Algintal Reports 1 - Wrtuk Formur

This article is written from an in-character/roleplay perspective. If you wish to contribute to this page, please refrain from making out-of-character (OOC) references.

Introduction

Natelia

Star date Y113.07.22 . This is captain Natelia of Ataraxia Pharmacies, Material Acquisition Division. The bosslady has ordered me to the Algintal constellation in one of the core regions of the Gallente Federation; Sinq Laison. This region houses one of the largest, if not THE largest, trade hub for podders in Federation space which is located in the system of Dodixie along with a wide variety of exquisite and/or exotic clubs and bars where the parties are a blast and the boys are hot. Not far from Dodixie, five jumps or so, is the constellation of Algintal, close to the border of the Minmatar Republic. Popular among tourists for its sites of natural beauty, though, I personally am not too fond of staring at space rock. Besides, the situation in the constellation has taken at turn for the worse as in the recent years Serpentis smugglers have setup camps in many of the tourist spots to support their trade of illegal goods across the Federation-Republic border.

The bosslady tells me an ancient human civilization inhabited these systems millennia ago. The Yan Jung nation, she calls them. Apparently it should still be possible to find relics and artifacts from that time at certain archeological sites located especially in the Deltole system. Those are not my current goal for this expedition, though. The bosslady has some old contacts from her time among the Thukkers and these have been helping the Serpentis with establishing a foothold in the constellation. My contact person is one, Wrtuk Formur… I will get into trouble if I have to pronounce her first name.

The bosslady is part of some science project and wants me to dig into some reports regarding a strain of rogue drones spotted in Algintal. Shesh, those mechanical monsters always give me the willies, and it does not become any better; apparently these RogDs have been digging through old Yan Jung artifacts too and it has seemingly had a remarkable effect on their behavior. I am ordered (hate that word) to investigate the matter and bring back any item that might appear useful for further research.

Rogue Stock – Trimming the Edges (1 of 4)

Thukker agent Wrtuk Formur

My meeting place with Miss Formur was at the Municipal Junkyard, which is essentially a huge space dumb with piles of garbage floating about, in the Deltole system. She briefed me thoroughly on my first task:

"Algintal is one of the primary smuggling routes between the Federation and Republic space and Deltole is the main hub for smugglers in the constellation. The Serpentis have taken over a local complex, a natural beauty spot called the Skeleton Comet, and made it their own. Us Thukkers do our best to keep up and fortunately we're in good enough standing with most of the Serpentis to be allowed in their haven for some R and R.

But a week or two ago the Serpentis asked us to pay them back some of their hospitality. It seems parts of the complex are crawling with rogue drones. And not just any rogue drones, but pretty lethal ones. I understand their presence there contributed greatly to the Gallenteans evacuating the Skeleton Comet in the first place. And now it seems the rogue drones are stirring once more and the Serpentis are edgy what they might do. My superiors asked me to look into the matter and I'm interested in hiring you to do some reconnaissance for me in the complex.

What I want you to do is enter the complex and locate the rogue drone hive. Kill a few of their perimeter guards and return to me with whatever they drop. Until we know more about what makes these drones such a threat we should tread carefully, so don't try to act the hero and take on the whole hive in one go. Just pick out a few outer guards and we'll take it one step at a time from there."

I was curious to get into just what kind of R and R was at stake here and if it would be possible to get a part of it, but I hesitated to ask. Miss Formur sense of fashion was a bit strange to me so I worried her sense of enjoyment would be too. I agreed to head over to look for from drones in the Skeleton Comet and Miss Formur complied with a rather weak joke:

"Happy to have you aboard. Don’t let a drone bug bite you."

The Skeleton Comet drone hive

Having been warned that the acceleration gates in the Skeleton Comet complex were not configured to allow passage of battleship or larger sized vessels, I had brought my trusty SS Endorphin for the task; a cruiser of the Cynabal class that I obtained recently through an Angel connection. But that is a story for another time (hi hi).

Activating the first acceleration gate took me to a stage of the complex called 'Serpentis Survey Site'. As the name suggested, plenty of Serpentis tagged vessels could be spotted, but mostly of frigate classes and none paid particular interest in my appearance. I spotted a few other podder controlled vessel chasing some of the Serpentis smugglers around but no reaction was spotted from those either. I quickly spotted an acceleration gate claiming to connect to the part of the complex invaded by RogDs and headed for that giving the afterburner full throttle. Getting there proved easy peasy.

The next stage of the complex, the 'Drone Infested Corridor', was swarming with RogDs. Oh, and some guys appearing to be environmental friendly activists too. Apparently not that friendly to other human beings, though, as apparently they had all managed to be labeled as pirates by the authorities and a sizeable bounty had been place upon their termination. Something a pair of podders was very active in collecting.

Paying no more attention to that, I turned my focus to the immense RogD hive that appeared to me. I spotted a considerable number of RogDs either guarding or doing maintenance on the hive structure itself. None of them paid any attention to my presence. Miss Formur had said I should focus on the perimeter guards, and, funny enough, some of the RogDs had that exact designation. With the afterburner it was no problem to close in on these RogDs and let the auto-cannons do the talking. I quickly dispatched a number of RogDs and collected the Aether Hive Link that each of them appeared equipped with; four for Miss Formur and some extras for the bosslady. The remaining RogDs had no time to react before I warped out with my trophies. Or maybe they did not care... you never know how these crazy bots "think".

