Stories of Lore 24

I believe Elion already covered the situation you find yourself in at Zenaka before you go charging off. So in other news, attempts to hail the Nelta fleet have been met with no response at all. Though Akuhiko from the Astral Order has some theory about why that is.

The draft for the refugees to work in food production hasn’t been too bad. General reception is understanding that food is an issue. Especially since many of them come from Sol where the food crisis is at its worse. Though there are some who disagree and other elements that seek to capitalize on the situation. You know what  you don’t need to worry about this while you’re fighting at Zenaka. We’ll just…wait until you get back. …hrm? you sure? I mean…you can’t do anything from all the way over there. Hylavi asked me not to tell you yet until she can clean it up…

Fine you’re the boss. So a riot broke out and now the main vittles’ factory is destroyed. Spurred on by Shetou refugees who still act like…well drow to be honest. Pirates have moved into the system preying on the remains of the food distribution because most of the fleet is missing. They got aboard Somnus through the 40th day programs and some tech savvy fellow among them figured out how to circumvent some of our automated security checks so now the station won’t even target them unless we go through manual overrides just to make it stop asking ‘are you sure you want to shoot this innocent civilian ship?’. Then a slight mishap occurred in which it actually was a civilian ship. Hylavi thinks VSEC was infiltrated in some manner to make this happen to destabilize the area even more dramatically.

So remember that plan to retake South Koura? The blow to Laura’s position as the queen of crime around here led to some opportunists seeing a weak spot. Her house was destroyed by some new pirate gang in an attempt to assassinate her, which was only thwarted thanks to Michael Haggard. The area is now under VSEC control once again but VSEC resources are past the point of breaking. Hylavi literally passed out on the sidewalk from…well not sleeping for three straight days and it turns out jydoq physiology just has a point where it decides it refuses to cooperate anymore.

Laura is currently off the grid being held by Nah just to keep her alive as the city descends into chaos. With the destruction of Vittles our food storage will last a little while longer but after that production is nowhere near what we’re going to need. We’re also about to be attacked by Nelta…actually this might be their doing in some bizarre way.

Governor Harlus was killed by the new crime factions who are now patrolling North Koura. Governor Joe is all that remains of that pair, and VSEC had to take him aboard Somnus and lock him into the upper decks so he doesn’t get killed too.

Ohalyn informed some of the Nah agent contacts that there is a new crime boss in town who was responsible for attacking Laura. She is staying out of it and just running her plaza as best she can but she does know who they are and that they’re living out of South Koura. This is a crime lord from SV3 who…let’s say has a strong admiration for the accomplishments of others in his field. Meaning he wants to pull off what Ark did. They acquired some of Laura’s bombs in all this chaos after we cleared out South Koura, and that’s how the vittles factory got destroyed.

This crime lord has been building an actual army, without Madhammer here and with all her attention on getting Laura out of power they managed to start a mass recruitment wave and establish a haven for pirates. They found out about the incoming Nelta invasion and are using that to stir refugees to ‘defend what they have left’. Basically they’re doing what we were doing to at least get people to help with food production.

They tried to take the Madhammer base while Madhammer is away at Zenaka. This didn’t work as their remaining security was enough to push them back but six civilians died. Really they were criminals trying to take over a military armory by force, but that is definitely not how the ne’er do wells framed it. With the aethernet being only slowly rebuilt and requiring civilians to access it with a new protocol that they’re slow to pick up on, information on who is official and who is just some ranting lunatic is hard to control and this is also being heavily exploited.

We also prevented another factory from being destroyed, stopped a highway bombing, caught six pirates, caught about sixty of Laura’s gangsters, and removed a few pirates who figured out the lowest deck docking terminal exists and were poking where they shouldn’t be. Two other would-be crime lord’s were caught by Hylavi and so all this news is just the stuff that slipped through. There have also been six shootings aboard the Somnus main deck since all this began. So it’s not like we’re doing nothing but…it’s getting out of control.

The security forces have been cut down by twenty five percent. A fifth of them are dead, and the rest bailed once they realized what we’re dealing with now that Laura is basically on her last legs as the crime lord of Koura.

