Well the new construction efforts restore more of it and make it a bit more spacious.

I should mention that building a station above Diadem, an uncontrolled and hostile location, requires shipping parts over there. We’re doing so but it will be awhile before they can even start construction there.

Upon moving to contest the pirates at Zenaka, the fleet encountered a threat we didn’t know was there. Andel’s warning proved correct, we can’t detect all of Asmodan’s fleet. It was hiding in the outskirts of the system waiting for our fleet to appear. The tactical intel has been updated, the first fleet was unable to enter the system. The pirates are wrapping around to cut off retreat as well. It appears they were waiting for our fleet so that they wouldn’t have to engage the planetary defenses. Typical siege stuff. The first fleet has sustained heavy losses and cannot retreat nor make it to Zenaka.

We are currently nowhere near figuring out how Nelta created those black holes. So that isn’t really an option. It is apparently related to sahad though New Age isn’t sure how to make a machine that does it. Though they are now concerned that if it can be done, then Decaelys definitely also knows how to do it.

The exploration teams sent after the Deimos have all lost contact. Whatever is out there, it holds to the stories that it is extremely territorial and aggressive. It is believed all three cruisers have been destroyed or worse.

The Pegasus was “found”. It’s was in the hands of some local pirates. It’s crew is believed to be stranded on some planet they may have stopped along on the way to Silnian space. The secondary explorer sent to find them escaped after sustaining heavy damage to both the ship and its crew. It was forced to make an emergency stop at an alien station. We have not heard from it since.

Our attempts to find Arkaric or the Black Library have led us to wrap around up to Zero North, since we know he was there at one point. So they’re still in transit but they’re taking ‘the long way’ around. Passing closer to Nelta space rather than risk going through the Western Reach or near the mysterious empire that keeps attacking anything that gets close to them.

Moncayo, Roha, the Hasao Tei, and the Heroes Guild are all experiencing an outbreak of mummy rot. It’s spreading rapidly through the populace. Local enforcement found evidence that it was deliberately added to a Vittles factory by an unknown agent posing as a refugee from the invasions. They match no known profiles, though security footage reveals the suspect had the disease themselves rather than transporting it. Food shipments have been recalled for inspection and all who handle transportation have been put into quarantine. The cities have been placed on lockdown as an immediate reponse. It would appear the Phantoms are growing more annoyed with us.

As you might have guessed, food just became a major issue again.

When it comes to nature rebelling, Eden is at least secure since she has total control over herself. Though she isn’t much of a druid beyond her own world. As a planar surgeon, a job title that never existed until just this moment, she can at least say that its definitely something Haziel is doing.

We’ve found another replacement succubus, turns out its surprisingly easy to get demons on board with wild schemes to gain power. Though we’ve gained some territory we’ve lost some of our forces on the ground. While the funding given to the prospective lords bought a lot of hardware they’re a bit short on manpower. Hina is doing the best on this front since she already had her mercenary team. Hina has acquired the most ground, though Quylla has lost the least forces. So a matter of effect versus efficiency between the two of them. Okazi is sort of in the middle at the moment and the new succubus is still being briefed and set up to enter the chaotic former territories of Valadeus.

In other pandem and demon related news, Kharla has been spotted in the old territories of Jvangard bringing things back in line. Obviously she intends to create a new demon lord herself, though now the territory is on fire because Kharla’s only setting is mass destruction.

Asmodan’s team are perhaps moving a little slower since he is otherwise preoccupied at Zenaka at the moment as far as we can tell.

Renjala still missing, more at eleven.

The voidforged do not have any special fabrics that the rest of us don’t already have. Also Kaylen reports they can’t update the prison defenses, Vasia built it and everyone who tries to modify it instead of following her very specific instructions tends to fall victim to the prison itself.

I’m starting to think nowhere is safe if I can’t go to Zanin either. There’s an outbreak in Moncayo right now, a crazed lunatic in Roha, and Enohas might just randomly piss off an entity that can delete planets from existence. Maybe I can lock myself in a box so Eden will let me hide in a basement in Garden city.

As for Sharen, they’ve always made their way by ‘investing’ in what they think will come out on top and otherwise staying out of conflicts. Dramatics aside, I don’t think its actually about who is winning or losing – we are losing by the way anyways. I think its about securing their own position, and not in the normal drow political sense. House Sharen has been in power as THE great house of Shetou for a thousand years. There is no way the Phantoms, an infiltration based group, do not have a way to keep tabs on them. If we could demonstrate an effective way to root out the  infiltrators of the Phantoms that would be a decisive enough play to at least get Sharen out of their paralyzed position. If they moved against the Phantoms now, they have good reason to fear their death would come from within.

The drones are acting fine so far. If anything they’re keeping the recent chaotic wild growths in check by eating it. Were not for Alexandria, Roha would be probably the most stable city in the midst of whatever planar shit is going on with the local wild life. Since if some fish gets uppity, the drones just eat it. If a plant grows out of the sidewalk, they eat that too. They are very thorough in finding aberrant growths and eating it since that is all they want to do anyways. It’s actually a byproduct of the way I told them what not to eat instead of “eat only these things”. Sooo my laziness saves the day?

You say to stop you from trying to do the same tech speedrun that the fallen civilization tried to do…you are speaking to the product of you trying to do that. We are in waaaay too deep to turn back now.

Speaking of which the scouts report that Kaisa’s target planet is…not as nefarious as we thought? It’s not another synapse or a planet full of puppies at least. It is instead a planet occupied by a militarized empire who took over several systems near themselves. In hindsight, we kind of forgot that Kaisa serves the last adventurer and he has final say in anything she comes up with. There’s an evil overlord, its our job to take them down and rescue the people I guess. Though despite the quest itself being pretty…questy…it of course wouldn’t be a Kaisa assignment if it was easy. The empire is a theocratic blah blah plots blah blah schemes – its fuckin Agallias. This is where he was building his own empire to serve the Phantoms and is worshipped as some otherworldly god. We’re…we’re gonna need more biomass.

VSEC cannot max warp us, its unique to the design of their ships. Also we went along to be the second wave just in case. Turns out that might be really important really soon given that they’re struggling with the pirates.

40th day reports that we technically have farms on all our colonies anyways. No maniac would have a remote colony sustained only by shipments from vittles during a galactic famine. Except Zanin, that’s a research facility with very few people on it. Though they need those farms to keep themselves afloat.

They also report we found something in NV147-3 Alpha, the water moon of Que. Sure you could totally eat some of this stuff, but more importantly they found evidence that something is or was down there among the ruins of the fallen civilization. We found something too newly constructed to be from the old ruins yet old enough to predate our own galactic awareness. It was a spear with a not-too-old spearhead. 40th Day thinks there is something or someone here. Though we can eat the fish, that too. At least I can, and so can humans dwarves orcs and demons. Elves maybe not so much.

The next step to confirming Setal as a demon lord is to meet with the council of lords and the Demon King and announce her candidacy. You aren’t a lord unless the king recognizes you as it were. Though once you pull the pin on that grenade, who knows what comes next. For now she’s just cementing herself as the leader of Zenaka.

Well we know how Decaelys does it, she just stops time in a specific pocket of space. Anything passing through it, if not sufficiently warded, will be caught in the spells effect. That is probably why she does it to stop incoming fire rather than just freeze the whole fleet, since ships have pretty powerful wards on them.

The Anti-FTL missile was actually fairly easy to prototype for Khymin. They just cost a few million credits per shot and they need to be launched from a carrier. They’re basically just small disposable starships. They also need to make it to the target and remain active. The latter part is the biggest complication, since they can be shot.

Si Yeon assures us that she didn’t infect herself to test the new weapon. Though she also just gave a quick excuse and left. I’m not a doctor but whenever someone keeps brushing off their illness and trying to ignore it, something is really wrong. Is she dying? Have I watched too many dramas?

We started making a test batch of that poison.

The observation program is proving fruitful. Just the caches alone are giving us a look into how the ring moves. It’s like there is a missing tile or two within its structure and everything kind of slots around one piece at a time to get any larger piece to where it needs to go. Also all the pieces tend to be double sided by using the same gravity generation method ships use…but in both directions. Up and down loses meaning within the ring.

After some autopsy’s we can say that their construction is quite advanced albeit not technologically superior to what we have available. It’s as if they are assembled with extremely deft hands that can keep everything together perfectly on a molecular scale so that once the finished robot is set loose it is actually quite robust and complex even if the battery isn’t exactly some strange alien technology that we’ve never heard of. Just really intricate construction.

The corpses left in the field don’t seem to go anywhere, though I have a hunch on that. I think there is some sort of salvaging system, but that it never comes up to the surface. As there are never any destroyed machines on any of the tiles that come up to get some sunlight. The theoretical scavengers may only live within the ring’s internal structure. Which coincides with Eleazor’s report that down there is very different. I would suggest there are multiple ecosystems throughout the ring, and the internal sections are a major part of that.

The mapping project combined with the caches have given us some notable data. It is currently theorized that while it is impossible to truly map due to its constantly moving nature, we are noticing certain sections are like boundaries. They never go past a certain point, and theoretically this is the limit of each exerlus’ control. Beyond those boundaries is the shifting domain of another part of the system.

So far we’re not doing great with non hostile contact. It seems everything is out to kill us. Though I theorize that has less to do with the machines and more to do with the fact that Eleazor made the exerlus pretty certain that it doesn’t like us. It could also just be a case of ‘if its not one of us, then its one of the others and we should kill it’.

So finding the other exerlus for diplomatic purposes will prove to be a bit difficult. We’re not even sure if we can find the one we already know about again. The scale of the labyrinth inside the ring is unfathomable. You could fit Thenica into the ring, and we just lived on the crust of that place. Imagine that, but several times larger and always shifting. Finding the exerlus inside of these areas will be a significant undertaking. We’re trying to basically invade a star system’s worth of shit for each section of this ring just to find the exerlus at the center of this mess. The main catch being that we can’t use ships inside the rings. The pattern in which the modules shift is also controlled by a sentient machine that can move them in the least convenient way possible for us.

The report from the first and second brigade is in. The Areti’s siege of the moon is dramatically more powerful than initially calculated, though that is likely due to it needing to pay little to no attention to defensive systems since we have no fleet or infrastructure out there. Also Faelyn’s entire fleet is hitting it and took no casualties reaching the moon, as such their initial estimates give them a month before it fails.

The fleet approaching Zenaka has spread out over the system and are disrupting space traffic, though we have a portal to get there so we’re not entirely sure what they’re up to. Though they are sticking out of range of the defenses for now. The natives are growing nervous though.

The fleets proceeded at maximum warp to Enohas to contest Decaelys. On the upside, it did stop her from whatever her original plan was. On the downside, they weren’t able to do anything to her directly. So remember how she can theoretically stop time? That includes the space directly in front of her. It was like that old movie with the guy who just holds up his hand and all the bullets stop in mid air. A brave shuttle pilot tried to ram her and discovered that the ship’s wards could protect from this effect which led to a chain of attempts to just run into her but space is big and she is more mobile in space than most. After destroying some of the fleet she just disappeared, likely into that fourth dimensional warp fuckery that we know she can do. So we lost a few dozen starships and stalled her yet again.

Kaylen reports that Song Yi has no interest in fighting the Areti. There was a much longer conversation, that Kaylen lost, but basically House Song’s only means of fighting the Areti would be with House Sharen’s fleet, which they are still withholding to observe the initial conflict with us and the Phantoms. Atop of which, since Faelyn is not a lich she isn’t on Song Yi’s priority list. It may also turn out that Song Yi is however not sitting around doing nothing. She’s looking for a way to deal with the terrasque as well as track it down.

Vittles reports that they can help in sending food to Preskian but not without straining the supplies for the Federation. Which are already a bit iffy, iffy enough that cyborg cultists are eating their own limbs down in Roha. With the druids gone to the Fae Wilds our supplies have started to dwindle, turns out that without Bill and the gang our crops are not doing so well. Eden is a single living planet but not one that bears much food, and Garden isn’t even built into any soil. Basically right now there isn’t much to spare. We could do so anyways for the sake of diplomatic relations but Vittles thought to ask real quick before they did that.

Speaking of the druids, people have been reporting strange occurrences across both Sol and the Federation. Trees are dying and normally docile animals are becoming more violent. Now I’m not saying Lancaster did something, but just something to keep in mind. I believe Irae will be paying closer attention to it.

Also I will note that I don’t think that Valen is particularly interested in affecting change so much as making money. She’s been reading a lot of news about the state of galactic affairs and suddenly taken a keen interest in having Vittles help her set up a farm on the land we gave her in Zenaka. She’s a bit of a wild card though if you’re hurting for capable soldiers I suppose she’ll have to do.

We’ve re-established contact with Eleazor, the ring sort of spat him back out. More so it rotated the section he was in to get it some sunlight and suddenly he was just…there. An emergency operation led by Madhammer retrieved him, Gunhild, and Laenadra. Who has lost another mech. Though debriefing reveals a lot of information.

The inner workings of the ringworld are impossibly vast and always shifting, but there is an entire ecosystem underneath the surface of the ringworld as well. The surface tiles that we see represent probably fourty five percent of the available sections within the ring that we will ever see on the surface. Modules that need to see the sun every once in awhile and are rotated out. However, these tiles make up a very small fraction of the other available tiles within the ring that have no intention of ever seeing the surface.

It is inhabited by even more creatures, and scarier ones too. Though they encountered something in there, something sapient. He described it as an ancient machine intelligence that told them the purpose of the ever shifting maze. Upon further analysis, the labs have concluded its an exerlus from consensus six. The creators of the ring found and captured one, using it for the basis of the technology that allowed them to build the ring world in the first place. This is also how the terlim machines were built. So it turns out that most of the galactic fuckups that civilization caused were because they got ahold of some crippled exerlus and tried to speedrun a few billion  years of technological advancement and then got a little too close to the sun on that one.

