Reaching the edge of the great wheel
28 Aug 2020Junagu
The journey to DSSA Reginleif was fairly uneventful apart from stumbling upon one exceptional system whilst we were climbing into the galactic plane from the lowest navigable stars along the borders between the Sanguineous Rim and Kepler's Crest.
Gongue NR-C d0 contained a class II gas giant with 3 rings, shepherd moons and an eccentric outer moon with landable surface. These are rare, so I took the time to do a detailed survey and encouraged the crew to do likewise. This sort of thing is a prime candidate for entering in to the Galactic Mapping Project.
I would have liked to have spent a lot longer in that system but we pressed on, visiting a region known as the Groerld Association from some expedition there (Monoceros Mission) in 3303. Whilst a lot of the prevalent high luminosity systems had been discovered already, very little - if anything - had been mapped, leading me to conclude that no-one had been through this region again since (3 years), which bodes well for our hopes of getting discovery tags in some of these places. Godthab and I took advantage to bag a few systems before we moved on.
DSSA Reginleif
Happily we found the DSSA Reginleif to be active and with a friendly and responsive captain and crew. We patched our respective comms channels and it quickly transpired that they wished to accompany us to the next DSSA at Amundsen's Star (not in their FleetCarrier I hasten to add). This was great news, as one of the aims of this long journey was to foster links out in the wilds and these CMDRs were of just the stripe that I'd hoped we'd meet. CMDRs Tom Norson and Capney were the most convivial but there were others associated with the Reginleif who sent a wave too. A good bunch.
Meeting the crew of the DSSA Reginleif
After working out a plan during a parlez-vous on the strange planet of Dryau Aec JF-A d11 B1 we did a spot of mining (CMDR Godthab in particular turning in a generous cargo of tritium) before heading down a thousand lightyears, as I'd noticed whilst perusing the GalMap over a breakfast of chilled vichyssoise one morning that there is an abunance of white dwarfs just below where the Reginleif is anchored.
Well, a chance to do something a little risky and keep everyone on their toes; white dwarf jumping can be intimidating enough in high density regions but where we were, boosting off the jet-cone was essential every time to make the next jump. Distances of over 100Lyrs to the closest neighbour are not uncommon there. I think we all had a little trouble to begin with but once we got into the swing of it we managed to tag quite a few systems and once we had our fill of bright, shiny and dangerous we were quickly on our way and managed to reach Amundsen's Star in short order, Blodeuwedd's Branch having no problems at all.
The DSSA, erm, TwitchTVSomdy (what sort of a name is that!?) was something of a dissapointment; another dessicated vegetable matter situation. Just the cosmic winds whistling through the support struts of the cooling antennas and nobody home. Oh well; 1 out of 5 stars in the gazeteer review it is, then. CMDR Robyobson put in a picture of what life there was in this extreme region; gyre trees.
Very strange indeed. I tried my best during my visit to get some further info or response from these outlandish organisms but they just kept turning; as did we... on to the nearest patch of stars and Leech TG-Y d8 - one of two super-giants in this lonely region and a great system for collecting FSD boost materials.
Our travelling companions took their leave to head back to the DSSA Reginleif more than once, perhaps put off their guard by the ease with which we had arrived in this region on the back of a 500Lyr range and also the thicket of stars around the supergiants which quickly falls off after a hundred LYrs or so. I don't think that these CMDRs, for all their gusto, were particularly seasoned explorers in such regions as this; being stumped a couple of times by the vagaries of their auto-navigation systems, which tend to refuse a route plot when things get tricky. However, a few tips seemed to do the job and they were safely on their way. I encouraged them to fill their boots with materials beforehand, too; no good being caught short out here.
Now I'll admit that I've not spent much time on the very fringes of the galaxy myself so I made sure to peruse the Galmap at lenth and, on the way out here, had noticed (and I don't think that this is any great secret) that there is a layer of brown dwarfs (L,T,Y class stars) on the level of the galactic plane where the concentration of stars is dense enough, giving a good indication of where the gaps are. It proved helpful choosing waypoints on "shores" of star clusters, as it were. The region around the two supergiants had a good layer of class Y stars so I went down that way and found a nice dull, dark, inert system, so that I could get my bearings.
And indeed, it was easy to pick out some important navigational beacons and get the general orientation of core-spin-rim-trailing sorted out before the next leg of the journey, which is to be along the Outer Arm edge towards DSSA Aristarchos and into Xibalba.
Tritium is still in plentiful supply with close to 15,000t still in the hold. We should reach DSSA Aristarchos with over 10,000t left.
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SVBK - Blodeuwedd’s Branch JHZ-6TZ - FCOC #131
Fortune class carrier bound for Xibalba
Taking on passengers and crew