Written by JH Media

Distant Oz – Waypoint 2-3 Cloudy with a chance of space balls

Big space balls float around in outer space. To potential players, CMDR’s who have rarely ventured beyond the bubble, anyone curious about Elite or anyone who likes to read up on the goings on of the Elite Universe I just need you to know that there are balls… floating in space.

How do I know this? Because I’ve seen the balls. Scanned them even. Nuzzled them with my ship. Distant Worlds 2 has opened my eyes to so much already.

Solid mineral spheres greeted me inside a massive, gaseous yellow cloud at NGC 6629, a system sitting inside a Nebula En-route to our next Way-point; The Conflux Abandoned Settlements.

This is the first Notable Stellar Phenomenon I’ve experienced in-game and a composite scan of these clustered space balls confirmed what I already suspected.

The balls are among us.

The Fleet continued on our journey across the stars, taking in the views on the way to the Settlements.

The Arkgamanon mountain range is a dream come true for CMDR’s who invested in the game for the simple pleasure of jumping off things. Big things.

The proximity of Eudaemon Anchorage meant that we could refill our SRV bays with relative ease and the daring Distant Worlder could afford the luxury of writing off an SRV for the sake of science.

Namely, testing the durability of our beloved rovers.

The Big Thicc, my voluptuous yellow Krait, sat atop the peak of a towering mountain and a short Fighter reconnaissance confirmed we were perched more than 10 kilometres above the moons surface.

Safe to say that on two separate base-jumps the SRV passed its examination with flying colours and my propensity for jumping off high objects was eventually satisfied.

The Eagle Nebula made the stopover at Eagle Landing a memorable one before I came to a rest at Eudaemon Anchorage in Rohini, nearly 8,000 light years from home.

As it turns out I’d be taking the weeks rest there due to outside commitments.

While I powered down in the safety of Eudaemon a quote by the Replicant Roy Batty sprung to mind.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Roy, Blade Runner (1982)

A moment of sombre reflection in memory of a significant figure, who framed a significant moment so delicately and with such poise.

An inspiring quotation for the explorers of the Elite galaxy and it made me wonder what my defining quote would be once my time in this game was finished.

I trawled through the ship logs hoping to capture a snippet that might capture the essence of my character, a moment I could mark for posterity. I opened a promising file from my stay at Tranquility Base.

AUDIO LOG/TRANQBASE/3305: “Oh god I swear that never happens to me… c’mon babe you know what they say about the Neutron Highway, studies have shown that repeated exposure can-“

I closed the file, smashed [delete] and cried myself to sleep in the comfort of the star-port.

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