Kaylen has a whole report that to summarize comes down to “yes she knows where to find some of them.”
On the low impact but safer sides, a lot of the colony efforts by the Phantoms around Thenica that are to raise PR should be easily accessible. They are public and an attempt by the Phantoms to make people less scared of them. Members on these fronts include Hyvory, who escaped Kaylen’s raid on their colony but are currently being hunted by the guild’s scouts. Ki’Ralcht also kind of falls in this category since she is in the Demon Kingdom helping to control Valadeus’ former territory. Though she is a slightly bigger fish than the Thenican colonies.
Scaling up a little are the ‘middle management’ phantoms. Eliza leads House Jaal’Darya on Thenica under the supervision of Yasrena. Faelyn manages the frontier fleet and is definitely a little bit smaller than she once was when she was managing Moncayo. Both of these are on par with any of the federation’s members so it would likely require combined effort to overwhelm them or the full resources of any of the federation factions to at least challenge them.
Then we have the higher level members such as Sakhessa. We know that Sakhessa is in Auwana and Yasrena is somewhere in Sol most of the time in Kar’Soluth territory. On the upside they tend to have their own business to tend to and aren’t as focused on us, on the downside each of them have as many resources as the Void State Federation if not more. This would be swinging above our weight class but cleverly picking at them might help lower them like we’ve done to Faelyn. Kaylen’s report indicates most of these Phantoms have much larger goals in mind so they often have many more problems to deal with than just us. An example being that Yasrena controls several great houses but right now she’s dealing with Kharla and the demon kingdoms.
Finally there are the galactic players like those of whatever crew Arkaric is assembling. This includes Rahlken, Decaelys, Kanika, and Arkaric himself. They are individually powerful enough to be a threat to civilizations. Kaylen has actually been hoping our cruisers would find out more about any other members of this team, particularly whatever that ‘highly aggressive isolationist’ civilization is. She considers this not even approachable until our own forces have some sort of opening and that we had best avoid their attention.
Kaylen’s report considers figures like Ki’Ralcht or the other smaller candidates to be a better starting position for offense as their influence is minor but they play a part in the larger holdings of the Phantoms. They’re also less likely to draw dramatic response from any of the higher up Phantoms. It would be ideal for trial runs of strike teams and a more gentle prodding. Fighting the middle managers should be done a bit more carefully since they can afford to put more of their attention on retaliation and depending how important they are to the Phantoms whether or not the higher members would take notice. Kaylen describes this as trying to always be the second biggest problem. Targeting Yasrena’s holdings seems ideal for this since Kharla is a big enough problem that it would be easier to keep track of her and hide in her shadow so that we’re never Yasrena’s biggest problem until its too late.
To that end, the report also knows the locations of several starting points. We know where Ki’Ralcht is outright, actually Irae has been dealing with that gently already in the demon kingdom. Hyvory is sneaking around Thenica but stealth isn’t her specialty and could reasonably be tracked down with some effort. We also know where several phantom colony startups are around Thenica as they are openly taking in refugees as they find them.
While we don’t know exactly where Eliza is, Kaylen reports investigations into the recent rot outbreaks point to Jaal’Darya as the likely origin of the problem not necessarily Sakhessa. While Sakhessa is where the rot comes from, Jaal’Darya are specifically qualified to work with it. She hasn’t ruled out that Eliza herself could be in Moncayo or at least her agents. Kaylen has a high priority on this investigation.
We also know where Sakhessa is but the latest intel we have shows her spending eclipses our own. At the current rate, the longer we take to assault Auwana the wider the gap between our forces and hers will get. However to our favor, this means Sakhessa has dropped a lot of the more careful practices required for the Phantoms to remain unknown and Kaylen’s scouts in combination with Nah division have been able to discern a lot of information by following the paper trail necessary for logistics of this scale. More on that later. For now, the latest intel report is that Auwana is growing faster than we are as a federation. She is the current leader of the Phantoms and has started amassing power in this specific location. More cities have been founded and people are arriving in the tens of thousands as they are brought in from many other holdings. Sakhessa is creating a capital for the Phantoms, which they haven’t had while living in secret. At best it was Kanika’s carrier up until now.
Due to the aforementioned paper trail of such logistics, Kaylen has been able to find out where Sakhessa’s major city in Necrosi is. It’s the third largest city in the planar realm, though given how much industrial production occurrs there it makes sense. We’re not sure how her presence there was a secret for so long but at least we know where it is now. We could assault it to slow the rate at which Sakhessa can afford to increase her holdings on Auwana but given that its a city owned by one of the mummies, we can safely assume the rot will be a problem when it comes to bringing people back.
