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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
"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 shefills 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:
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 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.
"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).
"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).
The key is - Gan and Halsey (and maybe most others) wanted to find Raxxla, or the Raxxlans, they thought it would lead to great things - but the thing about Sirens is... they seemed alluring and good specifically to trick people into coming to them willingly, but the Sirens are well known now to mean death. Siren Song is a way of saying "something that seems good to lure people in but is actually bad".
Obviously the game can't reach into our brains and give us dreams and visions, and Brookes wanted this easter-egg to be hard, so it's represented using what the game can do. Something that's actually been used (chronologically) later on too with the Thargoid signal and more light-heartedly with the amusing carrier signals.
That Siren Song was found a while back, and mistakenly called the Landscape Signal. Shortly I'll show you how all this fits together, and show you that the Landscape Signal is not a landscape, it contains so, so much more that - as far as I'm aware - no-one else has seen.
For now, remember these details about the "Landscape Signal".
Control humans access to Hyperspace, you control Humanity (broadly speaking).
But that's not all. I believe this related to something else too, the "Secret Lore of Raxxla". In the same way that the codex has other things in it that means two things, I think this does too, and again, it's something the sneaky devil (pun intended) Brookes did on purpose. Think about it: The Siren Song of Raxxla emanates from the centre of the galaxy, and can be heard everywhere. There's no escaping it. Gan Romero had dreams, Halsey had visions and dreams, Rift crewmember heard voices - who knows how many other people over the last millennia have also heard the call of Raxxla? Lots, I'd say. All of space-based humanity, at the very least. Maybe Guardians and Thargoids too... A signal that seems to generate tangible behavioural changes in humans. Mind control. Whoever or wahtever makes the Siren Song is essentially able to control humanity.
There's more supporting info, but that's the most important for this purpose. I will mention his absolute passion for deep, complex, narrative and lore, which is clear to see in everything he did - and I believe that's what Raxxla is. Deep, deep lore of Elite Dangerous that shows us a 'mystical' side to the universe, while keeping it suitably dark and foreboding.
This again seems like a total leap and a strange conclusion, but here's why I think that:
At long last (so very sorry for the long post, but context is key to understanding):
Remember the so-called "Landscape Signal"? I said it's not a landscape? It's actually a long image, like a frieze, that contains many depictions of alien serpent-monsters, and possibly other things that aren't serpent monsters, and some sorts of structures. That image is steganographically encoded in the audio of the Siren Song (the Landscape Signal), in the same way the Thargoid signal was, although it's MUCH less obvious.
The Raxxla Codex Logo, the final bit I haven't explained, is the little three brackets around the Circumpunct, they represent the "signal" emitting from the Omphalos Rift.
Remember the Whisperer in witchspace? That's also literal alien serpent-monsters. Raxxla (Hyperspace, remember) is full of alien serpent monsters. Every single time anyone jumps through Hyperspace, you're literally surrounded by them.
Remember earlier, I said "for those with eyes to see" in the Codex was a major clue? Yeah? It's because if you look carefully and using the right spectrogram settings, you can see the alien serpent-monsters all over it. It's literal. Remember Halsey? apparently spoke to 'architects of creation' after a Hyperspace accident. Serpent Aliens. I call them Dragons, but Dragons historically are also worms/serpents. Gan Romero had dreams about a place that glowed like heaven? The centre of the galaxy, where the "Landscape Signal" originates, the home of The Siren Song of Raxxla (the alien serpent monsters). Formidine Rift crewmember went mad hearing the Siren Song and seeing things in witch-space? Alien serpent Monsters called to him.
I know, I know. sounds mad right? Pics or it didn't happen right? I have honestly spent weeks trying to figure out how.
Thing is, these things are hard to see. Very, Very hard. I tried everything I can think of, used every bit of audio software I could find or use the free trial of to get a better spectrogram, and they all looked basically the same.
This is where I've fallen at the final hurdle. I can see them, but I can't clearly see them enough to show good pictures of them, and they're weird looking things in the first place. I've tried compositing and drawing them, but they're crazy looking anyway so it looks... crazy, and if I show them to anyone without all this ^^ explanation, I get called mad in various ways and people ignore me.
So here's where I turn this over to you lot, and hope someone can solve this final hurdle. I have included some of my best pics, but honestly, seeing them with your own eyes, yourself, on your own screens, is the best way.
Disclaimer: the Audacity settings I use may not work for you, screens are different, and these things are HARD to see, they aren't like the Thargoid signal, they are almost, but not quite, in the background. So have a play, figure it out, I did.
2) In audacity, switch to spectrogram mode. These are the settings I use (read Disclaimer above):
On the LEFT audio channel, Locate the D7 anomaly. That linked post by D7 shows you where, it's always the same.
It can help to split the audio to two mono tracks (DO NOT MERGE TO MONO) so you can more easily manipulate them in audacity.
WARNING: If you merge the Left and Right channels, you will not see Raxxlan dragons (usually). The Left and Right channels are slightly different, and when you merge them they effectively erase, or almost entirely erase, all the Raxxlan creatures.
3) Manipulate the image so the D7 Anomaly looks roughly like this:
Depending on your window and screen, recordings often start very squashed, and you need to zoom/pan, etc. If you aren't looking at these things in the right zoom and stretch, you won't really see them. The D7 Anomaly (I assume) is intended as a marker for us to notice and examine more closely - exactly as D7 noticed it. You'll see that same trick is also used on the so-called Landscape Signal too.
