Thinker, Raider, Sister, Tribe.

It’s well-known that the Sisters of Eve are obsessed with unlocking the mysteries of the Eve Gate.  It’s also well-known that the research and development arm of the SOE corporation, The Sanctuary, is the primary body entrusted with that mandate.  What is less well understood is how that all relates to one of the most cataclysmic events in the recent history of New Eden: the Seyllin Incident.

An indomitable cohort of Sanctuary researchers had noticed that the Eve Gate seemed to be ‘pulsing’ occasionally; generating a cryptic energy signature as if it were responding to something.  While their colleagues all but dismissed the detected anomaly as erroneous, this particular team of researchers hypothesized that the increase in activity corresponded to various major events in the history of New Eden.  Most notably, the data seemed to include a particularly strong spike which occurred in relation to the Minmatar invasion of Amarr space in YC110 and the re-emergence of the Amarr Empress, Jamyl Sarum I.

Before we proceed, I want to point out that mentioning Empress Jamyl’s name opens up a whole other lore can of worms that is well beyond the scope of this particular series.  That said, I’m going to provide an extremely concise snapshot of her relevance to this story with the understanding that it hardly does justice to the rich material concerning this fascinating character.

For our purposes here, we will start with the fact that Empress Jamyl died during a struggle for succession to the Amarr throne, but was “re-born” through a clandestine clone.  During that process, a malevolent entity called The Other infiltrated her mind.  The Other is another topic with its own rich history, but again, for our purposes we have to keep it short here.  Essentially, The Other is a powerful consciousness that emerged within the Sleeper Construct and appears to be hell-bent on leveraging the awesome power of esoteric ancient superweapons for a presumably nefarious purpose.

Enthusiastically snuggled into Jamyl’s mind, The Other influenced Jamyl to obtain a cache of a rare and powerful mineral known as Isogen-5.  This strange material is derived from blue stars and appears to be primarily attributable to Type O1 ‘Blue Giants’.  It is highly reactive and, for presently unknown reasons, is only able to be harvested by Rogue Drones and contained within Terran canisters…because that’s not intriguing at all.

In any event, The Other motivated Jamyl to send her soldiers to the T-IPZB system in Delve to retrieve a ‘prophesied Ring of Fire’ (i.e. Isogen-5) while concurrently dispatching scientist Marcus Jor (of the School of Applied Knowledge) to the Eve Gate to recover the contents of a hidden Jove cache.  Combining these elements, Jamyl was able to forge a weapon of unrivaled power and fitted it to a modified Abaddon-class battleship in Delve’s MJXW-P system.  She then used this vessel, supported by a meager fleet, to obliterate the 100+ ship Blood Raider blockade of T-IPZB and then went on to engage the Minmatar fleet in Sarum Prime where she completely destroyed a Minmatar Titan and routed the remaining invaders from Imperial space.  She promptly ascended to the throne thereafter and remains there today.  Her weapon, however, evaporated into the ether of legend.

That brings us back to our persistent researchers at The Sanctuary.  Studying the available data, they concluded that Jamyl’s weapon and the Eve Gate were somehow intimately linked.  Not only that, but there was an analogous signature emanating from T-IPZB.  The researchers obtained a ship and set-out to confirm their suspicions and investigate the signature in T-IPZB.  They were not, however, alone.  The high command of the Blood Raiders had been alerted of the Sanctuary’s quest and dispatched a small team to shadow them.  Midway through that pursuit, the sight of a Sanctuary vessel being carefully followed by Blood Raiders did not go unnoticed.  The security cadre of a Thukker Tribe caravan was perplexed by the lack of Blood Raider interest in their tribal convoy.  Typically, the Raiders would see the caravan as a prime opportunity to further their grisly agenda…but not this time.   Intrigued, a Thukker security ship broke formation and silently followed the Raiders into space.

The Raiders, in turn, followed the Sanctuary vessel all the way to a Rogue Drone hive in T-IPZB and, under orders, waited to see what would happen next.  The massive hive was brimming with Isogen-5 (which was still an unknown substance from the perspective of the three parties present at the location) and had incorporated a particularly intriguing modified Abaddon-class battleship into its construction (presumably, Empress Jamyl’s superweapon).