That aside, the ring is always moving because there is more than one of these exerlus within the ring, and they don’t get along. Their creations are constantly trying to fight for control of the ring but the constant shifting has to do with protecting itself from these invasions.

Gunhild was asking why Echo Prime left them here, since if she had the keys that absolutely means that the Echo Consensus knew about this place and knew what was in it. Eleazor supooses that it is exerlus policy not to mess with things that they have no business meddling with. Even if it is an exiled consensus being found inside of a ringworld that is factory producing robot monsters with laser beams on their heads.

Either way, Diadem is a battlefield between a few of these exerlus who are both too crippled to go punch each other and too outdated to fix themselves of their own volition. As the knowledge to repair themselves fully was deleted before the ringworld experiments began.

I suppose all you care about though, is that we have to either shut these exerlus down or get them out in order to get any section of the ring to stop moving erratically but if we do that it will be undefended from the other exerlus sending waves of mechanical monsters in. That was all the information Eleazor was able to get before getting kicked out after mentioning the key. The current theory is that the keys he has don’t give him admin access to the station. Echo Prime didn’t have anything so convenient, instead she just made him a flash drive that shuts off other exerlus. Because the one he was talking to was very unhappy to learn what he had.

It would seem that the absence of the druids is having a dramatic impact around the federation’s food supplies. Which I suppose we kind of saw coming but it was hard to convince them not to go on an epic adventure with the last archdruid. Though whatever they are doing, it’s causing erratic effects. With planar connections warping as Haziel does…whatever she is doing…things are not happening consistently but definitely abnormally.

It appears that all plants are starting to wither as if experiencing a sudden winter despite it not being all that cold. At least according to the local botanical scientists working for Vittles. Our fishing teams have reported that the native fish of the planet are growing more aggressive. Back in Thenica there are wild animals like rats just attacking people in their sleep and trying to bite them in the eye so that they’ll wake up too blind to fight back. Reportedly a few elves have been eaten alive by a swarm of rats. These are some of the extreme cases and it isn’t so universal that anyone else has really noticed the cause, but whatever Haziel is doing it isn’t a locally contained thing. The Fae Wilds are the higher plane from which much of what we understand as nature stems from, she’s altering the laws of nature and if she succeeds…well civilization might be about to take another hit across all of the galaxy. On the upside, my house plants are growing beautifully and a small sprout of basil I grow for spaghetti has now turned into a bush.

We’re not sure if this is all the result of Haziel intentionally doing something, or of what might be a war between the archdruid and something else. Though weather patterns back on Thenica are also growing strange, with lightning storms forming rapidly. Next week’s forecast predicts a flood at the ruins of what was once a capital city. Which isn’t too big of a deal since the city was already destroyed by Nelta, but it was not built in a place where a flood should be possible, and it hasn’t been for thousands of years. We’re safe from all of this here on Moncayo, the abyss doesn’t give a shit and we’re in a water bubble, but I thought you might find it interesting.

Our lordlings have gone forth into the territory of Ki’Ralcht. It was rough. Even with military assets at their side, Ki’Ralcht was already gearing for war with the Vloz invading Valadeus’ old territory. One of two succubi is dead already, killed by Ki’Ralcht herself with the aid of Asmodan’s pirates. Though we did score some ground through it all to establish a few camps they can operate from.

Aryn’s candidate having their shit together is exactly what makes them untrustworthy. You don’t make it far in the demon kingdom without stabbing a few backs and mauling a few fellows. We finally got their profiles sorted out if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

It’s a little difficult to help Charlotte with the Vivarium unless they want to build a new station for it. If they intend to put it on the Iron Cradle then we might have to wait for them to not be across the galaxy.

Rousing speech boss, I’m going to Zanin. We have a puddle there I can probably make a bit bigger. Alexandria just took over the administrative buildings and now controls Roha. Loyalists are being found dead in the streets every day as the inquisitors patrol. I sent Rhazin to ‘maintain the peace’. She sent him back in six pieces. Kaylen sent some boys over to see what was up, they can’t find Alexandria. Also I think you are correct to be suspicious that Alexandria isn’t entirely affiliated with Cassir directly. The other problem is she’s very sneaky, we can’t actually find her. Rhazin didn’t even see her coming before he woke up in the ichor lake. Though he can tell that he was impacted by a massive psionic attack from below the street he was walking down. There is a crater there that goes down to a sewer channel so that checks out. I’m starting to think this isn’t Cassir’s apprentice. Cassir was a cold bitch sure but she wasn’t cruel. She was also never very sneaky about anything she did, nor ruthless. At this point, I think it might have something more to do with Vasia than Cassir. That or maybe the Phantoms…actually maybe the Revenants. This is definitely in their MO.

Alexandria brought me cookies again and I’m just keeping my mouth shut. If they can take down Rhazin I’m not gonna try anything. She asked if you were going to stop by anytime soon.

If anything Kennae is a great example of an immortal that makes this linguistically confusing. He’s definitely not a higher sapience like Kanika even if he is biologically immortal through…protein shakes I guess? Though I don’t exactly have a phone to him, I just recap the things you said to me earlier this month for the sake of these monthly reports.

Though he did say that if he wanted to talk to Kaylen he could just go over to her, she’s not hard to find. He’s just got other things to do and he hopes she has better things to do than talk to him too. I get the feeling he was a surprisingly strict teacher.

He also mentioned that hiding in a fort will do little to help the jydoq people. Then a thirty minute ramble about the merits of zankou and being always prepared. Also he’s heading out to get back to work hunting the assassin and any other ne’er do wells he might come across.

Also given that you’re not having much luck, I’m gathering you have still yet to gain any foresight as to the assassin’s whereabouts. Does that mean they’re not paying attention to you or that they are still plotting a plan? I don’t know how your power works so I’m not sure at which stage of an assassination it would trigger. Can you tell from the moment they intend ill will upon you like Cassir or is it more of once they embark on a plan of action? That or is it just like that spider guy cartoon where you can tell two seconds before it hits in you the back of the head?

You know I can still taste things right? The taste just doesn’t have much meaning. Since I can taste everything in the synapse too. At this point its just a chemical receptor test to analyze the properties of an object rather than…flavor.

Also I doubt Song Yi has time to deal with your horrors. She is the guardian of ancient and terrible techniques and that is what she focuses on maintaining. Apparently she’s currently more concerned with Kanika’s lich-terrasque. Kennae is the one who fights injustice anywhere he finds it in any form like a warcrime seeking missile. Song is after necrocarnates, Kaylen is after Phantoms, and so on and so forth. I feel like Song Yi might be inclined to kill you too were not for the fact that she has a lot on her plate right now since she is hunting the biggest and baddest liches as well as us discovering dozens maybe even hundreds are out there working for Kanika.

-Renjala isn’t here to be the smoke alarm for a House Yi crusade. What are the chances she totally views my method of immortality as acceptable? I don’t *technically* alter their soul myself, I just give it my mind and my memories, and it just starts fitting better over time.

Drow actually do have dressing slaves, or more so servants who help them dress. That or whoever you live with. Standard practice in the morning for everyone to help one another with that. Those outfits are way too tight with way too many straps to do it all by yourself every day. Drow tend to lean between really loose and lazy clothes they can just throw on and ridiculously ornate things that somehow cover up even less but take two people to assemble every morning. At least the rich ones do. I just wore jeans but my mother liked to pretend to be fancy so I had to help her put that stuff on every day.

Craylin’s just curious, don’t mind her stalking people. She’s less than a few months old and being asked to live in a society that fears her for what she is. Let alone that creepy stare, so she just likes to go people watching to see what normal humanoids are like.

We know a really good assassin but counter assassin is a bit iffier. I suppose that is sort of your thing really but you have your own assassin after you. Nah Division is the next best bet. Vanjin especially.

We did a test of the FTL trap, it takes a lot of mana but New Age can actually do it. Granted it also takes a huge rig to do so and we can’t get it as big as Decaelys could. However, could just put it in a missile if we wanted to.

Si Yeon has been sick for the last few weeks so she doesn’t have much research to report. I’m not sure how sick but if it lasts that long it’s kind of odd. She still shows up to the labs but spends most of the time in her office or the bathroom in her office. She didn’t say it but I can’t help but remember that those who were infected by the parasite shouldn’t be able to get sick. At least not for too long.

Though she did report some success making a toxin that interrupts mana flow. Sort of an accident, she was going for mana drain but instead it does a little bit a drain and a lot of disruption. Disables casting though it has an issue in overcoming super resistances to poison. For example, undead who have no bloodstream or Eliza who just casually eats diseases like eleven essential herbs and spices. Would have worked on Illdath though, thirty seventy if it does anything to something like Decaelys. We have no dragons to experiment on but it might outright kill them given how magical their biology is.

ARC is on its way to Enohas to fight Decaelys but it takes a bit to get there. Sounds like it’ll be all wrapped up by the time they do.

Allison figured out whats happening on Thenica. Eliza isn’t with the Jaal’Darya at the moment. She’s what the Phantoms are moving. Though we don’t know where she’s going or why. While she was at it she also uncovered that Eliza, having been left to her own devices with Kanika’s research budget for so long, has become something…else. Dazzle has the strength of a dragon now, and Eliza herself is said to have gone even further. She is on Eden’s level as a surgeon, but instead of changing people’s native planes she can change their race. To anything she has an existing sample of.

As for House Beldobaan, we’ve learned that their house’s neutrality has cost them economically over the years. It is less so that Yasrena is what she is, and more so that the board was just reset in the recent invasions. Beldobaan has clung to power in irrelevance by hiding behind their neutrality so no one would even notice the gaping holes in their influence in the modern day. They are the weakest great house because they were the least aggressive in any way shape or form. Sharen’s dominance comes from economic aggression and so forth.

So it seems that they’re concocting a plan to get back on the playing board, they chose to be neutral at a very bad time. The industrial revolution just passed them by and they’ve been struggling to keep up ever since but you’d never know it since they are so secretive behind their walls. Yasrena represents a good shot for them to do that. The Yochlol thing presents a great front for the real reason, Kanika and the Phantoms can do what Beldobaan wishes they could. They’re not looking for the old ways, they’re looking for an ‘in’ to the Phantoms so they can get some assistance in restoring their power with the front of traditional values to leave themselves a little wiggle room.

This stems from one more complication. Historically it has been noticed that people tend not to mess with them despite them holding good lands. It turns out their matriarch was married into the house a long time ago and slowly but silently rose to power and became the matriarch by basically killing the previous one, as drow tend to do. However, before she married into Beldobaan, she was a Vloz. The reason people tended not to mess with Beldobaan is that Kharla just happened to keep turning all of Beldobaan’s rivals into dolls if they got anywhere near that matriarch since it is Kharla’s cousin. As we know, Kharla has a whole thing about blood relatives and making sure no one touches them.

So this puts Beldobaan in an awkward position. Their hidden ties to Kharla keeps them safe but Kharla isn’t exactly pushing drow politics forward. Without Kharla, House Vloz would be a bit of a joke given how old and backwards they are. They only maintain relevance because Kharla is the most powerful drow in Sol and perhaps to ever live. If even Kanika is wary of crossing paths with Kharla, that’s a clear sign that Kharla is not to be trifled with. So if they maintain their neutrality with the hidden threat that Kharla might come beat the Phantoms up if they get too uppity, they’ll be in a really bad spot if Kharla ever dies. A distinct possibility with how crazy she is. However, if they outwardly and immediately side with Yasrena they could anger Kharla who has quietly protected them for quite some while now.

The Matriarch of Beldobaan is playing it slow not to feel things out, which fits in theme with their house’s image, but to find Kharla and try to talk to her. Since Kharla was just evacuated to the demon kingdom after the Revenant attack, she’s become extremely difficult to gain access to.

We may have just uncovered a conspiracy that could rock the drow world and the many layers on which they’re all playing to try and get ahead of twenty different problems in a month. I suppose that’s why you’re the leader of the division, but damn sir that was fast.

We have conducted a minimally invasive survey of the flora and robofauna. It appears their designs are organically based, and I suspect there was once life here or somewhere nearby…or that they encountered in a database somewhere. Though the consistency in form shows intention, it isn’t random assembly chaos to see what works. That’s important because it means wherever they’re coming from, they’re being designed by something with a much larger brain. Though I don’t know why it wouldn’t imbue the same properties into its creations or network them into a consensus properly. There is also a consistency in some models, but a high variety of them. Though each model is exactly the same as any other in its species. No serial numbers though. Thank you for the abundance of samples Chevalier.

Vanessa and Adrienne have been conducting stealth surveys to see what they do when we aren’t looking. They do very much hunt and play, they even seem to have packs that can distinguish each other somehow despite the seemingly identical construction and the complete lack of data transmission methods. They have scars, wear and tear, and with that they can visually distinguish one another. Though Adrienne says they exhibit personalities, and that is how she can tell a specific one apart from the group. It hurries to its destinations with more urgency than the others but for no practical reason.

We don’t know where they get their energy from. We aren’t sure but it is reasonable to suspect they are solar powered by how much they like to sit in the sun. Though we have also seen species that eat other machines and consume specifically their battery cells.

In all, they’re alive as much as any other animal but with different biological functions and so far no observed methods of reproducing. They come from somewhere in the ring’s labyrinth and we don’t know why they are so heavily armed. Though we do see territorial tribal skirmishes in some species, and notably the different tribes are usually similar but different species.

Also, we may need to alert volunteers that there is a chance we don’t ever see them again. Due to the shifting labyrinth that is this ringworld, it is likely that any camp we set up could disappear beneath the ring for centuries, depends how long this project takes. We already lost a few camps to this phenomena.

Stories of Lore 47

Diplomatic proceedings have moved forward with an Alnae warlord known as General Preskian, an elf of course. They hold mostly what is the former state of Iothaes. I’d describe them as the least evil at least, also struggling the most.

