Stories of Lore 5

Well the running timer places the Exerlus arrival at an estimated two months and two weeks remaining. Also we’ve sent the royal battleship back towards House Sharen.

As for getting started on golem production, we already have Khymin eager to help. Depending on what type of golems you have in mind, we could just start a company dedicated towards their construction. We could start with simple things such as street cleaners at the least. War golems are definitely a little difficult to even get started on due to the hardware required. Also Khymin is a hobbyist not a professional, so little steps for now.

We’ve put Somnus Golbotics to work to start cultivating what they can on Orchard though it’s going slowly to be careful not to destroy the planet’s atmosphere. Oddly, this involved running more exhaust than we really need to just to balance out the total effect. Speaking of which the initial colony has completed construction so they have a cozy place to work.

As for the Koura elections, they’re still campaigning. Though we have noticed that the current lead candidate sourced “assistance” from Laura King. The illithid named “Harlus” has seen a surge in popularity. Oddly enough, Laura utilized charity to do so. Not quite as nefarious as Hylavi was expecting but Laura is extremely well connected and feared across Koura. So she knows where to pressure the campaign budget for the maximum effect. Hylavi thinks she also hired a few small time criminals to vandalize competing campaign signs and started several rumors that do not put them in the best light. Rival candidates don’t have as much backing as Harlus since the few companies in the system at the moment are relatively small and have a lot less to do with public opinions towards anything one way or another.

The problem with sending ships into the rift is that the entity is still there and won’t let the starships pass particularly far. Notably it accomplishes this by just sitting in front of them so they can’t go forward annnnd well the pilots don’t want to just crash into it. Apparently the entity can expand its size to the point that its not clear if the ship will win that collision. Though they cannot reason with it since it still won’t talk to anyone who doesn’t know sahad. Vasia has been occupied with her mutating parasite experiments so we haven’t managed to send her to keep trying to establish anything with the entity. She says to consider just shooting it and moving on, it is the creator of the parasites so we can ‘claim reasonable offense’.

Speaking of the parasites, Doctor Si Yeon has been managing to keep it under far more control and remove the parasites more effectively. She came up with an injection that kills the parasite but leaves the host unharmed other than some nausea for a day. Though they keep appearing in people out of nowhere due to the rift. Though cases are declining as the rift moves further away from the planet, we expect that soon it will be in open space and hopefully that will see to a decline of the cases.

And….*sigh* as a matter of interest. Doctor Eliza Pierce is here on Koura now. Vasia wants her for New Age, Alnae wants her for imprisonment, Nah would probably want her for the shapeshifting, Yi Seon wouldn’t mind having another medical expert like her, and I said I’d see if you had any thoughts on the matter. Normally I’d take it to Riley while you’re away but we agreed this was a ‘call the boss’ moment to at least check in.

We’ve delivered the Sharen battleship back to them, along with the information about Kar’soluth’s little secret asteroid base. It was a brief exchange they did seem interested by the gesture. Perhaps being in the middle of a warzone has rendered the discussion a bit less than we might hope for, but we did forward the existence of Somnus to them if they should care to visit.

So far chats with our alien are proving fruitful if nothing else for information about his species. Apparently they’re one of the stronger groups in terms of military within the NELTA alliance, though this has made them kind of talkative and they don’t really understand how intelligence gathering works. Basically they’ve never had to fight a drow. This might explain how they wound up as one of the races that attacked those luminous beings at the bidding of Selona, not the sharpest in the drawer y’know.

Messing with the rift in the system has been more of a mixed result, if nothing else we keep chucking probes in. The entity within it is still being a pain in the ass to deal with or communicate with. As it stands Vasia is preoccupied with her other experiments Ilex has her focusing on and Cerys is lightyears away fighting underground monsters so we’re low on people to actually try communicating with it. Though it still maintains a stance of not wanting us poking around in there. Not our department though, we’re still just messing with the rift. It is almost in open space now though if we wanted to try and anchor it into orbit so it doesn’t pass through Koura every seventy years.

Sarnai’s training is going alright. I wouldn’t say she is a natural but at least she’s not inept, kind of a brawler though. She’s learning the stances and the techniques as well as standard melee operations in combat, but if pressured she still just starts to swing wildly. She seems a bit prone to being overwhelmed if things aren’t going as she planned and has some issues with tunnel vision. I throw plastic cups at her while she spars with Alexander just to keep her on her toes. It’s fun.

So far Jamalia recruitment will be a bit slow since its so far away from here that only the most adventurous will go…especially considering that Koura is already a frontier colony in the first place. We may have to try and recruit the natives over there.

 Also I do advise you retreat from the warzone you’re currently inside of, the first lance is almost entirely broken.

It does turn out that the cultists have found ways to extend their use of food through the use of psionics, allowing them to survive on less for longer by controlling their metabolisms. They do get sluggish though, and notably its a survival mechanic rather than something you’d want someone like Cassir to do.

On to New Age matters. Vasia’s pet project is now her…pet dog I guess? I’m told it has potential to be more but it is basically a child right now and they’re working on seeing if it can talk, though psionic scans are proving strong potential. Though the idea to perform experiments on the process in new environments will have to wait until Setani returns from her adventures with the Astral Order.

The patients they are experimenting on with the whole awakening concept are still showing a lot of difficulty. Even the minor signs of recovery are proving questionable though Salied specifically is doing the best. We’ve gotten to the point where she at least knows to feed herself though she still just keeps staring off into space all day and mumbling to herself.

The construction of a holding Freighter has been completed by the shipyard. It’s basically a big empty box with a two meter thick hull lined with all the wards imaginable. Only transports one thing at a time unless you stack some cages in it, though this should help for bringing in large samples.

We haven’t found any real signs of sabotage on the ships New Horizons has been producing. It seems that Sarden just uses the company for her cover identity rather then doing anything useful, though in double checking the books we have noticed we are constructing a corvette that is reserved for a sale that doesn’t exist. That one’s a little bit suspicious. We could just sell it once its done being built as usual, though it has a custom design that leaves it a few tons lighter than it should normally be. Not entirely sure if that one is Sarden’s doing and if so, whatever that could even be for.

It would seen the colony owners don’t want orbital bombardments to take place, since the creatures live underground anyways though we’ve mentioned just targeting larger collections of biomass. Its currently going through officials who are debating the merits versus the repercussions that might come down the line.

We’ve started building the holding station in orbit around Koura in the opposite hemisphere to keep the station safe but accessible.

As for hiring a Sivataur team, actually pretty easy. If we pay for travel expenses and stock food sources for them, namely luxury slaves, we can go get a team of them quite easily. They do sort of enjoy this line of work and there are a lot of them not really officially employed at the moment. The only issue is keeping them from acting erratically, they do tend to scoff in the face of authority quite a lot so be wary of that just a little bit. Next thing you know they find some intelligent species to be a more interesting hunt and first contact goes bad.

As for Vasia’s concerns on alien tech, she just shrugged and went back to her usual affairs. Without any contact or objects to study she says its impossible to really ponder too much. To a similar note, contacting Giza results in little that could help Salied unless she were to be sent to the Valdir directly and their method of fixing her might not have that much to do with Sahad. They have noted that similar cases to what Vasia is studying have been found by those in proximity to the apprentices of sahad. Which is extending the theory that witnessing novice uses of it has some more traumatic effects than that of experts such as the Valdir Mothership’s use of it.

Sarden seems largely to use Laura as a point of contact and then her information network becomes at her disposal. I suspect this is a frequent method of operation for the Revenants, since following us around from planet to planet can make it difficult to establish a new information network every time. It would not surprise me if they just exploit local resources, that or they have a much larger following than we’ve initially suspected. However, in keeping tabs on her, we suspect she’s not actually here to assassinate Cassir. She hasn’t made any further moves in that regard despite how long its been since her first attempt. She seems to be visiting a lot of strange places and people. Specifically, refugees from the destruction of the more populated systems. Also specifically, the refugees with combat experience. I think she’s actually here recruiting and just saw an opportunity to take a shot at.

As for her hotel, we haven’t found much nefarious there but I did notice it extends into the lower decks as a basement level where staff related facilities are located. Which might be part of how Sarden is moving around so mysteriously.

Vanjin has managed to track down the engineer we’ve been looking for. However there is a slight complication. She was not sold on Solvang’s official channels but with some bar scouting she was able to figure out that the pirates involved in this are one of Solvang’s personal teams that report to Asmoday directly. It is likely that this was a mission rather than a random act of piracy and that this engineer has been taken very deliberately. Whether or not they made it look like random piracy on purpose is up for debate. Upon pressuring around, Vanjin has uncovered that the engineer was likely taken to the middle of nowhere. There exists a repurposed super carrier that flies around in deep space, it is not fitted to deploy ships like a typical carrier but is really just a space station with thrusters at this point. Apparently, after the events of the invasion in which Song Yi and Indal invaded the Raven, another more mobile version was built. If Vanjin is to retrieve the engineer, she will need to assault The Raven II. Backup and a better plan might be required for that one.