4) Look really carefully at the whole spectrogram. I found that sort of relaxing my eyes a little (similar to the Magic Eye stereograms) helps to 'not see' the static and interference so much, and what you'll start to see, eventually, is the Raxxlan Dragons. If you zoom in too much you'll see just the noise.
For me, the first one I saw is the rest of the D7 anomaly. It's a shorter Raxxlan Dragon (some are long) and the D7 Anomaly is sort of in the middle of it. Look left in-between the two vertical dark lines and you'll see an eye, and above that what I think of as the start of the 'nose', and if you follow that shape left you'll see the rest of the snoot. If you carefully and patiently follow it the other way you'll see it's weird body. In the image here I've loosely drawn around what seems to be the major body area, and the arrow shows the eye, which I've found to be always visible:
And... deep breath me... Here's a careful redraw following my best guess at the lines (of this particular image capture). For some reason on this one I couldn't see his usual long tongue, but sometimes the Raxxlan Dragons cross over each other and it gets very crazy, I think that's what happened here because (when you know what to look for) there's another smaller one passing vertically in front:
They are very weird looking.
They don't look like terrestrial animals. They're aliens from another dimension. They look quite Lovecraftian, tentacles, many eyes, some seem to have mouths with teeth, some seem more squid-like, some look more like classic Dragons, but I assume there are different types(?)... hard to be sure because they seem to play together(?) and as you'll see when you try this, when they cross over they are just a jumble. I think this (the D7) is only a bit of one. Other ones I've seen have longer bodies that stretch off, but I think that might be a 'wake' of sorts because it looks quite regular, though it could also be a long body, which sometimes it definitely is... Aliens are alien, I guess.
I know, I can feel how many of you are saying "stupid idiot been staring at static too long", to you I say, please try what I've showed you how to do. Please.
Right now you're primed. You're either on-board and excited, or you're sneering and already typing some mean things. For those of you on-board, there's so much more!
There are many more creatures in Witch-Space. They don't seem to always be in the same places, except the D7 Anomaly one. They can be horizontal or vertical, and sometimes I've seen them over the 15kHz upper range of the 'noise', which makes them very easy to see. D7 seems to repeat in the same spot if the jump goes long, and I don't know if the others are always in the same places but are sometimes more or less visible?
Here's a couple more, these were spotted over the 15kHz range, I've not highlighted these, you'll either see them or not, no clue how these come out on other folks screens. Again, test this yourself. there's one on the right emerging from the jump termination end, and one of the left on the same line. By the way, when you 'have eyes to see', carefully examine the jump termination and start... you'll see.... stuff...
Honestly, once I saw these things, I stopped looking, I know they're there, I was more interested in the Siren Song. I'd already cracked the Codex and was looking at the Siren Signal closely, and actually had seen some things I thought were odd, but it was D7's post (linked above) that was the final key for slotting all this together.
I applied the same techniques to the so-called Landscape Signal... I highly suggest you do too.
I have tested this, and you CAN see SOME of these things from ANY recording of the Siren Song made anywhere, so all of you in the bubble want to get on board, you'll be able to also. However, the best and most interesting details only show up in close proximity to the Omphalos Rift (as I call the Siren Song source). More on that in a bit.
Same Deal, but a little more complex:
1) Record clean audio.
2) Record both LEFT and RIGHT channels. DO NOT MERGE during recording.
3) Record for as long as possible. The Siren Song is about 1:46, but the signal strength varies, so a longer recording gives you more 'good' signal to 'bad' signal. The reason for this variation is partly explained later on. I record for at least 10 mins each time, and if I really want to be sure, 20 mins.
4) Examine the spectrogram. As with the Whisperer, my settings might not work right for you, it depends on the screen (mine are old). ALSO!!!! The signal is tricky, it's like it's a puzzle that's trying to remain hidden or something! The things you're looking for are as hard, if not harder to see most of the time than the Whisperers.
Much like the D7 anomaly being a guide as to where to look, the 'classic' marks in the so-called Landscape Signal are the guides as to where to focus your initial attentions: The "mountains" are the easiest one to see first, and have the most in them (that I've seen so far). So start there.
Bear in mind these are from right next to the LS source, galactically speaking, so they have a lot more detail in them than ones from the bubble, but I checked and you can definitely see the 'Bird' and a few other things at the very least, from anywhere.
So, using the techniques you learned in looking for the Witchspace Dragons, you should now be able to start seeing all sorts of things in the Siren Signal. The easiest and most obvious is the "Bird" (It's not a bird at all, but I thought it was at first, and so I call it that). Like all these creatures, they're aliens from another dimension, they are very weird.
In this image, I filtered it a lot in Krita to make it a little easier for you (dear reader) to see, and therefore locate yourself - but obviously in so doing I lost the details.
The weird blob thing above left of it, I originally thought was some sort of alien humming-bird - it's not. Both of these are part of much larger things happening all around them.
Future Edit: This post contains a video of this 'bird creature' that might be easier to see.
Yes! My signature and profile pic (at the time of writing) are very early redraws of this image, I was trying to stealthily see if anyone recognised them. You can see how obvious those shapes are, and my assumption at the time was that if anyone else had seen them, they'd probably say something.
From what I have seen, the entire Siren Song/Landscape Signal audio is one long image. In my many and varied testing I have seen creatures and shapes in every part of it.
