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Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.08.09 00:29:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Heska Saarde on 09/08/2008 00:36:46
The accident of my birth to a particular outcast. Years of training, hiding everything that was truly important to me, everything that was me. Tonight, at last, I walked the halls of the Covenant. Tonight has been the summit of my life so far. I see still greater peaks soaring ahead.
It took weeks to get myself transferred to a Republic Security outpost in Amarr space, nearer the homelands. Even after a brief sojourn there, the old Empire still haunts me like a bad dream, or like the memory of a drug-induced hallucination. Suddenly I found myself among a people, a whole civilisation, that is a distorted reflection of my culture, a culture I have lived out entirely inside my head these long years. I begin to sense, no doubt dully, how much we share with the Amarr.
Finally I made the contact I needed. Tonight I slipped out of the Republic station and set course for Delve. I have never felt so alive as when I crossed the Empire's border into nulsec. With each jump nearer my destination, I could imagine more keenly the disappointment of failing to make it. But it was surprisingly easy. The old gods smiled on me.
There are practical difficulties, as I anticipated there would be. I shall have to live off the land, as it were, for a while, and make do with what I can scrounge. Local space can be dangerous. As I butchered an Ammatar detachment tonight, I found myself keeping a careful eye on the local channel.
But what of it. It all pales beside the glory and the honour of being among my people at last. There was a sacrifice tonight. I hope I kept my composure as the slave was brought to the altar, for the creature was disfigured almost beyond recognition as a human, and the mewling through what passed for its mouth was difficult at first to savour. I have since learned the slave was a clone of a man first sacrificed over three hundred years ago. That man died so well that the Covenant have done him the honour of rebirth. Of course, significant deterioration of the genetic code has set in by now. But still we honour him.
Father, wherever you are, the Tables of the Covenant will be remade.
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Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.08.09 09:45:00 -
[2]
Today Amarr peons dared defile one of our chapels. It was my pleasure to despatch them. There was a bloodsport arena in the same deadspace complex. The operators were playing an old tune on the local civilian frequencies; "We Fight Proud For The Holder". I smiled at that. I hope they enjoyed the fireworks.
One of the Amarr ships had one of our logs in its hold. No doubt the Amarr had captured the log from one of our ships in an earlier battle. A tech-slave checked the Amarr had not broken the log's encryption. One of our doctors told me these tech-slaves cannot lie, after what has been done to them.
It was a beautiful old chapel, hiding amid the tumbling rocks of a deadspace pocket. I will return there soon. |
Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.08.10 22:46:00 -
[3]
10.8.110
If CONCORD keeps sending me enough supplies, I may yet prosper in this unforgiving place. Oh, not that I have turned traitor, dear reader. The supplies came from the wrecks of DED frigates.
Still, there are some things money cannot buy out in Delve, so I made a return trip to the Empire today. I noticed pilots of Cruoris Seraphim, Naqam and the Guristas Associates gathered in one system en route. I was briefly tempted to announce myself, but I reasoned it would not be wise to draw too much attention to myself from much more powerful pilots on an operation, with no reason to trust me. May the old gods favour their endeavours, whatever they were.
I don't care if the pods are supposed to suppress neurophysiological reactions; my heart raced when my first jump on the way home back from empire dropped me among five pod-piloted ships, spread around the gate. I was able to warp away before they could lock me. Fortunate, as I had a hold full of blueprints. The rest of the trip was uneventful.
Setting myself up in what passes for regular pod-pilot work has left little time for my other major purpose in coming out here - my research into the Tables. I have little more to go on than my father's ramblings after his release, by which time he was a broken man. Soon I must write up what little I do know. It would be a useful precaution against memory loss if I ever wake up in a clone... |
Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.08.10 22:47:00 -
[4]
[space reserved]
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Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.08.16 20:51:00 -
[5]
Edited by: Heska Saarde on 16/08/2008 20:56:02
16.8.110... the previous, continued
I suppose Biron Saarde was a shadow of the man he had been when we finally met, on the rock habitat he called home in a backwater system in Molden Heath. I used my first full two weeks of leave of absence from the Military School to visit him. His ramblings, in that trash-strewn room inside a mined-out rock, went far beyond anything he had ever published. He hinted at a common origin of blood and sacrifice cults on the four homeworlds - an ancient race, now departed from the Cluster, maybe human or maybe not. Old, cruel gods who came down from the sky and taught men to revel in ecstatic terror.
