CMDR Merydian profiel > Logboek
(Diamondback Explorer)
Today I passed through Slaiyooe OX-L d7-0, the final resting place of Commander Thomaski, to pay my respects. His memorial is at an ELW in the system -- a rarity in these parts.
Exploration is a dangerous business. It's ones like him who paved the way for ones like me. Each death is a warning, a lesson to those who follow, so that they may not make the same mistakes.
Undoubtedly mine will too one day.
But enough of the morbidity for now. That way lies space madness and that's hazard enough in these lonely parts. It was nice to see traffic around the beacon, not just because he's not forgotten but because it's traffic: a reminder that there are other humans out here. (Possibly Thargoids too but no point dwelling on that in an unarmed exploration vessel.)
After a dearth of no ELWs, I ran across a second not too far from here but someone else discovered it first.
6.5 kLy to go to Beagle Point, zig-zagging my way toward The Abyss.
There were a few hints regarding the routing needing to diverge east or west to get to Beagle Point, so I was right about that. There are also some POIs on the way. I wonder if they'll help with route plotting; anyway I plan on hitting them. And the two POI I definitely wanted to visit by Beagle Point are on the official list, so I'm glad of that. (I'll write about them when I get there.)
I liked the Seldowitch nebula. But in taking the one photo, I finally noticed that my paint job is really worn down. All the scooping, flying in dust clouds, and yes, the occasional crash has taken its toll. It's hard to tell my explorer rank from the photo!
I'm heading on to the next POI. But I'm so tired. I managed to fly through another star today on drop and in a moment of exhausted indecisiveness turned too late and emergency dropped into the corona of another. Took 1% hull and reactor damage.
I finally noticed my life support wasn't refilling from the brief moments it was down for repairs. Did that. And my trusty dual AFMUs finally needed their first refill. I have plenty of good materials so I went premium for the primary AFMU and basic on the backup.
Time to get some sleep. I will say one thing: you can sleep soundly out here. Nobody's going to shoot at you, let alone bother you. They'd be lucky to find you in the first place.
Tomorrow we find the routing and POI to Beagle Point. I already know a few points near there I’d like to see whether DW2 plans them or not. I’m definitely visiting those regardless.
I’ve tried plotting a course to Beagle Point, but the plotter keeps failing past 10000 Ly out from my current position. I’m not entirely sure why. There are stars in that 3000 Ly stretch beyond. Maybe they’re spread further than my jump range (about 58 Ly)? I don’t think they’re permit-blocked.
I’ve heard you need a minimum of 35 Ly range to make it to Beagle Point, probably needing jumponium. People have reached it before, so there has got to be a route. Given the direction the galaxy arms spiral, I wonder if I veer eastward enough I could find a way onto the limb with the destination and work my way back over to it. I suppose DW2 will have navigation information for us tomorrow. We’ll see if my guess is right.
Given we have at least 13000 Ly to go, maybe this will be another two-week waypoint.
So I did decide to hit up one more minor POI on the way to the Magnificent Desolation and visited the Shadow Earth. That planet is the closest ELW to being dead opposite Earth and Sol in our galaxy.
It was a one-jump to Luna's Shadow, Smootoae QY-S d3-202. Finally I've arrived at the penultimate waypoint. The next time I raise landing gear, it will be to head for Beagle Point. I'm almost there! The journey is almost over!
Unless of course you figure I have to fly all the way back home by way of Colonia. So maybe half over?
While at the waypoint I ran into some other ships and discovered I'm not the only member of the purple SRV club :-) We ended up doing some silly ship-jumping. I managed to land on a Krait Phantom and Anaconda. Woo hoo!
I dropped into a T Tauri system Ploi Briae BA-A g3 today. It turns out its primary star is a very close binary with a second star. I'm pretty sure I dropped through one of them on the way in. (I've done that particular trick before and managed to fuel scoop while doing it.) Unfortunately I landed right between them.
There was no way to avoid heat damage at that range between them no matter how fast I escaped. At least I didn't take more reactor damage; I can't repair that with my AFMU. Not that it's too bad (95%).
About 30 jumps to go to waypoint 11.
Today I found an ELW in the Styx area of Newton's Vault. Normally, I wouldn't be so this excited but it seems forever since I've seen one of these. This region of space is really rather barren. Lots of rocks, ice, sometimes a water world, but little life. Seeing this was refreshing.
And it orbits three stars. A triple sunrise. What's that remind me of? "When single shines the triple sun..."
About 100 jumps and I've probably visited systems in the Boreas region, Styx, and maybe even some of the Bleak Lands. I think so at least: I did make it to The Veils.
On the world of Cyoagaea DL-Y g1 2 I found a massive crater. It occurs to me I don't take many pictures of planets or geology. So here's the crater and some life I found. More anemones. But the picture in this group that I like most is Glaicheia AS-J d9-3 C 3 A. I call it "The Campfire". Lava spouts are cool like that. (Hot actually, but you know what I mean.)
Cyoagaea DL-Y g1 2
The Campfire
After zigging halfway across Newton’s Vault within the Boreas Expanse, I decided it was time to zag back in the opposite direction towards Styx and the Bleak Lands. Aristo was on the way so I thought I’d scan some biological anomalies, touch-and-go the meetup location and be on my way.
Any time I approach a world for landing, or any “hard” object, I always follow the same procedure (because I fly with extraneous systems powered down to minimize fuel consumption):
- Activate shields.
- Activate power distributor.
- Full pips to shields.
And if it’s a planet:
- Check System Cartography for gravity so I know how to approach.
Having done that I began a casual 1.1G approach to ground at Pru Aub DL-P e5-35 ABC 4, nosing down to scan the anemones.
Now someone out there is going to say, “Wait, isn’t that a 4G world?” Why yes, yes it is. The finicky map switched planets while I was scrolling it and I read gravity for the wrong one. Approaching a 4G world like a 1G is a Bad Idea(tm). So about the time I thought, “boy those anemones are coming up fast,” and pointed nose-to-sky full throttle it was too late. One jarring “crunch”, a “shields offline” announcement and now I’m at 54% hull. (Yay, shields: but for you I’d probably be dead!)
So being in a meetup star system, I did the sensible thing before calling out for Hull Seals: I put out a system-wide call to anyone with repair limpets.
Guess who responds?
None other than Waukeen Kyros, of recent “Cooking With Waukeen” fame from the Distant Worlds 2 Newsletters! Thank you very much! And hope you stay ahead of those pesky Fed authorities; they shouldn’t find you out here.
Links to those newsletters:
Maybe this is not the most valuable or spectacular discovery, but these seem to be difficult to find. It gave me my missing codex entry for it.
Prae Flyi WU-W D2-650
The helium-rich gas giants are the two ringed planets.
One really appreciates how precious life is after seeing how little of it there is in the galaxy. Even if its just some oddball lifeforms floating in the void. Though how one survives in a Lagrange storm is a bit of a mystery to me. I'll let the biologists figure that one out.
Speaking of "oddball lifeforms", I met with some of my fellow oddball lifeforms at waypoint 10 ;-). I think that's the one great thing about DW2: despite being alone for long stretches, you will always encounter people again at the next basecamp. And now I have new friends whom I'll hopefully run into again.
Hats off to the explorers who stay out here for months/years at a time before returning to civilization. As for me, our next waypoint is two weeks out and a whopping 14.5 kLy away. I'm not sure I'm going to fly the minor POIs this time. I've been doing that every leg but this time, I might strike out on my own for the GMP. I'm undecided on routing, but I intend to end up at Luna's Shadow in two weeks.
