Intergalactic Summit

I strongly suggest people not act foolhardy and use their immortality as a crutch to fight these Drifters.

From all indications the Drifters are also immortal and are not going to be easily beaten by a similar force. Even if you kill one, they seem to come back with the same force.

Their combat ability and technology seems to far exceed ours. We're fortunate they haven't actually attacked and instead are remaining mostly dormant--though this could just be because their main goal is securing the wormhole connections. While I believe that wide aggression may invoke a war we are not prepared to fight, we need to quickly ascertain their goals and how to possibly combat not only the Drifters, but the wormholes themselves. These wormholes are their logistical supply line and if we can cut that then we may actually have a chance should things get worse.

From a military standpoint it seems the Seekers were the Scouts, the Drifters were the Vanguard, and who knows what's next? We need to secure these wormholes, certainly.

From a humanitarian standpoint I caution people to label these Drifters as enemies. We could live with them. The only problem at this moment is we have no communication with them yet. The only communication we've really given en masse is one of hostility, thanks to our previous and now current actions.

My suggestion is this:

Do what they (Circadian Seekers) have done and send out scouts, picking out every small detail you can to establish their strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly their behaviors and possible motives. People with intent to push them away are acting too early. Try to open up to them and learn as much as you can. Send them mails, contract them gifts, tell them jokes; do whatever you can that is the opposite of being openly aggressive. Perhaps they will react with a touch of humor and open up and see us as a similar species, perhaps they won't respond at all.. but we can learn much from the actions and questions we ask now. If we want to continue trying to represent baseliners then we need to get back in touch with our humanity.

As capsuleers, the supposed protectors of the entire human race, many of us are verging on the point of trans-humanism. We still act as ambassadors to our race, especially to groups such as the Sleepers who mainly only see and deal with capsuleers, but we seem to have such differing opinions about life and sacrifice than those of the real world.

You can go out and try to murder them or you can go and try to establish diplomatic ties. It ultimately, and sadly, is the capsuleers choice how these Drifters see our society. With that said, I don't have much faith in the way capsuleers react to this "threat" but I do hope we get the chance to show people we're not just scared murderers and fanatics.

-Eran

Edit: It should be noted that the Drifter pilots aren't found on the regular SCC database. Trade and communication are not possible at this time, thanks to CONCORD.

Not sure how to feel about that...

It certainly isn't a bad idea, however that requires dozens of hydrogen-bombs/freighters for each wormhole and we have to assume that these entities were already able to insert structures larger than several titans before these wormholes even appeared to us. We tried to battle the previous Sansha wormholes with such methods as ECM and hydrogen bombs and it worked to some degree, but ultimately the Incursions still continue largely unhindered. The science of wormholes still has a lot left to be learned.

What causes wormholes and what can we do to stop them from happening? Basically what we need is a mobile cynosural field inhibitor, but for wormholes, and we need to find out how to make that happen as soon as possible.

-Eran

I apologize if my response turned you away from offering further suggestions. It wasn't a bad idea, and one that has worked to some degree before. Perhaps the physics behind the bombs have something to be further investigated.

I will say that I am personally not a big fan of bombing wormholes. It may work for the short-term but I don't see it solving the actual problem. Even if we assume all the wormholes lead to a centralized location, I am not going to advocate genocide on Sleeper, Drifter, or Sansha people. I just can't.

-Eran

Fair enough. In that case, I wish you the best.

All I ask is that capsuleers don't rush into a war against these entities.

-Eran

Just a thought but how do we know that the cloaking on those structures actually failed? There are rumours that the seekers and/or Drifters aren't just scanning but also transmitting information to us. It could be that they have tweaked our implants somehow to actually register the structures instead.

I get the idea that these structures are not totally similar in size and shape as now that they are uncloaked. This makes me think that the structures may have been recently build contructions (while cloaked) that have only been recently completed.

I recently had a thought I need to voice. Not entirely sure I've thought it through, but here it goes.
When we were first contacted by "Hilen Tukoss", he requested certain Jovian body parts to be delivered to the AJ Site One in the Eram system. Shortly thereafter these Drifters appear. Is it in any way possible that these body parts are used as a gentetic template to clone the drifters? I'm aware that I'm only connecting to points of data in a much larger web, but it at least falls within the boundaries of what is possible, at least to my limited scientific knowledge.
How far off the target am I?

Oh yes, I've seen that particular type of complex. The system in Anoikis I currently live in connected to one of the recently discovered shattered systems a few weeks ago. The epicenter looked fairly straightforward to me, nothing unusual except for a "Talocan Embarkement Destroyer" which gave no clues at all to it's purpose except for the usual speculation Aura puts together whenever you encounter unknown objects.
Having read the report you refer to, I have nothing to add except that, judging from the planet in the background, it may very well be the exact same system.

Even if we assume that this cloning is what happened, the question of who did it, and why, remains shrouded in mystery. As far as we can tell, the Sleeper drones posess no will to expand or engage neither capsuleers nor empire forces un less directly threatened. We could blame the Jove, but why? Any hypothesis regarding the Jove can only remain a hypothesis until we have an opportunity to actually interact with them. The drifters are the closest thing we have and they may not even be representative of the Jove who may or may not be living in the New Eden cluster. I find it difficult to relate to recent events with the sparse information at hand, which only makes me more determined to try and unravel this enigma.

Do we really know that there has to be a body though? Nobody has been able to actually enter a sleeper enclave and have a look, as far as I know.
Naturally they don't destroy their own sites. The only possible culprits at this stage are either the Drifters or Sansha forces since they are the only ones who are known to have a direct link to Anoikis. The connection betweenj the Drifters and Circadians play into this too though. I've yet to come across a report of Circadians and Drifters engaging each other, but there are plenty of reports where they seem to assist each other in their scanning endeavours. Wether these two are a faction of the Sleepers in Anoikis or an example of Jove pirating Sleeper tech for their own purposes remains to be seen. Drifters do appear have the capability to cause the destruction seen in Anoikis. Which side of the conflictg they have been on is also unknown.

To Answer that you'd have to recover a body, dead or alive. Not very likely. I advise you to, if you make assumptions, make sure you consider every possibility in a greater context. Who would the "previous owner" even be? If the Sleepers are indeed themselves sleeping inside some structure, I've yet to see proof.