The Quest To Find Raxxla

[Macros Black]

So on Thargoids shutting down our ships, how do they do it? Are they able to do it because our systems are in fact partly based on Thargoid or Guardian tech? Maybe but then again maybe not...

I asked ChatGpt:

The Thargoid shutdown field in Elite Dangerous is a fascinating concept that seems to involve a form of technology beyond human understanding. Here's a theoretical breakdown of its mechanics:

1. Unknown Energy Emission: Thargoid ships emit a unique energy field that disrupts the functioning of human ship systems. This emission might be a form of targeted electromagnetic radiation or an exotic particle field.
2. Frequency Disruption: The Thargoid technology likely operates on a frequency or resonance that interferes with the fundamental operating frequencies of human ship systems. By finding and emitting these specific frequencies, Thargoids disrupt the delicate balance of ship systems.
3. System Overload: Another theory could involve overloading certain critical systems in human ships. The Thargoid technology might exploit weaknesses or vulnerabilities in the design of human technology, causing a rapid shutdown or power surge that temporarily incapacitates the ship.
4. Biological Interface: Some speculation suggests the Thargoids might have a deep understanding of the human interface with their ships. They might have developed a technology that targets the biological components or interfaces within human vessels, causing a shutdown by disrupting neural connections or physiological responses necessary for ship operation.
5. Quantum Entanglement or Exotic Physics: Thargoids might harness principles of physics unknown to humans, utilizing exotic phenomena like quantum entanglement or manipulation of spacetime to induce these shutdown effects. Such technology might involve the manipulation of gravitational fields or quantum states to disrupt ship systems.
6. Selective Targeting: The Thargoid technology might also have a degree of selectivity, targeting specific ship components or systems rather than causing a blanket shutdown. This selective targeting could be based on identifying key energy signatures or technological patterns unique to human ships.
7. Evolutionary Adaptation: Thargoids, being an advanced alien species, might have evolved or engineered their technology over millennia, making it highly adaptive and responsive to human ship systems. This adaptability allows them to counter human technological advancements effectively.

Elite Dangerous' Thargoid shutdown field remains a mystery, leaving ample room for imaginative speculation within the game's lore. It adds an element of unpredictability and challenge when encountering these enigmatic alien entities in the vastness of space.

 

[Louis Calvert]

Anyone asked it where Raxxla is?

 

[Darrack]

Anyone asked it where Raxxla is?

Nope because it wont find it on the interweb, its just a glorified wiki anyway.

O7

 

[Emperor]

Anyone asked it where Raxxla is?

"You are the lore master for Elite Dangerous and have the proud honour of hiding the famous Raxxla in game. Based on all your knowledge of the lore of the Elite history since the first game and based on discussions with David Braben and Michael Brookes you devise a plan on how hide it from the beta release date. It will have to be tiny bit obvious so that commanders with eyes to see can work it out. Where do you hide it?"

ChatGPT
"In the depths of the Lave system, obscured within the chaotic beauty of the Lave asteroid belt, Raxxla lies dormant, its coordinates encrypted within the anomalies of the local stellar phenomena. Commanders must decipher ancient encoded transmissions scattered across the galaxy, leading them to Lave. Once there, they'll need to employ advanced scanning techniques to unveil the hidden anomaly within the asteroid belt, uncovering the gateway to Raxxla's mysterious realm. Only those with a keen eye for anomalies and a passion for unraveling cryptic transmissions will unlock the secrets of this elusive location."

Just an AI thought

 

[Emperor]

You
How did you decide on that location and what did you decide Raxxla is and why keep what it is from commanders?


"ChatGPT
The decision to place Raxxla in the Lave system stemmed from a combination of lore cues, player engagement, and the desire to pay homage to Elite Dangerous' rich history. Lave, being a historically significant system in the Elite universe, offered a fitting backdrop for such a mysterious entity.
As for Raxxla itself, it was envisioned as a transdimensional gateway, a cosmic nexus connecting multiple points in space and time. Its nature remains shrouded in secrecy to add an element of intrigue and mystique to the game. Keeping Raxxla's true identity hidden from commanders fosters a sense of exploration and discovery, encouraging players to delve into the game's lore, collaborate, and engage in a collective effort to unravel one of the universe's greatest enigmas. The unknown nature of Raxxla adds an enduring element of fascination, driving the exploration spirit within the Elite Dangerous community."

