The Quest To Find Raxxla

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

Posting this here because one of the authors for the "Tales of the Frontier" may have intentionally been given details on the mythical TDW station. The station was originally known simply as Citadel. To my knowledge, there are two Citadels in the game: Dublin Citadel in Gateway and Dantius Citadel of House Thiemann in Thethys. Both are Orbis stations. I don't remember specifically if they were dual toroidal but this may help. I should add "abandoned" is relative term. All the stations are supposed to be "officially abandoned" but are still in use. Neither is a station.

On a related note: Arx is not randomly chosen name. It is the Roman name for Citadel. Tagging @El Saico for visibility.

Arx (Roman) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

ARX

ARX is a virtual currency for Elite Dangerous that was implemented in the September Update across all platforms. It is used to acquire Livery and Commander Customisation items in the Frontier Store, and can be purchased outside the game or earned in-game. Up to 400 ARX can be earned each week by...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

 

[Ravenloft45]

Hello friends,

What I'm about to write now is probably off-topic or entirely related to my tinfoil time, but I need your help. I was watching retro ED videos and I came across this video of Dr. Ross:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz3nhCykZNw&list=PL7glm5rbPHKxwWFMLWFXB6KPWy1nzfn_x&index=9


At 38:55 Dr. Ross mentions a math error and says, "Ten points if you know what it is." Since English is not my native language, I think I don't understand a joke or expression here.

My question to you: What is the math error here and why Dr. Ross says "10 points if you know what it is"?

I ask this because there is a very strange coincidence and I have to convince myself that I am not crazy. We can all guess that the Raxxla codex entry contains clues, but I'm trying to understand what is assumption and what is breadcrumbs.

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

This Citadel idea may something to it. Also, been checking mountain and hills and that like Arx currency seems to point to mountains or defensive hills being important.

Citadel can mean Fort or Fortress. There are a few other words meaning the exact same thing.

• We have quite an number of Orbis stations with Fort or Fortress in the name (also a few oddball Coriolis). These would have been "abandoned" in 3008 when Gaylen Trasken Duval made peace with the Federation.
• Per Drew Wagar, the Club wanted central control via the Empire. This happened before the first game. The Feds were rebuffed when asking the Empire to join but the reverse apparently went through. This being why almost any faction has long haul supply routes to Imperial systems.
• There is a system Arx Arcis which is Latin for "The center of the castle" - https://inara.cz/elite/starsystem/21907/ . Also, probably a candidate for a in-person visit

From Wikipedia entry on Arx (Roman):
- The arx of Londinium was located in the northwest corner of the present-day City of London, south of Cripplegate. It was constructed around 120 and dismantled around the time of Diocletian.There is a planet by the name of Londoninium in Alexandrinus ( https://inara.cz/elite/starsystem-bodies/9245/ ).

System description of Alexandrinus:

Home to a lost, ancient civilisation with primitive beliefs in divinity.

Someone needs to check this system, ASAP.

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

Anyway, given the Roman/Aeneid angle has proven immensely promising I will put together a list of systems and stations that are likely technically abandoned. I still think we may have to find The Dark Wheel's main base before we find Raxxla. However, this is first time awhile I feel we might be making legitimate progress.

Find The Dark Wheel, Find Raxxla.

 

[Rochester]

Hello friends,

What I'm about to write now is probably off-topic or entirely related to my tinfoil time, but I need your help. I was watching retro ED videos and I came across this video of Dr. Ross:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz3nhCykZNw&list=PL7glm5rbPHKxwWFMLWFXB6KPWy1nzfn_x&index=9


At 38:55 Dr. Ross mentions a math error and says, "Ten points if you know what it is." Since English is not my native language, I think I don't understand a joke or expression here.

My question to you: What is the math error here and why Dr. Ross says "10 points if you know what it is"?

I ask this because there is a very strange coincidence and I have to convince myself that I am not crazy. We can all guess that the Raxxla codex entry contains clues, but I'm trying to understand what is assumption and what is breadcrumbs.

“10 points” is a joke, it’s a British pop-culture reference to TV game show catchphrase. Dr Ross was just saying there’s an error here - hypothetical credit for anyone who figures it out - it’s essentially saying the reward of points for doing so is not the prize, but the taking part. As the points were always irrelevant or overly high or low in comparison to the task at hand...

