Everyone is so far away

Posted on October 30, 2021

 

Stories of Lore 14

Patch notes!

Arsenal – Can shift arsenal stacks into offense or defense as desired and declare weapon/armor types as desired. Can upgrade colors instead of enhancing number as desired.

–It was always kind of supposed to be the ‘batman’ template in terms of using gear to prepare for the situation. This is an attempt to convert that into a mechanic that came to me at random, so now its patch day.

Lancaster – Lost some raw stats since arsenal now does a thing.

Renjala – Stats updated to Ryner sword’s bonus. Level up: Cosmology replaced with Durable, which gives extra hitpoints.

Alexander – Terror template changed to fire resistance. Because as I have written a lot more with him now, his personality has shaped into not quite what I expected it to be and terror no longer fits too well.

Sarnai – +2/+2 to reflect training. Lucky template added due to level up.

Vasia – +1 sahad

Vanjin – Replaced hunter with Arsenal 2, as this template kind of properly defines her entire character gimmick. Lowered slayer and offense by 1 because of arsenal buff.

Gunhild – Mass destruction lowered to 2 instead of 4 due to loss of Inaji rifle. Keeps template due to madhammer specialty.

Ecsanul – Lost one point of offense, defense, and mass destruction as a side effect of being banished. Note: Stats are unchanged in true form instead of bound summons.

Yasrena Val’Hari – Actually statted instead of memed now. “ow’ replaced with 3 and mass destruction 8 added.

Laesaaria Val’Hari – Same exact patch as above.

Eliza Pierce – +1/+1 from level up after completion of Koura parasite research

Roster additions who were already characters but not accounted for: Ihaslu, Peter Harlow, Echo Seven, Aato Jousen, Mikael Lehtin

 

Well with Lancaster out of aethernet range at best I can convey an occasional chat through Renjala…so he better not leave Somnus for awhile. In the meantime, I’m on the way back from Moncayo. So I am contacting Sethis through the comms so he can tell Renjala what to tell Irae so she can tell you what I said. This is going to be a bit rough.

Also Ohalyn’s trafficking isn’t a criminal enterprise, we never banned slavery. So I’m not sure just how well that conversation will go. Not to mention as the major supplier for New Age, her stopping those operations will open it up to Laura King to take over. Ohalyn may be somewhat jaded, but I can imagine what happens to the slaves when Laura takes over the enterprise.

You’re already there at..alien planet so I don’t need to keep you up to date on that at least, nor do I need this conversation to go on any longer than it already has. This many waypoints to communicate is aggravating enough, so you can just keep that knowledge to yourself for now until you get back.

Meanwhile back here, the KouKou has been thoroughly examined. Everyone who should be here is in fact here and we found no stowaways. That being said, there was an oddity. Rations wise, it seems like there is or at least one extra person on the ship. It seems like no one is missing, but someone is extra. However, when we take a headcount in the quarantine we come up with the right number. There is a chance that plus one is still on the alien world with you.

Hylavi also asked if we should be stopping the birth of an arena. Apparently as a sport someone has been running an underground arena like those found in Kar’Soluth. Formerly Shetou, though the eastern houses never liked the bloodier version where people can actually die. They’ve been offering people prize money in exchange for just surviving a fight, and so far no one has died. Most fights end before they get too out of hand, though there has been quite a few broken bones. Apparently it was born out of some of the wealthier denizens of Koura city realizing that a lot of the immigrants we take in are sort of desperate and penniless after fleeing Sol for greener pastures. Hylavi was contacted by Ohalyn about this arena looking to purchase some slaves. Which is usually what comes right before it becomes a true blood sport.

Also you’ll never guess who one of the major financial players in this arena is. Our dear friend Laura King.

I hope you’re cozy at Somnus, I’m still stuck back here at Enohas. Though after you left things have definitely wound down. As I told Alexander, Nihlav and Daesta returned to their city to take their lost and found back there as well as ready defenses in case Kar’Soluth reach them. We know Nila is still somewhere on the planet, and definitely low on ships at the moment, though I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing for us.

