Got promoted to Elite today! My first Elite rank as well, received it in trading nonetheless. I always thought elite in exploration would be my first, since I spend a lot of time moving around undiscovered systems. I suppose having over 100m in cartographic data that I still have yet to cash in, is the reason I haven't got elite in exploration yet, even if I have traveled over 20k ly last month.

In other news, I racked up over 500m from laser mining some LTD. Finally got my prismatic shields and stocked a bunch of them. I was able to leave that awful empire behind me for good. Though Aisling seemed like she's one of the lesser evils, even if she looks a bit naive. Ah well. I'll stick around Rhea for a while anyhow.

I've forgotten how beautiful the views were! Wish I could stay longer there. Maybe one day I'll settle in one of the outposts.

Heard a lot about this system from other CMDRs. There's a satellite orbiting New Africa in Epsilon Indi that supposedly has an orbit of 1 minute and 26 seconds. I have no idea how this satellite even stays in the orbit at 876 km/sec in the first place. One of the galaxy's mysteries, I suppose.

I picked up a friend of mine for this trip, so we traveled together. Getting to the system was the easiest part, now landing on the moon... That... Required some complicated maneuvers. Instead of approaching the moon myself, I had to let the moon approach me. It's quite hard to land on a rock that goes over 800 km/sec! Eventually on its seventh rotation we made it. It was impossible to pick some mountain on it as our pre-destination as it was rotating too much fast for us; we just landed wherever it "caught" us. And landing was definitely worth it. I haven't experienced nothing else like the views on Miterrand Hollow.

Been hauling my ass by carrying some illegal passengers to some satellite in Sothis from Ceos. I'm saying illegal, because I've been flying an Orca which can't land on outposts. So I'm forced to boost in and out of the mailslot everytime so I don't get scanned. Already learned my lesson where my gorgeous Orca got blown to bits along with the passengers when I was exiting the station and got scanned.

Here's a pro tip: keep your speed above 200 m/s when entering/exiting, that way you won't get scanned. I sometimes enter at 300 m/s just so I don't take any risks at all.

Please don't tell any of the upper hands in the management that I've been playing with the system like that...

It's a good thing I didn't decide to go there on my 23 ly Cobra MkIII... It's sort of peaceful here.

Was about to land on Mufrid A 1 a's north pole for some molybdenum. Just as I was looking for a good parking spot, I noticed a ship on my radar. It turned out to be a Beluga type ship, just hanging about over the crater. I would have ignored it, but it caught my interest. It was... hovering? For a good while, too. I thought at first it may have been out of fuel, but they weren't asking for any help. I tried nudging them gently with my ship, but that didn't bother them. I popped into my SRV and stood near under it so I could get a clear shot with my guns. I shot a couple bullets to see if that would get their attention. Of course it did. Got a lovely bounty and was accused of terrorising innocent passengers on board. Oops? Don't worry, he didn't die, just scratched the surface. Surged away after I scared him. Though, honestly? I think it's a pretty idiotic move to crash-land into a planet.

Warning! Hyperspace conduit unstable

These are the words that flashed on my screen as I was dragged out of hyperspace. I was peacefully moving from one damaged station to another, trying to earn some materials by transporting survivors to a rescue ship. I was about to fly to another star system, until I got this message.

Honestly, I've never seen a thargoid before. I've only heard stories of them and the closest encounter I've ever had with them was a crashed thargoid ship. So this was all very new to me...

Frankly speaking, it was terrifying. I had no idea what the hell was happening. I thought at first my FSD malfunctioned? But then some big brown worm with a green eye appeared? And he shot something at me?

Everything went black at that point. My systems were down. I couldn't move. My heart was racing. I thought for sure I was going to die and get my ship destroyed. Worst of all, I flew right past the alien, so he wasn't even in my LoS. I saw vast, empty space in front of me while I sat in the dark, waiting for something to happen, wondering what those creepy alien sounds were right behind me.

Thankfully my systems were turning on back bit by bit. I was urging my ship to charge her FSD faster, since I heard the thargoid was about to launch his second attack.

Eventually I managed to get out of his grasp. But man, it was one hell of an experience. I tend to get so immersed in my travels, this was very surprising for me. I'm never forgetting this.