The Quest To Find Raxxla

[Don Alvarez]

In short, consider the Codex as Fdevs first (and really only) actual hint and first ever actual in-game confirmation of Raxxla and start there with the assumption that they put that in when they didn't have to (no-one was expecting it at all and the quest was virtually dead), so they wanted us to have that specific set of info. It says what it says because Fdev made it say that deliberately and with intent.

Thank you. I was around when this thread started but I been gone for a long time and I wasn't aware of this. Matter of fact last time I played regular there wasn't even a Codex. Hard to play catch-up over 1700 pages this thing has grown to. I found a transcript of the codex entry, and it seems it is indeed the source where the language from the wiki comes from.

I'd ignore Astrophel and Stella and Astrophel too, no-one's found any references to anything in them at all

I plan to find out. Hope you're wrong.

 

[Louis Calvert]

Hope you're wrong.

A lot of people do

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

And I am saying it could be a giant arrow, that they have never approached something, fairly central to the most central and engineered system in the game.

Every other asteroid field works perfectly. Except Sol's.

I can go to Tau Ceti, and go to their Asteroid sites that are less than 4 ls from the star. Never any issue with any star outside of Sol.

Also, side note, every other Mining site in every other Planet's rings work 100% perfectly. Except the Void Opal site in Neptune's rings. Which doesn't have a drop point.

You could have something there, never tried void opal mining in Sol& haven't heard anything about drop point problems at Neptune. With the recent discussion on Triton it may be FD were giving us clues... Have at it Commander!

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Thank you. I was around when this thread started but I been gone for a long time and I wasn't aware of this. Matter of fact last time I played regular there wasn't even a Codex. Hard to play catch-up over 1700 pages this thing has grown to. I found a transcript of the codex entry, and it seems it is indeed the source where the language from the wiki comes from.


I plan to find out. Hope you're wrong.

I never believed that the codex's Astrophel (a boy's name, so why princess? sounds contrived to me) was a reference to Philip Sidney's prose (didnt stop me spending a lot of time diving binary BH from "Stella's black eyes", just in case!) nor any other classical literature- I cant believe MB would set us off chasing down external leads like that...the clues and solutions should all be available within this game. So I tried looking at that supposed book title as an anagram; many many system names can be derived, narrows down a lot if you believe Elite Legacy's hint to Raxxla being in Alliance space. But havent found it yet though.

Just a thought.

 

[selbie]

While on the topic of Astrophel I had built up a few more ideas around it with some retreading over old notes.
Aster / astra / astrum - Yes this means star, however, I'm reading that the word in Latin is used in context with known named stars whereas 'Stella' is a more diminutive word referring to nondescript stars.

The codex leaves out 'Stella' so there is a chance it was intended to avoid a direct relationship to Sidney's poem and the use of 'spiralling stars' may be acting as a substitution.

Like Jorki and others pointed out, 'phel' is peculiar in that the writer chose this suffix and not 'phil'.
It was used in Sidney's poem in the masculine sense, however, there is also a word phêl used in Welsh.
Note: Any native Welsh speakers who can clarify would be a great help
Phêl is a spoken variant of pêl meaning a ball, sphere/orb, world, or mark of honour/renown.

So in that sense the story's title could represent:
Princess - female figure of 'royalty' (ie. wielding power)
Astro - relating to the starry heavens,
Phêl - relating to a globular, spherical form.

This immediately reminds me of the cosmological Celestial Spheres.
One is the Sphere of Stars, which could be a link to the 'spiralling stars' portion of the book title.
Other candidates are the Spheres of Venus and the Moon due to their feminine mythological roots. Venus is obvious, but I think the Moon (goddess Selene/Luna) might be a better fit as there is the parallel with Seline Cavus in Legacy.
Another parallel is that the goddess Selene is pictured with a crescent moon on top of her forehead - ie. on her brow.

The codex's emphasis on a children's story, by a male author, who was 'concealing facts' is also intriguing. Riddles, kenning and metaphors are a form of concealing facts (truths). What if "children's story" is a play on words to mean it is a story of children - not in the juvenile sense, just literally the sons and daughters of parents. This would make sense in the context of Legacy - Julia the daughter who inherits power, and Darek her father grieving his wife and lover.

