I'm back, and I've been busy!

I've acquired a beluga and an eagle which I've kitted out nicely. While I was learning my beluga the nine martyrs attack happened, and I wound up helping out in Lave, Rhea, and Sol! (that's right! got my sol permit at long last!)

Since then I've been going back to my roots. I returned to the system where it all started, and decided to GO ON A MURDEROUS RAMPAGE!!!! :D

We all finally got out EVA license upgrades from the pilots fed (damn beaurocracy took long enough!) So I decided to stretch my legs in system #1 for me: LHS 3447. Just to challenge myself I decided to pick a fight with the dominant faction of the system - and take down every single one of their facilities in the system. Just to see if I could demote them from their throne - which I did manage to do, albeit temporarily.

Afterwards, I kinda felt terrible for tearing up the system, so I made it my personal mission to acquire allied reputation with all of the factions in the system (also a bit of nostalgia - since this is where I first undocked.) Not an easy task - made worse by the fact that at least one of them was actively shooting at me on sight now xD

But I've just managed that - all bridges are now mended, and now i'm off on my way again. I'm going to retrace my steps and see what new mischief I can get into on myown two feet as I blaze my trail all over again.

And away I go! ~Q

I finally did it.

After pasting my anaconda twice in the same day i... took a walk... and reevaluated how i was conducting my exploration.

With a wary eye on my wallet (i only has enough cash at this point to rebuy my ship one more time) I made the decision to only explore systems with high population density for a while.

I brought up my starcharts and tweeked the settings a bit - i had been selecting destinations based off of two simple criteria: 1) had i been there yet? 2) Was it as long of a jump as possible?

Still filtering out places i'd been to, i set the population slider to a rather hefty floor, high millions i think. Wouldnt you know it that still left plenty of stars on the map to putter around in.

And my hunch turned out right on the money - nearly every one of these systems had an earthlike world (or 2!) In them. Very quickly recharged my wallet by meandering selectively through these systems.

I had taken a liking to hunting down tourist beacons - if nothing else it gives me a random direction to motor off in. Halfway between 2 beacons i'd heard about i get a communique out of the blue stating that my explorer rank had been elevated to elite and that i could find the founders world permit attached.

Hot damn, I guess making cash while scanning actually gets you ranks that much faster after all! Being deep down in empire space at the time, i decided to get the becon data i was after before turning right round and beelining it to Jamison Memorial.

That journey begins tomorrow. For now, i need to get some shuteye. But i'm SO looking forward to shopping the ship parts racks at that station. I still havent managed to A-rank my Anaconda! :[

Well I found some interesting stuff for once! First, I located my first ever "water giant" -- A gas giant with a predominantly water atmosphere -- which is neat as shit.

Second, I found an ammonia world -- but get this -- it was a moon of a gas giant. With rings too on top of that. Doubt I'll ever see that again!

I also got invites from 'the blaster' and 'the lurker' today. I'm on my way to blaster now just to chart the system he's in - I still don't actually own guns... so... yeah, he's a fat lot of help atm. Lurker on the other hand... he interests me. Looking forward to docking up in Wyrd sooner rather than later.

Haven't had much to report lately, so I haven't reported. Been bumbling around mapping random systems as I bounce back and forth between khun and deciat slowly getting better FSD and Shield systems banged together for my anaconda. Mostly Ice and gas, nothing too interesting...

Until today.

I was scanning the farther of a binary star pair from the jump in point of system "Cephi Sector NX-U B2-02". I jumped in, honked, and rolled my eyes. Another system with 20 blocks of ice and nothing to really care about. 0 population. No settlements, no geothermal activity... buttkiss.

Checked the readout more closely and the eyes rolled again. Oh, wonderful. It's a binary system, and the twin is 300,000Ls out. Mapping this one is gonna be a bundle of joy. But I never turn back once I've entered a system. Not like it would be DIFFICULT to map this place, just... longwinded. So I kicked back, pulled up galnet and started reading the funnies as I bounced from planet to planet.

Crossing the divide between the stars took less than 10 minutes all told. Enough to down a hot cocoa and give the latrine a workout, but not much more. I continued business as usual and honestly wasn't even paying attention too much I've done this so many times now. But even so what I found at Planet 5 B struck me as odd right away.