I believe it is, in reality, an image that tells a story - THE story of Raxxla.
I won't go into the other things in there because they're so, so hard to share images of that you'd be taking my word for it anyway, so I'm asking again: Please try this yourself, and see what you can see. I am hoping that someone can resolve these images of Raxxlan monsters into something we can all actually see properly... I assume that's the intended 'full solution' to the Raxxla mystery.
2) I have tried all the noise reduction and filtering and noise cancellation, audio frequency reduction, phase inverting, etc. that my amateur brain can come up with, and nothing at all helped, it actually always made it worse. I'm positive someone who actually knows what they're doing will get a better result!
3) I tried recording the background galaxy sound in the same direction as the Siren Song (by jumping past the source in the same direction) with the intention of phase inverting the background from the Siren Song. It didn't work for reasons I don't fully understand, but I believe that both the Siren Song and the general galaxy sound 'naturally' vary a tiny bit each cycle, and phase inversion only works to remove like-for-like, so even tiny variations render it useless....? Maybe? therein my sound engineering wikipedia-google degree ends.
4) The Siren Song (like Witchspace) is different in the Left and Right channel. Some stuff shows up in the Left, some in the Right. I've sometimes been pretty sure that both in Witchspace and the Siren Song that merging the two into Mono shows more creatures in different ways - but then sometimes it seems to erase the creatures. I feel like maybe the solution is that some bits can be seen in separate L/R and some bits with both merged to mono... but I can't really make it work.
5) I have tried a lot of stuff. Nothing has worked to get a cleaner signal. This may be for many reasons that I just don't know I'm doing wrong, I assume someone out there will succeed where I failed.
In short (shocking I know), IRH, PublicStaticVoid, and Seventh Circle were right with their original investigation. The Siren Song comes from a point close to Stuemeae JM-W C1-5825, as best as I can tell. It's just outside the distance the furthest recorded stellar object from a parent star has been recorded in the galaxy so far (about .5ly), the Siren Song comes from some point slightly further away than that, but not too far from the system. The volume there is only a couple of lightyears, so it's easy to traverse, but by now we all know that each solar system is an 'instance'. Functionally, the Omphalos Rift exists outside any instance, (or rather in its own). It can't be jumped to (by any method I know of), therefore it's currently unreachable. This might be a 'narrative lock' until the Siren Signal is fully 'decoded'... who knows. I personally don't think it's supposed to be reachable.
I couldn't replicate Seventh Circles' method (seems valid, I just couldn't manage it), I did replicate IRH's method which was less granular but perfect for getting the general area, and then using what I've seen in the Siren Song signal itself I was able to use a similar method of grading the signal using the smaller details of the creatures to figure out that it came from near Stuemeae JM-W C1-5825. I would have tried to define it more, but since that result matched Seventh Circle's result and was essentially in the area of IRH's investigation earlier, I was happy with that.
The Red dot in the image below is the approx source, so you can see the sort of scale we're talking about. Not sure if it's exactly there, but it's in that area.
My assumption right now is that we're not supposed to reach the source. The Signal itself IS the thing we're supposed to find and figure out how to see properly, functionally Raxxla is the Siren Song in terms of "finding Raxxla", and anyway, the 'rift', if it exists, will only lead to Hyperspace, and we already go there. Plus there's narrative stuff that means we probably wouldn't want to.
Read on if you want to know my best interpretation of the "Secret Lore of Raxxla".
Remembering everything I've mentioned in the pos; especially about Halsey, Gan, Witch-Space, Brookes' influences and things he liked:
There's a few alternate versions of this narrative, and a ton of holes, but it boils down to: Raxxla is, fundamentally the real origin of the myth of hell, where daemons live and the Devil rules - in a biblical sense (as detailed by John Milton in Paradise Lost). Most religions have some version of a place where monsters rule. In a scientific sense it's another universe that has different but compatible laws to ours, a universe that contains intelligent malevolent life, life that... wants.
That life wants to get into our universe (or back to our universe). The entities there, let's call them Raxxlans for the sake of it, have figured out that they can subtly influence sentient minds in our universe (the Siren Song is mind control: Gan, Halsey, Rift crewmember, others). I'm not sure if the Omphalos Rift is natural or they made it, or the Guardians made it, or the Thargoids, I hope that'll be revealed in the Siren Song image.
This 'influence' is analogous to Satan tempting Adam and Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowedge - a major part of the narrative of Paradise Lost.
Via the Rift, the Raxxlans 'sing' (an in-game representation of what amounts to subtle/no-so-subtle mind-control), enticing people to the Rift by convincing people that it's a glorious place of heavenly beauty, or progressive knowledge to aid humanity. They may also be able to nudge sentient minds towards certain behaviours and ideas - like maybe the discovery of Hyperdrive was 'influenced'. We know Hyperdrives punch through into Raxxla, and ships travelling through are surrounded by Raxxlans... They want people to reach the Rift it because they need someone to open it from this side, maybe if a ship with a Hyperdrive enters the Rift it explodes, allowing the Raxxlans through. Don't know the details, I hope that'll become clear.
Again, this is essentially the plot of Paradise Lost; Satan plots to bring down humanity (God's newest and most favoured children) by essentially luring them to take an action that forever changes their fate.Satan hopes it'll destabilise God's reign, and the Daemons hope they can leave Hell where they were sent after their failed rebellion.