I’ve taken some time to look the report over though, it is strange for Asmoday to specifically target this engineer and immediately ship her off to the Raven facility which specializes in high powered maniacs. I suspect whatever this engineer works on is of specific interest to the phantoms. Which does bring into question what that factory is producing that could attract their attention. Though it’s up to you if we want to get tangled up with those people all over again.

As for Laura’s prominent underlings, I suppose that would be these dastardly folk. To be noted, they’re not all actually related. Laura just forces members of her inner circle to take her surname to promote the family mafia image. Usually by the time you reach that rank, a name change isn’t too bad of an idea I suppose.

We’re awaiting transport freighters from Auwana to help ship the bug queen thing to Sol for research, its a bit too big and unruly to be effectively and safely transported aboard military freighters. The war in general is going in our favor though now that we’ve come to the understanding of how the species operates and are now hunting down the queens specifically. We’ve lost some more forces but we’re making good progress on the eradication of those creatures that build more of everything else.

Stories of Lore 4

I’ll make a note not to tell anyone about the rift in any detail. Though this definitely doesn’t seem like what we signed up for with the establishment of a frontier station…I blame the drow in the basement.

The entity still doesn’t talk to anyone other than Vasia evidently, or any other sahad users at the very least though she’s the only one we have that can form a complete sentence at the moment.

The Royal Battleship belongs to Sharen apparently, and also of course they’d want it back. They’re also looking to find whoever stole it… Maybe we keep under wraps that they’re here right now.

As for Raiben Hayl, Alnae doesn’t actually know who he is. The problem with proving who he is would be how we found out, and the basement dwellers don’t typically like revealing their presence. Though given the current state of the aethernet with some effort we could probably work around that one.

So according to Khymin one of the problems with retrofitting the cruiser is that the only way to make it more stable is to take out some of the engines that give it the speed it has, or make it bigger at which point its getting into being a bit large. Which will hurt its overall speed, more so the acceleration and deceleration times. So far his suggestion is to just add more stabilizers to the seats themselves. Though it has to be a bit bigger to accommodate that as well or the crew section has to get even tighter. Alternatively he could take out one of the engines to make room for other things but then it slows down. It’s definitely an overspecialized ship.

To another note when talking with Khymin, I generally filter out his bright ideas for station improvement from my report but as you can guess he is a strong proponent of golems.

As for inviting Sol Media here, they don’t seem interested in making the trip. Apparently their original plan was to just call the Order instead of making the month long voyage through space to get to us.

We do know the rocks of Koura have the property of holding and gradually dispersing sunlight. Some basic experiments showed it works with any kind of light actually, and they don’t disperse it that quickly from the deepest parts of the underground network they form. The science team thinks they can actually track the planet’s evolutionary history by examining certain elements of these rocks and the light they release, such as looking into the past for any mass extinctions or other wide spanning events. Basically the geologists are having fun though its not that useful for us. Though they do store mana quite well, they just have an issue of constantly releasing it over time. There’s at least some promise in them as a mana storage material that is being looked into.

Somnus Golbotics has been founded to manage the hydroponic towers as well as the intended farming of AZ68-4. It’s currently still setting itself up and waiting for any actual yield as well as having taken over the research efforts on the potential of Koura’s native biology for use as food.

Also you are aware that if you allow Koura to form its own elected government, and you don’t win, that you will no longer have control over it right?

I suppose I’ll see you in a few months after your expedition to the new planet. Have fun with that, I’ll keep in touch over the APT.

As per your orders elections are being held on Koura to staff the civilian government. Campaigns are getting underway.

I’ll just leave a message since you’re apparently busy on that drow world at the moment. A conflict I hear is going…messily. We’ll see what happens when you get there.

As for looking into the stabilization of the rift, Alexander says the easiest way is to build a machine around it with the help of Somnus that we can operate to lock into a more consistent orbit. Sort of like the pandem gates that they use to get around back in Sol. Similar to maintaining a tunnel albeit a little easier since only one side of the tunnel has to be repositioned constantly. That or maybe with some effort attach it to the station, though people might notice it in that case. If we were to reveal the nature of the rift, we could use the same setup to open it upon payment if we were to try charging a toll for it.

In either case this would be an operation around 725 million to accomplish since it would have to be set up in space and probably large enough to send ships through. Not to mention the amount of parts and probably engineers we’d need from Sol to get all the way out here to build it. There is a reason that rift tunnels are not a commonplace thing even for the super rich. At least its half off since we only need to deal with one side of it.

The ‘boxed’ colony set is en route to PZ142-2, along with Lancaster herself. Though they’re going to take a bit to get there. Same for the construction teams to build the station on the moon.

Oh and also while you’re away I’ve had some of the knights keeping tabs on our alien captive that we’re still trying to talk with about the matter. So far we’ve gotten it to stop spewing death threats and now just grumble a lot. Progress! Though it turns out its species is an obligate carnivore so we’ve had to change its feeding routine, now that it finally communicated that to us at least.

The answer to stabilizing the rift with psionics is “not even a little bit”. Partially because its dangerous to attempt, manipulating planar activity causes corruption. Basically you could cut off all the cult psionics from their psionic abilities by having them even attempt to do that.

Cassir has been overseeing the construction at the temple while we deal with the revenants, simply because if we let her go off on her own right now there’s a high chance Setani won’t show up out of nowhere to save her ass. The importing of the cult’s other members are a bit of a mixed situation. More than half leave immediately once we put them on Koura since they ‘didn’t sign up for this shit’ as they like to say. So the cult’s numbers are diminishing quickly though that is to be expected with the shift in vision it is undergoing.

Related to this, Cassir isn’t planning to leave Koura until we have some progress shown on the revenants, given that had Setani not shown up she would have definitely been murdered by Sarden. So we’re leaving that one to Nah division.

As for the labs in the bottom deck, Subject 004-C is still in its shell. Though Vasia is keen to experiment with things even further she is awaiting the results of the first metamorphosis before we start altering environmental factors around it.

The hydroponic tower experiments do prove a good testing ground for the rocks. We’ve managed to show some progress using local flora that you can find growing near the rocks in the wild though it appears the light they emanate is not sufficient for Sol crops to be grown inside of a building. So they use regular lamps for that one right now.

We’ve begun construction of the colony on AZ68-3, when it comes to wards we’ve found some targeted methods of countering the atmosphere’s effects now that we know its based on and arcane occurrence. Though it drains mana very fast if it goes into the actual clouds of the upper atmosphere. On the ground, should keep any rain out hopefully.

When it comes to synthesizing Koura crystals, check out this thing I have. You flip this switch and tah-dah! Light. I call it a lamp. I’ll have the alchemists look into it for you though.

We don’t have any formal chefs in 40th Day. We have survivalist cooks, not quite razzle dazzle high dining chefs. Though the restaurant business down on Koura are already hard at work with finding ways to make the local wildlife a bit more edible and worth harvesting.

Salied is still in holding by Vasia, so far she has demonstrated some level of recovery. In that she will swallow things put in her mouth, which is close to eating. Vasia has been feeding her smoothies.

Vaeri is away with the astral order for now so we’ve lost our contact to Laura from here on out unless we want to reveal the existence of others to her. To that note, she is getting closer to finding out who we are though we can largely blame that on the Revenants, as inconvenient as that is. Though she did at least give us Sarden’s civilian identity here on Somnus.

Aryn has looked into the matter and found that the ID belonging to “Urricea” lives out of a hotel near the docks, though somehow has an employee ID with New Horizons shipyard. Upon some scoping out the hotel we’ve noticed she never enters or exits her room through the front door. Observation drones have found that she gets in and out through the hotel lobby though. We have a suspicion that the front door and the window are trapped, and we’re not sure if the other assassin is living out of the same location or not. According to Laura they don’t appear anywhere unless as a physical threat in full armor.

Keeping tabs on Urricea is hard, she disappears into crowds and alleys everywhere she goes out of pure habit. So we’re pretty sure she’s Sarden though we’re not entirely sure what she does during all of her off time when she’s not jumping on us. Though we have caught her wandering awfully close to the temple that Lucidity is having built a few times. She appears to have a few associates around the system she uses to acquire things, though whats peculiar is that she hasn’t taken any overt action like she did when Cassir first appeared. Perhaps because Cassir is under constant guard right now, but we’re sure she’s up to something specific. Though we can’t determine what she’s doing since she keeps disappearing. We’re good at this but she’s as much of a professional as we are.

Back to Laura King, it seems she gets her information from practically everywhere. Even if she isn’t actually the biggest crime lord, she’s established a reputation around Auwana as being ‘the big one’. Through contact with a lot of different people utilizing her conversational tactics she keeps getting scraps of information here and there that amasses into her being able to keep track of whats going on around here. She’s also a specific type of criminal that other criminals feel safe around since she isn’t prone to wildly lashing out or doing overtly aggressive action. Given her reputation for having  code of family honor among her gang, people just feel like they can trust her with the more illicit side of the market. We’re not sure about her drug chains though, we do know a specific drug she acquires that is an illegal sedative is coming from Thenica’s Shetou controlled continent. The other chains she doesn’t seem to be restocking as of late. I suppose we can tell which one is selling well, apparently she supplies Ohalyn with these most frequently.

