Immortals of Thera
Introducing New Eden and the World of the Capsuleer
The world of EVE Online centers on a dense cluster of star systems connected to one another by a vast network of stargates. These gates allow for near instantaneous travel between linked star systems, of which there are over 5,000 in the network. The core of this cluster, called New Eden by its inhabitants, is controlled by four major empires that constantly vie with one another.
These core powers are the Amarr Empire, Caldari State, Gallente Federation and Minmatar Republic. Beyond the interior of the cluster lie the outer regions, lawless zones where the independent space captains of EVE, the capsuleers, contend with one another for supremacy. Outside even these perilous regions exist the Jove Empire, an enigmatic power that rarely shows itself, and the mysterious realms of wormhole space. The capsuleers constantly seek means to exploit the planets, systems and regions of New Eden, and their power is on the rise.
Capsuleers and the Grand Strategy
In the inky depths of the outer regions, new powers rise and fall as alliances and coalitions of capsuleers struggle for dominion over star systems, constellations and entire regions. Politics is key to the forging of alliances and the grand coalitions that make possible the control of large swathes of the cluster by capsule pilots. Their enemies? Other capsuleer alliances waging war to control resources, invade whole regions or simply to eliminate a hated foe. Brinkmanship, espionage and statecraft all have their place in the politics of the grand strategy. Yet, in the end, war is so often the means by which the political aims of corporations and alliances are realised in the outer regions of New Eden.
Industry, War, Comradeship
When independent capsuleers began to appear in New Eden they rapidly joined together with like-minded pilots and formed the first capsuleer corporations. These corporations were as diverse in purpose as the capsuleers making up their membership. Corporations mine, manufacture, research and trade. Corporations explore, setup starbases, manage colonies and build outposts. Corporations wage war, engage in piracy, fight for freedom, build empires and serve them with their loyalty. When a pilot joins a corporation they become part of a small society or band of comrades. The corporation is the essential building block of capsuleer activity throughout New Eden. Operating independently or in alliances, the capsuleer corporations have made space their domain, and their pilots' ships travel and fight across all the stars of New Eden in pursuit of their various goals.
The New Powers
In the early years of the capsuleer era, many corporations realized that even though they could call on many pilots it would be necessary to ally with other capsuleer groups in order to control the outer regions. As swiftly as the idea arose, the capsuleer alliances were born. At first, the alliances organized on regional lines according to pacts between their member corporations. Some organized councils to govern their affairs, others were unashamedly military dictatorships. Some were little more than pirate coalitions, others were dedicated to political ideals such as democracy and free trade. These early alliances rapidly grew to control their various regions, and as rapidly fell to fighting with their neighboring alliances or dissolving in vicious civil wars.
The various faction and conquerable stations of the outer regions constituted the power base of the alliances until the technology of starbases became available to capsuleer corporations. These were swiftly spread across space and CONCORD was forced to acknowledge that the alliances were sovereign powers in their own right. As technology advanced more infrastructure became available to the alliances and the first true capsuleer stations, the outposts, were constructed in deep space. With the increasing hold of the alliances over the outer regions came intense warfare, as capsuleers struggled for control over territory, resources and the hearts and minds of their fellows across New Eden. While the core of the New Eden cluster remains the relatively calm domain of the old empires, the outer regions are a swirling maelstrom of capsuleer empires rising and falling in titanic struggles for power.
Swords for Hire
Many capsuleers operate as mercenaries across New Eden, in conflicts ranging from small corporate wars to the cluster-spanning campaigns of outer region alliances. Mercenaries operate as individuals for hire, corporations on contract and even as alliances fighting in the grand conflicts for payment in coin, resources and territory. Every aspect of the mercenary life is present in some form in New Eden.
Mercenaries can be found as often in CONCORD monitored space, as in lawless systems. The system of sanctioned corporate warfare allows corporations and alliances to wage war on one another even in "high-security" space. If war declaration fees are paid and no bystanders are attacked, the deadly retribution of CONCORD peacekeeper fleets can be avoided. Skilled mercenaries command high fees and the most powerful mercenary organizations are capable of deploying capital fleets and laying siege to entire constellations. The capsuleers have lent even the ancient business of the mercenary their own special urgency and intensity.
Outlaws and Vigilantes
One of the undoubted scourges of New Eden is piracy, a rapacious criminality that has been present in some form since humanity reached out to the stars. At first, bad enough, the pirates were mere mortals who preyed on other mortals. Now there are immortal pirates who devastate and loot mortals and other immortals alike. Many capsuleer pilots take to piracy, either as a means to gaining wealth or, more darkly, out of sheer enjoyment of the act of preying on those weaker than they. Most capsuleer pirates focus on the most lucrative targets: other capsuleers plying their way across the trade routes of low-security space and the outer regions.
