that allows a little bit of Raxxla to reach out, we'll discuss this later. Also, many parts of the Raxxla Codex are doing double duty (they mean more than one inter-related thing). Raxxla is also a way to describe the 'influence' that the Raxxlan aliens project out (more on this later).
Remember that "Raxxla" is
just a name some ancient folks gave to something mysterious, based on stuff they didn't really understand (full explanation further down). The Myth distorted and twisted through a thousand years of re-telling. We're told this several times in the Codex.
"Raxxla" is in reality another 'universe' that has different but compatible rules to our own - and most importantly,
alien life in it! I know, I know: "
but Raxxla is supposed to be a planet! A stargate! An alien machine! Moving stations that zoom everywhere all at once, where's my Stargate to Andromeda!"... etc. I
know. But
all that stuff is just conjecture and wishful thinking, there's actually very little in the Codex (the in-game lore) about what Raxxla
is.
Back in the beginning Michael Brookes said about Raxxla:
"it's in the Milky Way, but I can't tell you were at this stage, it's a journey that everyone has to travel for themselves." [1], and later David Baben said ".
.. but you don't know what is it." in relation to Raxxla. On the forums in 2014 Brookes said "
Raxxla is something different" in relation to Founder's World. Other than the Codex, that's literally all we had to go on that could be considered "word of god" - as in, the people who put Raxxla in the game said these things, and nothing else. Then the Codex in 2018 added more.
Hyperspace is a "definite place". We jump through it all the time (it's a journey everyone has to make... right?), it exists everywhere in the Milky Way. There's clouds and stuff in there (a lot more actually, more on that further down). There's actually a fair bit of
lore on Hyperspace, even right back to 1984 and the novella that gave us Raxxla. Brookes also talked about it in the DJ Truthsayer lore interview I linked earlier. It's not a coincidence it's called "Witch Space", and in the Codex Raxxla is described as "mystical" and "mysterious".
So, where is Raxxla? (it's Hyperspace), and WHAT is Raxxla? (It's another Universe with different fundamental laws to our own, that we perceive visually as weird cloudy things, we call it Hyperspace) - but that's actually not the end of it at all, there's
so, so much more: Alien sentient creatures live in Raxxla, and later in this post I'll show you how to see them.
OK, I know, I know. "
How can you possibly know this?" "
You're just making stuff up" "
this title says it's not RP!" "
pics or it didn't happen"
" this could mean anythjing" "HJHKHJ RAGE!!!".
Right this is where it gets Codex-y, so you're going to have to stick with me because this is three months (+ a few years) of research and experimentation condensed into a forum post resolving a ten-year easter-egg hunt, and at the best of times I tend to be wordy. Genuinely sorry.
How do I know?
a) I solved the Raxxla Codex, here's the solution:
OK. So the Codex
isn't a cyphered collection of complex clues, it's actually pretty straight-forward and tells us the literal answer right at the start. This part: "The Toast", is everything the Dark Wheel
presumably knows about Raxxla. I'll explain how they know this later too. This was a real doozy to solve, and honestly it wasn't entirely solved by me, I just figured out how it all fits together.
"
To the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies!" - Sagittarius A*. Imagine the Milky Way (or literally go look at it in-game). From the bubble it's a band across the sky, same as ancient Earth. Imagine that band is a diadem (circlet/crown), on the head of a god so massive she
fills is the sky. What's in the very middle of that crown, on her brow? Sgr A*. Hera in Greek mythology is the reason we call it the 'Milky Way', and in fact the word 'Galaxy' comes from that myth too (The word is derived from the Greek galaxias (γαλαξίας), literally 'milky'). Hera is depicted wearing a Diadem usually featuring a central jewel. Now that's not enough of a reason to confirm this is the correct answer, but later on we're going to circle back to this, and, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Talk about burying the lead, eh?
"
To the whisperer in witch-space, the siren of the deepest void!" - This one is a two-parter. We'll get back to this shortly, I promise, because this is literally the key to it all, but it needs a bit of a lead up.