Source: https://youtu.be/0obMRztklqU?si=mwrHmWtLQrHvTUkH

 

[Merlin StWahgwaan]

Unfortunately it doesn't so much represent the spectrogram in 3D as it does generate a wireframe waveform using an algorithm based on the audio. So, unfortunately, it's not really useful as what you see is only vaguely related to the sound itself.

However, it was a great idea, and if you find anything similar, do give me a shout

That's too bad, when I came across it in passing, the landscape signal was the first thing I thought of...

Not really sure how they work, but if you Google 3d spectrogram you'll be able to find several.

There's one more,
"3D Spectrogram Visualizer by Chris Donahue"
that looks alittle more promising, maybe...
it's able to create spectrograms of words/images in sound...
I think... lol
It's on an AWS site, that has GitHub links at the bottom...

But either way, maybe you can have better luck looking for one that might work however it should work, not really sure about the wire frame thing myself....

 

[Ravenloft45]

“10 points” is a joke, it’s a British pop-culture reference to TV game show catchphrase. Dr Ross was just saying there’s an error here - hypothetical credit for anyone who figures it out - it’s essentially saying the reward of points for doing so is not the prize, but the taking part. As the points were always irrelevant or overly high or low in comparison to the task at hand...

Source: https://youtu.be/0obMRztklqU?si=mwrHmWtLQrHvTUkH

Thank you for the brief explanation. I did a lot of search for the ship mechanics name. Art Tornqvist always sounded interesting for me. Google says Art is short name for Arthur, and a Celtic masculine given name, meaning "bear", the surname is Swedish. Very interesting and rare combination. when you put it in a base64 decoder, it shows "9 PT".
ART TORNQVIST https://md5decrypt.net/en/Base64-decoder/ There are some non recognised characters maybe from ASCII table, but ART TORNQVIST is decoded as 9 PT
and Dr. Ross'es 10 PT joke made me think Maybe we should try base64 for the clues from the codex?

Anyone can confirm that was Elite 1984 used base64 in coding, due to memory restrictions?

 

[Rochester]

I think that might be over thinking things, there is always a danger of going too far into historical relationships. What we really need are strong contextual links.

I caught the whole ‘Arthur / Bear / Thorn branch’ interpretation long ago.

But I suspect the text of the Codex is either metaphorical or allegorical.

Reading Holdstock, ‘Ragthorn’ I was reminded of the thorny branch from the Epic of Gilgamesh. And considering how much Holdstock is associated with Raxxla, and in my opinion, how he’s referenced in game through the Lost Realms zone, I believe Raxxla in ED is as much a Holdstockian theme.

Considering Gilgamesh, and Holdstocks running themes of mysterious lands and the ‘Otherworld’, there are various contextual links. In game many of the locations, and gods associated with that story are in game!

Is Arts name a reference to Holdstock and the epic of Gilgamesh, RH story ‘Ragthorn’?

Is Art a reference to King Arthur, and Tornqvist a reference to the thorny branch of both Gilgamesh and the holy grail of Arthur?

How much are Arthur and Tornqvist associated as metaphors for a hero’s journey…. In the end is the use of the name only the author trying to drop a contextual hint, to read ‘Ragthorn’?

Personally I think my above theory is a stretch too far, as there is very little historical academic context to back this up, as the two stories are separated by thousands of years.

Still no further forwards.

 

[Ravenloft45]

I think that might be over thinking things.

I caught the whole ‘Arthur / Bear / Thorn branch’ interpretation long ago. But I suspect the text of the Codex is either metaphorical or allegorical.

Reading Holdstock, ‘Ragthorn’ I was reminded of the thorny branch from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Is Arts name a reference to Holdstock?

We all over thinked too many possibilities here. Stretches and tinfoils in every corner. Maybe Art is referance to Holdstock. But where it leads?

 

[El Saico]

Thank you for the brief explanation. I did a lot of search for the ship mechanics name. Art Tornqvist always sounded interesting for me. Google says Art is short name for Arthur, and a Celtic masculine given name, meaning "bear", the surname is Swedish. Very interesting and rare combination. when you put it in a base64 decoder, it shows "9 PT".
ART TORNQVIST https://md5decrypt.net/en/Base64-decoder/ There are some non recognised characters maybe from ASCII table, but ART TORNQVIST is decoded as 9 PT
and Dr. Ross'es 10 PT joke made me think Maybe we should try base64 for the clues from the codex?

Anyone can confirm that was Elite 1984 used base64 in coding, due to memory restrictions?

Elite actually predates base64, as the original encoding standard (meant to send encrypted email as ASCII) was proposed in 1987.