There are also the mythological parallels.
The Norse story of Sól and Máni is about the sun (Sól) and moon (Máni) who are siblings and children of Mundilfari (meaning the one moving time / passage of time). In this setting, Astrophel could represent Sól as a literal 'star sphere', and the Spiralling Stars could be symbolic of her father Mundilfari, or their travels across the sky chased by the wolf Fenrir - maybe like the dragon in Julia's book?

Selene is also the daughter of Hyperion and sister to Helios (Apollo).
Keats' poem Hyperion does share influences from Paradise Lost as well as the Aeneid and Divine Comedy. The Hyperion text is abruptly broken off mid-line at the word "celestial" just as apollo receives his power - could this be what the title in the codex is relating to?

Hints for those with eyes to see:
In Hyperion, Apollo gains his godhood by looking into Mnemosyne's eyes and receives her knowledge as the goddess of memory. Apollo is the deity of Delphi. The omphalos and the children's story is described in the same paragraph of the codex - as well as this mysterious author who is claimed to be the source of riddles leading to Raxxla.
"Several versions" could refer to there being multiple versions of a mythological tale - so it could imply looking at mythological stories that focus on children of elder gods.

 

[Louis Calvert]

Interesting ideas.

Consider it from the other way around though too.

You're naming a character that you want to be an astronomer or "star lover", someone powerful, celestial, a princess or goddess figure...google those ideas, one of the names you get offered in those "250 names for your baby" type lists is, in fact, Astrophel. Here's one such, out of many.

This works both in the lore and out: In the lore it's the name of a character in a book so the author of that book chose that name - and it was also chosen by whoever wrote the codex info to be the name of a fictional person in a fictional book.

Having sat looking through endless names lists myself trying to find the right name for a character... maybe this is actually "what Astrophel means". Maybe it's just a name that someone picked?

 

[Rochester]

Pronunciation might be key to the title, if relevant. How is this Welsh word spoken aloud? I’m interested because the audio for the Codex seems to pronounce it a specific way, this might help if relevant…lost in translation?

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

<snipped>

The codex's emphasis on a children's story, by a male author, who was 'concealing facts' is also intriguing. Riddles, kenning and metaphors are a form of concealing facts (truths). What if "children's story" is a play on words to mean it is a story of children - not in the juvenile sense, just literally the sons and daughters of parents. This would make sense in the context of Legacy - Julia the daughter who inherits power, and Darek her father grieving his wife and lover.

<snipped>

I wonder how much trust we can/should place on MB's novel Elite Legacy in relation to the Quest.?
In that book
"Julia as a girl dreamed of being the first pilot to discover Raxxla....as a girl Julia grew up without toys with a single possession, a book about a young man’s quest to save a princess from an alien dragon locked alone each day in the tiny family cell while her parents slaved in the mines. She hoped to keep her Eagle as she’d grown accustomed to its idiosyncrasies...whether it was a suitable ship for travelling all the way to Alliance space was another matter”.

This appears on the face of it to indicate Raxxla is located in Alliance space, which might tie in with MB's words and expression during the Elite: Dangerous Fiction Diary #1 - @7mins30 MB said “When you’re travelling in Alliance space make sure you’re not accidentally smuggling something illegal” with big grin and fixed look for several seconds....but is that clue too obviousand therefore obfuscation?

Carrying on from @selbie 's thought above, if we consider children (plural) then I think we should ignore Julia (she was an only child) but we could consider her father & his siblings: Darik, Lee (viper pilot), Mervan (Fdl), & Selene (viper). Now "dragon" derives from ancient Greek where it meant giant serpent, and there is a definite snake theme in this game with the ship type naming convention. The children's story echoes the phrasing in the codex, so I suspect this might be a clue, but if so I think it will be obtuse. There might be an anagram of some the phrasing involved, or some form of cryptic hint. There is at least one serpent depicted in MB's tattoo, which I think is another clue to Raxxla.
Edit
Wikipedia has some interesting things about Python, a huge serpent, child of Gaia and its abide at Delphi (Omphalos location)...

