Intergalactic Summit

You will notice that lady Vitalia merely replied to Matari ex-outlaws and her message was the exact same than yours, telling them to go spoil another thread.

Back on topic, i'd like to post a small piece of poetry i read a few years ago, and that reverberate in my mind the same way Tamiroth's words does.

Spatial disposition is extremely important in the native script we use, and for that i apologize; i can't translate it properly in this medium. I hope the words carry enough of the original meaning, though.

'In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
where i kneel.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is
illumined nothing,

where ecstasy gets poured into itself
and becomes
lost,

where the wing is fully alive
but has no mind or
body?

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque,
a church

that dissolve, that
dissolve in
God.'

Unknown artist, 'The White Shores - Voices from the Anshar peninsula', The Outer Regions Collection, Royal Khanid Press.

TRUTH

It is the time for us to make the next step in our experiment. Currently, all the civilizations we have compete only in relation to the "Factor X", and one, the biggest, comes as a somewhat close "winner".

Let us introduce the Factor Y, subtly at first. Let us assume that the influence of the Factor Y manifests itself as small shifts in probability. In most cases these shifts are either unnoticed or easy to handwave away or explain via other factors. But they, very slowly, accumulate over time, and sooner or later we begin to see things that are harder and harder to explain.

Let us assume that this seemingly small influence of the Factor Y will lead to the universe changing dramatically in the distant future, and that the Factor Y has a defined direction, somewhat akin to the Strong Anthropic Principle of Gallente philosophers.

And that the Factor Y leads the societies adapted to it and thus positively affected by it to a certain new state. For example, let us imagine that embracing the Factor Y and following its "evolutionary direction" will lead the human society to transcending the boundaries of the world, becoming an infomorph-like beings of pure energy, and then either preventing the heat death of the universe or escaping from this dying space-time bubble into another one.

And then, as a finalizing act of our thought experiment, let us join Evolution, Tradition and the Truth in one human society. A traditional society that has many flaws like every other, but never the less is the biggest and most well adapted to the current rules of the game. But yet, it has another defining feature, and that feature is strongest possible adaptation to the Factor Y as the main factor of evolution. And there is no other society like this: every other one fails to read the signs of Factor Y's influence. And, when the Factor Y will inevitably replace Factor X as the main source of evolutionary pressure - an event that took our "chosen" society aeons to prepare for - all others will die out.

QUESTIONS

Is it beneficial for the long-term survival of the society to accept the existence of Evolutionary Factor Y?

It is beneficial for another society to merge with the dominant one, knowing that some of the newcoming members who are too backward, ignorant, rebellious and are lacking required self-control, will have to suffer their term as "non-people" until their eyes finally open to the existence of Evolutionary Factor Y?



I think you all already see where this "thought experiment" is going, so i'll stop right there.

The Amarr world is your only ark of salvation. Ascend on board, like many did before you, or die out. Blessed are the chosen of God and everyone whose soul is open to the light of God, be he Amarr, Ni-Kunni, Khanid, Ammatar or of any other blood. Join us, for it is to us that the destiny of faith, the destiny of mankind, has been given.

22:VII:CXIV A.Y.

What's in a Name - Finale

...I didn't set foot on "my" planet until the second year in the Royal Amarr Insitute, when I was 17. I entered RIN not as a future capsuleer, but as one of the myriad baseliner students. The education cost us a small fortune - enough to build a Punisher-class frigate from scratch, I believe.

It was summer. Though there is no difference between seasons when you spend most of your time in an orbital city the size of a small moon. I and several other students took a ten day vacation to Amarr. After six days of exploring the holy places, the imperial capital and other common sightseeing, I boarded a shuttle to Tamiroth.

Of course, I knew everything about the planet and expected nothing. It was a ritual, a symbolic act of completion, closing the circle of life. I took nothing with me, only the tiny memory crystal that contained my childhood drawings - of the lush islands, pirates, mermaids, rainbows and the beautiful winged ships.

When the little craft entered the low orbit and began the long descent into the atmosphere, a surreal, mystic feeling visited me. It is if as everything I imagined, the world of my dreams that never existed, was washed away and faded, one layer after another.

A beautiful emerald covered with cloud swirls, snow-white and golden, has transformed into a foggy cup, boiling with fierce hurricanes over the brass sea below; the shuttle was falling into the middle of that cup. Then, the all-cleansing plasma of atmospheric re-entry engulfed the ship, and the fake observation windows went black, like a coffin closed.