"
The parent's grief, the lover's woe, and the yearning of our vagabond hearts." - This is narrative, and it's actually referencing a few things. This loops back into the "Secret Lore of Raxxla" and the hunt - that the sneaky devil (pun intended) Michael Brookes really created something very cool. On the surface it's a reference to The Odyssey, where Odysseus takes 10 years to get home after many trials, when he gets back he finds his mother died of grief, his father is broken by grief, his wife is vexed by suitors who usurp his fortune, and he returns home as a vagabond to infiltrate his house... there are similarities in his journey to some
themes of Raxxla. Essentially relating to Raxxla being involved in a lot of tragedy and adventure. Here 'yearning' also does double duty in reinforcing the "Fernweh" that's mentioned later in the Codex (and is really important), and relates this to Odysseus' obsession with getting to Ithaca, even though he could have settled elsewhere.
And most importantly, most people that take a run at this forget how Toasts work. You toast
to something, right? "To Raxxla!", so what that means is that these relate to Raxxla directly. Look at it this way:
- Raxxla (is near) the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies!
- Raxxla (is home to) the whisperer in witch-space, the siren of the deepest void!
- Raxxla (causes) The parent's grief, the lover's woe, and the yearning of our vagabond hearts.
Remember that I said that Raxxla is Hyperspace, but it's
also the Omphalos Rift. In most cases people mean the Omphalos Rift, the Toast does too since the Dark Wheel were trying to find "it", the location, and fundamentally the Omphalos Rift is the "thing to find", Raxxla being Hyperspace itself is actually sort of irrelevant in this context.
So that's 'the Toast'. It's actually (when you know how), literally telling us the answer to it all. Remember the codex was released in 2018, after many years of people
failing to 'find Raxxla' (and believe me, there's
very much something very real to find, more later.). The Codex is essentially adding more details to help people figure out what Raxxla is, because we all missed it, literally all of us, for the entire last decade (mostly). But equally I assume that the intention was that when someone reveals what I'm about to reveal, there is maybe supposed to be some sort of further story? No idea. I've considered how to do this, and... well frankly I'm stuck at the last hurdle, so I figure I've had a run at it, got within touching distance, I just want it done now... you'll
see.
I'm trying to Keep this succinct, so let's go:
The Raxxla Codex
Paragraph 1:
This is a summary of the myth. Most important thing to remember is the first bit, the Dark Wheel is for context only. Sorry.
This tells us
important lore stuff. Raxxla has been known about (somehow, more on that later) for centuries. "in whispers" is both a nice phrase and also relates to the "Whisperer in Witchspace", sneaky, right? "mysterious place" is important, because, as we know, Witch-Space is mysterious, and deadly -
and I suspect there's an allusion there to the
real secret of Raxxla (more on that later too).
Paragraph 2:
This one is actually just to reinforce that Raxxla has been know about since "the very earliest days of interstellar travel" - which is actually from the Dark Wheel Codex. 2296 is basically within that early bracket for Hyperspace. Tau Ceti is the first extra-solar colony, and therefore colonists and traders will be using early Hypersapce to go there. Raxxla is Hyperspace, the myth started around the time humans started using Hypersapce, simple. Remember all the stuff earlier about Hyperspace being scary and mysterious, imagine spending weeks in there on a jump!
The second thing this paragraph does is introduce us to the idea of treasure maps. Think about the classic treasure map from fiction: A map that contains obfuscated (torn up, or requires secret knowledge or techniques) directions to the 'X' (not twitter). That's not specifically relevant, but you'll see later how that's actually not far off, and also framed the whole 'quest' neatly. Not sure if it was intentional, but it works.
Paragraph 3 & 3.5
This one is REALLY important, so I'll remind you of it:
Right, this one is literally true, word for word.
- Atlantis: Myth based on Plato's allegorical tales.
- El Dorado: Myth propagated by foreign invaders being convinced there was a Golden City to loot and plunder.
- Kingdom of Prester John: Mythical location of Christian safety in the midst of non-Christian locals.
Notice it? They're all myths about places that don't exist, propagated by people that really, really wanted them to exist for various reason.