We also know that Yasrena is on Thenica, likely somewhere among Kar’Soluth’s holdings. Which include Beldoban, Jaal’Darya, and Sarghess as the most likely houses to be hosting her presence. Probably doing diplomatic efforts to unite the Great Houses. However, that paper trail thing Kaylen mentioned earlier extends to discovering that Yasrena is rebuilding the church of Lolth that Kharla once inhabited. We aren’t sure if this is an attempt to reclaim it for Yasrena or to get Kharla’s attention.
If you have any specific you want to look into, Kaylen will probably be able to help at least.
We’ve started advertising about the Iron Cradle. Interest is perhaps lower than expected though there is a certain exhaustion in people about having to move so many times in the last year or so with the ongoing wars. Though those who have adapted to the more adventurous lifestyle are most of those who seem interested. While we’re on the subject, there are rumor filled news articles circulating Moncayo’s population about Diadem and ongoing conversation on whether its worth moving again. Mostly around the fact that its very far away from the Sol frontier so its less likely to be invaded. They might not know about the robots with lasers on their heads, or how dangerous they have turned out to actually be.
In the frontier topic, the VSS Raptor asked what you want them to do. They’ve been cruising around Jydoq space looking for interesting things but it is largely ‘more of the same’. They can get a report on various factions and cities popping up but it seems like Ilex is taking over most things going on there. Jiyan pointed out she’s the nearest to the last known position of the Pegasus if you wanted a fast response to the stranded crew issue.
Investigations into the rot outbreak found the saboteur is missing. They were an employee of Vittles but they’ve been absent for awhile. Looking into their bank history, it actually seems as if they went silent before the act of sabotage. Local enforcement believes we’re dealing with some drow bullshit, which would coincide with Kaylen’s suspicions that Jaal’Darya are involved. I have redacted her slightly racist rant about drow that quickly followed.
The battle over Zenaka is…obnoxious at best. Asmodan’s giant rock of a ship just took off while our fleet was being harassed by everything else, by the time we had enough forces to secure the area it was long gone and what remained took off in different directions with groups juuust the right size so that our strike craft fleets didn’t want to pursue them beyond the radius of influence of the super battleships. Radar indicates they split into three major directions, though we’re back to being only able to see a small fraction of them. One grouping is heading towards Auwana, another towards Jydoq, and the last set is returning to Thenica.
We’ve been sending food to General Preskian to keep up relations even with ongoing food issues.
Also Lancaster and the adventuring party that went into the Fae Wilds are back. They’re on some random planet in the Abyss requesting a pickup. Lancaster sounded urgent about it.
We’ve deployed the first lance to hunt Ki’Ralcht. This operation can so far be described as “oh right, Reika is a thing”. Selah also apparently thought it would be a good idea to open another rift to the Astral Wilds. There’s a six dimensional behemoth stomping around the area now and our prospective demon lords, who were not really collaborated with, have questions on what just happened. Irae managed to kill Ki’Ralcht on the mad offense to deal with her quickly as possible. So, mission accomplished. That was when everything fell apart.
Reika’s presence in the demon kingdoms has drawn the immediate attention of Kharla. Who wasted no time in showing up to the territory everyone has been fighting over. While the council of lords might have had some opinions on the matter, there are now two more territories up for grabs after she incinerated their lords for saying anything slightly along the lines of ‘hey maybe you should chill for a second and think about things’. All of her demon lords have shown up with her as well as most of the Vals. Monument is overhead and bombarding the territory with its fleet now. Demon lords are watching curiously while Kharla tears through every living thing. The entire territory is being turned into a crater while she tries to track Reika down.
On the upside, even more chaos for us to work with. On the downside, everything is literally on fire. There are even would-be demon lords just looking for Reika to sell her location out to Kharla. Voriuk and Aikane are the only ones unaccounted for but I’d bet my money that they’re looking for Reika as well.
Work at the rot quarantine has been steady though Hasao Tei has been absent from helping due to Roha falling apart and now the Hasao Tei are making sure no one enters or leaves the city without a lot of paperwork. Though they’re at the point of gunning down anything that tries to leave without taking the one path that they have someone standing in front of with a virtual clipboard.
