Nav ended up routing me right through the bubble, and it feels strange dropping into a system and seeing the contacts panel light up. Makes me a bit skittish flying where there are pilots who could shoot at me, and I can't shoot back. It's why I prefer being out where the pilots aren't.

Funnily enough, I'd already visited this system at some point and mapped the water worlds. Entirely missed the prasinum and flavum metallic crystals my first time, but I found the croceum gourd molluscs I was looking for

I decided to stick around for a bit, map out the planets that could be terraformed. The data should sell for a good amount of credits.

More of those strange energy anomalies, q09 this time. Not making the same mistake this time and keeping Abeona well away from these things.

Another field of flavum metallic crystals, along with these massive solid mineral spheres. No idea what to make of these, codex just says that they are "Created by spacefaring microorganisms".

Turns out the generation ship Lycaon is in system, and I'm shocked by it's state.

From the outside, I couldn't see anything physically wrong with it other than that all the running lights were off. I scanned down all the data nodes and listened to the physician's logs, slowly filling with a sense of dread. These poor people, so full of hope for their journey. What happened here must have been terrifying, being all alone, so far from anyone who could help. Whatever they found can't be allowed out of here, or a lot of people will die.

Nothing super impressive about this system at the drop-in, just a standard type G star. Pulled up the FSS and found 2 Stellar phenomena and 2 ammonia worlds, this should be interesting.

In a thick field of Flavum metallic crystals, we found 4 q04 type anomalies. I pulled Abeona in close, but the damn thing started hitting at the shield and doing hull damage. After a panicked second of full reverse thrust, the anomaly stopped whatever it was doing. Won't be going to get that close to one of these things again.

Found more rubeum metallic crystals at the second PoI, and some q08 type anomalies this time. I brought Abeona in slow and kept a further distance than before, but whatever the hell it's made of didn't play nice with Abeona's electronics. Just going to steer clear of these from now on.

This wasn't in the provided Canonn data, but I thought it was worth checking out: an ammonia world with a second ammonia world orbiting it, quite a unique occurance.

Heading out from Wredguia gateway, the nav brought routed us through a beautiful trinary system of Class T stars.

More molluscs to find at the waypoint, both notable stellar phenomena were located in the rings of 7-A, filled with even more crystalline clusters. I managed to find these rather easily and they seemed quite curious about Abeona, getting within 100m of her.

More Anemones out here as well, Roseum this time. Naturally, I wanted to get the scarab up on top of it. That other planet reminded me of the old holo films I used to watch about the old-earth moon, same grey, asteroid blasted surface. One day I'll get the Fed to let me visit. That's for another day though.

Passed through the Taurus dark region on the way to the Wreduia gateway, such a cool name for a sector of space. The egg-heads working in universal cartographics got some imaginations. Passed through a portion of the Pleaides and investigated some degraded signal sources. Found badly broken cutter, could barely tell what even used to be, the poor thing. Still, he doesn't need those mats anymore, so I scooped them off and jumped out.

Canonn waypoint indicates that this is a "jumponium" rich system but I couldn't anything in the periodic table or material list for it. Turns out its just slang for the mats needed to create FSD boost injections: Arsenic, Cadmium, Germanium, Niobium, Polonium, Vanadium, and Yttrium. And Wredguia gateway is full of them.

Seeing your first s type giant star for the first time scares you a bit. Your first reaction is "I'm too close to this thing that will vaporize me". It's terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Far off in the goldilocks zone is a lush earth-like, just waiting for some lucky colonists. That should fetch a good price when I get back.

Plenty more clouds of those crystal formations around this systems. The data Canonn gave me also says there are SUPPOSED to be some sort of gourd Mollusc out here, and it took me forever to find the lil' thing. I literally ran into it, and it let out a sad little groan. Research limpet didn't seem to grab anything from it either, so I just sat and watched it for a bit until it floated off.

The trinary star drop-in at 116 Tauri is quite spectacular

Long trek out to the D star, time to throw on some music, and kick back for a bit. It might not be as open as an Asp or a Krait, but Abeona's got some good acoustics.

Phew, made it. Found quite a few patches of Blatteum Bioluminescent anemones that look particularly nice in the dark. D-1 also has a 1.6 gravity, being so close to it's star

While heading over to D-2 to check on some PoI, I noticed this massive crater from orbit. By far the largest I've seen. Even more impressive planet-side.

Some of the Biological PoI had new Rebeum Bioluminescent anemones even, with some Blatteums as well. Lots of anemones to see in this system!

Managed to catch Tauri D-7 in a good light, some painite and platinum hotspots in the rings. I'll have to bring out my keelback when I get the chance. More Biological locations on D-8-A. The mapping data that canonn gave has been surprisingly accurate. Was able to locate some more anemones too, comp scanner registered these as Luteolum and Croceum. It started to get lighter, so I parked and got to watch the light from the D star creep out from behind D-8-B

Gravity isn't very high this far out from the D star, so I managed to boost my SRV on top of one of the anemones. That should wrap up all the locations canonn told me about, off to the next.

This is it. I've registered with Canonn, had my application for the challenge approved, and Abeona is all fitted, fueled, and ready to go. Heading out of Thompson dock feels like stepping onto a great plain, with nothing but the horizon in sight. So much lies ahead, and I can't wait to take it all in.

On the way out from Varati, nav ended up taking us through the Synuefe sector, filled with more class T and class Y stars than I would have liked. Abeona has a big fuel tank, but it's not bottomless, so a few scooping stops were needed

Jumping into the Oochorrs sector was my first time in the Sanguinous arm region, lots of new discoveries to log. Found my first patch of crystalline shards on B-4-B

I usually prefer to see planetary PoI on the light side if I can, but these crystalline shards look pretty good by the light of an SRV

This distant nebula even matched Abeona's engine color. One thing I made sure she had was my collection of old-earth music, and I'd recently found out the group "Daft Punk" retired on this day in the year 2021. There's something a bit hypnotic about low-wake when it's overlayed with old-earth techno.

I've never really believed in "Challenge Modes" for playing games. I always felt that the difficulty of the game itself to be challenge enough, and anything that wouldn't let me change the difficulty that wasn't already hard on it's own (Looking at you souls-borne games), didn't spark any interest of trying anything challenging.

BUT, I am a sucker for lore. And having a book full of lore entries to fill out does get me excited. So, I will be starting the canonn challenge. I just arrived at Thompson dock in Varati and will be setting out on the ~400KLy voyage to log every discovery that the galaxy has to offer.

I debated a long time on how to go about it, which ship to take with and what engineering to to get. I haven't flown every ship in the game, but I've fallen in love with my Diamondback Explorer "Abeona". She took me to my first guardian site and was the first ship I ever engineered, so I think it's fitting that I'll be doing this with her.

In the pursuit of the unknown, I wish you godspeed commanders.