Following the evacuation of Alnae Madhammer and the rest of the forces on Thenica launched the assault on Beldobaan. Initially the strike went well as ground was taken but attempts to reach the Beldobaan capital halted momentum and turned into a siege. The Madhammer batallions reliance on mechs in particular didn’t help since the Beldobaan capital is deep underground and well defended.

Over the course of taking the territories leading to the entrance of Beldobaan’s capital, Sarghess redirected its efforts. They have begun bombardment of our own forces with artillery. Though that also turned into another mess since uninvited and unannounced House Song showed up to fight with Sarghess and House Sharen are largely floating around in orbit playing a game of chicken with Faelyn’s fleet. While Sharen’s fleet has the advantage if Faelyn wants that fight, if they open fire on Faelyn that runs the risk of drawing Hassani’s attention. Yasrena is kind of doing their own thing and Sakhessa is just trying to stay out of it, but Faelyn is one of Kanika’s dragon henchmen and if she is attacked then all manner of problems can pop up. Though she was chasing the Tungsten Teeth around lately so wasn’t present over Kar’Soluth territory at the start of the war. Pending arrival to see how Cazvallow handles it.

There are multiple entrances to the underdark that Beldobaan can deploy in and out from, and while we have control of the main highways the Sarghess, Kenduis, and Jaal’Darya are entrenching to deliver support. If we lose the siege, Beldobaan might be able to get out and then our forces will be surrounded quickly.

We are currently mobilizing and preparing to send even more forces to reinforce our current offensive. According to Sethis, so are they.

As for your other emails in this list. The WTC-3 works well enough but has some terrain limitations that mechs can often manage but that tanks cannot. It has more power than an equivalent weight of mech just less mobility. In this case, it tends to really need large flat open areas or roads to get anywhere since it is so large.

We managed to catch the giant stealth ship moving through the galaxy with its systems down while we spent a week scanning for it. It stopped to refuel again. It’s currently moving across the galactic north and heading for the eastern side as far as we can tell. It’s behavior indicates that it might be newly constructed and performing a test of its ability to handle a voyage as well as its other systems. Though from these scans we can determine more concrete information about what it is than the account from Kuhas residents of “it was big and painted all black”. It’s a rather unusual ship that appears to be a hybrid design between a super battleship and a stealth ship. Similar to the closing statement but it doesn’t have the same level of armaments as it should for something of its size. No luck figuring out its origins though, but the fact that it is having hiccups out in the middle of space definitely implies its a prototype and practically rules out the exerlus being involved since they wouldn’t be having technical difficulties. However, some of its designs match elements in our database from the Reach. Implying it is from the Reach and likely its stealth tech is intended to thwart pirates or conduct extreme piracy.

As for central neutral places in the Reach, obviously there is Elasyn by their own standards though for obvious reasons we might not consider it quite as neutral as they do. Alternatively we could just pick a random planet right off the interstellar highway to develop though it wouldn’t be quite neutral if we were the first ones developing it. So obviously everywhere is owned by someone or is a lump of dirt, though the various stations all over the Reach specifically not owned by anyone particularly powerful could function as neutral ground if you could convince anyone to go there.

Valen reports that Zenaka is still an ongoing clusterfuck and while she has the upper hand she still hasn’t caught the remaining territorial lords who are particularly crafty. While a civil war has been prevented, by her murdering sixteen of the former territorial lords and their heirs, now VSEC is dealing with guerilla skirmishes. Also the orbital station reports the smuggling issue is getting worse. Ever since we blew up that one trade group they stopped using the station as a landing point, which while it has slowed down the smuggling operations the operations have become more dangerous to deal with. Several response teams from the station have been destroyed upon trying to apprehend anyone. They’ve destroyed just as many but essentially the situation is escalating in violence is the summary.

Well as predicted, the space bugs are just trying to eat everything on the surface rings of Diadem. Though they’re not exactly ravenous there is a lot of them. They tend to just sit there and munch on whatever they are on for hours on end. Vasia caught a bunch and sent some samples over for you to bind with and mess with. They are kind of fuzzy and nice to pet at least.

On Enohas the evacuations and construction plans are underway now that most of Alnae’s Thenica population has been relocated. Which led to a whole other can of worms. On that front, Sethis reports that Rahlken is approaching Enohas.

We’re also in an awkward position of hearing intel from Sethis that the Demon Kingdom may be sending reinforcements to Kar’Soluth in response to the attack on Beldobaan territories and the siege of their capital. Which won’t bode well for our upcoming meeting with them in three months.

Meanwhile back at Panemperia, the campus reports that three of its staff members have not called in for a week and all of them are missing. Local security checking up on them couldn’t find them at their residences either.

With the war against Kar’Soluth formally starting, Dr. Si-Yeon is currently trying to manage quarantines in Moncayo and Diadem in particular as the Jaal’Darya “plague bomb all the civilians” strategy begins to kick into effect. Fortunately, they didn’t deploy the mummy rot stuff since Sakhessa is still sitting out of it for now. So its not spreading through power lines like the rot did. Si Yeon complains that Vasia needs to stop playing with her bugs and help, though then rethought that statement when I asked her to consider whether or not Vasia would make the situation better or worse. She can quarantine people better than anybody else, true, but Vasia is one hundred percent going to start killing people herself in the process.

Hasao Tei is also screaming my ear off about the fact that we wound up picking a fight with the exact people they were worried about fighting before. Though half of their recent complaints involve being unable to contact Haleh who is off wandering around the Reach rebuilding her ‘crew’.

Further examination of the VSS Raptor, via long range pinging because that planet fires missiles at anyone who gets close, reveals that it is currently in an inoperable state. It doesn’t receive any data transmission attempts and we believe it is currently being scrapped. It might be a pirate station and or salvage operation.

However, the station it is docked at has unfamiliar designs and readings. They are several generations of technology ahead of us. The Western Reach we’re keeping up with at least a little by stealing some of their tech as we go. Though this particular station is halfway between everyone else we encounter and the Exerlus.

Echo Zero doesn’t know what that planet is, just notes that it was previously a world dominated by a primitive humanoid species. At some point a few thousand years ago they started showing signs of industrial growth, but not long after that they experienced an extremely rapid acceleration of technology and quickly became hostile towards outsiders following a war in the northern section of the galaxy. The Exerlus were, as usual, respectful of such things and haven’t been checking in on them lately.

Other probing of the local area reveals that passing through is likely to be an issue with the size of the cradle. Though instead of pirates this time it’s bureaucracy. The major routes in and out of the northern part of the galaxy are under tight control by the two former alliances in the north and now several smaller broken down warbands. Originally, a strong border was built up on the western side to keep the hive worlds at bay and the eastern side was under tight control to keep an eye on things involving the Jesai sector of the galaxy. Half of it to prevent their own people from going over and pissing the Jesai off, the other half being to prevent the Jesai from moving unnoticed. While the current state of things means they don’t control it nearly as tightly as they once did, according to Echo Zero we can expect any further ventures eastward to involve someone asking for our license and registration. If they don’t immediately open fire on us once they detect we are a mechanical race. The war between the two exerlus factions has everyone sort of jumpy around robots.

Because there are so many factions its hard to really narrow it down but I have some initial reports from our probing around of those nearest to Zero North. I suppose Zero North itself is the first place to be considerate of. Exerlus and all that who at least owe the federation enough patience to not kick us out immediately since Eleazor helped them out. Though they are still awfully wary of the fact that the destroyer of Zero North came from Sol.

The dominant descendant of the western alliance are called the zhulkites and are particular experts of sahad magic stemming from centuries of poking around with it. They’re kind of freaky and xenophobic but particularly towards organic super races. They were the border patrol to keep the hive worlds from infecting northern space. If we can prove to them we’re not exerlus rogues they might not mind us too much. Though they are to the west of us and technically that’d be backwards progress on our journey to the east.

One of the more relevant species from the eastern side are called the engurians who used to deal with Jesai space shenanigans is one of those aliens comprised of energy instead of fleshy bits. They are currently poised to come out of all this on top because they don’t need organic food and can extract energy from a stars radiation. They’re very solar powered. Though given they are in a state of downfall from the ongoing war with the exerlus skirmishes they’re a bit jumpy around robots.

Then there is the exiled exerlus consensus locked into a never ending war with Zero North. Both sides are capable of replicating at phenomenal speeds and while they aren’t directly targeting the others around here, due to the scale they operate at there is a lot of collateral damage. Which really are trade routes being disrupted by conflicts so large that neighboring stars to the conflict can get wiped out. Largely due to the fact that both sides are self replicating machines who just need raw materials and send out replicators to anywhere they can find with more material to try and produce more forces to win the skirmish. One fight has been going on for the last year non stop and flying through this area is just asking to get turned into exerlus scrap metal. These conflicts disrupting major routes in a time of massive food shortages has caused logistical nightmares that are not helping the local area manage the crisis. A huge part of this war was that the disruption of Zero North lasted long enough for the exiles to build up enough forces to actually survive fighting against Zero North at all. Said disruption being the Orochi incident.

The main problem for us and our original mission is that we are a very large ship made of a lot of metal. Either we’ll be mistaken for exerlus or eaten by exerlus if we’re just passing through and several major routes out of here are either under constant attack by the exerlus wars or are tightly controlled by the shattered alliances of the northern galaxy. Going around all of this becomes more of a fuel issue than anything else since moving the Cradle takes a lot.

A few reports from the overall war we’re now in.

Following the attack on Beldobaan from Lancaster and the attack on Sarghess from House Song it seems they were ready to retaliate. Which I guess is obvious since drow are paranoid that everyone is out to get them. No offense sir.

Anyways, we were watching for it so we caught on to the early stages of Jaal’Darya’s usual gameplan but they’ve already gotten to Moncayo annnnd here we go again. Quarantines have been established but we haven’t had time yet to figure out how bad any of it really is.

We also know from the radar facilities that Rahlken is approaching Enohas where all the Alnae were being evacuated to. We’re also aware that the demon Kingdom hasn’t finished mobilizing yet, but Vloz’Khress has made some deals with some demon lords and they will be at Thenica soon. There was some politics involved with the members of the kingdom placed in Kar’Soluth’s territory before the invasion but the short of it is that they’re showing up now.

Fortunately the Hassani proper haven’t been moving around very much. They seem content to sit around Aureum and call it a day, especially with Kanika being away. However, if Faelyn gets involved that could open a route to their involvement. I currently doubt that Sakhessa will formally enter into the war if she can avoid it, though other members might take the opportunity.