Laesaaria and Shetou are not really the type to tell us if they actually do need anything. Though we do know drow are always in a state of violent acquisition, the famine definitely took a toll on their population but they barely seem to notice the difference in day to day affairs. Cannibal elves in Alnae are a whole thing that makes everyone worried, drow murdering each other for scraps is sort of a regular day. So its harder to tell what they would need and they aren’t inclined to tell us due to that whole ‘we’re better than everyone’ thing they have going on sometimes. Might need to infiltrate them just to figure out what their issues even are.

As requested we’ve made contact with Valen. She proves to be a bit of a haggler. While we know the standard pay rate she points out that she has her own team to keep operating as well as equipment. So she’s questioning if we supply the equipment or the funding to buy equipment and whether or not that’s included in the initial paycheck as well as various potential benefits packages. That and she pointed out that if we are trying to establish an exclusivity contract with her she wants a series of land plots in the area of Zenaka we hold alongside a house in Moncayo. Then stated if we wanted her to formally join VSEC, she refuses to wear an outfit or do any other manner of behaviors associated with our military. Normally I wouldn’t mention all this but as Renjala often said, if you don’t hire them you’ll be fighting them. I think she is weighing contracts against one another given all the effort she’s been going through to make a name for herself among solian powers. I do know from background checks that she does have a tendency to make some…vulgar statements towards the VSEC occupation of Zenaka. Though she does the same towards almost everyone. Do with that what you will.

As for other diplomatic ventures, who is Masa? That and define ‘not psycho’ because Haleh is a raider turned pirate working for Rahlken right now.

Thunderstrike-4’s originally came from Alnae, actually one of the warlords has the old facility though its not in production at the moment. If we were to place a large order and maybe help with supplying it they could be inclined to get it up and running again.

The knights went to the new arcane moon and set up as requested while the fleet is headed towards Auwana. Though not long afterwards we detected an unknown fleet moving towards Zenaka. Allison from Tyne’s division reported that there have been odd movements across Thenica. Worth remembering we have a permanent portal between it and Moncayo. The rift to the Warrens is closed and the Areti is bombarding the knights at the new moon. Also it turns out that Decaelys and her cult are not with the Areti, and also since they are small and person sized we didn’t really pick up anything on the scanners. Technically we should have if they had the mass of mana that creates a jesai ship, but Decaelys is can apparently build her ship right on top of Enohas by using the radiation from the arcane moon itself. The nearby station of Renjala’s construction was crippled during her arrival.

Speaking of Paizarus, the sweep for Solvang ships actually hasn’t turned up anything. They seem to have been content to just leave once they picked up Asmodan. Though that might be what is approaching Zenaka.

Meanwhile the latest report from Diadem is that they have retreated most of their forces back onto the fleet after significant losses. They have managed to re-establish contact with Eleazor and Gunhild but cannot figure out how to get them out of the ring. It’s so colossal that the ever-shifting mechanisms with in it are like watching continents rearrange themselves. Eleazor says that he and Gunhild are alright but very lost, and have abandoned searching for any sort of control room. They’re doing alright on food by eating the strangest stuff they keep finding, it turns out within the ring is somewhat overgrown due to the constant flipping of the external plates depositing organic material inside. Given how old Diadem is, native life forms have evolved. The fleet is on standby to extract Eleazor and Gunhild if they get pushed out into the surface layers at any point but for now they are stranded inside of a living hostile super-station. Eleazor said support would be nice.

As an update, Kaylen’s back from Thenica after hunting down another Phantom colony and burning it down if you still wanted her to go talk to some people for…well Lancaster technically but you’re the one that is here right now.

We might want to hold off on repopulating Jamalia. VSEC just left to stop Faelyn again but Decaelys wasn’t with her. The ol’ distraction strategy. I’m not sure what will be left of Enohas if its moon just disappears. Also now that Decaelys is there, we can’t create a rift in or out of the area since she can either ward it or learn it.

Meanwhile in the demon kingdom. Our four candidates have been sent into the chaos though it is likely both Phantom and Vloz’Khress influences are there as well. Not to mention just rogue demons looking for a shot. The first major issue is that the Vloz sent Aikane, partially to investigate Jvangard’s death as well as guide any potential new candidates while making sure no one else gets a foothold besides those aligned with Vloz interests. Ecsanul and some other larger demons are there as well. Aikane is also trying to maintain the area to prevent it from turning into another bandit kingdom. This is at odds with what a few others are up to but seeing as Vloz ruled the area they’ve had an easier time getting things under control. At the same time, what we theorize to be one of Asmodan’s people are also there looking to destabilize it instead. Our candidates have been preying on stragglers as they can but by comparison Aikane took out several other greater demons already for ‘disturbing the peace’.

All this is to say that our four candidates are able to make some progress with our help on becoming greater demons but its a struggle. A chaotic demon territory is fairly violent and most of our knights were recalled awhile ago when we learned they were likely being watched. Now there is a shapeshifting demon lord patrolling the area and if she finds out we’re there our candidates won’t make it out.

So either they can go into the deeper parts of the territory for better use of their time while contending with other big demons who don’t need the promise of some outside force to do the exact same thing, or stay on the outskirts until someone mellows out the territory but will still be a ways off of being ready to push for demon lord. With the exception of Aryn’s candidate…they’re doing fine. Though they might not be entirely trustworthy.

Also to note, back in Valadeus’ territory Ki’Ralcht has taken over the largest share of his assets. While she is an abyssal and not really a candidate for a demon lord, I don’t think the Phantoms are planning on that. She just happens to know the most about his holdings and has the ability to keep them under control while Asmodan does whatever nefarious scheme he’s up to.

We’ve begun construction on the Iron Cradle for a portal and also sent it through to Diadem as requested.

They’re called acolytes until you win the challenge. Ritualists, cultists, and followers are the yoga moms in the circle. The acolytes actually fight though still have a way to go. Inquisitors would be people at Cassir’s rank. All of them follow the other potential cult leader who is ready to slap your shit. They just killed the other girls who were once associated with your old body and their speech was something to do with ‘oh look who isn’t here where the rest of us are’ and now they’re the leader of the Roha branch by default due to a lack of candidates. She’s an inquisitor, and all the other inquisitors work for her. She goes by Lord Inquisitor Alexandrea. She turned all her ritualists into acolytes. So you know she has also been by the ichor lake to talk with me. It was just a ‘getting to know each other’ conversation though I can tell she’s taking steps to position herself favorably with me. I’m going to be honest too, it’s kind of working. She brought me cookies. Remember how Cassir’s problem was a lack of direction or ambition so she just kind of did whatever we asked? Alexandrea has the opposite problem. The longer  you’re at Jydoq the more they’re probably going to take over Roha. I’d stop them buuut…well you see I had my head cut off and the doctor said I should just take it easy for a bit.

Aryn says she’s not technically cheating but she’s curious if it sounds racist to point out she’s a daiheb cyborg. So she’s a bit more capable at this kind of thing.

Suicidal people aren’t exactly lining up to be science experiments.

Calm down, Song Yi is clearly going to kill Renjala first so you can use that as a warning that she’s coming.

We could send the Yelay to the Iron Cradle. Charlotte seems to want to make a new vivarium.

Scout ships are on the way to see what exactly Kaisa is throwing us at.

The FTL trap would need a ritual with about as much mana as a cruiser can produce with its reactors per hundred kilometers. For comparison…Decaelys did one that would take all of Lancaster’s fleet to recreate. Space god and all.

Mana bomb? I assume you’re talking about the burst spell that Vasia was working on. In which case…sketchy. Kind of. See it keeps killing people who try to use it for kind of meh effect all things considered. Making progress though.

As for assessing Asmodan’s fleet, that might be a job for Nah or at least Allison. I have no way to check on it.

I understood none of that archmage talk. I just know Laesaaria and Yasrena are famously some of the best. At least until we discovered Sakhessa. I thought archmages just got their degree then went to work for some company? Also what do you mean despite how I treat you? I knit you sweaters all the time, well I used to buy them but Craylin has been working on arts and crafts with me. So the last few were mine.

The university syllabus is still being worked on, we got a year before its a good time to start a school year anyways.

As for power hungry, yes. Everyone always has a rationale for it but that doesn’t change that they covet power. Thus making them power hungry. Even if that power would let you save the world you still have to do certain things to get that power. There is a reason they say power corrupts. You simply cannot acquire that power purely through good deeds and happy thoughts. Even when your goal is to do good,  you must do what must be done to gain the power to do so. Such is the cycle of the corrupting effects of power. For example, do you want to keep control of the cult and Roha? To do so you must kill the most promising of Cassir’s apprentices who has the most vision for the cult. You keep the power, but you kill their last vestiges of hope that Cassir once gave them.

Can you even kill them? Unlike you they’re combat ready, as brutal and savage as Cassir was. What would you need to do to kill them and keep your power if you can’t defeat them as you are? If you desire the power to defeat them, perhaps you will once again do something…questionable.

Though if you don’t…well this Lord Inquisitor seems like a bit of a monster in her own right. She too has done what must be done to take power of the cult. Meanwhile, I just dress up my cat and hang out by the lake. I’ve done nothing too terrible, so I am relegated to being just a glorified secretary to my own synapse. If I wanted, I could control you and take over everything you have…but that might be a little amoral.

Kennae says that the skills of a good leader and surviving an assassination aren’t that different. Something something old lizard wisdom. Basically he believes everyone should think like a zankist and they have their own cult thing going on about how ‘everything is zankou’ so instead a leader should learn a series of useful skills like patience, observation, and so on. Also he hasn’t seen Kaylen in a long time.

I suppose as a briefing if you really intend to go to Beldobaan territory, you should know that they’re much quieter than most drow. They thrive on obscurity to an extreme, this might actually make it very difficult to get any information out of them. They do not divulge personal information easily. The Matriarch has not been seen since the invasion, and before those it had been about twenty years. She only appears to consult the masses during times of major events. Beldobaan is a very old house who have previously utilized their neutrality to keep their heads low while working primarily on civil infrastructure. They’re actually one of the less aggressive houses in Shetou in theory. Though we have reason to believe their assassins are second to none, and you just don’t hear about it when they do make a move. Though that is all only true of their deep territories, ones ruled very directly by the house. It is large enough to possess several other locations under its rule, and these places tend to be a little bit wild. Since Beldobaan doesn’t get involved unless absolutely necessary, Kylia for example is a lawless pirate paradise full of people so rebellious they can’t even speak common correctly. It’s where Allison is from.

However, their outliers are probably not what you’re after, so I’ll keep to the core of the Great House. We know it receives tribute from several of its minor houses but even they don’t know what all that money necessarily goes to. It just sometimes comes back for civil infrastructure unannounced. To be honest, to get close to the Vals of Beldobaan you might have to marry into them and even then it’ll be difficult due to their reclusive nature.

The pirate monitoring Allison has been working on suggests a few things. First that Asmodan’s fleet is being built up in the demon kingdom. Second that his new flagship is actually under construction right now at Riftgard back in Auwana.

Ha ha! We’re off on our first federation gig. Apparently our mission, should we choose to accept it, is…conquer a ringwor-holy shit thats a big space station. Full of robot monsters. According to my data, humanoids find other humanoids with pets to be more trustworthy. Clearly we must tame these monsters and put them in every pet store on the cradle!

That and there is the legitimate issue that this place is crazy. Millions of years left to soak up power from the sun and prepare for a journey beyond the galaxy that never happened. We’ve only just gotten clearance to begin mass production for warforged of the more violent models. We will need to place our resources carefully on this one and dispatch our forces intelligently to minimize losses until we have more to work with. Arsene is back at VSEC offices in a big armchair. Great start.

To survey the situation, it’s a ringworld. A ring large enough to encompass a star, its a small star but its a star none the less. One of Lancaster’s cronies got the keys to this sweet ride and upon attempting to move in they discovered that its overrun by robot monsters that are really kind of like us but less sapient and more stupid. The ring itself can shift into different configurations, apparently that was their solution to it being permanently exposed to a star. That’s what they came up with instead of umbrellas. Also that makes the interior an impossible to navigate labyrinth but at the end of that maze is the control room we need to plug the keys into. Without doing so, it is difficult to establish a permanent portal here.

Judging by the sheer size of this place, this might be a multi generational project to get full control of the ring even if we get access to the controls. Let alone to populate it. Right now some of Lancaster’s fleet is standing by but the guy with the keys specifically is trapped within the ring’s labyrinth and can’t get out. Since he has the keys, it would be ideal to find his body at the minimum.

So far the roaming robots are equipped with cannons, missiles, machine guns

As for more ship style warforged uhhh…sure I can try. One turned into a benevolent omniscience with a holier than thou complex and the other is now a depressed vsec secretary so roll the dice and lets see what we get! Oooonce I get ahold of a big enough ship. It has to be awesome.

As for expanding our potential populace we have some stroke of luck there. Right now due to the famine and all the other issues, people are generally happier to emigrate than usual. Bonus, living with a bunch of killer robots doesn’t seem so bad when your other options are a bunch of werewolves, a giant black puddle that spits out alien monsters, and *shudders* Moncayo. So we’re not terribly unappealing and this was a space station used for warforged production by humanoids so we could theoretically restore the life support to the ship interior. All those weird things we built on the outside of the ship maybe not so much. However, food production might be an issue.

Stories of Lore 46

We’ve initiated the pandem scanner and found the Areti is making its way what we would call galactic east, towards nothing in particular that we know of. Though initial attempts to track its trajectory reveal a few stars it could be moving towards. Notably, there is another system with an arcane moon in its path. Given they were planning to take Enohas’ moon when it was controlled by Valadeus, odds are they are just looking for an arcane moon more than a fight right now. As we know, Sakhessa is more interested in building her new city than anything else.

As to your question about Nelan, he is but for the most part he’s been assigned to handling a new project since we’re now on speed dial terms with Kaylen.

