Posted on December 12, 2021

Stories of Lore 20

 

Welcome back, this is definitely an improvement from talking to Wolum over a comm to talk to Renjala to contact Irae to then speak to you.

We already have 40th day for exploration based out of Somnus, creating a second company for it would be a little repetitive. Though investing in 40th day as we did the shipyards might be worthwhile given how fast and empty space can be sometimes.

Khymin is still making progress on the battle-bots thing at the moment, we could switch him to working on transportation though that would basically require him to start over. The issue with more civilian transportation matters is their tendency to not follow incredibly specific predefined paths through open space like the golem cruiser. That and people sometimes get nervous to see golems operating things like trains with no sapient there to pull the brake if need be.

Hylavi is back to her usual business of roaming the streets and keeping an eye on Laura though normalcy is questionable around here. That and Laura is off on yet another mysterious adventure that involves an awful lot of construction beyond the city limits of Koura that has Hylavi constantly trying to figure out what that woman is up to once again.

Koura cures has made some headway in being able to define when the parasite removal is necessary to insure favorable results. The severity of the mutations the parasite needs to make has been getting closer to being precisely measured, as some of the things it needs to ‘fix’ are not necessarily things we would really think about. The more we are able to define its mutational plan the more effectively we can determine when the thing needs to be removed.

We’ve sent the cruisers commanded by Koda out to FO-234 to assist the Nomads after their initial strike. Travel time ongoing. The fleet that went a bit too far has been reintegrated into the Somnus standing fleets.

Kar’Soluth station has been taken over more fully. I suppose it’s best use would be something that needs to be covert since there isn’t much resource gathering to be done out there. Pirates might like the area if you wanted to create some sort of seedier port than Somnus, it is on a major route to Shetou’s first major colony though at that point it risks them getting it targeted by Shetou.

 

Things on Enohas have escalated dramatically out of seemingly nowhere. Apparently Kanika paid a visit and ‘activated’ the wolf queen who is now assisting Reika in “commandeering” the planet. Basically the phantoms be meddling again, though I suppose this works to our advantage even if not the most ethical means of subjugation. Not the worst either though, it’s just Haziel exploiting that primitives will easily consider her a deity given her specific range of abilities.

In the meantime, more phantom nonsense. It didn’t take long after our return for Valadeus to get us our ‘starter pack’ as he seems fond of referring to it as. We have five hundred new squires, seven hundred slaves, and he gave us one of his assault carriers. Which doesn’t do so much the large fleet deployments, but is made to house armies and drop them aggressively onto other planets. It’s also quite roomy. He also sent a new champion to help make use of all these resources. Apparently he was initially going to send you a super hot submissive succubus wet dream but you kept mentioning you didn’t want to be a traditional warlock coven. So instead he sent “the weirdest candidate I have“.

Now that Valadeus is back in frontier space, we’re able to get some actual information from the phantoms. So regarding your recent curiosities, yes Nila got her wish while we were away and Eli Whately has returned. That’s…a whole thing going on in Thenica right now because apparently he was decapitated and left buried this whole time. Nila’s wish allowed her to find where it was buried and rebuild his body, which started a vengeance fueled rampage which has left a vague but menacing organization that tried to control him in shambles as all four of the Whately’s blew them the fuck up. Which everyone noticed, because it was a part of Alnae’s COA teams. Apparently they had something very similar to what we have with New Age and they tried to leverage something or other to get Whately to do what they wanted. He took exception to that and now a lot of formerly classified information is leaking everywhere while four maniacs with guns murder everyone involved in the most over-the-top warpath we’ve seen in years. They assaulted a military base on motorcycles, knocked over a skyscraper onto another building while standing on it, dropped a battleship from orbit onto an Alnae councilor’s head, and stood around posing in such manners that all media coverage of them looks absolutely awesome. Then Arkaric set another farm on fire. Amusingly though, they were our motorcycles. Apparently Arkaric likes the panzercycle and the Whately’s are nothing if not flashy when they get going. Something something, wasteland warrior, something something, cameo.