"
interpretations of the story range from the sceptical to the outlandish" - You know this is literally about us lot; who hasn't read/heard about Raxxla and theorised?
"The earliest documented stories tend to agree on several points, however: that Raxxla is a definite place, and that it holds a mystical secret." OK, here we go. Hyperspace is a definite place. We all see it and hear it, we use it to get places fast. It's got quite a lot of lore written about it. It's most definitely a place.
Mystical secret? We're getting there, I promise. But again, it's not called "Witch-Space" for no reason.
This paragraph is saying; "You're wrong about Raxxla" ('You' meaning everyone but me right now, obvs).
The Raxxla Codex Logo shows an empty hexagon (the dotted line), and a broken hexagon surrounding it: "various fragmentary rumours of Raxxla". The logo means "put the pieces together to reveal the truth". The fact that it's a hexagon I believe also relates to the Hexagons in our ship UI, and that relates to other stuff (we'll get into that later).
Paragraph 5:
Another very important one.
This actually is a real complex knotty, and very, very clever paragraph.
"Omphalos Rift": We'll get to this later, but this is actually a 'new' bit of lore added to the Codex for 2018. It's very important because this actually can be found (sort of...) and
this is, for many people, probably what they thought of when they 'went looking for Raxxla'. It really is a 'gateway' to a parallel universe (Hyperspace). Details in a bit, context first.
"gateway or tunnel through which parallel universes can be accessed": You've all seen the Hyperspace tunnel we jump through right? Also, that's specifically named in the lore, and also described in (the non canon) The Dark Wheel Novella. Also, the idea of Raxxla having a 'gateway to other universes' on it was the myth that Rafe Zetter told to Alex in (the non canon) The Dark Wheel Novella - the first 'recorded' myth of Raxxla.
So, as I said earlier, many parts of the codex mean more than one overlapping and inter-related thing. The "Omphalos Rift" is both a location where 'Raxxla' is closest to our universe (we'll see where that is later), and it's also our ship Hyperdrives, which are literally derived from alien technology and punch a tunnel or gateway into a parallel universe. The reason the Codex logo is hexagon is because our Ship Ui uses a hexagonal indicator, it's a hint that our ship is a gateway to Raxxla, you can't get there any other way, you need a Hyperdrive to make a gateway.
Omphalos means 'navel' and in mythology marked the centre of the world. Therefore the Omphalos Rift is a location at the centre of our world, the Milky Way. The Omphalos Rift (the thin spot) is in the centre of the Galaxy. The Raxla Logo has a circumpunct in the middle, a circle with a dot in the centre: this is a symbol meaning 'centre', and it was used to represent the Omphalos too. Again anyone can say anything, right? But you'll see later why this is the correct interpretation, because I found something at the centre of the Galaxy.
"These details however, were later shown to bear a striking resemblance to the children's story Princess Astrophel and the Spiralling Stars, and soon lost credibility" This is fully my interpretation, but so far I've not discovered any 'clue' here at all, nothing I've found relies on this being a clue. I personally believe this is a homage to Robert Holdstock, the author of (the non canon) The Dark Wheel Novella in 1984, which was clearly influential in creating a lot of lore for Elite Dangerous, and also the person responsible for creating the myth of Raxxla (note, the Myth only, not the actual answer). "Astrophel" is a poem written by Edmund Spenser in tribute to Philip Sydney (who wrote "Astrophel and Stella"), I read this as being a little bit of a nod to the fact that Michael Brookes created his Raxxla myth in homage to Robert Holdstock. Also, the fact that for a long time Raxxla hunters really only had the (non canon) The Dark Wheel Novella to bae ideas on when they started searching for Raxxla in Elite Dangerous, I think this is: "Raxxla seekers insisted that the story's author had cunningly concealed facts about the mysterious locale in his book as hints for those with eyes to see", and also the fact that some Raxxla hunters have scoured other works by Holdstock hoping to find some sort of coded clue to Raxxla in Elite Dangerous (Talmor Lens, anyone?)
However... "
for those with eyes to see" is a MASSIVE clue of unimaginably epic proportions, in a very, very real sense (more later).