The diplomatic adventures found that House Sharen is rebuilding its fleet, even if it already has the biggest remaining fleet in Sol. With the collapse of Alnae, and Kaylen just leaving entirely, they’re in a position to take control of Thenica if it weren’t for Yasrena. Shetou in general has both House Song and House Sharen still standing. Kar’Soluth is up to something though we’re not sure what. Though despite the pamphlet revealing Yasrena as a Phantom it might have had the opposite intended effect. Now that they know Yasrena is actually a yochlol, their loyalty to her has been strengthened. The traditionalist houses have a thing for…well tradition. And traditionally a yochlol is a higher rank than a Val’Hari for them. The only thing putting a pause in Kar’Soluth outright declaring loyalty to the Phantoms as a result of this revelation is Kharla. Who is currently in the demon kingdom under heavy guard by all of the Vloz demon lords. Perhaps ironically for us, Kharla is the only opposition of the phantoms within Kar’Soluth but is also one of the most influential matriarchs among drow. If she dies, Kar’Soluth will likely become openly aligned with the Phantoms. So, something to consider there at least.

House Song is in the process of re-arming with the help of Sharen building them yet another flagship. This one is bigger than the last ones, it appears Sharen found out about the Areti and they’re trying to build a titan of their own. The plan is for House Song to move its whole population out of New Kaifen and onto the titan for some good old fashioned crusading, so that Song Yi doesn’t have to sit around at home managing civil affairs when she could be going around murdering everything that slightly offends her.

We’re still in the process of finding all the Alnae warlords, more of them seem to pop up all the time. Though given that they are all in opposition to each other, it is perhaps somewhat strange that they don’t collapse more often. For the most part they actually all agree that Alnae needs to pull itself back together, but they are still separated by the critical need for food in this famine.

Admiral Qhu’stha has been assassinated and Kaylen almost was as well by Selona’s cyborgs.

I have advised Lancaster of this before, but the Hasao Tei are very…interesting for diplomatic relations. They criticized the idea of the embassy as political tripe since we are within driving distance of one another already and certainly within aethernet range. It is worth remembering they are descended from the only elven house in Shetou, so you can see how they might be used to certain harsh behaviors.

We’ve deployed the new ships as requested, though we’ll have to wait and see what becomes of it.

The battle of Diadem continues, the exploration fleet managed to find Laenadra but Eleazor and Gunhild are still missing within the depths of the ring world. They’ve also successfully established a landing area and started to reinforce it. Though the colony and the portal isn’t ready due to the constant attacks. According to Laenadra, the interior  of the ring is also always shifting. The control mechanisms are the result of an old security system’s attempt to prevent the inhabitants of the ring from reproducing out of control by constantly displacing them and moving them away from resources. Though after all these years, life found a way. Eleazor apparently is still down there in the labyrinth trying to find where the keys need to be placed to take over the ever shifting location.

The VSS Deimos has lost contact, though we were already sending two more ships out to check on them. Also they’re just very far away so ‘losing contact’ is kind of expected.

Operation Grassy Gnoll has…concluded. Jvangard was successfully killed but not by us. According to Bardhe’s report, there was an additional agent in play that set up the opportunity our demon tried to take in order to create a better opportunity for themselves. The oddity is that it is a zenakan, and a documented one at that. The zenakan is a mercenary who fought against us for the Vloz and then for us against the Vloz then for us against the natives then against us…for nobody in particular that we can tell. Apparently they’ve been behaving strangely ever since the Vloz came to Zenaka and are up to something particular. According to our offices on Zenaka who acquired up some local intel on the matter, this Valen woman is one of the zenakan elite by birth. Meaning she was conceived during a mana flare and is extra fancy. She’s been around for ages helping to settle disputes between zenakan governors by helping them murder each other. Ever since the arrival of the Vloz she has become very difficult to contact or hire…for zenakans. Elion’s office didn’t seem to have any trouble hiring her during those times and neither did the Vloz. We’re still not sure how she got off world, all the way to the demon kingdom, and then subsequently worked her way into a position to assassinate a demon lord.

You know, Lancaster’s gone, Renjala’s gone, Ilex is gone, I can still sometimes hear his voice. Kanika is also missing, Kharla just peaced out to the demon kingdom, I’m starting to get the feeling no one wants to hang out with us anymore.

The new carrier has been sent to jydoq to help with things around there. Though its somewhat chaotic, delving into things there reveals…uh…man Alnae’s warlords are almost hospitable by comparison. The jydoq colonies who can’t decide who the government is but that there definitely should be one tried to hold a vote awhile before we got here. All the candidates are dead now.

We have some ships looking for Sakhessa’s city in Necrosi, which is a whole thing. Theoretically it shouldn’t be hard to find a city we know has to be in Sol but necrosi is a strange place. Due to a lack of need for the basics to survive that the middle planes has, necrosi tends to be a lot more individualistic and rural. What Voriuk described as a city might only be accurate by necrosi standards, as there are only a handful of cities in the plane that could be described as such by the way we know of it. Also, a lot of weirdo vampires with massive harems here. Back in the 1500’s a bunch of vampires moved to necrosi for obvious reasons and really set up shop.

The Fae Wilds are going…great! Definitely great. Lancaster is having a great time.

We’ve also initiated the construction of the arcuran colony plan, that’ll take a bit of time to get everything in place. Though it’s mostly frame work because the arcurans aren’t terribly picky and they like their arcane fragment walls. Those are terrible walls but they like them.

As for our plot with the demon lords, I will say that the more knights bind to a demon the worse it can sometimes be for that demon. More minions means more drain on their existing capabilities. That keeps them reasonably shackled to us though, but might leave them unable to defend themselves effectively back in the Demon Kingdom. I point this out because once we initialize the plan, our co-conspiring demons will be putting a target on themselves. Also they aren’t very powerful right now. They’re about as strong as Setani was at best, and that’s just the biggest one we got working with us.

My good friend hippie demon is probably the weakest but he has a guitar! The two succubi are also quite vulnerable. Aryn found what she described as “a real demon” who is admittedly the strongest candidate for our plot but also the most difficult to work with. They already have significant territorial holdings, even if not enough to qualify for demon lord, and that comes with it the kind of personality that is harder to command. Particularly relevant given how sneaky demons tend to be.

However, our movements through the demon kingdom to find potential candidates have drawn some attention. Talking to the older more powerful succubi around without the more obvious motivation may have been suspicious. Particularly to what we now know to be a secretive succubus lord.

You know it’s kind of hard to tell if any memories are missing since I don’t remember them. I don’t remember my father very much though, is that concerning?

I do remember my mother having them beheaded though so that might be why.

I did warn you about contacting Kaisa. Also if I have the option of my involvement, I’m good here. Either we’re fighting another weak swarm to establish dominance as you suspect, killing our own allies since Kaisa was from the Raven facility, or we’re just killing puppies. Kaisa, ironically, has no chill. When Lancaster asks why you murdered a bunch of puppies, I’m going to point out I’ve been sitting here minding my own business this whole time.

Technically you bought a bunch of star systems from rich people fleeing the rift, their colonies are basically derelicts now. I suppose we could move into one of them but I’m not sure how much advantage there is to doing so. We have a burst of population acquired during the evacuations, but spreading them out makes it harder to defend them. Especially given our enemies love the tactic of making communication difficult.

We started setting up the Harlow colony as requested.

Also attempting to offer Linsun shelter at Roha didn’t work too well. Given that Shetou is the major powerhouse of Sol at the moment, rivaled only by Kar’Soluth, Linsun is doing pretty well in terms of aid.

As for declassifying sahad information that sort of depends on what you think is okay to do so with. Vasia was controlling weaponized sahad spells and advancing the field of ftl. Decaelys can obviously manipulate both time and space in weird extra dimensional ways, and so on. The most basic stuff is ‘survive in space’ I suppose.

Speaking of the cult, they’re up to shenanigans again. Some of them just jumped into the ichor lake because there’s no fence around it, just to see what happened. They’re drone biomass now, I’d make a villainous statement about how I don’t need mindless cultists that do whatever they’re told…but I did turn them into drones which really aren’t that different actually. Well the ichor did but you get the idea. Anyways your cult lady body has a challenge for control of the cult, and back here in Roha you have a growing faction that respect the ‘way of Cassir’ which was ‘do what the scariest person says’. So you’ve got the ones who like the ritual circles and the idea of doing big magic effects now and then as well as those that are the actual warrior followers. I dunno, you sort that one out I just deal with the swarm.

Setal’s still chilling out back in Zenaka, and survived two assassination attempts.

Yaellah seems to know where Vasia went. Judging by Yaellah’s emotional state, Vasia is already giving her orders again. That’s as much as we can really interpret about Yaellah through their communication methods. It’d be great if we had some sort of empath around. Also why did we contact Yaellah instead of Vasia?

Kennae doesn’t seem to approve of setting you up as the jydoq power, since you aren’t a jydoq. Also you have other interests and things to manage, he argues the jydoq need their own government restored that is expressly looking out for their interests. I’m gathering Kennae is painfully lawful good. While the assassin needs to be found and stopped, that doesn’t mean the collection of planets in the intersystem government of the jydoq should be led by an outsider. Something something, old lizard wisdom, something something, power hungry cat. Also if he finds out what your cult does and how you got that body I request you specifically mention that I had no part in this. I don’t need to get my ass kicked by a kobold, that’s just embarrassing.

Also no, your psyche starts falling apart even if you hop bodies. Sleep is a necessity for mental well being after all.

As for your mana experiments, ask Kaylen. Zankists are great at tapping into their own mana or manipulating that of others. Though yes if we were to redo all of our classification of magic there might be more careful boundaries drawn.

In a similar vein, the FTL trap is pretty simple in concept as long as you also understand the FTL enchantments well enough to counter them. Casting it at a scale to cover a planet and its orbiting space station is probably the hard part.

There are fourty two other known colonies on the frontier. We ran out of money before we could finish building all the destroyers. Got some shiny new destroyers though.

Set up a trade route too.

Si Yeon got her data back and has confirmed she has the only parasite that has the ability to hide from silnians. Not even Balhast has that effect. Also no one is sure how hers developed that, but the fact that she was presumably cured before and now has a parasite so thoroughly woven into her that she can’t remove it without killing herself indicates hers is particularly sneaky.

That and the mana sucking poison is a thing you could make. Though that’s getting close to mummy rot territory and if you go too much further you might accidentally kill your whole population like Sakhessa did when she researched such similar ideas.

So it turns out the scanning thing we used to find the Yelay before has a particular limitation, at least I am informed of such by New Age. Without Vasia or Salied they have no idea how to do that again.

Also I have too many things going on at once right now so sit your ass down before making more quest hooks.

We managed to bring Andel back around with the promise of a shiny new super carrier. They brought back a freighter or two from…who knows what poor colony they passed along the way.

We’ve been poking around jydoq to figure out what we can about these recent assassinations. So far we’ve confirmed that they definitely go after mostly political targets though we cannot be certain about leadership figures they have not gone after. It could be a case of these leaders being in good favor with the Phantoms or it could just be by location, they’re all on a different jydoq planet than the assassinations have been occurring on. It could be coincidence, or that territory could have already been thoroughly infiltrated enough that the assassin’s only job is to keep things destabilized everywhere else in the meantime. Unfortunately there isn’t much of  a crime scene left over by now for us to really look at for details. It may be beneficial to bait them into killing Ilex, if they are successful it will at least give us a fresh scene to analyze for their methods. Just a thought.

We sent Vanjin and the Nomads out looking for pirates, but it was Allison who had a meaningful update on the topic since she has an active Solvang membership. Asmodan is building counter fleets, now that the pretense of piracy being a coincidental benefit for undermining established order – cat pamphlet – he’s just recruiting pirates to his own fleet. While we have some time before it is ready to deploy, we may want to be more careful of trade lanes soon if he starts deploying warships. Apparently he is of the opinion that if secrecy is out, it’s time for a little more brute force.

Hello world!

That’s just a little robot humor. Anyways, they approved our admission to the federation as our own nation. See I told you that my team could get the job done. As a status update, the Iron Cradle is currently parked beneath Moncayo’s disc and the flotilla is with it as well.

Along with approval for admission came a wave of classified intel being released to you and by proxy me. No I didn’t steal it, I swear it says that advisors get clearance. You can just look it up in the handbook! Oh they sent a handbook too. Well VSEC did, the Astral Knights sent a gift basket instead. Though our timing is awkward, since Lancaster and Renjala are both missing. Also Ilex is here, despite popular belief, however he’s…a cat.

Hrmm..I’ve got a new idea. I’ll be back in my lab.

It’s patch day! Which mostly means nerfs so no one is ever happy about it.

Almost every character has been rebalanced. This was to help some of the older characters who haven’t been touched in awhile while the rules of the system and general trends of hero statting have changed. Such as removing all the knowledge and skill templates. So hopefully you just remember who is good at what professions other than combat.

Also we’ve cemented a grouping who can be thought of as world bosses or something similar. Basically they’re not on the humanoid scale anymore and require fleets/armies to really hope to deal with. Such as the archons, agallias, and Echo Prime. Note this includes Decaelys, their stats are perhaps deceptive. Though you already know her plan was to just pick up a planet and take it somewhere else, so that should be a red flag.

The method was to just create a tier list and put people into their bracket which was later assigned a level range based on the ceiling of the strongest characters. So some nerfs/buffs might seem a bit wild and others barely changed. Also added more templates because it is tradition that as a game gets older we need longer and longer blocks of text on their cards.

-Regeneration changed kind of, still convoluted as hell.
-Summon template clarified. Variants added: Raise dead, Vloz Summoner.
-Synapses and their templates reworked. Affects Valdir more than Nevun though. Also the synapse template itself is now way worse.
-Slayer: No longer gives defense bonus. Now gives critical range. Still gives offense. Now has a minimum stamina to activate. Might add that to more templates.

Rule Change – Aura bonuses do not stack, instead the highest is applied

New rule – Buying vehicles/ships costs soldiers support staff to crew them. Also buffed the recruitment speeds to make up for this a little. Tanks and ground vehicles can only be crewed by soldiers unless otherwise specified.

Ships in the shop have been tweaked a little bit, but now reflect the crew cost as well as their capacity to carry ground resources. For now each capacity is a point of power. I suppose soldiers agree to bunk up but Hero units demand their own fully furnished apartments.

