I blame tess for the rushed SoL

Stories of Lore 30

 

Riley has likely arrived in Nelta space by now. That’s all I got, stroke the magic cat if you want an actual update she is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of comm range. I’m sure she’s doing fine though.

Moving on, oh right second order of business. Everything is on fire.

Nelta’s here, they’ve invaded Koura fully though it was mostly evacuated so technically they just have Koura and Madhammer is fighting them from the fortified position of their headquarters outside the city. Somnus has a giant fucking hole in it and is now in pieces, very large pieces that Khymin has kept operational but still multiple pieces none the less. Three pieces actually.

The problem on Somnus is that Rikoy and his team got aboard and now more of them are sneaking their way in to reinforce him. We’ve had to back off of our conflicts with him as we sort of assess the situation and get through all the chaos. Now that things have settled down and everything is terrible, we can really take stock of our options carefully.

Rikoy currently controls one of the station sections, though that section isn’t attached to the main control deck of the station anymore though I wouldn’t be surprised if he just jumped between the two when he’s good and ready. His team are all super soldiers like him but the big three among them are nuts. Whoever we send to finish off this engagement better be exceptionally well trained.

Elym seems to be the one in charge down on Koura and they’ve taken over the cultist’s temple as their forward operations base onto Koura. It would appear that Elym has a group of fellow high level sahad casters acting as guard not to mention the whole camp that Nelta is deploying its forces to. They have control of a six kilometer stretch around that temple that Madhammer has yet to get all the way to. Simply put, Madhammer and VSEC stationed on the ground are overrun by sheer numbers and the reckless use of firepower.

Laura and Yenneiros are holding their respective areas, though the Hasao clan is definitely struggling. They don’t have a proper military, they had enough killers to make a great police or vigilante force but this is war and they’re being pushed back hard by Nelta. Yenneiros is the only one gaining ground on Nelta though, Laura is just doing her best to prevent them from taking the whole city all at once.

We could try to help them regain control by deploying the Winter’s strike craft to secure the air but that would leave Somnus in a worse spot as the Winter is all that’s preventing them from landing smaller transport craft, which can slip through the minefield, to reinforce Rikoy.

Elion has been holding things down and keeping it together to minimize losses until we can go in a bit harder, that timing coinciding with about five minutes from now. Satsujin and Nah are about to get back from Sol which can open some options for us. Nah has a battleship which can make a good hit, it’s also stealth so it can maintain comms for us as support if preferable. Not to mention the Nomads will be coming in as well.

So basically pick which hill you want everyone who works for you to die on before Elion initiates a proper assault to deal with key targets.

 

Elion called for us to retreat rather than push in on Rikoy when we had the chance, though he was right that the entire main deck split open and was vented. Since we can’t use Ethi much we have the distinct issue of not having the best countermeasures to being in open space. Might be some merit to sending the knights down to Koura where they can fight a bit more freely, it would play to their strengths more. However, that would leave us fighting a super-mage of some sort instead of the super soldiers which are more…understandable things for knights to deal with. I suppose its a choice between a favorable battlefield and a favorable opponent. Also where we think Ankathi should be helping most. She is a medieval fish out of water though, I don’t think she really “gets” what fighting in the void of space is like. Not to mention she’s so cocky she might not realize what I mean by “no atmosphere” and do something stupid.

We could go back to dealing with the assault carriers but rifting onto them proved to be extremely dangerous. First off, the atmosphere in those ships does not favor us. Second, surrounded by enemies. It wasn’t too bad, we did some damage but we were recalled to help with Somnus once they started getting on board there.

Meanwhile back at Enohas, things are going fairly alright. With the Revenants having left to go back to Sol we probably have a minute before they get back out here to harass us again. That or they might now be going after Nah or Lancaster since they were able to start pursuing the Revenants, which is something they historically don’t like. Cleaning out Daesta’s remnants is difficult though and we haven’t found much. Since they weren’t really publicly declaring themselves in such a way that we could get a list of who to look for other than Daesta. Though I imagine their morale isn’t doing well with both her and Nihlav dead. They haven’t shown any signs of activity at the least.

Construction on the new demonic wing of the citadel is underway, specifically designed to accommodate the size of at least Ki’Ralcht herself. Speaking of whom, they’ve recently got into a fight with more of the Vloz’Khress forces still lingering around on Zenaka. While they may have won the fight overall we can’t help but notice they appeared to have an objective they fulfilled as the orbital shield generator was sabotaged. Since they previously owned the thing they kind of knew the layout of the place.

 

Across the entirety of the swarm we just instinctively know that somewhere among the stars, the crusade has truly begun. A war of the likes you cannot begin to fathom has been initiated and billions die by the day only to be replaced and sent to die once more. War is a horror all have come to know, yet none yet know the brutality of a silnian war. Perhaps it is our link through sahad that we might see the ripple through the endless void, or maybe just a telescope would tell you much the same. Either way, know that the beginning of the crusade marks a turn in the Valdir offshoots like myself and Azilath. The hunger for blood and glory grows ever stronger, the call of The Wrath can be heard, and the ramifications of the faith will be felt. A divine walks among us, forged through knowledge of the celestial heavens that came before. But today a god of man’s own making reveals the mortality of all others before them.

