Public:Katia79 Polaris
Polaris The Magical Mystery Tour
“The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away.” – "Magical Mystery Tour", The Beatles
20.03.yc121 (2019) Saisio System < Okomon Constellation < The Forge Region
OOC (Out of Character): At the moment, I’m unable to explain how Katia came to be in the Polaris system lorewise from an in character perspective. If that changes in the future, then I may come back and write about the experience through her eyes. For now, I wanted to go ahead and share what a great time I had touring the system with CCP Falcon and some pictures I took along the way.
DISCLAIMER: I’m no Mark726 of Eve Travel. His journal is far more elegant than mine and be sure to check out his latest entry about the Memorial! Fantastic write-up and much appreciated, never thought I’d be the subject of one of his journal entries. I’ve always said he’s the National Geographic of New Eden and I’m more along the lines of the Griswold family vacation. 😉 Which also means I’m no Razorien when it comes to astrophotography. My Gallery has always been more about quantity rather than quality. Be sure to check out his awesome images from the Great Fleet, which is when Signal Cartel and I visited my last system, Redoubt, and celebrated. In both cases journaling and picture taking were more about documenting my journey rather than producing quality work. So, if you’re looking for quality, I’ll always point to Mark726 and Razorien. 😉
It was Wednesday, March 20th, and it was time for the Magical Mystery Tour to begin from my home station and our new Signal Cartel office of Perkone Factory, Moon 4, Saisio VIII. CCP Falcon was busy getting things in order as I patiently waited in hangar, looking over Voyager, my trusted Astero that was the ship that helped me to complete the Empire portion of my journey. Voyager was sporting my “One Eden” skin for that’s how I see New Eden, as one. To me, the stars are open for all to see. There are no boundaries, empires, or megacorps, there’s only the cluster and the journey to see it all.
Jumping on voice comms with Falcon, it wasn’t long before my trip began. One moment, I was in station, the next I was warping in space in the middle of Polaris. The surrounding star fields and nebula background were familiar, yet different, like Caroline’s Star which was much bigger in the sky. I had to pause and take it all in, almost forgetting to take some pictures, before finally accepting the invite to fleet up and warp to Falcon. Now truth be told, I suspected there would be a welcoming fleet of a few devs and GM’s, maybe a half dozen or so, and I wasn’t disappointed. What did surprise me was how many there were, which was around 30 or so. Lots of welcomes, salutes, congratulations were had and even a few who quoted Carl Sagan (GM IceCream) as well as some saying they were fans of mine who had been following me for some time. Of course, I’m just fanning out see all the names in local and flabbergasted a few of them were fanning out over me. Just seemed so backwards. 😊
This lasted for a few moments then I believe it was CCP Explorer that said “Astero on dscan, then GM Stardust spoke up and said “Astero is primary”, and lastly CCP Sledgehammer that said “Overheat your love!” and the fireworks began. LOL, I dare say their fireworks outdid our signature Signal Cartel Hugs fleet. It was close, as they also blotted out my ship in the glow, so I’ll just say it’s a toss-up. 😉 This carried on for a little while, but it was time for them to get back to more important things like getting ready for the upcoming Evesterdam, so we said our goodbyes, at least I think I did, I was still somewhat in shock, I don’t think I said nearly enough to thank all of them for their hard work and dedication to create the immersive SciFi universe of New Eden that we all know and love.
Next up was the tour as Falcon lead me around the system, planet by planet, station by station, structures, and finally the sun. It was funny, he was telling me that before I came to visit, he had to go around the system and clean house and update some “names” of “things” as they were rather “creative”. LOL. I always hate having to clean house before company comes over, but I get it and as an IT professional myself, former developer, I know in test systems I’ve worked on in the past I’ve also had some “creative” names for some “things”. So, I can only imagine.
