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.

By the Lemurian Sea where their centre of operations, the Boneyard, they acted unobserved by many of the powers of the Spur, accumulating wealth 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 ASSN.

The manner in which they recruited agents across the Spur has been likened to the 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 agents in which often led to zealous recruits willing to die for the Eyes.

Although the existence was uncovered in 2467 and it suffered internal strife and outside threats during 2468, leading to the destruction of their base, the Boneyard, in the Lemurian Sea, it continues to operate in a reduced capacity. It is theorised that many smuggling rings and criminal enterprises operated by the Eyes still remain uncovered.

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. After scouring the wreckages while fighting off the constant psiren attacks and long running voices, the Provost was able to determine a route out of the Sea from this haven, pulled from the bridge of one of the many ships which make up the Boneyard. They also found other co-ordinates - numerous smaller phoron clouds throughout the Sea, some accessible via havens.

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

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 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 recognized 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.

Philosophy

The Provost's Tenets

The Outer Eyes were formed around the content of several papers written by Provost Illzarth’go Valziop, which after the uncovering of the Outer Eyes were uncovered and re-examined. Using an examination of both human and skrellian 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 speculates that such war can be delayed by perhaps centuries and its damage minimized, 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.

Upon the formation of the Outer Eyes however, the Provost took this “extreme” philosophy as the founding principle of their new organization. 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 is ready to spring into action when the time comes. • It must enrich itself, so it may be dominant when all else has burned in the war. • It 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.

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.