The source code was released by Ian Bell a while ago; the system names were generated from three pairs of 16-bit "seeds" and a list of 32 tokens with two characters each.
This allowed fitting 8-character names such as Riedquat and Tionisla in only 6 bytes, something necessary given how scarce was memory in the BBC Micro¹.

Some reverse engineering of the system IDs² revealed that the Stellar Forge sectors are direct descendants, with the names being derived from the higher bits and the lower ones hosting boxel data.

¹ And making it run on the NES at all - much less feature-complete - was some Unseen University-level high wizardry
² There's a proper writeup somewhere on the internet instead of a source code with zero context, but I lost the link

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

Anyone can confirm that was Elite 1984 used base64 in coding, due to memory restrictions?

Back in that era, we had the Intel 8086 with a data width of 16 bits and maximum addressible length of 20 bits. 64-bit came much later.

Intel 8086 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Do we have the video clip of the relevant portion so it can be assessed for alternative solutions.

The first thing that obviously comes to mind is alternative spellings such as Tornquist instead of Tornvquist. Immigrants sometimes change family names when they move to a new area.

Colm Tornquist

Colm Tornquist is a reporter for the Imperial Herald. In February 3302, he reported on Chancellor Anders Blaine's plans to retake the Facece system. 04 FEB 3302 A little over two weeks ago, the Facece system was occupied by an independent faction known as the Allied Facece Order. The news sent...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

 

[El Saico]

Back in that era, we had the Intel 8086 with a data width of 16 bits and maximum addressible length of 20 bits. 64-bit came much later.

Intel 8086 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Do we have the video clip of the relevant portion so it can be assessed for alternative solutions.

The first thing that obviously comes to mind is alternative spellings such as Tornquist instead of Tornvquist. Immigrants sometimes change family names when they move to a new area.

Colm Tornquist

Colm Tornquist is a reporter for the Imperial Herald. In February 3302, he reported on Chancellor Anders Blaine's plans to retake the Facece system. 04 FEB 3302 A little over two weeks ago, the Facece system was occupied by an independent faction known as the Allied Facece Order. The news sent...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

Elite was written on the much cheaper, 8-bit MOS 6502, with a 16-bit address space.

This is what made porting to the NES even possible in the first place, as a lot of assembly code could be reused with focus going to the I/O - a monumental task on its own.

 

[CorvenDallas]

Found it, you can close the thread.
You're all wellcome.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

² There's a proper writeup somewhere on the internet instead of a source code with zero context, but I lost the link

https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Random_number_generator is a pretty good summary of the basics, with a bunch of links to more detail

 

[Astro13]

Elite was written on the much cheaper, 8-bit MOS 6502, with a 16-bit address space.

This is what made porting to the NES even possible in the first place, as a lot of assembly code could be reused with focus going to the I/O - a monumental task on its own.

Originally Elite was written on the BBC micro, which was the computer the UK commissioned the BBC to create. At that time the UK was quite behind on the whole computing thing, And the Micro was meant to be cheap. I have looked into the code of the original Elite, It is impressive. Now I wonder if anything in the source code for Elite points to Raxxla, I would not be surprised if FDev is trying to reference something in the original code, Or they snuck something into the emulated one you can get for free on the store.

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

Originally Elite was written on the BBC micro, which was the computer the UK commissioned the BBC to create. At that time the UK was quite behind on the whole computing thing, And the Micro was meant to be cheap. I have looked into the code of the original Elite, It is impressive. Now I wonder if anything in the source code for Elite points to Raxxla, I would not be surprised if FDev is trying to reference something in the original code, Or they snuck something into the emulated one you can get for free on the store.

The original Elite is available for free on Frontier's website at FDev digital merchandise store.

 

[Han_Zen]

Originally Elite was written on the BBC micro, which was the computer the UK commissioned the BBC to create. At that time the UK was quite behind on the whole computing thing, And the Micro was meant to be cheap. I have looked into the code of the original Elite, It is impressive. Now I wonder if anything in the source code for Elite points to Raxxla, I would not be surprised if FDev is trying to reference something in the original code, Or they snuck something into the emulated one you can get for free on the store.

The game was probably finished before the short story was even written. IB and DB wouldn't have heard the name Raxxla, at the time they made it.

At the time of the making of Frontier Elite 2, DB was focused on the realism part. Raxxla, Thargoids and other fantasy elements were not a priority. The short story 'Imprint' was published with Elite + for PC. It sort of smooths the transition from fantasy galaxies to the 'real galaxy' and gives some context to how Galcop space fits in the real Galaxy.

