Welcome everyone to the 6th article of the Biscuit Bugle, this week we’ll be talking about my recent trip to the Formidine Rift, an interview I was able to do with a reporter for Operation Sirius Business, and the messages that Commanders have been getting from Palin when they dock at Obsidian Orbital, as well as a tip about slingshotting around planets that I found out.

From Fear With Love

Earlier this week I set a course for the Formidine Rift, a mysterious sector of space between the outer bands of the Milky Way 7,000 ly from humanised space, that is supposedly haunted as well as inhabited by unknown, but evil beings. The Formidine Rift has many mysteries, but one of the mysteries of the Rift has been solved though, the mystery of a string of bases in the Formidine Rift, Conflux, and Hawking’s Gap that had strange recordings from crewmembers aboard vessels of the Dynasty Project, an operation that took place between 3260s and the early 3270s where ships were sent to the Formidine Rift, Conflux, and Hawking’s Gap to search for and drop beacons around and Earth-Like and Terraformable planets, for future reference in case of an emergency where the human race was pushed out of the bubble.

My trip to the Formidine Rift started in Merope at Alcazar’s Hope where I set out in my trusty Diamondback Explorer, nicknamed the Frostback. After I set out, successfully this time, my first stop along my route was the California Nebula, to stop by and see the Alliance Base setup in the nearby nebula, roughly 600ly from Merope. The sight from the orange-red nebula was great, but compared to the other sights along my route it was pretty mundane. The short hop to the California Nebula went well, and I arrived at the planetary base there for a short break to enjoy the view and to get a snack at the base’s food court before leaving off to the North American Nebula, a beautiful white-red nebula 2,000 ly from the California Nebula. After the hour and a half trip towards the North American Nebula I found a strange sight at a planet I stopped at, a crashed Nav Beacon, strange as it was on a planet thousands of lightyears from the nearest humanised system. After scanning the beacon and setting back off, I had two destinations, the Sadr Region, and the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, which would become the halfway checkpoint along my route. After the, I believe was 1-2k ly trip or so from the North American Nebula to the the two nebulae I jumped into a system and was greeted by a White Giant, I believe 1000 ls away, a pleasant surprise among the sea of normal stars, and was in Sadr if I remember correctly.

After arriving at the halfway checkpoint, an asteroid base in the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula I decided to turn in my exploration data I had collected so far, and talk back home across the Canonn Comms Network, and was recommended to visit the Bubble Nebula to check out next. I decided to plot a course to the Bubble Nebula, though it was a few thousand lightyears out of the way. The small detour, and the first of many along my journey. There was a rather interesting encounter I had along my way to the nebula, a sidewinder had decided to try to interdict me in the middle of deep space, a thousand lightyears away from the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, and halfway to the Bubble Nebula, saying that I had a bounty on my head. The only bounty I have is a small 200 Credit bounty for a system in the middle of the bubble, and I remembered a Sidewinder had also tried interdicting me when I was 2 jumps into my journey. Besides that strange following and finding the wreck of an Imperial Exploration Vessel I had an uneventful trip to the Bubble Nebula. I decided to land on a light purple ice moon orbiting a dark blue ringed gas giant, which the short drive would soon turn into an hour’s expedition to find a Water Geyser. Once landing there I had a beautiful photo opportunity as the gas giant was setting on the horizon with the cyan nebula filling up the night sky, making it appear bright on the surface when it was actually night. After an hour’s hunt that ended up empty handed I set back off, my next destination, the Heart and Soul Nebula, the gateway into the Formidine Rift. Along my next leg of the journey I only stopped at one more planet, a bright blue ice planet with glowing ice. I had stopped at the planet as it was strangely rich in the material Arsenic, a material I needed desperately for FSD injections, an emergency I was preparing for if I got stuck in the Formidine Rift. Upon landing and searching the surface, I had stumbled on 3 crashed Condors, the Federation’s SLF. I had decided to save the crashed crewmembers I found and load them upon the Frostback for transport to the station located in the Heart Nebula.

Sorry for the very boring list of events so far, but this is where it gets a tad more interesting. Upon arriving at the Heart and Soul Nebulae I docked at the Farsight Expedition Base in the Heart Nebula I docked and gave the Escape Pods that housed the Condor’s crew to the base’s medical clinic. I went back into the Frostback’s bedroom and took a small nap before reviewing the Universal Cartographic’s Star and Luminosity Classification Guide, and heading to the middle between the Heart and Soul Nebula, and stepping past the gateway into the Rift, my destinations being the Abandoned bases left by the Dynasty Project and the Zurara. All three bases rather easily, and after scanning the transmitters the site will be marked in the Nav panel for future reference, but I had an uneasy feeling when I was driving towards the second base, after mistakenly parking 30km or so away from it and driving there instead, thinking it was closer. I had the feeling that I was being watched by something, a feeling I have never felt before, and it was a feeling I only felt when I was on the planet heading to the Beta base. I quickly scanned the transmitters and received the base’s logs and very quickly got back into my ship and flew away, not wanting to stay on the planet as my uneasiness was growing quickly. I jumped out of the system and to the other bases, there were relatively no problems except for the SRV turret control camera malfunctioning often. After all the bases I started to head out towards the Zurara, the second most difficult leg of the journey so far as the stars thinned quickly, leaving very little room to go, and the nearest systems being 30 ly away. The trip was relatively a straight line there, passing by a decent amount of what appears to be some of the planets the Dynasty Project was looking for. Upon arriving at the Zurara and recording the logs of the abandoned ship a system in the distance caught my eye, and I’m deciding to head to it now. I believe the nickname the employees at the Expedition Base gave it was the “Explorer’s End” or something like that. Either way, this new detour will add a good 20k ly to my journey.