New rule – Missions cost stamina, available on player sheet next to characters for tracking. Stamina regenerates at 2 per week if the character assignment is “none”. Stamina cost is calculated after mission completion, there are no plans for any consistency at this time. If a character reaches 0 stamina they take -1/-1 per point of negative stamina and cannot use their templates.

Character exp value requirements tweaked a bit.

Also I was trying to launch the patch on a slow week but its never slow around here. So I waited until you weren’t mid-combat with the Phantoms. Re-assess as necessary.

Stories of Lore 45

Greetings Koda, with Lancaster away in the Fae Wilds operational command has fallen to you. Irae may have forgotten to tell her that once you go into the wilds…well most people don’t come back. That’s what makes it mysterious.

The trip to Diadem is apparently still ongoing. They aren’t able to set up the permanent portal so we can send more forces through. They have lost contact with Gunhild, Laenadra, and Eleazor. It turns out the ‘monsters’ Echo Seven was talking about are all advanced self operating machines ranging in size from ‘oh look a dog with a gun’ to ‘thats a mech’. It is exceptionally difficult to scan due to the entire ring being mechanical and emitting similar signatures to that of its inhabitants. Though with what we now know, we believe the entire ring consists of these creatures. They behave as animals but they have military firepower as a part of their construction. The ring itself is constantly shifting and our forces are getting spread out or new waves of creatures are being pulled in towards them. It’s a little chaotic.

The Hasao Tei are notoriously difficult to talk to, though not unreceptive. They’re just led by a group of very stern and serious people. They’re also a little secretive, despite taking several million people from our existing colonies to live with them they seem to like being in a quieter section of Cayetano. At the very least we’ve opened relations to building a highway to their city so people can come and go easier.

The nature of Enohas’ moon means that establishing a long term colony is not very feasible. While it might last a few years, I will caution that eventually the arcane moon can produce erratic effects on construction. Especially any power system. In a pinch it can be used, but I would just caution about the investment. A colony without atmosphere is a dangerous proposition on a moon that can sometimes shut everything off.

Kaylen sent one of her agents to speak with us since she herself went back to Thenica to continue recruiting. She’s also apparently hunting down another Phantom colony, the one run by Hyvory apparently. An opportunity came up she felt the need to capitalize on. She’ll be available for diplomatic relations later if you want her to try talking to the Revenants or House Song. The admiral is in the care of one of her lieutenants at the moment.

The VSS Phalanx is on its way to jydoq alongside the Sparrow. The VSS Pegasus has lost contact though they’re too far out of range to know more than ‘they stopped responding at all’. The VSS Raven has received the message you wanted them to take to Zero North successfully but they took advantage of the catphone to let us know they aren’t sure they’ll make it. They’ve already lost half their crew to pirate attacks, bandit kidnappings, and a freak accident involving a comet that apparently could not be detected on any sensors. The VSS Deimos doesn’t seem to be having any issues and are continuing on their trajectory.

Portal construction on the moon of Enohas has been getting underway. The exploration of the ring world via portal has also taken place. Though it turns out to be more difficult than we expected to set up a colony and a permanent portal. Particularly because the ring world is always shifting and moving various ’tiles’ around. Which is really bad for permanent portals since the calculations of where “Point B” is has to be entirely redone if it does this. Let alone if it does it every couple of days. Theoretically once Eleazor figures out where the keys go, we’ll be able to stabilize things. For now…that’s an ongoing problem. The deployable colony hasn’t even been dropped yet while everyone is running around trying to find some semblance of stability or where the guy with the keys even disappeared to.

The jydoq warlords are kind of pushovers, without their old council or Merlan they don’t really seem to have people left with a strong sense of direction. However, after losing the duel with us, their entire leadership was found dead within two weeks. Grandmaster Kennae was distraught and came to yell at us for being a bit too bold. Though more importantly, he informed us that he is chasing something…strange around the jydoq worlds. After some mutual information swapping, he’s concerned the Phantoms found a new agent for jydoq. One that is currently operating on a small scale but has assassinated any rising leadership repeatedly. Part of his suspicions are aided by the fact that, and this slipped out in the conversation, apparently the Revenants absolutely adore Kennae and talk to him about all kinds of things.

Which led to something else that sounded important. According to Kennae, who says according to the Revenants…bit of a ‘friend of a friend of a friend’ trickle of information here actually. Anyways, rumor has it that Sakhessa is scrambling to keep jydoq together at the moment because us meddling there isn’t good for her. Merlan and the jydoq were projects of Arkaric’s personal interest. Now that Kanika is missing it falls to Sakhessa to maintain the jydoq situation until he gets back, and as we know Arkaric has a rule about working for him. All of his pawns can avoid being expendable only by being more valuable to him alive than their loss would benefit his other plans. Apparently Sakhessa is concerned if Jydoq falls apart she’ll fall into the ‘expendable’ category and he is notorious for expending people in ways they never see coming.

Which is why Kennae is a little upset with us, if we’re meddling than the Phantoms will meddle harder. He is fine with the Revenants since they can be discreet, though we just showed up and started throwing our weight around. To which end he cautions that we may wish to build more defenses. Because whatever is killing jydoq leadership startup plans has infiltrated some of their most secure facilities and somehow not left a trace. Which seems odd, given that they’re slime people. If they slide around the floor, there should be a trace.

Also Robert has been promoted to double CEO. To which end he reports that power gauntlets are a bit tricky to do with any level of rift technology, especially kari. He could draft designs for a piston based version of the concept but the recoil might damage the wielder just as badly unless it was wielded by a particularly large and slow figure who’d gain more advantage from the acceleration of the impact while still being able to withstand the force. Other designs can be summed up as “just enchant bull’s strength”.

We’ve started moving the turrets from Jamalia to the moon.

After a bit of surveying, you would think the merkas and arcurans are an endangered species with how many of them have been taken. They got uplifted so hard they just fell off their own homeworld. It turns out a primitive world with an endless war doesn’t have much population and we’ve been shipping them out for the last couple of years. Though the merkas are actually endangered, in the survey we found out that Valadeus led the arcurans to destroying those birthing trees the merkas rely on. Which pushed them even further to siding with Asmodan. We also discovered something peculiar, whereas Ilex created a male merkas to help alleviate the issues, Asmodan just used succubi. Which explains why they were so fiercely loyal to him.

The ones that remain on the planet live in an apocalyptic scenario where their extinction feels almost inevitable while the arcurans keep rapidly reproducing under the radiation of the arcane moon. There’s only maybe a dozen clans left that we can find – though I do mention they are known for being sneaky- and they’re all below a quarter of their original strength. Valadeus was even more ruthless than the arcurans had ever been before, it didn’t help that Asmodan was likely telling Valadeus where all of their warrens were from the other side. Their eradication is effectively complete. They live on only as Asmodan’s new minions.

The arcurans on the other hand are doing fine. The moon creates more of them, and they were on the winning team twice. It turns out both we and the Phantoms liked their crazy warrior culture and found it very useful. While there is only maybe three hundred thousand of them remaining on Enohas, they can reproduce rapidly since all they need is radiation from the moon. They’re actually fighting with each other right now because they ran out of merkas to pick on.

I’m honestly a little impressed at how quickly two demon lords broke an entire planet and made its people happily agree to slavery at their hands. Though demon lords are definitely a couple orders of magnitude more dangerous than anything that planet has ever produced.

Vaira and Yoshai have returned to the demon kingdom to find some candidates. What I have for you are of course the usual cluster of succubi who have had enough social problems that just being nice to them is an easy way to get their attention. Let’s just not tell them that we shipped Setal off like a sex toy gag gift to Ilex. There are some particularly promising candidates that seem like they have what it takes to get somewhere, but they have the problem of being tooooo good. Demons are notoriously sneaky after all, so not sure how much we can trust them, especially after that Ki’Ralcht mess. I really like this one weirdo demon we found though he’s hard to work with. But he’s a hippy who plays bass and I think me and him could write some tunes together. Oh right actual candidates, well we’re still filtering them out and seeing who works where.

However, on the other side of things, obviously the Phantoms are also making plays to retain Valadeus’ territory. Asmodan in particular seems to be sponsoring someone rather quickly…too quickly…as if he knew Valadeus was going to die very soon. I’m starting to notice a tend with the demon lords. Sakhessa is quite loyal to Kanika and more interested in keeping things together despite her history of ‘whoopsing’ her empire off the map once before. Illdath was cranky but just wanted to sit in his puddle and be left alone, and Elder Black is just some old guy who probably spits cliche wisdom at them. Both of the demons are kind of psychopaths though. Valadeus was the one who schemed against Barachiel for us after all.

Anyways, Asmodan’s new puppet is specifically not associated with him. To everyone else’s perspective at least, I know this game well enough to know that he would not be making this much progress this quickly without help from the Phantoms. They’re thought to be somewhat independent and self made, though to an extent he is. This new greater demon has taken over several of Valadeus’ assets through both economic manipulation and straight violence using a host of minions. I’m just saying, we might throw a wrench in Asmodan’s plans if his new pet were to have an unfortunate accident in his bid for power while he’s still vulnerable.

So as it turns out, if the hauler drone goes into the ichor after you set it up as one of your pawns, it is left alone while you are in it but if you aren’t it is broken down for parts since it is not operating and is thusly just biomass.

Also I’m back. It turns out my consciousness is backed up throughout my psi-cystal bones like yours. While losing that much of it wasn’t good, it was restorable. Now to grapple with the existential question of whether or not it’s really me or just a copy with  me….meh I’m over it. Now put on this sweater. Learned? I learned not to get into a fight with a super soldier who has fought everything he was pointed at for over a millenia. Well I already knew that but he didn’t accept my surrender. I have a feeling Xilca is Nelta’s problem child.

Moving on, Craylin just stood around awkwardly. Rhazin might as well have said “yaaaas queen” when he heard Valdir’s call. He seems excited to bite some shit now.

Also what did you want to name the colony you wanted to put on the gold planet? Also the colony system you purchased is just sitting around in the warehouse, same as last time you asked. Though they just shipped it out to the ring world expedition that is already going fifty kinds of sideways. Quite literally, the floors and wall move. The new New Age director suspects it has something to do with the fact that the ringworld’s ring would be permanently facing the sun  at rather close proximity if it couldn’t flip its layers around. Option B is: The people who built the terlim are just whackjobs with wrenches.

Also yeaaah if you want to preserve people while you take over their minds you are going to need people with larger brains to hold the both of you. That’s more of a pandem thing.

Also it turns out the jydoq are highly resistant to psionic manipulation, probably since that is their primary means of communication and they’ve been an interstellar race long before us. That being said, they’re both dead now apparently. Irae seems to be keeping tabs on that one.

The FTL trap that was at Auwana is definitely a sahad thing. It is basically a preloaded counterspell basically, since we know what spell allows FTL to even happen it appears Decaelys set a rigged counterspell to stop that specific thing from being cast if they got close enough. Kind of simple in concept really…actually Renjala might be able to do this one. He can actually cast the same spell thanks to his bind with Eden. I dunno if Irae can though.

Also sent a bunch of data to New age on black holes. The lab on Zenaka 04 is still doing fine, it just doesn’t have Grinhys or Vasia overlooking it. So the team is kind of slowly but steadily making reasonable scientific process. Actually all of New Age is dealing with the loss of the Heretic as most of their big experiments and crimes against humanity were on that thing. Si Yeon has sort of taken over and she’s a little more reserved than Vasia.

We set up the trade route as asked. So far not much is happening with it but we just got it going. Also built those ships you wanted.

So it turns out extracting Michael is harder than we thought, while he’s there posing as a slave the issue is the slaves aren’t exactly allowed to just leave. Under Sakhessa’s rule basically they’re well off but it’s not quite like Renjala’s vision. They don’t go anywhere unless it is approved and disobeying gets  your ass beat. So we’d need a ship and to get into the warrens where he actually is.

Though he does know that Sakhessa is still in possession of the White Lion but he isn’t sure where the Inaji went. He also reports that it has been fairly uneventful lately, he isn’t exactly invited to command meetings but he works at the docks so he can see where ships are coming and going from. Sakhessa is playing very conservatively right now, she just wants to build her city and reinforce the system. Though more turrets and ships are built every week to further enforce the warrens base. So she’s ‘turtling’ I believe Aryn calls it. We did take a headcount though so we have an updated tactical intel of their defenses as of this month.

Captain Andel suggests getting one of those fancy mobile shipyard carriers that “everyone” seems to have these days. Everyone being Lancaster and other economic super powers. He would not stop waggling his eyebrows at me the entire time. I, exasperated, may have casually suggested that he should just steal one. He suddenly took off and the last we saw of The Nomad it was on a trajectory for Thenica. Sharen space in particular. We might want to stop him, by now people have noticed that the Nomads seem to always be working with the federation of Lancaster.

As for planetary surveying, Aryn just hacked the New Horizons database. Did you know there is a planet with an alarming presence of gold somewhere out there? I mean that’s not ship building materials but you can definitely trade that for ship building materials. Also the flotilla is on its way to an asteroid belt to look around for some resource rich asteroids.

Also what thing do you mean a couple cycles ago? They’ve answered a lot of questions while you come and go from your weekend retreat. At least that’s where I assume you go when we can’t get in contact with you.

To the Core

Stories of Lore 44

Evidently that was a trap. Decaelys has the ability to manipulate space and time, apparently that includes recalling to previous states like Elym on a much larger scale. The Areti suddenly disappeared from all scanners and re-appeared in Auwana along with Faelyn’s fleet. Though this has delayed their arrival at Enohas.

Meanwhile, pirate fleets appeared in Enohas for no real reason now. They aren’t exactly equipped to launch a full scale ground assault on the moon to make any progress until Faelyn returns. Instead they’ve been utilized to make an effort to extract Asmodan and his new merkas cult. Our fighters didn’t make it easy for them but our fleet was otherwise occupied to actually prevent the extraction.