Python (mythology) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Could the "children's story" actually be hint to the greekk myth? Gaia is the leading Sol faction...

 

[selbie]

Pronunciation might be key to the title, if relevant. How is this Welsh word spoken aloud? I’m interested because the audio for the Codex seems to pronounce it a specific way, this might help if relevant…lost in translation?

Going by wiktionary's linguistic guide it would be said just like 'fel'. Hence why I asked if there were native speakers around
While digging around for pronunciation I found there are certain scenarios where the p can be softened to a 'ph' sound in Welsh, but it wouldn't be a guaranteed thing. Beats digging around for stegosaurs at least.
The voice actor does say it in a way that emphasises the second syllable - which happens to be like iambic pentameter, thus a-STROFF-el - coincidentally used by Keats who abandoned Hyperion because of too many inversions like Milton but then ended up using Milton's style anyway in Fall

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Going by wiktionary's linguistic guide it would be said just like 'fel'. Hence why I asked if there were native speakers around
While digging around for pronunciation I found there are certain scenarios where the p can be softened to a 'ph' sound in Welsh, but it wouldn't be a guaranteed thing. Beats digging around for stegosaurs at least.
The voice actor does say it in a way that emphasises the second syllable - which happens to be like iambic pentameter, thus a-STROFF-el - coincidentally used by Keats who abandoned Hyperion because of too many inversions like Milton but then ended up using Milton's style anyway in Fall

Mmm, googling...
A "strophe" is a group of lines that form a section of a poem..the first part of a Greek Ode poem (the Odyssey???)

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-what-is-an-ode-poem-learn-about-the-3-different-types-of-ode-poems-with-examples

"stroph" comes from Greek, where it has the meaning "turn; twist"

Edit
So are we being told the solution is in an anagram, twisting the letters/words??

 

[selbie]

Wikipedia has some interesting things about Python, a huge serpent, child of Gaia and its abide at Delphi (Omphalos location)...

Python (mythology) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

While checking a few deity relationships I did come across the Orphic Egg with the serpent Ananke wound around it - a primordial entity preceding the later gods.

 

[Emperor]

While on the topic of Astrophel I had built up a few more ideas around it with some retreading over old notes.
Aster / astra / astrum - Yes this means star, however, I'm reading that the word in Latin is used in context with known named stars whereas 'Stella' is a more diminutive word referring to nondescript stars.

The codex leaves out 'Stella' so there is a chance it was intended to avoid a direct relationship to Sidney's poem and the use of 'spiralling stars' may be acting as a substitution.

Like Jorki and others pointed out, 'phel' is peculiar in that the writer chose this suffix and not 'phil'.
It was used in Sidney's poem in the masculine sense, however, there is also a word phêl used in Welsh.
Note: Any native Welsh speakers who can clarify would be a great help
Phêl is a spoken variant of pêl meaning a ball, sphere/orb, world, or mark of honour/renown.

So in that sense the story's title could represent:
Princess - female figure of 'royalty' (ie. wielding power)
Astro - relating to the starry heavens,
Phêl - relating to a globular, spherical form.

This immediately reminds me of the cosmological Celestial Spheres.
One is the Sphere of Stars, which could be a link to the 'spiralling stars' portion of the book title.
Other candidates are the Spheres of Venus and the Moon due to their feminine mythological roots. Venus is obvious, but I think the Moon (goddess Selene/Luna) might be a better fit as there is the parallel with Seline Cavus in Legacy.
Another parallel is that the goddess Selene is pictured with a crescent moon on top of her forehead - ie. on her brow.

The codex's emphasis on a children's story, by a male author, who was 'concealing facts' is also intriguing. Riddles, kenning and metaphors are a form of concealing facts (truths). What if "children's story" is a play on words to mean it is a story of children - not in the juvenile sense, just literally the sons and daughters of parents. This would make sense in the context of Legacy - Julia the daughter who inherits power, and Darek her father grieving his wife and lover.