The planet is covered by the warm, even overheated, but relatively shallow ocean with highly mineralized water. Tropical and equatorial zones are uninhabitable because of the runaway greenhouse effect caused by the water vapors. In fact, most of the planet's atmosphere is water vapor; giant cloud masses form over the equator and drift up towards poles, where they fall out in a torrents of rain never seen elsewhere.There is no indigenious life, except the gene-modded terraforming bacteria that fill the ocean. The terraforming project slowly moves forward, and you can already breathe the air, at least in the polar regions.

Low gravity and shallow water give birth to the storms otherwise unimaginable. The waves tower like slowly moving liquid mountains, like glassy cathedrals of divine wrath. The air is ablaze with electrical currents, the invisible sky covered with lightning nets.

The few families of True Amarr holders with lineages going back to the first Reclaiming own most of the planet. Like everywhere else in the Amarr system, you can't legally buy or sell real estate on any noticeable scale. It is called "not available for the general public." Even surveying the resources is forbidden. Everytime I see the message "Amarr IV (Tamiroth) is not available for the general public" in my neocom, i still grin a little.

There are numerous sea resorts around the poles in the "cool zone". The owners of those resorts tout the mineralized ocean waters of Tamiroth as a divine gift and a cure for every disease, but as someone who spent several days fiercely scratching every inch of my then-natural skin after a few minutes of swimming, i'd say that the healing and rejuvenating effect of this mineral soup is highly exaggerated. People from Amarr Prime, Oris and the orbitals flock to those resorts like flies though.

Otherwise, the planet is dead and inhospitable, and there is nothing to see.



I booked a room on one of the resort platforms that looked like a pyramid of gold, white and glass with my RIN student card and rented a small yacht. Next morning, just before the sun rose, I sailed away from the platform towards the horizon.

The sea was calm, a sheet of brass foil under the tan sky, pinkish towards the sunrise. The stars on the western half of the sky were barely visible because of all the humidity. The air was hot and literally wet, but yet thin, and my head went dizzy after a hour or two. It was hard to breathe.

By noon, I reached a shallow with a flash beacon of some kind sitting in its middle, the only landmark in the watery wasteland. I anchored my yacht near the beacon and descended into the waters of Tamiroth. Old Sailor Tammy reached her final destination, the end of the journey.

The water was warm and very salty, sour ar the lips. It doesn't feel refreshing, perhaps, because the mineral composition didn't match the human body somehow. Below, in the dim haze, was the dead sea floor. Though it wasn't entirely dead: soon I noticed something that looked like clumps of ugly orange fungi. Above them the water was slightly bubbling with tiny sparks of gas, like champagne. The colonies of terraforming bacteria slowly continued their centuries-long work.

Ms. Tamiroth;

Thank you for sharing the story of your childhood dreams and the watery world in which they slumber. I was particularly struck by them. I have no childhood memories, but I hope that they were as rich and wonderful as yours. The first planet I ever recall seeing is the blue orb of Funtanainen II, which sounds so similar to your Tamiroth. It remains the site of some of my most enjoyable work.

May your dreams rest easy beneath the waves.

29.VII.CXIV A.Y.

Sweet Home

The patch of Khanid highsec that connects to Kor-Azor through Kulu and Nakredge is isolated from the rest of the Kingdom by two low security systems, Rilera and Tegheon. Only three systems in this patch have stations in them - Palas, the local "capital", the neighboring Safshela, and Danera, which sits in a center of a small cluster of five systems with no orbital docking facilities.

Economically, this Palas-Danera pocket is much more dependent on heighboring Amarr regions than on the Kingdom itself. There are only few jumps from Palas to Amarr, so the local market is poor to non-existant, unlike the Khanid Prime-Agil area. Even for a non-capsuleer ship, with all the slow aligning, snail's pace acceleration and gate queues it would take less than 12 hours to reach Amarr Prime. (By the way, have you ever watched a baseliner civilian transport undock and align for warp? It's worse than watching paint dry or grass grow. It's continental drift, no less.)

Politically however, the Kingdom maintains a strong presence there. Four of the six local stations are huge naval bases and assembly plants. Local Khanid Navy representatives' offices are placed very conveniently, so an upstart freelance mercenary starts at Danera IV-1 with assignment levels 1 and 2, then progresses to level 3 at Danera IV-9, where a special tasks agent is also found. And, once his skills have matured enough, a level 4 agent at Palas II awaits him.