Also I bought some of those cat sweaters for you to try on, it’ll be adorable! Huh what were we talking about? No I’m not growing anymore, I think this is my maximum size.

Anyways, Cassir is on the way in with Satsujin and the rest of the Sol expedition crew just in the middle of Auwana getting invaded. So that will be…at least some help. The vivarium hasn’t really been attacked, it has been boarded and taken over by Nelta but they don’t seem all that keen on destroying it just yet. So…we have to get that back eventually. Vasia wanted to just turn off the security containment but I’m pretty sure Nelta will just blow up the station or kill all of the specimens if they have reason to think the station is hostile enough to reject their boarding parties. Nelta seems to have no idea that Vasia’s lab is hidden on Ash. The cult isn’t so lucky as it turns out we decorated too well and now Elym has taken that as her base of operations. Lot of dead cultists now too.

Que is not, this place was deliberately chosen to prevent us from being able to expand upon it. It’s moon is. The planet is just a big ball of dust and rock with no atmosphere. Que is enclosed in a spell that allows it to function as if it were hospitable, similarly to Tykel for example. Though it was deliberately chosen for how useless it is to anyone who can’t import what they need.

Also I can tell you that you are less fragile than a regular cat, but also more fragile than any humanoid. Don’t get shot.

All of the new members of the synapse can control a drone or two at a time. None exhibit  the ability for large scale or even squad level control. However, they can exhibit a larger version of control in directing the ghouls we can make through infection. Those are much simpler and stupider. The converts are not all bipedal anymore…I’m actually seeing a trend with this. I don’t have my legs anymore…you’re a cat…most of the new converts are some form of quadruped. Couple more naga like me, oh and that one guy who now is a centipede looking thing…with a human torso. He has a mouth on the backside and the front so we’re not sure if we want to ask where it all goes…

As for Finsir’s relation to Que, it’s open space. There are other star systems not too far away but they’re not closely aligned enough to be terribly more convenient then flying to any other star. I suppose we could scout them for anything useful, and Finsir is known to have high levels of mutated variety among its now two known inhabited planets so maybe the plane will be useful to the swarm. Not really sure how that works.

Seiyomi has left to go to Thenica. Alone. Byyyye Seiyomi. Actually he is qualified to pull that off but that’s still a dangerous place to be. I guess he’s on the tail of the Revenants to start figuring out how their intelligence network actually works. He did mention that you should ask Renjala about the Faelyn/Kanika business though.

Vasia made a special note to the returning trip that Salied is to be brought back to the Ash labs immediately and discreetly. One of the other researchers informed me she’s been building an elaborate machine to analyze and probably do something far worse to the entity she captured from beyond the rift. That and laying low in the hopes that the Nelta invasion won’t notice the secret lab on Ash.

Also yes we have been able to replicate the Nelta control core using the New Horizon facilities. It’s not up to par with the originals but the proof of concept is there and we used it to make the DNA preservation database though it hasn’t been finished. That’s a lot of information we’re trying to store in there and everytime someone makes a typo we have to start all over. I don’t think the species who invented this has the same attention span problems that humanoids do.

Remember when you said “safest location possible” for the Yelay? Guess where that turns out to be. They’re at the Ash facility now with Vasia.

 

We’re on return from Sol though Nelta struck a bit earlier than we had hoped for. Most of our team is aboard the Closing Statement, actually it’s just Leon and Vaeri back on Somnus adn they’ve taken the approach of waiting for support before they get involved in a full scale war.

 

We’ll be arriving into a somewhat dire situation. Nelta has boarded Somnus and the station was split open and is steadily drifting away from its other pieces. Though the station is so large that it is still fairly functional in this condition.

Koura city is almost entirely overtaken by Nelta with only Madhammer making much progress on taking ground from them. Independents and VSEC are doing their best just to slow their forces down. We’ll be arriving eighteen hours after the invasion began.

The Closing Statement could launch a sneak attack on their fleet in tandem with Koda to maximize our impact on the fleet but then we’ll be exposed and operational support might be difficult going forward. If we remain in stealth we can probably park on the far side of the planet and allow Aryn to provide support from the ship as we don’t know how long the Somnus command deck can keep functioning at all. Even now they barely have communications between Elion and Koda let alone the forces down on Koura. From there we could deploy the agents as needed to help with the Rikoy and Elym problems.

Basically there are three main areas of conflict we need to assess our ability to impact. The fleet controls space and as long as Nelta has that they can reinforce or move freely between the various planets and stations we have. Somnus is the main thing keeping that at bay as it has the firepower needed to threaten their fleet, though with it being boarded by Rikoy they are in imminent danger of being not only shut down but being taken over. If Nelta can figure out how to use Somnus’ systems they’ll be able to bombard Koura with ease.

The other big one is Koura itself. The orbital shield generator is all that stands between the city and a full scale bombardment. I suppose the military ramifications of this are not as critical but from the economic perspective Lancaster will probably never recover if Koura is reduced to a field of craters. Which isn’t good for our own funding.