Unfortunately, we lost track of thousands of pirates we’ve been keeping tabs on and Asmodan is also missing. Given that Asmodan and Yasrena had been in agreement of just murdering everyone, I imagine he’s going to pop up very suddenly in a place that is not good for us.

With all of this suddenly keeping Kar’Soluth busy, we’ve caught wind of Kaylen attacking them on Jydoq as well.

Azilath has reinforced SR3 with a massive swarm though she is still largely away and focused on colonization efforts in other systems. The defensive forces appear to be just to make sure no one gets any ideas of attacking them again.

As it turns out Sethis has a half dozen sisters he never talks about. And just as many who are a little too willing to participate in the plan.

Consultation with the Nomads about Faelyn’s mega ship has them pointing out that if they were doing it they’d board it the way they board everything else, by drilling through the hull. Which is still a bit of a unique approach that they’re known for. The issue being that once their aboard the crew of that ship is far more numerous and likely powerful than the average ship they steal. With infinite resources they’d just throw wave after wave of disposable soldiers into it until progress was made. They also say to figure out how much it costs to get Haleh to go since they don’t have a dragon to tackle any of Faelyn’s aboard it.

Koda points out this might be out-scaling their expertise of capturing and taking over ships by forcing a surrender of the crew. It is unlikely that Faelyn wouldn’t put some dragons on there just for dealing with boarders and this thing is basically a space station with engines strapped onto it. Initial observations point out that its slower than Iron cradle. While it likely exists as a response to the mobile station of the Cradle it isn’t controlled by one massive living voidforge and probably has several optimization issues. The Iron Cradle does as well but mostly born from the fact that its a bunch of space stations tied together, Faelyn and Sharen’s big ships were purpose designed as responses to it and the Alnae Ultra Carrier at the same time and they still aren’t as well put together as the Cradle itself. He’d consider that it and the Areti are both a bit on the slow clunky side and just attempts at putting raw firepower into a fleet of otherwise very modern and effective battleships. So even though he wasn’t actually asked he says just keep strapping things onto the cradle to make Faelyn keep wasting money on it so they don’t build more battleships which are their actual best threat.

Meanwhile back on Zenaka, Valen is still running around doing murder politics but has requested we send her Gunhild at the very least to help deal with a few remaining issues that so far have been able to best typical VSEC forces.

As an update on the WTC-3 project, it kiiind of works but its definitely not a traditional mech. If you want to call it a day, they do have a big machine with a big very accurate cannon but its more of a tank than a mech. They couldn’t get it to stay upright when firing it’s primary weapon reliably so they put treads on it. They’re still working on that bit.

Our exploration crews along with the Voidforged found the VSS Raptor in the northern part of the galaxy dry docked at a station for some peculiar reason. Though it is over a planet with a suspiciously familiar level of hostility.

In other news, Haleh is back at Diadem from her latest trip into the Reach and is for some reason commissioning a rather large pair of carriers from the shipyards and when asked why she just said so that she could get back to recruiting.

The evacuations of Alnae should “done enough” by next month and complete in two.

The next Council of Lords for meeting with the demon King will be in four months. So just don’t do anything that might piss him off until then I suppose.

With the pantheon meetings concluded, Ankathi fucked off back to the celestial realm and now I’m wondering if we should be concerned about whatever she might be up to over there.

Haziel has also returned to the galaxy to do whatever this weird galactic keeper business is. Apparently she’s currently dealing with two civilizations engaged in some sort of war that assures mutual destruction and getting a bit too close to pushing some sort of world ending button. Apparently, despite being one of the oldest and most powerful figures of Sol she has to do intern work to learn the ropes over at the fortress of vague but menacing star druids.

The shadow is off to try and hunt down Halaestra, from having had to organize such things on your behalf before…yeah good luck with that hot mess.

Jaerda is still in training with Selah to handle the Astral Wilds for longer than the split second it would take for her to be torn apart from seven dimensions.

Also we’ve tried scanning Yasrena before, though results weren’t good then and aren’t good now. Her bind specifically is fantastically elusive and if I were to interpret the machine’s output literally the implication would be that they are in one hundred places and multiple planes at once. That or they are somehow actually some sort of hive species now though Yochlol aren’t exactly known for that.

In other news, the Ultra Carrier is at least willing to ferry people around as long as the order comes from Jaerda specifically. Also as long as no one asks for any of their food. They’re still pretty picky about their food reserves.

The rest of the refugees are still settling into Enohas as construction is ongoing. Though the Arcurans don’t care too much, the Chosen Wolves are a bit cranky about building stuff around there. They’d probably be crankier if not for the fact that I have to keep reminding them THERE IS A PORTAL TO THE FAE WILDS RIGHT GODS DAMNED THERE. Just go through it more often! Also they spend half their time on Eden anyways. Also this is a lot of portals.

Vasia reports in that catching the bugs is pretty easy, you just grabbed one out of the middle of space. Also that they’ll be at Diadem next month. Just get a big net on a stick maybe, though if you prefer a more elaborate plan she could probably build a really big net on a really big stick. So far she suspects they’ll either fly past Diadem and we’ll need to use some freight ships to catch them out of space, or they’ll land at Diadem and start nibbling on things at which point you could probably just send some people out with trucks and net guns. Also that protecting the crops was probably a good call before you got invaded by space locusts.

Exploration report around Zero North as we look for various things alongside VSEC Exploration teams: The northern chunk of the galaxy is home to an alliance similar to ours or Nelta that has been crumbling ever since the influence of the Phantoms messed with everything. Formerly there were two major national alliances with hundreds of star systems and now there are 34 smaller alliances between dozens of star systems.

Initial poking around, which half the time meant poking the Exerlus with dumb questions, reveals to us that this place is in an ongoing state of apocalyptic fall and has been for the last decade. Once again, food shortages are all over the place and the Exerlus have been skirmishing with the exiled consensus who is also invading other worlds for materials. This is one of the most well developed areas of the galaxy in terms of materials and technology though now its breaking down into a bit of a salvage war.

More importantly, we found a peculiar world that is extremely hostile to reportedly everything. The world itself is almost barren and has no atmosphere but we can tell there is some sort of development there that is the size of a single city with an orbiting station above. While this isn’t unusual given how suspicious people tend to be in the ongoing salvage wars, we were able to detect several ships of varying origins aboard the station. One of them matches the profile of the VSS Raptor. We’re not sure how it got there but I’m fairly certain that it isn’t a good sign.

In terms of core resets we also have to consider how to refurbish it, as by then its likely to start experiencing wear and tear. I suppose now we’re just joining our solian creators on the quest to cure mortality, we’re just at a disadvantage of not having yet seen how our end-of-life experiences will be.

We’ve been running counter ops on Thenica and operations are concerned with where we found some of it. We managed to intercept a couple of refugees partaking in the mass evacuation of Alnae who were actually from Kar’Soluth. Beldobaan specifically. Which implies that if we missed any, there might be a problem later.

Also while running such operations to try and track any down that slipped through the net we accidentally found out that Sarden is on Diadem. She was the only revenant we could identify but we know they don’t tend to travel alone, she’s just the one we have caught before and thus can more easily identify. Though we lost track of her soon afterwards, what we do know is she was snooping around Renjala’s new pandem university. Even had a student ID and record, which we haven’t done anything with but its anyone’s guess why she’s there posing as a student. We have no evidence that she’s ever been to any of the classes despite a falsified attendance record, so I doubt she’s actually there to learn pandem.

We also found out that there has been a massive influx of Sivataur vampires from SR2. Obviously they would be landing in Beldobaan territories though they’ve been moving erratically from there. It would appear that Yasrena was able to make that deal to have some of them show up though I have conflicting reports on whether or not they are intending to join Kar’Soluth as a formal house or if they’re just here as mercenaries because they tend to just like picking fights.

We also found out that Vloz’Khress has been up to their old antics again and re establishing their presence in the Demon Kingdom. To the point that I can’t really tell which nation they’re more a part of at this point. As one of Kar’Soluth’s great houses you would assume that but their headquarters and main investments seem to be in the demon kingdom for whatever reason. Though that might be the fault of their patron demon lord being more interested in demon politics than Thenican ones now that they’re down to their last one, granted that one has grown a lot more powerful now that they have monopolized the Great House under the control of themselves and their own daughter. Though we also snooped around and found out that several prominent demon figures are in Kar’Soluth’s territory along with their specified retinue. It isn’t enough to make an army that would deal with Lancaster’s, but if she hits one of them it could suddenly cause an issue. I think it might be a trap.

We’ve had some troubles though, as the Beldobaan agents have captured some of ours as well and we’re going back and forth in this game of espionage. It is hard to determine what information they’ve gotten from us that we’d care about them knowing just as much as they might not know which parts we know about them. It is safe to assume though they have found out where we’re looking for them at the very least. I also have suspicions that they might have located Aryn and yourself even if they haven’t acted on that information yet.

Also by popular request, we’ve kept tabs on Reika for Renjala’s benefit. She’s mostly just following the Sarghess matriarch around and exhibits consistent behavior to what we know about her. It is unlikely that Kanika actually did anything to her essentia. She maintains a ridiculous K/D ratio against the Tungsten Teeth because none of them fully understand that she’s immune to bullets, artillery, missiles, and bombs or that the trick she’s using is based on an impossible reaction time. Anyone that might have figured the trick out generally doesn’t manage to report back to anyone about it.

Sarrai is currently on vacation as suggested. Though that mostly entails recovering from injuries rather than beach activities so far.

On the Thenican front, Sarghess is still fighting with the Tungsten Teeth across various skirmishes though it has started to turn more towards the Sarghess’ favor as time goes on and they figure out what these aliens are all about and how they operate. Also scout reports say that this has been valuable to see how professional alien mercenaries do things, and specifically that they’re definitely much stronger than most armies we have encountered. If this was a fair and honest fight, they’d definitely have a significant edge. Also they are very good at taking bases and fighting within enclosed locations. Likely because in the Reach a lot of their work would take place boarding ships or on space stations. The lesson of the story being: Don’t let them board us or get into urban environments in the future.

In terms of a strategic analysis of Sarghess, they still rely heavily on out-positioning with fast moving armies and rely on self contained logistics alongside massive arsenals. Wherever they need artillery, it appears there overnight. Same for their anti air weapons or similarly specialized tools. While the tungsten teeth are clearly better outright fighters, Sarghess is pulling ahead upon realizing these strengths and weaknesses and focusing on positioning their assets right where they need to be to exploit these problems. The alien mercenaries keep getting caught while moving locations in open fields or having once safe positions bombarded in the middle of the night by artillery that was a thousand miles away the day before. That and vampiric drow from beldobaan are probably, albeit discreetly, causing havoc in ways we’re not quite catching.

