New To New Eden

My tongue wants to shrivel up and die; my cheeks puckering in as if to save it. The Synth Coffee I had been given as a gift for taking on a tribesman's son as an employee may be the worst tasting thing I've ever tried to drink. I'm not sure if it's a measure of the father for his son, or if this stuff is just that terrible in general.  Or maybe the hydrostatic fluid of the capsule is slowly killing my taste buds. Could it be that the nanobots, the cybernetics, and the life of a capsuleer was slowly rewiring my body to taste the stars and give up terrestrial food and such delights? The faint whir of the door opening breaks my reverie and I look up to see my second in command, entering. His jacket is unbuttoned and I can see the start of white ink against bronze at his collarbone in a half-familiar image of our people, but not enough to be sure of the design. "Captain," he says in greeting before taking a seat across the table from me. "Entohk," I ...

Allison, begin log... This is Erika Fidard, Captain of the Signal Cartel Ship Reclamation. A ship that I found waiting in my hangar on Rens only two days ago, with no transaction log to tell me who my strange benefactor is. Still, I have to admit that for an Amarr vessel, she's pretty sleek.  But I digress. I woke this morning to a new ship with my preferred AI already loaded and a message that said AI couldn't display. Yet I could clearly see the light flashing for a new message. Ten minutes of hacking and what I had was a single line of Matari text. It read, 'Follow the roots.'  Whatever that means.  The Anathema is an Amarr vessel and so much of the history of New Eden ties back to Amarr. Maybe those are the roots? It was the only clue I had, so I set out to find more. I asked Allison to dig up relevant information on Amarr for me and listened to the reports on my way.  I'll admit that I nearly came to tears, not for seeing the beauty o...

Fatigued as a titan on roam, I returned to my quarters on Rokofur station and drop onto the sofa in the kind of heap that would have had my father sending me into parade formation drills. It's a passing thought and I smirk for it, there's not enough energy left in me to care. Besides, who's around to see me slumping? "Enter new log." I wait for the chime and continue, "Seventeen jumps from Rokofur to Yulai were shortened to twelve using the Thera wormhole connections. The Eve-Scout data proved to be accurate. Met with Ioannis Sepphires of Sapphire Interstellar Banking Solutions. Pleasant enough company even if he made me go planet-side to have our conversation. There's something to be said for meeting someone in person instead of just through relayed messages." I pause, drumming my fingers against the rugged material of my pants. "SIBS is an interesting proposition, and their Rhea Initiative deserves following. Ultimately, I believe Mr. Se...

I can still remember the lectures they gave at Pator Tech as my cohort of capsuleers prepared for our new lives. They were full of the bullshit you expect in government-sanctioned propaganda (You're the hope of the Republic. Remember your Tribe and always act in their Honor. Let us down and we'll come blow your fucking pod to pieces!). I remember the lessons we had on using our new clones too; make sure we sync up regularly; make sure we don't fly in a ship OR a clone we can't afford to lose; always remember to change our primary medical clone to the station we're going to call home. What they never told me, though, was that waking up a vat of biogel is one of the worst things you'll ever experience. It's not just being surrounded by a vat of body-temperature gel. It's the jarring of not being where your mind last remembers. It's the tug of the cables plugged into the ports along your spine, the eerie glow of the light coming through the goo and ...