We’ve looked into a few low-mana areas on the grid in search of the mana batteries to very little luck. An example of which is just finding a place where the resident works himself half to death for twelve hours a day so isn’t home to use too much power. We have a scanner we borrowed from 40th Day to look for any  weirdly high mana concentrations but we didn’t find anything on that either. I believe that either these batteries are being used in close proximity to something else that generates a large amount of mana to hide from scans or they’re spread out as singular batteries all over the place for some other purpose perhaps. That or are just shielded from scans. Though I find it unlikely that the Revenants would be behind this, they definitely think of themselves as some sort of hero. It is unlikely they would be willing to use slave batteries.

As for Ohalyn, we know she likes money so buying her out might work though that would cost enough money to ensure that it remains more profitable for her to avoid the practice than to continue it. Its kind of hard to get a read on her since she’s a workaholic that is always in her brothel slash bar, which makes it difficult to understand what kind of person she is outside of her business. If she hasn’t moved into a nicer place with the money she’s making we’re not sure what she’s doing with it all and its unlikely that she is trying to get on top of the criminal food chain. We know she has a business relationship with Laura and has shown no signs of wanting King’s position in the hierarchy. After some effort, Aryn managed to find out that she uses the Solvang banks to store all her money which is the end of the trail we can track.

Meanwhile, back in Sol, Vanjin finally arrived at the Solvang station to look for details on that missing ship. It was headed to a frontier colony on R4-1….you may notice its suspicious that its on the planet closest to the star in a system with no planets. Also its an unnamed system. It turns out this colony is built inside of a large asteroid, and is likely doing something covert there. The colony is funded by a minor house from Kar’Soluth. It is a very short distance away from Da Xian, the first system to see Shetou colonization efforts around the unbound star. One would even call it ‘within striking proximity’. We know the ship went missing in transit on the way there but not exactly when given the fact it was probably not sending logs for a particular reason or another. Vanjin has been questioning around the station and believes the ship was captured by pirates not too far into its journey. Said pirates then sold the ship and its crew off back through Solvang channels but it gets lost in the sheer volume of transactions with very little identifying details. So its likely that the engineer in question is back in Sol somewhere. Vanjin went through the bounty contacts to get a description of the engineer and is fairly sure they would have been sold into the luxury slave trade. So now she’s looking around for details into that.

As you can see she’s a bit too busy to look into pirate matters back here around Auwana.

As for smaller scale recreational drug producers, there are a few groups around Koura who are doing so but they’re not illegal so they don’t have as much need to skulk around the underworld with us. Looking into matters back in Alnae prisons would require us to send someone back to Sol, or to redeploy Vanjin from her current objective.

One more thing, the Astral Order wants to fund us hiring the Nomads once again. Aryn did a good job of convincing them to come back despite how things ended with Halaestra. So…they’re back but we had to forward the payment they missed when Halaestra took off.

Well that’s interesting, Gunhild captured what appears to be the subterranean alien queen. Though that term was placed on it by us due to similarities to Sol life forms. It would be more accurate to say it is the builder of the other organisms rather than the mother. It apparently puts them together like golems and then leaves them to incubate until they start moving on their own.

Reviewing the footage we have of the central hive chamber we found this creature in, the creatures appear to be assembled and wrapped in what becomes their skin. They look like just bags of flesh filled with stuff at first but the footage shows some mid-way through incubation. Its as if they start to take shape and come to life during the process and fill out their flesh bags properly over time. The creature doesn’t really use language, so even the tongues spell app doesn’t help us figure out how to communicate with it. Though we have reason to believe its not the only one on that planet. Vamon has been scanning and found other areas around the planet that show similar scales of biomatter concentration underground.

Despite this creature’s capture, the fighting still continues with the aliens as it did not display any hive control mechanisms. It just seemed to make things and send them to various locations where they could lie dormant. That’s about as much as we could figure out with our available resources on the planet. We might consider shipping the alien samples back to Somnus for analysis, though I don’t know who handles that. It would be faster to send it back to Sol though if we wanted results quicker to figure out how to end this war with the aliens earlier as people are dying the longer this takes us to do. We’ve also lost one of the mechs.

Stories Of Lore 3

This is Exme Faythe reporting live from the studio here on Thenica. The Kar’Soluth have announced that one of the most wanted criminals in the system was discovered to be operating at a frontier outpost named Somnus, a space station located in the Z-68 system, also known as Auwana.

This is Reika Kazamisha, a slave from the Vloz’Khress mines who incited a riot leading to her own escape. She is known to have killed Ilia Vel’Vloz’Khress, the former Val and matriarch of the Vloz’Khress clan. She has also been confirmed to have killed sixteen members of the Vloz’Khress family and over three hundred and sixty two Vloz’Khress personnel. The Vloz’Khress have assured us that the standing bounty of twenty billion credits for her head still stands to this day.

According to our resources, she is operating openly as a member of a group known as the Astral Order, living on Somnus station. Sol Media would like to remind viewers that it does not encourage the pursuit of bounties. Reika is extremely dangerous and should be approached with caution – if at all.

We also learned that Somnus station has recently reached out to Alnae in order to have an embassy with the empire opened on its station. We reached out to Grand Marshal Kaylen Yuriko though she declined to comment. All members of the high council could not be reached either.

Song Clan has moved to intercept Sarghess’ incursion on SV2 beta. The fighting has begun and the war-torn colony is now plunged into war once more as forces from House Song and House Sarghess clash in its streets. More on situation as it unfolds.

The Valdir Empire has been reported to be colonizing three additional planets already, notably forming a line as you can see here, moving deeper into the galaxy.

Not sure if you keep up with the news..but Hylavi’s job is about to get a lot harder.

They left some details out when it comes to the prototype cruiser. You’ll get there fast but you won’t be in good shape when you do…unless you’re First Officer Riley apparently.

Anyways, Hylavi has gone digging into Raiben Hayl a little more. He’s currently in Hylavi’s holding cells and his assets are being broken up as best as possible though it would seem some of his conspirators were quick to run off with the money while throwing him under the bus. I find it mildly surprising that such men think themselves harmless criminals compared to violent pirates, yet have vastly less loyalties than those of the dirtier sort. Maybe there is something to be said about bonds forged through combat.

As for the university idea, Renjala doesn’t seem interested in creating such a thing for fear of angering the other powers that be in Sol. Which is a fair point, the first alien to learn pandem from us is bound to become a target. As well as whoever taught it to them.

There may be some interest from the jydoq in the sanctuary of Somnus, if nothing else Hylavi probably makes them feel like it could be a good idea. Though we’d have to help transport them here, keeping in mind very few people who are in a bad position also have the ability to just pick up and move elsewhere. That being said, until the hydroponic towers reach production levels we might want to slow down on just inviting everyone in before we start running out of sustenance for everyone like the rest of the galaxy. Especially with ARK transporting refugees here in their freighter.

I went to Estelcar on Thenica to speak with Kaylen. She’s at least easy to talk to, and seems willing to send someone as an ambassador to keep in touch or help out with things between us and them. Since we have a bunch of empty buildings that wasn’t too hard to sell since someone just has to show up. One of the nicer places have been renovated to provide a facility for this embassy. Currently they sent a small staff including Ambassador Nelan Elwys.

As for domesticating the local fauna, we have a few researchers working on that. Though that could take some patience I am told as they try to domesticate and breed a new form of life into something we’d be able to eat in any particular quantity.

Construction work on AZ68-4 has begun, though it might need a proper name once it has a formal colony and no one wants to refer to it by its serial number anymore.

The offices on Koura have been made into a proper government office. Though I’m not sure it counts as provisional since we definitely own that place.

As for the matter of the Cult Warlord, Hylavi is currently searching for the assassin’s who tried to kill her. Though they have been particularly hard to find. With the exception of their attack they disappeared without a trace. We know one is elven and female though the other could be a golem for all we know. Hylavi suspects they have civilian identities instead of hiding in a dark corner, though that just makes it harder if they’re actually good at hiding their identities like that. We are already doing a lot to track what is going on around Somnus and Koura and Hylavi thinks the only way to really track those two down would be to create even more paperwork and security checkpoints to keep track of people’s movements to try and find any suspicious activity. Though the colonists at large would probably not appreciate that, as many do come to the frontier to escape larger more controlling governments.

We’ve been keeping Cassir under intense watch to make sure no one is sneaking up on her. Though she has left the station already so there’s only so much we can do at that point. It is unknown if her assassin’s followed or are still here on the station. Apparently these are old enemies of Tyne and Whitetalon, though they never could really figure out who they were either.

Okay but quick question, were we ever conservative with who we accepted as squires and students? I’m pretty sure its an open-enrollment program.

We’ve won the survey report, apparently by a factor of 24,999,998. Someone bid with an extra 2 credits it looks like. Cheeky, yet calculated in case someone else did the exact same thing. Here’s the initial survey report.

