Similarly I thought I would try and deconstruct the codex without falling down too many rabbit holes. As you can see there was a lot to unpack
Legend - specifically showing this part is not a
myth. Also used in TDW codex referring to their existence.
in circulation in whispers - the imperfect transmission of information across multiple iterations. Like the game of
Telephone / Broken Telephone / Chinese Whispers.
for centuries - the idea has remained strong despite its ethereal nature. TDW codex reflects this.
The quest for Raxxla - organised search mission
Location is a deadly secret - This is stated as though it is fact, and is ambiguous to what makes it dangerous. So any 'dangerous' locations could help filter a search. Is the location itself deadly? or the act of searching makes you a target? Is there a high-risk pathway to access Raxxla making it deadly to pilots who don't know the correct procedure? It is also stated distinctly separate to TDW.
Principal aim - if seeking it is their aim, then they have not yet discovered it.
Putative - word meaning a generalised assumption amongst society - this means they may not exist, or at least not in the Illuminati-esque form we might assume it to be. It is interesting to note that the original Bavarian Illuminati's stated goals were "to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power." Basically to prevent society from imploding by discreetly manipulating its levers. I would imagine these benevolent secret societies probably fall apart because they are trapped in the paradox of their innate goals requiring them to recruit new members, but at the same time remain secret, and also somehow hold themselves to common principles, whilst the entire time wielding immeasurable power with the temptation to brag about it.
Fraternity - group sharing a common interest - notably using the masculine latin 'frater' for "
brother/brotherhood". Why masculine?
Legend-chasers - this reinforces the above 'principal aim' premise, they likely do not have possession of Raxxla. If true, this is an avenue of investigation to search for TDW station first, because it will likely contain the clue that spawned the secret society in the first place. As the DW codex states, you can allegedly "
examine the record and artefacts preserved there". What's the point of examining artefacts and records if they supposedly have possession of the Omphalos Rift itself.
Early days of interstellar travel - this pins it to the 22nd Century onward - this could mean an early explorer found something that pointed them to Raxxla (but was not Raxxla itself), and thus TDW was formed to search for it. Private corporate interests dominated exploration in this era and coincidentally the hyperdrive was also invented during this time by
Li Qin Jao.
Side note:
Li Qingzhao was a famous 11th Century Chinese poet. (The 'zh' in mandarin is a 'juh' sound - so a potential parralel exists with 'Jao'.) Two impact craters on Mercury and Venus are named after her - worth taking a look at?
Li Yong-Rui is part of the Li dynasty (surnames are addressed first in Chinese culture). So is the dynasty derived from the success of
Li Qin Jao's invention??? How Qin Jao came to that discovery is unknown - perhaps benefiting from an certain alien artifact discovered by corporate pioneer explorers?
Yong = Mandarin for 'forever', Rui = sharp/acute/keen - Forever Keen -> Fernweh? -> Future sight? Li is also quoted in the Knowledge Base codex with his thesis on behavioural
predictability - "Becoming the
Watchmaker". I believe there may be a big clue here.
Earliest record is in a journal of a shipboard mechanic in Tau Ceti - This puts it in common circulation early in the 23rd century. How did this "secret" become circulated? Perhaps through the disintegration of TDW? or society members leaking info?
Side Note: The location of Tau Ceti is obvious due to the early period of exploration, but the date 2296 is far beyond John Taylor's separatist actions in the colony. Aside from an obvious Pink Floyd association,
John Taylor is a British
inventor and horologist known for his Corpus Clock in Cambridge which he called the
Chronophage or "
time eater". It has an inscription "the world passeth away, and the
lust thereof".
Here is John Taylor explaining its beautifully haunting
mechanics. Notice the 6-armed central reinforcement structure, and the method of using vernier slits to reveal the passage of time - I'm reminded of the landscape signal segments with each shape revealed like it was emitted through an opening.
Super-duper side note: Thargoids can be broken into Thar - old version of 'there' ie. far away, and Goid - an Irish/Gaelic term for 'steal'. So one could construe "Distant/Beyond Thief", or perhaps more ominously - "
Future-Stealers". Maybe this is a link to their behaviour of stealing human stasis pods.