We did confirm a kill on Valadeus however. He was in one of the ships our fighters shot down and despite him being  a demon lord, space is very indiscriminate on its oxygen distribution.

Moon successfully defended for now it appears.

Eleazor is back with keys to a ringworld infested with rampant native life forms that eradicated its creator. Perhaps not the original deal that was worked out with Echo Prime, though given the circumstances it was the best she could do now that the exerlus are falling apart.The downside is that might not be entirely convenient in location. It is on the western outskirts of the ‘Western Reach’ as it has been referred to.

For some reason Eleazor keeps offering to barter with people for their possessions up and down the streets though, which seems unnecessary given how much we pay him.

As to your other query, the Hasao Tei isn’t particularly powerful as military force. They are a strong civilian government with high approval ratings. They do have some strong champions among their numbers but they serve mostly as suppliers to the Heroes Guild at the moment. There is some potential there but they are mostly just another colony out here on the frontier harboring refugees.

I’ve opted to ask Kaylen to deal with the Revenants for us in attempting negotiation once again since they find her more likeable. Though she said it would have to wait until she gets back from Enohas. Same for Song Clan.

The colonies of the Villena Alliance are spread out and have largely managed to stay out of everything going on. They are playing very carefully in response to our diplomatic missions. Aware that until a distinct winner is available, our war with the Phantoms might not be wise for them to get involved with. Unlike the Thenican refugees, they still have something to lose if they anger Faelyn and few means to stop the Phantoms from crushing them. Though there are murmurs and discreet messages indicating a hidden support for our cause. We did learn that they are somewhat suspicious of the pirates on the frontier, while we already were pretty certain it was Asmodan helping out the Phantoms it is at least a good sign that the colonists are also noticing the correlation despite the PR campaign the Phantoms have been running.

We have surmised that the Villena colonies aren’t particularly satisfied with being ruled by somewhat they learned is working for monsters, not to mention they’d love to not pay tribute, but they are small frontier colonies just thankful that Nelta didn’t destroy them and there is a general feeling of powerlessness among them.

The explorers are still exploring, though the cruiser we sent into the Western Reach reports multiple evasions of pirate attacks. The pirates were verified to be alien in nature and unlikely to be working for Asmodan. The explorer’s report that the Western Reach is, in their captain’s own words, “Fuckin crazy as shit” on his official report. Eleazor confirmed this as well, informing us that this is due to the path of progress they have taken and the constant threats they live under. Though apparently the galactic community considers us to also be a part of the Western Reach. I’ll just move that border a little bit.

To a similar note, the explorer’s looking for signs of Arkaric keep finding a lot of evidence that he has been establishing several assets in the Western Reach. This came as a surprise to no one that the calculator of chaos likes the most chaotic region of the galaxy.

The VSS Raptor is still trying to get ahold of what is going on around Jydoq and establish diplomatic relations with local colonies. They have also been following the astral knights around for protection.

The one looking for the stolen shipment is pretty sure Asmodan did it but is having a hard time tracking him. Even though we kind of know where he is or at least was just a moment ago we don’t actually know where the shipment went. Though Allison from Nah Division is pretty sure it would have worked its way to the Solvang station in Sol.

Also I’m told that operation grassy gnoll is proceeding a bit more aggressively due to the death of Valadeus causing some opportunities to be seized upon in the demon kingdom.

Well it has been an uneventful anticlimatic month here on the moon of Enohas. Lancaster I suppose successfully diverted the incoming fleet so they never got around to landing on the moon. Instead the pirate fleets opted to extract their leaders since our own fleet was also missing and sort all this out later. Also a bit of a ‘what are all these people doing here, Valadeus said they left’ situation.

We’re waiting to hear on if we intend to stick around and guard the moon. We could refurbish Jamalia if we wanted to, or strip it for parts to send to Garden City. Enohas is still a golden world even if the political relationship with the primitive natives is flopping back and forth all the time. Though there is a chance that the Phantoms come back and better prepared this time.

With the death of Valadeus this creates a bit of a window in the demon kingdom. While it is very likely that his territories and holding will be taken over by Asmodan and then perhaps distributed to a new demon puppet for the Phantoms it is a time of political instability as Valadeus was one of the major players. This has also given Voriuk a chance to start meddling with things once again. The deaths of Valadeus, Vidarius, and the absence of Kanika have left the Phantoms in a politically weakened state and now Sakhessa is the default leader of the Phantoms.

We’ve sent a team out to Jydoq, which quickly met up with the VSS Raptor and its crew. Evidently they have been having a rough time and are now exploring by following the chapter around in the hopes of not being attacked by bandits as often.

New Age labs has analyzed the recent disaster at Auwana. They have come to a hypothesis that Decaelys is the mechanism by which the Phantoms have been moving throughout the galaxy. Given her ability to instantly  recall to a place she once occupied, seems kind of obvious now. It is also likely  that if time were to be accelerated for her they could cover years of travelling within a matter of months for everyone else. The obvious downside to this would be that you would still age, the obvious counter to that is the Phantoms are staffed almost entirely by long lived species and immortals.

We also analyzed the data Lancaster sent over regarding the other spell they had left in place that didn’t trigger. Our sahad experts are not certain but they think it is likely it prevents FTL acceleration. Had Lancaster gotten closer to it, she would not have been able to escape Faelyn’s fleet at all. Both were created via a ritual, similar to how the cult works. Though it was utilizing Decaelys’ jesai methods, but that is how she can create spells so massive as to control entire fleets or regions of space.

All that being said, we did not get the opportunity to try and negotiate with her. As soon as Faelyn’s fleet was set to arrive at the system, they suddenly warped backwards into Auwana because of Lancaster. The labs are hard at work analyzing any data they can on Decaelys since she is evidently the most powerful sahad caster we’ve ever encountered and there is much to learn from her. Unfortunately, without Vasia they are definitely struggling.

Contacting the Valdir can be summarized as “getting judged by Kaisa”. Though the desire to be able to control the ichor to create drones that don’t bite everything once they fall out of the synapse is particularly triggering to her.

Also Kaisa stole our ritual and your infinite sending technique. This whole time we’ve mostly paid Indal lip service as not to anger Kaisa who keeps calling him a god despite him just being a dude with an axe that swings really good. The Valdir synapse just became infinite, omnipresent, and Kaisa just sucker punched everyone in the brain to let them know it. I don’t know what the qualifications are to become a deity, Ankathi has a very laid out plan and series of requirements. Though at this point, I’m not really sure who is going to dispute Kaisa on her mad ramblings anymore given that she can send them to you any time any where for any reason. So….all hail the god emperor? We may wish to ask Ankathi’s opinion. Also Lancaster would like a word with you.

As for the ichor experiments, they absorb mana from radiant sources better. At least if the drone is produced at the Zenaka 04 lab lake. Might want to bring a sample back here as we do have an arcane star near Moncayo.

We’ve established the Zion colony on Jydoq. Two local governments are displeased that we didn’t ask for permission first though they also disagree on which of them you should ask. It’s the Alnae warlord situation all over again, some groups think they represent the old government and disagree who does. Either way its there now.

As for your question about the long range aethernet relay, the 650 billion one IS the one that connects two systems. You chain them together to get a larger galactic network but each system within a certain range would need one. Interstellar communications are expensive. Space is big.

We found Yaellah. She remanifested after awhile, unkillable lich alien and all. Then she just took off, sahad alien that can jump between planets of its own volition and all. My money is on that she knows where Vasia is and went to go find her.

Larazja, or what is left of her, is still with the fleets and we haven’t been able to throw her in the puddle yet.

Cyberware that increases your mana capacity is called a mech, or an exosuit. Or armor. I mean technically we can put a mana battery in the chassis of any cybernetics we want but it still needs to be recharged and takes up space. So it can technically be done it’s just often better for anyone who actually needs that to wear armor and strap some extra mana packs to it rather than compromise the design of the cybernetics to fit that battery internally. Since you have to live in your cybernetics all day but you only go into battle once every now and then. Unless you’re Selona. He just put a living creature in himself to serve as a battery, that works I suppose.

Also as far as I can tell, my non organic stealth thing is unique to my parasite. We could theoretically replicate it, Koura Kures had most of the data on working with the parasites. However, Lancaster fired me so I don’t work on parasite research anymore. I’m sure Vasia would just subject a hundred people to conditions similar to mine to see if it replicated but from a more practical standpoint we’re not sure why I have this specific mutation.

I am not going to comment on your vacation trips to meet with Setal you are planning. Though you’re not anywhere near the portal at the moment.

I would ask Irae about the demon lords thing, her knights were specifically looking into that and are better qualified.

Stories of Lore 43

Khymin has constructed version 0.2 of the prototype mech for you to try again. He advises maybe testing it on some of the larger wildlife of Enohas while under supervision rather than immediate field tests against a demon lord that can tear tanks in half.

As it turns out the incoming extra signal was Nelta and their hunt for Vasia after she murdered a whole planet. Elym somehow cut Vasia off from being able to communicate or control the Heretic for awhile there. Well, if it isn’t the consequences of her actions. It went better than it could have though. The titan carrier was carrying a small crew of volunteers, we’re not sure how they got ahold of this carrier as it was definitely not properly staffed.I am willing to calculate that they stole it or Qhu’stha gave the speech of his life to get Nelta to donate it to a suicide charge while in the middle of a war with the jesai. Their suicidal aggression towards Vasia combined with the still-standing streak of Rikoy being able to do even the most impossible of missions is all that kept them in that fight.

Upon revisiting events, I believe they must have been on a galactic adventure to unite people, convince them of the greater threat, acquire a fleet, learning about friendship and duty. It must have been one of the great quests of a band of heroes trying to save the galaxy from an impossibly vast and terrifying threat. Too bad their ship was destroyed and we can’t harvest the logs to see their….odyssey.

Gunhild captured Admiral Qhu’stha and he is currently detained on Koda’s ship. Aryn suggests just killing him outright. Gunhild’s rebuttal is ‘above my paygrade’ so they forwarded the information to you. He is so far a very uncooperative prisoner and destroyed his own translator. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Vasia being the last time he tried diplomacy with us.

The Jamalia shield generator has been moved to the moon as requested.

The Heroes guild has provided staffing for two of the super battleships, the super assault, and the super carrier. They have also brokered a formal alliance with the Hasao Tei, who still have their independent city to the west of Moncayo.

We have received word that Valadeus has reappeared after rendezvousing with Asmodan. Asmodan then killed him, reportedly. We don’t have a body to examine ourselves and we know they like to be tricky about these kinds of things. However this has Solidied Asmodan as the hero of the merkas and uniting them under himself.

We have two weeks before the pirates and Faelyn’s fleet arrive. We suspect Decaelys will be present as well, all analysis suggests that Decaelys can have some impact on a fleet battle though we’re not entirely sure to what extent.

As a strategy briefing, I should point out that if the battle is prolonged we will need orbital control at some point. Faelyn’s fleet is powerful enough to destroy our orbital shield within five to six months of bombardment. The actual capabilities of the Areti versus the mana infused generator are making this calculation uncertain due to the untested variables. While our emplaced turrets should prevent a three month long bombardment, if the shield coats the entire planet she can position her ships on the far side of the moon from our defenses and just keep bombarding. We can shrink the shield to mitigate this but given that they’re after the planet itself that might not be as viable an option as it normally is to force them to engage our defenses.

It’s been a short time since my last visit, though apparently Lancaster is re-assessing the situation after the encounter with Nelta. Though we’re still deployed as requested and recruiting around Zenaka.

Steam tanks might be doable. The steamworks director described it as “sure, that’s just two panzercycles strapped together with a big gun on top and an extra coat of armor”. So…I guess that makes sense. The director sometimes gets carried away with odd ideas.

With the recent events happening with Nelta, Vasia is presumed maybe dead by everyone except the only person whose opinion on the matter really counts. Ankathi is pretty sure she is still alive, because her soul fragment has returned to her. Robert says incorporeal creatures are normally still destroyed by the immense gravity of a black hole, though he has no idea what Sahad magic she knows.

The Fae Wild volunteers are still standing by ready and prepping but currently they are occupied with the defense of Enohas. The Arcurans have been taught about peaceful protest recently and are now protesting aboard The Outsider with signs and everything. They still want to blow up Enohas because it would be “glorious”. Something is wrong with those guys.

Selah’s ship has been prepared though she is also busy with the war so she hasn’t been able to depart just yet.

So one of our city guards who spent the last few months passionately investigating a missing person’s case has a report of a wild suspicion that got forwarded up the chain of command. Specifically because several missing people were not near the river when Selah opened it and with investigative assistance from the druids came to the wild theory that they left to the void plane. Which is one of those insane ideas that gets their boss yelling at them for being ridiculous but I’m not sure they know the greatest and only void pandem specialist passed through recently. Not sure if its relevant, but it was interesting.

Garden City is progressing well, managing to sustain itself despite the lack of housing this whole time. Initially there were mass emigrations but recently the governor’s promises of ‘we’re building houses’ has tided people over since the weather is nice and controlled by eden. The space nerds are still space nerding.

Well that could have gone better. We probably could have better prepared for the arrival of Nelta hunting down Vasia. Sarnai and the celestial order says that there is a very high chance that Vasia is still alive but aren’t sure about the details of it. Were it not for Nelta opening a black hole we’d be at least able to go check around for them.

Larazja is alive, it turns out her brain is spread equally through her spine as well, like yours. So beheading doesn’t actually kill her, just gives her brain damage. I’m pretty sure if you bring her back to the pool she’ll be fine. Vasia apparently had the Heretic reshape and throw her at one of VSEC’s ships and they put her in the cargo hold since she was still moving. Very twitchy and not doing well, but moving. Though you will understand why I am giving the report for now.

The ritual to subsume one of your cultists into your overmind has been completed but you should know there is a distance limit. Your secondary bodies cannot be too far away if you want to transfer in or out of them as the primary consciousness. It works on the scale of about a country but space is big. It would actually work anywhere with aethernet relays on the scale of the relay itself though. So while within a star system with one of those relays it would work at the scale of the solar system. If two of the space relays are connected, then you can transfer over that.