So far our alien slave friend is just being a matter of trying to communicate with them. With Hylavi’s help we’ve been able to deduce it is a grouchy thing that keeps threatening to kill us soon as it gets out. So hope you’re having fun with that. It appears to be a soldier from an alien race that is actually on the Sol’s list as ‘actually dangerous’. Many alien civilizations are not as powerful as we are militarily or their anatomy just doesn’t suit warfare as well as ours does. This thing looks like it’ll fuck up a dragonborn. We’re not actually sure how it got captured in the first place. It definitely seems very aware of what happened to its ambassadors last year though.

The third lance continues its campaign with Madhammer across the planet, and they have found some level of intelligence though definitely towards the minor side of the scale. It’s more comparable to an octopus. The underground dwellers have a multi species civilization like  hours, though those at the top are really just a little clever not quite writing with language or anything. Do with that what you will, in the meantime Madhammer bombed thousands of them out of existence already.

Reika took the first lance to confront the Jaal’darya. It turns out to be a politically complicated situation. The Jaal’Darya decided to just leave when confronted by Reika instead of requiring much direct bloodshed. Though it is inevitable that Kar’Soluth will be taking an interest in our order and Somnus station soon given her notoriety among the Vloz’Khress.

In other news, I got an email asking if we would be willing to do an interview with Sol Media. I will remind you, you are a lich.

Company reports, 40th Day has been extracting samples of the atmosphere from AZ68-3. It appears to be a gaseous form of the arcane disintegration effect, which is why it is so spectacularly destructive. The magical effect can already be replicated with a spell, though the sheer mass of it that is in the atmosphere is definitely bizarre. Other gases in the atmosphere are responsible for the signal blocking however which has created the current mixture. Armed with this knowledge, a survey team was able to send a probe to the ground that was automated to return despite the lack of signal. It was discovered that the disintegration cloud only exists in the upper atmosphere. While that is a very thick layer, the ground itself does not have this effect. The cloud is magical in nature so does not effect the rain. It was suggested that the cloud is basically impassable without very serious scientific effort, though we could get onto the much safer surface by use of a pandem rift from another plane. Just…wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone while there. The atmosphere below the cloud is not quite right for habitation but at least it doesn’t melt your skin off in seconds. The oxygen content is too high, so just adding some other stuff and filtering out some other contaminants makes it habitable enough.

Az68-4 efforts have begun with the construction of a basic colony with which to use as a base for attempted seedings later. There are definitely a lot of possibilities with this planet overall. The only real issue is the reason it’s so cold is that it’s quite far from the system’s star so we’ve been experimenting with things that don’t need quite as much sunlight.

The New Age laboratories are continuing their experiments on the strange creatures we captured samples of. With Vasia’s pet projects doing well. Currently the laboratories are making room for Vasia’s new test subjects that are being…imported with some help from their new friend Ohalyn. Also there is that whole report she gave a presentation of at the recent meeting. I’m not going to pretend to fully understand it.

ARK has been beginning to look for the rogue cults and bring them to Auwana. Cassir has been spooking a few of them, as many signed up for yoga instead of being a part of a crazy war cult. Though the enlightened seem to like her.

Speaking of which, Cassir has taken one of the starships alongside her closer crew to go and deal with some rogue elements out there. She is currently in transit.

Currently Linsun doesn’t seem all that eager to help sponsor a university on some colony deep into the frontier. They’ve historically used their universities as a position of power to exert over the other houses of Shetou which establishing one on Somnus wouldn’t quite do. Not to mention with the state of things, not sure how many people are all that concerned with their higher education. If anything trade schools are doing well, particularly the trade ‘hunting edible monsters on alien worlds’.

As for space to begin the university, that might be easier on Koura, simply  since space is at a premium aboard a space station. Technically there are some areas it could be done, just more expensive. Depends what everyone really wants to get done.

Related to this, getting a skyscraper on Koura is plausible…but I’m not sure the cult can use all of it. Then again who knows what kind of paramilitary force it might become if Cassir has her way.

We’re looking for the Revenants once again, though they are still elusive. Our closest thing to a lead is that the crime boss Laura King seems to know something about them. She also seems to know something about the parasitic infection and is making us choose between the pieces of knowledge for now. If we cannot extract the information Laura knows, we at least know that the Revenants are in some way tied to the criminal underworld to move around and get what they need. There is a high chance they rely on Laura directly and if we keep an eye on things around there they might reveal a list of candidates to us. How many elves can Laura really be meeting with?

On that topic, contact with Laura has been interesting. Though its worth remembering she has taken down rivals before by joining them. She is a clever person but those are often the most dangerous. Though as it stands right now, she does not know who we are and is likely to try and figure that out as time goes on even if she is being cooperative. When we recruited Sophia we only had to pull her out of prison, she had very few options from there and just went with whatever we told her. She was a natural #2. Laura is a matured crime boss on the other hand, and may be a little more difficult to control. We could watch her attempts to deduce who we are as a sort of test of her abilities, or just keep her in the dark as to maintain distance from someone who specializes in being an information broker. Alternatively, she does have a record of appreciating loyalty and some code of honor among thieves so bringing her into the fold more fully might make her a little more endeared to us. Up to you.

Raiben is currently in jail for an indefinite period of time. Somnus’ justice system isn’t too specific and Hylavi is just holding onto him while doing the math over the matter as slowly as possible. Contact with him has been far more predictable. He would of course take any offer we make him that gets him out of holding and back to making money. He is pure greed and selfishness, and lacks the physical danger crime lords like Laura have at their disposal. easy to predict or control as desired if you really want him around here playing with faking taxes and the economy of the system. Though we would have to get Lancaster to let him out.

Ohalyn has been approached by Vasia for actual business purposes so we just kept track of her report on the adventure to see what we can learn about Ohalyn. It’s quite evident that Ohalyn is of the ‘dead inside’ type of criminal and that has made her merciless. Her slave trade has reached into all aspects of the profession. While this isn’t anything new, this may affect Alnae’s ability to look the other way. The Astral Order’s version of slavery might be okay, and taking in prisoners or voluntary slaves might be easy enough for Alnae to accept. Though Ohalyn is definitely stocking people that have been outright abducted, and also prepping some to become mana batteries. That last one is something Alnae has a very strong stance against. However that leads to another problem…if there are mana batteries we don’t know about in the Auwana system, what are they powering? There are no battleships besides ARK’s parked in the area or mysterious colonies we don’t have any insight to. Using slaves as mana batteries is also a way to keep off the power grid so no one can see how much you are using.

Vanjin is currently en route to the Solvang station in the Sol system. She still has our membership credentials so should be fine. She will report back once she gets over there. However, Aryn points out she unfortunately cannot confirm what the Siwa factory was making as that specific facility is on a closed network. Though she was able to pull up past assets that have been moved into less discreet hands to get an idea. She’s actually pretty sure this particular factory is a layered front. It appears to be an arms manufacturer, but underneath it is producing and selling slightly more illegal weapons. Particularly viruses both physical and cybernetic in nature. However, that is also likely just to explain why its being kept a secret. Aryn found a few records still flying around Sol that indicate it has received shipments from third parties for resources that are not used in the production of…really any of that. Said shipments are not inherently that strange, but if you compare it to the things we know the factory has produced it doesn’t quite match up. That being said we just might not be catching everything they make, though judging by the shipment quantities, there is something strange going on in there and no criminal elements seem to have any idea what it is. At least not the ones we can get in touch with. It’s as if the factory is producing a lot of something that it isn’t selling to anyone.

As for the drugs on 105th, most come from independent manufacturers on Thenica. Some of which is actually from our old friend Aberhoff’s factories. Some of the more recreational ones are grown here since we have less restrictions on those kinds of things as other settlements and its easier to do so that way. The coffee comes from a plantation in Shetou space. The drug store’s records aren’t as shady as most other things we’re dealing with and a quick check in their inventory records seems legit. Notably, there are certain drugs they don’t have, but Laura King does. The really really illegal kind, used not for recreation but assault. We’re not sure where she’s getting those from as obviously she doesn’t even keep inventory records.

The war with the underground bug monsters is going…well. We’ve lost about a sixty five men so far, though have killed thousands of them for it. Granted they are just bug monsters for lack of a better word. As the battle goes on, we’re seeing more advanced tactics being deployed by the enemy. They’ve also become less of a passive seismic seeking threat and started to launch ambushes on our forces in the middle of the night.

Our continued adventures also include finding some much larger versions of these creatures. Samples have been handed over to the colony that originally hired us to see if they have any researchers who might discern something about their anatomy. Apparently they can exist in a form of hibernation, which might be why they’re just buried all over the place waiting to pop out.

Their counter attacks have been growing steadily more and more thought out though, and the types of monsters that appear seem to be different as if adapting to what we’re doing to eliminating them.

Stories of Lore 2

This is Exme Faythe, reporting from Thenica today. After the recent death of so…so very many people of Alnae high command, a council vote was enacted to grant the title of Grand Marshall to Kaylen Yuriko. Many are supportive of the prodigal general’s promotion, though some criticize her inexperience. At ninety four years old, she is the youngest Grand Marshall in Alnae history. Prior to the invasion of Sol, she was only a colonel and commanded only one brigade. Though she has seem some success in the field, previous Grand Marshall’s had lost more battles than she has ever seen. However, the Alnae high command has been repeatedly targeted and now there are few candidates left to take on the position. In a risky gamble, the High Council have decided to elect a grand marshall with enough individual prowess to prevent her own assassination instead of based purely on command experience.

