Do you know Jaques?

It's Jaques, not Jacques

If you play Elite Dangerous then you may at some point have heard of Jaques and wondered 'Who exactly is he?' Well, Jaques is the sole owner and proprietor of Jaques Station; the system hopping starport of Elite Dangerous. He also may have inadvertently become the saviour of the human race, should the coming months in game prove difficult.

Long Past

What'll it be Commander?

He first showed up in 'The Stories of the Frontier', the booklet that accompanied 1993's Frontier: Elite II. In the year 3200 Jaques was a cyborg bartender, hard wired into the massive dodecahedral Coriolis starport of which he owned half. He planned to buy out the other half, strap some whacking great engines and a hyperspace drive to it, head out to the Frontier of human space and maybe beyond.

Fast forward a hundred years and Jaques is no longer aboard a Coriolis station but has transferred to a newer, relatively smaller Orbis class starport. Starports of this size do not normally come with engines and jump drives, they are often expanded from the main docking bay body that is jumped into system. The engine and jump modules attached to the stations main body are then removed during the construction of the rest of the station. Jaques not only kept the engines and jump modules, but he sourced a few more and had them strapped on too, getting the whacking great engines he always wanted. Who doesn't like a turbo charged ride, eh?

Recent Past

His power plant can't manage all the neon's he had fitted

Jaques Station was finally opened for business in the February of 3301 (2015) and his station was jumped from system to system throughout 'The Bubble' of human space. In June he came to rest in Gliese 1269, a system on the very edge of The Bubble nearly 300 Light Years away from Earth. Here he stayed for just short of a year, whether his planned storyline had been canned due to player actions like the Emperor's Dawn storyline, I do not know. My theory is that Jaques was meant to head to the Pleiades nebula but the players decided to have Obsidian Orbital built instead. Either way, Jaques was brought back to the galactic limelight in May 3302 (2016) when a Community Goal was started to bring him fuel.

A Community Goal is a timed multiplayer mission where rewards are tiered according to individual contribution and total achieved by all participants. As the achieved pool increases, it unlocks progressive reward tiers available to individual participants. the more you contribute, the higher up the contribution table you go and the more you are rewarded once the CG is completed.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Milky Way

Yep, that's a Type 9 at Beagle Point

At this time the Distant Worlds Expedition, an over 1000 strong contingent of player pilots had
reached Beagle Point, the then furthest reachable star system from Earth at 65 000 LY but many were worse for wear from the journey, some with a dire need of repairs. Someone came up with the idea of Jaques bringing his station the 65 Kilo Light Years (Kylies), all the way to Beagle point to provide repairs and to get him away from the star he'd been staring at for the past eight months. The Community Goal was started on the 5th of May 3302 and successfully concluded a week later. However, it was not just fuel that had been delivered to Jaques.

A little something extra

Nope

While hundreds of players contributed towards the Community Goal, there will always be those who just want to see the galaxy burn. These individuals instead delivered a bunch of Unknown Artefacts, probe like objects that led to the discovery of the 'Barnacles' of Merope. These UAs have a damaging effect on nearby technology, degrading the systems of ships that hold them and shutting off services of the stations they are sold at. The only known counter to this effect is copious amounts of Meta Alloys, sourced from the aforementioned Barnacles. No one knew about the sold UAs until the 20th May when a report on GalNet, the in game news reel, listed the stations influenced by the alien objects; including Jaques Station. The report came too late for the needed Meta Alloys to be gathered as the following day, Jaques was no longer in Gliese 1269.

Back at Beagle Point, a small group from the expedition were eagerly awaiting Jaques' arrival. News of his departure was gratefully received and it was considered that given the distances involved, even with the stations jump range, it would be some time before he would appear in system. After four days, it was realised that Jaques was late and on the 26th, he and his station were officially declared missing.

The Milky Way, a fluffy centre with no chocolate

Where's Wa-Jaques?

So began the greatest search party in Elite Dangerous so far, involving hundreds of players. Those players at Beagle Point began searching local systems, making their ways back toward human space while another party worked in the opposite direction. Many independent explorers who were already somewhere in between began searching the systems around them. This went on for a little over two weeks with no sign of Jaques, many gave up in the search and either returned home or continued on their own way. The 13th of June saw a change to that, a broadcast from Jaques was received by various Frontier outposts. However, the signal was heavily fragmented with some outposts receiving more than others. Various players worked on collecting these fragments with the hope of reconstructing the message and finding out where Jaques had ended up. In the end, it was by sheer luck that Jaques was found so quickly.

On the 27th of June, Commander Cly was using the galaxy map to plan a trip going from nebula to nebula when he spotted something unusual. One of the systems in a nebula nearly 22KLY from Sol was showing as 'Independent' when all the others showed as 'None'. Rather than announce his discovery, he wanted to check it out for himself so set off on a 15 hour journey to the snappily named Eol Prou RS-T D3-94. As you can see here, Jaques was almost a wreck. The UAs had caused a 'misjump', making the station crash through hyperspace and veer off course. The news of Jaques' predicament spread quickly and many players took it upon themselves to gather Meta Alloys to ship out to Jaques and nullify the UAs.

Ten Four Rubber Ducky!

Didn't we pass that star once already?

A convoy of various player ships set out from the Maia system on the 1st of July, commencing the longest single stop trade run of over 22KLYs. Estimated average jump range for these vessels would be around 22 light years, meaning that on average it would take roughly one thousand hyperspace jumps to reach Jaques and deliver their precious cargo. Over the following days, the convoy made their deliveries and some turned back to pick up another batch from Maia while others decided to search systems local to Jaques for the Barnacles that produce the Meta Alloys.

The Canonn Research player group have been working hard to investigate all things 'not human' in Elite Dangerous, be that Unknown Artefacts, Barnacles and the new Unknown Probes cataloguing their findings, correlating data and finding other sites where Barnacles could be found. Through this research, more Barnacles had been found not only in other systems within the Pleiades nebula but also the California and Witchhead nebulas. It was hoped that this information would help to find more Barnacles closer to Jaques although to the best of my knowledge, the only Barnacles to be found are on the Pleiades side of human space.

I'm not saying it's aliens, but...

Don't touch it, you don't know where it's been

With the rise of the Unknown Probes, there has also been a increase in mysteriously wrecked ships with unidentifiable weapons damage and log fragments talking of strange noises, myths and devastating weapons. This has got a few players spooked and they made enquiries with Frontier Developments on the possibility of starting some colonies around Jaques and away from the predicted interstellar warzone in the galactic south. At LaveCon, a primarily Elite Dangerous convention held in the UK, Executive Producer Michael Brookes confirmed that Frontier would enable and support colonisation in the area around Jaques but its the players that would have to make it happen. The first step to achieving that is to get Jaques fixed up and get all his services back online if his station is to be the hub of this new 'Bubble'. To this end there is a Community Goal running for particular commodities. Secondly, a surface station is to be constructed to help in the colonisation effort and for that a second CG is running for mined metals.

In response to these recent CGs, players have once again formed a flotilla to run the required goods, this time named 'The August Exodus'. The first group of 261 registered pilots are already en route across the galaxy while a second group, currently at 187 pilots, is due to leave on the 15th of August. So far 7226 individual pilots have made the 22KLY journey to Jaques to deliver what he needs.

Jaques of all trades

From bartender to station owner, wanderer to explorer, attempted rescuer to survivor, pioneer to possible saviour, now what the future holds for Jaques depends on the actions of the Elite Dangerous community. Now when someone asks 'who's this Jacques guy?', you can say 'Jaques, not Jacques' and give them his history.

Or you can give them the link to this.