Also as your advisor for the day I should point out that you are a cat. Your main contribution to any battlefield situation is your psionic abilities. They’re going up against Decaelys, who is the greatest caster our civilization has ever encountered. So…make smart choices Ilex.

The synapse has been deployed to protect the generator at Enohas. Also the ichor likes the mana moon and goes into production overdrive while on it. For better or worse.

We’ve funded the cybernetic upgrading of the Lucidity cultists. Also the drop colonies are being assembled once again. Also the other colony finished construction and is in a couple of freighters at the Moncayo shipyards.

Setal pretty much controls Zenaka at the moment with the exception of the resistance terrorists. They keep blowing up infrastructure points. As for avoiding the demonic dogpile you mention, nope she has nothing. She’s a succubus and has spent her whole life dealing with and accepting being on the lower end of demon society, her input on how the lords operate is entirely lacking. You would need to talk to an actual demon lord about that.

The city itself could mostly handle drive in theaters, though no one goes to those. As mentioned by Larazja previously, people like convenience. You already re-established the aethernet network for the city, so their APT’s are working again. Though with less cantrips than before. However, this makes all viewing based entertainment sort of an ‘at home’ experience.

The psionic skeletal systems of the synapse can be reviewed for synthesis attempts though we would need samples and a lab to do it. Notably the best lab just got blown up by Nelta.

Also no, the ichor does not recognize the rest of my body as particularly advantageous to spread through. I have gathered you have an interest in this subject so I figured I should explain not all Koura parasites give this ability. Mine is the only one that did. However, it reconfigured all the cells in my body to be a little bit stealthy to the ichors method of recognition.

Also yes we completed the enchanted medical bed for Kaylen’s new apprentice.

The Nomads have deployed to Paizurus, the flotilla has been left in open space for now. No need to take the civilians to a warzone and the Nomads just use the same old ship they always do for these operations.

Though not much is happening at Paizurus just yet, we’re reconvening to reassess the situation after VSEC’s encounter with Nelta.

Stories of Lore 42

For some reason the Merkas are confused as to who you are and believe the last time they saw anyone by your name it was a human woman. I’m not sure how they can tell the difference anyways actually.

It turns out the issue is that their resistance is largely controlled and revolves around Asmodan. So they just want you to go meet with him to figure out what’s going on. They’re not totally aware of what any of the conspiracy talk we come up with is about and they don’t like us that much. Without Nihlav or Daesta not many of them were there for learning about the phantoms and as far as they’re concerned Renjala may have kind of gotten those two killed. In short, diplomatic relations are iffy with the merkas unless we can somehow make them like us more than Asmodan. However, they did tell us where he is. He’s near one of the merkas cities hidden in a mountain.

Also as your advisor, do not take their offer to meet with Asmodan. I approximate it to be quite dangerous. Something something demon lord, something something politics.

Also the VSS Winter’s scanners report several incoming ships from several directions outside of the system. Likely Asmodan’s pirates, who rely mostly on smaller ships. Though there is a larger signature approaching from the direction of Auwana. A very large signature. I have deduced from previous records that warning you of an approaching Phantom titan is a trope by now. So I’ll give you three guesses instead. We are really only detecting general energy signatures at this range and speed, a clearer scan will come through once it is too late. I mention this due to the misunderstanding the scanners produced during the Nelta invasion where we mistook Guardian for being a fleet. Because we are detecting a second titan coming from another direction of no particular landmark.

I got a text from Captain Andel whose gravity is under examination. It just says “Asmodan’s fleet is made for ambushing.  So if you detect fifty signatures, there’s five hundred lmao.” I do not know how serious or exact he is being. Though we do detect over two hundred signatures, I think he might be unaware of our upgraded scanning equipment. That or Asmodan has the same level of proportionate response that Arkaric is known for. Though I do not believe this is terribly significant, even if every pirate in Sol appeared they do not use ships intended to attack battleships let alone super battleships. The Nomads are still the only crew to do this successfully more than once in their careers. At worst, they will contest our smaller ships and carrier deployments. In a prolonged battle, Koda’s super battleships will eventually overpower them regardless of number. Unless its something crazy like every pirate in the galactic neighborhood and we are swarmed by hundreds of thousands.

Khymin reports that the second iteration of the design is coming along, he’s trying to fix some mobility issues it has with the joints. While the previous design could fly quickly, it has become evident that close quarter situations which could be expected with the sword leave some room to be desired.

Laenadra asked if she gets a custom design too with her promotion. She seemed to be, taking her shot as I have heard the expression used.

The explorers you sent out to Jydoq made it there, they’re currently poking around. Satsujin’s work she left behind is still yielding results, with her former team still trying to relieve efforts. Ever since the collapse of their government and then a pamphlet about their new leader in Merlan they’ve been having a rough time. The jydoq are naturally inclined towards following leadership, it might be part of why they are all psionically talented. There are several stories of roaming bandits getting into fights with vigilantes.

In trying to determine where Valadeus was taking the enslaved merkas, as well as the arcurans, we have reason to believe they were being sent to the demon kingdom. They left in the direction of Sol but no one on Thenica reports seeing mass shipments of aliens.

Steampowered mechs might be reaching a bit for what they can do. A door without ethi tech is fine, a functional mech might be another thing entirely. I’ve told them to look into it but they just stared at me for an uncomfortable while.

We’ve invested into construction of defenses around Enohas’ moon. Well we mounted a lot of them to the existing refinery we left there, it still floats around orbit so that works. Though we can only build so fast.

Actually it turns out Zenakans are weirdly enthusiastic about pandem. Aside from the completely understandable interest in planar travel, learning the universe expands along a whole other axis they didn’t know about that they can go exploring, something about their culture seems predisposed to shaking hands with strange entities for power. Though they are also notably interested to learn that incarnum is a thing, might just be the alien ‘wow’ factor we have going on.

Also Garden City has seen its first major construction efforts going well. We’ve been building some big residential towers on the platform. So far it is holding stable, Robert actually just hid more rifts in the buildings so they would weigh down on the platform less as well. So…it’s just a city full of rifts.

The local astronomers have been noting that since Eden is actually on the other half of the galaxy from Sol that there have been some interesting things to find. With what we now know about galactic culture we’ve learned for what markers to look for when searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Somehow Eden is in a very quiet patch between two very chaotic regions of space apparently. Though also having an observatory so far from our own system has allowed much better galactic charting. Since we’ve always relied on an orbiting planet to give us the same view from two positions and create a binocular measurement of distance, having a much further away location pretty much lets us pinpoint where everything in the galaxy is much easier. Honestly I don’t get all of it, but the space nerds are having nerdgasms all over Garden City.

Sarnai also said to tell you that Ankathi has an assignment for the Fate Chapter once we’re done on Enohas, specifically for Selah. We’ve been asked to provide her with a ship for her to use in such scenarios. Sarnai then stumbled through pointing out that Ankathi demands it to be fancy. Because Ankathi is an empress with expensive tastes.

As an advisor I read a lot of history whenever you have a random question about how anything works. Vasia makes me.

Rhazin’s powers allow him to fly short distances but he has freakish aerial agility in these bursts. He can also fire telekinetic shockwaves rivaling a 105mm tank shell. Cassir’s were bigger but she had the cult boosting her. Also spawn psiblades. He can also just enhance his speed as well as that of his drones. After some work we learned

So if provided with clay and paint she…makes things like a five year old I guess? Somehow that makes her creepier, the soul stealing alien with the creepy girl ghost stare has the faculties of…a creepy girl. She’s getting better though. Also I don’t have a fridge to hang anything on, she does keep them on the lakeshore though over there.

The main difference between her drones and the regular model is that…hers store essentia. They also have less teeth and claws, they have what I would call navigational mutations like Grinhys. So they can get around an area and find essentia to harvest.

We started readying a deployable colony as requested.

Setal points out that the outreach program was cancelled due to the knights being stalked around, so while we were making progress we’re sort of in the dark as to how amicable to the idea they remain. Though the knights just took some back home with them as new recruits anyways, that doesn’t give us much of a foothold in the demon kingdom.

With the aethernet servers up they’ve begun some basic broadcasting. More accurately its just a Moncayo based video hosting service because ain’t nobody got time for scheduling otherwise. Though no luck on the pre-invasion media samples. Blame the cloud. Also no public theaters yet, we’re still solving housing and other basic construction problems. We’re a bit of a way from dedicating a large space to ‘watch some shows’.

Also I’m not sure we really need signs around the lake. While I am here the drones are docile enough to give people rides down town if they don’t have a car. Long as they don’t go too far to the town outskirts at least.

As for the male merkas, correct. Too bad the merkas are at war for their freedom, survival, and being pulled between multiple factions for various reasons. Given their disposition towards stealth and guerilla warfare against the arcurans…I can see why the Phantoms are so interested in uplifting them at least.

As for warding the moon, that’s basically what a planetary shield is.Given that it is an arcane moon it would be pretty strong due to practically limitless mana available there. Which is probably why the Phantoms decided to take this specific moon instead of just any other one.

Well finding a lunatic prophet among the lucid cult wasn’t that hard so…we have some you can run experiments on. Though candidacy wise they’re pretty much just cultist with questionable cybernetics. Actually one of the most devout is the woman who found “Cassir’s cat”. Though none of them are on par with Cassir, and if they were you wouldn’t want to use them for the overmind since you’ll be erasing them with yourself. Though also with all the reports going on about jydoq, maybe we should go recruiting over there since they like having a leader. Granted that’d make us about the same as the bandits.

Stories of Lore 41

More than installing a planetary shield it appears Valadeus took over Jamalia’s. Also it appears that in our absence a system was put in place by Valadeus to ship thousands of merkas ‘elsewhere’. There were multiple destinations. He has also been “enslaving” arcurans. Similar to our own experience with them, they don’t take much convincing. So he has an arcuran army as well now, though its still a small grouping and I think we have more of them. Interestingly, Asmodan is here as well ‘rescuing’ merkas. Given what we know about them, it is kind of obvious. Though to the merkas it probably isn’t so evident that the Phantoms are just splitting the two races apart to take to different campaigns for the time being in preparation for the destruction of their moon.

To our advantage, they weren’t really focused on preparing to defend the planet from us as they had other things to deal with. To our disadvantage, Valadeus’ army is larger than ours. The initial charge brought down the planetary shield though Koda said to double check with you if you want to bombard them despite the risk to the native life. Particularly the captured merkas.

Valadeus himself has disappeared, though initial strategical reports suggest he is likely to be buying time. We have a very short window before they could mount an effective retaliation. Sethis warns that Asmodan is Sol’s signature space pirate king. Until recent discoveries about the bigger pirate in the Western Reach he was number one. His fleet is immense though unlike Faelyn it does not utilize many larger ships which may be to our advantage.

We also know the Areti will be ready to deploy soon, and that they originally planned for the arrival of Decaelys. Thus increasing the necessity for fast action, and increasing general frustration at the inability to find Valadeus. To add to the pile, the moon has no shielding beyond the station Renjala built for harvesting from it. So if Decaelys does arrive, it is relatively unguarded without the active presence of our fleet.

Casualties so far include Gheir, Akuhiko, and Yonam. Rennyn has crashed on the planet’s surface and is presumed to be alive but that might be a temporary analysis.

We have control of the orbital situation and have retaken Jamalia. However the orbital shield was damaged in the attack, though it should be possible to repair within a month or two. Though Valadeus has several arcuran camps under his command and Asmodan is somewhere out there. Current troop movements are hindered by the jungle itself though we are regrouping at Jamalia.

Yes the academy increases chances of finding crew members for the ships.

The Pandem Radar complex is reconstructed to the best of our ability. Our early detection system has been improved by it though there is a crystal component we are missing to restore its full functionality it once had. According to the servers that Nah division has been rummaging through, those crystals were made by Sakhessa and specifically amplify its range and the speed of its analysis. We can imitate the effect but only for a brief scan, targeting either a specific ship ID we’re curious about or getting a clear readout of a particular area of space.

Khymin reports that your new prototype toy is ready for testing. Testing meaning three years of careful stress tests before finalizing- or you can just take the keys now. That works too….annnd it’s gone. Khymin’s working on some improvements to stabilize the design…again.

We’ve retaken Jamalia, home sweet home, at minimal losses. Actually it was surprisingly easy, I suspect we got there faster than they could mount a defensive force since they were expecting us to be busy with other things. Also Eerihild and the wolf knights are rather dominant on Enohas. No I did not recommend her outfit or carrying four swords, apparently she got the idea from Reika.

While we have taken Jamalia, it is worth remembering that the jesai’s objective will actually be the moon. Which is a lot harder to protect, its nature as an arcane moon means that it is dangerous to set foot on. Also we don’t know how the jesai can…move a moon?

Eerihild has been investigating the state of the planet. There is a resisting force of merkas…again. Though they are definitely weaker than the ones we last saw, probably because Haziel hunted down so many of their strong spirited members before. Morale for the merkas is at an all time low. When we met them they were losing to the arcurans and being dragged out of their warrens for slaughter, then dealing with us, their princess died, then Haziel hunted their resistance down, then falling apart while the arcurans reigned, and now Valadeus. They…haven’t had a win in awhile.

Haziel has been preparing to leave for the Fae Wilds after deliberation with Ankathi. Neither Ankathi or Haziel told us this, I found out because Sarnai eavesdrops on everything. Is it eavesdropping if its her body that they’re using as the telephone? Eerihild informed me that after the campaign on Enohas she will be going with her mother along with her best knights. Haziel has objected to Eerihild going but Eerihild is being stubborn. Sarnai says Ankathi told Haziel that some key to restoring the fragment of the primordial Wilds soul she has is there. So I’m sure they’re preparing for some ludicrously dangerous adventure.