There are also the mythological parallels.
The Norse story of Sól and Máni is about the sun (Sól) and moon (Máni) who are siblings and children of Mundilfari (meaning the one moving time / passage of time). In this setting, Astrophel could represent Sól as a literal 'star sphere', and the Spiralling Stars could be symbolic of her father Mundilfari, or their travels across the sky chased by the wolf Fenrir - maybe like the dragon in Julia's book?

Selene is also the daughter of Hyperion and sister to Helios (Apollo).
Keats' poem Hyperion does share influences from Paradise Lost as well as the Aeneid and Divine Comedy. The Hyperion text is abruptly broken off mid-line at the word "celestial" just as apollo receives his power - could this be what the title in the codex is relating to?

Hints for those with eyes to see:
In Hyperion, Apollo gains his godhood by looking into Mnemosyne's eyes and receives her knowledge as the goddess of memory. Apollo is the deity of Delphi. The omphalos and the children's story is described in the same paragraph of the codex - as well as this mysterious author who is claimed to be the source of riddles leading to Raxxla.
"Several versions" could refer to there being multiple versions of a mythological tale - so it could imply looking at mythological stories that focus on children of elder gods.

The mutation of pel to phel would mean it's in a sentence meaning her ball.... My Welsh is rusty but think that's correct...

 

[Emperor]

Going by wiktionary's linguistic guide it would be said just like 'fel'. Hence why I asked if there were native speakers around
While digging around for pronunciation I found there are certain scenarios where the p can be softened to a 'ph' sound in Welsh, but it wouldn't be a guaranteed thing. Beats digging around for stegosaurs at least.
The voice actor does say it in a way that emphasises the second syllable - which happens to be like iambic pentameter, thus a-STROFF-el - coincidentally used by Keats who abandoned Hyperion because of too many inversions like Milton but then ended up using Milton's style anyway in Fall

Yes the letter ph would sound like an English F

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

which superpower did Michael Brookes support/favour?
Alliance? Federation? Empire?

I'm sure I heard him favour one during a livestream, but I can't remember which...Im still considering the hint in Legacy that Raxxla is in Alliance space.

 

[Louis Calvert]

which superpower did Michael Brookes support/favour?
Alliance? Federation? Empire?

I'm sure I heard him favour one during a livestream, but I can't remember which...Im still considering the hint in Legacy that Raxxla is in Alliance space.

The only way the idea that "Raxxla is in Alliance space" makes sense is if Alliance space expanded to encompass Raxxla very recently.

Raxxla has been know about since "The earliest days of interstellar travel", and the Alliance was formed from a rebellion after 3228.

Nothing in the history of the Alliance seems to suggest that its formation was related to anything other than a rebellion against exploitation and the desire to be 'not part of the Empire or Federation'. Therefore what you seem to suggest here is that the Alliance accidentally expanded to encompass Raxxla? Or you're theorising that Raxxla is moveable and was put in Alliance space? Or the Alliance leadership deliberately expanded territory to include Raxxla once they discovered it somehow?

While the Alliance's early history around some prominent individuals (from the FFE era) have certainly had a major impact on the Galaxy - I wouldn't put it past the Turner Family to have some ideas about Raxxla - I find it questionable to conclude that Raxxla is in Alliance space because the main character in that novel (who is basically a Luke Skywalker-style youth that's grown up entirely within one asteroid mine) wants to go look for Raxxla, and she's in Alliance space. We might also conclude that Raxxla is in the Federation since Art Tornqvist mentions it in a similar context in the Codex?

Still, you might have more luck considering the juxtaposition between the extant of human-explored space in Art Tornqvist's time versus the Alliance territory in Julia's time, because, logically, if Raxxla is in Alliance space, and Tornqvist knows about the myth of Raxxla almost a thousand years before, then there must be a venn diagram of systems that could have been discovered in the 2200's to start the Raxxla myth that are part of Alliance space in the 3300's.

I'd be much more inclined to buy into this idea* if there were other factors to support the Raxxla-Alliance location, but so far there doesn't seem to be any?

