The Rhea Expansion was introduced to EVE Online bringing with it Thera with its many ever-changing wormhole connections. Johnny Splunk and G8keeper, our founders, decided to form a neutral service corporation, EvE-Scout, tasked with publicly documenting the connections live on a website they created at eve-scout.com.
“I still remember the first time I traversed into Thera and the following week of maintaining the connections in Thera with our co-founder G8keeper. We would take shifts between sleeping, real life, and scanning Thera. It was stressful and exhilarating: some of the best parts of EVE!” – Johnny Splunk
EvE-Scout
However, Johnny and G8keeper soon realized that the endeavor was not sustainable with just two of them. Fortunately, volunteers from the greater New Eden community were eager to help scan Thera’s wormholes as scouts. In an effort to maintain the corp’s neutrality, the original Thera scouts were not permitted to join EvE-Scout. Due to EvE-Scout’s dedicated and trusted scout team, the service became the de facto source of Thera wormhole connection information.
Johnny stated, “When we launched the Thera scanning project we wanted to provide neutral information to all of New Eden. Not to favor one group over another. Our scouts were not even able to join our corporation (EvE-Scout). We only accepted out-of-corp scouts. The reason was we could disavow our scout’s other activities and while at the same time allow us to attract scouts without them leaving their existing corp.”
Signal Cartel
As one would expect, a lot of the original out-of-corp Thera scouts were also explorers. As exploration is a mostly solitary affair, these scouts wanted to create more of a community with an identity centered on scanning and exploration. Thus, the idea for a new player corporation was formed. While Johnny and G8keeper were supportive, they were busy expanding EvE-Scout’s Thera Scanning service and knew they would need someone else to run the new corporation. They wanted the corp to be neutral to all, counter-culture in ideology, and of course exploration-centric.
Fortunately, Mynxee was there to answer the call as one of the first Thera scouts having recently returned to the game as an explorer after gaining infamy as the founder and leader of the Hellcats and fame as a CSM5 (2010) Chairwoman.
According to Mynxee, “Soon after my arrival in Thera, I started scouting for them. We began talking about exploration as a career and what a fine thing it would be to create a home, a haven, for explorers who just want to wander between the stars on their own agenda. Much talking later, Signal Cartel was born: a corp devoted to the highest ideals of exploration, nurturing to new players, and many other things besides that are practically foreign in New Eden culture.”
January 2015
Signal Cartel was co-founded on January 20th, 2015 by Johnny Splunk, G8keeper, and Mynxee with Mynxee serving as the first CEO with our Credo at the heart and core of who we are. EvE-Scout Enclave Alliance was formed on January 23rd, including its two member corporations EvE-Scout and Signal Cartel. Then on January 31st, Signal Cartel opened its doors to the public.
Of the original dozen or so Signal Cartel members that joined the corp on the opening day, I’m humbled, honored, and proud to be the oldest active member and current Alliance Executor.
Happy 10th Birthday Signal Cartel/EvE-Scout Enclave Alliance! o7
From Katia Sae: It’s an absolute privilege to share this news with the greater New Eden community. EvE-Scout and Signal Cartel offer many service-oriented efforts to our fellow Capsuleers and one of our first was our EvE-Scout Rescue Division (ESR). Through their efforts we rescue stranded pilots in wormhole space either via Search and Rescue operations or our Rescue Caches that are seeded throughout New Eden. We currently have 2400 active caches which covers 92% of wormhole space. Recently, our ESR Division celebrated our 5000th rescued capsuleer! Following is an announcement from our ESR Division Manager Xalyar.
Xalyar
Greetings New Eden Community!
When the EvE-Scout Rescue Division was first established, it was a cocktail napkin, pen & paper kind of adventure for those involved. It wasn’t until the advent of our co-pilot Allison in 2017 that stats started to be tracked continuously and diligently. Since then, we have accumulated many a record while performing our duties to help those stranded in wormhole space. Many pilots have been saved thanks to probes and launchers found in our Rescue Caches, and all of that has built up to quite an impressive record during many years.