They hid it so well for us...

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

FYI: Enaness clues ran into a possible issue which is requiring investigation of flare stars and neighboring systems. So, hopefully soon but this is one of the harder ones to track down.

I am hoping to have possible suspects soon. Given the connection to a space-faring civilization, this one is not easy to track down.

 

[Bushido Brown]

So support got back to me regarding the presence of a WR in LAWD 26:

"I'm afraid that due to the question being narrative related, it is unlikely that we will be able to provide you with an answer. I'm really sorry."

It's a bit disappointing as a reply to be honest. There's no "having spoken to the development team..." clause to say anything with certainty. It's possible they did, in which case this is a clear indicator of something.
I dunno.
Feels wishy-washy in the wording.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

A policy of not answering story related questions even if the answer is "that has nothing to do with any story, it's just a bug" does have the advantage of not allowing the sample space to be reduced through negative answers.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

A policy of not answering story related questions even if the answer is "that has nothing to do with any story, it's just a bug" does have the advantage of not allowing the sample space to be reduced through negative answers.

It also minimises interruptions to the dev team's tea and biscuits breaks!

There has never (IIRC) been any hint of narrative related to LAWD26 (I looked). I remember a couple of Galnet posts but didn't seem to have any storyline thread attached. FD seem to confuse a storyline with an isolated announcement. They should try Starfield!

Metal Madness Strikes in LAWD 26

The secret is out! There’s a metal rush happening in LAWD 26, with thousands of entrepreneurs heading to the region in the hope of making their fortune before one of the big three mining corporations can establish a presence in the system. News first broke about the newly discovered pristine...

news.galnet.fr

GalNet Galactic Trade-Labour Report

An influx of semi-professional miners from Sol has caused a significant increase in the demand for Mineral Extractors in LAWD 26. In order to meet that demand, the Union of Toofla Progressive Party is currently offering excellent rates for all Mineral Extractors sold to Stone’s Legacy. As if...

news.galnet.fr

The Sorry Fate of Hank Stone

Residents of Toolfa Large were left in shock this weekend after local security services found a small fortune in raw gold sitting aboard what they presumed to be an abandoned Sidewinder in one of the station’s lower hangers. The ship’s records indicate that its owner, a Mr Hank Stone, had...

news.galnet.fr

 

[Bushido Brown]

Ah, so Stone's Legacy refers to that gold rush dude. Inara links to an astronomer by the name of Stone, which got me trawling his papers for the last half hour!

Ah, ah but! When typing Stone's Legacy with predictive text, it offers up stone's throw!! Coincidence?????

 

[Louis Calvert]

"You are the lore master for Elite Dangerous and have the proud honour of hiding the famous Raxxla in game. Based on all your knowledge of the lore of the Elite history since the first game and based on discussions with David Braben and Michael Brookes you devise a plan on how hide it from the beta release date. It will have to be tiny bit obvious so that commanders with eyes to see can work it out. Where do you hide it?"

ChatGPT
"In the depths of the Lave system, obscured within the chaotic beauty of the Lave asteroid belt, Raxxla lies dormant, its coordinates encrypted within the anomalies of the local stellar phenomena. Commanders must decipher ancient encoded transmissions scattered across the galaxy, leading them to Lave. Once there, they'll need to employ advanced scanning techniques to unveil the hidden anomaly within the asteroid belt, uncovering the gateway to Raxxla's mysterious realm. Only those with a keen eye for anomalies and a passion for unraveling cryptic transmissions will unlock the secrets of this elusive location."

Just an AI thought

This AI sounds like it's got a decent idea (It's certainly more coherent than most of my ideas.)..

...