We’re repairing Alexander’s corvette at the outpost as best we can, though we don’t have a proper shipyard so it is taking a little while. At the very least we were able to get back to Jamalia on it.

New problem, something was horrifically wrong with Sarnai. She was vomiting blood – which is glowing by the way – and a bunch of other symptoms that get all the more gross the further down the list I go. However, upon analysis from Alexander, her pandem corruption was at record levels. Previously it was barely present, she struggled to even open a basic rift. Then it skyrocketed to sixty eight percent. For comparison, you are the most corrupted and powerful pandem caster we know. You’re at fourty three according to your last checkup. He described it as she created a vortex of corruption around herself. I couldn’t even get my APT to work if I’m standing too close to her. This leads into the big problem, the medical teams couldn’t examine her. If they got near her with any ethi tools whatsoever they would malfunction. At best they could use some traditional hand examinations, but that didn’t turned up anything useful. Also her glowing blood made a microscope shatter when they tried to look at it. That being said, over the last few weeks, we’ve been keeping an eye on her of course. Her corruption level seemed to be deteriorating the more mana she steals from things around her. We put her next to the corvette engines for awhile and she returned to normal levels of two percent corruption after sleeping next to the engines for a night. She’s back up and completely fine, but Alexander has concerns. As all this happened after her bind possessed her, which admittedly saved her life and Reika’s.

We’ve never actually seen corruption be undone by draining mana from other things to basically purify itself. Alexander thinks this might be a hint as to what her bind is. A similar phenomena is known to take place in certain entities where corruption can be avoided entirely. For example, Setani experiences no corruption since she only links to the demon planes but she is actually from there. So its possible Sarnai’s bind, despite how hard it is to track, is from her native plane and is just some sort of strange creature. It would explain why during her possession she became an absolute master of humanoid on humanoid combat with a sword, as if she were familiar with that situation and those specific weapons. His current favorite theory is that she’s bound to some sort of creature that drains mana. His second theory is that she’s bound to something natural, something that can filter and purify mana on its own. Like maybe a dryad. Third theory is that we should talk to Vasia. Fourth theory is that we make absolutely sure not to talk to Vasia.

This leads to the problem Alexander now wants to solve. We don’t know where Sarnai comes from. His theory that her bind is sneaking around on her native plane means we need to solve the problem of Sarnai being an orphan from the streets of SV3. It could be that she is indeed from Vermasih, but well…is it ever that easy? Though to be noted, we have no idea if determining what plane she’s truly from will help at all, it’s just the next best lead he has.

Also, of course, we cannot get her bind to answer any questions. Sarnai mentions that while she is in communication with it from time to time, this is sporadic and not under her control. Often it seems to be only one way communication, she can hear it but it can’t hear her, or chooses not to.

In other news, steamworks completed its new project in transportation. Or more so its proof of concept prototype. Basically its a bike. It keeps falling apart because the engineers keep trying to put a huge engine on it and its kind of bulky. They also insist on offroad tires. They call it a panzercycle. We’re working on stability and consistency still, kind of neat though.

 

Well Eliza’s willingness to help anyone usually comes based on what they can trade with her. Money doesn’t seem to work as we noted last time when Sarden approached her. Especially now that she’s backed by the phantoms. She’s practically richer than Lancaster now, at least when it comes to funding her projects. So she said she wasn’t interested outright, though I do believe if we can get her something she wants she might be inclined to help. As your advisor I can tell you right away that we can afford her, and that it also might be a bad idea. If we give her access to the Maker in the vivarium she would probably bite and agree to do the operation. I have no idea what happens after that.