Pirates are in particular an ever-present danger in low-security space, those half-abandoned and practically lawless systems that lie between the core empires and the outer regions. Nominally subject to law, low-security systems are guarded only by static sentry guns around stargates and stations, with CONCORD peacekeeper fleets concentrating on maintaining order in the more populated or important systems of the high-security zones. As these systems cannot be directly controlled by the capsuleer alliances, it is rare that even the brutal frontier justice of the outer regions is visited on low-security space with any consistency. Therefore the pirates flourish.
However, the pirates are sometimes opposed by bounty hunters and so-called "anti-pirate" corporations or coalitions. Some capsuleers actively hunt pirates for possible profit, while others band together to try and bring order to sections of low-security space. Even so, the pirates are many and the most powerful outlaws can command capital ships capable of destroying starbases and other infrastructure. Only the most determined can hope to fight against these pirate lords but some rise to the challenge.
Engines of Creation and Destruction
Economic power and industrial might are as crucial to the capsuleers of EVE as to any other society that has sought to impose its will on history. The space-industrial economy of New Eden is increasingly controlled by the capsuleers, who produce and use a large proportion of its vast output. Capsuleers mine asteroid belts and moons for vital resources. They exploit planets through their colonies and build starbases and outposts, in order to refine minerals and create exotic new materials. These pilots research their own creations and construct them in nanoforges controlled by sophisticated blueprints. The capsuleer market sees trillions of ISK in transactions every day, with goods ranging from ore to battleships changing hands in vast quanities. This economy is the engine that drives EVE's never-ending cycle of creation and destruction.
Buying Low and Selling High
The capsule pilot has access to a sophisticated network of regional markets on which goods as simple as unrefined ore and complex as mighty capital ships can be bought and sold. Every day on the capsuleer markets of New Eden there are hundreds of thousands of transactions, millions of items changing hands, and trillions in ISK passing through the network. With few exceptions, anything that can be used by capsuleers can be bought or sold on the market.
Traders find many opportunities to buy goods in one region and sell in another. Even systems relatively close to one another provide potential gains for those willing to ship goods from one market to another. The major hubs provide anything that a capsuleer could want, with Jita holding the crown as king of market hubs. In Jita, the ISK flows like water and capsuleers make fortunes trading on the fine margins that exist in this most active of marketplaces.
A significant alternative trading system exists in the contracts system, where capsuleers can offer bundles of items and also auction goods to the highest bidder. Some of the rarer and more expensive goods are typically found on offer in exchange and auction contracts. However, this is the dark and risky world of EVE. The buyer should beware, and take care to check the price of market goods and the details of any contract. Many capsuleers make a good living preying on the gullibility of casual buyers.
Factories in Space
Independent pilots having been building their own ships, equipment and ammunition since the dawn of the capsuleer age. The vast array of Tech I, II and III items available to use can all be manufactured in the factory facilities of space stations, outposts and capsuleer starbases. Many of the rarer ships and items can be constructed using blueprints given as rewards for loyalty or seized from the wrecks of pirate vessels.
In most cases, every stage of the supply chain can be satisfied by capsuleer industry. Raw materials are refined and processed into fuel, minerals or advanced materials. Processed materials can be used to manufacture advanced ships and equipment. Mighty capital ships can be assembled using enormous and complex components produced by capsuleer industrialists. Even the starbases and outposts used by capsuleers can be built through the industrial processes made available to them.
Capsuleer industry even reaches into the realm of pharmaceuticals, with enterprising individuals and corporations manufacturing a range of chemical boosters. Such combat drugs are very popular with advanced pilots and their advantages ensure that the purest boosters command high prices on the market. The thirst among capsuleers for maximizing the potential of their ships is also responsible for the ingenious ship rig industry. Using salvaged materials, many canny industrialists manufacture devices that can be used to jury rig ships in many different ways. The industrial output of capsuleer manufacturers is enormous, meeting the demands of an economy of celestial destruction generated by the never-ending struggles of immortal warlords.
Stripping the Heavens
When capsuleers first went into space, the most readily available resources were found in the tumbling asteroids that swarmed in belts in every system of New Eden. The mineral riches to be found in the belts, particularly in the relatively pristine outer systems, were high indeed. The ores extracted from these rich fields were swiftly used to fuel the burgeoning space industries, and asteroid belts remain at the heart of the capsuleer economy. Early technologies were limited to relatively low-yield mining lasers, often mounted to ships that were not even specialized in mining. The technology of mining improved as time went on, with the Tech II revolution affecting mining lasers and their yields as it affected other areas of capsuleer endeavor.