So Alnae could be doing better, though this all resulted in some odd politics. Kaylen apparently didn’t know about that agency even though she is basically the military dictator of Alnae by martial law for the time being. There were more things going on there then just pissing off one really dangerous group of people, including several warcrimes involving captured Shetou prisoners, experiments with Jaal’Darya plagues to try and find a cure that needed ‘research samples’ that are honestly not progressing faster than Jaal’Darya can just make a whole new plague but the arms race goes on none the less. Torturing high value prisoners for information, capturing sahad anomalies and locking them away for study, they were kidnapping Valdir for experimentation to find new weapons technology to deal with their swarms, and other such illicit nonsense. This provoked Kaylen into doubling down on that whole military dictator thing. She has several councilors attending a meeting soon which doesn’t look good for them.

I’m pretty sure the Phantoms knew Nila’s wish would cause this to happen.

Moving on, the bar doesn’t have drinks you could really enjoy though it does have an ooze bath spa you might like. Along with other strange amenities suited for such bizarre creatures.

As for ‘what the fuck is going on’, the invasion thing Valadeus mentioned is the major plot. Though the toes not to step on involve…a lot of odds and ends, they said they’ll tell you if you’re up to something they don’t like. However, there is ‘one last meeting’ before the invasion about to take place. You’ve been invited to go. It will be held aboard The Raven II super carrier in deep space. They did mention to use the rear facing hangar entrance and arrive via nothing larger than a starship as the hangar is also the meeting room due to the abnormal size of some of its attendees. So get dropped off, ship goes back out to hovering in space and picks you up when its time to go so that the hangar has enough room for all these damned dragons. You’re not allowed to bring any guests, including aboard the ship that takes you there. I would caution that you would be going alone into the den of the system’s most powerful necrocarnate who can easily wipe your ass out, but it’s not as if the invitation is all that suspicious at this point. Though as advisor, I feel inclined to point it out.

Meanwhile, the gateway at Moncayo has finished construction. We gettin paaaaid. Just in time too, all those new recruits Valadeus just sent us are probably going to mean we need to do some infrastructure upgrades. Alexander is also now freed up for any other shenanigans you might need. Though it should be noted all those new members are actually with him at the Moncayo Chapter house…due to the gate just being finished there. Most of Valadeus new staff to assist us was in Sol so that gateway happened to be the fastest way to get them to the frontier. He also isn’t too interested in being Eden’s test subject. Pointing out that necrosi natives kind of need necrosi to be their home plane or they’re just corpses, that and he is a pandem scholar. Being native to the elemental plane wouldn’t help him all that much since he’s still out there doing planar shenanigans with literally every plane he can find. I believe his words were “I’m no casual practitioner. I am the Knight-Chancellor.”

I hear your journey into the rift was…frightfully boring. Mostly because the entity and Eden spent the whole time chatting between themselves in that silent telepathic manner that leaves everyone else out of everything. Though it seems the entity would be fine with allowing Eden to pass, if anyone else is on the ship with her they will not be allowed. It’s very adamant about this whole thing. So the bad news is, Valadeus says to just shoot the thing if it’s not going to cooperate.

Oh no you don’t. It is just sitting there minding its own business and even allowing us to approach it. Its consciousness is vast beyond our recognition and so there is a cultural divide going on, but at least it is trying it’s best to communicate with us. Running up and shooting it would be just wrong.

I know with absolute certainty you are not saying that for any reason involving ethics.

 

Obviously, shooting it with a battleship would just be stupid if it’s going to let us walk right up to it again and again without suspicion or understanding of our technology. This is the easiest super charged sahad entity we’ll ever have a chance to just outright capture and shove in a box, since it can change it’s size I imagine I can keep it in a reasonable containment facility. Give me command of the operation and I’ll make sure it moves out of our way so we can explore the rift more fully. Your goals will be met, and I’ll get my research subject. Everyone is happy.