Also, you are correct. You did not send Cassir as Vasia’s guard. However, you did sort of give a blank approval to Vasia’s requests. She decided to take Cassir and I kind of just…stamped that one and moved on since I figured everything she wanted was approved. Though in hindsight, I don’t think she wanted Cassir for a practical reason involving the mission. I mean it was beneficial to have an empath there, but it was more beneficial for Vasia to get to meet Cassir on her own terms. I’m betting Vasia wants to get Cassir to the point where she’s cleared to know about New Age Labs so she can be properly utilized by Vasia. Possibly dangerous, might give Cassir something to do though. Just in a quirky direction.

New age has been delegating Vasia’s schedule and is investigating Uneloj discreetly to see what they might learn from them before they find a way back home. Apparently they figured out that we don’t know sahad and are now offering to trade some knowledge on the matter for passage home. They’re very astute to economics.

Aside from that, the race now known as the yelay that we picked up recently have been settling in. We’ve gotten them to explain those black spheres from the ships we’ve been salvaging. Apparently those are indeed the control mechanisms for sahad devices. They use light for computing, making them vastly more powerful in terms of processing than most methods we have. This is also the reason they are such a deep black, because if any light gets into or out of them it could basically cause a bug. However, Vasia was right that you can only make them once. The pathways in them are not malleable like our psionic computing is. So if you mess up, you have to start all over again. They’re basically clockwork computers, and once constructed they can’t be modified. So while powerful for their size and energy requirements, you’d need to be really confident that you never wanted to add new features or fix a glitch. It is likely that a civilization without access to psionic computing invented this as a solution to their issues and mastered it enough to mass produce it as needed. For our uses though, we mostly want to be able to read them so we can figure out how things work rather than replicate them. Humanoids like the ability to rewrite things, and perhaps we’re more willing to make programming errors in the interests of speed and project completion since we know we can go back and fix small problems later.

Orchard is the definition of having space for workers at this point. Phoenix however is another story given how difficult the planet is to work with. Speaking of which, Adryn hit the jackpot down there.

Lookit! It’s adorable and fluffy and it eats practically anything. I just let it lick my dishes clean and eat the leftovers. It also eats cardboard boxes. A great find for the vivarium. They breed like crazy too. Pet shop time. I already got him to send me three.

Oh right, refugees. Yeah we’re shipping them around where we can, whatever.

As for the exerlus engine…it could be going better. We did confirm the atomic construction is an actual necessity. Also we blew up a workshop learning that. We’re having more luck looking over the scavenged ships for their engines than the exerlus one. Granted the exerlus one is uh…fast. Echo Seven confirmed they could reach where Lancaster went through the rift within about thirty years. So basically around ten times faster at FTL. Though that number is somewhat related to the fact that the exerlus don’t need life support or anything else and can focus entirely on speed if they really want to.

…are you saying I’m not socially talented? I’m hurt sir. Though among the Somnus security forces would likely be our best bet on that, since they have to talk to people and defuse situations all the time.

Also in searching for the leak that got to Laura King it was surprisingly easy. It wasn’t that Laura found out, it was that Selona did. How do we know this you ask? Aryn called her big brother and asked if he knew anything about the suspiciously overpowered weapons Laura had for Vaeri to use in this cover op. They’re actually his prototype battleship class weapons intended for countering alien ship designs based on intelligence from the New Horizon’s shipyard salvage that Laura DID find out about through her own connections. She is also selling him the information on what Siwa factories is up to after we give it to her.

So basically… Selona figured out what Vaeri is up to because they’re also keeping tabs on the Siwa business and the phantoms and the revenants are the only people who can recognize Vaeri and noticed her snooping around. Selona offered Laura to offer Vaeri weapons for her op. Aryn asked if Arkaric knew where she got those weapons. Arkaric did indeed design them, based off of intelligence Laura sold him that she got from New Horizons. Laura is the smallest fish in this chain of informational hot potato and is just the middle man of choice for Selona. Given the way Selona operates, of course they did all this bullshit instead of just texting Aryn. Partially because its the officers doing it not Arkaric himself, and also because that’s just his style to make everything as confusing and convoluted as possible.

