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The Drifters are by all appearances Jovian in origin, albeit heavily altered.

Jovian Male

A Jove

The most mysterious and elusive of all the peoples of New Eden, the Jove number only a fraction of any of their neighbors, but their technological superiority makes them powerful beyond all proportion.

Government[]

The highest known governmental body is the Jovian Directorate within the Jove Empire, though this has never been confirmed or denied by the Jove. The structure and purpose of the Jovian Directorate remains uncertain.

Military[]

The Jove Navy is a powerful group, but remains small due to the Jovian Disease. They rely on information and their advanced weaponry to destroy their opponents. The Jove's implacable ruthlessness in battle makes them immensely deadly.

Appearance[]

Although definitely human, the Jovians often seem to the other races as though they are not, the reason being that they embraced genetic engineering as the way to solve any and all the problems which plague the human race. Over the thousands of years since, the Jovians have experimented with every kind of genetic modification their technology allowed. As their powers grew, they began to believe they were capable of anything, and this led them into increasingly more bizarre mutations of their bodies and minds, a policy rigorously backed up by strict governmental control.

Jovians have a very strange appearance. They are mainly between four and six feet tall, and their skin is a grayish yellow, their veins clearly visible. They have also lost all hair on their bodies, their features are very softened, and their pupils are much larger than those of most humans, to the point that their sclerae are nearly impossible to see. Female Jove have pupils that are a little smaller, making their sclerae visible, if barely. The Drifters have many implants all over their bodies, their sclerae are black and their pupils a brownish yellow.

Culture[]

The Jovians crave knowledge, any knowledge at all. Their superior technology has enabled them to infiltrate the other races with bugging devices and sensors, giving them unrivaled access to information, which they use to maintain their strong position among the races. The Jovians sell a lot of their advanced technology equipment to the other races and it is this, more than anything else, which keeps the others at bay.The Jovian language is a very strange tongue. Speech consists entirely of vowels and fluctuates rapidly in frequency.

Jovian society is mysterious and difficult to comprehend. For this and other reasons it remains very much closed to the other races, and few foreigners reside within the Jove Empire.

Jovian Disease[]

Years of genetic engineering formed the Jovian Disease, a deadly disease that only afflicts the Jove, which has caused millions of Jove to die as a result of interfering with their basic instincts, curbing their aggression and sexual instincts and cultivating strange new ones from the Shrouded Days. The Jove tried to fix the problem, only to discover their DNA was destroyed beyond repair. The Jove tried many things to fight against the disease, but found that their advanced technology was ineffective against it.

Finally, they created the three Jovian Motherships and placed the majority of their population into cryostasis, leaving their home territories in the process. Anyone who showed symptoms of the disease was left behind to perish. However, the relocation failed. The Jovian Disease continued to afflict the Jove.

Despite this, the Jove escaped the chaos that followed the closure of EVE remarkably well. Within the space of only a few centuries they had recovered, and were once again running an advanced society. They settled in a number of systems and founded an empire lasting for nine millennia. Despite the new founding, they have not recovered the splendor of their First Empire as the disease within them keeps them from reproducing, thus preventing them from increasing their numbers sufficiently for their current empire to flourish. As expected, one of Jove primary goals is to find a cure to the Jovian Disease.

Bloodlines[]

The Jove have different branches that exist but are not the result of variations in geographical or climatic differences, instead that of genetic engineering through the centuries. Today there are two known Jovian bloodlines the Modifiers and the Statics.

Modifiers[]

The Modifier tendency has manifested itself in many strange forms over the shared history of the three Jove Empires. Its unifying principle is the notion that the existing state of the Jovian race must be altered using genetic manipulation. Two major philosophical factions have endured over these ages to the extent that they can be considered the primary groupings within the Modifier tendency: the Existentialists and the Puritans.

The Existentialists are almost the archetypal experimenters and scientific adventurers, constantly exploring new avenues of research and, above all, tinkering with their own genetic codes. The Existentialists are the most energetic of all Jovian factions and the quickest to debate a point or advance their own agenda. Their energy is somewhat constrained by their own diversity, leading to vicious arguments within their own ranks and steady erosion, as radicals splinter off to form their own philosophical sects. Even so, the Existentialists are perhaps the most dangerous individuals in Jovian society, and their disdain for non-Jove leads them to see other races as little more than resources or opportunities for ever more bizarre experiments.

