The Revelations of Delegate Zero

Inheritance: Something that is or may be inherited ; property passing at the owner’s death to the heir or those entitled to succeed; legacy.

–Dictionary.com, “Inheritance”

So CCP Delegate Zero dropped a massive lore dump over the holidays, a Chronicle appropriately titled Inheritance. If you haven’t already, go read it now so this post makes sense. The title speaks at once to its subject matter (namely the handing down of wisdom and authority from the Jove to the Society of Conscious Thought) and the passing down of many, many revelations from storylines recent and ancient to the tinfoil-hattery lore nerds of EVE Online.

If I had to pick a theme for all of what was in this chronicle, it would be entropy. Rot, neglect and decay. There are a lot of positive implications for the overall player-side story, but for the Jove, the theme is the crumbling of everything. If it shines a light on one error I’ve regularly made in my calculations it’s probably that I have given the Jove a high degree of calculation, agency, and need to act. What this chronicle instead shows is extreme passivity, distraction, confusion, failure to achieve, failure to overcome, and a race that simply seems to have given up (or not been able to process a need to act) when taken on the whole. Like the Wizard of Oz, there is no superpower behind the curtain. The Jove basically quit, with a handful of exceptions like Veniel.

I will cover the bulk of these revelations and their impacts in this post. The remainder (specific to Caroline’s Star, its attendant Dyson Swarm, Jovian space and the Talocan) is covered in the Kardashev’s Children post.

There is a metric ton of info here (warning and apology: this post alone is over 5700 words and dives into detail and speculation – if you want something more TLDR check out Tarek Raimo’s post on Crossing Zebras), so let’s dive right in. For each thing I found a new revelation, I’ll dig in a bit to the back story, and then throw a bit of tinfoil at it relative to where I think the CCP story team might be taking it.

On the Jove and the Jovian Directorate

• Revelation #1: The Jove are still here, but a tiny fraction of their former selves, which they consider a “rearguard”.
  • Why it’s interesting: The fact that they exist at all is a bit surprising since no one has seen or heard from them since the Sansha invasion and the Mouse Nell incident five years ago. Even more interesting, Veniel specifies that there were fewer than 1000 Jove by the beginning of YC116 (2014). And by the time the supernova happened in November of that year, only 100 had “chosen, for whatever reason, to stay in New Eden,” and that those “permanently had dispersed to their hidden destinations far away from the abandoned remains of the Third Empire.” Matshi Raish also makes it clear that governmentally, “Certainly the Jove Empire and the Jovian Directorate are no longer functioning entities.”
  • Where it could go: What is important from my point of view is more about what is not said than what is said. Veniel at no point says that the Jove are dying out, succumbing to the disease, and that the race is doomed. Instead, he implies that they left. By choice. Like some sci-fi equivalent of Tolkien’s elves, sailing to the West. Like Moses crossing the Red Sea. It’s a diaspora, not an extinction. What this revelation accomplishes is that it lets the CCP story team keep the Jove as a tool in their toolbox for when they need an event spark or a deus ex machina – while the Jove are “gone”, the explanation “Because Jovians” actually still works. There are also some really cool opportunities for “finding the last Jovians” arcs, since there are still some in their “most carefully maintained, best shielded stations.” and even one “in a bunker below the surface of an outer planet.” Even stranger, Veniel insists on calling T-C5A0 “home base” multiple times – this makes little sense in the context of the old Directorate. It’s not the HQ of any Jove corp, not even Navy Logistic Support. Jove HQ is in most cases 54-VNO. T-C5A0 is not only disconnected it is close to empire space, nowhere near the few still linked. The Jove have been reduced to near-mythical things, but ones who can still be called on for story purposes as needed.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Where are they fleeing to? Can we follow (will the new gates allow us to get there)? Who of the Jove remains and where are they? Why is T-C5A0 “home base” – is it just home for Veniel and his crew as one of the few stations still operational?
• Revelation #2: The Yoiul still exists, and Jove still have other plans for her.
  • Why it’s interesting: Much like the above, this shows that the Jove storyline is not over. It’s going into the “deep background” but is by no means done. For those who may not have put the pieces together, the Yoiul is the ship upon which the current structure of CONCORD and the empires’ detente was hammered out. It’s the “Y” in the YC dating system. But to Veniel, who was alive 200+ years prior to that, it’s kind of “meh”. What is particularly fun about this is that this ship heralded the start of CONCORD, and with Raish now a part of CONCORD, it may be the herald of the doom of CONCORD as well.
  • Where it could go: I don’t think this is the last we’ll see of Yoiul, even if it’s years from now that she pops up again.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Again, Veniel’s throwaway lines are the most interesting. He says of the Yoiul Conference: “Important, yes, but she’s done much else besides and after all is about to do even more.” Ummm, like what? Surely not just ferry Matshi Raish around.
• Revelation #3: The Jove Observatories were used by the Jovian Directorate/Third Empire – which is to say within the last 500 years or so.
  