Sorry for rambling on, and the story most likely not being that interesting. In summary, if you plan to take a trip to the Rift, I highly recommend checking out the Bubble Nebula, as well as the North American Nebula on the way, the sights there you won’t regret.

An Interview with An Operation Sirius Business Reporter

Earlier this week before I set out on my exploration journey, I got in contact with CMDR Hikaru, a reporter and media liaison for Operation Sirius Business, and he agreed to partake in an interview. Below are the transcripts.

Q You stated that Sirius Business wouldn’t Lockdown or UA bomb any known permit giving systems, if there were to be another group trying to close Qwent and Palin off completely, would you offer to defend these systems after the rest of Sirius Corp is gone?

A Professor Palin is well known throughout the galaxy for his expertise in Thargoid technology. Any attempt at isolating him would certainly upset a lot of parties, us among them. The honest truth is that forcing anyone who wants to get in contact with Marcus Qwent or Professor Palin to work through Procyon makes that system almost bullet proof – it will take a sirius, concerted effort with no push back at all to take Sirius Corp out of control of the Procyon system.

Q When you proposed Operation Sirius Business, how successful did you think it was originally going to be?

A Salomé had started the fire, we just stoked the flames. Though we always knew the operation would be a success, the sheer number of groups and commanders taking part is staggering. While we always knew a large number of Commanders would join us in this attack, we did assume the resistance from Sirius Corp’s Head Office would be much higher. They seem to be finding allies hard to come by. Sirius Gov’s support of this attack, and the battle for control that is waging within Sirius Corp may have something to do with this.

Q How much negativity do you, and the rest of the Operation get, and how do you guys deal with it?

A Our operatives face Sirius Corp and their supporters every day in combat. So far they had much success dealing with them. The civilian response throughout the galaxy has been mostly positive. There have only been a handful of Sirius contractors voicing their opposition and few of them are actually doing anything to oppose the operation.

Q Do you guys have any other ideas for objectives for when Operation Sirius Business concludes?

A Yes. The list of targets is long, the number of Commanders willing to attack is high. We will bring ‘The Club’ to its knees – destroying Sirius Corp is only the first step towards that goal.

Along with the interview, he had stated that there are currently 28 supposed factions partaking in the Operation.

Palin’s Request

Very late last week Commanders have reported Professor Palin coming to them with a request when they docked at Obsidian Orbital in the Maia System. Palin is currently looking for Thargoid samples, and is paying anyone who takes their time to open up the Unknown Structures are retrieve these samples highly, about 1-2 million credits for 2-3 tons. We can only suspect that Palin is wanting to study these samples as they are very recent discoveries, and find out anything he can about them. I’ll keep a close eye on Palin and report every week that I can with news on his findings or advancements towards understanding the Thargoids.

Ads and Recruitment The Biscuit Bugle

I will be doing the interesting locations segment weekly now, and I am requesting that if any Commanders want to help contribute to the Bugle, I’ll be taking submissions each week and posting a few locations that I’d recommend Commanders to visit each week. If you would like to submit a location, message me with the location, your CMDR name, a short description, and if you would like a screenshot of the location’s main feature.

Interesting Places to Visit

Reader Submitted – Skardee 1 (Submitted by CMDR SentryBlitz) – Enjoy a toasty up close view of a sun from only 2 light seconds away! Bring a couple heat sinks through because your ship and it’s exquisite cow leather seats will likely melt. This planet is highly dangerous to land on, and I’d advise anyone

Bubble Sector LX-T B3-1 10 A – This is the planet that I drove on in the Bubble Nebula. It has a really amazing view and the low gravity makes it very fun to drive on. I recommend not just checking out this system, but checking out the Bubble Nebula in general, as it’s probably one of the most beautiful sights to see in the galaxy.

North American Sector EH-K A9-1 A 1 A – Another planet that was a lot of fun to drive on, and this planet also housed the Crashed Nav Beacon. The view is very nice from here, and the nebula shows up very brightly in the sky as well.

I’m sorry about the long, boring story about my trip to the Rift, I had thought it would be a good idea to take a trip and report back with my findings as there are many new recruits into the Pilot’s Federation and I’d thought that they’d enjoy hearing about the mysterious sector of space. I tried to not go into too much detail, but the story still ended up taking a large section of the article. Not to fear though, I will get back to regular reports next week! Stay tuned for next week’s edition of the Biscuit Bugle!

If anyone has any feedback about the Bugle, any suggestions for sections or events to report on, I would love to hear it. Thank you to all of my weekly readers for supporting and taking the time to read my articles at the end of each week.

Written by: CMDR Science0, 27/7/3303