I believe the Raxxlan aliens resemble Serpents/Dragons (more of less) because of Paradise lost again. In punishment for their actions God turned al the Daemons into serpents, and in fact the biblical story of Adam and Eve is one version of ancient mythology that casts serpents/dragons in the role of antagonists. Another is the story of Delphi in Greek Mythology. This relates to the Omphalos Rift because in Greek Mythology the Omphalos stone marking the centre of the world was placed in Delphi - over the spot where the god Apollo killed a dragon called Python, this is why the Oracles of Delphi are called Pythia.
Imagine that the Siren Song of Raxxla has been beaming out across the universe for millennia, and subtly influencing humanity. What myths and legends have arised that have similar themes and shapes? We might speculate that the origin of these myths of battles in heaven between 'gods', and some of them being exiled to the 'underworld' are the tendrils of influence from Raxxla.
I also wonder what might happen if some species made a non-organic sentient mind that couldn't be influenced by the Siren Song? I wonder if such non-biological minds would consider that destroying the biologicals was the only way to keep the universe safe from the Raxxlans?
I think this Drabble, written by Michael Brookes about his book "The Space Inbetween" might have been (a version of) the plot for Raxxla:
"No faith alone can unlock their prison, but science has the key." - like, Hyperdrives, for example? What if the Sirens are trying to attract someone with a Hyperdrive to the Rift?
I assume the full Siren Song signal image, when revealed, will tell the full story I hope.
I've ben writing this for hours, I'm totally sure I forgot stuff I wanted to say, but I also wanted to get this out there finally so people can figure out the stuff I couldn't.
Very happy to answer questions, etc. please be nice, even if you disagree, I spent a lot of time on this.
*Yes, I know Drew Wagar didn't know anything about Raxxla but maybe someone suggested that 'effect' of Hyperspace to him, or maybe he just coincidentally wrote it and it worked out, or someone else edited that bit in, who knows!
** No, Halsey didn't meet Guardians. This post of mine explains that weird narrative.
*** Yes, Gan was "off camera narrative", but that doesn't mean anything at all other than 'you cant physically find him'.
[1] The transcript of that section is as follows:
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.
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.
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
"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.
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.
"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).
Paragraph 6:
This is a reference to Raxxla hunters in general - crazy bunch, amiright? - but it's also a link to Elite Dangerous Lore. Specifically, it loops back to the very top: the Dark Wheel Toast. Remember this: "the siren of the deepest void!"? In Greek mythology Sirens sing alluring songs to lure passing sailors to their deaths. It's a bit of a leap (pun intended), but it's not hard to see a hint of a connection between the idea of people becoming obsessed with finding Raxxla, to their detriment and death, and the myth of sailors jumping overboard trying to reach the (presumed) beautiful women that really want to... ehm. You get it. Also I mentioned the idea of Odysseus being obsessed with getting back to Ithaca that drove him on for 10 years rather than giving up and settling down. It's also a reference to the "Secret Lore of Raxxla", which we'll get into soon. Here's how it all connects:
- Formidine Rift Alpha Crew member: I’m scared… help me someone… I can’t bear another jump. The lights in witch-space are coming for me, the lights… always the lights… they’re calling to me… a siren song… I must join them…*
- Jasmina Halsey: "They are out there. I have seen them" "I saw the universe, and our galaxy within it, as I'd never seen it before, and I felt the presence of the real caretakers of our galaxy. The paradox of their existence – tiny yet gargantuan, fleeting yet eternal".**
- Gan Romero: "makes repeated mention of seeing ‘an area of space, not black but radiant…glowing like heaven,’ and being called by ‘voices that didn’t come from anything with a body’.***
- The Dark Wheel: How did they know about Raxxla? One (or more) of their founding members was like Gan, Halsey, etc, and had visions and dreams! They heard the Siren Song of Raxxla, they knew something was there, same way we did (metaphorically), but didn't really know where. Maybe ALL the (real) Dark Wheel members have Raxxla visions.
The key is - Gan and Halsey (and maybe most others) wanted to find Raxxla, or the Raxxlans, they thought it would lead to great things - but the thing about Sirens is... they seemed alluring and good specifically to trick people into coming to them willingly, but the Sirens are well known now to mean death. Siren Song is a way of saying "something that seems good to lure people in but is actually bad".
Obviously the game can't reach into our brains and give us dreams and visions, and Brookes wanted this easter-egg to be hard, so it's represented using what the game can do. Something that's actually been used (chronologically) later on too with the Thargoid signal and more light-heartedly with the amusing carrier signals.
That Siren Song was found a while back, and mistakenly called the Landscape Signal. Shortly I'll show you how all this fits together, and show you that the Landscape Signal is not a landscape, it contains so, so much more that - as far as I'm aware - no-one else has seen.
For now, remember these details about the "Landscape Signal".
- Audibly sounds like a ghostly mystical female voice singing.
- Originates near the centre of the galaxy.
- Can be heard anywhere in the galaxy except on planet surfaces (or more specifically within the radius of Horizons).
- Has a very, very definite source.
- The audio, when examined, shows steganographic shapes.