Even more important than the improvement in narrow-beam mining lasers, was the development and release of an entire class of specialized mining ships. The mining barges, and the high-yield strip miners they could wield, enormously increased asteroid mining yields. Tech II versions of these barges branched out into specialized mining such as the extraction of Mercoxit ore and ice-harvesting.
The expansion of mining into ice fields, in search of advanced fuels for starbases and capital ships, was not the only advance in resource harvesting. Those manufacturing illegal boosters for the capsuleer market required large quantities of various chemicals found most abundantly in certain interplanetary gas clouds. The technology of gas harvesting was quickly developed and put to work extracting these useful chemicals. When wormhole space was found to contain large clouds rich with rare fullerenes, the gas harvesters found a new resource to collect and a new market to sell into.
Mining and resource harvesting are not limited to spaceship-mounted systems. The first capsuleer starbases were dedicated to running automated mining arrays that extracted many useful materials from the moons they orbited. Even now, after starbase capabilities have been expanded to running factories, laboratories and shipyards, many thousands of moons continue to be mined by harvesting systems based on industrial starbases.
Economy and Industry
Immortals Descending
For many years the capsuleers were prevented from establishing planetary holdings, the core empires being extremely wary of allowing the rogue immortals such a direct presence on their planets. The special technologies of colonial development were even withheld to such a degree that capsuleers in the outer regions could not practically establish colonies on planets that were of no importance to the core empires. This changed in mid YC112, with the signing of the CONCORD Planetary Development Treaty.
Since the outbreak of the Empyrean War in YC110, and the recruitment of capsuleers into militias that fought directly for the empires, it had become clear that the capsuleers were increasingly important to the future of the core empires. More pointedly, the empires had been at war with one another for nearly two years and perhaps saw an opportunity to access the vast wealth of the capsuleers by levying tariffs on orbital import-export movements. Negotiating among themselves through CONCORD, the empires finally agreed to the treaty that allowed capsuleers to establish colonies on their planets and released all the technologies they had long perfected in their own planetary facilities.
Given the means to finally extend their influence to the planets below, the immortal pilots sent down command centers and built industrial colonies extracting and processing all manner of raw materials. Swiftly grasping the possibilities of this new planetary industry, the capsuleers built up supply chains and established factory planets where they produced the most advanced items available using planetary technology. That planetary industry finally unlocked the ability to manufacture sovereignty structures, starbase components and fuel items was especially gratifying to industrialists and empire builders across the capsuleer diaspora.
Science and Technology
Knowledge is a Weapon
EVE is a world of lost and rediscovered sciences and technologies, still recovering from a cataclysm that destroyed entire civilizations and plunged New Eden into a dark age. Today, many technologies have been recovered, and spaceships warp across star systems and jump between the stars. The means to exploit the resources of entire planets and wage war on a scale terrifying to imagine, let alone behold, are under the control of both empires and individuals.
The liberating science of cloning and the capsule allow the independent pilot a degree of freedom and power unimagined a scant few hundred years before. Not all science or technology has been recovered however, and many mysteries await the intrepid explorer in the darkness between the stars, in the strange zones of deadspace and in the weird realms of wormhole space. Science and technology were once lofty goals in themselves, now they are simply means to the ends of the ever-warring capsuleers.
Capsuleers in the Laboratory
Capsuleers use some of the most advanced technology in New Eden, their very existence relying on the powerful combination of cloning and capsule technology. As such, many capsuleers take a keen interest in research and development of new technology. Using laboratories on stations, outposts or even starbases, research-minded pilots improve their blueprints, reverse engineer ancient technologies and even invent more advanced designs. Many research corporations exist and often work with manufacturing and exploration concerns in mutually-beneficial arrangements.
Capsuleers are also able to perform minor research tasks on behalf of the various R&D corporations aligned with the core empires. In return for undertaking such work, pilots receive datacores that can be used in their own research or sold on the market. Fully exploiting the fruits of wormhole exploration also requires specialized researchers able to reverse-engineer the strange technologies that can be recovered from the wrecks of the Sleeper drones standing guard over the ruins of their mysterious civilization.
The Fundamental Designs
Capsuleer ship technology is largely based on designs that have long served in the navies of the core empires, and the basic equipment used by capsuleers reflects similar origins. The standard ship and module designs are often referred to as "Tech I", derived from "Technology Level I". While some of these vessels are typically the province of those pilots starting a career, many Tech I designs are used by veteran combat pilots and are among the most dangerous ships that can be encountered. The ships and equipment available at Tech I can be considered foundational designs and there are many variations.
