I’ve been doing some theorizing from what we know.
CONCORD detected “a series of unusual energy spikes” late last year which led to the discovery of Abyssal space. What caused these spikes? Potentially there are possibly five candidates. It could have been some kind of natural spacetime event, of a type not really seen before but may be connected to the the Dead Storms of Deltole, although this seems unlikely. The others are the Drifters, Rogue Drones, Sansha’s Nation and even the Triglavians themselves. They have all been found in the Abyss and get mentioned in the Semiosis transcripts.
The Triglavians are possibly the least likely culprit; they are adapted to life in the Abyss and have been there for millenia we believe, and fled there to escape enemies from what we now know. They seem to be able to navigate to our space without difficulty and do not appear to use filaments. I don’t think they add up in this respect. Later on they cautiously scouted New Eden and, only when they were sure of the situation did they invade, and this took place after many invasions of their own domain.
Footage has been seen of Sansha forces in the Abyss, although capsuleers have not encountered any so far, and they were there in large numbers, possibly in a region of Abyssal space that we do not, as yet, have access to. They are a good candidate, having a history of co-opting Jovian technology, being active in wormhole space and presumably researching Talocan technologies. I feel the last may be important. The Sansha are either able to create their own wormholes or have access to the hidden wormhole systems, some of which, almost certainly, contain still operational Talocan devices. There are a lot of wandering connections, too many, and that could indicate that Anoikis was much larger than what we see today.
Which really leads to the Drifters, who quite obviously have Jovian technology. They can make their own wormholes and appear wherever they want to be in space. The Drifter wormholes show signs of being controllable, the lifespan of the holes and the number of connections have been shown to vary according to Drifter activity. This also points to hidden systems with operational Talocan devices. Before we really knew about Abyssal space large Drifter fleets kept showing up showing significant damage. The first of these encounters took place in February, YC120, when an ARC Hive fleet met 25 damaged Drifter ships. According to CONCORD, spikes were noticed in late YC119, which would fit nicely. The first attempts to move a large fleet into Abyssal space could well have cause the reported spikes.
The Rogue Drones are another possibility, although they might not be as good a candidate as they first appear to be. They are ever present at the Devil’s Dig site and have a propensity for digging into old technology, as well as significant skill in manipulating gates. As Ashterothi pointed out, they are always on the hunt for resources and have shown interest in Isogen-5 in the past. Filaments turned up in Drone data sites as well, but they are not that creative, its perhaps a limitation with artificial sentients. Over time we have seen them make good use of technology they find, but their original source was Orphyx, and it stole the plans created by human scientists. I can see Rogue Drones following trails into the Abyss made by others much more than being the first to make the trail.
Much has been made of how Oveg Drust entered the Abyss. Although he appears to be a pompous idiot, he is actually a highly skilled DED SARO division operative, tasked with anti-Drifter operations. It makes a lot of sense that he simply tracked and followed a Drifter fleet into the Abyss and the recovered ship was one that the Drifters had managed to damage, perhaps disabling, or capturing the crew.
The next question is how did the filaments end up in capsuleers hands? The answer might well be very interesting. At first the DED offered to put them on sale, then the filaments began showing up in data sites, pretty much every type of data site. If these had only been found in Drone data sites then it might well point to Rogue Drones as the originators, but they didn’t. We know that the Triglavians are nomadic, so far no Triglavian habitats have been seen in Abyssal space. They do appear to be looking at planets in New Eden but that seems to be for the purposes of resource gatherng and production. We do not really know what the conditions are like on Abyssal planets, they may well be uninhabitable. Filaments are found in the Abyss, I am unaware of the actual figures but I would assume that the vast majority of filaments used today come from the Abyss, and certainly we only find the simplest form of filament in data sites. This really does point at them being Abyssal in origin, and, hence Triglavian.
If the Triglavians wanted to test capsuleers, without giving them too much access to the Abyss, what better way than to release a stock pile of Calm filaments into New Eden? How they did this is interesting, but speculative. Suppose they approached groups in New Eden, wanting the filaments to be distributed. DED offered to put them on sale in some fashion, but maybe this didn’t really suit the Triglavians, or the DED wanted some kind of reward that the Triglavians were unwilling to give. There is a strong possibility that the Triglavians instead used Thukker as their distribution point. The Thukker Tribe are largely nomadic, and I can see Trigalvians having some sympathies with them. In addition the Thukker are now building huge City ships out in the Drone Regions. To me that looks like they got the plans from somewhere, they use large ships in their caravans, but nothing on the presumed scale of this. It seems too much of a coincidence. The report is that they are using technology found in the Drone Regions, but this could a cover up. Ret Gloriaxx, who appears to have good standings with the Thukkers also went on a wormhole expedition with a Thukker covert intrusion team.
There really are some odd things going on in New Eden at present, outside of the Triglavian conflict, although maybe associated with it. I am still investigating.