The Empress is Dead....

...or is she?

So, shockingly, the Drifters turned up to pop Empress Jamyl I over the weekend at the flagship handover party. Pretty sure no one is surprised at that!

There has been a lot of talk about if she was a capsuleer won't she just reclone? Now I'm no massive expert but this is how I remember the lore goes. If you want the real story go track down one of the Hydrostatic Podcast guys or Mark726! There are likely mistakes below, but its roughly in the ballpark..

The Amarrian Heirs aren't allowed to have clones, sacred flesh or something. Those that can ascend to the throne must be pure. They are allowed to be capsuleers and have the implants but they are not allowed to be clones.

When an Emperor/Empress dies a new one is selected by the succession trials. This is basically a big space brawl between the eligible heirs (seven of them? Or am I getting confused my Matari Tribes) to see who gets the top job. The losers all destruct their capsules so that the newly appointed Emperor/ess has no rivals or other claims to the throne. In the last one Champions were selected (I think it was an IG event using players?) but the result was the same, the losing Heirs were expected to kill themselves.

So without clones they are all dead forever right?

Nope. The naughty* Jamyl had a secret clone. So when she destroyed her pod a few years ago when she lost in the succession trials she was recloned, however there was a problem. The brain-scan took an exceptionally long time to arrive and when it did, it was much bigger than expected.

As far as I know CCP have not revealed why officially, however, it is widely accepted that 'The Other' got in on the transmission and embeded him/her/itself into her consciousness. Who is 'The Other', again we don't know 100% if it is The Other, but the consensus is it is an entity that was 'born' in the Sleeper construct. Think of the construct as a sort of The Matrix and The Other as Agent Smith. Anyway the rules of the Matrix, sorry The Construct, was that to exist inside the Construct you had to have a body in the real world. The Sleepers chased The Other and some how due to "space magic" it was able to get inside Jamyl's head. No mean feat given this all probably kicked off in wormhole space. It might be that Jamyl was using a Templar Implant or other such Sleeper tech well before wormholes became commonplace following the Apocrypha event.

When the Empyrean War kicked off seven years ago Jamyl was able to guide her supporters (she's a bit psychic too now she's been reborn) to a Terran superweapon hidden by the Jove near the Eve Gate. This stopped the Elder Invasion by nuking them. This act of saving the Throne Worlds then led to her becoming the Empress even though it was obvious she'd been cloned. The Sleeper-Jove connection means that The Other could know where the Terran artifacts were hidden. As it is believed he/she/it is inside Jamyl's head it stands to reason this is why she knew where to find it.

Since she fired that thing off she's been acting wierd (read Templar One) and has appeared to have multiple personalities. Remember it was the Amarr who were going into Sleeper structures to pull the implants out of the heads of sleeping Sleepers to make cloned soldiers.

The Drifters appear to have been after the Amarr since they showed up. Drifters/Jove/Sleeper connections would mean that they really want The Other out of the head of the most powerful person in New Eden.

So is Jamyl dead? Possibly. CCP have said they want players taking centre stage, not NPC's. Heth is gone, Jamyl may be gone. Roden and Maleatu Shakor should be worried!

Then again we know Naughty Jamyl likes bending the rules and I doubt The Other who is influencing her gave two hoots about Amarrian tradition. I would expect between the two of them they'd have a clone or ten stashed somewhere.

OK, so thats roughly the story on why Jamyl is a capsuleer, hasn't got official clones but might have some hidden ones. Ish. Sort of. Badly. I hope Mark726 or the Hydrostatic guys don't see this, I'll probably get roasted.

*For naughtiness justification read Templar One, Page 287!