If we're looking at the official novels, it's arguably more likely that And Here The Wheel contains hints to Raxxla, since that actually focuses on an offshoot of The Dark Wheel, and mentions the Ryder family by name and fills in some background on them in Elite Dangerous - this also fundamentally canonises at least the Ryder name and their prominent position in the hunt for Raxxla and position within The Dark Wheel organisation, and the fact that the Dark Wheel never found Raxxla. This post from John Harper contains some context details.

Q: ... the Dark Wheel didn't find Raxxla.

A: ...AT THE TIME OF WRITING THIS WAS TRUE AS PER INFORMATION PROVIDED BY FD...

We can learn a lot from the fact that the Dark Wheel spent a thousand years looking for Raxxla and didn't find it. We can also consider that probably most of human-colonised space has been searched by the Dark Wheel during this time. The Great Raxxla Potato Hunt group here on the forums has scanned a vast portion of the bubble in just a few years... make that slower due to older hyperdrives (and consider the bubble was smaller), and it's reasonable to think that the Dark Wheel has already scoured human space before we got on the scene!

As I've talked about before, the major thing we have now is the ability to easily explore the entire galaxy. That simply wasn't possible prior to the late 3290s. Anyone playing FE2 or FFE knows that exploring human space and the Frontier was relatively easy in the end-game, the killer was ship maintenance outside the Frontier systems. This, in my opinion, lends weight to the idea that Raxxla, or whatever is discoverable in that way, lies outside the bubble - or outside the realm of 'common human explorations'. We know that with extreme funding it was possible for ships to reach a few kilolights outside the bubble prior to FSD, but every story that includes that reinforces the extreme danger and hardship of such travels, and that many never returned.

*in theory

 

[Rochester]

The assumption made by @Jorki Rasalas (correct me if I have it wrong) is based upon a statement made by Brookes about flying through that area with unidentified prohibited goods. And is combined also with the assumption that in Brookes Elite Legacy, certain acts occur in that general area.

The assumption is from my perspective, not that Raxxla has had an effect upon exploration (?) but rather the author may have hidden locational environmental clues in his statements and work(s) to advocate that zone might be a good place to look?

We also seemingly have it by official source, that other novels were told to avoid the subject of Raxxla.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

I'm making no assumptions, but I'm wondering how much credence we can place on that apparent hint in Elite Legacy (& possibly also the hint from the Dev Diary vid also stressing Alliance & carrying illegal goods, possibly implying TOHF) that Raxxla is in Alliance space. I suspect it may be obfuscation...

 

[Rochester]

I'm making no assumptions, but I'm wondering how much credence we can place on that apparent hint in Elite Legacy (& possibly also the hint from the Dev Diary vid also stressing Alliance & carrying illegal goods, possibly implying TOHF) that Raxxla is in Alliance space. I suspect it may be obfuscation...

Mmm not sure, I think it is possibly related but only temporally.

In so much that its possibly had relevance in an original timeline of orchestrated events, but maybe now, any such evidences relevance might have degraded, because of obfuscation!

Personally I feel there are two mysteries at play here.

One revolves around an original narrative that was cut short, but whose architecture persists to this day?

The other possibly a redux, a redraft of the original, which may or may not continue along the same path of enquiry?

Logically any evidence ought to correlate along the timeline irrespective, but if chapters were removed, before they were drafted, or shared, how reliable would it be now?

 

[Louis Calvert]

Consider: what seems like magical alien technology in the 2200's might be something we in 3300 consider commonplace. Therefore Raxxla to us might be "boring", or "not useful", it might be little more than a historical footnote for most people.

Imagine a car from 1973 being dropped back in time to the vague Middle Ages with a suitable amount of petrol and an enthusiastic shotgun-owning American man at the wheel, like this real-life recording of such an event:

I'm not saying that Raxxla is a 1973 Oldsmobile, but maybe Raxxla to us in the 3300's is the equivalent of a 1973 Oldsmobile displaced in time six hundred years. It was once a near-magical bit of technology that served as the cornerstone of R&D for whoever had it, but now it just represents a historical footnote and proof that there's weird stuff out there.

It's entirely possible (likely) that whatever Raxxla is now is significantly less impressive to us than it would have been to someone in 2290, especially if - as is stated in the Codex - Raxxla has already been 'leveraged' by some sole tyrant or sinister cabal.

