A lonely mountain, long and thin. No more than 500m tall at the highest point. Summiting it requires decently technical use of the jump assist. Was discovered while examining a Distress Beacon while hunting bacterium signals.

At the beacon, we discovered the scattered wreckage from another exploration craft, plus 6 occupied escape pods, nearly 3km from the Peak. We used the Peak as a visual reference point for completing the bacterium samples. No cargo of interest at the beacon, but we did recover the escape pods.

Upon return to Fleet Carrier H1G-WKN GP McCollum, we cracked open the pods and got the survivors settled in. Their story came out that evening, in discussion over dinner and drinks.

They were six engineering ratings from the ICZ Arcing Head, a corporate-owned, exploration-rigged Anaconda, under command of Captain Georg Takane. They were engaged in a contracted survey update and prospecting mission in the space between the Bubble and the Elephant's Trunk.

All was going well, until they began the orbital drop onto Wredguia KP-L C22-2 B 1. At the beginning of the their glide phase, a hither to undetected engineering fault in the Arcing Head's FSD finally revealed itself. This forced an emergency drop from supercruise, which further compounded the fault and led to a catastrophic engineer casualty, by which we mean the FSD exploded.

To his credit, Captain Takane, who seems to have been not just respected but liked by both his enlisted ratings and officers, managed to hold the Arcing Head in level flight long enough for his crew to get into the escape pods, and start deploying those pods. Unfortunately, before the seventh pod could deploy, one of the primary thruster sections fell off. Which led to a cascading series of failures in the Arcing Head, which lead to the power plant failing catastrophically, by which we mean the power plant exploded, taking the rest of the ship with it, as attested by the limited telemetry from the six surviving pods.

The surviving crew members of the Head have, understandably, requested repatriation. They have also, thankfully, agreed to throw in with the McCollum's own engineering section, until we finish our own survey to Elephant's Trunk and beyond. This was after we reassured them that they did not half to, and would be allowed quarters and food, even if all they did was sit in those quarters, and would at no point be stuffed back in their pods, unless they caused an issue.

We hereby propose to the GEC that the Lonely Mountain of Wredguia KP-L C22-2 B 1 be named Takane's Peak, in honor of the late Captain Georg Takane.

Full album here.