The navies of the empires have a number of modified designs that can be acquired by capsuleers who are regarded as sufficiently loyal. Even such ships make their way onto the markets, however, and capsuleers of less certain loyalty, who are simply rich enough, are commonly seen in ships the empires might prefer to remain more exclusive. The various outlaw and pirate factions also have a number of designs based on foundational ships, together with some original designs that are entirely unique. These too are often acquired by pod pilots and used in the service of capsuleer interests.
The basic Tech I modules and equipment also have many variations ranging from fairly common "named" versions, to the far more exclusive "officer" and "deadspace" variants. Some of this equipment can fetch a planet's ransom on the capsuleer market. Ultimately, for the less wealthy and the beginning pilots, there is reliable old Tech I and the minor variants that can readily be acquired.
The Morphite Revolution
Not long after the rise of the independent capsuleers, the properties of a rare mineral derived from Mercoxit ore were fully explored and a technological revolution began. It was realized that the mineral - now dubbed "Morphite" - had the remarkable property of altering and enhancing every other mineral, compound or alloy with which it was joined or combined. The applications were particularly exciting in the space industries and rapid development of a class of high-performance frigates called "interceptors" followed the discovery. Advances in ship technology were accompanied by parallel advances in ship equipment and other systems.
The applicability of Morphite was so widespread that it required a new category for the technologies developed using the remarkable mineral. Technology Level II or "Tech II" was born and new ships and equipment continued to be developed by applying Morphite and advanced materials sourced from moon-mining to the foundational Tech I designs. Capsuleers adopted Tech II ships and equipment with alacrity, their appetite for advanced technology fuelling the research and development of new designs by empire R&D corporations able to call on the services of the immortal pilots. The interceptors were followed by many other advanced designs.
Capsuleers were soon using heavily-armed assault vessels, sophisticated command ships, highly-advanced reconnaissance cruisers and many other specialized ships. Standard equipment designs were also substantially improved and Tech I workhorse ships could be transformed into formidable engines of destruction using Tech II modules. Moreover, the impact of the Tech II revolution on the capsuleers went beyond ships and equipment. The need for advanced materials spurred industrial expansion, as capsuleers established moon-mining starbases in orbit around thousands of moons across New Eden. These starbases would become the foundation of the first wave of territorial control by capsuleer powers.
An Ancient and Powerful Science
In early YC111, a terrible disaster destroyed the inhabited world of Seyllin I, leaving it a shattered husk of a planet. This cataclysm was but a symptom of a profound space-time event that caused large numbers of unstable wormholes to emerge in the New Eden cluster. While unstable, and prone to collapse after a certain period of time or if destabilized by excessive masses passing through them, the wormholes could be entered safely by most spaceships. The capsuleers lost no time in exploring these new gateways in space and found that many of them led to completely unknown star systems.
The systems of wormhole space, or "W-space", were found to be highly varied and often washed by strange radiations and other effects from cosmic phenomena. While these effects could often affect ship systems they were not the most interesting discovery to be found beyond the wormholes. W-space also contained the apparently abandoned and ruined remains of an ancient civilization, with technology that seemed to correspond to artifacts of the so-called "Sleepers" found by archaeologists in the New Eden cluster. Unfortunately for some early explorers much of the Sleeper technology in W-space remained active, particularly the legions of immensely powerful drone guardians that would attack on sight intruders disturbing their sleeping domains.
After some skirmishes, many capsuleers got the measure of these deadly wardens and were able to destroy them. It was soon discovered that the Sleeper's drone guardians were constructed using advanced technologies unknown to the science of New Eden. Salvaging from the wrecks of the Sleeper drones yielded much useful material for investigation. Explorers soon found that the sites of their structures could also be hacked to gain access to datacores and special tools used with the ancient technology. When archaeologists also found that many relics from the Sleeper ruins could be reverse-engineered, the blueprints for a whole new technology lay before the capsuleers.
One problem might have been sourcing the highly-advanced fullerene-based polymers used in the ancient technology. But W-space met even that need, as gas clouds rich in the necessary chemicals were discovered. It was clear the Sleeper civilization had taken advantage of the abundant resources of these strange systems and capsuleer explorers were able to follow suit. When all the elements of the ancient science were pieced together it was found that a remarkable new class of adaptable spaceships could be developed. Using a combination of subsystems that could be easily swapped in and out, "Strategic Cruisers" represented the newest, third level of technology and ushered in "Tech III".
No. of Known Star Systems: 5,431
No. of Empire Systems: 1,907
Estimated Wormhole Space Systems: 2,498
Plane Area: 8,500 sq LY
No. of Zero Security Systems: 3,524