The Puritans constitute the other main faction within the Modifier tendency and are a rather more coherent grouping, with a single philosophical principle guiding their conduct. Put simply, the Puritans wish to reverse the accumulated centuries of genetic manipulation that the Jove have subjected themselves to. At this point in the history of the Jove, this can be considered an extraordinary and probably impossible goal. For the Puritans, however, it is the logical answer to the Jovian disease. If the taint of genetic manipulation can be erased, and a pure form of the Jovian genetic code developed, then the race may be saved. If the concept seems sound, in practice it has led to all manner of collective genetic engineering projects, some with rather spectacular and unexpected results. Regardless, the Puritans are capable of commanding the respect of even the Statics.

The activities of the various Modifier factions have resulted in another group usually considered part of their tendency, the so-called Lab Rats. In truth, the Lab Rats are not a coherent group, and the name — the closest approximation CONCORD translators could put on the usage of the Jovian term “Apokumenoi” — refers to the rather tragic origins of this class of Jove as individuals specifically created for the purpose of scientific research, rather than the social good of reproducing.

Lab Rats are in no way a slave class or possessed of limited rights. They are conceived and brought to term in the fetus tubes according to a particular set of experimental variables, and once born are treated as full Jove in the normal way. Lab Rats are usually asked to voluntarily make themselves available for tests throughout the rest of their lives. Such are the cultural pressures bound up with the search for a cure for the Jovian disease that almost all Lab Rats acquiesce in this melancholy duty

Statics[]

The Static tendency is marked by the unifying notion that there has been enough change wrought on the Jovian genetic code and even on the very fabric of the Jove Empire’s society. As a result the Statics are very firmly opposed to large-scale genetic engineering, and many are fanatically opposed even to minor genetic alterations. The knowledge that the Third Empire is very far from the pinnacle of Jovian achievement has considerably blunted the philosophy of social stasis within the tendency, but the most dedicated still hold that attempts at directed change to society are misguided and should be resisted. There are three significant factions within the Static tendency: the Elders, the Unsullied, and the Stasis People.

The Elders, in something of a historical irony, are the descendants and beneficiaries of one of the very first Jovian factions to use genetic engineering to effect significant change in the race. Their First Empire forerunners were masters in the arts of gerontological science and manipulated their genetic code to considerably slow the aging process. Their success was significant; pure-strain Elders can live for centuries in a natural life span, and even longer still with longevity implants. It is quite possible that the oldest Elders of them all have outlived more than one member of the Amarrian royal houses.

The Elders achieved paramount authority over the First Empire, but they developed their Static philosophies to an extreme that brought about the fall of the very empire they were trying to preserve. This failure weighs heavily on the Elder faction’s collective conscience, and while they do continue to argue their view, Elders rarely take an active role in Jovian politics anymore. (It should be noted that there is no relationship between this Jovian faction and the Minmatar spiritual leaders known as “elders.”)

The Unsullied are the strongest advocates of an end to all genetic manipulation and experimentation. For the Unsullied, enough has been done, and the time has come to abandon genetic technology except where absolutely necessary for the survival of the race. The Unsullied do not even use genetic therapies for medical purposes, opting instead for conventional medicine, nanotechnology, or cybernetic methods of dealing with sickness and the onset of old age. The Unsullied are rather active in the political life of the Jovian Directorate, and it is likely many of the Jove encountered by the other races were members of this faction.

Like the Elders (and, for that matter, all Statics), the Unsullied are deeply concerned with the accumulation and preservation of knowledge. Unlike the Elders, however, the Unsullied are rather outward looking. With the exception of genetic manipulation, they are willing to entertain the development and spread of many technologies, particularly cybernetics and nanotechnology.

The Stasis People are a relatively small faction in numbers, but their importance is considerable. Their mastery of cryostasis technology and the use of virtual environments has led to their taking on a role as important keepers of much knowledge that would otherwise have been lost to the Third Empire. For some reason, the Stasis People insist that virtual environment technology has reached the optimal level and should not be developed any further.

