About the fourteenth thing that confused us during the Elite: Dangerous: Odyssey: Extraneous Colons! Alpha was our inventory.
We were all used to our ship's inventories. We buy, steal or contract to carry great big canisters that get stacked in great big cargo bays. They're not mysterious, those canisters. They stay where you put them (hatch breakers aside) and you just pile them up in one place and offload them in another. They don't get around much, otherwise.
But in Odyssey.... well, we have a backpack. Technically it's our suits that have backpacks, because each suit can carry a different amount of stuff. A backpack is almost as simple as the cargo bay in a ship or an SRV.
You can transfer goods and components from and to the backpack; mission goods, like power regulators, and the very important energy cells and med packs get added to your backpack when you leave a vehicle. It's like your spaceship is straightening your scarf and verifying your mittens before it pats you on the head and sends you out into the thin (but hellish) atmosphere of whatever planet you're about to die on.
But.... the stuff in the ship? Is it really in the ship? Those goods and components, once you've transferred them, survive the ship's destruction. If you're taking an Apex taxi those goods and components follow along with you; when another taxi picks you up, your goods and components are there, too. It's like they never left.
When you visit a bartender to offload your loot or trade for even more components, the bartender has instant access to whatever you own, and you can see a list of all of it. So it's there, too, isn't it?
It's almost like – by which I mean “this is exactly what's happening” - your goods and components and your data, which up to now I forgot, are following behind you wherever you go. In some strange way your collection of stuff is never visible, but it's never far away, either. As though... it's stalking you.
![LUGGAGE_Discworld_Josh_Kirby[1].JPG](https://forums.frontier.co.uk/attachments/luggage_discworld_josh_kirby-1-jpg.224759/ "LUGGAGE_Discworld_Josh_Kirby[1].JPG")
Yes. This is the truth. Your whole collection of goods, data and components is contained in a more-or-less sentient piece of Luggage.
Your Luggage follows behind you. The reason you never see it is that the Luggage is wise to your tricks. Any time you start to turn around, the Luggage darts to where your back is about to be. The Luggage does not wish to be seen.
As if that weren't enough, the Luggage has much greater freedom of movement than we do. We can't walk around in our ships, right? But the Luggage can. While we sit glued to our pilot's chairs our Luggage is prowling the dark, inexplicably damp corridors of our ships. It is hunting for boarders and stowaways.
“But I've never seen boarders or stowaways!” you object: and here I nod mysteriously. You never will see them, either.
The Luggage darts behind you as you enter an Apex taxi, and the Luggage is the sole reason why Apex taxi drivers never turn their heads. They don't want to see what's behind you. They know better. But they're happy to get rid of all the boarders and stowaways who crowd the taxi's hallways when we're not on board.
The last great mystery of the Luggage is why bartenders can always see just what's in it, and how they can so easily take things from it, or add things to it, without learning firsthand what happened to the boarders and stowaways.
When we make a deal with a bartender their Luggage confers with our Luggage; a transfer is made. The Luggages nod and bow. Balance is maintained.
I'll leave you with this. We may never know what becomes of those boarders and stowaways, but we do know that human life is cheap in the Galaxy. They probably meet an ominous, highly unpleasant, but unknowable fate... and the same may happen to anyone who inquires too closely about the Luggage, or who overhears the Secret of the Luggage when they weren't supposed to.
Yeah, that would probably lead to a really nasty surprise.
Hey! You read this all the way to the end, didn't you? Hmmmm.
We were all used to our ship's inventories. We buy, steal or contract to carry great big canisters that get stacked in great big cargo bays. They're not mysterious, those canisters. They stay where you put them (hatch breakers aside) and you just pile them up in one place and offload them in another. They don't get around much, otherwise.
But in Odyssey.... well, we have a backpack. Technically it's our suits that have backpacks, because each suit can carry a different amount of stuff. A backpack is almost as simple as the cargo bay in a ship or an SRV.
You can transfer goods and components from and to the backpack; mission goods, like power regulators, and the very important energy cells and med packs get added to your backpack when you leave a vehicle. It's like your spaceship is straightening your scarf and verifying your mittens before it pats you on the head and sends you out into the thin (but hellish) atmosphere of whatever planet you're about to die on.
But.... the stuff in the ship? Is it really in the ship? Those goods and components, once you've transferred them, survive the ship's destruction. If you're taking an Apex taxi those goods and components follow along with you; when another taxi picks you up, your goods and components are there, too. It's like they never left.
When you visit a bartender to offload your loot or trade for even more components, the bartender has instant access to whatever you own, and you can see a list of all of it. So it's there, too, isn't it?
It's almost like – by which I mean “this is exactly what's happening” - your goods and components and your data, which up to now I forgot, are following behind you wherever you go. In some strange way your collection of stuff is never visible, but it's never far away, either. As though... it's stalking you.
Yes. This is the truth. Your whole collection of goods, data and components is contained in a more-or-less sentient piece of Luggage.
Your Luggage follows behind you. The reason you never see it is that the Luggage is wise to your tricks. Any time you start to turn around, the Luggage darts to where your back is about to be. The Luggage does not wish to be seen.
As if that weren't enough, the Luggage has much greater freedom of movement than we do. We can't walk around in our ships, right? But the Luggage can. While we sit glued to our pilot's chairs our Luggage is prowling the dark, inexplicably damp corridors of our ships. It is hunting for boarders and stowaways.
“But I've never seen boarders or stowaways!” you object: and here I nod mysteriously. You never will see them, either.
The Luggage darts behind you as you enter an Apex taxi, and the Luggage is the sole reason why Apex taxi drivers never turn their heads. They don't want to see what's behind you. They know better. But they're happy to get rid of all the boarders and stowaways who crowd the taxi's hallways when we're not on board.
The last great mystery of the Luggage is why bartenders can always see just what's in it, and how they can so easily take things from it, or add things to it, without learning firsthand what happened to the boarders and stowaways.
The Galactic Siblinghood of Bartenders and Shady Waitpersons assigns a Luggage to us when we get our Pilot's license. This is the shadowy organization that – somehow – acquires Luggages and oversees their use. The bartenders know more than we ever will about our Luggage and they don't want us to know any more about it than we do already.When we make a deal with a bartender their Luggage confers with our Luggage; a transfer is made. The Luggages nod and bow. Balance is maintained.
I'll leave you with this. We may never know what becomes of those boarders and stowaways, but we do know that human life is cheap in the Galaxy. They probably meet an ominous, highly unpleasant, but unknowable fate... and the same may happen to anyone who inquires too closely about the Luggage, or who overhears the Secret of the Luggage when they weren't supposed to.
Yeah, that would probably lead to a really nasty surprise.
Hey! You read this all the way to the end, didn't you? Hmmmm.
