Star Citizen: Loremaker's Guide to the Galaxy - Tohil System

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:14

   [Music] hello welcome to another episode of lawmakers guide to the galaxy my name is Adam Weiser and I am an associate writer here at CI G Los Angeles and I'll be your host today on a tour of one of the many systems that you'll be able to explore in star citizen and potentially squadron 42 so today we're gonna go off to a system which is interesting for for a number of reasons it's in kind of an

2. 00:01:02

   interesting position it has an interesting history and for the longest time no one really thought much about it which actually played into how important it did become within the history of the the UAE in particular so today we're gonna go visit the system of tow hill we're gonna start on earth as always and here using this handy beautiful star map that we've put together along with our friends at turbulent we're going to hit tow hill right here in the search bar and let's go visit the system now the system was originally discovered in 2716 and though it was discovered at that time the UE didn't claim it for for awhile after for reasons which I'll

3. 00:01:50

   explain as we go further into this presentation but it's a four planet system that has at the very center a k4 main sequence sequence star now this thing as we I love going in close here because the the effects that have of the the sun rays coming off that are quite beautiful these types of stars are are really something that astronomers really look out for in the universe even today because they have a long long stable time where they can actually basically put out the right amount of heat and everything to have a very good and viable green band these things can stay stable for close to fifteen to thirty billion years is kind of the rage we expect which is about double what the

4. 00:02:37

   the Sun at the center of our system is expected to kind of like stay in it in its in its state so people always look to these types of systems with the K for main sequence stars as being quite potential for maybe alien life-forms and in habitation which was the case when the system was first discovered - they do just for for a frame of reference they do have they're not as big or as bright as the Sun at the center of the Lassalle system this one for example this star at the center of tow hill actually has a luminosity of 0.19 compared to our Sun if our Suns one this is just almost 2/10 as bright when it when it comes to that now the the tow hill system itself let's back out here for a second and try to explain why why

5. 00:03:26

   the system was it hasn't really been thought highly over much about throughout most of history was discovered by - - basically almost by chance by Oasis soon and Ida Amino who were basically two folks that were running the smuggling operation right here in the NICS system which you'll see is connected to tow Hill through a large jump point so they were living on Levski which as you're familiar with they have basically people there that are anti u EE and when this is a system was discovered in 2716 it was the the height of kind of the mess of rain lots of lots of really horrible stuff was going on and people were realizing that they weren't quite what they what they hoped

6. 00:04:15

   to be so they were working in Nix a system which was anti u EE but they also don't want to encourage a lot of piracy or a lot of bad stuff going on there because more activity by those types of elements might then bring the u ee to go visit them and and kind of stamp the foot down so they actually were banished from Levski for Aida from you know actually trying to really promote their smuggling operation they were kicked out and they're sitting in the outer reaches of the NIC system here just floating around and Aisha soon was a very talented mechanic and pilot and was doing some fixes and repairs to the new scanner system and started to get this string of strange readings which at first she assumed were mistakes on her part due to what she did but after she examined it she actually realized that

7. 00:05:03

   they were hinting at a new jump point and they followed it on through and they ended up in the tow hill system now if you think about this if you look at the map right now there's only one jump so at the time the system was discovered it basically ended right there this the second large jump that didn't exist yet nobody knew about it so when it first happened they they ran back to the next system Aida and OHA and they basically decided to figure out like well what are we going to do with this here is this entire new system that we know very little about but they you know could we use this it could be a good smuggling port they had all these ideas and what i eated decided to do was she like listen I've got some friends down here in the Bremen system they've got some really

8. 00:05:51

   high-class scanning equipment let's go pays them a visit we'll bring them back here they'll scan the system and we'll figure out whether this is something maybe we should try to keep secret on our own or whether it'll just be worthwhile to broadcast it to everyone and and and let them know that this new system was discovered now they get to Bremen and the these to celebrate their discovery the first night and Oishi wakes up the next morning with this like terrible hangover and I eat is gone and so is the constellation that was used to discover the system and not long thereafter news reports start popping up all over the UAE that this that this new Explorer Aida Firmino had discovered a brand new system now uh-oh YCJA was really hurt by this because she was the one who did a lot of the work to do this and she also felt double-crossed by Aida and basically went to the Terra

9. 00:06:42

   Gazette with her side of the story and with a bunch of like reg tags showing the constellation that they'd used and a bunch of smuggling operations and in doing this kind of blew up I eat his entire story about how she was this lone intrepid explorer that had gone off and discovered this new system and the entire controversy was a big was kind of big news on the spectrum for a few for a few weeks until it eventually kind of faded away now what's the ue got word about the system they went in there and again if you're looking at the map it's just nixed too there that's all they see and even at that time NYX wasn't a you EE system but the UE still went in because they they wanted to see exactly what was there and besides the Sun which we described before they found toe Hill one which is a lava planet as you can see very very