For those not familiar, Polaris is one of the 230 player unreachable systems out near Jove space and it is considered the home and headquarters for CCP in game. Those systems are not connected to New Eden or to each other in anyway, no gates, no wormholes. There once were gates that connected them to each other (but not New Eden), but they went “offline” or were destroyed when Caroline’s Star exploded. I believe that knowledge is OOC. The systems are used by CCP Dev’s and GM’s for testing. During patch deployments to the server when you see it coming back online after down time, you may have noticed the player count say VIP and a number showing there are folks in game. That’s the Dev’s in the test systems (Jove Space and Polaris) checking things out first before opening up the server to the rest of us. Lorewise, Falcon didn’t know if the stations and structures were actually in the system or not or what state anything would be in, so again, this is all out of character.
So, what is there? According to the in-game map’s description Polaris is “This is not the system you are looking for”. It’s in Region UUA-F4, constellation 9RW5-Z. There are 9 planets, 6 asteroid belts, stations located at the first 4 planets, and structures around planets 6, 7, and 8 as follows: Planet VI “Game Master Health Spa”, Planet VII “Team Security Clubhouse”, and Planet VIII “Game Masters Biomass Processing Facility”. I can only imagine what they were named before. 😊
Falcon took me to each of the planets, stations, and structures and I’ve included my favorite images here. I also managed to drop one of our, Signal Cartel’s, EvE Scout Rescue Caches at planet V. 😉 It contained an assortment of probes, launcher, fireworks, and a Fedo. (I think, lol, this getting old and forgetful is annoying.) Then before docking up, we journeyed to gaze upon the sun of Polaris. With some magical mystery dust, Falcon managed to get me even closer than what would be normal for a typical warp in. Just an amazing view and amazing time.
But all good things must come to an end and so it was for me as I was instructed to dock up, sternly warned to not set a clone 😉 and I was teleported back to my home station with all modules intact and in functioning order. All in all, it was good to be back home, but I’ll never forget my visit to Polaris with CCP Falcon, the Dev’s, and the GM’s. Seeing that distant star up close and personal will forever be the highlight of my 9 year long journey.
I’m curious to see if CCP does somehow explain the visit in lore. They opened the door to that possibility in the Scope ticker when the Sisters of Eve confirmed my journey to every known system and “beyond”. I’m not concerned either way, it would be great from a roleplayer’s perspective, but at the same time I understand as well. How would it even be possible? How’d I get there? What was really there? How’d I get back? I guess that’s the mystery part of the tour. 😉
Coming up, I plan to start posting about the behind the scenes effort that took place to help me secure the last 600 wormhole systems with the help of my corp, Signal Cartel, without them even knowing what it all was really about. Then I’ll follow that with my thank you post(s) and what’s next.
In the words of Caroline Grace from Twitter, the discover of Caroline’s Star, “Big things have small beginnings!” and this was certainly one of those.
Fly Clever!
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Polaris IV, Caroline’s Star
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Polaris I
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Polaris VI, Game Master Health Spa
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Polaris VII, Team Security Clubhouse
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Polaris VIII, Game Masters Biomass Processing Facility
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Polaris V ESRC
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Polaris III
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Polaris
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Polaris VII
Comments
"Hmm. I think I might have read some in-game reasoning behind your trip to Polaris. But I guess that might be only for Signal Cartel to know about for now. 🙂
Amazing stuff. You are truly one-of-a-kind in New Eden! I am proud to call you a corpmate." - Thrice Hapus
"What awesome pictures and what an awesome experience. Many hugs to CCP for making this happen for you…we are ridiculously proud of you! I am so happy to see all the love you are getting from the community and CCP for your quest. Well earned, well deserved!" - Mynxee
"An excellent writeup and I’m still jealous!!! I’m glad you got to experience this, though; it’s a rare and well-deserved honor!" - Mark726
"Really cool read 🙂 I wonder how they could include “going beyond” into the lore? Sounds like a cool idea either way." - Julien Gray
"Cool read! I heard about this on a certain discord server from katia 🙂" - Hazen