While those Jove from other factions who have been granted access to their virtual environments have been impressed with the fidelity of the simulations, they have often wondered why the Stasis People do not experiment with novel environments or alter parameters such as the information density and temporal flow of the simulations. The Stasis People politely refuse to discuss such matters and concentrate on their role as the ultimate archivists of the Third Jove Empire. In keeping with their special function, the Stasis People maintain cordial relations with all tendencies and factions of the Jove. They can be classed as Statics more on the basis of their philosophical outlook than any political or ideological activism.

The Society of Conscious Thought[]

In AD 23044, roughly two centuries after the formation of the Third Empire, a man named Ior Labron founded a new kind of organization that he called the Society of Conscious Thought.

While Ior Labron was a Static hailing from a particularly outward-looking Unsullied enclave, he had been a keen student of a remarkable Jovian entrepreneur and intellectual named Gorda Hoje. A rather unique individual, Hoje derived from the Elders’ genetic strain, but he had broken with the introspective and secluded ways of their faction as a young man, wishing to help expand the Third Empire. It is thought that Hoje may have been a crew member on the long flight of the Jovian motherships from the Heaven constellation. Certainly, as an Elder it is quite possible that he had lived through that time. He died a little under two centuries after the Jovian resettlement.

Hoje’s special talent in his later years lay in nurturing young minds, particularly those with a thirst for knowledge and a desire to understand the ultimate ends of sentient life. Wealthy, seemingly from his work as a leading corporatist in the early Third Empire, Hoje had much time to churn out cryptic philosophical texts and carefully constructed scientific papers. Most viewed his philosophy as eccentric and his science as impractical. Hoje did not care. As he saw it, his real task was mentoring a generation of Jovian minds in preparation for the coming age.

In Ior Labron, Gorda Hoje probably had his greatest success. When the old savant and philanthropist finally passed, Labron made a deep study of his mentor’s works and found in them the outlines of a profound and rich philosophy. After many years of study and preparation, the energetic young intellectual gathered together like minds and founded the Society of Conscious Thought (SoCT) as a vehicle for the exploration of Jovian spiritual potential.

The great task of the Society was to discover the meaning of life itself, a seemingly quixotic goal that somehow led the cult-like organization into the politics of the Jovian Directorate. In truth, the Jovian need to find meaning in existence was only heightened by their lack of a deep emotional life, and the SoCT therefore readily attracted many dynamic adherents, becoming very powerful in the process.

For a period the SoCT was effectively the secret power behind the Jovian Directorate, operating as a sort of shadow government, but the distorting effect this had on the Third Empire was swiftly noticed by equally active factions. In particular, the various Modifier groups banded together to break the SoCT’s power and even succeeded in persuading the orthodox Statics to agree to ban the Society.

In the widely distributed and diverse atmosphere of the Third Empire, however, such a ban could not hold forever. The SoCT slowly but surely emerged again, but this time as a new form of scientific and spiritual community. In order to avoid triggering the intervention of other factions, they established a far-flung network of self-contained enclaves that they called “kitzes.”

The kitzes were built in remote places throughout the Jove Empire, with the resulting settlements resembling fortress monasteries and housing living quarters, food production, libraries, laboratories, and all the needs of a self-sustaining commune of Jovian spiritual scientists. Each kitz developed independently of the others, but communication between the kitzes of the SoCT network is frequent and considered vital to the mission of the Society.

Once the Jove Empire established contact with the core empires, the Society began setting up its own connections with the other nations of New Eden. Before long the SoCT established new kitzes in remote areas beyond the Jove Empire and closer to the core of New Eden. Ultimately, the Society went so far as to openly establish control over an isolated constellation in the mostly uninhabited Geminate region. Nominally independent of the Jove Empire, the Society was granted sovereignty over the N-K4Q0 constellation by CONCORD without intervention by the Jovian Directorate.

The SoCT has subsequently had a large impact on New Eden through its policy of admitting non-Jove to its schools. Arguably providing the best education available to non-Jove in New Eden, the SoCT schools have a remarkable track record when it comes to turning out world leaders in science, industry, and politics. So prestigious and effective is a SoCT education that even the elite of the Amarr Empire will eagerly send their children, should they gain one of the coveted scholarships to a kitz school.

Sleepers[]

Nearly all of the Stasis People, except for a few moderates, left New Eden and moved to Anoikis shortly before the collapse of the Second Empire, establishing virtual enclaves throughout wormhole space. These days, the majority factions of the Stasis People are better known as the Sleepers.