It was in late 2021 that rescuers performed the 1000th Live Rescue. In June 2023, the 911 Rescue team received its 10,000th 911 call, and reached a total of 3000 cache rescues.
PlanetManX
It is with great pride that I come to you today with another outstanding milestone that was recently achieved. Bear with me while I tell the story surrounding it.
On February the 8th 2024, at 20:42 EVE time, a pilot by the name of PlanetManX (who has graciously allowed us to share their name for this announcement), reached out to our 911 Service in search for help after getting stranded.
Rani Ulfr
Signal Cartel and 911 Operator Rani Ulfr (only on their 14th call answered at that point in time), responded to the call and established contact with the pilot. Without a chance to use the Rescue Cache for a direct rescue, and without a way into the wormhole, a Search and Rescue Request (SAR) was opened for PlanetManX and they were instructed to safelog and wait for help.
Kythaela Enralei
It would be just about 10 days later, early in the EVE morning hours on February the 18th, that Signal Cartel pilot Kythaela Enralei, during their travels, would happen upon the Class 4 Wormhole where PlanetManX was, offline, waiting for rescue.
It took EvE-Scout Coordinator Kuroha Hitomi only about 14 minutes to reach the Wormhole to secure it. They were shortly joined by another ESR Coordinator, Tekufah. The two Coordinators combined for more than 150 total successful rescues and were just about to add another one to their resume.
Kuroha Hitomi
As the two coordinators established a presence in the system, it became abundantly clear that fighting was ongoing and Rescue operations could not be conducted straight away. A decision was made to wait, and just a bunch of hours later, after things had calmed down, PlanetManX was safely escorted outside the Wormhole and back to K-space.
Tekufah
We see many rescues like this in a week, sometimes multiple times a day. The wheels of the EvE-Scout Rescue Division never stop turning to help the New Eden Community.
However, there was something very special about this very operation. While all parties were unaware of it, and just treated it like any other ordinary rescue, this would turn out to be rescue number 5000 for the EvE-Scout Rescue Division, cementing this particular operation into our corporate history book.
It is with much honour that I award, on behalf of the EvE-Scout Rescue Division and Signal Cartel, the “SAR Lifesaver – 5000th Rescue” medal to the following pilots:
Rani Ulfr (for their role as 911 Dispatcher),
Kythaela Enralei (for their role as Wormhole locator),
Kuroha Hitomi (for answering the locate and effecting the rescue),
Tekufah (for answering the locate and effecting the rescue).
Thank you to all involved for an exemplary operation and thank you to everyone in Signal Cartel for being part, through your travels, of this historical project of ours. The EvE-Scout Rescue Division thanks each and every one of you.
Our NEW EvE-Scout Thera/Turnur Scanning Website/API is now live! You can check out the new website via this link and if you are an API user at this link.
We’ve updated the platform with a new, modern interface, new backend, and new API (with documentation). Join us Beyond the Horizon as our services now include scanning connections for Turnur. Also, our route mapping now takes into account Thera, Turnur, and Zarzakh connections.
For more information, please visit our Signal Cartel/EvE-Scout GitHub and raise issues there, or join our Discord #developers channel and tag “@Sky Diamond” with any of your concerns or questions you may have.
We are currently in development to replace our EvE-Scout Thera Scanning website and API (https://www.eve-scout.com/api/…). We plan on transitioning to the new website and API by the end of the year. There are a couple of reasons for doing this: we want to update our platform with a new, more modern website and API (with documentation) and expand our services to include Turnur Scanning.
In light of these changes, we’re ready to start testing our alpha version of the API service, which our Development Team will then use to work on our tooling and for the new EvE-Scout website. We are highly interested in getting early feedback from anyone who currently consumes or wishes to test our new API, so we can make further improvements and prevent future issues.
For more information and to participate, please visit our Signal Cartel/EvE-Scout GitHub and raise issues there, or join our Discord #developers channel and tag “@Sky Diamond” with any of your concerns or questions you may have.