Miss Formur was happy to get her Aether Hive Links and said:

"Good work, Natelia. I’ll get our techies to take a look at those links you collected and we’ll see what they come up with."

Rogue Crop – Neither Safe nor Sorry (2 of 4)

When I asked what to do next she came up with an unpleasant surprise:

"This Aether Hive Link you returned with is a puzzle. It looks as if these drones are capable of more intimate communications than otherwise believed, but there are also hints that even more advanced hive mind links exist. I'm not a technician, so I can't go into all that much details, this information is just something relayed to me from our techies at the Thukker Mix. They say that they suspect that a truly symbiotic drone hive might be evolving. They sound excited about it, but they are safe in their labs, so what do they know? It's us that have to deal with these drones face to face that have to worry. In any case, we must verify whether this is true or not. I need you to go back into the complex and now I need stuff from drones closer to the hive. There are some drone workers orbiting close to the hive that seem like ideal targets. Take a few of them out and, again, return with whatever they drop. I will then forward it to our techies and see what the situation is. Just be extra careful when you take the workers out, you never know what might be protecting them. Maybe nothing, maybe something heavy."

I mean, I had just been there and did spot the worker drones close to the hive; why did she not just ask me to shoot all the RogDs in the first place? Sheeesh. I tried not to appear too annoyed when I left to go back to the Infested Drone Corridor in the Skeleton Comet complex.

And if 'something heavy' was supposed to have been protecting these workers it never appeared when I blasted them to bits. Well, apparently some Neural Bio Links survived the blasting and I brought a couple of these back with me to Miss Formur, and, of course, some for the bosslady too.

Miss Formur has quite happy about my findings and her appraisement made me nearly forgive her for sending me back to the Skeleton Comet. I still did not like her choice of lipstick color, though.

"That’s the way to do it! I think these weird links are just what our techies were hoping for."

Rogue Crop – Root of the Problem (3 of 4)

Luckily she had no more needs for me to go back to the Skeleton Comet, instead she wanted me to transport a data report for the research to progress:

"The techies have taken a quick look at the links you brought me and they're telling me it's something they've never seen before and are totally baffled by. I'm not sure what to make of their comments, is this radical new design a threat or not? I must get a definite answer before deciding how to proceed. My observations and the data that you and others have collected for me, as well as information on these links, needs to be looked at by more talented techies. Take this data over to the Illinfrik system, to the Trust Partners station there. They will analyze this data and give me feedback I can work from."

I simply put the ship on auto-pilot and rested my mind with other issues until the ship reached the destination in Illinfrik. I contacted Miss Formur about the success of the package delivery and she complied.

Rogue Crop – Alpha Strike (4 of 4)

After returning to Deltole she had one final assignment for me:

"I've received a preliminary report from Illifik. It seems a new strand of rogue drones evolved in that hive over in the Skeleton Comet complex. At first, this new strand was incorporated into the existing hive and used to augment it. These strange links you got me are a case in point. But here's the interesting thing. It seems the queen in the drone hive in the Skeleton Comet eventually turned against these new rogue drones and chased them away. The techies in Illifik managed to extract imbedded commands in the hive links you brought them that showed that the queen has ordered her drone army to destroy all these evolved rogue drones. Obviously she fears they might pose a threat to her authority. I don't know if her drone army is already on the prowl, but I do know where one group of these evolved rogue drones is located at. I've been ordered to retrieve a functional hive mind from these new drones for further analyzes of their capabilities. Getting in a cross-fire between two opposing rogue drone factions seems kinda dangerous to me, thus I'm asking you if you're up to the job. I have no idea what you should expect in this drone hive location, be on the lookout for the drone army sent by the queen in the Skeleton Comet."

Site of the drone encounter

Her words about going up a RogD hive all on my own made me a bit nervous as I warped to the co-ordinates I had been provided. But the battle was already over. Or most of it was except an immense lone RogD apparently left behind to patrol the area. Though, being equipped with mostly large sized weaponry it was an easy matter for my nimble cruiser to duck under the incoming beams and get into distance for my cannons do their magic. In few seconds the RogD was a crumbling wreck. Sensing no other hostiles nearby (that could move, at least) I started looking through the wreckages of RogDs left behind. Something identified by my ships scanner as a 'Shattered Hive Mind Cage' caught my interest. A few bullet holes allowed me to collect what was inside, and sure enough there was a piece of Cognitive Hive Mind in there. This I returned to Miss Formur and she praised me again:

"Amazing! Looks like the drones in the Skeleton Comet beat you to it. Thankfully they left enough of the new breed drones intact for you to complete you assignment and me to have something to send to my superiors. But now we can rest assured that these evolutionary drones won’t pose a threat to us in the future. And we got you to thanks for that, Natelia!"

Final Remarks

How nice! Maybe bluish-purple is the new fashion color among Thukkers. Miss Formur was so pleased that she promised to recommend my work to other members within the Thukkers and gave me a good pile of ISK for my efforts. All good, except I did not tell Miss Formur about my other finding at the last RogD site. I will get into that on my next report.

To Arek'Jaalan: Ancient Races

Top Contributors For This Page

Navigation

Item Database

Tools