Imprint: A short story set in the Elite Universe by Andy Redman | Dream-Ware

Any commander will instantly be reminded of his/her/it's maiden flight from Lave and the dreams they had when they were still starry-eyed and before t

www.dream-ware.co.uk

When Frontier first Encounters came out, aliens and mysteries were back on the menu. From the code and the unpublished parts of the Journals, it seems like there were plans for more chapters. There are also signs that point to plans for a multiplayer game. FFE the game, was released relatively unfinished. There aren't any sings of Raxxla in the code. If there are any hints or pointers in the old books, Gazetteer or Journals, they have most likely been unintended at the time of writing.

Raxxla is an ED concept, inspired by an old book. Mythical planet, alien construct, gateway to other universes. That is all the dev. team that made Raxxla for ED, had to go on. The rest was up to them.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

And while that was the description of Raxxla from Holdstock's novella, I strongly suspect FD didn't feel at all bound by that description for its (first and only) implementation in ED.

 

[Rochester]

John Milton the Space Poet: Early Traces of Science Fiction in Paradise Lost - Reactor

One of the many ironies of Paradise Lost, John Milton’s retelling of the Book of Genesis as an epic poem, is Milton’s trashing of Calliope, the Ancient Greek muse of epic poetry. In Book 7 of the poem, he references Calliope’s failure in mythology to save her son’s life and calls her “an empty...

reactormag.com

 

[CMDRCorrMorningstarFelian]

Just for the record: TDW novella is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg but the codex in-game recycles the phrase "gateway between Universes".

From TDW novella:

The Codex in-game:

Several versions of the Raxxla story mention an alien artefact, the Omphalos Rift, described as a gateway or tunnel through which parallel universes can be accessed. 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. Undaunted, some 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.

Students of Raxxla lore have noted that the legend exerts a strangely potent fascination on the minds of seekers. Commentators have compared this sensation to 'fernweh', the unaccountable longing for a place one has never seen. More than one interstellar treasure-seeker has become obsessed with Raxxla to the exclusion of all other dreams, and spent his or her entire life in a futile search for it.

This, however, was far from the earliest or only mentions. There have been both earlier and much more recent mentions. None, have exactly clarified what it is exactly.

Alien World the Complete Illustrated
ISBN-13: 9780706413984
ISBN-10: 0706413989
Author: Eisler, Steven
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd
Published: 1980

ISBN 9780706413984 - Alien World the Complete Illustrated

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Alien Landscapes
ISBN-13: 9780905310336
ISBN-10: 0905310330
Author: HOLDSTOCK, ROBERT AND EDWARDS, MALCOLM
Edition: First US Edition
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Mayflower Books
Published: 1979

ISBN 9780905310336 - Alien Landscapes

Alien Landscapes - Information and prices for ISBN 9780905310336, ISBN 0905310330

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Lost Realms: An illustrated exploration of the lands behind the legends
ISBN-13: 9780905895918
ISBN-10: 0905895916
Authors: Malcolm Edwards; Robert Holdstock
Edition: First Thus
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Paper Tiger

ISBN 9780905895918 - Lost Realms: An illustrated exploration of the lands behind the legends

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Tour of the Universe: The Journey of a Lifetime : The Recorded Diaries of Leio Scott and Caroline Luranski
ISBN-13: 9780831787974
ISBN-10: 083178797X
Author: Edwards, Malcolm
Edition: First US Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Mayflower Books
Published: 1980

ISBN 9780831787974 - Tour of the Universe: The Journey of a Lifetime : The Recorded Diaries of Leio Scott and Caroline Luranski

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EARTHWIND
ISBN-13: 9780671441876
ISBN-10: 0671441876
Author: Holdstock, Robert
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1982-06-02

ISBN 9780671441876 - EARTHWIND

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That's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg because a lot of Holdstock's science fiction appears to have influenced Elite's overall direction (though that isn't the only source per Transport Lakon Baker Gamma Sierra Heavy). In the end, they recycled the phrasing from TDW novella. In more modern times, Drew Wagar wrote extensively on Raxxla for Oolite and there have fan stories including stuff like AJN Lion which appears to the basis for Communication Array Delta 69 given the gravitational anomaly.

So, are the Easter Eggs Raxxla? Good question. I wish I knew the answer. Is it Onionhead given the weird typo? Or is it some alien construct? Hopefully, if we are lucky enough, we'll find out ... eventually.