Thank you in advance for your time and consideration! o7 Katia Sae EvE-Scout Alliance
Sky Diamond Signal Cartel Engineering Division Manager
I remember when I joined Signal, it was within the first week when the corporation opened its doors, there were about a dozen of us. My thinking, which echoed those that were with us at the time, maybe we’d grow to around 50 members. Explorers tend to be solo’ers, doing their own thing, rarely reaching out or needing anything from anyone. However, in just a couple of weeks we had grown to 100 members and new applications were still pouring in. At one year old, we had grown to over 700 members! Of course at that time, we were something exciting, fresh, and new to New Eden. Today, no longer something new, we’ve settled down to around 300 – 400 members on average as we do prune our ranks to keep active players and to keep ourselves from becoming a warehouse for Alts. Still, that’s a healthy number of explorers hanging out together.
What’s the secret to our success? A corporation is less likely to survive on just shared interest alone, there has to be a solid foundation and a shared goal, for us, that would be our Credo. Signal Cartel was born out of being a service corporation to all of New Eden. With the introduction of Thera in the Rhea expansion in December of 2014, Johnny Splunk wanted Thera to become a freely accessible crossroads to all of New Eden and the EVE-Scout Thera connections site was born. The model behind the service was simple: Thera connection information freely available to all equally, not a paid service, but donations were accepted and then used to compensate the independent scouts that scanned down and entered the signature information.
After some time, these independent scouts wanted to fly together under the same banner. Reaching out to Johnny, who agreed with the idea, a corporation under the EVE-Scout Enclave Alliance was created and Signal Cartel was born. Johnny was the visionary and creator of our foundation which became our Credo. However, as a successful EvE streamer, he knew how time-consuming building a new corp from scratch would be. So, he looked for someone to lead it. As it turns out, Johnny saw my interview with Mynxee, a previously successful CEO of an all-female EvE pirate corp, CSM 5 Chair, and upon returning to the game after a break an explorer and one of the independent scouts for Thera scanning. She was brought on board to be our first CEO. Together Johnny and Mynxee laid down our foundation, built our reputation to what it is today, and the rest as they say is history.
Over the years our services have expanded from Thera scanning to sharing the bookmarks publicly when those came online, to our EVE Scout Rescue services which include rescue cache deployments and live rescues as well as our recently added Storm Tracking service. Our cache program has consistently covered 90% or more of wormhole space, providing probes and launchers to stranded capsuleers. Should there not be a cache in the lost pilot’s system, then we’ll look for them and do live rescues if they’re willing to wait.
1,000 Live EVE Scout Rescues!!!
As it turns out, last month on December 11th 2021, Axar Tiberius saw the alert from our Signal Cartel 911 call service of a stranded pilot in system J——. The message from the stranded pilot indicated they had forgotten to bookmark the exit. Axar knew it was highly likely they knew their entry system and sure enough they did. Quickly he flew to the entry system, navigated the chain, it was an easy, straight forward, routine live rescue. Yet, it was a milestone. Signal Cartel has performed 1,000 live rescues and that doesn’t even include rescues via our cache program. We started keeping track of our rescue service stats in 2017 and it was on April 25th of that year our first live rescue was recorded and performed by Igaze.
Even though it may come across as an individual rescue pilot, that’s far from the truth. All of our services are successful because of the team effort it takes to make these things happen. From our developers that build the tools such as Allison, to our scouts that fly with her, to our cache tenders. All fly under our Credo, friendly to all in our travels and never initiating aggression in an effort to be recognized and respected by all across the cluster and left in peace to do our work.
Happy Birthday Signal Cartel and congratulations on 1,000 live rescues!
Where has the time gone? We try to do these every six months, but it’s been a little bit longer coming this time around. Check out our last State of the Signal #14 if you missed it and are interested to see how we’ve come along. Since we just recently had our leadership transition and I posted our updated organizational chart with those thoughts as well, I won’t repeat myself here. For those reading this on our public blog, you’ll just have to wonder.
I will say just how proud Aldar and I are to be part of the Signal Cartel team and we can’t do this without each and everyone of you. It’s an honor to serve you and to represent Signal Cartel on your behalf. We’re all ambassadors and your success is the success for us all.
The following divisions are a reflection of our motto: “Be the content you wish to see.”
