Sandbox:Outer Eyes

“From the darkness, do you see the light most clearly.” - Outer Eyes proverb

The symbol of the Outer Eyes since the early 2460s.

The Outer Eyes are a criminal syndicate with influence across much of the Spur. With a history spanning several decades, it worked undiscovered by many of the major powers of the Spur for much of its existence, controlling the lucrative Purple Market – the illicit trade of Phoron – which gave it incredible wealth.

Originally founded on the wealth generated from finding phoron deposits in the Lemurian Sea, acted unobserved by many of the powers of the Spur, growing influence and directing the expansion of many of the frontier colonies in the ICSR, where subtle political influences saw their power expand. Beyond the Lemurian Sea and the ICSR, they acted much more covertly, where blackmail, bribery and even assassination of people in power saw their network established all the way from the Sea to the fringes of the Solarian Alliance.

Their original goal was to survive a predicted second interstellar war with their assets intact, so they could control the reduced population and guide them along an “enlightened philosophy” to prevent future such catastrophes, though the recent dissolution of the leadership has left their philosophy now undefined.

The Eyes recruited members in two manners. First, individual agents would be recruited in a manner which has been likened to a cult – where potential agents were targeted for exploitation based on fringe belief and societal rejection. The Eyes would use their obscure philosophy, the Tenets, to draw these recruits in, imparting a sense of purpose and higher knowledge. Many would be willing to commit heinous criminals acts for the Eyes, without fully knowing the immensity of the organisation they had been recruited to. The second method would be simple mercenary recruitment, using the Eye’s immense wealth.

History

Founding

In 2434, a secret expedition was launched by the Second Nralakk Federation into the Lemurian Sea with the goal of recovering the Maki’i Xau’an – a generation ship lost in the Sea over a thousand years earlier. Leading the expedition was Illzarth’go Valziop, then a provost at Gliutip'lyaz University. A former student, doing their second degree alongside Weashbi Jrugl themselves, Valziop was at the time one of the Federations leading historians and scientists, a well-respected academic reaching a peak of SCI 9.82.

The expedition met mixed success. Avoiding Assunzione, it approached the Sea from further out in Light’s Edge, seeking to explore a newly discovered haven in the Sea. However, it soon became apparent that the route provided was bunk. The three-ship expedition soon found themselves split up and out of contact, completely lost thanks to the effects of the Sea. The Provost, by chance or fate, found themselves inside a haven after several weeks lost to the fog. Here, they found a vast nest of psirens built in the mangled wreck of hundreds of ships. A ball of twisted steel tens of kilometres across, built from the carcasses of ships lost in the Sea and lured to their doom in this haven by the psirens living here. The Provost, fighting the voices in their own head, identified some wrecks with liveable atmosphere, and set up a new home.

This wreckage would come to be known as the Boneyard. The Provost would spend years piecing together the information contained on hundreds of ship computers, and come to map the Sea based on their failures, finding most importantly dozens of deposits of Phoron scattered throughout the Sea and the information required to reach them in relative safety.

With their position secure, and a sitting on potentially trillions of credits of Phoron, the Provost dwelled on situation. Turning the crew of the surviving ship to their personal loyalty, Valziop decided to put into practice the philosophy outlined in one of their many papers. The Phoron would be sold, slowly, safely to avoid the attention of greater powers. They would amass a fortune, watch the Spur from distant safety of the Sea, and prepare for the war they had long predicted. From this position of strength, they would lead the post war Spur into a new, better age as a benevolent autocrat. The Provost gathered around those who believed in their philosophy, and formed the Outer Eyes in 2436.

The Eyes

Illzarth’go Valziop, founder and leader of the Outer Eyes until 2468.

Expansion was slow at first. The Provost was far from the Federation, where they had trusted contacts, and content to allow them to believe they were lost to the Sea regardless. Instead, they probed the underworld on Assunzione, eventually coming into contact with Nomiki Mylonna, the leader of a smuggling ring on Assunzione. After months of negotiation, and a visit to the Boneyard, Mylonna eventually joined the Outer Eyes as the first of the Provost’s inner circle – the Seeing Eye. Their connections kickstarted the growth of the Eyes into Coalition markets, and was a catalyst which saw the smuggling side of the Eyes operation begin to grow exponentially.