Nah division reports that the fight is effectively over, Jaal’Darya has sent people to deal with it and aside from their naval control that grows every month  – they developed bioweapons that specifically kill the dominant races among the Teeth mercenaries. Sarghess has been deploying it with their own people and while the fighting appears to still be ongoing as of now, they estimate that by next month the Teeth will be crippled.

Analysis aside, Alnae refugees are still being evacuated as best we can though there are a lot of them. More than had even gone to Moncayo in the first Nelta invasion – largely because of communication of ‘what is going on’ is better between warlords than disparate groups we find roaming on Thenica.

Essentially there are a lot of logistics going on as we prepare to attack Beldobaan after Shetou moves in which could take a bit since that hinges on getting the refugees out, then letting them fight the last warlord.

Zenaka has experienced an escalation of violence as now several territory lords are attempting to assassinate Valen, some of the other lords are trying to assassinate them for assassinating Valen, and Valen is currently occupying one of the territories with most the available forces she has for offense while looking for a particularly sneaky one. So business as usual.

The shadow reports that in their opinion the power dynamic is largely between everyone other than Ankathi, and Ankathi. Purely because she is the only one that knows how to kill other deities efficiently, at least supposedly. If she can actually do this, she’s the only one who can resort to brute force in the entirety of the council. Other than discovering the method to create planar entities, that is sort of her only claim to her position as well. Between this ability and her powers as The Fate being a little overpowered, she’s in charge by way of brute strength. Though The Shadow is just an information person, not terribly great at Charisma. So they still intended to just make you do all the work with such information anyways.

On that topic, they’ve been trying to figure out how to get to Halaestra. Finding her is extremely difficult since she lives in the void and then convincing her to exit retirement is just as difficult. They were asking if you had any ideas on how to accomplish either, since Halaestra is one of the most prodigal pandem wielders we know about despite their lack of interest or even outright distaste for the art.

For alien candidates, Chancellor Habrah is quite likely to be the university’s pandem expert but Shadow can’t confirm it since no one at Utewa uses binds.

As for Reika, she is waiting for Kanika in order to be recalled. Kanika left to elsewhere in the galaxy after the treaty to pursue finishing her studies, since Yasrena had been a big part of that treaty she left Reika to work for Yasrena for the time being. So to get Reika away from Kar’Soluth, you’d have to cause either Kanika or Sakhessa to recall her. Though with Aureum expanding its fortress defenses by the day despite being in a position of peace, it would be hard to convince them that they need Reika for anything in particular. The Shadow also commented that these girls sure have a lot of K’s in their name.

Haziel points out that Jaerda is a candidate just for political reasons for an empire that is in a state of decline and she just so happens to be very good at pandem magic. The other four of you at least have survived multiple eras of history, enough to see various nations rise and fall. Jaerda’s too deeply attached to Alnae and isn’t ready to take on a position that could stretch on for thousands of years. She’ll have the power to pick favorites before she’s seen a wider perspective, which turns into gods like Lolth. Too attached to one group of people with too much power to focus on them. Druid credentials aside, Haziel feels that Jaerda is going to do something stupid and meddlesome very early into her new career. Which brings up the question from Shadow as to what you think even should be the qualifications for these rituals?

The Shadow also reports that the Demon King will at least agree to the meeting but it will be held at his castle at a specified date, which happens to be during the Council of Lords. This is good for getting a meeting and getting a chance to sway demon lords as well, though I warn ahead of time that this means Asmoday will also be there and that makes the whole thing a little bit more complicated if he decides to have an opinion on the matter.

Evacuations of Alnae are underway but it will take some time to move uh…a few billion maybe?- of people to Enohas. Also in the process of which we have members of the fae migrations still ongoing so Enohas is becoming a mess. Arcurans keep trying to set up arena promotions for nicer land plots and argue that they technically should still own all of it and it is their right to hand it out to refugees by their own governmental system…of get a high place in a tournament for better real estate. Obviously they’re just trying to get more people in the Arena and don’t particularly care about any other aspect of this complicated refugee crisis. The Chosen Wolves are also grumbling about housing so many people on Enohas will result in the overtaking of all its natural elements that had caused them to set up shop here in the first place.

Jaerda has been undergoing training with you on this planar entity business, and would probably prefer a new plane over anything else, though this means that despite her ability to maintain the Enohas building codes it is proving sketchy for the refugees.

In other news, Vasia points out that kidnapping Yasrena is pointless since it is just a drow priestess controlled by possession from the yochlol. So step one is finding the yochlol or it’ll just nab another host. The real Yasrena is just some rich girl who likes living in a fancy house and is otherwise okay with not being conscious for days at a time if it means she doesn’t have to get a real job. The Shadow might know how to find said Yochlol since it is  a bind but that’s one of those bits of premium information that’ll cost a significant trade.

She has also determined that space bug you found is a space bug. She just made it sound much more exciting. It’s a life form similar to the Lakaaj or whatever-the-hell Decaelys comes from. A creature that exists in a galactic scale ecosystem rather than a planetary one and is proof that regardless of how insane: life finds a way. She is transferring half her team to Diadem in preparation to tag and observe as many of them as she can since this revolutionizes our understanding of what is actually out there in the galaxy, since its the first non-sapient species to live in the vacuum of space for no reason other than “because it just does”. Vasia also describes them as being very docile, probably not a lot of natural predators in space. They also eat organic matter rather than sunlight or, as their incarnum wings might suggest, souls. It is likely to be some sort of descendant of the silnians with origins in hive territories. Some observations of it have revealed that it eats some of the organic matter floating through space radiating from the hive territories that probably put the fish on Diadem in the first place. It stands to reason that this is a common phenomena in the hive territories, at least enough so that such a large swarm of these bugs could be flying around out there. Though that does it make it strange that such a large collection of them is flying away from the hive worlds towards Diadem rather than anywhere else with radiating organic life, energy, or any other resource usable to such a creature. It’s on her list of ‘needs more observation’. That and instead of developing sapience with their essentia they developed space wings and the ability to survive such. So it is on the list of one of the many ways something might evolve into existence. Instead of a fully formed sapient incarnum soul and psyche, they opted for space flight.

She also questions what you consider mental scarring because Larazja gets traumatized by practically anything.

To summarize Echo Prime’s explanations of degradation-

It should happen within a few centuries of its own accord but it does depend on the lifestyle of the voidforged in question and their own ability to keep their shit together. Chevalier was used as an example for “probably fine” but Vanessa is a hot mess waiting to have a mental breakdown.

As for the why, apparently its a fault in our core design but by her description it is less of a severe fault made by poor engineering and more so a fault found in almost all living things except for the true immortal beings like Decaelys and the Lakaaj. Essentially, we might be mechanical but we can still get old. Replacing parts accelerates the mental degradation aspect when we would have to relink to a new shell. Also lil bit of that old parable mixed in, how many parts can you replace one by one on a ship before it’s not the same ship?

The how kind of went over my head. Something about mana corrosion leading to psyche degradation despite the two needing to exist simultaneously for essentia to exist. This in some way related to how damage to the psyche can cause it to repair itself in a way that produces more mana in the process. It is part of Renjala’s studies about how basically every crazy powerful mage tends to have very depressing backstories. The process of psyche reparation causes an increase in mana production which in turn accelerates the corrosion of our psyche. Many species experience a collapse of their physical bodies before their mental abilities, especially with an ordinary lifestyle. It is likely that we would wind up like pre-operation Haziel over time. If your body can outlast your mind by a long enough expanse, you start to see the impacts on your mind before dying of old age. It was the reason Haziel couldn’t remember the names of her own children or the many adventures she’d had over fifty thousand years but with the mental capacity for a hundred at best. All of this was part of Kanika and Eliza’s research and one of the main focuses of Kanika’s work.

There is massive individual variance if you count fringe cases. For example, those who upgraded beyond their anatomy. As a human, Sakhessa should be a puddle of amnesia like Haziel by now but Kanika patched the problem of human anatomy to extend her ability to avoid degradation. If you don’t count the fringe cases who upgraded or escaped their anatomy through various means, you see variance of about 50%. For some humans the problems begin at fifty and others at a hundred but all of them have it by a hundred and fifty barring external means to combat the issue. It’s a limit of their squishy brain. Using a mechanical example, the Exerlus themselves have upgraded themselves far enough to avoid the problem for thousands of years at  a time but they still usually shut down and clean out their memory for some maintenance then reboot as a refurbished consciousness that can access its old information through their collective network memory storage.

This is how they prevent the problem in particular, routine maintenance and memory wipes. However, they are a collective networked consciousness similar to the Silnians. This makes them less individualistic but it also means rebooting their individual consciousnesses is less of a dramatic impact on them. Voidforged are highly individualistic since we were modeled after the elves that built us. Which might be a part of why our core’s lifespan is very similar to their brains. We do not have a networked state of being and as you have noticed we all have very diverse and unique personalities. If we didn’t, then you wouldn’t be rejecting my funding requests all the time. They’ve also determined that my crab master 2000 might have an abnormally short lifespan because of this. To be fair I am just learning about all this too.

It can be detected but only by advanced technology far beyond what we have. The Exerlus can scan a life form down to its atomic composition and as a result notice patterns in their collective database. So while it isn’t guaranteed that everything they said about this process is correct, apparently our cores exhibit similarities to a few thousand other mechanical races that indicate this is likely to occur.

When it comes to prevention and treatment we get into some weird territory especially since we are such a young species, to the point that we haven’t even observed this happening yet and are going entirely based on the prediction of a glorified scanning probe. Prevention measures suggested have included: Don’t replace limbs in such a way that it requires re-calibration on behalf of the core. Replacing the shell of a limb is one thing, replacing the circuitry and bones is where the problem comes in. Don’t plug in an aethernet cable between two cores as to avoid a level of communication where it becomes hard for one core to differentiate its thoughts from the other. Also, because we are based on Solians, deprivation of agency is theorized to cause additional problems. Which we theorize explains why Arsene had mental issues mirroring that of solian humanoids. They couldn’t move very much nor could they interact with their environment as they were too large and had no tools for manipulation, but they lived in a world built for much smaller creatures with fine motor control. Other prevention measures would be to avoid any scenario with a static environment for too long, otherwise known as a lack of stimulation – we can get bored basically. This really all sums up to us being more like our creators than we really appreciated. Despite the scale of the differences when comparing a human to a demon and then either to us, comparing us to an lakaaj or an arcuran is a much greater difference. Apparently energy based creatures are better at maintaining long lifespans without mental degradation since they don’t really have a memory limit determined by their material properties.