* * *

I was born on Danera V. This world was once a smallish ice planet with little to no atmosphere. When the Empire began to colonize the region that was to become Khanid, they chose between Danera II and V as possible terraforming projects. Danera V, while receiving much less sunlight than II, had enormous deposits of water, and that sealed its fate. Danera II still stands barren. Even though the terraforming was launched there as well, it still has several hundred years left to completion.

Thus, the world I was born to is a fake, artificial one. The rings of atmospheric processors around the poles keep the air breathable and support the greenhouse effect that enables the comfortable average temperatures of ~18 C near the equator, but the planet is still too far away from our sun. Should the immense ancient citadels buried in ice stop breathing, within the next few decades our world will revert into the dead glacier-covered wasteland. That was one of my main childhood fears. But then, i learned about the Caldari, and the fears were gone. They did it. They survived. And we will survive too!

The gravity here is slightly above half standard. The air feels like high in the mountains. There is perpetual twilight, and our eyes grow adapted to it. Everything is similar. Everywhere you go, you find the same few species of gen-modded crops, grass, bushes and trees, the same few species of insects and bacteria. There are no "larger" animals except humans, their livestock and their pets. Even during the day, you can see brighter stars and the tiny sickle of our moon. There is a small abandoned starbase orbiting it, called "Osprey heights" - a testament to someone's failed ambition. Our year lasts about 5 calendar cycles. It's a long year, but we are used to it.

My father's estate was near the lake Nasamih, in the northwestern part of a huge crescent of grouped landmass - a large continent and a number of islands - covering most of the hemisphere. In the end of the 80's, after a minor campaign against the Covenant in Querious, His Majesty granted many token patches of land around Nasamih to the distinguished officers of the Navy, making them low-rank Holders. One of those officers was my father. Most of our neighbors were navy veterans as well, save for the most senile and hilarious Baron Gorzakh - a True Amarr noble well over 200 years old. A self-professed xenobiologist and the owner of untold number of titles, the only person here I can really compare him with is Lord Vaari. The funniest part is, that Grandpa Gorzakh Who Collects Bugs, being a True Amarr Holder, stood on the social ladder higher than any of the newly elevated Knights, his neighbors. Just imagine how he treated all those upstarts from the Navy that suddenly appeared all over his quiet, unchanging realm!

Poor old Baron. I almost want to hug him. But he most likely won't understand it, so I never will.

And this concludes my writings for today, to be continued later.

31.VII.CXIV A.Y.

The Special Power

When I was a child, I often wished I'd have some sort of special power. I'd use it to change the world, to make everyone happy, to correct everything that is wrong. You know those cheap "magic girl" holoreels: you can ban them as you wish, but yet they get somehow smuggled in, copied and shared, and soon everyone in your class appears to have watched a ton of them. I was no exception.

Just a bit of special power, and the sun becomes brighter, the minions of evil run away in fear, everyone loves you, and there is peace and happiness in the universe. Just a bit of special power, and no one ever dies, and the lost are found, end everything that is broken becomes whole again.

Just a bit of special power, and your everyday life, boring and pointless in its tragedy, suddenly becomes full of greater meaning, and every star in the universe is open to you, promising an immortal future.

* * *

Then you grow up and slowly begin to realise, that you already have that special power, that it always was within you. The power to change the world and make people happy, the power to make someone's life meaningful. And all that you need to do to activate that power is to open your mind to the overhelming beauty of the universe we live in. Even if this beauty is too often tragic and transient as life itself.

People are broken and imperfect. It does not matter.

Their world is a distorted reflection of their corrupt souls. It soes not matter.

It all won't end well. And it doesn't matter.

Because, if you still have that special power and your heart shines with the light, nothing else matters.

* * *

Then, you open the door, and upon your doorstep there are three men in robes of gold, black and white. They brought you the gift of special power as they think of it. And, suddenly, the sun becomes brighter, the minions of evil run away in fear, and every star in the universe is open to you, promising an immortal future.

But the true special power lies not in your implants, not in the biomass of your clones, your ISK wallet or a few terribly fitted tech 1 ships you happen to possess. It is in your soul, and it is only through it is that you can become truly immortal.

* * *

"When thine heart shines with the Light, thou shalt know no hardship;
When thine actions are in Light's name, thou art immortal."

- The Scriptures, Book of Trials 2:1

I commend your loyalty and your clairvoyance, may God continue to shine his light on your way and reward your faith.

I have offered a response to your inquiry which I hope will provide something to consider, in the least. I would also request that you and I meet at some point to discuss it further.