We should check with Lancaster before we just start abducting the only alien within throwing distance of Auwana who we’ve had nothing but frustrating but amicable relations with thus far. We’ve already seen that we can get past it with a little bit of creativity.

You have two months to deal with it before I tell Kanika that you’re not dealing with it and she assigns the mission to me.

 

Wait since when are you a phantom?

 

 

I’m not, but I am friends with Eliza now and she works for Kanika who is in charge of Valadeus and thus Renjala. I’ve been waiting to capture this thing for almost two years now while you guys all just poke at it again and again with progressively more elaborate pokes. I will sell you all out to Kanika to finally get this thing done.

…Whose side are you on?

 

 

Ilex’s. He has assigned me to discover the mysteries of Sahad. I will do so. It is the nature of our labs to operate above and beyond the means of authority, it’s why we exist. Even if that means cutting down authority figures to get what we need.

Okay you need to chill…please. You scare me enough already.

Moooving on. Yoshai is wandering around the mansion playing with all the ethi swords he bought from Laura to see which one he likes the most. He still seems to be doing great compared to First Officer Riley. Apparently along the ride here he was talking to Setani about such things, who told him that he should talk to Vanjin since she’s the equipment expert of Nah Division and knows where to find all the good stuff. The good stuff apparently comes from Laura.

Eden’s avatars are being spread around our operations since…well she-it-them-they-thing can just do that. They’ve been wandering around Somnus in particular just looking at everything we’ve built there. Then they met Echo Seven, both proceeded to probe each other so hard I think that was some sort of alien sex we just saw. Though despite common worry, Echo Seven doesn’t really seem all that concerned with Eden being a silnian byproduct. Just another oddity to scan. The exerlus are not that confrontational, and Eden is several leagues behind true silnians who conquer worlds for lunch. Literally.

 

Here we go traveling again. While we’re on the way, on to other matters. As for Qhalord, I imagine Renjala will be the best bet of finding out  what’s going on with him. I also suppose whatever the bait is, if its open enough we’ll just hear about it? Maybe? Not sure. Though I have alerted Nah Division to keep an ear out for anything involving that.

I’ve sent message to Que about our arrival but they didn’t really respond. Though they do tend to be quiet I suppose and mind their own business. We’ll be there in about a month, it’s out on the frontier.

Vasia says if you give Eden’s samples to the monster maker it will likely just make more things as usual. The Maker is not really good at assimilating new organisms for designs like silnians are. Even with it’s most recent developments in metal crafting it’s still not approaching the level of complexity that Cassir’s cybernetics are at. It just strapped metal plates onto things to replace chitin armor. So the sample will just be more construction material as far as it is concerned. At least that’s her, highly educated, opinion on the matter.

She went to find Ihaslu, the yelay have been doing quite well since she brought them here but they haven’t seen her since then due to her trip out with Lancaster’s crew. That might be why they’re doing quite well. Vasia learned a few new tricks, particularly the spell that the silnian monsters like to use that fires that white light laser thing which blows shit up. Her version of it is weaker, but she can do it now.

While she was on the return trip to see how things have been in her absence, she reconnected with Balhast and deemed him fit to follow her around full time as a bodyguard. It now knows the words yes and no, but expresses it only via nodding and shaking its head. She feels exposure to more conversations will help its mental progression, that and she just likes taking her puppy out for walkies I imagine.

Then she acquired more slaves to test if the laser changed the quality of their awakenings. Results pending. Once she got around to Salied again she noted that the original awakening shows no signs of being overwritten by it so she isn’t sure if the spell causes no difference compared to her other one or if a higher quality spell does not add context to previously exposed victims. Then she decided Salied was at least safe enough to be taken around with her to see if the social reintegration process was going well since she also has Balhast to take care of her if need be.

