A low‑level ripple has begun turning heads in nav‑centers from Denon to Dromund Kaas. Three nights ago, independent Starchaser relays along the Rim recorded a burst of "ghost pings" — hyperlane‑beacon handshakes that flashed into existence for less than a second and then winked out as though they'd never been powered. At first the readings were dismissed as nebular interference, but when archivists over‑laid the signal with obsolete Celestial checksum tables, every checksum matched an extinct format last catalogued during the Ashlan Crusades.
Within hours, the raw telemetry began trickling onto encrypted data‑boards. Galactic Alliance traffic‑control flagged the packets "anomalous" and warned civilian traders to ignore them until verified. Meanwhile, a Sith courier out of Jutrand reportedly paid double market price for a full copy, and Mandalorian couriers on the Hydian have been overheard bartering bevii'ragir spearheads for whatever sliver of the data they can pry loose. Even the various minor governments have dispatched slicers to scour the HoloNet for fragments, hoping to score political capital by being the first to make sense of the mystery.
What little consensus exists so far is chilling: the pings all originate from the same blind spot in the Mid‑Rim nav‑mesh — a region most captains cross without a second thought. If the checksum correlation holds, someone (or something) is broadcasting on dead Celestial hardware and doing it from a star‑system that shouldn't have beacon infrastructure at all. Rumors suggest the readings line up with fresh Starweird activity charts, but those files remain sealed in Alliance black archives.
For now, sectors as far apart as Corellia, Bastion, and Ord Mantell are quietly tasking patrol craft to sweep the blind zone. A few bold brokers whisper that whoever deciphers the checksum pattern will own the first breadcrumb on the road to whatever's bleeding the lanes dry. The race is on, and every faction knows it: find the source, cloak the intel from rivals, and maybe—just maybe—pull back the curtain on the crisis that prophets are dying to describe.
OOC:
I will start DM'ing more threads for the event - so if you want to explore or find something out, tag this account and I'll get you a response ASAP.
