OK. What have we learned the past week?
We now know three things about the UA.
1. It scans
2. It transmit the human name of the closest (or most dominant) local celestial body in mores code.
3. It does more (thanks for the heads up Kerrash).
A big question is: Can the UA be mounted in a ship and be used as a scanner or must it be dropped and listened to?
@ Jmains and QorbeQ. Have you listened to the chittereing made by a regular Disco. scanner to see if it also morses the name of the closest body?
There are probably hundreds of YouTube Disvovery videos that can be used to check.
We have a few in-game hints from the Wings trailer and GalNet. One thing that has stuck with me is this quote from one of the "Science reports" about the Soontil artefacts:
"The community seems wary of awarding these artefacts any title yet, given the fifty years of false hopes since Soontill was first mentioned by the Thargoids." (
https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/18-MAY-3301)
"Soontill was first mentioned by the Thargoids" This is a strong indicator that there actually was some kind of peaceful interaction with the Thargoids in the 3250s, thus giving weight to the validity of the FFE story as lore.
The FFE story can be researched from the News Journals:
http://www.dream-ware.co.uk/first-encounters/journals/all/ (lots of other goodies here as well. Especially Empire history and gossip)
and from the mission texts:
http://www.jades.org/missions.htm (Contains a lot of locations that are reachable in ED).
Bare in mind that the FFE missions are branched. Only one branch will be valid lore. We do not know which.
All the new books for ED are valid lore. The FFE story is looking strong. The Dark Wheel should probably be considered valid in a mythological sense.
Oolite stories are not lore.
Good clue hunting Commanders. Ctrl+f is our friend.
P.S. A child named Ishmael was regarded as the fulfillment of a divine promise (Old Hebrew)