Kar’soluth has made bold invasions onto Shetou territory on SV2-Beta, attempting to take control of a major city belonging to House Sharen. House Sarghess has successfully taken control of the city in a surprise attack. With most of the citizens still bearing loyalties to House Sharen, it is unlikely it will be attacked from orbit and Jaal’Darya have moved troops overtly into House Song’s territory. Threatening a great danger to the territory if House Song moves to assist Sharen. The situation is still developing.

Valdir has continued to ignore everyone and keep flying elsewhere in the galaxy and they will not respond to any of my emails as to where they are actually going.

Attempts to rebuild lost areas are going slowly, the famine brought about by the invasion has gotten worse as factions burn each other’s farmlands simply to win the battle even if that results in no one having food in the end. Newly formed organizations amid this chaotic environment are being referred to by the formal empires as “gangs”. In truth, many of them operate as normal small governments trying to find self sufficiency in a time of crisis. Though just as many find that sufficiency preying on the others.

More and more civilians are seeking to flee to the colonies on the frontier for hope of a better living situation, though few can afford transportation to reach these places or hope to begin a new life there.

That’s all for this week, now to cosmology and then sports!

Well this has all been eventful. Khymin is currently overseeing the construction down in Koura in the wake of all this mess. We’ve already seen some interesting numbers among the infected. It seems that most of them were definitely present in that little uprising they had, but about one percent of the population have immature parasites. Which we are…dealing with. Related to this research, the wildlife show high infection rates and do bring up the question of how many species are actually alien wildlife and how many are mutated variants of the same wildlife. We have found that the mutations in the wildlife are less dramatic, or at least to our senses. I believe the parasites have a certain compatibility with the local creatures and have not yet figured out human anatomy and how to make it do what they want. Though we’re not sure what they want. So current medical advice to the citizens is not to meander outdoors with open wounds, and only drink the colony water.

Apparently the parasites’ hosts are compelled to help deliberately spread them, though not with any particularly master plan. They just run up and vomit parasites into open wounds…as lovely a thought that is. Though they only do this once the infected host has eggs to give. This does not seem to be the primary way people have been getting infected though, otherwise that would have been kind of an obvious report. The parasite is designed for the local wildlife not people, so something else is likely to be the cause of it getting into regular people.

Also we’ve managed to tunnel out the area beneath the colony to allow shuttles to be deployed through the rift. It isn’t a pretty operation but the rift will likely move soon anyways. At least we can get to it right now.

With some conferring with Hylavi, she points out that right now the problem with the intelligent alien races is that they see us as a very direct threat. However, the jydoq people are the second closest galactic neighbor and in shambles right now. It could be worth finding more of them to bring aboard our station to further our image as being friendly towards the galactic community. However, the jydoq are notoriously reclusive compared to other races and have been assimilating into Sol for reasons unknown. So maybe not the best first choice.

As for attracting them to us, it definitely doesn’t help that we have enough firepower here to pose a serious threat to any of their fleets that might want to come poking around. I actually feel like they won’t no matter how appealing we make ourselves unless we make contact with them enough to plant the seed of potential. Hylavi mentioned that it also depends which aliens you want to attract. Trade obviously attracts those interested in money, though if we just started teaching every alien that came through about pandem magic we could attract the powers of the galaxy. If nothing else their militaries would be very interested. Though that might also attract the Ire of some of the greater powers of Sol. If we manage to anger Alnae and Shetou at the same time by just giving away our system’s greatest weapon against alien threats, our station won’t be around for very long though. So no visitors.

On that end, Caitlyn has assembled her crew and taken off into the stars to see what she might be able to find.

As for contacting a cruiser-capable shipyard, there are three manners of doing this all of which having some complications. Independent shipyards in it for the profit are producing at full capacity with orders to last for ages, though many of these contracts are owned by the larger governments. The problem with this is that we just have to wait until they have some room to spare, that or outbid current contracts for a higher place in the queue, apparently a common practice by now. If you want to get into a silent bidding war with them, you are free to just pick a number and throw it at them to see where you get.

The second is by appealing through larger agencies who typically produce for themselves but at such capacity that our requests might just be a side venture for them. There are a few options though House Sharen is the most obvious candidate as they specialize in building ships. In combining our earlier discussion, you could try to appeal towards Alnae instead since you’re already planning to adopt some of their customs. A good step here would be to send someone to establish relations with them, maybe help them with a few things so that they’re more interested in the strange colony far out in the middle of nowhere.

The third, and cheapest option, is to buy them from Solvang. There is actually a battleship for sale on the black market right now too. Posting bounties on specific classes of ship would entice them to go and get one to sell to us, likely at a cost lower than actually producing the ship. It would be used of course, and such activities would illicit some attention from less savory sorts that we may wish to avoid.

Final option would just be to invest in the shipyards here at Somnus until they are large enough to meet our requests.

So we bought turrets.

When it comes to Koura city, it actually has more then it can use. Its original investors put too much into it with the hopes that it would grow quicker so now it has entire skyscrapers that stand empty. So we moved into one of those and had some furniture made for it. As it currently stands Koura needs people more than anything else. Which we lost quite a few of in the recent parasite swarming. Not that the story of such events is going to be good for attracting more colonists. There is actually a very easy option here. Half the slaves on the market, if not more than half, are regular people abducted from the ruins of the invasion. If we just bought them and set them free in Koura they wouldn’t really have anywhere else to go. Also we could ‘rescue’ people from those same worlds with the offer that they can just come live here if they stay here.

Though before we get carried away with that idea, it could use more food sources. Right now, as it is an alien planet, most things we might try to grow just die in the semi-toxic atmosphere. We currently use warehouses to grow food for the people but that does have a limit giving how much warehouse space that would take. Not to mention the power bill. We have found a few things to be edible to humanoids across the planet but they are not domesticated properly so produce poor yield and frankly taste terrible. The…less fortunate colonists eat the rations made of those.

So I suppose the real problem is food sources. After that the rest will sort of fall into place with easier solutions. It could also use a police force as what they have currently are equivalent to mall guards. Somnus has better security but its also a smaller and more controlled area.

Also we put out an ad campaign back in Sol as you asked.

We’ve handed out the Selona weapons as instructed and thrown the other in the armory. Also winter says that a mechanical eyelid would be basically a piece of leather and a string, you could just run the string down your coat to your arm so you can pull it discreetly as desired.

On the upside of buying all those slaves, building places for them to live on Koura is already done. The city has entire empty apartment buildings, so we just bought out one of those instead of building one from the ground up. The bulk of slaves we acquired went with citizenship, I suppose that’s to be expected with how many of them get abducted from the ruins of their old life and already have certain expectations.

The scribe work has actually been able to just find out who most of these people are, though reuniting them with lost families might be a significant undertaking simply because we don’t know where most people in Sol are at the moment. However, it does occur to me that we could leverage this a little more if Lancaster’s desire to open relations with Alnae remains firm. Since slavery is specifically illegal in Alnae but not Shetou, buying up all the elven slaves we can and then reuniting them with lost ones would be a good way to improve our standing with Alnae. We could also just go kidnap every elf we find on the ruined worlds since odds are very high that they’re from Alnae every time, saves money and we can just take down slaver gangs wile we’re at it. This would do well for the order’s reputation.

Alright this is a lot of money going into a temporary research station for a rift that y’know…moves. Though on the upside you got to stick your head into it, so that’s always fun.

Rhea can cover the scanning of the planets since they’re the ones we had do the extra surveying. Not the most exciting places, though I suppose we do live on the only one that was really significant already.

As for the Alnae war with itself, things have taken a bit of a swing though we aren’t sure if its for better or worse yet. Not sure if you saw the news but they appointed a new grand marshal, and not the most popular appointment since she’s so young. Though she is a zankist grandmaster apparently, one of three in the whole system. At least zankists tend to be fairly level headed. There is opportunity there, she was appointed largely because she’s all that is left standing. Might’ve been about four options for Alnae and she won out just because she’s the least likely to die any time soon. Young zankist master has a higher survival rate than old crotchety officers I suppose. So she doesn’t have that many merits or friends to her name yet, even if we are a small station by comparison to the Alnae Empire now is a good time to make friends with someone who has very few.

Also I already play guitar thank you very much, its a side hobby.

We do have some civilian members among the order who have a measure of talent with screwdrivers. They could look into this whole steam power thing of yours, though I’m not sure how useful that will be. It’s a start though.

House Sarghess is currently invading House Sharen, also covered in the news. We know they’re with Kar’Soluth and are currently trying to reduce Sharen’s fleet superiority that forced Kar’Soluth into inaction in the first place. As you may recall, the Kar Soluth traditionalist expected the oldest house of Sharen to join them in splitting away from Shetou. They did not actually check before they made any declarations, likely in an effort to make sure Sharen would not be the ruling house in Kar’Soluth by default if they were fully involved as the Vloz’Khress. In perhaps a bit of a twist for the drow, it turned out the Sharen were just a little more liberal than they expected. As such Sarghess is tasked with crippling the Sharen as much as possible to level the playing field into what they expected during the split. If we wanted goodwill with them, we could just attack something valuable in Shetou.

