Lixiana’s Journey

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.

My name is Lixiana Vor’shan – and I am a Signaleer.

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”.

Hugs for a Fellow Capsuleer

Mona Liena

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.”

I love Signal Cartel.

Credit: Sensa Skyward

Journey of Katia Sae Anniversary Event

Henrique Arnolles

March 9th marked the two year anniversary for completing my journey to explore all of New Eden, both known and wormhole space, all done without a single ship loss. Signal Cartel, my New Eden family, played a big part in that towards the end of my trek. To celebrate the occasion this year, I decided to run an event for my fellow Signaleers having no idea if anyone would really be interested in participating or not. The event would be based around recreating portions (or all) of my journey for the known space systems as well as finding the only named planet in wormhole space, Eyjafjallajökull. Points would be earned for each system visited based on difficulty with bonus points awarded for doing systems within regions in the same sequence I had done, taking screenshots, completing a region, and not losing a ship along the way.

Prizes ranged from fitted ships based on what I had flown during my journey, ship skins both common and rare, iskies with bonuses to be the first for reaching a tier, and a chance for some Signal Cartel swag in the form of a few challenge coins that I had left over from the Great Hunt two years ago. The prize offerings came out to over 10 billion isk and that doesn’t even include the skins of which some I have no price for.

Aeterna Noctis

To say I wasn’t prepared for the response is an understatement! You’ll see from the statistics I’m about to show just how well it went over. For a Corp that runs around 400 active members (we do keep our roster clean), I think the results are astounding. Signaleers were asked to enable event tracking via Allison our Signal Cartel co-pilot which is where most of these stats come from. The event ran from February 1st to March 9th and I had five tiers for different prize packages that were handed out.

Aldar Roanaok

We had 102 Signaleers that had Allison enabled for event tracking, of those there were 24 that submitted entries for the event for prizes. Together they had visited over 26,000 unique pilot/system entries, covering 97 regions, 7,141 systems, flying 305 unique ships of 64 different types, and capturing over 11,000 images!!! They covered 100% of known space and even though wormhole space wasn’t entirely part of the event other than trying to find Eyjafjallajökull for big bonus points, they covered 78% of wormhole space. Did they find the only named planet in wormhole space? Yes, multiple times and I think just about everyone that wanted to find it for the bonus points were able to get it.

Hanto Karobi

Now for some event highlights. On day one, February 1st, tiers 1 and 2 were reached by one Signaleer. Remember there was a bonus for being the first to reach a tier. On February 2nd a different Signaleer was the first to reach tier 3 and went on to reach tier 4 on February 3rd, and went on to be the first to reach tier 5 on February 6th. I’ll brag on this particular Signaleer in a bit, but let’s see how the tiers broke out. So, within the first week of the event, all tiers had been reached. I wasn’t sure what to expect, like I had mentioned, I didn’t know if there’d be any interest. Now I was thinking I didn’t make it hard enough, lol. In the end, we had eight Signaleers earn tier 2, four that reached tier 3, eight that reached tier 4, and lastly four that made the final tier 5. (Not the final frontier 😉 )

Kyew Mohc

So I’m going to brag for a moment on one particular Signaleer. Total possible points that could be earned were 20,243. That’s if you maxed out the bonus points, which I felt was asking too much and not many, if any, would go for it. The highest tier, 5, I had set at 5,000 points which seemed difficult, but achievable by the most dedicated and as it turns out with four reaching that tier, it turned out about right. I think I had tiers 1 and 2 too close to each other, as everyone nailed both quickly and easily. Three of the four that reached the highest tier were between 5 and 6 thousand points.

Qifara Raholan

“Speedy”, as I have nicknamed him now, hit over 17,000 points! He visited every system in known space, a fair number of the systems within the regions in the same sequence I had done them, taking a screenshot in a fair number of systems as well, and didn’t lose a single ship!!! He also found and secured the bonus points for Eyjafjallajökull in wormhole space. All of this in 15 days, which has to be a known space, no ship loss, record. Never did I think someone would rise to the challenge to this extent and I’m just blown away and honored to see this Signaleer rise to the occasion. Amazing work, well done!!!

Sparkler Cadelanne

Unrelated to the event, but certainly in the same spirit, we had an end of event celebration and hugs fleet. As part of that, we visited system Motsu on our way to Saisio. Motus is the last system one of our Signaleers needed for his alt character Rhysio Typho to complete their journey of navigating ALL of New Eden, known and wormhole space, all on their own!!! Unfortunately ship losses were suffered along the way, but still an amazing journey, especially with no corp support. A request was submitted to CCP to validate their effort and we’re waiting to hear back, so hopefully that can be validated and confirmed. It all started in the system Cistuvaert  in March of 2015 and finished today, March 14th, 2021! Just amazing to see others take on this journey of exploration. Congratulations to Rhysio and so glad we could share in the celebration of visiting your last system.

Rhysio Typho

Of course, this event would not have been possible without the generous support and contributions made by the following:

  • Signal Cartel, Zelden Aurilen, and indirectly CCP – EVE-Scout and Signal Cartel won the EVE Awards 2020 Best Alliance and we were rewarded with a generous supply of the EVE Partner skins which were the “mystery” skins from the drawings for each tier.
  • Signaleer Igaze for skins, and various ship hulls.
  • Signaleer Sloopy Noopers for the Stratios, Stratios Skin, and various ship hulls.
  • Signaleer Tamayo for “FIRST” isk donations, skins, and selected rare skins.
  • Our Celebration Fleet FC and Scouts:
    • Bernard Lachapelle
    • Captain Crinkle
    • Katherine Skysong
    • Null Flare

Lastly, I wanted to share this highlight, Signaleer Dr Strike produced a video of their journey in the event. This is really awesome to see and mesmerizing to watch. Check it out.

Quotes

Tamayo

“Thank you for this great opportunity to participate in the event!”

“Thank you again for coming up with such a wonderful idea as this contest. I am running around in the brand new Buzzard that you gave me, it fly’s so well!”

“I loved this event because it gave me back the feeling of excitement I had missed for a long while. Felt so weird when I realized that I played this game for so long and never took the time to appreciate the beauty of it.”

“Thank you again for creating this, it was fun and exciting!”

Troubled Watters

“Was great fun and illuminating. The distractions, rigor to hit every planet/system and then general hostilities bubbling everywhere puts your run into a new light.”

“Thank you so much for running this event, it’s been a very special experience taking part.”

Lixiana Vor’shan