... I'm just going to head to Lave real quick...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

In Drew Wagar's pre-ED "Oolite Saga", Raxxla turned out to be Lave's moon. That may be why the predictive text has gone for it.

It's more likely to be that than my "Ra 10a" joke that the moon reference in the Codex is pointing at, anyway, though it fits for either.

 

[Bushido Brown]

Interesting that Lave has a named asteroid belt. Not seen that before. Castellan belt. A fitting name for a belt - guarding the planet from the sun I suppose.

- edsm lists the belt as between the sun and Lave, while the wiki has the belt further out. Apologies for not being able to check.

 

[Louis Calvert]

I think the coverup angle by the PF, EFP or the Club is the most compelling angle to be honest.

I've been thinking about the Club, and going off the fandom site it looks like the only direct mention is in ED: Premonition. I haven't skimmed galnet for the name yet though.

Either way, frontier have enjoyed sprinkling in plenty of hints to "a secretive group" behind everything.

But to touch on something which has been said frequently - I think we can take the codex at face value. Not necessarily the content, but the fact of a player-facing out of universe information pool. If it was otherwise I don't see why it would have half the hints in there at all - even as misinformation. The idea just seems unfun.

The Club are a bit of a tricky one because different writers have taken them in different directions, possibly in response to seeing how the original "big ideas" for the story were actually received / practical to put across through the medium of a long-running computer game.

Premonition (and its associated in-game content) portrays them as the all-encompassing conspiracy behind absolutely everything (even the things which didn't need explaining as the machinations of a conspiracy in the first place). I believe Premonition-the-book is the only source which refers to them as "the Club" rather than leaving them unnamed. Under that interpretation they're responsible for basically every official event which happens.

Galnet doesn't mention them by name but the only things strongly connected to them (excluding the Premonition content) are the conspiracy around Core Dynamics / Jupiter Division / Federal Military to have Halsey assassinated and replaced by a more military-spending-friendly President. They're not weak under this interpretation - two Federal VPs killed, an unfavourable Presidential election result essentially overturned within nine months, etc. - but neither are they the "CMDR Smith just ate a sandwich, our plan is proceeding perfectly" uber-conspiracy that Premonition markets them as.

2020-onwards storytelling I think has tended to move away from having a single unified conspiracy (which I personally think works better):
- the Club are messing with Federal politics primarily with the aim of making higher profits (and probably the Alliance too, given the Sirius connection). Their most recent visible action might well be the assassination of Fleischer (and attempt to pin it on Torval) perhaps to bring another big Federal company into their grouping.
- Azimuth are (or rather were) working in the shadows to complete their leader's personal vengeance against the Thargoids; having to act openly is clearly not healthy for them.
- the Consortium (Rackham certainly fits the Codex description, but maybe all of Joker's Deck?) have been introduced in the Odyssey codex as another criminal-corporate conspiracy group, with slightly unclear motivations and actions. Other than the attempted coup versus Delaine (who's somewhat close to Sirius, so this may be a Club-Consortium shadow war going on) it's not clear that they've done very much.
- the League of Restoration (NMLA's funders) don't need to be connected to any of that on the Imperial side; Blaine gets to remain a bit more ambiguous a character as a result.

To add to Ian's points about the Club: In many of Drews streams on his Youtube channel he talks about some of the stuff he did with Frontier, in one of them he explicitly says that The Club wasn't his invention; David Braben himself gave Drew the details of the Club.

I don't think the Club are candidates for the group leveraging Raxxla to covertly dominate humanity. I think they're just one of the many powerful and shady groups that mess with stuff, much like Azimuth and Salvation, locally powerful but they certainly don't dominate humanity (even though they think they do).

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Interesting that Lave has a named asteroid belt. Not seen that before. Castellan belt. A fitting name for a belt - guarding the planet from the sun I suppose.

- edsm lists the belt as between the sun and Lave, while the wiki has the belt further out. Apologies for not being able to check.