He had no real evidence; just one artefact, from his final expedition. An engraving taken from an ancient complex on a dead world in a nameless system out in the Great Wildlands. A table in a long-vanished language and script. He'd run the symbols through a cheap deciphering program, all he could afford, and got nowhere. He said his theory came to him in a dream. He got the machine to cross-reference patterns in the symbols with astrographic coordinates. He theorised the table was a list of places, the symbols the coordinates. The machine identified a pattern in the entries correlating with the stellar locations of Pator, Amarr, and a handful of other known stars. But most of the entries still made no sense, and the table was clearly incomplete.
The implications were clear. Who knew what secrets lay undiscovered at the other sites listed on the Table? To crack the code and travel to these long-forgotten places could be to look into the faces of the gods themselves. And seize from their dead hands whatever power and technology they had possessed.
Now that I am at last among the Covenant, I have the resources to pursue my father's research. I know he would be proud. Of course I could not allow him to crawl from his rock and advertise my paternity; I would have been kicked out of the Military School, at the very least. So my first visit to my father was the last visit he ever received.
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Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.08.17 14:51:00 -
[6]
[OOC: Mods - this seems to have turned more into a blog than a discussion - may be more appropriate to move it to the Library]
Date: 17.8.110
My strangest mission yet - destruction of a laboratory infected with mutated creatures. Bizarrely, some animal-rights extremists arrived to try and stop me. I claim no credit for overcoming them; I could have dealt with them while sill a cadet in my Breacher. To be so far from empire in such underpowered craft was naive of them. Almost as naive as I am, perhaps.
I took one of them prisoner - a young Intaki male, spitting defiance over the com. His nerve cracked when we dropped out of warp at the Covenant base rather than the stargate back to empire. He broke down entirely as he was led into the blooding chamber. I know something of his people's belief in reincarnation. Perhaps he believed our ceremonies would keep his soul trapped in the walls of our temple. Certainly, he will take a long time to die.
I managed to secure access to one of the deeper vaults of the Covenant archives, just for a few hours. Such treasures of ancient learning... I barely had time to scratch the surface. Sadly my researches have kept me from space more than I would prefer. But my orthodox training as a pilot continues, alongside my other studies. I must ensure I am ready to brave the dangers of space wherever the Tables may lead me, once I have learned to read them. |
Ravin Abai
Amarr
Cruoris Seraphim
Exalted.
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Posted - 2008.08.17 15:36:00 -
[7]
That's an interesting theory you've got.
We've made a note of your presence, perhaps we'll speak in the future.
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Mebrithiel Ju'wien
Veto.
Veto Corp
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Posted - 2008.08.17 20:59:00 -
[8]
Ah! Well heyla there hunny.
Welcome to Delve! It's lovely here really.
Personal Library |
Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.08.17 21:19:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Heska Saarde on 17/08/2008 21:19:58
To Mr Abai:
Perhaps.
I am contactable via channel The Chapel. Or by standard evemail.
I look forward to making your acquaintance. No offence, but... from a distance would be fine, for now.
[Saarde knows what the Tables could be worth, and that the Covenant isn't exactly the Interbus.]
To Mebrithiel Ju'wien:
Delicious to meet you, Captain. I would wish you luck in your mission to Delve, but I'm sure it's not needed. |
Ravin Abai
Amarr
Cruoris Seraphim
Exalted.
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Posted - 2008.08.18 04:17:00 -
[10]
 Originally by: Heska Saarde
No offence, but... from a distance would be fine, for now.
Clever girl.
Watch your back, some of us aren't as civil as Mebrithiel and I.
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Heska Saarde
Minmatar
Tables of the Covenant
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Posted - 2008.10.29 00:05:00 -
[11]
I was unavoidably detained, but after all, there is more in heaven and hell than is dreamt of inside a pod...
Still, it's good to get back into space.
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