During these early stages, the Eyes made early outreach into Light’s Edge itself. While an area with sparse, small colonies, the Provost sought to use it as a proving ground for their theories. Taking covert control of the Meropis colonial council in 2438, the planet would become an example of Outer Eyes rule and a valuable location where they could operate both without scrutiny and without the danger of the Sea.

Early attempts to probe beyond the Coalition lead to some fruit. The Provost themselves witnessed nuclear war erupt on Moghes in 2439 – a fact which when later discovered led to the fringe theory from multiple groups that the Provost was behind the supply of excess nuclear weapons to the Traditionalists, an unlikely theory given the still nascent state of the Outer Eyes in 2439. During their observation however, the Provost aided in the rescue of a runaway IPC from the Solarian observers, known as Gambit. In 2444, Gambit enters the inner circle as Harmonious Eye.

The rumours behind the Provost’s links to the Traditionalists on Moghes extend to the acquisition of an egg from the Azarak clan in 2449. An opportune snatching of an egg, or a planned extraction demanded by the Azarak clan, whatever the truth an egg was secured, alongside a small cohort of Traditionalists. This egg would go on to hatch Soztal Azarak, who would be raised near the Sea on Meropis by a mixture of traditionalist exiles and the Provost’s academic circle, and much later join the Outer Eyes as the Vengeful Eye in 2460.

The next to join the inner circle was Alexandra Sanghera, a woman from Biesel, in 2453. The Secession of Biesel was an opportunity for Eyes to break into a new market, as they had previously failed to penetrate the once Solarian market. Joining as the Generous Eye, she began to corrupt the Phoron supply chain and the Boneyard’s reserve was supplemented by off the records extras from extraction sites across Tau Ceti.

Eventually, the Outer Eyes operation spread into Sol. The chaos spread by the Solarian blockade of Biesel in 2458 forced some drastic actions to protect Outer Eyes interests in the region. The exact nature of the activity is still unknown, as much of the records were lost during the invasion in 2459, however by the time of Violet Dawn in 2462, a Solarian captain, John MacGuffrey, had defected to the Eyes, and taken on the moniker the Enlightened Eye.

The Purple Market Dossier

The existence of the Eyes did not go completely unnoticed during their first thirty years. Some groups and megacorporations ranged from knowledge of the Eyes and their operations, leveraging in for their own gain, to only a vague understanding of a criminal underbelly in their areas of operation. The invasion of Biesel by Frost in 2458 was an opportune moment for the Eyes operating in Tau Ceti to clean up more than a decade of shoddier work, however this reprieve would not last forever.

More brazen acts to establish a wider criminal base led to increased scrutiny which the Eyes were eventually unable to shake. In 2467, a phoron siphoning operation in Tau Ceti was uncovered by the BSSB, which quickly blossomed into a large network across the Republic of Biesel been uncovered. While the Generous Eye, then in charge of operations in the Republic, was able to sever many links to the greater organization of the Outer Eyes before BSSB agents routed them out, enough data was gathered to point to this wider conspiracy.

This information was eventually leaked from the BSSB in 2467. Dubbed the “Purple Market Dossier” by the intelligence community and it spread like wildfire, reaching far beyond their control. Most notable was the investigation into the Eye’s roots in the ICSR and the Lemurian Sea, and indication of a potential new phoron source in the region. Many of the groups who obtained a copy of the papers began their own investigation into the Eyes, and a general scramble of ships to the area began early in 2468.

Civil War

With the pressure ramping up, the Outer Eyes found itself split into two factions in 2467. The group who would become known as the Modernists began to act outside the direct orders of the Provost, pursuing a new accelerationist and more radically interventional approach. While there was not outright violent conflict within the Eyes itself at first, each side began to bring assets to their side as the split within the Eyes grew larger.