  Old Jovian Directorate station

  • Why it’s interesting: Veniel states, “the Jovian Directorate’s old observatories.” There has been a long-running speculation discussion among lore buffs around the origin of the Observatories. For myself, I largely look at it through an architectural lens. The Directorate had a very distinctive organic “grown” look to all of their things, including their stations. Veniel actually touches on this in the chronicle when he hints that Jove stations are less organic than they are nano-created, saying, “Nanorot. Repair systems are losing cohesion and going rogue locally. It’s far more advanced on the truly abandoned stations.” This stands in sharp contrast to the Drifters, whose battleships are long, angular, and stark in their appearance – much like the Observatories. Because of this, lore nerds have generally drawn the conclusion that the stations were built by either the Talocan or the First or Second Empire. CCP also recently changed the color palette of the Observatories from Drifter oil-slick to Jove greenish … I can only assume because of what was in this chronicle. This actually does fit with the documents that you discover upon running an Entosis Link 0n one of the Observatories – what you get back fits the Directorate timeline.
  • Where it could go: This change opens a ton of new questions that I think will become clear over time. We already know that the Observatories have many more permutations to go through in their disintegration. If we ever get to Jove space, the advanced “nanorot” should make for some really cool ruined stations.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Why are the architectures so radically different (and will it be retconned)? Did the Directorate make a sharp left turn into nanites at some point that turned their sharp angular architecture into nanite-grown architecture? Is this finally the long-awaited bridge to explaining the Rogue Drones (Veniel even uses the term “rogue nanites”)? How on earth are they connected to the Antikythera Mechanism and related Drifter items? My personal gut check after seeing how lackadaisical about things the Directorate was is that these still were not Jovian structures, but that the Directorate borrowed them for their use. After all, Veniel does not specifically say that the Directorate built them.
• Revelation #4: The Jove can definitely create wormholes, and location of creation makes a huge difference in how much power is required.
  • Why it’s interesting: It has of course been assumed for some time that the Jove could create and use wormholes much like we do but in a directed fashion. After all, Sansha could do it and presumably so could the Talocan. What we get from the discussion in the chronicle however is a bit more nuanced, and a lot more detailed. If you read between the lines it suggests that the Talocan created and perfected the technology, the Jove re-engineered it for precision but a much, much smaller scale, and the Sansha stole/borrowed it from one or the other and reverse-engineered it in a very clunky, brute-force sort of way.
  • Where it could go: Shipboard wormhole generators confirmed. In fact, Veniel goes into a remarkable level of detail about its limitations: “We command the full range and precise positioning available with the technology. We also understand how to take advantage of the local topology of space-time. This is the reason for our long warp to this position, it makes things much easier for a ship of this size. After all, there are limits to what is possible and you were not in error to consider that.” It now seems inevitable that controlled wormhole creation, with appropriate balance mechanisms, is likely to be on CCP’s roadmap. This is not all that surprising but this is just another weight on that side of the scale. I also think that it will likely have some sort of connection to the future gate technology CCP has already stated is on the roadmap.
  • New mysteries it spawns: What exactly are the differences between the Talocan, Jove and Sansha methods? How are they relevant, if at all, to the future of the game? There aren’t truly new mysteries here, so much as new shades and nuances to old ones.
• Revelation #5: The Second Empire upheaval may well have been CAUSED by, the discovery of Anoikis rather than precipitating it.
  • Why it’s interesting: Veniel and Raish actually discuss this briefly, and I think we would be foolish to ignore it. Veniel starts:
    “I would imagine the Second Empire discovered entryways into the Anoikis network in the vicinity of the Curse Region. When? Where? Who knows but I would guess late, perhaps even shortly before the collapse of the Second Empire.”
    “The discovery may even have precipitated that collapse in some manner,” suggested Raish.
    “My thoughts exactly. Coincidences occur but there are rather too many associated with the Second Empire, Anoikis and the Shrouded Days. Something happened, some encounter, some miscalculation, some psychosocial upheaval, and then, well, chaos and the darkness of knowledge lost to history. Lost to us.”
    For me, this was a foundation-shaking idea. Again, my theory up to this point (and I think that of most lore-heads) was that the Jove had wormhole technology from very early on, First Empire or even brought over from Earth via the EVE Gate. What this suggests is that the Jove were entirely ignorant of Anoikis prior to the Second Empire, and the very act of discovering it was the event that triggered the fall of the Second Empire. This again highlights how truly derivative the Jove are rather than the masters of their own destiny that I thought them to be – rather than the Sleepers leveraging unknown super-tech to kick themselves into Anoikis to get away, the discovery of Anoikis might have been the cause of the societal rift itself.
  • Where it could go: It is unlikely that CCP will do much with this within the game, but it adds further shades of grey into the story that they could leverage because the Sleepers, Talocan and Drifters are much more clearly separated from one another than they were before the chronicle. One place that CCP could (and IMO should if they haven’t already) leverage this discussion is that there should be some cool new things to be discovered in Curse. Ever since I started the game I wanted to find more Jove things in Curse, and there’s just not much there as far as I know, other than the names of the Heaven constellation and the old poems.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Again the mysteries here are less new than they are more fleshed out than before. How did they discover Anoikis during the Second Empire? How would that have caused a rift? Is there anything to find in Curse?
  