"The Castellan Belt is an iron-rich cluster of asteroids in the
far reaches of the Lave system. Owing to most hyperspace
arrival calculations being calibrated to avoid them, most
travellers remained unaware of its existence. "
From Elite: Lave Revolution by Allen Stroud

On a quick search of the pdf looks like there was a Castellan station and Mining Platfrom too..no time to do a proper search & it's several years since I read it.
I've said many times that hiding Raxxla in an asteroid field/planetary ring would be easy, effective, and fit the lore...and it fits withe the EXO mining vid.

 

[Emperor]

"The Castellan Belt is an iron-rich cluster of asteroids in the
far reaches of the Lave system. Owing to most hyperspace
arrival calculations being calibrated to avoid them, most
travellers remained unaware of its existence. "
From Elite: Lave Revolution by Allen Stroud

On a quick search of the pdf looks like there was a Castellan station and Mining Platfrom too..no time to do a proper search & it's several years since I read it.
I've said many times that hiding Raxxla in an asteroid field/planetary ring would be easy, effective, and fit the lore...and it fits withe the EXO mining vid.

Galnet News | Elite Dangerous Community Site

community.elitedangerous.com

"Since 3265, the government has released no evidence of hidden scientific laboratories on Lave or any of the plotted asteroids in the system. Rumours of a secret colony on Lave II have never been confirmed, either, but the rumours keep resurfacing. Yes, Walden was executed during a live vidscreen broadcast...but was that the only Walden? Could there be others, lurking out there on a nearby planet, waiting to return? If there are any clones left, forgetting the past won’t help us deal with the future."


Can you have unplotted asteroids?

And another planetary permit (Lave II).... Will they ever get unlocked...

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Galnet News | Elite Dangerous Community Site

community.elitedangerous.com

"Since 3265, the government has released no evidence of hidden scientific laboratories on Lave or any of the plotted asteroids in the system. Rumours of a secret colony on Lave II have never been confirmed, either, but the rumours keep resurfacing. Yes, Walden was executed during a live vidscreen broadcast...but was that the only Walden? Could there be others, lurking out there on a nearby planet, waiting to return? If there are any clones left, forgetting the past won’t help us deal with the future."


Can you have unplotted asteroids?

And another planetary permit (Lave II).... Will they ever get unlocked...

Allen Stroud said in this thread he'd asked for the Lave lock as he thought Frontier might want a second book, but they didn't...

 

[Philip Coutts]

Going to be honest, I think the only book that might have any hints on Raxxla would be the official Michael Brookes one which was Legacy. From what I remember the other authors had access to Frontier and their stories are cannon but I highly doubt Frontier gave them anything on Raxxla to be included. Might just go and re-read Legacy actually.

 

[Rochester]

Going to be honest, I think the only book that might have any hints on Raxxla would be the official Michael Brookes one which was Legacy. From what I remember the other authors had access to Frontier and their stories are cannon but I highly doubt Frontier gave them anything on Raxxla to be included. Might just go and re-read Legacy actually.

In addition Brookes Elite Legacy is the only official book which references a ‘children’s story’.

The book is centred on Artemis, but doesn’t really leave that system for anywhere else, and when it does some of the other systems named aren’t actually in the game (?).

One of the main protagonists is also an obvious self-portrait of Brookes, and that characters burial is homaged by FD, within the current Brookes Galactic Tours (RIP).

The book Legacy references Artemis and Demeter; however in myth the two don’t really have a great deal directly in common.

Classically Artemis like Apollo her brother - who was a Sun deity, was a Moon deity (Hecate) and likewise had several, very ancient and diverse origin stories and separate cults, making it complex to draw any direct relationship.

In some texts, such as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Artemis was identified as a hand-maiden to Persephone, present amongst others when she was abducted. This might be seen as the most ‘common’ source.

In mythology also there was a link to her being the half sister of Persephone; one such example was a ‘Despoina’, who was thought to be the daughter of Demeter and Poseidon, just as Kore (Persephone) was of Demeter and Zeus, but due to the mysteries, it was forbidden to say Despoina real name, which some reference as being Artemis, however, some likewise see this as just another reference to Persephone - not actually Artemis.