After mapping the planet the system pinged that (1) human signature was present here. I must have spat cocoa halfway across the bridge at that. In an anarchy system, with zero known population, on a dead icy rock waaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere? I immediately (well, after cleaning steaming cocoa off my console) pulled up the details on the signature: it was in orbit. Identifier tag came up as "Generation Ship Phanes". I tell you It's a good thing I'd used the latrine because I damn near shat myself.

I found a generation ship. It was in mid-level orbit on the far side of the planet from where i'd launched my probe spread (because of course it was). So I turned and burned - fast as I could - around the big iceball and punched it into the navsystem to get me there ASAP.

I dropped right infront of the protective disk shield and the S.A.R. system briefly went haywire - tried to call the cops for support but, uh, anarchy system with nobody home; that worked juuuuuust great. Anyway, I maneuvered around the dust shield and was greeted by a sad sight. It was a ghost ship, dead as a door nail. It still had limited power though somehow, judging by the flickering lights on the outer hull.

I flipped over to the data analyzer and sure enough my ships systems were picking up live interface points. I managed to download a small number of logs before the connection went dead... but it was enough to figure out what happened to the men and women aboard. Subterfuge that backfired and resulted in an all out war-in-a-bottle. Apparently this wasn't the planet this bottle rocket was originally launched at - but whatever rock it did hit first was just as dead and empty. Apparently the command crew decided to keep on trying (roulette style more or less, as far as I can tell.) and fired off to another star... the rest of the crew was more inclined to return to earth with 'mission failure' as their epitaph. Command wouldn't have it, and it came to blows; command won by sheer brutality and instituted a lockdown on anything related to sol. Brainwashed the remaining crew into thinking they were all that was left of humanity and off they went into the black.

But their illusion wasn't perfect and eventually it cracked, someone got wise and went digging - doesn't really matter how - but they found out that the rest of us are just hunky-dory out there. The couldn't keep their lips buttoned about it and we quickly come to bottle-war-two. Apparently nobody survived this time because the screaming at the end of that voice-log was the last bit of the last file chronologically in the ships systems.

Poor fuckers. I found a floating graveyard. I'll be registering its location if nobody else knows of it when I next touchdown to update universal cartographic. Just... wasn't expecting to find something so sad here. I think I preferred this place when it was simply... empty.

I finished charting the system without really even realizing it. Was full on autopilot my mind decidedly elsewhere as I wrapped it up and got the hell out of that place. The saddest thing... the next system I jumped to had an earthlike planet in it - Not even 30 lightyears away, current population in the millions. Those poor fuckers were so close, and now they'll never know it.

...Really makes me appreciate what the FSD can do...

Not much to say. Chart and jump and repeat. About 100mil credits to go till elite i believe. getting there... slowly...

daw... apparently I cant stick photos in here. boo. Oh well. Jaw dropping sunset on a planet with a 0.8 Day 'year'. Nothing too out of the ordinary, just... idk, the angle and all that lined up just right to look really pretty.

Anyway, almost to decait again! woot!

Yay! Found an interstellar legal office today. Paid all my fines - at a net profit too [evil laughter]. Spent most of today playing 'climb the mountain' in an SRV. Meh, didn't accomplish much, but it was good practice. Got a few systems down the road after that. The keeping on... keeps on.

Usually I aim to please, but apparently hacking into and then selling the contents of various classified databanks tends to make people a little cranky. Got over 100k credits worth of a bounty on my head in one system now... I only murdered two people... come on guys - lighten up. :P

...I could really use an interstellar factor right about now...

Had a blast today snooping about a pair of high security installations - one of which was some kinda prison. Apparently the empire will pay VERY highly for whatever it is I snagged from that places drives. Wonder if there's some sort of political prisoner in there or something. Wait - DON'T CARE! Onwards to more exploration!!

Boy was that anticlimactic. I was raiding a high security instillation, skimming data and poking my nose in where it didn't belong for giggles when the fat ass of some ship gets in my way and I cant scan a terminal because it's too close to said ship. So I climb my way up to the pad amid a hail of bullets and give the thing a hailstorm of SRV anger -- fully expecting it to take off and fly around in angry circles while I go back to my business. NOPE. not today! It just sat there like a lump and didn't budge.

... So I blew it up. Honestly I'm not even sure what kind of ship it was, Federation Dropship maybe? Whatever it was it took something like 10,000 shots to bring it down to 0% hull. That took eons, and put me on the wanted list at the same time! Joyfun.

Best part is that afterwards the base defense network managed to pop me anyway before I managed to hack back into the network fully. FML.