As outside powers such as the SCC, the PRA and Zeng-Hu began to meddle in the ICSR more so then ever, violent conflict broke out between the two sides of the split, truly escalating the divide in philosophy into a civil war. Dozens of smaller naval conflicts took place, and the Loyalists provoked the violent revolution on Meropis, providing the colonists with arms and gear to fight against Modernist forces which had seized control of the vital phoron processing facilities on the planet.

Ultimately, the Provost’s twin bases of the Lighthouse and the Boneyard remained beyond the reach of the Modernists, and the increasing scrutiny on the region saw the Eyes unity fractured. During the summer of 2468, the surviving members of the Ennead, the inner circle, began to quit the region and consolidate their power in the rest of the Spur.

Operation Deep Dive

Working amongst the failing unity of the Eyes, the SCC launched Operation Deep Dive in 2468, a five ship mission headed by the SCCV Horizon. While the Eyes still commanded enough ships to destroy this force, the Provost recognised such an action would lead to inevitable large scale corporate involvement in the region, destroying any attempts to salvage the failing mechanism of the Outer Eye’s power and wealth.

In the end however, corporate involvement merely expedited the Eyes fracture, even been involved in the death of the leader of the Modernists, John MacGuffrey on Meropis. The civil war drew to an end, having merely destroyed the Eye’s unity. Left isolated, with their dream failing, the Provost at the end sough in desperation to use the Modernist method – the deployment of psirens as bioweapons to trigger an interstellar war, an act which was prevented by a joint squadron of ships including the SCC, AXSF, PRA and Karzekani.

Operation Deep Dive drew to a close in August of 2468, as the weakened Boneyard was scuttled by the Provost in face of corporate seizure of the harvested phoron and the lanes leading to the confirmed phoron clouds. The Provost was killed in this action, officially ending the era of a united Outer Eyes.

Successors

Numerous members of the Ennead survive and some sought to continue the work of the Eyes, or merely to exploit the network built up over decades to further their own goals. The purple market, the source of the Outer Eye’s wealth, operates to this day, now relying on pirate seized phoron and corruption fuelled thefts directly from Tau Ceti and Elyra.

Modus Operandi

Combined with the immense wealth granted by their own phoron find, the Outer Eyes were always defined by their obscured philosophy. The recruitment of individual agents was often likened to a cult, with layer of understanding and knowledge been granted as members proceeded, using the sense of belonging and knowledge of the future as incentive for recruits to fall further into the Eyes’ grasp. Experienced recruiters throughout the Spur would target vulnerable and isolated people, turning many to the cause. Even closer to their home in the Lemurian Sea, where the credits flowed more naturally and mercenaries did the Eye’s work directly, this process was repeated, leading to immense loyalty and willingness to commit graven acts in the name of the Provost and their tenets.

With equality amongst the species of the Spur been one of the tenets, the Outer Eyes saw their recruitment spread naturally even beyond human and skrell planets, though the hatred the Celestial Creed held for the Eye “Intrusion” into the Sea saw few diona in their ranks.

Such agents can be planted in any area, fitting in without issue. Bribery, blackmail and assassination would ensure the progress of agents through important organisations to positions of power, meanwhile other agents would perform field work to further goals which were rarely fully shared with them. These systems were used largely unrecognised and undisturbed for thirty years, and the investigations of 2467 discovered such agents lying inside every megacorporation, including the SCC, alongside political positions inside many states. The full extent of this network was never uncovered, though the knowledge of their existence is likely to have hampered their growth.

When needed, the Outer Eyes would deploy teams of enforcers, outfitted with their signature armoured voidsuit and usually equipped with military grade gear of Coalition make. Usually fanatically loyal, but often mostly motivated by immense promised financial reward, the nature of Outer Eyes recruitment would often lead to mixed and varied teams.

Finally, most often close to the Sea, the Outer Eyes would indirectly direct and control pirate and freebooter ships, directing their raiding and attacks via incentive of rewards from the Eyes or a particularly tempting target.

Philosophy

The Provost's Tenets

The Outer Eyes were formed around the content of several papers written by Provost Illzarth’go Valziop during their time at Gliutip'lyaz University, which after the uncovering of the Outer Eyes were uncovered and re-examined. Using an examination of both human and skrell history and the discovery of phoron, the Provost assumed a Second Interstellar War, this time involving the Skrell, the then newly discovered tajara and unathi was inevitable, and a Third after that. Their original paper, which examines the facts and history of the skrell and humanity from an "objective outside perspective" speculates that such a war can be delayed by perhaps centuries and its damage minimised, but it could not be averted.