Soused / drunk - as I understand it the first GalNet news event reports the Federation banning the proliferation of celebratory liquor. Just an innocent health and safety message by the PF? or was there a link to something in game related to alcohol?
"Map to a pirate stash" - could this be implying there is a secret stash linked to pirate/rebellious groups?? Could it contain a clue? Another avenue is to scan through instances of pirate activity for unusual cargo or 'odd' pirate activity.
Again with GalNet, the early news articles are about Eranin civil war, Eranin Defence Force, and piracy in LP98-132, as well as lots of mentions of Fish - "380 cargo canisters of Fish were detected floating in deep space. Authorities speculate that pirates ejected them to make room for more valuable cargo." It's a loose connection, but bears resemblence to Homer's Odyssey repeatedly referring to the "fishy sea".
"While we're at it" - so the same act of using the 'map to some pirate stash' is to find Raxxla, thus it could be implying the 'clue' element is needed for a successful discovery of Raxxla.
It is clear from the text that the myth was already in circulation - here the framing has changed from legend to myth. Myth involves timelessness, and has no objective proof in history or reality. Whereas Legends are stories based on historic events and can be placed within a timeline. So after the journal of Art, the parts of the codex entry referring to myth may be read as a timeless framework of ideas and meaning, not connected to the game's timeline or characters.
Extremely difficult finding consistency among fragmentary rumours - if the fragments are inconsistent, it could mean the 'signal to noise ratio' is poor, thus people take what little information they had in the wrong directions - see the above point about whispers - Telephone / Chinese Whispers. Perhaps the author is saying to find a position of clarity to reduce the interfering 'noise' - either with a literal signal source, or some other lore instances.
Ancient myths - within the same sentence, these myths are related to the interpretation of stories about Atlantis etc, so it could be telling us to avoid getting too outlandish and search for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements (Occam's Razor).
Unremarkable moon, or state of cosmic enlightenment - here the writer could be giving examples of these outlandish theories.
"Unremarkable moon" saying that it is unlikely to be anti-climactic and banal.
"State of cosmic enlightenment" is trying to rule out the idea of a symbolic end point, like a message in the game with no tangible outcome.
I guess that rules out Braben's floating head in space then
Points of agreement - here is the meat on the bone!
It is a definite place - it exists as a location in the game.
It holds a mystical secret - either 'holds within', or 'holds onto' a secret that has a 'spiritual or magical significance that transcends human understanding'.
This part has an auspicious relationship with Milton's
pendent world fast by a golden chain.
Alien artifact - a sentient lifeform created it. Non-human. A higher form of technology?
the Omphalos Rift as a [central] tunnel or gateway resembling the fictional children's story - just like what was discussed here earlier, this seems like the author is talking about allegory. It could be telling us we need to look to a story that is an interpretation or tribute to an older version for an element in it that symbolises a passage / gateway / tunnel.
Concealed facts - here it mentions "in
his book", so specifically a male author.
Edit: If we consider this book within the game's history -
Li Qin Jao's real world namesake was a famous poet who wrote about her husband Zhao Mingcheng, whom she shared a love of poetry with. This was during the
Song Dynasty a time of massive
technological advancement. It's first standing Navy, first known formula for gunpowder, first known discernment of true north, first description of a nautical pound lock, and improved designs of
astronomical clocks. So perhaps Li Qin Jao wrote the children's book?
Eyes to see - something that can reveal the secret - either a code, cypher, lens, pattern, whatever.
It could also refer to a mystical
seer?
Li Yong-Rui certainly claims to have this talent!
Could the children's story be connected to
Li Qin Jao or the
Li Dynasty?? Was this children's tale a coded message for the early Dark Wheel acolytes?
Students note the legend exerts a strangely potent fascination on the minds of seekers - Here again the author is pointing to legend, not myth. Something associated with a point in time. What instances are there of people's minds affected? We've certainly seen some instances already with visions, lights and drawing people to seek them out.