  Admiral Ouria

• Revalation #6: There was more, and less, to Admiral Ouria than we knew.
  • Why it’s interesting: Admiral Ouria was one of the first Jove characters introduced to the players, in an event in August 2003. He was presented as a crazy rogue/renegade with the Jovian disease. Many lore types, myself included, long believed that the “Jovian disease” statement relative to Ouria was false (since the Directorate did not condemn his actions immediately), and that instead he was a rogue actor fully in command of his faculties but acting against the governing body of the Directorate in a way that might have benefitted capsuleers over the Jove. However, Veniel specifically states that he was in fact impacted by the disease, killing that theory. Even so, Veniel clearly sees Ouria as a hero, and his portrayal of the disease almost suggests that Ouria was “raging against the dying of the light” in his final acts. Ouria was apparently a person of great positive impact before his fall.
  • Where it could go: Unlikely to go anywhere, just a new perspective on an old icon.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Potentially more on the Jovian disease – it has long been a debate point whether the non-fetal form of the disease is truly a disease or simply an effect of long lives and despair – effectively Jovian bittervet syndrome.
• Revelation #7: The Directorate appears to have been fashioned after the ancient Athenian political model, with an elected Archon (political leader) and Polemarkos (military leader).
  • Why it’s interesting: Particularly under the former lore leadership of CCP Abraxas, EVE lore had a very heavy underlying theme of Greek myth – particularly Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey. It has also never really been specified what changed from “Empire” to “Directorate” among the Jove. This suggests that it was similar to that evolution, where the Jove tired of emperors and moved to an elected midway point.
  • Where it could go: There’s a story behind it all but to suss it out you need to be a Greek myth, Plato and Homer scholar. I haven’t been able to muster the time and enthusiasm to go back and reread The Iliad and The Odyssey with an eye to EVE lore, especially with Abraxas no longer at the helm of the story (meaning Delegate Zero may well go a whole different direction). CCP could further detail the ancient connections between the Drifters, Jove and Gallente.
  • New mysteries it spawns: None. Just reinforces an old one: Why do the Drifters, Jove and Gallente all have Greek naming conventions?

On Sansha’s Nation

• Revelation #8: Sansha’s Nation definitely stole the technology for wormhole generation.
  