((See if you can figure out all the SciFi movie/show images 😉 ))
THE ANOIKIS DIVISION
Manager: Tamayo
General Information
As of 24 March 2021, I am pleased to report that the division is very active and operationally sound.
The Anoikis Division has a great core group of excellent and enthusiastic pilots. Many of which contribute to the success of the division, whether it be through donations, hauling, organizing events and activities, advice, and intel.
ENGINEERING
Managers: A Dead Parrot and Sky Diamond
Your Engineering Division (also known as the friendliest IT department on the planet [admittedly a low bar]) continues to function in the background quietly supporting all of our in-house IT needs including Corporate Buyback, our Member Management Application, the 911 service, the Eve Scout Rescue division, Thera Scanning, Allison in all of her forms, and generally trying to keep Xalyar from pinging people too often in Discord.
The division is run by myself, A Dead Parrot, and Sky Diamond.
Most recently, we created the tracking feature in Allison for the Katia Sae Anniversary Event. As a reminder, if you participated in that event and would like to download a record of all the systems you visited and when, you can do that here.
Since the last State of the Signal report we released a new application aimed at helping inexperienced 911 operators as they learn the ropes. The application was the brainchild of Jehan Dante and is an interactive flow-chart application that guides the proper handling of a 911 call to our rescue service.
And… Sky is always tweaking Allison on Discord with new and useful capabilities, and some just for fun. In case you don’t know, you can issue requests to Allison (note I used the word requests, and not commands) by starting your request with the exclamation point. So next time you are on our Discord with no one to talk to, try some of these commands out:
!info Astero !coffee (or !tea) !roles !wiki !time !credo or just try !dii
Volunteers? We are still looking to complete an application to support the Signal Cartel Academy’s (SCA) offer and acceptance program for live instruction. This is envisioned as a single location where members can request a live class on an Eve topic they would like to learn about, or advertise a class they are willing to teach and other members can sign up. The program would automate and organize the current system taking place manually in the forums now. The back-end REST API for this is already written and we would welcome any volunteers who feel they might have the time to help produce the front-end for the ever-helpful SCA.
(I would also like to mention that I have not forgotten about you Sir Fiddle Sticks )
Finally, if you ever have questions or suggestions about our projects, or you just think of something funny that Allison should be saying, and would like to see it become a part of her programming, look us up in the #developers channel on Discord. Don’t be shy. Remember, we are the friendliest IT department on the planet!
EVE SCOUT RESCUE
Manager: Igaze Asst. Managers: Captain Crinkle and Xalyar
Over the last seven months, since the last SotS, the ESR program has shown its resilience. While there has been some fall off in participation we’ve still maintained strong numbers (rescues and caches) due the dedication of the team and the strength of the processes they’ve developed.
The ESR Coordinator Team is relatively the same with one change as Triffton Ambraelle has won EVE so we brought the incredibly capable Tekufah in to fill the spot. The current team consists of Xalyar, Sydney Selket, Dagmar Maulerant, miruxa, Catbriar Chelien, Angel Lafisques, Captain Crinkle, Ace Rimmer Midumulf, and Tekufah.
The 911 program is now at 26 operators, down from 36 seven months ago but is still handling a substantial number of calls. In the period from July 1st, 2020 until March 26th, 2021 there were 1007 successful rescues, 780 from rescue caches, and 227 from SAR. One of our big successes this past year has been the addition of filaments to our caches as fully 60% of our cache rescues now use filaments.
Our cache coverage has varied a bit over the last number of months ranging from a low of 86.7% coverage to a high of 96.8%. We’re currently at 92.9% coverage and trending up.
Our stats since we started recording them four years ago are:
RESCUES: 2418 (ESRC: 1598, SAR: 820) (As of March 26th, 2021)
Medals of Note since the last State of the Signal
Master Dispatchers (over 100 pilots aided) – Xavec, Tekufah, Captain Crinkle, Vanessa Pacht Feng, Reynauld Lachapelle, Timea Aldeland, Sydney Selket
Insane Cacher (5000 sows/tends) – Aldar Roanaok, Troubled Watters
Crinkle Crown (10000 sows/tends) – Renek Dallocort and Tamayo
SAR Gold ( 50 rescues) – Tekufah, Catbriar Chelien
Beacon of Anoikis ( 100 rescues) – Xalyar, Captain Crinkle
And as always a huge thanks to A Dead Parrot and Allison. They are the linchpin to this division. Allison’s continued growth is incredibly important to the success of ESR!