Paragraph 7:
Raxxla is Hyperspace. Think about how much the people that make/develop Hyperdrives dominate humanity. Not just FSD, but all Hyperdrives in history are absolutely vital for "modern" society to work. In the Lore look at GalCop - they used Quirium Hyperdrives (essentially comparable to FSD in most ways), using a proprietary derivative of Hydrogen called Quirium. When GalCop collapsed, the 'formula' was lost, and interstellar travel was forced to fall back on other much slower Hyperdrive methods for over a century until FSD was invented, or derived from Thargoid tech, actually. FSD has totally changed the landscape of the Galaxy.
Control humans access to Hyperspace, you control Humanity (broadly speaking).
But that's not all. I believe this related to something else too, the "Secret Lore of Raxxla". In the same way that the codex has other things in it that means two things, I think this does too, and again, it's something the sneaky devil (pun intended) Brookes did on purpose. Think about it: The Siren Song of Raxxla emanates from the centre of the galaxy, and can be heard everywhere. There's no escaping it. Gan Romero had dreams, Halsey had visions and dreams, Rift crewmember heard voices - who knows how many other people over the last millennia have also heard the call of Raxxla? Lots, I'd say. All of space-based humanity, at the very least. Maybe Guardians and Thargoids too... A signal that seems to generate tangible behavioural changes in humans. Mind control. Whoever or wahtever makes the Siren Song is essentially able to control humanity.
Putting it all together
Michael Brookes is primarily responsible for Raxxla. I'm sure David Braben had influence, and absolutely knew about it, but by all accounts Brookes was the driving force of the Raxxla easter-egg. I researched him, not in a weird way! Everything here is from his website, things he said in Fdev interviews, or from his forum posts here:- His favourite book is Excession, by Iain M Banks: "The book's epilogue reveals that the Excession is a sentient entity that was acting as a bridge for a procession of beings that travel between universes."
- He described John Milton's Paradise Lost as "The greatest story ever told", and clearly loved it a lot.
- Allen Stroud (one of the official authors who worked with Brookes closely on the game lore) says that he feels that Brookes was "more Lovecraft influenced than Holdstock influenced". Lovecraftian fiction is typically related to near-unknowable elder-beings from beyond human understanding, and the madness that humans suffer when they get a glimpse of the larger reality.
- There is a drabble on his website for an (apparently) unwritten book from 2015 called "The Space Inbetween" that he described as "John Milton meets H P Lovecraft in an epic tale of cosmological horror". I suggest reading that page.
- Brookes commissioned artwork based on the story outline of "The Space Inbetween", which features a biblical battle, where the demons are Lovecraftian creatures. He posted that on this forum, and had it tattooed on his back. That image bears a resemblance to what I'm going to show you now (though it's definitely not the same).
There's more supporting info, but that's the most important for this purpose. I will mention his absolute passion for deep, complex, narrative and lore, which is clear to see in everything he did - and I believe that's what Raxxla is. Deep, deep lore of Elite Dangerous that shows us a 'mystical' side to the universe, while keeping it suitably dark and foreboding.
This again seems like a total leap and a strange conclusion, but here's why I think that:
At long last (so very sorry for the long post, but context is key to understanding):
Proof of Raxxla (by seeing it's inhabitants)
This is a really hard one, and the reason I delayed this post for the last several weeks. Taking pictures of 'Raxxla' is crazy hard, and I've failed to do so for weeks. Here's why:Remember the so-called "Landscape Signal"? I said it's not a landscape? It's actually a long image, like a frieze, that contains many depictions of alien serpent-monsters, and possibly other things that aren't serpent monsters, and some sorts of structures. That image is steganographically encoded in the audio of the Siren Song (the Landscape Signal), in the same way the Thargoid signal was, although it's MUCH less obvious.
The Raxxla Codex Logo, the final bit I haven't explained, is the little three brackets around the Circumpunct, they represent the "signal" emitting from the Omphalos Rift.
Remember the Whisperer in witchspace? That's also literal alien serpent-monsters. Raxxla (Hyperspace, remember) is full of alien serpent monsters. Every single time anyone jumps through Hyperspace, you're literally surrounded by them.
Remember earlier, I said "for those with eyes to see" in the Codex was a major clue? Yeah? It's because if you look carefully and using the right spectrogram settings, you can see the alien serpent-monsters all over it. It's literal. Remember Halsey? apparently spoke to 'architects of creation' after a Hyperspace accident. Serpent Aliens. I call them Dragons, but Dragons historically are also worms/serpents. Gan Romero had dreams about a place that glowed like heaven? The centre of the galaxy, where the "Landscape Signal" originates, the home of The Siren Song of Raxxla (the alien serpent monsters). Formidine Rift crewmember went mad hearing the Siren Song and seeing things in witch-space? Alien serpent Monsters called to him.
I know, I know. sounds mad right? Pics or it didn't happen right? I have honestly spent weeks trying to figure out how.
Thing is, these things are hard to see. Very, Very hard. I tried everything I can think of, used every bit of audio software I could find or use the free trial of to get a better spectrogram, and they all looked basically the same.
This is where I've fallen at the final hurdle. I can see them, but I can't clearly see them enough to show good pictures of them, and they're weird looking things in the first place. I've tried compositing and drawing them, but they're crazy looking anyway so it looks... crazy, and if I show them to anyone without all this ^^ explanation, I get called mad in various ways and people ignore me.
So here's where I turn this over to you lot, and hope someone can solve this final hurdle. I have included some of my best pics, but honestly, seeing them with your own eyes, yourself, on your own screens, is the best way.