As for Alexander’s fire elemental, isn’t it technically a member already? It’s hanging out in its home plane but it shows up whenever Alexander calls it, which is everytime we need it for getting anything done.

So far our lances that have joined with Madhammer have found no signs of intelligence in the creatures that are harassing the colony but there are suspicions that deeper underground lurks something that has put a lot more thought into this then the monsters it sends to the surface.

Speaking of joint operations, Si Yeon asked if we could look into the idea of pandem rifts implanting parasites in people due to her most recent findings being a little clunky.

Upon looking into details on this ship we’ve found some more details that paint a better picture. The ship in question was a freighter going from SZ4 to System V1, also known as Bellar. It hasn’t been made quite apparent to which planet in the system it was aiming for, but Bellar does have a lot of independent colony efforts going at the same time. It disappeared somewhere along its path of transit with its last known location being only a few systems out of Sol. Pirates are suspected to be involved due to the proximity to Sol when the incident seems to have occurred. It was noted that the engineer who is the target of the bounty is actually the child of someone rather wealthy. Which also explains the distinct lack of interest in the posting about the ship or any crew members. It is a good payout though.

That being said, as you mentioned with the secrecy, there is likely something else afoot there that isn’t included in the scope of the posting. SZ4 is host to a single factory owned by Siwa industries and no one really knows what is going on in there. It is questionable why a ship with impressively little documentation was traveling from it towards independent colonies.

Aryn suspects that the ship’s departure location might have drawn pirates to it in hopes of some sort of payday. Which may or may not bode well for the crew we’re actually interested in. Though she notes that finding out what happened to the engineer specifically might best be pursued through our still-standing Solvang membership. If anyone cares to visit their station at least.

Among the various crime gangs on the station its hard to decide who is actually a criminal or not due to the nebulous state of laws that the station currently has. The drug trade is able to operate openly, they have a corner store down on 105th actually. The store is just specialized to ‘chemical alterations to your state of mind’. Its best seller is actually just coffee. Though you can get some pretty hard recreational drugs there too. Same can be said of the arms market.

Most of the criminal organizations haven’t done that much yet, there’s plenty of space here and on Koura so gang violence hasn’t quite broken out even if there’s a bunch of mean looking guys who hang out on some street corner or another. In our investigations we found three notable people who act as a more central network for questionable activities so I suppose that makes them local crime lords in a way. You can find them over in the files.

So far Leon and Vaeri haven’t had much issue dealing with the criminals since we haven’t decided any formal course of action and they’re all pretty small in scope with how new the station and city are. Fortunately for Somnus, its current freedoms mean even the really dangerous criminals are taking it easy for now. Such as pirates who are just passing through to lay low for awhile.

Not quite the same as criminals but as it turns out those Revenant fellows are back, it appears they’re chasing after Cassir. The new figurehead of the cult of lucidity. Last time we saw them they had assassinated Zex successfully. It appears that despite the gauntlet dissolving, our old friends are still holding a few grudges. Apparently bringing her onto the station brought with it some old rivals. I’m sure Lancaster is going to love this.

The surveys have found evidence of a lot of lifeless rocks, though that is to be expected in space. Most stars have nothing particularly habitable. I’m a little disappointed we don’t have any gas giants though, those are always fun to throw probes into.

Anyways, there is a slight complication.  AZ68-3 scans reveal there to be life along the planet and some drones with scrying beacons on them were sent to get a closer look. They were able to discover large scale animals and trees and rare metals were also found to be surprisingly abundant. However, the corrosive atmosphere is so hostile that it chews straight through arcane barriers with ease and rendered standard probes into scrap. So we started throwing random things in there to see what might resist the corrosion. So far the answer is glass. Also apparently it doesn’t corrode gold or quartz, not that we can really make a ship out of that. We also threw some meat down there, it fared worse than the drones. Afterwards a glass encased scanner was sent down and we discovered a new interesting property. The atmosphere blocks long range signals. Including the ones needed to tell the probe to come back up. I think we should throw Vasia out the airlock at it and see what she finds, since spirits won’t be affected by the atmosphere.

AZ68-4’s previous scan data from the original colonizers of this system left out a very important detail. It is a golden world, correct atmosphere, correct gravity, everything humanoids need to just put up a tent and start surviving. Except food. It doesn’t have food. Its an empty wasteland that settled at just the right levels to be habitable to us with no effort. I guess its a blank canvas if we really wanted to try to do something on a planet that cold?

When it comes to a xenobiology expert, I think we might be best off looking for an actual xeno. Hylavi knows more about aliens than anyone in Sol, even if not specifically their biology. There’s bound to be an alien doctor or something out there.

Salied has been moved down to the new containment chamber along with Vasia in order for some quick experiments to be done while the rift is still in that general location. The labs have been experimenting on the new samples we’ve acquired. Turns out they don’t like fire, what a surprise.

After Renjala poked his head through the pandem rift what we’ve learned is that some sort of sahad based life form is there and not immediately hostile. Vasia has done her best to translate what she’s learned and describes the creature as something of a very patronizing resident of the nearby star on its own end. Though perhaps creator of the star would be more accurate. It sees us as something with no business being in there and has no real intention of letting us poke around though at least it doesn’t convey that by immediately throwing Renjala into said star. Though we’re not sure how powerful it actually is by our standards and if passage could be…’negotiated’. Though its clear that it will only talk to those with sahad knowledge, in our case that limits us to Vasia and Cerys. Though Cerys is hanging out on some other planet killing underground bugs or something I heard. So we have Vasia. Also whoever the Astral order sends to actually open the rift as none of us can do that.

Related to New Age, Vasia says you need to buy her some slaves for experimentation purposes still. That or just send scouts across the galaxy looking to be in the right place at the right time to capture anyone who gets exposed to sahad in an uncontrolled environment and hope for the best of luck on that one. As for the many creatures we’ve suddenly come to acquire, we haven’t learned too much new that is of use. Just that the parasites and the weird monsters that came through the pandem rift have similar traits that further imply they’re both from beyond the rift and possibly related to this entity on the other side.

As for the xenobiologist idea, we have literally nothing. We were also cautioned by our neighbors down here on the lowest deck to not hire anyone with any manner of experience in the field whatsoever. Something about conspiracies and terrifying people. Our actual most qualified individual we even know about is Hylavi, because she’s at least seen some aliens. There is some merit perhaps to searching for alien civilizations who might be able to help since no one in Sol really does the whole ‘galactic community’ thing thus far.

Vamon is off with Madhammer once again surveying underground things while shooting weird monsters. He lives an exciting life I feel. As for if he has any “acquaintances” he has several. None that Lancaster would approve of coming onto the station regularly.

Also, Cassir is here on Somnus now. The “warlord” as they call her. She’s already creeping people out…she has kind of an intensity to her you could say. As of late, she and her cultists have just been sitting around eating all the food they can find in every restaurant they can find.

We’ve sent the first and second company to engage in the extermination of the subterranean threat over on another colony. It’s going smoothly so far though we’ve only just recently landed and are starting to grasp the full measure of the situation. The current theory of Gheir is that whatever lurks down below is a bit more clever than its given credit for and what we’re mostly dealing with right now are weaponized…scout things.

I don’t get it either. Another theory running around is that they mature over time into something bigger and scarier. We’ve managed to scan for a deeper layer in the planet where we found a network of tunnels but they’re all burrowed through and into the dirt so it isn’t a rock cave we can just send troops through. Right now we’ve just been hitting various areas with artillery to see what pops up, then hitting it with more artillery and some gunfire. All in all, going pretty well. I can’t really comment much since I’m still here at Koura City dealing with the parasite problem. However, we have a problem on that front. The infection rates are climbing and people I previously cleared are coming back having now been infected.

These creatures are still spreading somehow annnd I’m not really sure how. At all. We’ve checked the water, the food, the sewers, the tendency of people to cough on each other, everything. However the eggs are still being transmitted somehow and I can’t really find anything these people have in common other than the fact that they live in the same area of the city.

Whiiich leads to my next problem. So…I apparently got infected too and I’m not really sure how. I wear hazard gear and everything. Fortunately I was able to remove it…and then I got infected AGAIN. At this point I’m willing to humor the idea of pandem rift parasites just manifesting inside people’s bodies for no reason and I’m gonna throw Renjala over at it.

Stories of Lore 1

Well this has all been frighteningly eventful. *Sigh* I suppose we might as well start with the alien infestation. At the very least, its not a major threat yet. The assault on Koura City and Somnus Station did shockingly little damage for how widespread the attack was. Though perhaps the invasion of Sol gave us a different sense of scale for how bad an attack can be, I must be getting jaded in my years.

We’ve discovered that there are three components to the assault though we don’t fully grasp the meaning of it. One section are comprised of parasite-ridden civilians, another are just mutated civilians for no particular reason as they do not have parasites. The final problem are the wild alien monsters that came from another plane with little to no warning and formed an immediate relationship with those already present.