Other treatment and prevention options get sort of into the realm of immortality. Our solian counterpart solutions being prime examples, becoming ‘other things’. Mummies, liches, gods, elementals, and so forth. For us to do something similar to that…well I have some experimental ideas. First of which is to find a voidforged who can learn incarnum or pandem without immediately shutting themselves down on accident.

All of this is to say: Our lifespans and signs of degrading are mostly mental rather than physical, and as such doing things that impact us mentally are far more damaging than it would be to other races. Though how dire it is has yet to be seen and its worth noting that things which would rapidly degrade the physical condition of solians do not apply to us. Rather than us being particularly susceptible to mental degradation, it is simply more prominent to us because physical degradation doesn’t apply as much. Even if our cores can age, decay, grow weaker, and then shatter on their own – it is likely that our cores can physically outlast our minds. So these mental issues are at the forefront of our potential problems of mortality. So it is more likely we develop dementia before we develop cancer is basically what I’m saying. However, because our cores cannot physically modify and repair themselves like organic brains, these problems can be accelerated by external factors more so than organics as well.

The universe is a bitch like that.

Stories of Lore 57

Valen reports back that her current plan is slightly repetitive but now with her insight as someone who has been a member of these types of affairs. Though specifically, by presenting herself as a new leader with FVS backing that is also a Zenakan elite coming by to ask people some questions, she is able to find them and in some cases just shoot them right there in their own offices. This was her solution to avoid bombardment or invading cities such that it might alert those leaders that they should run and hide. For the most part she is just writing down which ones are especially problematic as well as their successors to have a territorial lord she promised FVS salary and emigration to continue to pose as one of the rebellious ones who will call a meeting later so she can just blow that up with all of them in it at once. For now her main focus is on getting control over who replaces them to try and avoid it turning into a cycle. Though she has also invaded multiple areas and just blown up at least half the city near the border areas to slow down attacks.

However, one complication she’s found is that FVS forces are now in greater danger than before and the skirmishes are becoming more costly in both manpower in equipment. The offworld weaponry that has been slowly spreading has been equipping the rebels with the tools to actually damage our assets rather than just the standing prior constructions of the native zenakans. This is leading to situations where what should be at best a street gang are now making plays for territorial control against their territory lords and muddying up the process.

Jydoq doesn’t seem particularly interested in commissioning a new space station, they technically still have a couple in orbit as well as in the nearby star system. These haven’t been damaged but they’re in a sort of Alnae situation where different miniature governments control different things.

The strike on the new machine within the other section of Diadem was a success albeit an expensive one. Details in the battle report.

The Caelkians have been poking their head through our portals ever since formal access was granted. They are however newly galactic and their ships are taking forever to get anywhere so progress with them has been slow. They’re still trying to figure out how to install communication systems that could reach as far as Diadem back on their own planet.

Gasaba has accepted the deal for the pathian crystals if nothing else that helps us spread them around as potentially useful resources. We’ll see what kind of ship they come up with that as well.

Also it turns out the huge chunk of biomass is a swarm of alien bugs just sort of cruising around. At least its not hostile or anything, but it is a curiosity. Also why are there so damned many?

We’ve arrived at Zero north, very swanky. It’s like…a bunch of diadems stacked on top of each other or something. Imagine what we could build with access to that much energy…like a giant star crab of some sort.

Perhaps got carried away. Anyways, according to Echo Prime one thing to keep in mind with the destroyer is something called mental…uh..health or whatever. I dunno, anyways the destroyer prototype is technically working!

So far Renjala seems to be just chatting it up with the elves while we get into fights with dark skinned elves. So far as I can tell the Tungsten Teeth aren’t doing well and just taking credit for us over here on the side but no one can tell the difference between them and us, heh.

No luck finding any details on that stealth ship, obviously it was very sneaky and just cruised on out of there afterwards, perhaps never to be seen again. We can say it is definitely of alien design though. We don’t build ships that look quite like that at least. That or some art major is somehow part of the project.

As for re-recruiting Nila, odds are low. Last we saw her she intercepted and crippled Haleh with new glowy eye bits. I’m guessing she has since entered into the Selona Cyborg program, or maybe the Daiheb one…it’s hard to keep them all straight. Though I’m still assuming she is largely working for Selona directly now. Either that or cruising around and causing general mischief.

Our investigation into the Kuhas security forces has revealed that they are all clones I think? There is very slight differences so at the very least they aren’t perfect clones but they’re definitely strikingly similar to one another. They all look like the administrator does.

Stories of Lore 56

The Tungsten Teeth reported to Rampart that they have been delayed by a fleet conflict with what they described as “A big gun with engines on it”. Apparently their invasion of Thenica was slowed down by Faelyn who destroyed a quarter of their fleet upon contact. They continued to land on Thenica as a rather contested drop with their assault carriers but their remaining fleet is fleeing across the local stars to try and escape Faelyn’s fleet. Which, as we now have an update of what they’ve been doing at Aureum, is now larger than before. The Tungsten Teeth ran into an immediate issue upon assaulting Sarghess in that the Kar’Soluth was ready to meet them, likely having detected their violent entry plan via sensors from some distance away. This led to a battle on the ground and now the Tungsten Teeth are split apart fighting smaller skirmishes as they try to outmaneuver Sarghess to whittle away at their troops. The Tungsten teeth are generally comprised of stronger soldiers than Sarghess on a troop for troop comparison but they are woefully unequipped to outmaneuver Sarghess on Sol’s homeworld. They are barely even aware of how extensive the underdark really is or how Sarghess keeps moving around so quickly. Most importantly, Reika was there and the Teeth did not do well against an enemy who could heavily mitigate all of their artillery and bombardment strategies.

The fighting is still ongoing, but it mostly consists of the commander of the Tungsten Teeth trying to find a way around and through Sarghess to get to Reika before Reika finds them first. Matriarch Alystra Vel’Sarghess is also involved in personally commanding the troops. This has slowed the offensive on the Alnae border while Sarghess is busy dealing with all of this.

Combat assessments reveal earlier projections were missing some crucial data about Sarghess operations. Among which was that they have some elite units that were unaccounted for. They have an alarming quantity of highly trained veteran soldiers. The matriarch herself is also much stronger than we would have thought and we suspect it has something to do with her pandem bind that no one really knows much about. Another such factor is that Reika is currently with them though we’re not entirely sure why or to what extent. What it would mean for any simulations is that bombardment by any means will be heavily mitigated and if she is near the Alystra Vel’Sarghess all of our WTC tactics would be effectively negated against the matriarch. Probably a good thing we hired mercenaries to reveal this information to us before we did anything.

Valen has left for Zenaka to begin on that assignment, and clearly unhappy about the restrictions placed on it. For now she’s meeting with various people to assess the political situation more carefully to look for some options. She has gotten Ehan to come out of his bunker though has not turned him over to VSec, stating that if you get rid of him the next replacement will be just as annoying but less competent at the same job. This hasn’t particularly slowed the skirmishes and border cities are being bombed by the infiltrating Zenakans. While the shields on our station held up, it might be worth noting they launched missiles into orbit at the station.

We’ve also seen a rise of violent crimes in residential areas deep within the federated space as sympathizers are targeting federation supporters in their own homes, often with improvised arson techniques. Leading to an increase in paranoia and a new figure has popped up. A group of Zenakans have formed a heavily armed independent gang selling weapons that are not locally manufactured. Either federation weapons from our own armories that they somehow got ahold of, but most concerning are the weapons from Sol in general. There have been three reports of discovering Selona weapons in circulation.

Related to this, Vasia has discerned that the ships we shot down that were approaching from before were members of the Reach who managed to convince Utewa to let them into Finsir so they could try to ship more products to Zenaka.

Jydoq continues its ongoing developmental struggles, we did get some new immigrants though out of all this. It is also becoming clear that the conditions on the planet are slipping back deeper into destabilization. Kennae remains on the planet continuing his quest to help the region. Notably, reports have spotted Kaylen here. Though we are not sure if she is here just to visit her former teacher or if she is continuing her crusade with what little she has left by targeting Kar’Soluth.

Gunhid and Sarrai report that after going deeper into the neighboring ring they found a evidence of material shortage that explains the decline of the attacks on our border. They have been producing a much larger machine and most of the machines we normally encounter have been refitted into a new model they don’t recognize and are standing guard over the new machine.

This comes at the same time as a report from Gem Station that “something” is approaching Diadem from the direction of the Hive Worlds. As far as the station’s sensors can ascertain, it is approximately 1.8 billion tons of biomass with no significant presence of metal or electronic signatures. So, not a traditional fleet at least.

Koda reports in on the investigation of the rumors about keys in the hands of the Utewa and Exiled Exerlus. In order to find out more information about if the Utewa have one we would have to undertake significant investigation. The rumor comes from the fact that Utewa has thousands of strange and probably extremely valuable relics. Apparently they are collectors of them for purposes of academic curiosity. Though they are also very secretive about exactly what they have or where they keep them, as pirates on Kuhas already know that Utewa has several storage locations for these to make it hard to steal more than one at a time. The running theory is that there was probably at least one still in the Reach after the Terlim Wars, and if it would fall into anyone’s hands it would be the Utewa. This also turned into a tangent from some of the people being asked about it stating that the factory flotilla wandering around would be another candidate to find or keep such a thing.

The Exiled Exerlus having one is just a wild theory based on the fact that they contacted a now-extinct civilization ten thousand years ago that was the descendants of one of the alliance’s council races. Either the key would be laying in the dirt on the radioactive waste of a world, or the exiles would have found it, known what it is, and taken it. If anything they would be most motivated to have it as leverage over the defunct exerlus controlling parts of the ring even now.

The VSS Raptor has taken off towards the southern core of the galaxy to try and see how close they can get to the Blaiken on another plane.

In other news, Jiyan has been gone a bit longer than we expected and the exploration corps are starting to get nervous about not hearing any word from her in so long. Especially given that its possible to exit the Warrens in other galaxies and just get lost.

Also, emissaries from the Caelkians are becoming a more common sight around Diadem. The water people that live at a nearby star. Apparently they have been becoming very interested in our portal networks that lead all the way back to the southern end of the Reach. They’ve been asking about travel rights and border treaties recently and seem mostly interested in the fact that we’re not like the rest of the Reach. They are a recently galactically capable civilization and still not too happy to find out they’re surrounded by anarchy so they’ve been asking us a lot of questions.