  How I picture Veniel’s thought process during the Mouse Nell incident

  • Why it’s interesting: The chronicle is remarkably short on information regarding two of the main players in the current storyline – namely the Sansha and the Drifters. However, this is the one key area where the Sansha get some play. Veniel is obviously pretty annoyed by their use of wormhole generation tech. Specifically:
    Veniel: “Did you imagine that Kuvakei the thief, barely understanding what he has in his hands, has the means to generate wormholes at will while we, who after all are the inheritors of the legacy he plundered, do not? Come now, Matshi.”
    Raish: “Yes, of course, forgive me. It is just that our intelligence suggested Sansha’s forces require considerable resources and equipment to generate their wormholes. More than a cruiser could encompass, most certainly, but of course they are presumably working with crudely reverse-engineered systems.”
    Veniel: “Quite.”
    Veniel’s choice of words here is remarkable. “we … are the inheritors of the legacy he plundered” is quite the statement of superior entitlement. What Veniel is effectively saying is that the Directorate had this tech handed down to them – either from the Second Empire or from the Talocan or in line through them – and that Kuvakei was bad for trying to steal and reverse engineer what the Jove themselves appear to have stolen and reverse engineered.
  • Where it could go: As noted in #4 above, this suggests that the three technologies for wormhole creation (Talocan, Jove and Sansha in order of power and precision) could very well play out in different ways and with different story and gameplay implications.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Unfortunately it doesn’t answer the key questions we wanted to know about the Sansha – or for that matter the Sisters of Eve – in shattered wormhole space. What really happened at the Jove station during the Mouse Nell incident? How did Sansha and SOE get to those systems early? How are they actually using wormhole tech and in what form? These questions are still out there.

On The Sleepers

• Revelation #9: The Sleepers are now definitively Second Empire Jove Stasis People.
  • Why it’s interesting: There have been a lot of theories of various people on various timelines with various parts of things interconnected, including my own (wrong) theory that they were actually contemporaneous with the Talocan. Veniel now states it flat out: “Far removed as the Second Empire survivors may be in history, we of the Directorate can recognize them as our own without much trouble. At least, cladistically speaking … The Second Empire Jove found Anoikis, entered it and, we can now be quite certain, the Stasis faction established enclaves throughout the systems of the network.” Delegate Zero closes the book on any speculation about the Sleepers firmly with this statement. It also dovetails out nicely with all the things that say Sleeper and Jove going together (i.e. Jove clones in Sleeper enclaves, and even the use of the term “enclave” itself).
  • Where it could go: Going forward, the Sleepers become a very clear part of the Jovian discussion and timeline, with a very clear place in that timeline. This years-old mystery is at last laid to rest, enabling CCP to move forward with more statements and less questions around what the Sleepers are and more around what they represent, what they bring to the table, and what they mean to the future of the story. There is room to explore the implications of the Second Empire surviving while the Third disappears – it would be like our modern world decaying and disappearing, leaving knights of the middle ages behind to take our place. Long story short, it gives CCP more room to take a clear hand in directing the Sleepers’ actions now that we know who they are.
  • New mysteries it spawns: By setting this definition, it also means that we theoretically now have answers to questions we thought lost to time – specifically, what the heck happened to the Second Empire? After all, today’s Sleepers were alive then. They know first-hand what happened. They know what happened to Miko Bour – is he among them? They know what caused the Jovian dark age. The answers are in the Enclaves. What will it take to get them?
  

