With the Dark Wheel we only have in my opinion, supposition and speculation generated through conflicting communication.
This was one of my primary initial points at the beginning of my quest. To establish the veracity of one of the most ‘obvious’ clues.
Doing so would either put one upon the correct path, stress test other Cmdrs findings but ultimately, rule out unnecessary dead-ends.
Let’s break it down:
As it is presented in game to ‘fresh eyes’ so to speak, ignoring all other sources of information. The player is presented via the still official manual with a mystery, with no clues, namely a secret organisation in the Pilots Federation (PF) who say they are being monitored.
In game the player is already effectively part of a secret organisation namely the PF, all other members of the public are the NPCs, and they are not part of the PF.
In game the PF home system of Shinrarta Dezhra (SD) is portrayed to the general public as mysterious and a place effectively secret.
In game SD is also the home base of the faction the Dark Wheel (DW). Certain beacons attest this is a splinter or sub-faction of the PF.
In game they DW has various NPCs flying around doing odd stuff, carrying various odd stuff…
Then we have the Trinkets of Hidden Fortune.
Then finally in the the codex, that hint’s strongly the DW may be bogus, but with a twist of logic that they may not (namely that if they were they should have been shut down). It also presents two new elements of information never seen in previous games prior to the codex, that the DW has/had a unique low power station, and that it orbits a gas body with eight moons.
Ignoring 3rd party research, if you a player we’re to ask Frontier Developments (FD) today about the DW and Raxxla, their official front facing office ’support’ will tell you the DW faction hands out special mystery missions…(I check regularly and yes they do say this).
Now with 3rd part information:
Look to page one of this thread and you will observe evidence of Cmdrs challenging FD over these missions, which ultimately resolved with the confirmation that they were removed, and that the ‘trinkets’ were linked to this ‘story’.
If you challenge FD Support now with information obtained via this quest, they will then get a Dev to confirm that yes the information they give out is redundant and there are no missions.
This might be construed as counterproductive, but it’s only evident Support only have limited information very likely obtained off Wikipedia.
Next we have a Drew Wagars admission that he was told as part of the initial writer pack and other 3rd party discussions (not replicated here due to being unsubstantiated) that said DW was bogus, and that the DW missions were potentially part of a grander narrative not written, due to various unverified allegations.
Conclusions:
The admission of FD Devs that the missions and effectively the Trinkets, are now gone leads one to believe these logically now lead nowhere.
The historical in game and 3rd party information about the DW being bogus, may be accurate.
The current official FD statement would lead us to speculate the DW faction is initially real.
The inclusion of new information about a station and a new location via the codex, may lead one to suspect the DW faction is ‘now’ effectively redundant, and or ‘real’. But a new game mechanic has been retro fitted and is now an unknown station ‘somewhere’ and Cmdrs simply have to find it.
I believe the DW exists in game, but the faction is redundant. The real DW is giving the assets available to FD m, to be a low signal ‘dead’ space port, Gen ship of carrier. That it cannot be found via the scanner but only via close quarters detection or the Mki eyeball scanner.
I believe it doesn’t lead anywhere, but very likely has custom voice actor logs which gives some spurious information about the DW history and/or the first clue towards a path towards Raxxla?
Technically said station if real, is very likely in a tight location around Sol no further out than Achenar.
It very likely is ‘anywhere’ within said system with a gas giant with eight moons.
I don’t suppose it’s permit locked, if it is then it’s almost certainly narratively locked, if so there is logically no point going looking for it. Therefore if it were - like FD confirmation about permits, FD ought to have confirmed it’s inaccessible, which they have not, so logically it’s out there, just floating around in the dark.
Or it’s not.