 This is Witchbase News for Friday the 17th of November 2023. I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, there's a pre-engineered mining laser up for grabs in this week's community goal, Frontier Cancel November's Frameshift livestream, and as Taranis prepares to lose control of its last systems, there's a terrifying hint in a galnet news story. You know how this bit goes, like, subscribe and ding that little bell so that YouTube is polite enough to show you all our content and if you'd like to help our work here at the burp at you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. A mining based community goal went live with Thursday's server tick this week that is calling for freshly mined Paynight, Prasodymium, Lithium Hydroxide and Tritium to be delivered to Kerbeam Hub in LHS 3872. The top 75% of contributors to the goal will receive a pre-engineered mining laser with the long range modification added that also grants reduced thermal load and power draw at the cost of module integrity. You'll note I explicitly freshly mined in my description of the required materials, without having tested it ourselves our understanding is that pirated goods or goods that have even been previously stored on a carrier will not suffice, they must be mined and then delivered with no middleman's step whatsoever. This suspicion would seem to be backed by the participation currently happening in the CG which is set at the time of recording at just 165 commanders. Typically a solid CG these days can expect around 1500 to 3000 plus participants so the low turnout can probably be taken as an indication that gigantic quantities of carrier assisted cash are not applicable to this particular CG. Frontier announced this week that the next Frameshift live live stream is cancelled for the month of November. The announcement arrived in a very brief somewhat perfunctory single line forum post from Elite's now only remaining community manager Paul Krauber. Whilst it's disappointing to hear the cancellation this month of all months is understandable. Long time Elite Dangerous players will doubtless remember the heady days of your when Elite Dangerous had no less than five dedicated community managers, a weekly not occasionally monthly live stream schedule and a regular weekly newsletter. Those days are very much not these days however and Elite Dangerous finds itself in very different waters indeed as Frontier developments itself is wrestling with the double whammy of challenging industry conditions plus some of their own well documented financial woes. Fdev is launching Warhammer Age of Sigma Realms of Ruin this very day as I speak these words Pre-order early access to the game started three days ago and it goes on general release on PC, Playstation and Xbox later today. It is therefore understandable that the almost singular focus for the outward face of the company right now would be their new first time foray into real time strategy with Elite's community manager Paul Krauber also working on Age of Sigma alongside Arthur Tolmey. As things stand at the moment we are still expecting and looking forward to the Elite Dangerous Christmas live stream on December 14th. Before then there is an interim stability patch expected into Elite Dangerous later this month and we of course have Update 18 incoming to an as yet unannounced point in the future. A fascinating and disturbing in equal measure piece made it onto Galnet this week and unless you were peering at the details obsessively you might have missed the significance. The rescues recovered from the Thargoid Titans have since their arrival back in human occupied space always proven to be somewhat a source of anxiety. Predominantly the worry comes from the suspicion that the interstellar vacuum vegetables could be using the millions of souls recovered from their caustic grip as a kind of Trojan horse. Waiting patiently for us to exercise our innate trend toward you know humanity, rescue our lost people, take them home and then have them altered by the Thargoid somehow turn on us. Thus far of course that has proven to not be the case and indeed when the first pod victim started arriving from the Titans a piece published on Galnet did say quote all abductees are being monitored for signs of Thargoid physical or mental influence so far I'm pleased to say these test results remain negative unquote. That article also stated that the abductees were whilst still in quarantine being granted visits from relatives and access to comms networks. Fast forward to this week where Imperial researchers are now stating that tested abductees are showing quote clear evidence of an autoimmune response unquote and further that this quote qualifies as evidence that these individuals have been altered in some way by the Thargoid constructed bio-storage capsules unquote. One Imperial insider being so panicked by this revelation they're even calling for the abductees to be euthanized should they display any further signs of mutation. Harsh much? The mass extermination of traumatized abduction victims aside there is clearly something more here. There has long been the suggestion within the community that the abductees could be something akin to Terminator infiltration units or Borg being sent to assimilate from within and the line we're now seeing indicating that the victims have indeed been altered even on such an apparently subtle level should be cause for concern. The fact remains they have been altered by the Thargoids if they are indeed unwitting participants in some sort of terror-trophic Trojan plot then it seems likely that there will be a trigger at some point and they'll you know Trojanus right up. What form the Trojanine takes we can only speculate of course whilst they could be infiltration or assimilation units it's also just as likely that they could be something less subtle such as bombs or could they perhaps spread a plague of some sort after all we tried that with the Thargoids they kind of owe us. Whatever the case it seems unlikely that the Thargoid effect on these individuals would stop at personal autoimmune problems. As an aside I mentioned in last week's news that the Taranis Titan was being beaten to a pulp by the hugely active and as you can imagine infused AX community in the game it's now as of this recording down to controlling just seven systems in its available sphere of influence at the current rate of progress Taranis will be the most unpopular kid in Thargoid kindergarten come Thursday's server tick. What happens after that will of course let you know right here. Will you be going after a free engineered mining laser? Do you think the rescued humans are infill traitors or just victims? Are you expecting a newly recovered dearly missed relative to explode over Christmas dinner? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then 07 Commanders follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.