The second paper examined the longer picture – the prevention of the Third Interstellar War while continuing the forward march of progress to improve the lives of all in the Spur. The Provost’s solution was considered extreme, and was framed to show the inevitability of the Third war: the forced regression of technology available to the masses and strict control of interstellar travel and communication, with the rise of a meritocracy valuing scientist philosophers with an enlightened autocrat at the head. Academics at the time took this as a clear hyperbolic take meant to push the Provost’s core prediction of the Third war - that such a thing was impossible.

Upon the formation of the Outer Eyes however, the Provost took this extreme rhetorical philosophy as the founding principle of their new organisation. The Outer Eyes was formed with these tenets:

• The Second Interstellar War is inevitable.
• To prevent a Third, and bring the best possible lives to the surviving masses, an enlightened regime must strictly control the survivors.
• For the regime to succeed, it needs to have the best possible start.
• It must seed itself across the Spur, so it may seize what power is needed in one move.
• It must enrich itself, so it may be dominant when all else has burned in the war.
• Its main body must be apart from the Spur, and above its politics and conflicts, so as to survive the war untouched.
• It must foster harmony. Peoples must transcend foundational politics and prejudice, and be equal under the future leader.

In 2467, the discovery of the Outer Eyes threatened many of these tenets. The Provost believed all they had built until that point could persist until the war came, forming the Loyalist philosophy, opposing the emerging Modernists.

The Modernist Philosophy

The group who came to believe the tenets were now out dated came to be known as the Modernists, opposed to those who still worked by them, the Loyalists. The Modernists advocated for greater involvement of the Outer Eyes in Spur politics – not just seeding their future and enabling their criminal operation, but acceleration of the Second Interstellar War.

They would cast aside the cloak of secrecy as needed to achieve their goals, best exemplified by the direct attacks on Elyran phoron shipping beginning in 2467, purposefully using false flags to escalate tension between Elyra and the Dominian empire while securing more phoron to supplement the Boneyard’s dwindling supply, and the finalisation of a hypothetical project to use psirens as controlled bioweapons to spark chaos.

The Modernist philosophy, with its push for an immediate and much bloodier war to secure the Outer Eyes position, fundamentally did not alter the Provost’s post war plans, and still believe the accelerated war would have them rise from the ashes. Even as the Provost died, and the Ennead fractures, it is rumoured some of that number continue this accelerationist policy, though with much diminished resources.

The Ennead

The Seeing Eye often wore blindfolds in public, leading to speculation of augmented vision or even psionic vision.

The Provost as part of their paper speculated that a single autocrat could not rule with absolute certainty over as wide an area as the Spur, and that they must have a class of trusted and learned seconds to rule regionally. This basis formed the inner circle, named by the provost The Ennead, but also often called confusingly “The Eyes” due to their names. Each adopted a new title, chosen by themselves and the Provost equally, become one of a council of nine.

Given the Provost’s chosen name of the Ennead, it is likely they always intended to surround themselves by eight others – even during the early development of the Outer Eyes. It wasn’t until 2464 that the Ennead had actually solidified to eight members (including the Provost), plus the Shadowed Eye. With the death of the Provost in 2468, each of the remaining Eyes each controlled their own segment of the Outer Eyes operations, and continue to pursue their own agenda. To date, no one has taken the autocratic central role left empty by the Provost, and the Ennead has not been in quorum since late 2467.

The last iteration of the Ennead, in order of the date of their elevation to the position is as follows:

The Seeing Eye – Nomiki Mylonna

Nomiki Mylonna was born in 2409 in the city of Dalyan on Assunzione, and grew up admidst poverty and crime. By the age of fifteen, they had fallen in with small time smugglers, working as a mule. Their quick wit and talent for working people saw them come to lead the group by the age of twenty one. By 2438, she controlled much of the black marker on Assunzione and had started to branch out into Coalition territory when the Provost approached her. Convinced by their vision of a grand operation, they fell in with the Provost. With the wealth from phoron smuggling combined with their growing criminal enterprise, they saw the Outer Eyes flourish from an idea to a reality.