The Shadow points out that one of the issues with trying to control their intelligence network is that parts of it operate independently from direct contact. Obviously the library among them, but also executives in various positions of their other holdings have been known to sell things as ‘advertising data’ that if someone were particularly clever could be used as military tracking information just by following money around. The Shadow claims at least direct innocence since they’ve not sold any military secrets about us recently and they’ve instead been busy trying to spy on Utewa. Though unfortunately, Utewa doesn’t seem to know about binds and their use of Pandem magic is much more primitive than ours even if they can perform impressive feats with it through sheer engineering.

We have made a fancy coffee shop. Speaking of which, Ankathi is summoning a meeting next month now that we have it done. She specifically demanded that The Shadow be present in person to some capacity since she hasn’t actually met them yet and has some questions. This comes on the heels of her mostly wrapping up what she was doing in the celestial plane, to which end her powerbase has now expanded significantly. Maybe not the most loyal powerbase at the moment, though definitely expanded.

The first realization Jaerda had was that Pandem Cleansing was even a thing. We haven’t exactly advertised we can do it that heavily and she’s been living in isolation for awhile now. So that kept her distracted for a large part of these negotiations. She points out that the snap elections don’t need to be held, she feels the warlords and their staff will win the vote almost by default since they’ve been keeping people alive this whole time. Not that they don’t deserve the public affection for them but rather than it’d be a time consuming formality that solves none of the ongoing problems.

Then the matter of turning her into a member of the pantheon got into a mess of her trying to understand how you even figured out how to do that then did it three times. Now she wants to meet The Shadow and uh…Ankathi out of at least curiosity as to what this whole pantheon business even is.

She also points out that the remnants of Alnae will pose another issue with joining the Federation as a member state. A lot of the leaders are old and stubborn, herself included. Getting them to reunite is one thing but to join as essentially a lesser house to a group of colonists that started on Thenica will be a harder to sell them on. To an extent you’ll end up leaving behind several of them here on Thenica in order to take the others to Enohas.

In unrelated but relevant news, Sethis found Reika. She’s currently presumed as being Alystra Vel’Sarghess’ bodyguard though we don’t know why or to what extent. She was just standing around there and dealt with the Tungsten Teeth mercenaries that took a shot at the matriarch. She is in fact still holding the Ryner, so we found that too while we’re at it.

Hrmm the one with horns was someone they were talking with not shooting. I suppose the dark skinned ones are to the east. GET THA TRUCK!

Now to sit here and wait for someone to do somethin’. Since they’re just sittin around waitin to be attacked. Weaklings.

We got some more turrets built as requested. I dunno how you have the budget for that but not for meeeee.

Also reviewing the recon report from Gunhild, I can confirm that the exerlus next door is building “a big thing”. That is a war mech if I’ve ever seen one and notably the new models also captured in the report have weapons clearly designed to penetrate the Federation’s mechs.

Which is bad news for us too as we’re made with the same materials and build philosophy. Basically it appears that the neighboring Exerlus has realized we’re not the same opponent it has fought for a few thousand years and now its changing its designs to deal with us specifically. Which means those border lines are about to experience a significant increase in casualties. Also if this information somehow spreads through Diadem we could be dealing with all future pushes into these rings, should we find more keys for example, to be much worse than last time.

This also reveals something critical, these new designs are not just targeting the front line mechs we’ve been using. Some of those weapons look designed for other purposes and if I were a sapient machine designing weapons to destroy my enemies, ah-hem, I’d only make those if I knew what they were intending to hit. The implication here is that there are machines in Diadem also performing reconnaissance on the Federation.

So I’d be concerned that we’re about to get hit by a wave of new machines meant to kill us specifically instead of other exerlus robot dinosaurs with laser beams.

Rampart is always keeping an eye around Kuhas and it might be relevant to know that a very large ship passed by the station recently. It was painted all black while possessing significant stealth technology and practically snuck up on the station and sent people into a minor panic about what it even was. Typically stealth ships are smaller and rely on a variety of techniques which tend to become quickly outdated. So there is no reason for it to reveal itself to Kuhas station just to stop by for gas, I suspect it was a systems test. Someone is testing a very large and powerful stealth warship on purpose which is very unusual. Though as a result, we also know that somewhere in the Reach is a strange ship that is almost undetectable. Visual confirmation from Allison reports that it is definitely a warship, and its main cannon is unlike anything she’s ever seen before. The ship refueled and left without further incident.

On the Alnae front we’ve learned that Beldobaan has been assisting Sarghess in combating the Tungsten Teeth mercenaries on the ground though they usually attack at night and the mercenaries do not even know who Beldobaan is. So they probably just all look like drow to them. We also know that Jaal’Darya has received a new fleet to add to its growing list, and House Sharen has revealed eight new warships at New Kaifen in response just to remind people they still have the biggest navy. What’s important about this is they’re all hitting the same bottleneck, crew. Kar’Soluth is aggressively recruiting on alien worlds, particularly Jydoq, to get these ships staffed as soon as possible. Sharen has been recruiting around the Reach for similar reasons using Diadem as a launching point into the Reach.

Another movement in the works we caught wind of, Kar’Soluth has apparently decided after the Tungsten Teeth attack that they should expand their forces further through a variety of methods. Though the most notable one is we discovered they are entering into talks with the Sivataurs of SV2 and we suspect they’re trying to get them to join Kar’Soluth as a new house to supplement their forces that are mostly handled by Sarghess. The Vloz’Khress are also still rebuilding, but their new matriarch is focused on finding recruits in the demon kingdom.

Similarly, the Hassani have been quiet for awhile but our embassies have pointed out that they just placed a new facility around the star of Auwana. It doesn’t take much to tell it is a very large gun.

More intel reports say that Nila Whately has been spotted aboard Kuhas station. Allison reports she was just drinking at a bar, but given that Nila has a tendency to cause an awful lot of trouble she felt we might like to know she was around. We also have heard reports that Jydoq members are traveling to Elasyn for reasons unknown.

Stories of Lore 55

Zenaka is largely being run by VSEC federation officers at the moment while Ehan sends occasional messages in and out. Which has actually only made the rebellion get worse as members Ehan had convinced at the summit have now broken away. Upon taking the authorization to begin rooting out the rebels, the situation has declined to open warfare. While the bombs Zenaka launched at the federated territories didn’t hit, shields, it does show their intent has escalated. Valen points out that you should just conquer and enslave them at this point as “its the only language they understand”. That a series of small things along the way have not done well to ingratiate them to you. When reminded that we don’t really do that she expressed disapproval. She’s still not terribly fond of her own world and its culture clearly.

We have regarded the incoming fleet as hostile as ordered, most were destroyed upon approaching Twilight Station though a few fled back into space. Sifting through the wreckage finds a collection of odd aliens we don’t have records of mixed with some of Thenican origin, particularly demons.

Jydoq negotiations continue, the unification of their world poses some problems. First of which being that Kar’Soluth has made similar offers to sway groups of the population. Another growing faction has started to turn hostile to all foreign visitors, most of their efforts are focused on Kar’Soluth at the moment though they don’t like us that much either. Jydoq has always been independent and this faction believes that trading assistance now to retain that in the future to be worth it. While that’s nothing new, their growing hostility is notable and we have some reports that they may have started assassinating members of Kar’Soluth. Sort of sticking to the trend that figures in power on this planet have very short lifespans.

Kar’Soluth have pushed into another of the Alnae territories where we aren’t particularly located. The vittles outpost in that region is on the north western side and they attacked the southwestern one. Which has allowed us some insight into how they’re doing this since Sethis is keeping an eye on things in the area.

Things have been oddly quiet on the diadem front, particularly the waves of machines. They’re still present but its been weirdly uneventful over there.

Steamworks is definitely messing with those crystals, though so are some other tech companies. So far Khymin has the best prototypes to make use of the crystal in the form of a shuttle that is very fuel efficient. The simple explanation is that the crystals amplify movement when exposed to certain conditions. The one caveat is that no one has figured out how to make it spin something in a circle efficiently, so less effective at helping gears and more effective thus far in things like ships that use propulsion. Steamworks has strapped what are basically rockets to a panzercycle to make use of these properties though its a bit clunky still.

Also my point about Kharla being Ankathi’s medium wasn’t about her identity but about the fact that she can kill everyone else’s prophet all at once if she wanted to. That and being obnoxious. Also do we even need climate control in Diadem? Will the cafe be open to the public on non meeting days?

The Shadow points out they can summon Daiheb not quite at will but pretty close. If you want they can ask her to show up for you sometime between now and a year from the initial asking. However, if you don’t have an artifact on hand to trade there is no guarantee she bothers to show up. More accurately there is no guarantee she remembers to show up if her sticky note falls off the wall. She is not described as being well organized.

They also know that you’re right about the Demon King and that this pandem reality of how their magic works is historically the reason why he has been the counterpart to celestial gods. He had the same gimmick going on as they did but no one knew pandem science back then well enough to explain why the Demon King was so powerful. The mythology prefers to think of him as an entirely different kind of being from celestial gods but as a planar entity he checks all the boxes. Which is why his powers can be found interwoven into all demons. Though getting a meeting with him is once again one of those things that The Shadow is equipped to do. As the eavesdropper of pandem binds, they can just tell what the demon lords are usually up to as no one knows The Shadow can do this or that they should be wary of it listening in. Demon lords are very well known for having binds and all. Though they can get a message to and from the king, his exact whereabouts are considered one of those expensive information trades.

As for the crystals, you can open a rift to him and forge a strong planar intersection between your realm and the elemental one right on top of where he’s sitting if you wanted to add more fire to your domain. That being said the experiment resulted in the crystals instead producing a lot more heat when activated rather than becoming activated by heat.

Meeting with Jaerda has proven a bit bleaker than expected. She knows a lot more than everyone else about what is really happening in Alnae and also is apparently the queen of the cannibal elves. Go figure. Building a civilization is hard even in good times but in hard times it is clearly a task to tackle. I’m not convinced though that she’s right in that she should be abstaining from retaking her position as councilor. She has the teeth she mentions needing after all. Cheveyo is a scary bastard and if she can even just project him there isn’t an elven warlord on Thenica that wouldn’t shit themselves.

As for the Ultra carrier, they’re still largely just waiting for things to stabilize since they themselves are self sufficient hiding aboard that ship on cruise control around the star. Rebellions and insurgents aren’t an issue so much as a general reclusive nature for fear of Alnae requesting their supplies that they can produce. They’re sort of a time capsule of Alnae before the fall. They’d agree to return to the authority of the council if the council were to properly reform and prove itself by solving the food crisis that led to their isolation in the first place.