FLEET OPS DIVISION
Managers: Katherine Skysong and Xavec
Since the last State of the Signal, there has been a change of management in the Fleet Operations Division (FOD). The FOD is now co-led by Katherine Skysong and Xavec. The focus of the FOD is to support Signaleers who wish to undertake [credo compliant] fleet flying, organizing their own fleets within Signal Cartel. We both want to emphasize that FOD is here to both offer fleets as well as sponsoring fleets. We did not corner the market on FCs and fleet ideas!
Such help can come in the form of:
Hulls and fits for doctrine fleets
SRP for doctrine fleets
Advice & Troubleshooting
Event promotion
Fleet ideas
Expertise eg FCs
Skill plans and skillbooks as usual
Education alongside the SCA
Asking ALLISON nicely to find the right wormhole for your fleet type
Current SC Doctrines include:
A-BC: Armor Battle Cruiser – for running combat sites in wormholes.
S-BC: Shield Battle Cruiser – not taken out for a spin in over 18 months.
Hugs: Funs ways to die lobbing fireworks at folk in all kinds of situations.
Abyssal: We have a few abyssal doctrine fits and can facilitate entry level mini fleets.
Current Financials:
Roughly 10B ISK in operating capital.
Roughly 10 each of the various A-BC and S-BC ships, mainly Alpha fit, some Omega (T2) fit.
SRP for doctrine fleets sponsored by FOD.
You have a fleet idea, it falls within a supported doctrine, ask and we can sponsor so you can have more pilots.
For fighting/logi ships that we can loan – Destroyers, Cruisers, Battle Cruisers, Logi: Harbinger, Hurricane, Brutix, Augoror, Caracal, Corax, Drake, Ferox, Moa, Osprey, a handful of others.
We have a few ideas for fleets coming up which include challenges and competitions as well as good old fashioned kabooming wormhole rats.
When Xavec finally starts his new job properly there will be some SCA sessions on Wormholes in general, fleet flying, how to fly logistics (“logi”) FC’ing, and much more.
We are also keen to help and advise any capsuleers who wish to undertake other forms of PvE fleet flying with other groups such as Vulfpeck.
Please feel free to ping @Fod-Admin or Xavec/Katherine personally with your questions or suggestions. We will answer when able and are only too happy to help. We look forward to seeing you in the #fod-general discord channel.
SIGNAL CARTEL ACADEMY
Division Manager: Xalyar Admin Team: Dagmar Maulerant and Sloopy Noopers
I would like to welcome you all to the Signal Cartel Academy section of this year’s State Of the Signal. This is the second I have had to write since the SCA became a thing following the announcement of its creation on the 23rd of November Y121 (2019), and while a lot of things have changed since then, a lot have luckily stayed the same.
The will to share knowledge within the Corporation, and to help each other learn the game, has been one of those immutated things we still carry with us within the ranks of Signal Cartel and of the SCA. It is good to see that this driving force has not faltered.
Compared to last year, I will not come to you with hard numbers.
Our weekly class average is just hovering around 1 per week, and while we saw a resurgence of offerings during the first six months of the year, mostly due to a lot of availability due to various forms of lockdown we were all subject to, we have now stabilized around what could be called the “SCA holding pattern”.
Sessions covering the basics of the game pop up on the semi-regular, in response to a new influx of people joining, or a particular request. So do SCA session covering all things EvE-Scout Rescue Cache Program and Search and Rescue.
Just recently we came back to the Singularity Test server for some more advanced HAT (Hunter Avoidance Training), and for some deep dives into the amazing world of the “EvE Overview”.
In general, the SCA is functioning on cruise control and quite able to respond to request made on the Forums, directly picked up from DISCORD, or picked up from a direct interaction with someone asking for help.