Current findings indicate that the parasites do not possess an advanced intellect, so we’re not sure how they spread through so much of the population without being noticed. The highest concentration of infections seem to be based on various epicenters that have very little in common. The pattern would indicate intentional spreading of the infection but as I said, the parasites have demonstrated no sign of advanced enough sentience to put together a plan like that. The monsters from this other plane also show little sign of coherent thought beyond a pack-like behavior with the parasites, of which they share little to nothing in common with.

Amidst all this, we discovered a natural pandem rift beneath the city to a plane that the Astral Knights declared ‘new to us’. Within it we found a planet just slightly out of synchronized orbit with Koura. I am told that it will align again in about seventy six years. So maybe we just don’t have to bother with it and just build a big room around the rift to contain it once that time comes. Unfortunately, the parasites share similar genetic structure to the aliens from beyond the plane even if they aren’t closely related. However, these creatures have been on this world for at least a thousand years. Likely more, but that’s as far as the survey teams could date anything back to so far. To their credit, this is an alien world they’re trying to perform paleontology on within a year of arriving. So at least we know the parasitic worm creatures have been here for quite some while.

In terms of options, I would say this requires a longer term plan. The parasites infest the entire planet and ridding it of all of them is not feasible without terraforming it enough to kill them. Which is an option, there is a colonizing company based here on Somnus we could ask to do it. However, that could also damage the other forms of organic life on the planet and then we’re left with a rock in space we have a city and a station over for no apparent reason other than maybe mining.

I would say our least destructive course of option is to instead focus scientific and medical research towards protecting ourselves from being infected by any more of these things. I do not know how that would work or how many resources it would take but devoting about three million to setting up a specialized research lab to focus on the matter might yield some results we could then analyze. Just enough to get a dedicated team hired and provide them with some equipment for now until we have more information about the matter. Though New Age has already taken an interest in researching these creatures even if their motives might not quite align with ours, might be able to get them to divert some effort into preventative measures for cheaper than establishing a new laboratory.

Of course there is also the most aggressive option, we invade the rift and see if blowing up everything on the other side ends the threat.  We do have a mercenary company on Koura who might be able to do so, and a small naval fleet presides nearby. Judging by the strength of the invasion that we faced, I have very little, and by that I mean just one, reason to believe we couldn’t accomplish this.

Speaking of which, when the Astral Order went through the portal they discovered that there is some sort of sahad aligned entity on the aforementioned planet in the mysterious plane. A very powerful and fast acting one, though given our limited understanding of sahad it is anyone’s guess how powerful ‘very powerful’ is and we only have Vasia’s recount of the events to fall back on to try and gauge the situation. Peaceful contact may be possible, we don’t know its general disposition as we avoided the encounter quickly. We could also attempt to infiltrate the plane a little more subtly than we experienced recently to try and gather more information. Then of course, just shoot it and see what happens if you wanted to to take a more simplistic approach.

On to the next matter, this is a note from Hylavi. During the conflict she discovered just how many ‘civilians’ are armed or capable of some sort of magic that can do an awful lot of damage. While we didn’t exactly ban personal weapons, it was alarming how many there were and how so many of them were clustered in very specific areas. Most notably the docks and a couple of particular city blocks. Hylavi tracked down an unassuming bar to be the epicenter of one such collection of these incidents. She has reason to believe that Somnus has drawn the interest of more than just colonists looking to explore new alien worlds on the frontier. Because of the station’s youthful age and lack of association to any standing governing body, we haven’t really set down a lot of laws about certain things and some individuals who may not be welcome in Alnae or Shetou seem to have taken an interest in the station for its ‘personal liberties’.

Okay in less political wording, Hylavi thinks there are a couple gangs here exploiting the lack of local laws on things that other governments have already taken a stance on. She doesn’t know much about such laws nor care enough to do anything about the matter unless ordered to, but she did still do the groundwork to figure out what was going on. One amusing example is the aforementioned bar, it sells almost every recreational drug imaginable. It does pay its taxes though. While it might be staffed by ‘ex’ gangsters from Sol, they’re mostly just acting as bouncers for the time being.

That being said another gang that lives on the starboard side of the city are a little more extreme. They’ve been using warehouse space in the lower decks to act as a massive vault for things I’m pretty sure they stole from Sol. Including people. Given that it is no easy feat to reach the station from Sol, these gangs who can make it here can be pretty far away from anyone who might want to pay attention from them.

We could ‘borrow’ some legal precedents from Alnae if we wanted to clean the station up a bit. Particularly like banning certain items or extending a treaty of extradition with other major governments in Sol and inviting some of their agencies to set up an embassy here to keep an eye on such things. Shetou, Kar’soluth, and Alnae number two through six being relevant options as well. This would definitely hurt us economically, though it would give us a chance to start a good relationship with any other empires we chose to consort with. Not to mention clean up the station from such activities, which would improve stability.

Alternatively we could extend the very same olive branch to these ‘startup companies’ and make sure they keep paying taxes as good law abiding citizens of Somnus. We just happen to never pass a law banning their business practices. This would be very economically beneficial for us, as groups like these tend to make a lot of profit if they can find a spot to settle in. As the galactic stage begins to expand we’re in a good position to become a major commerce sector if we just so happen to be one of ‘those’ places where you can go to find anything you want. It would probably leave us a little bit outcast from the standing empires though if we’re harboring people they’d like to see arrested and things might get a little more chaotic around the station. Though historically, that chaos brings with it an odd sense of security as no one wants to pick a fight with a station where everyone in it is armed all the time. Basically, we’d be like Tykel or Solvang Station. Places where people go to escape government oversight and get business done.

Ey boss, I’ve compiled the reports about that rift business. I’m sure you got most of it since you were there but just let me recap, I’m going somewhere with this.

So the rift goes to an unknown plane with a synchronized star but the orbits of its planets are not so walking through casually can be a bad idea. While the matter of some big Sahad spook roaming around isn’t really our business, the existence of the plane itself probably is. What’s a lil weird is that we can only enter the other plane from the rift down on Koura. No other attempts to access it from here on the station have worked. The immediate issue this creates is that accessing the plane would require a space worthy craft of some kind, and the rift is underground. So it would take a bit of effort to get a ship there. We might be able to move the rift’s apex position here in Zonaricth since its stable though that would require quite a bit of effort and research. If we’re just moving it up a short distance into space, that is at least reasonable feasible. Not like we need to tow it across the galaxy.

An easier passive solution, that rift’s position in space is not tied to the planet of Koura. It just so happens that soon after we got here a one in a million math equation happened and it popped into a place where it could release things. Last month it was just buried in the rock, and in another month it’ll be about sixty meters in the air. A month after that and it’ll be wildly floating through space. So we could just wait it out. Alexander wanted me to pitch the other idea though, I think he just wants to try moving it around to see if he can.

As for the things coming out of the rift, that was a one in a billion math equation…that will happen again in seventy eight years, one hundred and four days. Assuming my math is correct. At that exact moment the planets had a synchronized position and the rift wasn’t in the rock of either one, allowing things to slip through. Preventing this disaster scenario from happening again at that time is likely to just be a matter of making sure some people with guns figure out where it will be during the next apex intersection like that. Assuming the same kinds of things come through at least.

Data collected on this mysterious other plane has been sent to us and I’ve gone through the effort of having it printed onto paper for ease of access. Alexander believes that it shows signs most consistent with higher planes, particularly the astral one, though it rides the thinnest of lines between that classification and being more aligned with the middle planes. According to him, it was a difference of a single decimal place.  The greater concern about this rift business is how so many of those creatures got onto the station, since the rift was way down there inside the planet. It implies that something on the other side has some control over this phenomena and deliberately sent things onto the station rather than creatures just trickling in on accident.

Whether or not this is related to this whole sahad entity thing isn’t really my place to say. It could be them, it could be something else. This is a very unexplored territory. We’re not even sure how many things are on that planet in the first place, we only know that there is one notable creature on it who we have not even gotten the chance to see let alone interact with.

As for more local matters. The knights have all been pestering the new champion for sparring sessions. Reika isn’t particularly interested in sparring everything that moves, she’s not much of a glory seeker. She simply is glory incarnate and doesn’t have to try anymore. Either way this resulted in the men forming an tournament where the grand champion’s prize is to get their ass kicked by Reika for five seconds. If I didn’t know you people I would have sworn that was a fetish porn synopsis.

We moved in what? Three weeks ago? Already dealing with inter-dimensional parasite zombie monster hordes. On the other hand, hey we’ve only been here three weeks and already we have a case of inter-dimensional parasite zombie monsters to look into. New Age is having fun with that one at least.

40th day is currently docked as we were helping the station resolve this whole ‘underground horde’ thing with some of our scanning equipment. ARK is also on standby in the area.

New Age has suddenly acquired a lot of samples and many of them showing signs of sahad manipulation. Which is not a thing we really knew was possible but sahad magic has some method of manipulating life forms. Vasia says it makes sense, we’re all just made of space dust anyways. So space magic might have a few radical abilities in the creation department instead of just shooting lasers. Updates on that as more research is done. They have also acquired a young drow named Salied who is a witness of sahad usage. Though she shows extreme symptoms, far worse than what Cerys ever went through and we’re not entiiirely sure why. Working on that one too.