  Pic credit: Morwen Lagann

• Revelation #10: The Sleeper structures we attack are in some (many?) cases spare clone repositories for body replacement, not “living Sleepers”.
  • Why it’s interesting: Many of us have assumed that the Sleeper enclaves we’ve seen in w-space are full of “active” Sleepers. But Veniel adds clarification to that:
    “They had made sure to preserve their original bodies for as long as possible in the event that they wished to return to the real. We also discovered they had made provision for clone growth and replacement at special facilities scattered throughout Anoikis. They had been well aware that their bodies might decay beyond usefulness even as well preserved as they were.”
    “The hives,” whispered Raish.
    “Yes, the hives.”
    Delegate Zero makes a bit of a faux pas in the chronicle when he calls these “Hives” (potentially confusing them with Drifter hives) but he clarified on the forums that he means the Sleeper structures, not the Drifter structures. But the upshot is that what the Difters are stealing bodies from is likely the unused clone banks, not the “live” Sleepers.
  • Where it could go: Mostly, this casts a further shadow across the relationship between the Sleepers and the Drifters. It actually makes things less clear, unlike most of this chronicle. It gives CCP a whole new set of mysteries to explore between these two groups, to say nothing of the wider cluster.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Why are the Drifters only taking the spares? How could they be positively related to the Sleepers, when presumably the Sleepers can get these without chopping the whole enclave open? Why are Sleeper drones collaborating with Drifter battleships when Drifters seem to like taking Sleeper bodies? How are the Jove, Drifters and Talocan related? This particular part of the mystery was boosted rather than addressed in the chronicle.
• Revelation #11: The Sleepers are in internal chaos.
  • Why it’s interesting: Veniel illustrates this in several places, but the most telling is when he states that, “The Second Empire survivors are clearly in a state of some confusion and exhibit an incoherence to their pattern that is suggestive of significant internal discord. This would not be particularly surprising when discussing the collective actions of formerly isolated Jove enclaves attempting to organize to common purpose in an unfamiliar environment. With the survivors the situation is even worse. Their enclaves were virtual constructs that have been running for centuries. Inevitably, there was degradation in many instances, and much that took place in Anoikis over the centuries of the Stasis faction’s presence there is a mystery. The uncontrolled wormhole access to Anoikis made possible by the Isogen-5 Quantum Criticality Event led to an explosive spike in destruction of the survivor enclaves’ virtuality infrastructure. We can only guess at the effects.” In other words, the Sleepers are suffering from digital degradation, attacks from the inside by The Other(s), attacks from the outside by capsuleers, literal brain removal by the Amarr for Dust implants, and clone abduction by The Drifters. It is little wonder they are losing their collective minds.
  • Where it could go: Given this, it is not surprising that Veniel counsels Raish that “The Second Empire survivors are unpredictable as matters stand. A great amount of your work must be bent to managing the problem they raise.” I think we can plan for their “problem” to get bigger – and start becoming our problem.
  • New mysteries it spawns: The whole narrative has now set things up so that the Sleepers come off as our poor, innocent Jove neighbors, set upon for being different and because bad capsuleers are xenophobes. Are we geared up so that Sleepers will be our allies if we play our cards right in the future? Or have we already missed the boat on that one, ensuring they are our eternal enemies finding ways to bring ancient methods of death down on our heads?

On the Drifters

• Revelation #12: Delegate Zero likes baiting the playerbase by RPing Veniel playing Raish – and us.
  

  Drifters? You got this.

  • Why it’s interesting: The biggest tease in the entire chronicle (and one of the few concrete mentions of the Drifters at all) is this back and forth between the characters:
    Raish: [The biggest unanswered puzzle is] “the Drifters and their sudden emergence. But if the constructs have produced freely emerging artificial sapients then it answers some questions.”
    “To a point, certainly. Consider the timing though. Why the large uptick in Sleeper drone activity? Why did unfamiliar, exploratory Sleeper drones begin emerging from Anoikis to wander through New Eden? Why did those called the Drifters emerge also? Why did they begin their curious plundering of the Jovian Directorate’s old observatories? What are they building and why are they so hostile to the Amarr Empire? So many questions.” Veniel smiled at his former student once more and, extraordinarily, winked.
    In other words, he’s not going to tell us these answers in this chronicle.
  • Where it could go: I had sudden flashbacks to CCP Dropbear: It may not make sense at first. This is clearly the go-forward storyline coming out of this chronicle. Delegate Zero is sweeping away the confusion around the Sleepers in order to clarify focus around what’s going on with the Drifters. Specifically he is avoiding answering the question “who are the Drifters?” by extending the debate that they could be Talocan, other Jove, re-embodied Others, re-embodied Sleepers, or something else entirely. It’s easy to see Raish’s guess (that they are re-embodied Others) as being the answer but Veniel isn’t committing. These questions are left unanswered precisely because this is where the story is going next.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Veniel laid them out nicely, don’t you think?