Like I have highlighted last year, there seems to be a stable need for certain topics to be covered with a somewhat regular schedule, but in general, we have managed to avoid creating a rigid curriculum/class plan and we are still widely enjoying free-flowing and offering knowledge on a per-need basis.
Once again, I will send out my usual call. Both for you all to offer your help, while also not being shy in asking for help when needed.
While the game is still as unforgiving as it always has been (perhaps, even more so), our wealth of knowledge does nothing but grow, and it would surely be a waste to let that go untapped.
“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” – Mister Fred Rogers (well, his mother, really 😉 )
SPLUNKWORKS
Manager: Null Flare
Splunkworks… Where to begin? It’s been what? Over a year from when I was handed (thrown) division head and have to say, I’m enjoying it a lot! Was always interested in Fitting, but never in my early days figured I’d be in one of the servers top corps, fitting for a whole corp.
I don’t have any fancy numbers and stats like my fellow colleagues (that’s not how I work to be honest) but I will say, on average I help out at least once a day (sometimes a lot more) with fits and/or fitting questions on our discord. It’s a massive subject (fitting) and even I get stumped sometimes. But that’s also what makes it fun for me.
On a side note, as everyone knows, always here to help, whether it’s a forum post asking about a Stratios fitting, a discord chat about fitting festival launchers on a stealth bomber (DO IT!) or a fitting 101 class, we are here to help! “`
RECRUITERS
Manager: Aldar Roanaok
A lot has happened since the last State of the Signal: Wanderlust led Quinn Valerii to step down as head of recruitment and dive into EVE with the Anoikis Division. I stepped up to try to fill the role with the great support of Tamayo, Sky Diamond, and Quinn Valerii in their advisory capacity.
Recruitment had a particularly busy year with the pandemic leading many old and new pilots to New Eden. The huge wave of applications kept the team busy checking applicants’ understanding of our playstyle, expectations, and Credo. Our recruiters tend to be online daily, and the shop is running well though we may be considering trying to broaden our time zone coverage.
So again, many thanks to the recruiting team! And thanks to all of those friendly Signal Cartel pilots in our public channels that direct people to our Joining FAQ and online application when the recruiting team is unavailable.
CENTRAL SERVICES
Manager: Asa Kansene
Station Quartermasters
Station
Quartermaster
Thera XII – The Sanctuary Institute of Paleocybernetics
miruxa
Zoohen III – Theology Council Tribunal
Asa Kansene; Billie Idol (QM Helper
Saisio VIII – Moon 4 – Perkone Factory
Asa Kansene
Gelhan V – Moon 10 – DED Logistic Support
SuperTomy
Following earlier trends, the Quartermasters provide free supplies mostly in the form of corporation contracts related mainly to our main activity, which is exploring. Starter exploration frigates, fireworks (or “hugs”), ESRC caches are the items that have usually greater demand. There are also regularly available shuttles, anchoring skill books and station containers.
In case any activity is planned that requires que access to other ships or materials, Quartermasters try to provide those supplies too.
With the change of leadership, Asa Kansene became the central services manager.
Big thanks for the work of Billie Idol that keeps the most important headquarters, Zoohen, working no matter what. Also, miruxa, who has the ability to keep Thera supplied, with the obvious difficulties that it presents.
We’re evaluating what to do with the blog going forward. Content has been difficult to drum up over the last six months or so. Blogs in general had their peak many years ago and have been on the decline for a while now. We may just continue to use it for public Corp oriented announcements.
TripTiks
Mynxee
Stay tuned for upcoming changes to our TripTik service as Mynxee takes over the position of our Historian!
SCRUBS and SCRAMS
Xavec
Continue to go from strength to strength.
Since the last State of the signal figures at the end of June last year SCRUBS has paid out a whopping *REDACTED* to Signaleers for their blueprints I had to check those numbers twice. SCRUBS continues to break-even when taking into account costs of manufacture, haulage, sales, and donations of hulls for FOD.
We have completed 25 SCRAMS contracts – relocating new members from their old homes to their new ones in SC offices. The average number of jumps per contract is 12 jumps and the average value of each shipment is around *REDACTED*.