Fernweh - a tormented/pained yearning, contrasted to wanderlust which describes a more joyful yearning. It could infer a feeling of being trapped/shackled down by present needs preventing you from going.
a place one has never seen - this could mean a location, but consider the aspect of time as well. The future is unseen. It specifically uses the word "seen" not "been". Yes that is stretching the meaning, but still a specific use of the word. It could describe a place that doesn't exist at all - like Atlantis, or Heaven, but as I theorized earlier the author has ruled that out already. Or the place is invisible or heavily concealed and can only be seen when we have the correct access to it.
futile search - what made it futile? the author may be saying it's pointless to aimlessly search. Again it likely means the place must be revealed by a trigger event or accessed via a gated task - makes me think of a Turing Test. Maybe it's an alien CAPTCHA check
Conspiracy theories - Conspiracies can be used as a method of social engineering or manipulation. Seeding uncertainty about "this" or "that" to create mistrust of people or groups. Perhaps it is a method to slowly undermine the Federation's ubiquitous power - the earliest accounts of the legend started around the time of the Federation's emergence. The Dark Wheel codex also backs up the mistrust theme by mentioning Lyta Crane, a so-called 'people's journalist'.
Some kind of sinister cabal (or sole tyrant) - There are two GalNet articles in sequence on 23 NOV 3304 and 30 NOV 3304, which mention
Li Yong-Rui's private fleet having a "
cabal of junior officers" launching the incursion into Meene - which was basically a veiled attempt by Li to grab Ram Tah's research. Li tries to discredit the officers and 'arrests' them even though the mercs claim they were commissioned by the officers.
Sirius has certainly leveraged power to insert itself into political and humanitarian situations and the fact that the codex calls out a "(sole tyrant)" in parentheses like that is as though the codex author is winking at us.
I refer back to Yong-Rui's codex quote:
The fortune teller rattling bones in her simple hut, the smiling insurance salesman with his snakeskin briefcase and the data analyst with his interactive holographic model are all selling the same thing: certainty. One of the paradoxes of human existence is that we crave the freedom to be spontaneous, thinking it is essential to our nature, while constantly seeking reassurance that nothing unexpected is going to happen. We flatter ourselves with the belief that we are exempt from the rules of modelling that govern the rest of the universe. — Introduction to "Becoming the Watchmaker", Li Yong-Rui's master's thesis on the innate human reluctance to accept behavioural predictability
- Fortune teller rattling bones in her hut - a witch / seer of prophecy / future events, also a person who makes money from exploiting people's emotions.
- Smiling insurance salesman with snakeskin briefcase - insurance is a buffer against future catastrophy, and the smiling+snakeskin symbolism implies malicious manipulation.
- Data analyst with a holo model - Reading and modelling future events, but also someone who may be feigning technical skill with shiny gadgets with the intent to steer the decisions of people with power and influence.
- The paradox of craving freedom, but seeking reassurance of safety - this sounds a bit like Fernweh. Yearning for freedom, but trapped in fear of uncertainty and danger.
If Raxxla existed as a legend during the early centuries of human stellar civilisation, it means someone found something to spark its existence in everyday conversation. So I'm becoming more convinced now that Raxxla has never been found and that the Dark Wheel only have/had a marginal advantage by possessing at most a few artifacts that they could study and derive advanced technology from to gain special economic advantages and power, but could never find or access Raxxla itself.
The parallels to Li Yong-Rui can probably be applied to the Federation's shady actions as well. However, the connections of '
legends' to the early period of hyperspace travel, and the long influence of the Li dynasty in association with ship technologies, seems to position Sirius as being the likely vector of discovery. This does not mean the corporation is constantly dropping hints. It's more like a starting point where we could search for hidden skeletons
Additionally the keys to the door could be hidden in plain sight, like the fact we are using their drive technology to access the galaxy. Or the composition of FSD materials are somehow linked to a clue to find The Dark Wheel station - my theorized home of frame shift technology.
