farmers market
17 Dec 2023C. Instinct
***Captain‘s log – AIRV Big Sister
Date: 17.12.3309
Condition: AMBER
Location: PLEIADES SECTOR MM-V B2-2
Entry 40:
Being an official member of AzCorp is not as bad as I feared… actually it is pretty fun so far! I was worried that having to coordinate with other commanders would restrain me in my personal projects but it turns out that my new connections actually greatly boosted my efforts. I suppose the main reason for this is the fact, that the first big project we are starting to work on as a team is right up my alley. They call it the “farmers market” and it’s big goal is to make advanced xeno-research- and defense-tech more accessible to other commanders by gathering and distributing large amounts of hard to acquire thargoid related materials. Meaning: poking goids, snooping around in their lairs and looting their stuff! Needless to say I was happy to jump right in! Given my experience with the maelstroms, it seemed obvious for me to focus my efforts on extracting caustic tissue samples but instead I somehow became a specialist in gathering meta alloys now… well here’s how that happened:
As soon as I decided to support the farmers market, I stared to do some research missions at the edge of a maelstrom to run some tests and figure out how to most effectively retrieve samples from the caustic generators. After only two missions I had refined my extraction method to a degree where the limiting factor of mission duration was not the amount of heat sinks I can carry or how much caustic damage I can manage to absorb, but the lack of corrosive resistant cargo space to carry the samples home safely. So I decided to finally work on something I had been putting off for far too long: constructing a grade 4 CR cargo rack. And for that I needed meta alloys! And THAT meant going into thargoid space! And that is where we are right now! The crew is not quite as happy as I am to be on this expedition though. I hear them mumbling a lot more complaints than usual and “cutty” was even bold enough to announce to me that “moving into the territory of a hostile faction during an ongoing conflict with said faction is a serious safety hazard for the entire ship!”. I swear, some day I’m just gonna tip him over and leave him lying in a hallway with his little feet helplessly flailing in the air…. not that that I have ever done that before…
Anyway, on my search for a suitable site to gather meta alloys, I have learned 2 interesting things about thargoid surface sites, that contradict what I had read in the main literature about thargoids in the past.
For once, every barnacle site I have visited in the pleiades sector so far has been completely depleted, no meta alloys there at all! That was quite surprising to me, since from what I had read, these sites where supposed to be the best places to gather MAs. It’s not a big problem since I quickly learned MAs can be easily and consistantly gathered from surface structures, but it does seem a bit odd.
The second thing that surprised me was the fact that every thargoid structure I have visited so far has been “active”. I distinctly remember reading that most thargoid surfaces structures appear to be abandoned and inactive but my personal experience is very different. I have been to 4 different structures so far and everyone of those was very much active and buzzing with scavenger activity. I don’t mind that at all, those little fellas are usually quite friendly and sometimes even remind me of my “little ones”. But again, it seemed odd me, since I was expecting something very different. Granted, it was quite some time ago when I had read those reports and my information might just be outdated. But even if that is the case, it means the thargoids have definitely changed their behavior quite significantly since then. To me this is yet another indication supporting my theory of them working in distinct “phases” towards… whatever goal they have in mind.
***