Abandoned Mining Colony

Editor’s note: The following is a guest travel blog by Ren Takahashi. All pictures and text are thanks to him. I’d like to thank him for putting the effort into this!

As Jaroud Dertier sings in Miner’s Blues, the black is a lonely place, full of woe and wonder in equal measure. Amidst the most lawless parts of The Great Wilderness are places of breathtaking beauty, and in the safest lanes of the Republic there are reminders aplenty of the unforgiving dangers of New Eden…

First time I heard about the Abandoned Mining Colony in Kronsur was from one of my uncles. I was twelve or thirteen and working in the bowels of our family’s battered Wreathe, “Killian’s Vale”, on the Pator-Teonusude munitions run – before capsuleers like me made it unprofitable for regular haulers. We were deep in the electrical subsystems that handled scan, trying to patch one of the frequently snarling emitters. Rather, I was patching it, half-buried in wires and optics, and he was telling stories and taking swigs from a bottle of fortified brandy acquired in dubious circumstances from the back corridors of a station in Aeddin. He was a rogue, a gnarled tree of a man, so wrinkled and leathery that his tattoos looked more like brands on wood and with a gravelly voice perfect for scaring youngsters. I still missed him.

Anyway, he was telling stories of this place in Kronsur and they stuck in my memory. Not the stories themselves, for I can’t remember if this was meant to be a place full of monsters or ghosts or corporate betrayal or pollutants that turned men into raging lurching beasts. No, not the story, but the fact that this was a place of stories and so I had to come here, now that business was settled and starting to turn a profit in nearby Sist – it helped that the crew for my second-hand battlecruiser needed a bit of a shakedown too.

Fleet officers attached to the Tribunal stations in-system maintain a beacon for the site, though the broadcast message is innocuous enough, and that is where “Night’s Rapture”, my Hurricane, had emerged:

Throughout the history of space flight, countless mining corporations have tried and failed to strike it rich among the stars, fuelled by dreams of lucrative profits and grand adventures. All too often, however, these naïve dreams are met with the cold reality of ambivalent police forces and roving pirates that are all too eager to exploit the lax policing.

Off the port bow was the main body of the colony – the lights still lit but all entry-points and data access locked down. It was a typical field-mining setup, with mineral-poor stony rocks pulled into close proximity and anchored. You can see some detoriation and stress-fractures on the linkages and supporting stuts, but the colony retains its cohesion and it is difficult to determine an exact age of the structures.

Off the stern was the wreckage of a ancient cutting drill-head. Although time has eroded most of the markings and components, it looked to be a early ship-mounted Class IV ‘Reaver”, similar to ones I’ve seen on educational reels at Pator Tech School from the early days of the Minmater Mining Corporation [2.jpg]. If it is, it’s drifted some distance from the other nearby wreckage – a large hull that’s been twisted and split, with the nose in particular showing signs of significant shear and torsion forces, that is still being circled by sections of hull plating and what was probably a thuster unit. I had reconfigured one of our drones before travelling out here and the close-ups of the spiral shears taken with the nose-mounted camera can be seen below.

Further steer-wards from my initial egress point seems to be the main command tower, a second colony and the main target of the site – a mammoth hollowed out rock that shows many signs of being worked.

We eased the “Night’s Rapture” closer to the planetoid, using the spots to highlight where the rock has been chewed and gnawed by a series of drills. Two shafts in particular cut through the interior sufficiently for us to drift the battlecruiser through, literally threading the needle. Good close-quarters practise, especially when one of the Jigs nearly paints the interior with the comms array atip the portside solar fin.

Emerging from the other side, the second colony comes into view. It is a more significant construction, more modules and connecting struts and less rock. Probably the ore processing factories, constructed from pre-fabricated units once the results from exploratory surveys were completed. Again the facility ignores repeated attempts to hail or even respond to a data connection.

We circle round, scanning for further clues to what went on here, who these people were. How they lived. Died. Nothing. Around me, outside the pod housing on the bridge, the crew quietens to a murmur, out of respect or nerves it is difficult to tell. There’s certainly an eerie feel to the place.

Finally we turn the ship and approach the command complex: three squat towers sulking atop a stony fragment that could have come from the main asteroid. Given the age it’s difficult to tell, but these towers are more Amarrian in external form and features than the rest of the colony. Each of them extend through the rock and below to connect a second fragment, space enough to hold significant data banks and processing units with which to co-ordinate the colony. Despite our efforts we fail to find an access point here either. Even scans of the towers returns only murky hints of the internal structure.

We recall the drone after an hour or two, aligning to the Sist gate, preferring home to the tales of wreckers and ghosts that I remember from previous visits to the Tribunal stations. As we enter warp I fire off some enquiries to GalNET and ISD, not expecting a response but hoping we’ve not left the nameless crew floating in the dark corridors of their tomb.

Whatever happened here, it’s long in the past and all that remains is a stillness that I hope endures.

Basic information:

• Attraction: Abandoned Mining Colony
• System: Kronsur
• Security Rating: 0.9
• Region: Heimatar
• Potential Hazards: Debris is in well-contained orbits, hence poses little to no threat to a careful pilot. Visitors below a -4.5 in security status, of -5 in standing with the Minmatar, will likely attract the attention of local law enforcement. Low probability of encountering members of the Angel Cartel – whilst we encountered none on this or several subsequent visits, small bands can be found in the Osta constellaion with relative frequency.
• Additional Notes: Whilst this and surrounding systems are full of hard-working mission-focused capsuleers, primarily in Magnate and Bestower class ships, none of them come near this site. This site can be found throughout the cluster, though most notably here in Kronsur.