10. 00:07:32

    close to the system Sun now just to give you an idea of how close this is 0.06 for a you away from the Sun so if the earth is obviously one a you away from our Sun this is 0.06 for away from the Sun so obviously all the heat and and being right nemesis Anita there has turned this into a lava planet and a place that's completely inhospitable for human activity in any way shape or form now if we back up here you can see the very start of the green band here and next we're gonna go to toe hill too and this is actually just on the it's on the inside edge of the green band so this sits at point three one seven au in the

11. 00:08:21

    system again that's that's measured from the from the Sun and the green band starts at point four one so just outside of it just out just out in this range here so again it's not quite a habitable planet because it is just on the inner part part of the of the green band this planet is a it's a rocky it's a mezzo planet so there there was a chance if it wasn't the green band we could make it habitable it doesn't lack and lacks an atmosphere though no one quite is sure if it had it ever lost it there the the the planet does suffer some from very intense solar winds so there's a theory that over over the the millennia whatever atmosphere this planet had was slowly stripped away by by the SolarWinds and just left without an atmosphere that fact again

12. 00:09:11

    corresponding with the fact that it's just inside the green band made this another planet that the UAE when they first looked at it were not didn't make him too excited about now the crown jewel of the system which even at that time wasn't considered that great is toe hill three right here and this is an ocean planet with the no significant land masses of all at all on on its surface so we're gonna skip over this for right now because it it does play an important part in the history but when the UAE first looked at it in 27:16 they just saw a big ocean world without many resources on it and they they didn't see the appeal of trying to settle down in an ocean world at that point if we go it a little further I'm going to back it up and you'll see on the edge of the green band here you've got the tow Hill Belt alpha now this is

13. 00:10:00

    a very very dense asteroid belt and the first scans of it we're kind of promising because there there are minerals and and different things worth mining in this belt unfortunately a lot of the the bigger kind of like mining conglomerates looked at the layout and what was in this asteroid belt ran a bunch of projections and basically discovered that for massive operations the amount of stuff you would extract from it is it worth all the money in the effort you would have to put in to get it out so they've kind of left it alone that means it's probably a good opportunity for some minor smaller miners to go in there and try to to make a few bucks here and there but they that doesn't that come to the zone dangers which I will explain a little bit later on let's move on out to the last plan into the system this is tow Hill for and

14. 00:10:48

    this is a super-earth it's it's massive it's frozen now it's well beyond the frost line it suffers a lot from asteroid strike so there really hasn't been much activity or much used for humanity to go to this planet it just kind of sits out here on the the very edges of the system now so this is what the ue saw when they first came in scanned it and they saw this and they're like you know what you know we don't really need the system it doesn't really do anything for us it doesn't add anything to the Empire and again the only way to get to it would go through this unclaimed system and Nick so what's what's the use in doing that well it turns out that a few years later this jump point connecting it to oil was discovered now at the time that this jump point was discovered

15. 00:11:38

    coming in from Oya this was I believe let me double check my notes here 27:21 so it's like five years after the initial discovery oh yeah also was already part of what was called the Perry line now for those unfamiliar the Perry line was basically a string of systems that separated the UAE from the xi'an empire during the Cold War particularly during the time of the messers these systems like oil were basically completely abandoned on both sides they'd run their military patrols through them just to keep an eye on it but they were considered no-man's land these were buffer systems that were meant to try to keep the empire separate when Oya and tow Hill were suddenly connected that became suddenly maybe a more strategic place for the UAE to own

16. 00:12:27

    so they moved on in and in 2721 that is when they officially claimed the system because they figured they could stage other military units in tow hill so if anything ever went down and oil here they could send in the military from tow hill and castra also right down here had a large military contingent so they figured this would be a great you know now that it's connected to Oya it's become strategically important they claim the system and they kind of went in and we're spending time there and while they were there over the course the years they were doing more scanning and that's when the second large jump point which connects it to virtus up here was discovered now virtus is a as a xi'an system it would basically become part of the parry line - so the parry line up and this

17. 00:13:15

    part of the map would kind of go right through here all three of these systems but the second that toe Hill got connected to virtus it was no longer this kind of insulated system that was like Nixon Oya that the Yui could completely control now the Xian also had a direct route right into the toe hill system and this this kind of changed the equation and the math on whether or not it was going to be worth to keep the system or how much it was going to be worth for the UAE to spend time in this system because if you kept a military contingent there it would be very expensive to basically watch this jump point kind of be prepared for anything that might come from Oya and of course if something does go on there you're kind of isolated because boya is an empty system Nix is is is a system which is there's no military presence in it

18. 00:14:03

    for the UAE so getting any backup or resources of the system in case of an attack or an emergency or anything would would be much more difficult than expectance or then then you would want it to be so because of this discovery to the virtus system the UAE military presence in tow hill they decided to pull it back and they pulled it back to Castro here they moved it back all the way here just and had basically left toe hill alone they added it to the power line said this is basically another one of the buffer systems people can come and go through just in case to kind of keep our peace now but by the time this happened tow Hill had been known in Nix for a while and when the military moved out they realized wait a minute now we have the system here which used to just be connected here which also leads us into