We have opened a new channel on the Signal Cartel Discord – #SC-Support-Services to help with all queries relating to central services including Quartermasters, SCRUBS, and SCRAMS.
THERA SCANNING
Manager: Johnny Splunk Thera Liaison: Captain Crinkle
Since the formation of Eve-Scout more than five years ago, our Thera scanning service has provided up-to-date details of connections across the cluster. This is done in accordance with our Credo; that is open to all pilots equally regardless of playstyle or affiliation. The service is headed by Johnny Splunk, our head of alliance, and I serve as a liaison for Signal Cartel.
Since the last State of the Signal, we have made a significant change in how our scouts will be paid for their contributions for Thera scanning. As discussed at our most recent fireside chat, contributors will now be paid weekly on Mondays, with these payments made on the basis of activity taken between the previous Monday and Sunday. The formula for these payments has not changed, only their frequency, to ensure our pilots are rewarded for the efforts as quickly as possible.
If you have any questions drop me a line. I’m easily contacted through Discord or Eve mail. Our forums have a dedicated section for Thera scanning which should answer most common questions.
Editor’s Note: Signaleer Lixiana Vor’shan shares with us this week their experience during the recent Journey of Katia Sae Anniversary Event. I really enjoyed this write-up and I hope you do as well.
Two years ago, Katia Sae completed her epic journey to visit every possible solar system. To mark the anniversary of this legendary achievement, Katia challenged the capsuleers of Signal Cartel to travel the length and breadth of New Eden, recording their travels as they went.
Lixiana Vor’shan
The Journey will be forever Katia’s, but this journey is mine.
It began with Solitaire, my beautiful companion for this adventure. I’d watched over her construction, and had only recently seen her finished out in Firewatch red and black. Pacifier-class, swift and agile, she was the perfect choice to carry me across the heavens. With Allison installed and spare towel stowed, I was ready to depart…
Following Katia’s own star charts, I crossed our Caldari homelands with carefree ease. My moment of truth came when I realized that to get into Otsasai I would have to run the gauntlet of capsuleers camping the exit side of the star gate. I’d always avoided these situations before, but this time there was no going around. I opened comms to my fellow Signaleers for advice, and encouragement flowed across the ether to me. Emboldened by the wisdom of my peers, I gave Allison the nod and activated the gate-jump sequence. In a blur I was there, the menacing shapes of hostile ships lighting up my display in a sea of red icons. Remembering my training, I slowed my racing heartbeat and took stock of the situation. There! An avenue of escape – in a single fluid motion I fired up the warp drives and engaged the cloaking device. Solitaire leapt away like lightning, leaving any possible pursuers far behind.
Solitaire at the Katia Sae Monument
Speed and stealth served me well in that escape, but did not come to my rescue in Sotrenzur. I arrived at the ninth planet, and set up my bookmark and image capture of the planet. In doing so, I noticed some Triglavian cruisers and a couple of the big Leshak-class battleships about one hundred klicks away. Interesting to see them here, I thought to myself, but no risk to me sitting cloaked this far away. Hang on, incoming target lock?! That’s impossible! I’m cloaked… wait… no I’m not!!! Beams of ruby light sizzle across my vision, my brave Solitaire coming apart and with it my quest lies in ruins. Death and destruction are a heartbeat away… wait… I’m not dead yet? That’s impossible! A quick glance at my instruments reveals my shield is still at full capacity – the Trigs are somehow missing with every shot. Resignation turns to blind panic, I’m punching every system I have: cloak (no good, still locked up); MWD (no good, they’re still blazing away at me); Allison (she reminds me that I’m a Rocket Man, but that doesn’t help either). Or does it? In a glorious moment of golden revelation I realize my warp drive is still online! “GO!!!” I screamed, a split second later Solitaire answered with a howl of her own as the drive kicked in and we roared our way to safety.
Fallen Capsuller Memorial – Credit: Sensa Skyward
Many, many jumps were to follow, step by step, system by system. Not to say that I didn’t take the occasional detour, such as making a trip to the Fallen Capsuleer Memorial in Molea to help a friend of a fellow Signaleer. I’d never seen it before, but the scale of it was breathtaking, not just the memorial itself, but the sheer number of tributes anchored there too. I read some of the messages as we drifted past, from groups and individuals, some long and some short, some funny and some utterly heartbreaking. All of them poignant reminders of those we have lost, but not forgotten.