The Lucid “Institute” can only say that lately they’ve been on the path to rebuilding and cutting out the yoga classes. Finding that historically the order took root in a time of secrecy by posing as a thing for soccer moms to do while cult leaders used the collective meditation for power. Then later when the desperate needed a place to stay and would agree to join the circles to empower the warriors. Now that the cult is somewhat exposed in their practices and also no longer in a dire situation since they’re cozy in Roha and Diadem, the whole method of getting recruits is both impractical and unnecessary. The new leader has been focusing on implementing Averill’s system within the circles to instead allow ritual casting novices to be safe yet experience the events of the warrior’s adventures through these psionic rituals. Which all makes sense but knowing what we know about the director’s doppelganger, I’m just more confused as to what they’re up to.

Another specific thing they’re doing is committing several people to deep study and practice of psionics. With Ilex gone none of them are strong enough to cast the infinite range sending spell he had even with ritual help and with several people knowing the ritual. They don’t have another psion on the scale of Ilex or Aberhoff in their ranks and very few exist. Psionics in the modern age is a lot of tech know-how and nerdy programmers. Very few people bothered to achieve the mastery of those like Ilex necessary to cast that spell. Despite your total lack of knowledge, you’re actually the only one who might be able to do it because surviving the astral wilds certainly bolsters one’s psyche. So basically they opened more intense training programs. Notably, they approached Vasia voluntarily for  help in designing these programs. In their mission to create a new super psion they may have gotten a little too ahead of themselves there to submit to her experimental methods of achieving such results. Problem is, they shouldn’t know she exists or  how to contact her. Second problem, she didn’t question that they did manage to contact her and did indeed start laying out some ‘exercises’ they could get started with. Two deaths already.

Vasia asks how she’s supposed to prep in Moncayo if she’s been exiled to an asteroid in your plane. The conversation did not go on long enough to clarify any details before she disappeared to said asteroid.

Troop deployments in Alnae have been largely ignored by Kar’Soluth and they’ve just kept doing what they’re doing and going around our forces. Short of using force to make them stop they can easily avoid using force on us to get around and keep damaging Alnae.

Dem cannibal elves apparently have some sorta boss that now one of the big uns are talking to. Apparently they have antlers. We gotta march up north and get tah shootin.

We’ve made some progress in the prototype designs. It’s basically an assault carrier, but miniature, and with guns on it. Not much headroom though so not great if we have any guests. Very well armored though.

In other news. Chevalier has a dog now. They just…gave it to him. I didn’t know the slave trade was so easy to get into.

In keeping an eye on developing matters between Kar’Soluth and Alnae, our positioning to observe recent affairs have shed some light on why Kar’Soluth has suddenly made such dramatic advances into Alnae territory. They have acquired all the security information of these military bases they keep taking over and are attacking at night. We don’t have any fine details of exactly what happens since one of the first things they do is disable communications and security features. It is likely that after taking over the base they are carefully destroying any recordings of the events. Though this operations are consistent to say there is somehow an active leak within Alnae that spans between the warlords as to feed information to the Kar’Soluth. One in a position to acquire an astounding amount of intel somehow. On the topic was our agents desire to find out how they’re getting so much information on us. Our agents on Thenica report that the information on ourselves are somehow traceable to the same place the breaches in Alnae security are coming from, House Beldobaan. They’re distributing information to the other houses that they are acting on but we don’t know exactly how they’re getting it.

The teams visiting Utewa have reported back that there are dozens of methods but most importantly to the interest of wards is that there is a sahad method in particular we have never encountered before. The only civilization to make practical use of are the three elders though. All other attempts to recreate the method have been extremely difficult and expensive. Likely not a factor since it is just as vulnerable to typical wards and antimagic implements as any other method. We’ll just have the techs add a few extra runes for it. The other methods are just different implementations of similar concepts that we’re familiar with.

Payments have been made regarding the Tungsten Teeth, though there are once again flight times to consider to get from The Reach all the way to Thenica. We’ll have to see how that turns out.

The ongoing affairs of Zenaka continue to turn more chaotic as the attacks inward keep going. The general governing body of the federally allied territorial lords have seen a defection as well as two assassinations. There are reports that a fleet is inbound towards Zenaka from an unknown origin at this time, just an early scan but they are moving off of traditional ship routes and going towards Zenaka itself now. Though the fleet isn’t particularly large nor does it seem military in nature. Initial possibilities are thought of to be a wayward traveler, a diplomatic committee, a transport company, or that one officer who suggested the Jydoq assassin. If it were to be an actual military fleet it wouldn’t really get past the overhead station or the anti orbital defenses on the ground.

As an update from the front lines, a few more mechs have been lost defending against the exerlus incursions. They have noted they are appearing more aggressively in the inward layers.

A few of Jydoq’s factions are interested in joining the federation with said seat, but notably not the majority of them and they seem particularly interested in leaving Jydoq. With its ongoing food crisis combined with being in the minority for their multi-stellar civilization, they appear to rather live at Diadem or at least “anywhere with food production”. negotiations are at least moving along faster now that they’ve chosen a representative.

In regards to preparations for Operation: Farewell to Greta, the Vessians are willing to help invade Thenica. Though our intelligence department points out that sending them to a starving world that has a notable cannibal population might produce adverse effects.

The Tungsten Teeth prices come with various packages depending which of their many teams you hire. The larger scale interstellar teams have infantry teams at about 50 million per month which is worth about 50,000 power by our math. The ones with more tanks and other mechanized assets get up to 150 million for about the same overall value to the way we calculate things, but they are a fully self supporting army with access to more tools and logistics. Worth noting that their contracts state they’re allowed to loot any area they are deployed to and there are several salvage right contracts involved in all that.

Shetou offered to tell us that Beldobaan is notorious for thousands of years of being very difficult to prove they ever did anything specific. These last months have actually been concerning as its the first time they’ve undertaken an offensive war of conquest since the founding of their house. They do know that this is tied to Yasrena recently becoming more aggressive in general particularly tied to Alnae. She must have ordered them to stop sitting around and do something and in some way had enough power to make Sabrae consider doing it. Which may be tied to the loss of Kharla. Also that Jaal’Darya and Vloz’Khress have been steadily increasing their naval manufacturing and training with the help of Faelyn.

Vasia returns from her chats with Eliza to confirm that its way too late. Jaal’Darya is already involved and they probably already started doing something. Though Eliza doesn’t really tell Vasia about military movements, the pair of them usually just talk science. It is also worth noting that it was implied that Faelyn will come to Thenica if we show up purely because she has it out for you specifically.

More ships have undergone construction as requested, it sure seems odd that we have so many big ships now given just a few years ago we couldn’t even open the doors on them. I vote we install manual doors on every ship anyways just for tradition. Also for entertainment when guests aboard the ship walk straight into doors expecting them to automatically open.

Doesn’t meeting with your binds in the middle of a coffee shop somewhere heavily favor Ankathi still since her medium is Kharla? Yes I am just still doing this to drive you crazy.

Vasia reports not having much luck with convincing Eliza to defect since she technically already works for Kanika directly by also helping Yasrena with Jaal’Darya, it’s a complicated relationship. Also Vasia said she got the impression that Eliza has already gotten involved. The Order of Shadows reports, or less dramatically Yoshai texted me, that Sakhessa and Faelyn sitting out to work on Aureum isn’t really a sign of a rift so much as the assumption that Yasrena can handle it. Yasrena is already well aware that Lancaster would like to interfere and is simply allowing it rather than invoking treaties and the nuance of paperwork, opting to take us on without the rest of Hassani’s help. This is sort of typical of the Phantoms since they do have a lot of people who operate with a lot of independence. Essentially, once Lancaster interferes on Thenica then Yasrena can ignore the treaty without annoying Sakhessa or Kanika.

Troops mustering ya da ya da.

We’ve established the university as requested. Though its still getting construction and recruitment finished up. Recruitment of both staff and students for that matter.

The team is headed to Utewa to look into other methods of alien communications, bit of a flight though.

As for further studying up on Beldobaan, not getting far with the whereabouts of the Ryner since its actually the Vloz’Khress that probably have it. Also worth remembering vampires are notoriously hard to escape.

The avengers team is now redeploying back to Thenica to assist with Lancaster’s plans to help Alnae against Yasrena ever since they got turned around by first Rahlken and then Preacher’s advice.

We’ve last four teams on Thenica while they were going for the supply lines. Beldobaan is already running counter movements against us it seems. Our teams trying to counter their movements are also finding a few odds and ends here and there. In particular, they sent out ships to ‘not here’ and we don’t know where they went.

Further surveillance also reports that it is likely that Kar’Soluth have allies outside of the Hassani to be concerned with. As the position of the Vloz’Khress implies, the Demon Kingdom is a potentially notable factor.

Yes…Lancaster sure knows a good suicide charge when she sees one. It’s sort of her signature move.

I can definitely attach a toolbox to a voidforged’s hands to act as an engineer aboard the ships easier than i can figure out hands. Though not sure about adding more limbs to hold all of it given that it might overcomplicate the frame. Probably worth a try and just hoping we don’t create a cursed abomination.

Test builds! Test builds everywhere!

I remember back in my day when we fought the Bevenny gangs. If they got ahold of you they’d rip yer asshole out your mouth and use it as a straw to drink your insides. These drow ain’t nuffin. If it weren’t for muh bad leg I’d show em some real war crimes.

Though I can’t really tell these people apart from one another. The boys thought they found a few of dem infiltrators, turns out it was a native. Outranked em all too. I’m told the order of takin a walk had some words with them afterwards.

Anyways I got the gang all loaded up for this ‘ere outing Lancaster be planning. I heard we get a free house if we help out. I call dibs on the one by the lake. I’m old, we like to sit on our porches and stare at lakes.

Technically Ehan is still there and in power he’s just in a bunker under the claim that until it’s safe they really shouldn’t have him just wandering around. The rebels being uppity are mostly doing the old “sneak in then hit and run” style of being annoying and are now primarily targeting VSEC facilities with varying levels of success.

As for the hunt for Diadem keys, I’ve sifted through the collective rumors, made up random crap while trying to ask for money, and people who may have heard from a guy who heard from a guy. Also some talks with the various Ika we have about. Rumors corroborate the theory that the Blaiken probably have one. Given that they used to be one of the major members of the alliance that built the ringworld it wouldn’t be unreasonable. We already have the one the Exerlus had, but it is possible the exiled consensus has another of them. Along with Nelta, there is a theory that Utewa would have one or perhaps more just by their nature of being collectors.Though that one is just a “it would make sense if” kind of rumor and Utewa are known for not sharing secrets such as that.