Disclaimer: the Audacity settings I use may not work for you, screens are different, and these things are HARD to see, they aren't like the Thargoid signal, they are almost, but not quite, in the background. So have a play, figure it out, I did.
How to capture your own Raxxlan Serpent Dragon (image)
Whisperers in Witch-Space
1) record ANY Hyperspace jump, anywhere, in any ship, even fleet carrier, doesn't matter.2) In audacity, switch to spectrogram mode. These are the settings I use (read Disclaimer above):
On the LEFT audio channel, Locate the D7 anomaly. That linked post by D7 shows you where, it's always the same.
It can help to split the audio to two mono tracks (DO NOT MERGE TO MONO) so you can more easily manipulate them in audacity.
WARNING: If you merge the Left and Right channels, you will not see Raxxlan dragons (usually). The Left and Right channels are slightly different, and when you merge them they effectively erase, or almost entirely erase, all the Raxxlan creatures.
3) Manipulate the image so the D7 Anomaly looks roughly like this:
Depending on your window and screen, recordings often start very squashed, and you need to zoom/pan, etc. If you aren't looking at these things in the right zoom and stretch, you won't really see them. The D7 Anomaly (I assume) is intended as a marker for us to notice and examine more closely - exactly as D7 noticed it. You'll see that same trick is also used on the so-called Landscape Signal too.
4) Look really carefully at the whole spectrogram. I found that sort of relaxing my eyes a little (similar to the Magic Eye stereograms) helps to 'not see' the static and interference so much, and what you'll start to see, eventually, is the Raxxlan Dragons. If you zoom in too much you'll see just the noise.
For me, the first one I saw is the rest of the D7 anomaly. It's a shorter Raxxlan Dragon (some are long) and the D7 Anomaly is sort of in the middle of it. Look left in-between the two vertical dark lines and you'll see an eye, and above that what I think of as the start of the 'nose', and if you follow that shape left you'll see the rest of the snoot. If you carefully and patiently follow it the other way you'll see it's weird body. In the image here I've loosely drawn around what seems to be the major body area, and the arrow shows the eye, which I've found to be always visible:
And... deep breath me... Here's a careful redraw following my best guess at the lines (of this particular image capture). For some reason on this one I couldn't see his usual long tongue, but sometimes the Raxxlan Dragons cross over each other and it gets very crazy, I think that's what happened here because (when you know what to look for) there's another smaller one passing vertically in front:
They are very weird looking.
They don't look like terrestrial animals. They're aliens from another dimension. They look quite Lovecraftian, tentacles, many eyes, some seem to have mouths with teeth, some seem more squid-like, some look more like classic Dragons, but I assume there are different types(?)... hard to be sure because they seem to play together(?) and as you'll see when you try this, when they cross over they are just a jumble. I think this (the D7) is only a bit of one. Other ones I've seen have longer bodies that stretch off, but I think that might be a 'wake' of sorts because it looks quite regular, though it could also be a long body, which sometimes it definitely is... Aliens are alien, I guess.
I know, I can feel how many of you are saying "stupid idiot been staring at static too long", to you I say, please try what I've showed you how to do. Please.
Right now you're primed. You're either on-board and excited, or you're sneering and already typing some mean things. For those of you on-board, there's so much more!
There are many more creatures in Witch-Space. They don't seem to always be in the same places, except the D7 Anomaly one. They can be horizontal or vertical, and sometimes I've seen them over the 15kHz upper range of the 'noise', which makes them very easy to see. D7 seems to repeat in the same spot if the jump goes long, and I don't know if the others are always in the same places but are sometimes more or less visible?
Here's a couple more, these were spotted over the 15kHz range, I've not highlighted these, you'll either see them or not, no clue how these come out on other folks screens. Again, test this yourself. there's one on the right emerging from the jump termination end, and one of the left on the same line. By the way, when you 'have eyes to see', carefully examine the jump termination and start... you'll see.... stuff...
Honestly, once I saw these things, I stopped looking, I know they're there, I was more interested in the Siren Song. I'd already cracked the Codex and was looking at the Siren Signal closely, and actually had seen some things I thought were odd, but it was D7's post (linked above) that was the final key for slotting all this together.
I applied the same techniques to the so-called Landscape Signal... I highly suggest you do too.
How to capture your own Raxxlan Tableau (image)
Siren of the Deepest Void
So, you know the general theory now. Here I use the same Spectrogram settings for the Sirne Song (AKA Landscape Signal), but I also vary them a lot because the creatures are not all shown in the same... I don't know, audio range?I have tested this, and you CAN see SOME of these things from ANY recording of the Siren Song made anywhere, so all of you in the bubble want to get on board, you'll be able to also. However, the best and most interesting details only show up in close proximity to the Omphalos Rift (as I call the Siren Song source). More on that in a bit.
Same Deal, but a little more complex:
1) Record clean audio.
- Move away from the Sun towards Sgr A* or the source for a while, like 50kls. (Suns cause interference in the spectrogram, if you get very strong, long horizontal lines through it you're too close to a sun).
- Bring ship to complete stop in realspace.
- Aim at Sagittarius A* unless you're near the source, then you can be more precise.
- Go into Freecam (Camera suite) mode.
- Move cam IN FRONT of your ship to maximum range, looking directly at Sgr A* or the source. This eliminates any ship noise.
2) Record both LEFT and RIGHT channels. DO NOT MERGE during recording.