On the upside, we’ve ended the reign of Laura…yaaay? The power vacuum is exacerbated by the sheer number of refugees, the invasion, the particularly vicious people who snuck in during the refugee drives, and the fact that people are about to start starving to death. An even larger catalyst is the invasion itself though. With every empire falling apart, trust me Alnae is having a worse time than we are right now, people are making mad grabs for power and wealth in the chaos of the situation. Apparently Moncayo has a similar problem. A few people who happen to be desperate and dangerous are looking for any way they can to establish themselves anew. The rich who don’t want to be poor, the poor who have always wanted to be rich, and others just trying to figure out what team they should be on right now. Auwana being as heavily developed as it is just makes people even more vicious in what they’re willing to do to either take over the system from you or start their own companies.

On the less negative side of things, we’ve also seen a huge spike in recruits for VSEC from those who have the same basic motives and situations of uncertainty but figure they’re better off being on the side of controlling government. There is an upsurge in small businesses of people trying to establish themselves as best they can while keeping their head low. The draft to vittles production is largely positive with people accepting the deal easilyThere is also a counter-gang…gang that showed up. They were refugees from the eastern empire of Shetou, found some members from other more aggressive but lawful refugees and they just really don’t like how people are behaving lately. They just run around killing gangsters in the street which isn’t…quite what I would like them to do but at least they’re on the side of law and order…by way of vigilantism. They saved Hylavi’s life at least.

Hylavi says she’s working on it, don’t worry about it. It’s fine, everything’s fine.

I may disagree with her.

Also we set up the banking thing as a temporary measure at the moment to try and stabilize the currency issue as best we can. So of course people are now already finding out ways to forge and steal it. Though at this point that’s barely even on my priority list.

The KouKou is roaming around picking up what it can. It’s not really a freighter for salvaging raw materials and most of the valuable recruits are in the middle of a war. Though it has found a few people worth bringing back who have agreed to anything as long as it gets them the hell out of there.

So…looks like Lancaster is having a rough day. So the boarding plan at Enohas worked out and the approaching fleet diverted course to avoid a direct assault as it recovers from our boarding actions. Buying us a bit more time perhaps. Though we’ve heard word from Faelyn that more ships are on the way after having taken out a few other frontier colonies to offer reinforcements. Apparently they have re-evaluated the threat level of Enohas. The downside to this being, more are coming soon. Judging by the data Faelyn provided, they’re sending an assault carrier to provide more manpower in closer engagements. Since evidently, orbital bombardment isn’t going to work on us. Can I request a vacation? I was thinking of going to a nice beach. Somewhere that is anywhere but here. Why? Oh so you know how Nelta is sending reinforcements to engage us again with a better prepared team? Well you know how Faelyn keeps track of all this stuff for us right? A cruiser is coming straight towards Enohas from Sol. We’re not totally sure, but according to reports it’s Chief Rikoy’s ship.

We didn’t manage to conduct the boarding phase as cleanly as we would have liked. It didn’t fail outright but we couldn’t finish because first off a lot of knights were dying and second we are…not as good at this as we might have hoped. Inter-planar boarding action turns out to be extremely fucking complicated.

Akuhiko also has a theory that the reason we can never engage in diplomacy with Nelta is that they are actively blocking our primary means of communication. The idea being that the Phantoms slipped information to them that something about picking up those hailing requests causes us to have an ‘in’ to do things to them or whatever. Though Reika points out that if we bother to confirm this will be in a very bad position.

Oh so should we talk about the Sarnai thing? So she might just be the only living cleric in all of Sol’s expanse. Because she can cast heal. Not even Reika can do that. This would also explain all of the problems she’s been having up to this point with her bind. Such as the day it possessed her and she nearly died, because no one else is bound to something that powerful. Especially while so inexperienced. The reason we can’t track her bind is likely that it escaped the purge through very deliberate methods. The fact that she can’t contact it is likely a byproduct of it intentionally hiding itself.

Meanwhile at Zenaka, things are still creeping along. Lancaster just got there though its a complicated situation with a war spanning the whole planet. Though Ki’ralcht is still fitting in find and Yoshai may have discovered the first alien std…we think.

Steamworks is doing a bit better, with all the chaos going on we’re still seeing a lot of new people coming in to Koura so that’s just a bigger customer base for us. Especially since our products are rooted in physical hardware you can play with. Right now people love physical hardware. A little too much though. Six engineers were kidnapped by that new Kyven guy who is running the show on Koura ever since Lancaster put the last nail in Laura’s coffin so to speak. We don’t know why. We’re very concerned with the why. I would have understood if he just blew up the factory, maybe hijacked a shipment, stole some shit from the store front, I don’t know. Though for some reason, he wanted the engineers.

Cassir shrugged when I told her she’s the new face of…well all your stuff. So I take that as her approval, at least enough to move along with it.