The Jydoq are at least interested in this proposed council seat though it comes with further discussion and negotiation. Given that we’re not the only ones involved in their affairs as of late they are in a weird spot overall. Since they have some nine governors this month, there were some mergers and one split again, they’re generally curious as to who takes the position. That’s more of a matter on their own end to resolve I figure but its whats slowing the process down. Not to mention a few of them are more involved with Kar’Soluth who is becoming more problematic by the day. I’ll get back to that one. Essentially things are moving along while they try to sort out if they should take the deal, it does appear that at least one or two of the factions is interested, but they’re sorting out who would be their director representative. Apparently a small but notable minority were considering voting for Kennae for a moment there since he’s been vigilante’ing around the planet for awhile now.

Haleh reported back with news from Sakhessa, apparently Kar’Soluth getting a bit more uppity isn’t just an exclusive thing on our end. Yasrena has suddenly gained a lot of influence within the Hassani. Apparently she’s recently been in contact with Selona after figuring out the whole dynamic that he always uses and how to enhance her position with him specifically. This all comes with Kanika not even being home right now, she left recently to go continue her journey to figure out psionics in particular. Which has left Yasrena able to operate a little loosely. Kanika showing up if we attack Kar’Soluth isn’t the issue since she’s not even around right now, though Sakhessa doesn’t know why Yasrena very suddenly became much more efficient at her job. The issue is more so that if we attack Kar’Soluth, Yasrena herself is going to be the problem.

Have fun on date night try not to be distracted by contemplations of war with some sort of super charged drow empire. Obviously Alnae is invested in helping with this and Shetou wouldn’t mind poking their heads in since they don’t get along with Kar’Soluth much though they’re not committing to anything. I’m noticing a recurring trend there.

We have managed to find some clues to the whereabouts of Councilor Jaerda, she’s with one of the other Alnae Generals and we’re not entiiiirely sure if that protection she’s enjoying is mandatory or not.

Eneas has offered up some names of “replaceable staff” as she puts it that could come by to swap notes at least. Some of the other university staff who are not as busy with running the school.

As for meeting the head of Utewa’s pandem department, it turns out they’re less amicable than Eneas. Very shadowy and reserved, likely because the pandem aspect of Utewa is one of their more guarded secrets and they don’t actually teach very much of it to others. They focus more on the dangers of it and conveniently omit that this is the magic that lets them warp their planet out of existence.

Haziel gave the warlord a poking but little more then that. For the most part they expressed a concern with matters going on back on Thenica making the idea of moving to Jamalia an odd idea.

As for setting up said sanctum for the Pantheon in the Astral Wilds you kind of hit the same problem but now you’re on Ankathi’s home turf. So Ankathi approves of the idea of course.

Also why is everyone getting asteroids lately…whats the real estate market on those like? Should I want an asteroid too?

Selah mentioned that Ankathi is currently letting Kharla rest since even for her sustaining all that Ankathi has taken a definitive toll on them. Ankathi herself apparently told Selah to tell you that she’ll be dropping by for a visit soon anyways though because she’s curious as to what this whole ‘Shadow’ business is that was going on while she was busy. It does occur to me that they’ve never actually met. Ankathi suggested a formal first convening of the pantheon in some way to iron some things out and, as mentioned earlier, is completely fine with it occurring in the Astral Wilds. Haziel voted for ‘anything else’.

The Order of Shadows has been getting its wing underway with being built at the palace. You’ll never guess their interior decoration choices! Yeah they didn’t install any  lights whatsoever, though weirdly enough The Shadow has been oddly specific about getting some statues made to spruce up the place.

Vasia is going about as directed though some of the officers noted being concerned about her behavior. She’s not as erratic or energetic as usual. Almost as if she’s just clocking in and out by necessity, which has never really been the description of her. If anything that’s actually always been the problem with her now that I think about it.

As for violent species in the hive worlds, as it turns out there is no shortage. They outnumber the ones who will talk to you by about a thousand to one. If anything the issue is finding one that Larazja can actually deal with before they deal with her. Also Larazja is whining that she’s a governor now and shouldn’t be expected to go on dangerous missions. As usual.

On the note of artifacts not in the possession of the Hassani, we at least know a few. Naexi and the revenants are still wandering about, we know where Alakira went, and Kaylen has a third one. Also the Ryner is still somewhere in Kar’Soluth most likely. Actually now that I think about it, Yasrena has been awful uppity lately.

Si Yeon probably could learn pandem but she’s definitely not interested in the practice. She also has to spend most of her time learning more about Sahad.

Reports are in from our shadowy friend about the Lucid Cult issue, we can say just by a pattern of behavior that its our old buddy the Director’s Doppelganger. Same one that appointed Alexandria and posed as you at some parties on Thenica. The Shadow knows they were at some point on Cayetano again but have since left and likely are back on Thenica again. The technically appointed new leader of the cult is just some cult member who is pretty strong, but I imagine that is secondary compared to who appointed them…again. These fucking cultists man. It doesn’t appear that the cultists themselves are malicious towards our authority over them, at least intentionally, just that someone somewhere is up to some weird shenanigans.

As another report they thought to point out that going to war with Yasrena is going to be biting off a little more than we might be expecting. She’s recently gained a lot of power though the means of which are somewhat unknown. Perhaps lessons or inspiration from Kanika’s recent return. The Shadow knows she’s already watching us and waiting for us to do something. She’s been talking to Selona a lot lately and that might be a little concerning.

Uhh…I’m not sure if going to Thenica yourself is the right move there. I know you’ve been training and all but I’m not sure I like your odds if you have to fight a drow vampire matriarch thing.

The agents on Kuhas station have at least come up with a plan to see about abducting a security guard. Most of it involves a whole lot of wards to block out any weird communications it might have with the rest of the security forces. Though these are aliens with alien technology so the odds of success are a little hard to determine.

According to the Order of Shadows from Renjala’s crew over there, the Director Doppelganger is up to some mischief yet again and we at least know they’re somewhere on Thenica. Not that it narrows it down terribly but thought I’d update you on the matter.

We’ve prepped the best we can for a conflict with Beldobaan, we’ll uh…see how that goes.

Well I can think of a few news headlines about us showing up and engaging in a war on Thenica that might not be good for diplomatic issues but naaah it’ll be fine. We’ll just blame Lancaster for it and say she told us to do it.

Also your dreams of the Alnae op not becoming a long slog are optimistic at best. Lancaster is trying to defend somewhere not destroy somewhere else, my  money is on that taking forever. She still has to leave battalions here to keep the defenses up against the exerlus warbots that are attacking us on Diadem all day every day.

Experiments with the ships are coming along, there is something to be noted that if we just place multiple cores that could work too. Just a big array of cores about the size of a refrigerator could represent an entire crew. Definitely less space than a typical crew. At least thats the idea I get from seeing how modern ships use psi crystals to link all their systems together.

One limiting factor on the engineering department so far has been that we still haven’t managed to catch these hands and figure out Adrienne’s magic touch, or my own for that matter.

Also whats budget restrictions between friends eh Lancaster?

The WTC-3 is making slow progress, mostly because it keeps falling over due to how large they’re trying to make the cannon that is sort of the signature of the series.

As for the simulation of our forces against house Sarghess, there was a notable issue in dealing with their previous tactics that we have seen on record. In particular they spread out and move much faster on the ground than the average force will. The most significant effects dealt to them came from our aircraft. Another aspect of the simulation is the assumption that we will be out of position at the time of their attack, as their last six out of eight battles were conducted with a positional advantage. If we assume they start on the opposite side of a battlefield from us, we do about 60% better. If we assume otherwise, simulations project heavy losses. It is likely to depend heavily on the location of any such conflict. We basically want to fight them in a large open area to have the best odds.

Zenaka is slowly becoming more chaotic with the rebellious factions being somewhat upset at the ongoing matter post-summit of being declared a part of the federation led by Ehanxelvun. Their skirmishes into the federated areas are becoming more frequent. Ehan has moved to a secure location on Zenaka and left us information on how to contact him. Apparently he is at some sort of fortified bunker that has sacrificed communications facilities to enhance security as it is a very rustic base with a notable distrust of magic. It kind of reminds me of Renjala’s steam technology actually.

We’ve started shipping some of the Vittles crops around to Alnae.

In regards to Kuhas station. Most of the people you’re buying out just take the money and venture on back into the Reach to find out what to do with all the money. Also yes Renjala’s refinery makes the same basic fuel they use. Though he would be considered to be producing a lower quality version of it, the most common stuff. Utewa is one of the few places in the Reach that can refine fancy fuel but most people don’t find it worthwhile given how many stations can easily be found within the Reach. That or they aren’t operating ships that require that stuff.

Some of the Vessian tribes who came to investigate the food outreach program are definitely interested but our logistics are hitting a problem of sustaining them before anything is finished growing. We sent a large amount of food to Alnae and most of our food on Diadem is still being imported from Cayetano. Keeping the Vessians fed long enough to yield any crops is an issue, while there are only a few hundred of them here they eat more than some species who are considered monstrous for their appetites. The few that are here are manageable but scaling up to having more come and visit would be a logistical impossibility with our current production. So far the best idea Vittles board of directors has is to go in slowly expanding phases as more of them can come.

As for discussing diplomatic relations with them, obviously the food is a big leverage point in their interest with the Federation. Though they are also not governed the same way most larger civilizations are, so its sort of just holding up a “sign up here” billboard and seeing how many show up compared to continuing their nomadic lifestyle. We considered offering to help terraform their world but by the sounds of it, their world was beyond the terraforming ability of anything we could do barring the entity of Rixa-Thenica and that one is just a maybe.

To another end, as the Vittles farms expand we’re seeing more accidents occur due to that whole “Haziel hates everyone” botanical update patch. Not that farming anywhere other than Diadem would alleviate the issue for those involved, but it is worth noting that food production is scaling up to the point that the druidic order of Renjala’s can’t keep up with making sure nothing goes wrong all over the place all at once.

As for smaller planets, we do know about that semi aquatic race who even entered into the Diadome tournament that lives nearby. They are at least space worthy. Other then that the explorers would likely have to find some other small planets to make an offer to. The aquatic peoples are actually quite interested since we seem big and spooky and we’ve learned they are a little terrified to come to galactic awareness only to realize they are surrounded by the most lawless part of the galaxy and nowhere near any other sane civilized people. Also that there are far fewer aquatic people in the galaxy, at least to achieve space travel. Though given their aquatic nature they’re concerned that we don’t have enough water on Diadem, so currently our diplomatic corps are talking them into visiting Cayetano, which is almost all water.