Over the years, Nomiki was at the head of expanding operations across the whole Spur, where she would come into conflict with law enforcement and intelligence agencies repeatedly, defeating them all in turn through guile. As the Outer Eyes split, she first joined the Loyalist philosophy and remained apart from the fighting, where she was last confirmed working on the securing the Phoron supply within Biesel.

The Harmonious Eye - Gambit

The nature of Harmonious' dual positronic arrangement remains a mystery.

A baseline frame IPC originally constructed in 2435 to perform a none combatant role aboard SAMV Condor, Gambit had access to vast quantities of military information as part of these duties, which saw the formation of their prediction of the future – both in the short term, and long term. These calculations led to Gambit to begin to plan their escape from servitude, something accomplished with the help of the Provost in 2439 as nuclear war erupted on Moghes.

The two would often discuss matters of philosophy and predictions on the future. The Provost was quick to explain their own tenets, and by 2444, Gambit had joined the Ennead under the name Harmonious Eye. Tasked with exploration of synthetic history and the technology behind the positronic itself, a field in which the skrell Provost had little experience, Harmonious quickly established a scholarly network within the expanding smuggling and criminal rings of the Outer Eyes. It was during this period that their frame was modified to carry another head and positronic.

During the civil war of 2468, Harmonious remained loyal to the Provost until determining they had become too unstable to logically carry out their original plan. Quickly pivoting, they aided in the fall of the Boneyard, before vanishing to continue their research.

The Generous Eye - Alexandra Sanghera

Born the same day as the completion of the bluespace ring in Tau Ceti in 2416, Alexandra Sanghera lives a life in the shadow of the megacorporations, culminating with working for NanoTrasen as an investigator in 2439. It was here during investigation into phoron siphoning in Tau Ceti that she came into contact with Outer Eyes agents working directly under the Seeing Eye. Seeing Eye create an area of safety around Sanghera, ensuring leads would come to dead ends and witnesses would vanish, a game which would last for over a year. Impressed by the investigator’s tenacity and ingenuity, Seeing Eye saw Alexandra snatched from NanoTrasen corporate security after she had assaulted a superior.

Wanted in Mendell City, Alexandra soon started working for the Seeing Eye, directly in touch with phoron facilities and their workers across Tau Ceti. Disenfranchised by the megacorporate domination, she came to abide by the Provost’s tenets and was made a member of the Ennead, as the Generous Eye, in 2444.

During the civil war, Generous did not pick a side, attempting to determine which would prove most likely to win. After an attack on her person by the SCC on neutral ground in the ICSR, she fled the region and is assumed to have returned to Tau Ceti to consolidate her position alongside Seeing Eye.

The Enlightened Eye – John MacGuffrey

Born 2407 on Mars in the Argyre arcology, John MacGuffrey joined a family with a long and proud history of service in the Solarian Armed Forces. Destined for the Navy, John grew up in a highly competitive environment. Pushed forward only by expectation, he joined the Solarian Navy in 2430 after a successful if short academic career, where he then joined a new competition for rank against Lunan junior officers. Seeking to advance his career, he joined patrol vessels in the outer rings, where he eventually made the rank of captain and was given command of the SAMV Obsidian Arrow in 2452, despite growing disillusionment at the Alliance.

In this command, he took part in the blockade of Biesel in 2458, and joined Frost’s invasion in 2459. Concerned for his crew and ship, MacGuffrey sought an early exit from the invasion. Following leads of ships who had fled Biesel prior to the invasion, he made contact with the Outer Eyes. Working together, The Obsidian Arrow quietly defected from the 33rd and made for the Lemurian Sea.

MacGuffrey witnessed the fallout of the invasion from a dozen lightyears away. Enraged at the rise of Frost, and inspired by the provost’s tenets of a wiser total government, MacGuffrey joined the Ennead in 2459, acting as an experience military advisor and taking up the moniker Enlightened Eye. In this position, free from the expectation of his family and the Navy, he suffered from ever increasing misanthropy, dedicating himself to his foreseen return to Sol amongst the ashes of the second interstellar war.