A different diversion came late in my journey, when word filtered across the GalNet that a route had been mapped to the wormhole containing the planet Eyjafjallajökull (an important but elusive waypoint on Katia’s challenge). What’s more, the K-Space entry point was only 11 jumps away! I asked Allison to purge our current route and recalculate for our new target. My nerves mounted the closer we got, passing through systems showing signs of recent rapacious activity. After so long in Empire space, the silence of Anoikis was ominous as I imagined cloaked hunters closing in on all sides, ready to kill. As I orbited the burning cinder of the volcanic planet, I was sure the predators could have tracked me by the sound of my heartbeat alone! Thank Bob, today was not my day to die, and before long I was back carving my way towards Hahyil, the one thousand, eight hundred and eightieth star to light my path.
Eyjafjallajökull – Credit: Aldar Roanaok
My list was complete and my logs full. But the journey was not quite complete. Saisio, start point and home system of Katia Sae herself, was calling. After a month of wandering, weary and weather beaten but unbowed and unbroken, Solitaire returned to the light of Katia’s star. My last command on that voyage was perhaps the most simple, yet certainly the most heartfelt: “Home”.
Editor’s Note: Signaleer Mona Liena shares their story this week on a recent visit to the Molea Cemetery. It’s an experience that humbles even the most hardened Capsuleers. I really appreciate the story and hope you will as well. For those that have gone before us… o7
Signal Cartel is not an alt warehouse, so in order to graduate to a full member, one is expected to write an application which shows how you’re engaged in exploration and the corporation. As I started summing up how I took part in corp life in my second month, one event stood above the rest: My first visit to Molea.
Credit: Gillian Venari
One afternoon as I was exploring Triglavian space in order to farm neutral standings, a fellow Signal Cartel member called for a hugs fleet in chat. The goal was to fly a ship fitted with a festival launcher in order to try and cheer up a fellow pilot. Often I have a hard time changing my plans, but ever since joining Signal Cartel I’ve been trying to live more in the moment. Unfortunately, having just used a filament to get into Trig space, I had a fifteen minute timer before I could use an exit filament. Then I’d still need to find my way from a random system to a ship with a festival launcher and actually get to the target system.
Credit: Sensa Skyward
Even if the event sounded like a great experience, I wouldn’t make it in time. Or could I if I really tried? I realized that since I had a clean clone I could take the pod express to Zoohen, grab a free T1 exploration frigate from our Corp contracts, some festive gear provided by our Quartermasters, and use the Gatecamp Check to plan the route to have a fighting chance to make it there in one piece and on time.
Credit: Sensa Skyward
I managed to reach Molea in time and I waited for our hugs target in space along with a fellow Signaleer. I had never been in the system, so I had no idea what to expect. I only knew that I was there to try and cheer up a person who had lost someone dear to them in real life. When our target arrived in system, we fleet warped to greet them – The Capsuleer Cemetery. My first reaction: It’s HUGE. Then I realized it’s made out of mostly hundreds of different containers. As we bombarded our target with hugs (fireworks), I read through some of the messages on the containers. There were plenty of funny or random messages, but there were also a ton of messages dedicated to real life people who were dear to the capsuleers who had anchored the containers.
Credit: Sensa Skyward
Reading all those messages made me feel connected to people I had never met in real life, and I grasped why our fellow member wanted to bring our target here. Being there, trying to cheer our target up in that location, felt like one of those once in the lifetime experiences, and I was glad to take part in it.
Around a week later, I noticed a new corp mail. We get them quite often, as it’s the policy of the Corporation to commend our active members for their efforts including e.g. Thera scanning and wormhole rescue team. This time around, I noticed the mail was about the event I had attended myself. The Signaleer member who called for the hugs fleet had let our leadership know what had happened. All the pilots who answered the call for the hugs fleet and managed to make it to Molea received a medal that said “For actions exemplifying our ideals of friendship.”