Before you ask, yes Jiyan really should have reported something back by now but we have no idea how far or how deep into the Warrens she went. She said she was fine last time we saw her and knew she was going to be gone for awhile though so I’m not sure if its worth being concerned yet.

Eleazor and Valen have departed Diadem to chase after the jydoq assassin into the Reach. All they know is there are six possible places they might have left to if they have left Diadem at all but we definitely lost track of them.

For now the Jydoq government should be a little safer than usual since we know the assassin is on the other end of the Reach from them. Ranwe also isn’t struggling too much as civil unrest for the Jydoq isn’t particularly violent. It turns out the Jydoq are instead prone to experiencing mass depression. So for them “civil unrest” is more like a steep drop in productivity and their economy. I am reminded of how Hylavi expressed herself by being just apathetic at all times and it kind of makes sense if you ask me.

However, the Jydoq are wary of joining the Federation for the same reasons they never joined Nelta, they’re quite used to remaining independent. This apparently has some history for them with being approached by many other civilizations for various alliances including the Tungsten Teeth, Hassani, and Utewa at one point. Not to mention the Kar’Soluth are also here and pushing for many of the same things. They don’t mind trading or negotiating certain terms, but they don’t particularly like being beholden to an authority that spans further than their own interests. Their initial point is they would only be liable to consider it if they were immediately given a position on the executive board as to make sure their own unique interests and needs were represented at the highest possible levels. Though they wouldn’t mind making immigration easier in both directions and setting up trade routes. Also on Jydoq, a similar summit was held by the Kar’Soluth though we’re not sure what they’re up to over there. We suspect they’re looking for a new person to make an official leader of similar to what they did with Merlan.

In other news, two of the western Alnae members on Thenica were recently crushed by Kar’Soluth. A large chunk of their population is here on Diadem farming, and whether or not that caused a gap in the defenses is hard to say. Reports are that Beldobaan in particular made a sudden and aggressive attack that led to the death of one of the generals and their base of operations has been captured.

The idea of putting Arcurans in a combat mech definitely excites Arcurans. They have already broken six of them in gladiatorial combat. I suppose it counts as training.

Friend has become known as The Shadow upon taking over the plane of shadow in the process of their ascension. Didn’t even know that was an option. Well technically Haziel did it but she had a fragment that made her the legitimate heir to the plane. They’re still settling in though but it is notable that without Ankathi here, since she’s busy at the moment punching angels, we have no idea what their powers actually are. Other then that they can eaves drop anywhere there is a shadow being cast, and we do not know the limit of that ability. It is implied there is some sort of rules and limitations to it but if nothing else, they are known for being a bit secretive.

As for detecting Zero, it was notable that this close to the cluster there was less going on compared to your adventures in the deeper parts of the Astral Wilds. It is also questionable if they are ignoring you or slowly drawing closer because they can’t cast FTL.

It actually isn’t that hard to create stability in Valjala as long as it is something in motion. Such as your idea for Vasia’s asteroid. However, I would advise that hosting the pantheon in your domain might be a bit of an awkward meeting ground. Since it is where you are most powerful and sort of imbalances things a little. It would be like Haziel hosting it in the Fae Wilds, a place where she has all the physical power over any other attendee.

As for my fiance, she works at the bar I play my guitar at every other month or so. Gets me free drinks too!

Eneas points out they can’t stay to take over a temporary professor role since they also possess an administrative position back at Utewa. They only reason they came themselves was to see how things were going on the formerly abandoned ringworld. They also had a lot of questions about those Ika they saw walking around during the festivities though didn’t give any actual opinion on the matter.

Most Reachers despite enjoying the tournament are still nomadic in nature and not terribly interested in joining a formal navy. A few recruits here and there, though mostly those interested in settling around Diadem rather than joining a navy.

Of those invited to the formal founding of the Pantheon, Haziel said sure, Mahuea said he’ll send Vairatoa since his presence would literally incinerate reality around himself, Mokihi said nothing but Waianoa said she’ll represent the quiet turtle, and Eden is just always following you around already anyways. Technically a good start all things considered, its just the Archons are a little difficult to work with since they can never leave their domain without causing severe ramifications.

Vasia in the meantime points out she still needs a ship. Preferrably one large enough to carry Kaiju freighters for collecting samples. Though if you want her to look into the Selona matter, she needs to get to Aryn and Allison to figure out the nature of their cybernetics. Barring that, she needs to find one in the wild that isn’t close enough to Selona to draw his immediate retaliation.

Larazja’s response can be summed up as “she’ll be at the lake”. After being working class for so long, being royalty with a private lake is cushy enough for her. She remains extremely difficult to motivate to do anything. I suppose technically if she is the governor of Roha they just have to have matters of governance directed to an outdoor office with a giant snake woman sunbathing all the time?

It should be noted the Lucid Lance is behaving strangely. They’re mostly going about business as usual but they keep mentioning their leader, and not in the past tense. They also keep undertaking operations we didn’t tell them to do. So far nothing too dramatic, mostly just setting up new bases, but I’m sort of wary of a bunch of cultists suddenly acting on their own.

Well we set up shop at Diadem for now, two more made it back who knows where the other two are. We should probably figure out what we’re doing now. Not many ongoing projects.

Well that was a bad idea. The only three portal locations available were 1) A dead solar system the jesai destroyed 2) Another dead solar system that Vasia destroyed 3) The Nelta military headquarters. Lancaster chose Number 3.

As your advisor I feel before we launch this that I should point out in no uncertain terms, we will be arriving via portal into either an actively occupied territory in the middle of a warzone OR the military capital of Nelta. They do not like us and have an active practice of ignoring our comms now because of what Vasia did and what Selona has done to them three times now.

Option A: A jesai deletes us from existence. Option B: We test those shield generators and anti boarding measures against Rikoy. Who by what I’ve heard, is much more dangerous than a pirate. Rumor has it, started by Lancaster, that Rikoy might have beaten Rahlken so bad that the latter never returned to the eastern side of the galaxy again.

The whole reason for going around was because we wanted to maintain a distance from all this, if we portal straight into it I just need to make sure I have the ability to say “I told you so”

Upon further investigation of Kuhas, no one knows anyone who works for the security team. No friends, no bartenders with a regular, no family members. Every member of the security team is a helmeted soldier with no outside relations. No one has ever seen any of them without the helmets except for Layilli.

Kennae’s main job for you is to find that damned assassin so he could beat the tar out of him again. Though that has little to do with your training I think.

Also that assassin is definitely not a match for the Revenants. For one all the Revenants are solian and for another they all use weapons. The assassin makes weapons from their body instead. That and honestly Sarden probably would go after the assassin herself if she could find them.

Stories of Lore 54

Senshicon was a reasonable success. There have been a few complaints about the format of some of the tournament rules and seeding but that can be adjusted for in the future. It was the first run of it, can’t expect everything to be perfect. It definitely did draw a lot of guests from the Reach thanks to the company’s marketing efforts around Kuhas in particular. A great chance for diplomatic greetings with some people in particular.

It is quite certain that some were here to scout us as much as we are scouting them. Likely leading to credibility of Cazvrath’s suspicions that the mage from Utewa threw the match as not to reveal more than she wanted to. Also Chevalier’s victory might have made people wary of the Voidforged in general. Even if most of them didn’t get to top 16, people just remember who the final winner is. Oh well that’ll be a problem for Hex I’m sure.

Also we sold a lot of hot dogs. Reachers apparently like those.

Meanwhile back at Zenaka, they’ve suddenly started moving the bureaucracy really slowly. Citing that the paperwork is complicated, even though they had that down surprisingly fast just a short  while ago. Though as it stands now, Federated Zenaka isn’t really  moving that much but the rebels are still being rebellious even if they are smaller in number ever since the summit.

Larazja commented that as far as she knows she’s just still in charge of her puddle in Cayetano. Vasia being in charge of Roha means that as far as she’s aware she now listens to Vasia and isn’t entirely certain what the Nevun being a member state actually means.

Despite being Ilex’s advisor for so long, clearly she wasn’t paying very close attention.

Friend is working on their plane shenanigans at the moment, apparently it takes awhile. So by the way in the five years you were gone did you know I had a kid? Eerihild said I should probably mention that.

The tournament was a bit of an upset but also…kind of makes sense? Eerihild learned that Vessians are pretty good at dealing with savage tactics and Haleh learned that Chevalier is very very good at one on one combat. There’s been some dispute about the rulesets favoring certain fighting styles, though all of the top four were melee experts so not so sure how big that complaint really is. Though if Nila had shown up I do wonder how this would have gone.

Meanwhile out in the Astral Plane, no sign of Zero but its a big place where all methods of detection don’t work. I imagine though if you just sat out there long enough Zero might find you judging by how you found the Raven II the first time. Astral gravity or something like that.

Isn’t Irae already knight champion for Valjala? if not her than Holua. Either way you have too many people to keep track of.

The celestial situation is a bit of chaos. To some of them they’re fighting for the continued independence of the celestial realm from planar entities like Ankathi, some just don’t like her specifically, and others are of Selah’s mindset of “well clearly there’s our new god”. Though notably, we’re not getting as many refugees as we might expect. I’m guessing Ankathi is trapping them in some way. Selah says we should probably stay out of Ankathi’s affairs since she’s directly involved in this one. That and they kind of aggravated her with their initial attack and “you know how she is”.

The Lucid cult is still figuring out whose in charge right now as all their leaders keep dying over and over again. To the point that some are wondering if its dangerous to be in a cult. A few are trying to experiment with that mech project at least.

Hrmph, weird station. Apparently we just missed a tournament of some sort. They have some sort of…farming initiative going on. Anyways while we’re here for a little bit, we should see what they ferment here. We’re still waiting for the other team to get back from their latest mission.

Ahhhhh we won. That’s good ol Preacher engineering for you.

Sooo the assassin isn’t here at Jydoq anymore. I just received word from…you sir…that they were at the tournament. Defeated by Gunhild though. Then they disappeared off into the crowd. We can only guess as to their motives. Though Kennae confirms that was them. Which explains why they’ve been so quiet around Jydoq lately, they’ve been out in the Reach.

We’ve distinctly learned that Kuhas has extensive background checks before allowing people to join security. Which is weird because no one has a paper trail to conduct background checks with. It seems like a formality to tell people ‘no’. Which now that I think about it, given the rumors surrounding the administrator there might be something fishy going on there.