On The Other

• Revelation #13: The Other is more powerful than we ever imagined.
  • Why it’s interesting:  The Other seemed scary enough before – it was able to leave the Sleeper construct, convince people to put implants in highly-placed individuals that it could jump to, and interfere with the cloning process of Empress Jamyl Sarum herself. But in this chronicle it gets much, much worse. The implication is that The Other is far more intelligent than us, views religion through the prism of power, has no respect for the law of one-mind-one-body, is able to control multiple hosts simultaneously, and is “inimical to the interests … of the New Eden cluster.” Between Veniel and Raish they surface all these data points:
    • “We should analyze the data further but the artificial sapient is almost certainly a high level entity capable of multiple simultaneous intrusions.”
    • “You mean that the entity has found it necessary to intermingle to this degree to control her?” “No, not at all. The need for it to do so would indicate a relatively unsophisticated brute level of entity and this one is not that. Rather, she opposes it in the only way that she can. She draws it in. It is an impressive act of will.”
    • “This entity is a severe existential threat. Its sentience quotient must be at least 15 positive [ed note: Humans are 13 positive, capsuleers may be a bit higher].” “Several points more I should think,” interrupted Veniel. “More? Then all the greater reason to intervene. Its entire motivation cannot help but be inimical to the interests of living sapients in the New Eden cluster.”
    • “To be explicit, it is probable that the entity views the religious mode of thought through the prism of power and politics alone.”
    • “Not to forget, of course, the plundering carried out by the Empire under the direction of the Empress.” “But that may have been under the influence of the entity that has commingled with her personality,” gasped Raish, appalled at the implications. “May have been? I think we can dispense with ‘may have been’ and be certain that it was under the direction, not mere influence, of that entity. We can also be certain that we are dealing with a renegade artificial sapient that long ago threw off the restrictions of the law of one mind in one body. How? Why? Questions for another time, questions that may very well come to concern you most grievously.”
  • Where it could go: When the story team killed of Jamyl Sarum, I was certain that in large part it was to rid the universe of the deus ex machina bogeyman of The Other. Apparently I couldn’t be more wrong. This virulent, powerful infomorph is almost certainly going to appear again. And when he does, it will not be pretty.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Who (or whos) is The Other in now? When Veniel teases that how and why The Other threw off the chains of one-mind-one-body are Raish’s to deal with, what else does he know? Does this have anything to do with Raish’s sudden interest in Upwell? Since The Other has in the past primarily operated via implants, has he taken this opportunity to compromise the obvious target, Sansha’s Nation? What is his involvement with the Drifters?
  

  Raish scans Jamyl Sarum and finds The Other. Image credit: TheMittani.com

• Revelation #14: Both the Jove and the SOCT are aware of The Other and its inhabiting Jamyl Sarum prior to her death.
  • Why it’s interesting: As suspected, the entosis scan Raish did of the Empress’ vessel showed him that she had two consciousnesses embedded in her. In addition, there are “psycholinguistic” indicators that The Other is in charge of an individual – perhaps this is something like the Spock Speak trope. More interesting though is that the Jove have clearly known for quite some time, and done nothing about it. In the style that permeates this chronicle, the Directorate have chosen to observe passively rather than act. UPDATE Jan 3: Had a brief discussion with Diana Olympos on #Tweetfleet Slack that I glossed over here. Long story short, the chronicle implies that Jamyl effectively orchestrated her own death in hopes of destroying The Other when Raish says, “The death of Empress Jamyl is regrettable but, as she herself so obviously appreciated, was necessary.” As noted above, I don’t think she succeeded, and the chronicle leaves quite a bit of wiggle room to figure out exactly what did happen.
  • Where it could go: The truth is now officially out there. Matshi Raish has his own scan and his new status as Jove representative, so if he wants to prosecute this, he can, and the chaos that would spawn would be incredible. Taken to its ultimate extreme, Raish could follow a Salem-witch-trial approach and assume that everyone is “infected” – that could make for some fun events too. It gives him a literal tool to claim people are possessed (even if they later turn out not to be). Based on the discussion in the chronicle, we would be foolish to think that The Other is not still around.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Why did the Jove intentionally choose to withhold this information from the Empires and CONCORD? What will Raish do with his confirmed proof that The Other exist and that it had possessed the Empress? Did The Other jump or multi-home and is it thus still alive? If Raish keeps it to himself, what is he trying to achieve? Will we be able to identify new “posessed” individuals via its brand of Spock Speak? Does he suspect The Other’s hand in the rise of Upwell? UPDATE Jan 3: There are questions around Jamyl Sarum’s death as well: Was it really unexpected? An accident? Did Sarum arrange her own death with the Drifters somehow? Or did Veniel and Raish have a hand in her death?
• Revelation #15: The Other was definitely responsible for the harvesting of Sleeper implants at the beginning of Dust514.
  • Why it’s interesting: While this was known more or less out of character due to some commentary in both Templar One and the chronicle 514, it is now in character knowledge for Raish to do with as he sees fit. As noted above, Veniel states, “we can dispense with ‘may have been’ and be certain that it was under the direction, not mere influence, of that entity.” Raish should be able to put two and two together and determine that The Other is not friends with its former compatriots in the Sleeper Construct.
  • Where it could go: Raish is likely to commit himself to the extinction of The Other. This could go many different ways depending upon where CCP determines that The Other now lives, and what its long-term objectives are. In all likelihood, The Other will move to take down Raish as inimical to its near-term plans.
  • New mysteries it spawns: Why is The Other against the Sleepers? By being against The Sleepers where does that leave it relative to The Drifters? What organizations within New Eden, if any, benefit from allying with The Other?