The arcuran colony on Moncayo has finished construction and arcurans be arcurin’ all over it. They already have elected a new leader by democratically voting that whoever kicks everyone else’s ass is the new boss. His name is Ranwe, Slayer of Ogaba, He Who Stands, The Great Wall, He Who Shall Know No Fear, The Unbound Wisdom, Slayer of Hashhash, Creator of the Silly Hat, The Soul Seer, The Moonborn, The Sun Catcher, The Quiet Roar, The Specter of Nikibalas, Blazing Fire, Like The Thunder, Slayer of Nenanket, Eternal Blossom, He who is Dark as a Forest, Skin of Stars, Thunder that Rolls Over Clouds, The Hair of the Earth, The Night Lion, The Dancing Song, Born to an Elder’s Wisdom, The Mountain River that Cleaves the World, He Who Sees the Final Dusk, The Dawnwalker, Wild Like Killiteket, Slayer of The Eternal Raging Starbeast Who Knows No Equal, Speaks with Heaven, The Gliding Snowflake, Slayer of Sun Rising Above Horizon, Speaks with Star Walkers, Fights with Wolves, Champion of Brightland, and Democratically Elected Mayor of Brightland.
Kaylen insisted we expand the character limit of the ‘name’ field on all paperwork in order to be culturally sensitive to arcurans. You can’t even read his access badge, it’s just a picture of himself and then a bunch of dots.
Bill, Haziel and Eerihild are back from the Fae Wilds, though need a ride back since leaving the Fae Wilds is a tricky thing. They dropped into the Abyss since ‘atmosphere’ isn’t really a concept there then floated their way over to the nearest available land mass. Speaking of which, the botanists keeping an eye on the plants report that recently all the plants started growing faster and can now eat through metal. I do mean all the plants. In the galaxy. Including the ones on ships we use for mana filtration. Haziel just changed a fundamental planar connection and permanently altered reality. Until we get them back for a debriefing, we don’t know what she actually did.
It might be reasonable to use regular stealth technology to hide from the ringworld’s creatures but they aren’t really scanning so much as just wandering around and nibbling on whatever they find.
The rot might be a new mummy, or it might be Deinuu’s or whatever. We’re not sure.
The ship that was on the way back to Roha from Jydoq has failed to report in. It failed to report in at what should have been its halfway point. Where our scanners aren’t able to see it unless Koda wants to turn on the big radar to take a look, we’re not sure where it is. It wouldn’t be far fetched to assume they intended to kill you there because they know about your overmind abilities, but not your ultimate sending technique. Because any other psionic if killed right there, would never have been in range to jump to another body. Though the ship isn’t late to arrive yet and they might just be having comms issues. Can wait to see if it shows up, or go investigate.
Meanwhile, jydoq people do love them some purpose and direction. So the cult is actually not doing too shabby on the planet itself. Though they are a bit weaker and more timid than the Roha branch, notably they lack an inquisitor to get them into the warrior side of things. Do with that what you will but as is, good numbers just don’t expect many useable soldiers to come out of it.
Yeah I already left Roha, Alexandrea scares me. I really didn’t want to go back to Que though. So I’m at Zenaka actually with Setal. She’s basically the queen of Zenaka so her palace can fit me in some of its rooms and she has zenakan tee lee vision. I don’t know its some box, they haven’t gotten quite so good at illusory projections so its all 2D but its better than nothing.
I decided against taking Rhazin with me because you asked him to build his new army and uhh…I think Lancaster would sell you out to the jydoq assassin if I brought him to Zenaka with me. So he’s still in Roha managing that with Craylin.
Speaking of, Roha is now a warzone. The heroes guild has had to ask the Hasao Tei to seal it off from the rest of the tunnels that lead to the other cities. It turns out Si Yeon is fucking scary and in the process of defying Alexandrea’s request to see what remains of the New Age labs, started a conflict that Alexandrea didn’t outright win for once. Si Yeon…won. Somehow. Sure the streets are filled with Balhasts who are specifically attuned to hunting psionics, and the civilians are amputating their own limbs to get their APT’s off before these things find and devour them, but hey…Si Yeon can rumble. By releasing hundreds of horrifying monsters from a lab. We might need to stop respecting her privacy.
Also in the chaos, drones are fighting…balhasts…I forget their number designation and Vasia never named them as a species. The rot can infect silnians, and uh…thousands are dying.
The arcane moon’s impact on the lake is keeping it productive in the night, not quite as productive but decently productive. The lake likes energy sources for its work evidently.
Setal informs us that when it comes to putting a lake in a crater, the entire continent that Kharla destroyed. That’s a lot of space between the lake and everything else. Though she also is a bit against isolating the lake. Then she said some dangerous things about spreading the ichor’s love to all the people.
Sahad labs progress has been stifled a bit by Si Yeon’s absence, since we can’t get messages in and out of Roha she has pretty much gone dark. I mean we can just look over there from Moncayo and know she’s still there doing crazy stuff but its hard to do lab paperwork with her. That being said the nova spell is coming along, though by its nature i’m not sure how useful it will be to the average person. We’ve made a ship cannon version that just depletes the ship’s mana instantly for one big shot, leaves the ship sitting there for awhile afterwards. At least it doesn’t implode like human casters have.