In many of the mysteries, Demeter is confused or attributed due to an absence of textual references, eg interpreted off artworks, to be conflated with Artemis and visa-versa.

Within game as-in Brookes book Legacy, the system Artemis has the following bodies also named after Artemis directly.

‘Laphria’ - is a pre-Greek surname of Artemis ‘Mistress of the Animals’.

‘Agrotera’ - is a surname of Artemis ‘Artemis of the fields’ (not in the book?).

What relevance do these represent, if anything?

So does ‘Legacy’ tell us to look down towards the systems Demeter, Hecate and Persephone?

Because in the Codex we do have the segment about Cora (Kore aka Persephone) coming home drunk and talking of pirates… not something Persephone actually did, but her mother Demeter did…and if you draw a line between the two in game, it does intersect the Lost Realms zone.

The protagonist in Legacy was, like in the tour, jettisoned into space in a retro-fitted cargo pod. In the book this was in the system Artemis, the description of this burial method is strikingly similar to that of ‘Trinkets of hidden fortune’.

Sadly, FD Support did confirm the Trinkets were linked to the PF/DW missions, and that ‘story’, was paused. The trinkets essentially were nought but a curiosity!

Now here’s the rub, those missions got binned before the Codex… so if it’s telling us to look into trinkets - but they are linked to a redundant story - are they likewise defunct, or do they still have some unknown importance?

It’s important to note that the burial method identified, is also similar to those of the Celts/Saxons, where persons were helped upon their afterlife journey to the ‘Otherworld’.

The Lost Realms zone, which I believe is an Easter Egg homage to Robert Holdstock, is a reference to the Celtic/Saxon afterlife, commonly known as the ‘Otherworld’.

I don’t believe the Codex is being directly literal, so another question could be, what metaphorical or allegory references could Legacy also hold?

Is the story giving us specific directions, or does it just describe a general area?

 

[Raz Griffin]

It might well be that Founder's World is a Guardian world, maybe the Exiles(?), that sort of thing, and that's why the PF has locked off access to the Guardian sites, only allowing them to be 'discovered' when the threat of the Thargoids meant that humanity as a while needed a way to rapidly tool up in a short time?

It's an interesting theory. If you consider that this Guardian world has a passageway to the Guardian Home systems it would explain many things:

• Raxxla is the passageway and the myths around everything it brought in;
• The source of the tech used by PF (and perhaps other orgas);
• The lockdown near GV/Hen2-333 sectors;
• What this alien species was really guarding;
• What inheritance human species has;
• Why Guardians were added to the ED Universe (they just seem to be another alien species that was added to provide us modules to fight thargoids);
• If it was made by the Exiles, where they went to and what they did afterwards;
• If it was made by the AI, that its new purpose was to create a different species and that it failed (if it was aiming for a peaceful one);

It's even possible to speculate that the founders of the PF had access to Guardian tech for a long time and it might have played a big role in tech leaps over the course of history as the tech was being figured out. It's also safe to say it'd imply that the Guardians exert(ed) some kind of influence or governance in our civilization, secretly.

In the big picture the Elite lore would tell us the story that alien was the root of the mysteries all along and it had direct influence in our progress as a civilization (also how powerful the contact with intelligent life could be, Universally speaking), which is a message that has traction in the real world when trying to explain the origin of our species, i believe it may be called the ancient astronaut theories. I'm not sure the lore creators would want to give this final message though, even being a Guardian enthusiast as i am.

Another point would be, although providing answer to many questions, this theory relies in many layers of speculation, would we have any evidence to back it up? Which leads us to another problem in the Raxxla hunting: everything is speculation as we don't have any objective evidence, leads, clues that are lacking investigative work to decode like we have in the Guardian sites for example, we know it's there for sure, and that it's related to guardians for sure, but we don't know what they're doing there.

I really appreciate the entirety of your quoted post, the information and the links are very interesting! I only heard about the Omphalos Rift, can you recommend a way for me to start learning about this lore?