Intergalactic Summit

Funny story...... Yes.

A gallery of events for anyone who was not present to witness the Empress's passing. We have given credit for those images our own camera drones did not capture.

We are filled with sorrow to have captured the exact moment Bishop Alizebeth Amalath's heart broke, today.

In light of earlier events, where it turned out she was not dead after all, I took the liberty of asking one of my locator agents if they could trace her presence. Let me directly quote my agent:

"She is at Chaven VIII - Moon 1 - Imperial Academy station in the Chaven system, Parud constellation of Domain region."

I guess we will have to wait for either a official confirmation of her dead or a new Minmatar invasion for her to come around.

Time will tell

CONCORD-mandated identification factors are, so far as are aware, not falsifiable.

Given that there were only about ten seconds between the Drifters' arrival on grid and the Seraph's destruction, I'd estimate that only people who were right next to the lifepod doors when the proximity alarm sounded would even have had time to get in them, let alone initiate the launch sequence - and that's being generous enough to assume that the Seraph's XO even had time to set Condition One throughout the ship.

For comparison, the reason so many survivors were rescued from the Shiigeru was because its demise had been forseen many minutes in advance, giving a lot of the crew enough time to complete evacuation proceedures.

The Abominations will pay for this. It is time for a crusade against those who oppose the empire.

God Wills it!

I'll take this particular comment as an excuse to say something to all Imperial capsuleers.

I have no reason to mourn for Jamyl Sarum, but I won't speak ill of her at this time. I understand your grief, even if I don't share in it. But I urge you - remain calm. Do not panic or lash out. The Drifters strength lies as much in their unity of purpose as in their technology. New Eden cannot be united in leadership, but to effectively combat this bizarre and mysterious threat we will need to be similarly united in purpose. The Drifters demonstrated today that they possess unspeakable power - they can simply walk into a system and assassinate one of the most powerful individuals in the cluster cooly, calmly, without any fanfare or grandstanding and leave as quickly as they came.

This is not Sansha Kuvakei who would clog up local with badly-written, self-aggrandizing novellas. This is not something that can be threatened, or intimidated, or even communicated with in any meaningful way. They do not fear the Imperial Navy, nor apparently do they fear capsuleers or even death itself. They are not something that can be opposed with our current technology without horrendous rates of attrition. As it currently stands - as was aptly demonstrated today - if they wish to destroy something, they will destroy it.

Faith in God alone will not stop the Drifters. I'm sorry to say it but if you wait around for God to deliver you from this threat, there'll be no-one left to save. If you wish to honour your God, to honour the Empire, to honour the memory of your Empress, search for weaknesses. Fight alongside the other pilots of New Eden. If you possess scientific acumen, search for answers to the Drifters' terrible technological power.

We must all hang together, or we will asuredly hang seperately.

The only answer, Gallentean, is their utter destruction. We shall purge them from the cluster, along with any who stand in our way...

Sentiments and veiled threats like this help no-one. Either the cluster co-operates and we find some way to push back the Drifters, or we fight each other and they win.

The choice really is yours. If you choose to turn against the only potential allies you might have in this fight, you have doomed not just yourself, not just the Empire, but the entire cluster. The Drifters have demonstrated that they do not know fear. They can slip past any defence as if it were not there. They can obliterate even the largest capital ships without only a token effort. They have the manufacturing capacity to turn out thousands of ships that are more than a match for any ship currently available to capsuleers in New Eden. Even if they fall their superweapon allows them to destroy subcapital ships that oppose them on a nearly 1-for-1 loss ratio. This is not something the Empire can fight simply by throwing everything they have at it - and you certainly can't afford to be starting wars with the rest of the cluster, either.

Considering the usual goings on regarding ascension and the kind of people in and out of power involved who will want to take over the throne, I think the biggest immediate threat to the Empire is not Drifters at this time.