So that whole cult thing, they’ve been going through some rocky times what with the halving of civilization. After the assassination of Zex the cult had a severe lack of leadership at a time when it definitely needed it. In the wake of this chaos it created a power vacuum among the enlightened members of the cult who are aware of its true purpose, they in particular had a desire to continue the cult practices if nothing else for their own advantages. Without any guidance they’ve split into factions among different leaders. You may have noticed I am intentionally vague with my word choice there, because all of them have radically different titles. Zex held the title of Spokesperson, but now things are shifting just a little under the ministrations of the new leaders vying for power. If we don’t step in and deal with it they will likely split into new sects entirely and die out once they become thought of as the latest con. Without their unity they do seem a little scammy, especially if three different groups are all trying to get people to do the same thing for radically different reasons and approaches.

Anyways, the first of the new sects has given themselves the title of warlord. They’re a violent fanatic who have used the cult’s power to create super soldiers empowered by the meditation circles. This stemmed largely from the fear of the falling civilization around people. In exchange for protection and safe shelter, old members and new recruits flocked to these psionic warriors. This sect sprung up within the ruins of Luna. After the towering cities fell, where the poor tended to live in service of the rich, there were a lot of people with nowhere to go and nothing to their name. However, the affluent neighborhoods of Luna formed small militarized camps on their estates. The Cult of Lucidity would then provide a means for the poor to attack these estates by focusing the psionic energies of those who couldn’t find into those who could. These super psionics would raid the estates and bring back the spoils. Essentially creating a deal where the weak could simply practice meditation in the circle to receive free food, shelter, and protection. The unique twist to this sect is that its followers know exactly what the trick to these circles are, it just happens to be an even better offer than the yoga class for people this desperate.

The second of the new sects rose in SV1, a former world of the Vloz’Khress that suffered catastrophic damage when the aliens invaded. Dropping their own ‘moon’ onto the planet, flooding it with the massive ball of ice that was their excuse for a moon. In the wake of this destruction the ecosystem and environment were so massively disrupted that it has been said that SV1 is like year one of a new planet. The sect that gathered here are something of a group of mystics. Granting their new leader the title of Dreamwalker. They were actually formed from someone who didn’t fully understand what the cult was about, pursuing the continual path of mysticism within the cult to achieve enlightenment. They’re fairly nice people just minding their own business on SV1 but they believe themselves to be the true path of the cult, which leads to them trying to shepherd the other sects towards themselves. You can see how this might agitate the truly ‘enlightened’ members of the cult who are losing recruits to this path that has nothing to do with the cult’s original true purpose. Its a bunch of hippies on a rock, but their faith does drive their message quite far and they continue to grow in these harsh times by preaching of a fresh start on SV1, the reborn planet in a time when everything is crumbling around them.

The final major splinter stem from Thenica. They happen to be the one in the more functional areas of civilization. After the death of Zex, one of the apostles figured out that the cult was a particularly effective at making money with just a few tweaks in marketing. Offering a manifestation of ‘thoughts and prayers’ so the rich wouldn’t feel guilty about not doing anything for the rest of the crumbling system, and just so happening to ask for a few donations here and there.  What the psionic energies were actually devoted towards just happen to be whatever the leader of that circle feels like doing that day.

As a situational analysis, I can tell you that we will have to remove two of the leaders from the picture so the remaining one can assume the mantle uncontested and no deviant messages spread throughout what converts the cult currently has. In order to…handle the issue. The sects don’t have spectacular access to starships right now so they aren’t really able to conflict directly with each other the way we can. The third splinter is the most equipped to travel but has the least desire to do so given that they want to operate in the more civilized areas.

The warlord is obviously the most aggressive of the groups. Supporting them would gain us access to a very effective projection of force should we need to do so in the future. The mystics are the most popular at the moment and getting things under control with them could help us spread our influence further. The final group would allow the cult to finally start producing a profit instead of being a constant sink of our resources. Essentially, it would depend if you’re more interested in warriors, influence, or money.

Welcome back sir. You’ve been away for a little while so let me brief you on what you’ve missed. When the gauntlet dissolved we slimmed down the team. It was a good opportunity to re-assess some of our employees and their priorities. Nila, Auni, and Reika were let go as they were expensive for our new budget status and their loyalties were somewhat questionable. We try to maintain good relations, and Reika is really not too far away. Vaeri, Aryn, Vanjin, Leon, and Setani were noted for having no other priorities outside of the agency that could conflict with our parameters so they were considered valuable enough to keep on staff. Even with the pay cuts they haven’t really gone anywhere.

We’ve relocated the primary base aboard the Somnus Station, enough equipment is on the stealth ship for mobile deployment if necessary though the primary office will do for processing logistics and jobs that don’t require hands on-site. That and Aryn’s computer is too big to fit in the ship without renovating the whole thing. There is typically little need for her to be away though.

With you away we’ve been getting by letting Vanjin take some ludicrous jobs for a single bounty hunter to undertake but discreetly aiding in her in completing the task, that was how we managed to keep afloat at least. Her notoriety has grown as a result, as well as her overall standing among the higher echelons of society. As we’ve seen, other top level agents like Auni or Nila are downright chaotic and difficult to call reliable. Vanjin has developed a reputation for being a professional who has managed to achieve the competency and feats similar to those of the aforementioned lunatics. She’s not associated with us as far as the galaxy knows, though she has proven very valuable in allowing us to negotiate jobs people don’t know she has an entire support staff to help handle. Sometimes she accepts work and we just send Setani instead.

We’ve made a few connections, a woman named Nicole Lancaster owns Somnus station and is aware of our presence. Another named Doctor Vasia Nikolaides, who is our neighbor on the station, does tend to like hiring us to handle matters discreetly for her facility. We’ve also been able to fall back to relying on our old friends at Madhammer, though in the process one of their colonels became aware of our existence. Though he has managed to maintain discretion thus far, so it has not proved an issue.

With us moving away from Sol we’ve been able to operate a bit more liberally as scrutiny is not so intense. Not to mention everyone has their own problems so we haven’t been investigated too deeply any further.

On to matters at hand, recently Somnus station has seen a little bit of a bug problem. They are also apparently dealing with people of criminal backgrounds setting up shop here and in the city below, attempting to take root and establish their businesses. We’re not in the middle of anything at the moment but we could get involved in such ongoing matters if you have any ideas. I know that if Ms. Lancaster wanted, we could look into these gangs for her or…remove them without making a big fuss.

Alternatively an option would be to take control of this side of the market. Sophia is currently on Thenica tending to her own personal affairs. With the collapse of the system she went on a bit of a hiatus since there wasn’t much for her to do and she wanted to take care of personal matters. We would probably need to invest into re-establishing our former black market presence, I estimate it would be at least a ten million credit investment. Can’t re-establish Sophia without collecting some things to sell. We could also see who the existing presences are and maybe find someone a bit fresher.

We have a stealth cruiser and some of the best agents in the galaxy, and a surprising lack of problems that would fall to our responsibility to deal with. So its up to you what our next step from here is.

Welcome to Koura sir, a planet filled with just…stuff. Its not quite a golden world due to the complications of the atmosphere but its not too bad given what most colonization projects are working on. In the wake of the recent crisis I’ve been busy cleaning out the infestations but there is still a lot to do.

The new bunker is still under construction though it is operational. We still have to get our own landing pads built and the warehouse space is being expanded along the outside of the mountain. The main bunker for the more sensitive equipment has been built into the hollowed out mountain, space is at a premium in there so only the really valuable things are there. Such as the barracks, ops center, main armory, and some of the more expensive toys we don’t want anyone sabotaging. Orbital cannons and anti air batteries are online and it seems the task of orbital shielding falls to us due to the colony’s lack of them otherwise. We’re still working on that one. Most of the men are living in the city down the highway since its really cheap right now and, well who doesn’t want their own quarters?

I have our field officers living in the bunker though so that they don’t wander off too far if we need them in a hurry. This is a frontier world after all, I’m sure something is going to go horribly wrong eventually. I guess technically it already did but you know…again.

Budget wise we’re still floating on what we got from selling our assets on Thenica to the generals but we definitely operate at a net negative if we don’t go shoot something. Fortunately we’re subsidized a little bit by Somnus since…we did just prevent the monster invasion from wiping out the colony. So that takes care of taxes for now, which helps.

I do advise going over the logistics sheet to know what assets we have ready to deploy. Though you should know the fifth company is currently helping colonists in construction as security. There are big monsters with teeth on this planet that sometimes need to be discouraged from approaching developing areas.

Perhaps I’ve just been working here too long, but all these investigators seem to be looking for hard evidence of something that I can see quite clearly. The mutated monster invasion had to be deliberate on some level. At the minimum two different types of entities had made a combined attack on the Auwana system, targeting us. Whether it be this foreign sahad entity in the other plane they mention or some sort of saboteur among our colonies, I have a hunch that while they’re looking for the what, how, and why we should really concern ourselves more with the obvious ‘who’ side of all this. Then shoot them.