Consider that our FSD, from the outside, essentially has us magically appearing next to our targets anywhere in a system, and travelling many times faster than light casually. Imagine in an era where Hyperdrive is this: (Glanet) "The first commercially available hyperspace system was known as the 'Faraway Jump'. The Faraway system was far from perfect, however, depending on a complex network of monitoring satellites, branch lines, stop points and rescue stations – which took hundreds of years to establish – to operate smoothly."

And imagine if Raxxla allowed someone to develop 'fast Hyperdrive' like we have today (or even the Galcop Qurium drive) back in the era of Faraway. Someone with such a drive would be able to "magically" drop in on people, they'd be able to travel outside the Faraway network they'd be able to jump ahead to meet targets coming out of Faraway... That would give them the leverage to be able to dominate any area of space. If you had a small fleet of ships with fast-hyperdrives... you'd own space.

Maybe even create the myth of aliens or pirates ravaging areas that the people controlling Raxxla didn't want anyone to go, right? Like you find a planet loaded with rare minerals you want to mine, so you use your fast-hyperdrive to terrorise any explorers or nearby space lanes for a few years, and suddenly your 'goldrush' planet isn't on anyone's plans for expansion. Maybe you could even make entire battlegroups "vanish" this way...

There are other examples of mysterious ship disappearances in the lore. Some are definitely Thargoids, some are maybe Thargoids, some are maybe not Thargoids...

 

[Nezzie Muso]

OK I've been working on this for the last couple of years but making no further progress, so publishing and asking for what I could have missed. I should mention I'm on Legacy, which could be significant.
1. First clue is that earliest mention in Tau Ceti by Art Tornqvist - Tau Ceti is the other notorious in-game comet system apart from Pareco
2. Pareco is within the bubble at the date given (2296)
3. Pareco is owned / exploited by "an evil man" Yuri Grom
4. Pareco station names are the answers to the six questions of the Raxxla toast - CROWN is the diadem; ASIRE (a sigh) is the whisper in witch space; James WEBB was the siren of the deeper void responsible for the foundation of NASA; the GARDEN (of eden) is the longing of our vagabond hearts (according to the song by Joni Mitchel) and so on.
5. The stated population of Pareco exceeds that of the six stations - it includes the colony at the comet. Someone once managed to get within the comet instance and posted a screen grab.
6. The station ring orbits perpendicular to Polaris (Pole-star = Astrophel and the spiralling stars, seen from below) I assume Polaris is permit locked specifically to stop you easily getting the direction right.
7. The "Omphalos rift" = meaning the navel, would suggest that the access is in the centre of the ring. So I'm guessing you get to the comet and go up toward polaris; or possibly you need to go between comet 1 and comet 2, if anyone knows how to find them.

So. I became allied to all the Pareco factions, I loitered in the system, and I received an inbox "covert" mission directing me to steal data from a secure planetary base. (Blackman Silo+++ on HIP12248 5A) On successful completion of this mission, stealing the data that "we are not alone in the galaxy", I receive an on-screen message telling me that I am now considered "elite" - being a pre-requisite for joining TDW. I've done this 3 times so far. I know of no other system where a covert inbox mission gives you an on-screen message as a reward.

However, many months later this is still the point at which I'm stuck. I have drawn out the map of the system and plotted the location of the comet (four times, the location changes as the stations orbit at different speeds and semi-orbital distances)) and tried to supercruise to the current location many dozens of times, without success, even though I know that someone did once succeed at this. I have flown around the "shipping lane" and "deep space" area inside the centre of the ring for many, many hours (hundreds) and have not managed to locate the comet. Its usually just nside the shipping lane of Asire. I have flown through the approximate centre of the ring in the direction of Polaris (and back) many dozens of times. I have tried hyperjumping through the ring. I have tried visiting the stations in the named order in the toast, in case that made a difference. And about 20 other orderings as well (but there's over 700 possible orderings in total).

I know in Live there was briefly a bug where you could jump in-system to a calculated offset; so did anyone jump to pareco comet 1 or 2 and take a picture? Does anyone have any thoughts on how to trigger the next step ?