EVE Fiction

As I'm sure most everyone here is aware, the limited edition Eve Source set came with a commemorative plaque which features a cryptic image supposedly to give a little hint of Eve's future. Now, I don't know how widely the shipments have been disseminated, I know that the Collector's Edition arrived a little earlier for me than other people (anomaly of the postal system?) but I've been looking at it and just want to share my initial thoughts with everybody and hopefully get the ball rolling on some community investigation. For those that wish to not sully their virgin minds with details of the image before actually getting their own or anything turn back now, what follows is a poor description of it.

The image is a series of lines, branching off from a central point, they are of differing angles and lengths. There are eleven in total but one centered at 6 o'clock on the bottom is different from the others. Ten of them are at odd angles and feature various series of dashes (both in the "|" and "-" positions) which start at different points along the line but with each series then continuing to the end of its respective line. This eleventh line, however, has a single "-" at the very bottom of the line (furthest from the intersection) and nothing else.

The first thing that struck me was the idea that a series of intersecting lines in three dimensions would look like this and that "triangulation" patter reminded me of the Project Compass of the Arek’Jaalan Project which dealt in using distances between control towers to try and discern the location of W-Space in relation to K-Space. It seems, however, unlikely that that's what this is. There are more lines than necessary on the plaque and the plot you would end up with locating the two areas of space in relation to one another would not create an image of a set of lines intersecting at a single point. It also does not lead us anywhere with the dashes.

My next thought, and the one I'm currently considering, is that this is a hint about a new area of space being opened up. The eleventh line could be seen as the last system of a region which connects to a new region. The rest of the lines emanating from the intersection would be those systems which could be accessed once in the region. One of the things I've noticed is that while there doesn't seem to be an immediate pattern in the different series' of dashes I have noticed that every series begins (beginning meaning reading from the portion of the line nearest the intersection and moving outward along the line) starts with a "|" and never a "-". If these series' were showing us each systems's set of planets and moons and planets were represented by "|" then it makes sense that we would see each one begin with a "|" and never a "-" (Planet A then moons of Planet A then Planet B and so on, never moon first).

One of the things that might not work with this theory is the large numbers of planets in each system (with some having 20 or more). Now, if this new area is to be confined to ten systems for any great period, it might make sense to have so many planets in them (if the planets are in anyway related to what we're supposed to do there, like for resources or salvaging ancient stations, etc. etc.). Even still, I cannot imagine the crowding that would result. It just does not seem sensible.

The only thing that gives me a little hope is that in Eve Source's epilogue about looking towards the future it mentions that travel to new areas of space is somewhere in between unlikely and impossible. But then it asks what if that weren't the case and new areas were opened up? I think I'm probably wrong on the details but I feel confident that it's saying something about going to places we do not yet have access to or know about (or, and this is a stray thought, letting us build stargates in W-space).

This is the culmination of about 20 minutes of not in depth brainstorming, and I'm very nearly 100% confident that I'm not even close. But, you know, let's get at this.

Hello,

Count me in aswell. The image on the plaque also made me think of the Pioneer plaque and it got me curious, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one !

I guess we gotta find out whether all plaques are unique or not. Should we start posting plaque pics somewhere ?

The only thing that comes to mind are google albums, which you can set to be editable by everybody who you shared the album with.

If you want a naming convention and more information such as a millimeter scale, it could help to make a short illustrated tutorial on how to submit a plaque pic properly, and then this tutorial can be passed around. You seem to know a bit about how to read these diagrams so I'll let you figure out what could be useful here I guess :)

This is just fantastic! Well done to Aelisha for some excellent work and to Annabella Rella for sparking it. My ideas are silly in comparison (which is good, it means we're probably that much nearer the truth). I think it is right that the next step is to begin comparing plaques with a standard method of cataloging.

As to what the ten non-origin lines might point to I'd like to put forward another hypothesis in the "Ten Anomaly Controversy" of the Seyllin/Shattered Planets Incident. CONCORD has said that there were ten such anomalies in K-space but only seven were within the stargate network. We could try and see if the seven align to the Eve Gate in a way shown by the plaque and then deal with the three unknown ones if anything interesting turns up. It could just be a coincidence, though.

An email could be setup to receive plaque pictures and an album open to the public can be setup on an image hosting site.

EDIT: Wait, are we sure that the actual image differs from plaque to plaque? I just checked the Eve Source dev blog and the image looked similar to mine.

Yep, same as mine. It still gives the location of something, it just won't be 1400 somethings !

I'm a bit confused with the fact that these pulsars match real-life ones. I don't see how that could help in finding something that's located in New Eden.

About pulsars, could they be related to the wormhole system effect ? If wormhole systems have a known location in the EVE universe, maybe the 9 pulsars of the plaque are referring to 9 w-space pulsar systems.

I compiled some information about pulsars in w-space, just in case it's relevant :

142 Pulsar systems in total :

• 12 C1 (6 static HS, 1 static HS/C2, 1 static HS/C3, 3 static LS, 1 static NS/C4)
• 24 C2 (7 static HS/C4, 9 static HS/C3, 3 static HS/C1, 4 static LS/C2, 1 static NS/C6)
• 34 C3 (7 static HS, 20 static LS, 7 static NS)
• 35 C4 (4 static C1, 1 static C2, 11 static C3, 12 static C4, 7 static C5)
• 26 C5 (3 static C1, 3 static C2, 6 static C3, 5 static C4, 7 static C5, 2 static C6)
• 11 C6 (1 static C1, 2 static C2, 1 static C3, 7 static C5)

Editing to remove wrong info.... I've just read further and people are way beyond me. Interesting that they relate to known pulsars

As a thought, is it possible that number 4 relates to an unknown wormhole/pulsar system. Like for instance, isn't sansha hiding in a wh somewhere? could we assume it's location from the information we know, regardless of the fact no-one has been there?

Impressive work there, ISD IonCharge. May I however ask where in all this you think there is a clue for us to find ? I understood all your calculations / explanations, but I'm a bit lost when it comes to seeing the big picture, and what this is telling us. Is the 10th unknown pulsar the only unknown variable, or are there other things left out ?

And can all this be related to EVE's universe ? Maybe this is supposed to give us the location of the other side of hte now closed EVE Gate in real space.