Empyrean Chronicles Artwork – Credit Gabriel Cassata
During my first days as a capsuleer in New Eden I scoured the forums and Eve related sites happily consuming both the official and fan fiction of New Eden. Trying to understand the massive stories of Eve and how they all fit together was important to me. I needed to understand the bigger living universe in order to help frame my place in it as I started my journey. In the years since I have consumed the continued contributions to the grand lore of Eve when ever they were published. On Friday, June 10th the rich stories and lore of New Eden received a much anticipated addition as Rixx Javix’s site Eveoganda.com released a free to download electronic book, Empyrean Chronicles.
For the last thirteen years that universe has thrived on the single shared server of Eve Online. It is at once imaginary and very real, a shared neighbourhood of death, destruction, chaos, creation and insanity – the largest living work of science-fiction the world has ever known. This vital, living place continues to inspire a global community of writers, artists, and creative people of all types. Story-tellers that feel compelled and inspired to weave tales both true and imagined, spun from the cloth that unfolds for them in the darkness of space. It is these visionaries for whom this volume was created, a place for them to share their tales. A collection of fan-fiction directly from the vast community of Eve Online players. -Excerpt from Empyrean Chronicles by Rixx Javix
Rixx Javix has been contributing to the community of Eve by working on a myriad of projects for over the last 7 years. He started playing the game in 2008 and runs the largest pirate corporation, Stay Frosty, in the game while serving as the Alliance Executor for A Band Apart. He has has also been running the Eveoganda blog site since 2010; has designed, created, and provided thousands of pieces of Eve based artwork, logos, posters, and other assorted items; and recently started a podcast called ‘After Hours’ at Crossing Zebras.
Rixx stated the goal was to “provide a quality, well-designed showcase of artistic talent from the Eve community, for free, to everyone.” He further explained the genesis of the book:
The idea for the book came to me about two years ago when I was reading a piece of Eve fiction on a blog. And I wrote the idea down in my project list as something I might like to do sometime in the future. Last Fall I wrote a blog post about it on Eveoganda and spread the word on Tweetfleet and on Slack, looking for submissions. My good friend Gabriel Cassata agreed to let me use his Blood Raider portrait painting as the cover image and submissions started rolling in. I asked my friends Drackarn, General Stargazer and Mord Fiddle to serve as my co-editors and we got started working on the stories as they came in. It should have taken about three months to finish, but it took twice as long due to real life issues and other projects. The timing worked out perfectly however, as I was able to snag some great new art from Gabriel for the interior, as well as finish a few extra illustrations that I was working on.
The book, at least 5,000 downloads in the first 24 hours, has been well received by readers. As a result of the surge of downloads Eveoganda added more download sources to support demand. Rixx plans to do 2 of these anthologies a year and as such a new call for new submissions sill be going out soon. When asked about the next book he said:
So far the feedback has been incredible and I’m very excited about the project. I can’t wait to get started on the next one.
The book is available for download here. The compilation of stories written by the players themselves continues Eve’s great history of the players themselves truly crafting the sandbox that we all inhabit. The artwork and stories contained within Empyrean Chronicles is destined to become another staple in every Eve players library.