3) Record for as long as possible. The Siren Song is about 1:46, but the signal strength varies, so a longer recording gives you more 'good' signal to 'bad' signal. The reason for this variation is partly explained later on. I record for at least 10 mins each time, and if I really want to be sure, 20 mins.
4) Examine the spectrogram. As with the Whisperer, my settings might not work right for you, it depends on the screen (mine are old). ALSO!!!! The signal is tricky, it's like it's a puzzle that's trying to remain hidden or something! The things you're looking for are as hard, if not harder to see most of the time than the Whisperers.
Much like the D7 anomaly being a guide as to where to look, the 'classic' marks in the so-called Landscape Signal are the guides as to where to focus your initial attentions: The "mountains" are the easiest one to see first, and have the most in them (that I've seen so far). So start there.
Bear in mind these are from right next to the LS source, galactically speaking, so they have a lot more detail in them than ones from the bubble, but I checked and you can definitely see the 'Bird' and a few other things at the very least, from anywhere.
So, using the techniques you learned in looking for the Witchspace Dragons, you should now be able to start seeing all sorts of things in the Siren Signal. The easiest and most obvious is the "Bird" (It's not a bird at all, but I thought it was at first, and so I call it that). Like all these creatures, they're aliens from another dimension, they are very weird.
In this image, I filtered it a lot in Krita to make it a little easier for you (dear reader) to see, and therefore locate yourself - but obviously in so doing I lost the details.
The weird blob thing above left of it, I originally thought was some sort of alien humming-bird - it's not. Both of these are part of much larger things happening all around them.
Future Edit: This post contains a video of this 'bird creature' that might be easier to see.
Yes! My signature and profile pic (at the time of writing) are very early redraws of this image, I was trying to stealthily see if anyone recognised them. You can see how obvious those shapes are, and my assumption at the time was that if anyone else had seen them, they'd probably say something.
From what I have seen, the entire Siren Song/Landscape Signal audio is one long image. In my many and varied testing I have seen creatures and shapes in every part of it.
I believe it is, in reality, an image that tells a story - THE story of Raxxla.
I won't go into the other things in there because they're so, so hard to share images of that you'd be taking my word for it anyway, so I'm asking again: Please try this yourself, and see what you can see. I am hoping that someone can resolve these images of Raxxlan monsters into something we can all actually see properly... I assume that's the intended 'full solution' to the Raxxla mystery.
Things I learned:
1) The 'background sound' of the Galaxy is ALWAYS merged with the Siren Song. If you record the Galaxy sound (look away from the Siren Song and record in any direction) you'll see it's pretty clean and simple mostly (with the exception of the bent worm), but there are sections that get very noisy. The Galaxy background repeats at about 2:30, and the Siren Signal repeats at about 1:46. I'm sure you can already see why the 'strength' of the Siren Song varies so much: Each time both the background Galaxy sound and the Siren Song repeat, they are effectively running at different rates, and so the interference caused by the two signals overlapping is a big (deliberate) problem. The only way I 'solved' it was to just record for longer and you eventually see all the bits of the Siren Song as clearly as they can get when they fall into the clear parts of the background galaxy sound.2) I have tried all the noise reduction and filtering and noise cancellation, audio frequency reduction, phase inverting, etc. that my amateur brain can come up with, and nothing at all helped, it actually always made it worse. I'm positive someone who actually knows what they're doing will get a better result!
3) I tried recording the background galaxy sound in the same direction as the Siren Song (by jumping past the source in the same direction) with the intention of phase inverting the background from the Siren Song. It didn't work for reasons I don't fully understand, but I believe that both the Siren Song and the general galaxy sound 'naturally' vary a tiny bit each cycle, and phase inversion only works to remove like-for-like, so even tiny variations render it useless....? Maybe? therein my sound engineering wikipedia-google degree ends.
4) The Siren Song (like Witchspace) is different in the Left and Right channel. Some stuff shows up in the Left, some in the Right. I've sometimes been pretty sure that both in Witchspace and the Siren Song that merging the two into Mono shows more creatures in different ways - but then sometimes it seems to erase the creatures. I feel like maybe the solution is that some bits can be seen in separate L/R and some bits with both merged to mono... but I can't really make it work.
5) I have tried a lot of stuff. Nothing has worked to get a cleaner signal. This may be for many reasons that I just don't know I'm doing wrong, I assume someone out there will succeed where I failed.
Siren Song Source (Omphalos Rift)
AKA Landscape Signal Source, if you wanna be old skool about it.In short (shocking I know), IRH, PublicStaticVoid, and Seventh Circle were right with their original investigation. The Siren Song comes from a point close to Stuemeae JM-W C1-5825, as best as I can tell. It's just outside the distance the furthest recorded stellar object from a parent star has been recorded in the galaxy so far (about .5ly), the Siren Song comes from some point slightly further away than that, but not too far from the system. The volume there is only a couple of lightyears, so it's easy to traverse, but by now we all know that each solar system is an 'instance'. Functionally, the Omphalos Rift exists outside any instance, (or rather in its own). It can't be jumped to (by any method I know of), therefore it's currently unreachable. This might be a 'narrative lock' until the Siren Signal is fully 'decoded'... who knows. I personally don't think it's supposed to be reachable.