As for sahadist awakenings, as Vasia’s research went over: It generally requires people who when confronted by the infinite unknown have enough space in their heads to accept it really. The better the expression of sahad the cleaner the awakening. Vasia would use a little star to do it, though we know that Cerys – the most powerful sahadist in Sol for awhile there – witnessed the Valdir swarm doing some crazy stuff. It would be reasonable to assume that the Valdir’s sahad expert might know particularly good spells for this. There is something to be experimented with in having the cult do it by force. Just brainwash people then fill their head with sahad shit and see what happens. Though that might be a little too much of a Vasia idea.
The anti ftl missile project can be implemented if you want. How many do you want? They’re four million credits per shot and take up hangar space in a carrier.
Salvage insurance doesn’t upgrade, and using it at Zenaka against pirate ships is indeed likely to be the less lucrative use of it. Use it when we fight Sharen, their ships have gold on them.
While the situation has changed since you asked, Gunhild says it’s not really that normal for Si Yeon. Actually it went from ‘yes that’s abnormal’ to ‘that’s very abnormal’. Si Yeon is normally very direct when asked questions about herself but very good at keeping secrets about others.
The poison’s first trial is done whenever you wanna try doing something with that. We also put smoke around the lake. Cuz the city is kind of smoking as it is already.
Searches into a sapient species beneath the water of NR147-3 are ongoing. While specifically tasked with such, 40th Day has been a bit more directed in this objective and has found more evidence that indicates that there is something hiding here. Though it might also be hiding from us specifically, not that it would be terribly unusual to be hiding from strange aliens with probes descending from space. The search for intelligent life continues.
Having worked with the phantoms before might not give you that much on finding the robot replacements. Especially because there are technically two…that we know of. The daiheb model and the selona. Also there isn’t really anywhere to start. The fact that they were in the heroes guild, we know some just live as normal people, and so forth…literally everywhere. Also even with Aryn as a sample, the only way to detect it is with a little bit of exploratory surgery. It’d be more of a plan to go looking for where you want to make sure they’re not at rather than where they might be. Since they might be everywhere.
Also yes, Chaudret can only be deployed from Aryn’s sword lodged in her arm. You can theoretically deploy it by just calling a device infected with it and hoping it spreads. Though that’s a shot in the dark if the device infected will be able to be called or if it will have lost that functionality.
It appears our assassin was on the ship that Ilex sent back to deal with Alexandria. It implies a couple of things if we assume that it was indeed our target. First off, they know about Ilex and what he can do to at least some extent, furthermore they might know how well defended the spot he’s standing in actually is, and they might have indeed sent Alexandrea in some form or another. Maybe gave her some backing, but the first attempt on Ilex’s life came after she had made herself bait.
Mike, who we still have not managed to extract due to Aureum being on a sort of lockdown, has sent us an updated intelligence report. Still no idea exactly where that giant sword has gone, but Sakhessa has unveiled a new technological marvel of hers. Imagine Selona tech, but as a turret floating around in space. These new turrets have basically more punch but they are also giant magic missile spells that can fired under different settings. As a singular hit its pretty big but it can also disperse its payload into a cluster of smaller spells that seek out different targets. Basically, more defenses around the new Phantoms capital.
They also completed the construction of Asmodan’s new flagship. It disappeared shortly afterwards, though as we’ve learned Asmodan likes to hide his assets.
We have the general idea of the Exerlus’ individual domain. We can kind of tell just by which direction the plates go, there are certain spots where it never goes forward, only backwards…and those spots also tend to be really violent. So it stands to reason that’s their borders they’re arguing over.
We’ve sent the expedition deep into the ring elsewhere to try and establish chats with any of the other controlling exerlus. So far it appears that they’re all very…hostile. The expedition is in the ring and dealing with that nonsense again.
There have been some losses fighting the robot wildlife from VSEC’s 3rd brigade in order to enter into the ring. We suspect a greater toll will soon be taken as well. After a month, they’re still pushing through and trying to find the exerlus at the center. Though as with Eleazor and Gunhild before, we lost contact with them as soon as they went deep enough inside.
Turning one of their factories into a warforged facility might be doable, though we’ve yet to find any of the production points. They are likely guarded deep within the ring, and the scale of these rings is quite large.
On another note, the life support systems have been repaired around the Iron Cradle for whenever we might want to receive guests. With Koda building a new station in orbit around Diadem we might be able to go off searching for organics in distress to join our merry city.
Arsene is still working a front desk back in Moncayo and so far has not had much luck on dating apps.