History[]

Much about the Jove remains uncertain, due to the devastation their civilization suffered in the past, but they have been determined to be one of the oldest races in New Eden.

Colonial Period[]

The ancestors of the Jove were among the last to colonize New Eden before the EVE Gate's collapse in 8061 AD. They arrived in seven primitive sleeper ships with aging warp drives. They settled the Utopia system in the Heaven constellation. The first Jove were a hardy people, immensely culturally diverse and were only held together by their idealism. Even though the collapse of the EVE Gate had a negative effect on the Jovian society, the effect was only minor and the Jove quickly recovered back to a state of being an advanced society within a few centuries. Early Jove colonies were self-sufficient and self-reliant, built to survive in near-total isolation and only collaborating with each other when needed. To save the strain in their colonies' resources, they kept much of their population in cryostasis. Many of those enclaves also became focused on accelerating the evolution of humanity, genetically, cybernetically and socially.

As the centuries passed, the Jove enclaves' culture diverged with each other to the point Heaven was submersed in open warfare due to their disagreements. The Jovian conflicts also pushed them to expand beyond Heaven to the rest of the Curse region.

First Jovian Empire[]

Somewhere between 10,000 to 12,000 years before CONCORD's foundation in 23233, the Jove enclaves' wars came to an end and the Jove united under a single banner. This marked the birth of the First Jovian Empire, which would last for eight millennia. It was the golden age of the Jove people, in which their colonies' science and technology unified and pushed them to heights unseen before, or since. It was a peaceful and productive nation in which scientific freedom was widely promoted, and the Jove focused on tech that improved their nation's cohesion, like longevity enhancements, cloning, virtual realities and cryogenics.

The eventual downfall of this empire was brought about by a political faction known as the Elders, who believed their civilization had achieved true perfection and attempted to suppress change and force stasis , which turned the other Jove factions against them. Once more, the Jove fell to war for several decades and the First Empire collapsed. Nearly all Jove assets and colonies outside of Curse were abandoned due to the conflict

Second Jovian Empire[]

Around the early 21st Millennium, The Jovians were reunited by Miko Bour, the First Tyrant, who removed the remnants of the Elders faction from power and took over the entirety of Heaven. A ruthless and strategic man, Bour managed to stop the collapse of the Jove, eliminate his enemies and found a new empire. Upon proclaiming the Second Empire's birth, Bour offered to all scattered Jovian factions to join him. Most Jove, who were weary from war due to their collapse, accepted. Those who refused were quickly wiped out by the navy, which was fanatically loyal to the First Tyrant.

While certainly ruthless in pursuing his goal of uniting the Jove, Miko Bour was no mere warlord. Once the Second Empire was stabilized, he put in place a federal system where each Jovian enclave could promote representatives to an assembly called the Ruling Chamber. Recognizing that the power of the Tyrant required legitimacy, Bour provided for the Ruling Chamber to appoint one of its members to the office of Tyrant. The system served the Second Empire well for a time, and the rule of the Tyrants lasted for some 2000 years before disaster struck the Jove once more.

The Second Empire never reached the mythical heights of the First Empire, the Jove’s long-lamented golden age, but the fall that preceded it was not so great as that which followed it. The Second Empire is looked back on by today’s Jove as the last time of true Jovian greatness. In many ways it was the definitive empire of the modern Jove, having been founded and populated by people not so very different from the Jove of the modern day. The fall of the Second Empire is a greater horror for the Jove than the legendary collapse of the First Empire, because in Jovian terms it took place a matter of generations ago and it brought with it the nemesis of the Jovian race: the Jovian Disease.

The Shrouded Days[]

Why the Second Empire collapsed is a mystery as complete to the modern Jove as it is to anyone else. Given the apparent connection with the Jovian Disease, much speculation has focused on the malady. On this account the survivors were those who were able to resist to some extent, but remained vulnerable over the long term. Many alternatives have been proposed, including yet another Jovian civil war, invasion by some unknown external enemy, or simple exhaustion of local resources and subsequent economic collapse.