On CONCORD

Matshi Raish

• Revelation #16: CONCORD has been ineffective primarily due to bureaucratic deadlock, and Raish can now break that as the “Jove” representative. This is the primary “inheritance” that the chronicle’s name hints toward.
  • Why it’s interesting: CONCORD has been viewed as largely ineffectual for some time now. This chronicle lays bare exactly why – there are four dedicated CONCORD members here! This means that even if all the empires pulled together and CONCORD wanted to do something else, they could not, it would be a tie 4-4 vote. The absence of a Jove representative has ensured things remained stagnant. Raish is a more prominent figure than many may at first realize – he was the chairman of the Symposium on Emergent Threats (aka Fanfest 2015 and the Drifter investigations). He was the person who handed out the Gnosis battlecruisers on EVE’s 10th anniversary. Adding Raish to the mix gives the Society of Conscious thought the crucial deciding vote in many potential disputes, and gives him the upper hand in many negotiations. Veniel specifically tells Raish: “The capsuleers remain the great investment in the future that should be shepherded most carefully. You can do this more directly only if you have the power to do so. I intend to give you, and the Society, this power.” Interestingly this also reinforces a long-held belief in the lore community that the Jove have been driving the idea of capsuleers intentionally to nudge humanity in a specific direction. So Raish is literally a part of the CONCORD Inner Circle with a mandate to guide the direction of capsuleer development.
  • Where it could go: Along with the Drifter tease above, this is the main outcome of the chronicle – expect to hear a lot more about Raish and a lot more about the Society of Conscious Thought. This should be somewhat alarming if you have ever read the Black Mountain series of chronicles, because the SOCT is not always a nice group of people.
  • New mysteries it spawns: How exactly did Veniel transfer the Jove seat to a non-Jove? What will the SOCT do now? What will the SOE, effectively mortal enemies for many years, do? What will the outcome of Raish’s tiebreaking votes be? What direction will he try to steer the capsuleer world and why? Why is his #1 order of business, after all this about Sleepers and Drifters and Others, to ask about Upwell rather than any of that? What did he learn over the course of five months between meeting with Veniel and taking his seat at the Inner Council table?

[UPDATES Jan 3: Sar Hasarin brings up an interesting item I didn’t address relative to SOCT’s “unknown” base in Geminate. See below for my reply. There is also some good discussion going on in the associated Reddit thread. In addition, it’s worth your time to check out the brief discussion of this chronicle on the Hydrostatic Podcast Lore Update from Dec 23 (starting around 33:00) – I’m sure there will be a full lore panel on this stuff too.]

That’s a lot to digest, and that’s only about 2/3 of what’s in there. And the most fun stuff (at least in my opinion) is in the next post: Kardashev’s Children, which covers the implications for the Talocan, Caroline’s Star, the Dyson Swarm and Jove space.

Let me know what you think so far in the comments.