I couldn't replicate Seventh Circles' method (seems valid, I just couldn't manage it), I did replicate IRH's method which was less granular but perfect for getting the general area, and then using what I've seen in the Siren Song signal itself I was able to use a similar method of grading the signal using the smaller details of the creatures to figure out that it came from near Stuemeae JM-W C1-5825. I would have tried to define it more, but since that result matched Seventh Circle's result and was essentially in the area of IRH's investigation earlier, I was happy with that.
The Red dot in the image below is the approx source, so you can see the sort of scale we're talking about. Not sure if it's exactly there, but it's in that area.
My assumption right now is that we're not supposed to reach the source. The Signal itself IS the thing we're supposed to find and figure out how to see properly, functionally Raxxla is the Siren Song in terms of "finding Raxxla", and anyway, the 'rift', if it exists, will only lead to Hyperspace, and we already go there. Plus there's narrative stuff that means we probably wouldn't want to.
Read on if you want to know my best interpretation of the "Secret Lore of Raxxla".
So what is going on?
AKA The narrative, "Secret Lore of Raxxla"Remembering everything I've mentioned in the pos; especially about Halsey, Gan, Witch-Space, Brookes' influences and things he liked:
There's a few alternate versions of this narrative, and a ton of holes, but it boils down to: Raxxla is, fundamentally the real origin of the myth of hell, where daemons live and the Devil rules - in a biblical sense (as detailed by John Milton in Paradise Lost). Most religions have some version of a place where monsters rule. In a scientific sense it's another universe that has different but compatible laws to ours, a universe that contains intelligent malevolent life, life that... wants.
That life wants to get into our universe (or back to our universe). The entities there, let's call them Raxxlans for the sake of it, have figured out that they can subtly influence sentient minds in our universe (the Siren Song is mind control: Gan, Halsey, Rift crewmember, others). I'm not sure if the Omphalos Rift is natural or they made it, or the Guardians made it, or the Thargoids, I hope that'll be revealed in the Siren Song image.
This 'influence' is analogous to Satan tempting Adam and Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowedge - a major part of the narrative of Paradise Lost.
Via the Rift, the Raxxlans 'sing' (an in-game representation of what amounts to subtle/no-so-subtle mind-control), enticing people to the Rift by convincing people that it's a glorious place of heavenly beauty, or progressive knowledge to aid humanity. They may also be able to nudge sentient minds towards certain behaviours and ideas - like maybe the discovery of Hyperdrive was 'influenced'. We know Hyperdrives punch through into Raxxla, and ships travelling through are surrounded by Raxxlans... They want people to reach the Rift it because they need someone to open it from this side, maybe if a ship with a Hyperdrive enters the Rift it explodes, allowing the Raxxlans through. Don't know the details, I hope that'll become clear.
Again, this is essentially the plot of Paradise Lost; Satan plots to bring down humanity (God's newest and most favoured children) by essentially luring them to take an action that forever changes their fate.Satan hopes it'll destabilise God's reign, and the Daemons hope they can leave Hell where they were sent after their failed rebellion.
I believe the Raxxlan aliens resemble Serpents/Dragons (more of less) because of Paradise lost again. In punishment for their actions God turned al the Daemons into serpents, and in fact the biblical story of Adam and Eve is one version of ancient mythology that casts serpents/dragons in the role of antagonists. Another is the story of Delphi in Greek Mythology. This relates to the Omphalos Rift because in Greek Mythology the Omphalos stone marking the centre of the world was placed in Delphi - over the spot where the god Apollo killed a dragon called Python, this is why the Oracles of Delphi are called Pythia.
Imagine that the Siren Song of Raxxla has been beaming out across the universe for millennia, and subtly influencing humanity. What myths and legends have arised that have similar themes and shapes? We might speculate that the origin of these myths of battles in heaven between 'gods', and some of them being exiled to the 'underworld' are the tendrils of influence from Raxxla.
I also wonder what might happen if some species made a non-organic sentient mind that couldn't be influenced by the Siren Song? I wonder if such non-biological minds would consider that destroying the biologicals was the only way to keep the universe safe from the Raxxlans?
I think this Drabble, written by Michael Brookes about his book "The Space Inbetween" might have been (a version of) the plot for Raxxla:
Imagine that Hyperspace is "a maze of nothingness". You've seen these creatures by now "their impossible forms".
"No faith alone can unlock their prison, but science has the key." - like, Hyperdrives, for example? What if the Sirens are trying to attract someone with a Hyperdrive to the Rift?
I assume the full Siren Song signal image, when revealed, will tell the full story
I hope.I've ben writing this for hours, I'm totally sure I forgot stuff I wanted to say, but I also wanted to get this out there finally so people can figure out the stuff I couldn't.
Very happy to answer questions, etc. please be nice, even if you disagree, I spent a lot of time on this.
*Yes, I know Drew Wagar didn't know anything about Raxxla
but maybe someone suggested that 'effect' of Hyperspace to him, or maybe he just coincidentally wrote it and it worked out, or someone else edited that bit in, who knows!** No, Halsey didn't meet Guardians. This post of mine explains that weird narrative.
*** Yes, Gan was "off camera narrative", but that doesn't mean anything at all other than 'you cant physically find him'.
[1] The transcript of that section is as follows:
Note: Thargoids are linked to Hyperspace too. I honestly don't know if there's any connection between Raxxla and Thargoids, nothing I've seen confirms that, but... I don't know, wouldn't be surprised. Nothing I've seen links Guardians with Raxxla at all.
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, make lemonade. If I came across as harsh, I am sorry.