19. 00:14:52

    shyam space so a lot of entrepreneur entrepreneurs and smugglers and different criminal elements realize if you didn't like the messers if you wanted to get out of the UAE tow Hill was now a viable option and it was one the military really wasn't spending that much more attention on so was during this period that tow Hill got the reputation it still has today as basically a Smuggler's paradise it's a place that not many people thought out they didn't think as I explained before there's nothing really in this system so and that's the way that the the pirates and the smugglers kept it for years in years and years because they don't want people coming there because they they wanted to use this as as kind of the main smuggling route between the UAE and the Xian Empire through the end of the Cold

20. 00:15:40

    War now what what the these smugglers realized when we go back to tow Hill 3 which is this ocean world I told you about earlier is that tow Hill 3 has it doesn't have large it doesn't have any land masses to populate but it has a very interesting ecology it has these what they call living Islands there are these large biomasses that are a part that are part of the ocean and kind of connected have these deep roots underground and nobody knows exactly when or who did it but at some point supposedly a smuggler had to crash-land on this planet and just because they had no other choice they set down their ship on one of these large floating formations plant masses and it helped and they realized over the time that

21. 00:16:29

    these actually were sturdy and strong enough whatever whatever these plants were that they could support humans walking around landing ships even starting to build some structures on them so for years and years and years they they wanted to put forward this myth that nothing was there so that every one of the smugglers and pilots could have their own little like floating island that they can maybe deck out things like parts of the Caribbean style like this is their own secret little place where they can go and hide their ship and build and build something a place to hang out and and hide their loot and stuff like that so it was it was a boon for the smugglers at the time that people didn't think there was really much going on here on tow Hill 3 now the the popularity forward as a smuggling destination actually then came in to be a big part of you EE history

22. 00:17:19

    in 27 89 a young emperor cray who was the ruler of the xi'an empire actually came to the system to meet with the senator from tara by the name of terence a karai now they sat down and they had the first kind of human and xi'an meeting to talk about the Cold War and tried to negotiate a solution to it and what they walked away from at the end of this at the end of this conference which was done and complete secret nobody else in the UAE or the Shannon Empire knew about it is they walked away with an agreement that if the messer government and basically the earth part of the UAE at any point did an attack on the xi'an empire tara and the more what you would call maybe forward-thinking wing of the

23. 00:18:11

    UAE as represented by tara would support the Shia and and would not fight in any attack against them that the messers tried to put forward at this time when this treaty was basically announced to the general public it it was one of those things that it didn't have an immediate impact but it it was definitely one of the key factors into the downfall of the Masters because it showed just how toothless they were in being able to stop something like that and it really galvanized those who were anti Messer and probably more of a Proterra bent that that there was hope that there could be a peace to this cold war so it's a very important system in the history of the ue4 for bringing peace and a bit of stability to to the

24. 00:18:59

    empire with this agreement with the with the she own just a few other really quick things about toe hell 3 because this is the system or this is the planet when you visit the system you'll be able to go visit visit some of the landing zone see some of their it's just even though the system isn't or this planet isn't technically recognized by the UE Senate there are still some you EU laws that do govern the type of building that does go on here because the the floating biomass is that that take up this planet they don't want to put too many people too many ships or too many large structures on them that may that may have an adverse effect on them a very famously Hamedan Island sank here was the the biggest and the most populous I'll kind of like the

25. 00:19:47

    island mass on this planet and it's sank for people most people believe it's because of what humanity did putting so many structures on it that it eventually just brought it you know kind of all the weight brought it down and destroyed whatever structure however however the biomass works here so it's it's an interesting place it's not going to be too heavily heavily populated all over the place because of the strange-looking conditions but it's it's definitely a very unique and unusual place in the history of the system and one final thing to note as I said the toe hill belt alpha there are some minerals in there and you could probably make make a few bucks if you're a smaller miner wanting to go out there and do some digging around but just be warned that again this system became a Smuggler's

26. 00:20:37

    paradise there there is a very strong outlaw presence in the system and this dense asteroid belt is also one of those areas where pirates outlaws will hang out set up traps maybe try to hide their there there whatever they have in certain places here so even though mining might be profitable for some it can also be quite dangerous so just a little heads up if you decide to venture into the toe Hill asteroid belt so uh that was a quick look at the toe hill system which you'll be seen in in the game at some point in the future hope you enjoyed the the history and a little bit of the science behind it and we'll see you next time on lawmakers guide to the galaxy thank you for watching so if you want to keep it with

27. 00:21:25

    the latest and greatest in the star citizen of squadron 42 development please follow us on our social media channels see you soon