In the assault, Akuhiko was killed by one of Valadeus’ minions and Yonam fell victim to Ki’Ralcht. Bill almost died too but that was more so because he flew around as a bird most of the time and birds are fragile when half the forest is exploding.

Also still no word from Renjala? It would be nice if we at least knew if he still…existed.

It’s somewhat hard to determine the results of your project’s testing since you’re doing it to people in the wild as opposed to Vasia’s lab. Also everyone likes having a pet cat, as you may have noticed by now, though the way you want to go about this is definitely a long process. Vasia points out she could speed all this up. Actually her words were “I can make them suicidal in a couple of days give or take.” I also feel you could accomplish this whole thing a lot faster with the lucid ritual, they’re already cultists willing to do anything you ask. Including creating a large scale psionic ritual that super charges your own abilities and leaves them quite vulnerable to anything you want to do.

Haziel apparently relied on the advice of Ankathi over your greater seer. Likely because Ankathi has accomplished ascension, which is what Haziel is trying to do. So an experienced professional who knows the step by step instructions is probably more appealing than a fortune teller.

Though if you’re curious about the Wilds, it was a primordial force back in the days before the rising. So it ranked above the old pantheon because it was older. It being dead has not helped historians piece together what it actually was by modern magical understanding. Basically it liked natural landscapes, made minions who liked natural landscapes, and maintained Thenican ecosystems. We killed it because of Haziel actually. She destroyed so many towns and cities that she got added to the purge list, and that meant going after her god. Actually after we killed it there was about two hundred years of awful. Specifically droughts, floods, and a very large extinction event. It was actually during this time period that Shetou became a really big thing, because the underdark was spared from the worst of it and its inhabitants were already adapted to extremely harsh conditions. People have mostly forgotten about it, Haziel likely spent centuries as various animals and never revealed herself. If she had turned out to be a Phantom it would have made perfect sense, though she was probably a squirrel for awhile there and they didn’t even know she was still out there. Kaylen would probably have more to say about Haziel being alive given how dangerous to civilization she was, if it weren’t for the fact that Haziel now just mopes around all day and Kaylen has enough problems and not enough time to solve them.

Kaylen has no idea who Gellix even is.

Also yeah putting muzzles on drones wouldn’t be hard, though what do you want to do with them then? It’s not like they could fight like that.

The noodles do tend to develop hobbies. Rhazin sunbathes and plays tag with some of the others, but Craylin has been making random things out of junk. I think she was making baskets out of leaves and mud most recently. It’s a long way from being useful but I guess she’s a creative type. She has apparently making excursions into the city and stalking people as well.

Grinhys is on his way back to explore Cayetano as asked.

Setal has been implementing Lancaster’s plan for Zenaka.

Vasia points out her chat group has fallen apart thanks to you. Also she knows of at least one rogue Desoir who became some sort of musician and was last seen on Thenica. They probably wouldn’t miss her. Though for the moment she’s busy at Enohas. Very busy. I have a feeling Vasia would be happy to see us lose so she could see Decaelys in action, as she did not know sahad users could just eat moons or whatever the Phantoms are planning.

Oh if you’re curious about Kaylen’s new student, her name is Genevieve. Apparently something about being in constant physical pain while her mana well tries to explode makes her very cranky. Like…abnormally cranky. Si Yeon points out It’s less of a treatment for her mana rupture as an active method of preventing it from killing her. Imagine it as if she needs to constantly flex every muscle in her body to prevent herself from bleeding out. Apparently Si Yeon has been building a sort of chamber that might help the girl maintain herself while asleep as she wakes up on the brink of death every day.

Wait what do you mean, “Baltun” to Zenaka? I have a handgun and do paperwork here at the office. Though Vanjin went without any complaints at least.

Getting Michael out of Auwana might be harder than expected, ever since Lancaster showed up they’ve been improving security. We’re looking for an opportunity to extract him though it might take a bit.

We still actually don’t know who has the White Lion. Past intel suggests that Sakhessa should have it but she’s also not the type of combatant to use a sword like that. If she gave it to Deinuu that would make sense but we did not see it with him at the duel. It is a huge sword, the fact that we haven’t physically seen it being carried by anyone is an indicator that it might not be where we think it is. That or someone has a bag of holding. Aryn points out that only specifically qualified people can wield the full power of any of these artifacts. A theory tested by having anyone other than Reika hold the Ryner. So her theory is they might be passing it around trying to see if they have a suitable wielder for it’s full potential. Given they have an army spread over the galaxy, it could take a bit for the sword to get into any new hands.

As an update, Allison is in Sol establishing her uh… ‘crime ring’. There isn’t really much crime anymore though. Shetou doesn’t care and Alnae fell apart. So she’s more of a bandit queen right now I suppose.

Stories of Lore 40

We’ve been in the process of subjugating Zenaka as necessary. Setal is apparently visiting the countries under the pretense of getting to know them and also ensuring their loyalty. However, according to Ilex she is actually just shopping for the best place to set up her new office and trying to determine which countries have the most scenic landscapes.

Anomalous behavior continues to be detected and harassment of local forces continue despite the national surrender. Currently believed to be an effort led by individuals not representing their state.

For record keeping reasons I have to summarize the mission you already went on for archiving accuracy. That could have gone better, could have gone worse.

Saving Archive…

A sale for the construction materials has been stolen in transit to the prospective buyer. Given how short the distance between the Winter and its selling positions are, this is highly abnormal. We know that the shipping frigates were taken before arriving at the Winter, and the original buyer is no longer alive. The Winter has since started its return as ordered.

Khymin says the big robot suit is almost done. He said to ask what kind of weapon you want for its short range option. I feel like he has asked this before, and you have likely answered. Retrieving data….error.

We know of multiple other galactic civilizations that do exist though their expanse might vary. Nelta represents the largest open coalition in the eastern side of the galaxy, though the Jesai are actually the largest multi-racial civilization. Though their theocratic government is much more difficult to work with. Due to their reclusive nature within the Chromaclysm they are considered a less prominent political force than Nelta even if they are larger, wealthier, and much more powerful. Up until they started invading Nelta they were a non-factor to most other civilizations.

The Exerlus is the most widespread of single race civilizations. They are not reclusive and are even helpful, to a fault almost. Most feats of super-engineering are their doing.

The Silnians are the largest civilization by population. Even if you do not count the drones, they have more sapient life within their territory than all other empires by a significant margin. Joining them is often not optional, if you are within their slowly expanding territory then you are joining them.

We learned from Mahuea that another civilization is contained to a single star near the center of the galaxy. Though they are famous for being extremely hostile to outsiders. However, investigating this civilization may prove useful since we know they are working with Arkaric in some form. Though they are known to be extremely advanced, enough so that no one has decided to mess with them.

You know what, here is a map of what we know about. Not super accurate given it doesn’t account for planes, just hastily generated to help provide visual aid. Jydoq is a galactically aware civilization so they might be able to help us more with this particular question of yours.

One of the cruisers has started to move outward from Eden in careful search of silnians to scan. The ensigns have a betting pool on how long until it stops reporting back in. The other is traveling to Zero North a bit slower.

I put their adventures in our notes archived to prevent data loss.

Greetings Irae, I see you’re still settling into Renjala’s office. Don’t worry I’m sure he’ll be fine, he has a rock orgy festival to come home to. Never underestimate a man properly motivated by…rock orgies. Usually musical but in this case literal rocks work too. Still no word though? Strange…I suppose falling out of the known universe might be pushing even the limits of a pandem bind. I do have to wonder what that means for his phylactery though.

So far it doesn’t seem any of the squires are terribly traumatized by the trip to Mokihi. One just complains about the hangover.

After the operation to the Areti, it seems everyone actually made it back. Though Reika is badly injured and being kept in quarantine. She can normally regenerate but the rot seems to be inhibiting her ability to do so. Sarnai informed me that Ankathi is concerned about this jesai business. Concerned in the way an empress feels the need to ‘maybe crush some resistance’. I swear I have been trying to explain to her that she might be biting off more than she can chew with this one but she seems to refuse to believe anyone could rival her at…literally anything.

Also you have a filing system for ordering upgrades to be focused on for Garden City. We moved the big portal up onto the city platform though at least and are in the process of moving the refugees up there bit by bit.

As for the fog production, there are two options. Open a rift to the ethereal plane, it looks cloudy enough, or have a machine do it. Might take a lot of polypropylene glycol though. So…rift? No Irae I do not know why Renjala orders certain things. I just carry them out and handle administrative duties.

Also on an unrelated note, Yoshai has volunteered to lead the the squires in elemental reproduction habits and studying. Technically, we know how they normally do so. Waianoa’s predecessors invented a whole new way to do it. For a silent turtle, Mokihi might become the most powerful archon with this ability hidden among his mountain people. With the death of the primordials back in the rising, it sort of leaves the archons as the rulers of the elemental plane.

To that note, Haziel is back at Moncayo and grumbling about everyone building cities on this ‘beautiful planet’. Yeah…planet…sure Haziel. Anyways, she has been talking with Sarnai a lot lately and Ankathi has been ‘unavailable’ on the same days. I am concerned. The Chosen Wolves are happy to see her again though, even if she can be a bit uncharismatic.

Apparently Eleazor had the Rena stolen by alien refugees, and is running around the galaxy with Echo Seven trying to get their ship back while getting dragged into inter-civilization wars between planets. What the fuck? I thought he was just taking a trip to Zero North with no pit stops. Oh well, sounds fun at least. That does explain why it’s taking him so long though…

Did you just try to force me to give birth to more drones for you? I’m calling HR. Lancaster!!!

Hehe nah I’ll see about getting the paperwork processed.

Actually speaking of finding a particularly talented wild life explorer who is good on camera…actually nevermind we can’t find that damned gnoll.

So are you going to make a classic dog movie about a fenalis to promote the fenalis industry now? They are cute at least.

Also I managed to get Haziel to come by…I didn’t know I had to pull strings to do that. It turns out she isn’t a member of the federation, she’s actually a rogue agent. Did you know that? I didn’t know that. I submitted paperwork and made phone calls and everything and then it took six other people before someone finally told me they could ‘approve’ visitation and I said “Okay great when can she come visit?” then they pointed out they have no idea. They don’t even have access to Haziel, she just appears here and there and we had to go through more people to get to Eerihild and request her mother come by. I made so many phone calls for nothing. Now I have to make brownies and put the game on or something since this is a civilian house visit apparently rather than an appointment. I am not prepared for guests! We don’t even have a stove! I mean yeah she’s a druid but it feels rude to just ask her to come visit and then not have food.

Huh? Oh right, actual druid business. No she can’t reprogram the ichor. It also goes against her whole thing to do so. Though she can control drones, more accurately she can calm them down rather than control them. My own orders can outrank hers, but the drones just like being around her. Now that I am kind of like the animals that druids can empathize with, I am realizing their relationship to the wildlife is much more complicated. Though boils down to, ‘nice lady, don’t bite. nice lady wants me to go this way, i go this way’ rather than any actual form of dominance. Well…except  for Haziel and Eerihild specifically. They’re more of ‘they will win if it comes down to biting, better not piss them off’ on a primal enough level that you can just feeeeeeel that Haziel is the big bad wolf.

As for containing the synapse on planetary assaults…uh…we’re working on that. They really just love to bite everything once they get loose though.

Also yes your position to relevant things helps your greater seer. It’s why you have the cat tingles when you are near something that is about to go terribly wrong.

Traveling across systems is…finding a ship large enough for me and Rhazin I suppose. The drones fit in about anything else just fine.

I dunno, people dramatize everything I do. If I could end free will I wouldn’t need so many containment units. People would just do what I told them, it would be great…hrmm…desoir can kind of do that…I need a desoir for study.

Also no clue, if I knew what it did it wouldn’t be a new spell. I’m just trying to make it work. I’m going to go on a limb and guess that it destroys things judging by what these planetary bursts are doing. I’m just trying to replicate the effect and see what it does. That being said, I have successfully replicated the effect. Kind of…an iffy spell. It explodes. Actually it compresses the users mana and releases it in a super burst. Normally we can only use so much magic at a time as it has to flow here and there. The mana burst just blasts 100% of your mana reserve and knocks you unconscious immediately. Big boom though. If I can imitate Salied’s mana reserve than basically anyone with this spell would be a walking bomb. I’m actually working on converting it into a more utility effect, kind of like maximize augment for arcane magic. Not really much point to replicating an already known trick but if it works then it’s at least a proof of concept.

Anyways I have enough of a basis to work with, I’ll just use whatever data they send me from the facility. It’s time for me to get back to traveling. Oh right hi, I’m back. So where would we find some desoir vampires?

SDFLKJLSD I really wish you would just walk over here normally instead of appearing through the floor. Welcome back though.

Also Rhazin does speak fluent common so you know. He just doesn’t need to very often. If he growls at you, you stop doing whatever you were doing. Conversation over. Actually he gets along really well with Haziel…I am however concerned that Rhazin also recognizes Haziel as the biggest baddest thing around. For crying out loud, Rhazin is a wingless dragon built specifically for war, what the fuck is Haziel? I’m too scared to ask her directly.

Grinhys has found no spectacularly useful properties in the microscopic life other than flavor. I mean yeah they can absorb mana better than most but arcurans are kind of way ahead on that front. It is interesting that there is life at all though, before the planet explodes into a star I wonder if it would develop any more advanced life.

I think a lot of it has to do with them being newborns so they don’t have as much need for advanced communication or concepts. They don’t need to tell you how they want their coffee, or complain about their boss, or monologue to their victims. They can speak all they want through the synapse with their peers just fine but they don’t communicate verbally. So to them, speech just isn’t a necessary thing to do too often. Maybe if they were deployed on independent operations where communication with the other branches was necessary than they would develop their speech a bit more?

Si Yeon reports that Kaylen’s new student’s mana rupture is unique. It might be because no one has ever thought to use the self mastery of the body that is zankou to treat a mana rupture. They also report that it is probably very uncomfortable but not as debilitating as it would normally be.

Have fun being the local kitty cat. By the way, consider building more housing around Roha.