The Vo'shun Archive and an Introduction

This is my OOC introduction of the Vo’shun Archive. The IC announcement post should be in the Intergalactic Summit soon [once it escapes from the Akismet spam filter . . . I hope].

Please go check it out at voshun.pages.dev.

With this site, I hope to chronicle events and stories that I am privy to between BETA and the first few years of EVE Online where I played seriously. I do this mostly for my own enjoyment but I hope a few people would find it of interest.

By way of introduction, I started at Beta under a different character, our corp [BIG] went to Fountain at GA, was part of the finalist team at Jamyl Sarum champion selection. With the current character I created Rona Paratwa and became Minmartar terrorists. We ran a few player-lead events with Friends of Matar and PIE. I was one of the founding council members of Ushra’Khan. After the Hamish Incident, I was politely asked to leave Masuat’aa for fear I am a spy and assassin with Guiding Hand Social Club to do harm to Adrielle FIrewalker, our alliance leader. But Adrielle would have none of that and ask me to be by her side at AWEI. I became less active and left the game after a while.

I am not famous in EVE by any stretch of imagination, but hey, my mugshot was in the famous PC GAME article that CCP just show again at fanfest keynote opening. I even flew with Strike once! Bonus points to those who know who Strike was.

For the tech geek, Vo’shun Archive is a static generated site, created via MkDocs with the Material Theme, and is hosted by Cloudflare Pages.

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An excerpt from Chapter 1 of Wherein the Faith of the Liberated? by Gaelbhan Wulf.

The Sandstorm

The sands of the Greater Amamake desert howled outside the titanium-shelled bar at the base of the Twin Mounts of Amake’Son. Luci’s Bar was never much of a spot for traders or pirates of any race, let alone the Matari and Amarr who lived in the system.

But tonight there were a dozen of each filling the small room.

“Bah, what do the Matari know of ghosts?!”

Ensign Serfh said, bolting back some Amarr brew. “I mean, real ghosts! Not the spook stories told by their fat, ugly women!”

Dour stares from the Matari deep-space traders at other tables ended the laughter from the assembled group of Amarrians seated around the table with Ensign Serfh.

Rather sinister looking spacers seated along the wall seemed to be keeping to themselves, Angels by the look of ‘em, but they were listening too it even if they did not show it.

“I’m talking about real specters” Serfh continued.

“Like the terrorist Matari clans. I heard there was another bombing run on a belt operation just last week. Blew up a bunch of soft-skinned miners. Maybe they got Ensign Castor too, ya think?”

No laughter ensued from that latest remark. This group of Amarrians had been waiting for the Ensign for over six hours, having heard nothing from him since the early morning. They couldn’t leave without him, and any more time spent here would surely corrupt even the most pious Amarrian.

“There are the Paratwa . . .” said d another Amarr, his voice lowering as that last word spilled across his lips. The wind howled, which was not particularly different on this night except that the whole of Luci’s Bar had gone silent, heightening the words.

“Yeah, there’s them,” Serfh added. He turned to the bartender, bellowing out for more brew. “And there’s the other ones too, I heard of them. The Cast-Off.”

The bartender stumbled when Serfh spoke of the Cast-Off, nearly spilling the brew onto the Ensign’s ragged, but yet finely decorated uniform.

“Watch it!”

“My apologies, Sir . . . but, we . . . we don’t mention them here . . ."

Serfh laughed, smashing his glass down on the table even as the bartender tried to retrieve it.

“Them? The Cast-Off? Yeah, I heard of them. Loners and crazies they say!”

Serfh stood, throwing his arms up and dancing in a small circle, laughing.

“The Cast-Off,” he bellowed, causing all to turn at the loudness of his voice and derision in his tone. “They were once Paratwa, now just shells of Matari with no home. How sad!

With that, he threw his glass against the far wall, past the bar where it clattered wildly against the shelves filled with alcohol. He continued to laugh at the bartender until he noticed that no one was paying attention to him at all. He turned to see the door of the Bar had opened, the howling wind barely a whisper across his ears. How had he missed the wind dying down?

A woman perhaps, Matari for sure, dressed in typical sand-wear, entered the bar and took the short path through the crowd of tables to sit at the center of the bar.

Her gear was the color of sand, and only her shape could be seen beneath the layers of leather and fabric. She even smelled of sand and earth, and the hairs on the backs of the heads those she sat next to rose as if she were charged with the electrical current that accompanies all sandstorms.

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Not one to be ignored, Serfh pulled the bartender’s shoulder round from the woman who had entered, leering into the man’s somber face. “What say you, Matari? What say you of the Cast-Off? Are they as fearsome as they say?”

The bartender closed the small space between them, staring eye for eye, whispering, “We do not tarry too long in the darkness, Amarri. That is where the Rona Paratwa live.”

Serfh turned to his mates and pointed to the bartender, laughing. “There you have it! A wives’ tale, and a bad brew to boot.”

The door of the bar startled everyone as it banged against the wall, the latch having failed. Beyond, the wind had returned to its ceaseless howling, but even the thickness of the dust billowing into the bar, and the intense sound did not keep the patrons from staring as the woman simply walked back out into the storm.

The door banged madly, and the chaos had set the bar’s lights to swinging, lighting one side of the room, then the next.

A deep-spacer sitting next to where the woman had stationed herself, held up a small bag.

“Hey . . . she forgot this.”

Serfh watched as the bag slid open at the bottom, and an object dropped to the floor.

People scattered, pushing up against the walls. When it did not immediately explode, Serfh pushed away a table and kicked the object. The swinging lights made it difficult to see what the thing was, but he had no doubts.

He stared into the eyes of Ensign Castor, the Amarr’s head only lightly covered in blood. A small crescent shaped mark on the forehead glistened under the swinging lights, really just the skull underneath where the skin had been cut away.

The door continued its hectic banging as the sandstorm blew out across the desert and between the Twin Mounts of Amake’Son, the place where the Cast-Off were said to slumber.

**

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Book Two of the Tribal Council Trilogy: Revelations of the Faithful is now restored and available under Fictions.

Written by capsuleer Airgoidh Brendan, this fictional work is based on true events in EVE. It follows the Paratwa sisters as each makes consequential choices in the midst of Amarr conspiracy, Matari terrorism, and personal discoveries. The events chronicled in The Virus Incident were given further context.

We also added EVE Lore page under the Chronicles section, a curated list of links to official lore relevant to the stories we are telling.

More works are being restored, next up are:

  • “The Hidden Fleet” by Acharya
  • “The Hamish Saga” by Istvaan Shogaatsu
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