The weapons are helping Vaeri’s cover identity though, she now gets invited to the cool parties. With wine and fancy clothes hosted inside garages filled with prototype firearms. She’s definitely deep into the scene relatively quickly, though is still working her way into the inner circles that might reveal what is going on in that basement to her someday.

Meanwhile back at Sol, Vanjin has concocted a plan. The driver for the councilor isn’t consistent, it rotates on a regular basis. Though they’re always elven, and likely have some security clearance she can have Aryn look into fabricating. Then place an elf into the job and maybe replace some other security who might be supposed to recognize the current driver of that day. This is where the plan starts to go off the rails. She wants to get into contact with one of the rogue warlords and organize a full blown attack into the capital city using rioting citizens as a distraction to sell to the warlord and have the invasion to distract the entire platoon of armed forces protecting the councilor, then our driver just takes some evasive maneuvers down a side street and we extract from there. Here’s the problem, the major obstacle to conducting this is getting Kaylen away from the capital when it happens. If she’s there the rogue warlords wouldn’t risk an attack even with some insider information on a hit they could try to perform.

As for Uneloj he’s currently selling sahad knowledge to get a ride home. Given that he was captured in battle and shipped around in a cage for months, he is a bit homesick. Definitely not looking to start a new job in a place he’s never been to before with people he doesn’t know and surrounded by aliens. I think this is why the black market keeps saying ‘cooperation levels may vary’ when we look into these alien slave auctions. None of them want to be here, otherwise they wouldn’t really be slaves or prisoners. Either send them to Ohalyn or expect them to be seeking a way to get back to their homes, people, and families. Though if we can get people to refuse to sell Uneloj transport home for his sahad knowledge we might be able to corner him into needing some short term income to get his passage back. Which is something we could send some agents out to ensure becomes an unfortunate situation for him.

We’ve lost a few more bodies again after the battle at Enohas with the Kar’Soluth. Only one tank, car, gunship and a mech of each model. We only sent one of each to show off to the arcurans so we didn’t necessarily have that much there, though it all got blown up by their corvette. Clearly we should have sent more tanks.

Though we’ve definitely gained some arcuran recruits for all this effort. They’ll need a specialized boot camp, probably throw that one at Gheir, to get caught up with modern warfare as we know it. However, Whitetalon Armaments has a prototype mech concept to test once we can get them back here to Koura. Because they’re made of mana and their shape is malleable…we might be able to create some interesting mech designs for them to pilot. If we could remove all the life support, controls, chair, screens, buttons, and so on…well that’d be a pretty thick mech.

While we’re currently recovering, we still have plans to go blow up the walled city of Helym and…improve our numbers. We might need an extra freighter or two if recruitment keeps going this well. Arcurans are very easy to recruit. Whitetalon armaments is also working on armor suited to their anatomy in anticipation of their arrival whenever we manage to ship out. We’ve also set up a more permanent recruitment center on the planet since it appears this will be a very…lucrative investment.

As advisor it is my responsibility to inform you of possible options and consequences. So in keeping with my duties, I will mention that their primitive society could be recruited in mass if we destroy the merkas city and bring them to witness it. We currently have one hundred twenty seven arcuran recruits. If we destroy that city and they see us do it, I am fairly certain we can expect tens of thousands with ease. That’s just the short term too.

Also as advisor, I will inform you that Lancaster may try to shoot you if you so much as mention I explained this possibility. Renjala too maybe.

We’ve gained some regular recruits as well from the refugees 40th day have been shuttling around. Impending alien invasion sure brings the patriotism out of people, and colonists don’t like the empires as much. We have a very good sales pitch for this kind of scenario.

Gunhild is severely injured. This is more of a job for a mechanic than a doctor. I’ve fixed the bleeding but she doesn’t have much left to bleed. Blitz also broke his leg fighting the Kar’Soluth so he’ll be out for a month or two while we fix that up. I’ve had to restrain him. Do not let him convince you to take that collar off his still working leg.

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