This is when the pace really quickened and rapidly spiraled toward disaster.  The Sanctuary vessel made the mistake of hailing the Rogue Drones and attempting to reason with them.  This had the effect of stimulating the Drones into a destructive frenzy and the Sanctuary vessel was summarily pulverized with the full loss of its crew.  The Raiders then contacted their HQ for instructions from the sidelines.  They received a prompt response from their supreme leader, Omir Sarikusa, which instructed them to recover the device immediately.  The Blood Raiders were apparently entering into a partnership with the Society of Conscious Thought.  The Society had a keen interest in analyzing the weapon and the Blood Raiders would presumably gain access to the device for their own purposes thereafter.  The Society provided the Blood Raider team in T-IPZB with an override code that effectively enslaved the Rogue Drones, rendered them submissive, and allowed the Blood Raider team to access Jamyl’s vessel.

While the Raiders were in the process of spinning-up the Abaddon’s systems, the Thukker vessel captain watched all of this unfold and made a comms call of his own.  His superiors instructed him to leave the area at once.  Despite the Captain’s protests, the official response from command was,

“It’s not your fight, captain. There are forces at work here you do not know of.”

The Thukker captain disconnected from HQ and independently resolved to destroy the weapon rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the Blood Raiders who would almost assuredly use it to wage all manner of abhorrent undertakings.  Valiantly, the Thukker captain and his crew decided on a last ditch suicide mission to, in their eyes, save the world.  They made contact with the Rogue Drones, who were conspicuously distressed by their present loss of free will, and miraculously appealed to their sense of liberty.  Rather than live as slaves, the Drones elected to die by their own hand.  They voluntarily exposed the volatile Isogen-5 mineral core of the hive to the Thukker vessel.  The Thukkers fired and the Isogen-5 catch detonated; destroying the Drones, the Raiders, and the Thukkers.

The destruction, however, was not limited to the drone hive in T-IPZB.  It turns out that Isogen-5 reacts in such a manner as to transform it into a type of negative-mass material which is capable of generating stable, bi-directional wormholes.  Thus, when it detonates, aside from releasing unfathomable amounts of energy, it has the ability to punch holes through space-time.  Isogen-5 also enjoys a considerable degree of quantum entanglement, meaning that Isogen-5 stores seem to generally act like interlinked parts of some unified whole.  When one part of that linked whole detonates, so go the others.  Throughout New Eden were secret stores of Isogen-5, presumably placed there long ago by some ancient race of exceedingly advanced technological mastery.  These stores were entangled with the store(s) in the T-IPZB drone hive and detonated in tandem.

The resulting explosions laid waste to various parts of New Eden; shattering entire planets.  The most notable planet destroyed that day was Seyllin I.  The planet was caught in the path of a coronal mass ejection funneled into a magnetic channel generated by an entangled Isogen-5 store.  Despite hasty evacuation attempts, the destruction of Seyllin I resulted in approximately 500 million casualties as the planet disintegrated.

This all happened in March of YC110 and the following days and weeks saw the appearance of wormhole systems leading to previously unknown regions of space which were presumably formed when the Isogen-5 explosions ripped into the fabric of space-time.  It also completely altered to the historical trajectory of New Eden in a way not experienced since the rise of capsuleer.

For instance, it contributed to the discovery of the previously isolated (from the standpoint of the public) and (publicly) unknown Sleeper race with all their mysterious and formidable technologies.  It allowed Sansha to penetrate wormhole space and undoubtedly played a role in fostering the wormhole-based Sansha incursions experienced in YC112.  It allowed for the Sisters of Eve to enter Thera and begin constructing the secret installations that would be only discovered by capusleers years later in YC116 (Rhea release).  And, it spurred the now dead Hilen Tukoss to leave Zainou Biotech in YC113 and form Arek’Jaalan… 

Essentially, it was a truly seminal event for Eve and one that developed as a direct consequence of the long-evolving agendas of two of Eve’s most powerful extra-imperial forces: The Sisters and The Society.

In Closing…

The Sisters of Eve and the Society of Conscious Thought constitute two powerful extra-imperial entities in a rich mixture of highly-important contributors to the history of New Eden and these posts should not be taken to imply that everything in New Eden can be traced back to them.  Rather, it is my hope that this series illustrated the tremendous impact that extra-imperial forces have had on shaping New Eden’s recent history and dictating the conditions in which players are experiencing the game.  I also hope that it fosters an inquisitive and critical mindset when it comes to perceiving the activities of extra-imperial entities.  After all, this series only shined a light on how much of an impact just two of the numerous NPC organizations have had on Eve’s recent history.  Just imagine what else lies below the surface.

Thanks for reading.

Further Reading:

Want more?  I highly recommend reading the following:

• End of the World Chronicle (which starts here)
• An excellent post by Eve Rhavas on Crossing Zebras
• Eve: The Empyrean Age
• Eve: Templar One
• Eve: Source

…and of course, you wouldn’t be complete without the famous Lore Survival Guide by Mark726.