The evidence suggests that outlying settlements were destroyed. From the archaeological remains in the band of systems that constituted the outer Second Empire, some kind of cataclysm is apparent; the ruins there are almost all in worse condition than the remains of the First Empire. In the Heaven constellation some arrest of the disaster was managed, but the following period of approximately five hundred years is a historical black hole. This period is known by the Jove as the “Shrouded Days.” It is a topic of great pain for them, representing an immeasurable loss of knowledge of science, technology, culture, and history. Above all, it represents a calamitous breach in the genetic records of their race. The Jove of the colonial period, as well as the First and Second Empires, through all their troubles, had been connected by a carefully maintained genetic history. The Shrouded Days destroyed that history, leaving its account of the First and Second Empires fragmentary and introducing a gaping void of five hundred years following what was arguably the hardest fall of the Jovian race. Remnants of the Second Empire survive to this day in wormhole space and in New Eden, in the form of the Drifters and the Sleepers.

It's implied the Second Empire and their Drifter remnants had a war with the Triglavian Collective in ancient times, who call them the "Ancient Enemy Azdaja". Drifters and Triglavians continue to fight each other both in Abyssal Deadspace and in Pochven.

Third Jovian Empire[]

Since the Shrouded Days, they have been trying to put the pieces together again, but their DNA-structure has in many ways been damaged beyond repair.

In a desperate attempt to finally rid themselves of the Jovian Disease after failing to find a cure, the Jovians decided to abandon their home worlds in Curse, in three massive motherships, and settled the regions of J7HZ-F and A821-A, where the third Empire resides to this day.

The current of the Jovian Empires has prevailed for just over 500 years. Despite the reallocation of home worlds the Jovian Disease is still prevalent among the Jovian society continuing their steady decline.

Since introducing capsuleer technology to the Ishukone Corporation, defeating the Amarr Empire at the Battle of Vak'Atioth, participating in the establishing of CONCORD and wiping out the original Sansha's Nation alongside the other four Empires, the Jove have become more reclusive on the interplanetary political scene with very little public communication with the other empires.

With a few exceptions, like Veniel and the Society of Conscious Thought, The Jove have kept little contact with the other empires since the capsuleer technology was released to the public in YC 105.

The penultimate confirmed contact between the Jovian Directorate and the CONCORD Assembly was in YC 112, and concerned the Sansha’s Nation incursion into the Prosper Vault in the 3-CE1R system. In a communiqué to the Inner Circle of CONCORD, the directorate tersely announced the expulsion of the Sansha's Nation fleet and the reestablishment of Jovian control over a facility that was stated to be an unimportant materials repository in an outlying system. In truth, the station was abandoned.

In YC 116, The red giant star W477-P in the heart of Directorate territory exploded, unleashing a massive supernova known as Caroline's Star. The supernova destroyed an ancient Talocan stellar lattice array in orbit of the star, triggering a quantum event that destroyed the Jovian gate network. By that time, only around 1000 Jove remained in their home space, the rest either claimed by the Jovian Disease or who'd chosen to stay in New Eden for good. Losing their stargates did not bother the Jove, as many of their ships, including the aging Yoiul, possessed the ability and calculations necessary to create artificial wormholes.

Near the end of YC117, after half a dozen more years of silence, the former Archon of the Society of Conscious Thought and its last known surviving Jove member, Veniel, transferred control of the Jove corporations in the core regions of New Eden to the Grand Elder of the Geminate Chapter of SOCT, Matshi Raish, designated the Society as the Jove's successor in CONCORD, and finally withdrew the Directorate remnants from New Eden's astropolitical scene once and for all.

The Jovian Directorate has remained completely silent since then. No manned Jovian vessels have been seen beyond the border of the Third Empire. The only traces of Jovian presence that remain are their corporations and the Society of Conscious Thought. Within either of those, no member of the Jovian race has been encountered for many years. Many believe the Jove are gone. Some think the Jovian disease has finally claimed them. Others suspect they have migrated yet again, perhaps into the depths of wormhole space, a region they call “Anoikis.”


The Races & Organizations of EVE Online

Racial Overview
Amarr EmpireCaldari StateGallente FederationJovian DirectorateMinmatar Republic


CONCORD AssemblyAmmatar MandateKhanid KingdomThe SyndicateGuristas PiratesAngel CartelThe Blood Raider Covenant
The InterBusOREThukker TribeThe Servant Sisters of EVEThe Society of Conscious ThoughtMordu's Legion CommandSansha's NationSerpentis

According To Veniel, the Jove intend to leave their current home once more.

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