The other specimens of 004C projects have demonstrated similar stability to Bahlhast and some other much wilder mutations in second generation projects that Salied concocted by forcefully breeding them whenever possible. Notably, their offspring are more parasites rather than anything like the 004C creatures, though they’re not the same as the one’s native to Koura. We think the nature of the 004C creatures are producing more advanced parasites since they are being born from incarnum infused creatures instead of whatever wild animal they mutated. She has introduced some of these parasites into a few of her new test subjects to see what effect it  has. Apparently these parasites are much more…. intense than the previous ones that sort of snuck their way into people undetected. Described as “voraciously chewing through the flesh to find appropriate lodgings for themselves and spreading within the host system with a rapid and painful aggression.” Ignore the screams coming from her labs.

Cassir arrived on Jamalia just in time to partake in the much more aggressive subjugation strategies of Haziel who has taken to helping the order with their merkas project. Things are going well.

Peter thinks he’s found some weird shit. In investigating Seiyomi he’s found himself going down a spiraling rabbit hole of oddities. So one part of his reports is peculiar and he doesn’t know what it is. The name Daiheb has come up twice in his search and Nah Division isn’t sure if we should tell him or not that he’s getting into some deep shit. Seiyomi’s elusiveness likely isn’t just for fun as we might have originally expected.

Mass evacuation of Thenica is going as fast as it can. Though at these distances, transporting billions is difficult even if under evacuation conditions. This is also about to put an immediate strain on all these colonies they might not be able to logistically handle. You’ll see it next month, the economy out on the frontier is about to nosedive and the hunger afflicting Sol will be arriving as we put too many  mouths to feed onto these colonies. Vittles is producing as much as they can right now but…it’s going to be lean for awhile.

The vivarium expansion has begun, will be a bit until its all fully operational but not a big deal since the existing station can hold everything it needs to for now.

The Iron Gnoll as he’s called says working with the Nomads sounds fun and then we took our eyes off of him for a moment and he stole one of Lancaster’s starships she left uncrewed and took off to go ‘catch up’. We didn’t tell him where the Nomads went, and his trajectory implies he just took off into space at random. We got him to at least correct his course, but honestly I’ll be amazed if he gets there all by himself. I’ve excluded just how hard this conversation was to have with him. Just know, Adryn made some progress and is now exhausted.

Well we ordered a mail-order psychopath and Elgrim arrived quite promptly. I think the Raven is a lot closer by than we think for some reason. So far he’s been well behaved, he’s still an arrogant grouchy bloodthirsty maniac but he hasn’t broken any of our equipment.

House Enelynn is one of the great houses of Shetou, led by an elven family who just didn’t like Alnae. They were so brutal and efficient that they managed to carve out a place for themselves in Shetou despite the obvious racial tensions. As their wealth amassed their status as a house continued to grow. They’re not as crazy as the Kar’Soluth traditionalists at least, they allied themselves with the eastern alliance alongside the great houses Song and Linsun and played a part in the eastern alliance’s power that would eventually culminate in the crowning of Empress Laesaaria and the imperial nationalization that the empire is undergoing. As for bombing the place and their heir, the estate is located on SV3 at New Kaifen, where the eastern alliance has culminated their reconstruction efforts. Enelynn in particular manages a lot of the efforts to recreate the farmlands and this estate happens to be a major part of those efforts. It’s clear the Jaal’Darya are interested in not only this death but the destruction of the farming efforts to induce a bit more starvation and chaos into Shetou. Particularly the eastern alliances they’re not too fond of. Meaning we’ll need either a lot of bombs, some very fiery ones, and or some really big ones. The facility is highly patrolled due to the value of the farmlands to the empire right now and Shetou’s devious nature meaning anyone with a gun might try to pillage the place if it wasn’t heavily guarded.

Also what kind of factory? It wouldn’t be hard to start setting one up on Koura given the plentiful real estate.

Vanjin is mostly recovered and Setani is back here on Somnus with us now. Vanjin’s fine, if not a bit creeped out by Jhaeros. Setani looks like she’s about 5 seconds away from stabbing Elgrim who is now also on Somnus with us for the time being. She hasn’t stabbed him yet, and he doesn’t really seem to even react to or remember her that well. Though she definitely hasn’t forgotten the whole matter.