During the civil war, wishing to speed this process along he joined the Modernists, seizing control of Meropis and the rimward Lemurian Sea beacons. During the suppression of a worker revolt around Meropis’ equator, he was killed by an SCC force.

The Vengeful Eye – Soztal Azarak

The Vengeful Eye was said to bare the exact resemblance of his late father, King Don'zai Azarak.

The Fall of Darakath during the Contact War saw the long-rumoured smuggling of the final egg of Queen Wei’za Azarak into the wasteland by loyal soliders of the Azarak Kingdom. This rumour was only partly true, for the Queen had struck a bargain for a covert vessel to extract the Egg and dozens of loyal Sinta off of Moghes. This vessel belonged to the Outer Eyes, and the retainers and egg were brough to Meropis early in 2450, where the egg was hatched and the sinta within named Soztal Azarak, per their mother’s wish.

The arid climate around Meropis’ equator proved the ideal habitat for the growing Soztal Azarak, who grew up receiving a joint education from his mother’s retainers and the Provost’s own people. Word of the growing Azarak spread in hushed rumours, drawing in exiled Traditionalists to Meropis. By the age of fifteen, Azarak took up command of the warship of one of these groups, redubbed the Ashen Prince, and began to work under the Provost. The Provost in turn pledged support for the reclamation of Moghes under Azarak during the predicted coming interstellar war. They would eventually take on the title of Vengeful Eye in their duties for the Outer Eyes.

During the fracture of the Eyes, Azarak continued to follow the Provost’s orders, but remained distant from the growing Loyalist faction, conflicted between his own loyalty to the Provost and the wellbeing of his people. Eventually, as the civil war concluded, Azarak elected to lead the Sinta fleet he had built in the ICSR over the years back towards Moghes to shield them from the fracturing of the Outer Eyes and the growing attention of the Karszekani, rejecting the title of Vengeful Eye and seeking to reclaim the Azarak Kingdom and Moghes.

The Watchful Eye – Haldaraasi Ron'tul-Samdynh

Born 2429 in the city of Ron’tul, Adhomai, Haldaraasi had a tenuous childhood in the interwar period on a strategic border. At the age of 29, while still residing in the city, Haldaraasi lived through the siege and subsequent firebombing of the city, retreating south into the republican heartland.

Remaining records place Haldaraasi as serving in the various military roles, raising to the rank of Captain in the newly formed PKSC in early 2462. Early unsubstantiated rumours of phoron in the Lemurian Sea saw her ship deployed to the region and assumed lost in 2463. In reality, a stroke of luck saw her finding a previously unknown route to the Boneyard. Trapped in the very jaw of the Outer Eyes, she negotiated safety for her crew, who were forced into comfortable imprisonment at the Boneyard to ensure their discovery would not leak. Haldaraasi became a favourite verbal sparring partner of the Provost in this period, and deep-seated resentment from the second revolution and the firebombing of Ron’tul eventually saw her subscribe to the tenets, and she was made the Watchful Eye in 2465, the final addition to the Ennead and the Outer Eye’s representative for the Tajara people. As part of her work, she lead covert operations, often against corporate or government target, refusing aggressive actions against “innocent” targets.

During the civil war, she remained loyal to the Provost but was cut off from communication as Harmonious broke ties. Her current location and activity is unknown.

The Merciful Eye – Unknown

The Merciful Eye is rumoured to be a human of either Elyran or Dominian heritage, however they have retained their anonymity even as the Outer Eyes have come under greater scrutiny from law enforcement and intelligence organisations across the Spur. Evidence proves them working for the modernists during the civil war; however, their current activity and location remain unknown.

The Shadowed Eye – No One

A purposefully fluid seat, the Shadowed Eye’s role was to provide a counter position to the Provost and their tenets, a nay sayer who’s role is to ensure the others are not blinded by their own positions. There are multiple recorded people having taken this title, most recently a skrell researcher who was killed in the Lemurian Sea during the civil war while working for the modernists.