The Dust Has Settled
Writing for the Interstellar Correspondents, Verone shares his thoughts on the impact of wormholes and the new technology that has been discovered inside them.
"When I first woke on March 10th, I thought half the capsuleer community had gone insane after connecting to GalNet and hearing news of Seyllin. I'd slept through best part of it, but hell it was a good night.
The Federation and the State were at each other's throats again, apparently blaming each other for unleashing weapons of mass destruction. To my amusement, thousands of scientists probably with no clue what the hell was going on seemed to be trying to theorise what kind of weapon or natural phenomena could have caused such carnage.
Hundreds of them were in a panic, a few daring to brave the trip into these unstable anomalies and returning with horror stories and images of strange unidentifiable structures and vessels with advanced weaponry and systems that make even our capsules look like something you could pick up for a swift million Kredits at a backwater trade hub.
The response from the egger community was unbelievable and within hours Veto Corp, along with a hundred other organisations, had scouting parties traversing these wormholes to explore and map this new space. If I'm honest, I was a little concerned. I've a duty to protect the people who fly our corporate colours.
It seemed similar to the initial “gold rush” in the stories I've heard of the early days of space travel, when rare ores and minerals were first found. A short burst of intense exploration when a new area is found before most of the prospectors are either dead, dying or back in Jita, drunk as hell and too rich to care any more.
The dust cloud has settled now, leaving a scorched planet and a few distant relatives and a friend or two dead. Life goes on though, with an untold amount of reverse engineering in progress producing some, well in my eyes, very bizarre new classes of hull. Naturally I've managed to get hold of all four of these new hulls and their sub-systems.
They're unlike anything I've ever seen before. Unbelievably versatile, and almost able to adapt dynamically to a given situation. They just seem sharper, more focused and more tuned to the senses of a capsuleer than existing hulls that have been retro-fitted to handle our hardware.
They're selling for billions as people cash in, the stories of death and attacks on those out in unknown space not deterring those looking to seek their fortune. Then in the middle of all these fortune seekers, there's us.
Watching the traffic for a few days lets anyone see how much profit there is to be made in our line of work, but I believe we're going to have to be careful. These “sleepers” as people are calling them, seem to have a strange tactical intelligence about them. I haven't a clue what or who they are but I'm leaning toward the suggestion of a Federal Loyalist by the name of Julianus Soter that whatever they're up to, it's not friendly.
A lot of people are calling him paranoid, but I've heard of a few outlaw corporations, some of which I've had respect for in the past heading through into this strange space, only to come back decimated or via a neural upload to a new clone. Still preliminary reports from our own operations seem like it's worth the risk for the profit.
There's an abundance of people out there to take advantage of, with the only downside being the unpredictable nature of the wormholes used to travel. We're going to have to be careful, we've already had one combat patrol and scouting party stuck out there for nine days on a trip that was intended to last only one.
Thankfully they all made it back, but many with only a single load of ammunition left, some running with their turrets and launchers empty. This space by it's very nature is violent, unpredictable and dangerous, with little to no consistent subspace communications and none of the infrastructure we're used to. If you're unlucky enough to be trapped out there, life quickly becomes the most valuable thing in existence over any rare salvage you might have picked up.
As an experienced engineer and shipbuilder, the technology my pilots are bringing home is enthralling.
It's a mixture of everything. It's Caldari in its functionality, Amarrian in its resilience to attack, Gallente in its beauty, Matari in its diversity and adaptability and most frightening of all, almost Jovian in its level of advancement over our own technology levels.
The cluster is changing at a remarkable pace as this new advanced technology filters into general use. The dynamics of combat have already started to shift for people like us, and the sheer efficiency of this new technology means even our own planetside prototype weapons testing facilities are struggling to keep up no matter how much of this new hardware we throw at them.
I believe that over the coming months, into 112YC, we're going to see yet more new hulls reverse engineered, perhaps even more subsystems and weapons that will allow us to face off against even harder odds.
In my eyes, the events in Seyllin have changed the face of New Eden forever. Only time, and the actions of these so called “sleepers” will show us whether that's for better or worse.
One thing is for sure though, if these sleepers do decide to wake, we're all in trouble."
This article was written by Verone, for the Interstellar Correspondents. He is the CEO of Veto Corp and a prominent commentator on life in New Eden.
