Eafots Exploration log, day 1
26 Jan 2021Daedalus Spyke
What started off as an impromptu trip to the crystal gardens in HIP 36601 became an impromptu "trip to the Elysium Shore" and then an impromptu trip to the 2Mass cluster and an impromptu trip to the Heart and Soul Nebulae. It was a fun trip for fun and I got some great pictures along the way!But then I stumbled upon something when I was checking the datanet for information about tourist sites or here: The Eafots Mystery.
I didn't just decide to be out here and, as far as I can tell, nothing in particular drew me to this place. I wasn't even planning to stay too long initially; it was just going to be a "go here, see that" trip and then go home to shoot stuff and earn merits. I even left Gladys onboard the Negotiator saying I'd be back in a day or three. But....
There's a mystery out here. Possibly a few of them, if these stories are to be believed. That much isn't what's weird to me; there's tons of mysteries in the galaxy. No, what's weird to me is partly that there's no satisfactory conclusion to this one but mostly it's that all of the info I'm able to find about it is from three or four years ago and when you combine those two factors, that's what's weird to me.
See, commanders who take on this sort of task are generally pretty clever and tenacious. There's historical evidence of it everywhere. In this sector alone there's records of unmarked beacons that people have found that only transmit a coded message once every hour. Commanders found those, cracked their codes and followed them to two different yet related planetary outposts with logs. Other unsolved mysteries, like the Thargoid Map, at least have a conclusion where we have a large piece of something but just can't make sense of it *yet*. "Yet" being the keyword. Some braino is going to figure that out at some point and until then we at least know that we have the puzzle in our hands. That trail can still go somewhere.
Out here though?
Nothing.
Just those beacons and those outposts.
But that doesn't feel "right". That doesn't feel like the end of the puzzle out here. I'm almost ready to say they're not even related. With all the buildup I see in those old logs, an outpost just doesn't cut it as the "prize". So I'm going to look around for a bit.
I don't know if I'll find anything. I don't know if there truly is anything left to find. But I'm here now. And I've got all the time in the galaxy to keep looking.
I've already checked out a few unsearched systems and came up predictably empty. I decided to make camp in an asteroid base inside the Heat Nebula. It's run by a gang of thugs who don't seem to take kindly to outsiders given that one of them tried to interdict me on my way to the base. But at least I've got docking permissions and repairs.
I just hope Gladys won't be too upset that I'm extending my stay out here.