Also technically we had Lancaster bringing a carrier from Moncayo to Zenaka, also Alexander leaving to Enohas. So…we just had some guys throw the barrel on Lancaster’s carrier. Close enough.

Cassir has taken up post at Que and is helping Larazja and Adryn clear out some of the mass of monsters that are still infecting the place. Throwing them into the ichor to at least make use of the biomass and see if it makes anything more useful than the drones.

Also Cassir is doing fine. You were a cybernetic because your body was frail and weak and could not survive outside your tank. Cassir is a cybernetic war machine crafted with the most advanced cybernetics in the system. You were not the same. Her actual closest empathizer is probably Gunhild.

So we relayed to Seiyomi your location, and then he disappeared. Just in time for Koura to turn into a gang ridden wasteland too. I’d care more about the problem if I hadn’t moved to Ash. No one wants to come here, so I’ll let Hylavi deal with the riots. I suppose if I need to go look into the time manipulator, I’ll head to Sol next after I check in on things around here. It feels like it’s been awhile since i was back at the lab.

As for Larazja’s progress, she’s doing better. Still not quite the most natural at it. Though drones are getting thrown in the pool either way. Also we found out what that large thing it was making is. It was a big drone collector…so it was preparing to initiate biomass retrieval itself evidently. Interestingly, Larazja can control the collector much easier than the drones.

The project of collecting names to see who is where has hit a slight problem. Everywhere is pure chaos right now so it gets hard to get people to line up and give their names and identify themselves basically. It’s making great progress all things considered though its definitely a clunky affair with people conducting organized raids on one another just across the street.

We’ve rebuilt Arc’s battle cruisers and are working on the starships for mobility and for 40th day to keep ferrying things around. As for anti-piracy techniques: make your ship look well defended but worthless. Which is contradictory. Though having a lot of firepower on display helps dissuade them from trying either way, most crews are not like the Raiders of Abbathor or The Nomads who purposefully target the biggest fish they can get. They’re just looking for easy pickings and risk free profit.

Also actually a lot of your ships survived the portal ambush, we only lost five battlecruisers and two starships. The ambush went heavily in our favor, it just happens that one of the battlecruisers was the one Vamon was on. We were able to retreat through the labyrinth of the abyss once it became evident that Nelta had mounted a proper counter attack.

Also the scavenging profits have been accounted for, keeping in mind how much of it was reserved by various other members of the alliance and we were in charge of distributing it afterwards. So we still got our share from it at least.

While 40th day is looking into it, we do have some records of an actual planet that has gold on it. Very inhospitable, barren wasteland, not necessarily an extreme amount of gold, though as far as mining operations go it wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

The makers are proving difficult to work with, as usual. So far the only records we have of them deliberately co-operating comes from their interaction with Cassir. They seem to like her and everyone else is just constantly struggling to push them in directions they kinda want the project to go. So getting them to make another is proving difficult.

Also yes, Fenalis are edible. I can feel Rhea’s ghost scowling at you though.

As for humanoid development, we can actually make a full humanoid from scratch if we really have to. Especially if we get either Eden or the Makers to help. The problem is that whole essentia thing at this stage though.

Also profits are up for 40th day and New Horizons is having a bit of a dry spot.

As far as we can tell the Alien is just a former Nelta soldier that was captured by Sol and sold on the black market, as you may recall. They still have no idea why  they were unable to contact them previously on their last visit.

Setani is heading to Enohas. Vanjin and Elgrim are off to Sol to look for the Revenants. Leon is headed to help out with Zenaka.

Michael and Raiben’s job got complicated. Laura was dethroned ever since her grip on South Koura was broken by VSEC and a new far more violent criminal entered the scene to take advantage of it. While Laura still should have remained at the top of the criminal food chain in the system, the assassination attempt on her coming so soon after South Koura was retaken has put her in a bad position. Harlus being dead also isn’t helping her any. After so long of Lancaster trying to cut Laura off before she could really grow her power, she didn’t have the power needed to stop the sudden explosion of criminal war for territory and influence. The most notable problem being the one who went after her directly, Kyven Hyeon.

Now their job has switched to keeping Laura alive at least for now. She’s being held by us instead of VSEC, as she won’t be safe there. Kyven is very dangerous and already almost successfully assassinated Hylavi. He destroyed the main vittles factory and has been recruiting hundreds to his somewhat vague cause.

The problem with Kyven is that he killed two of our agents who tried to approach him to resume relations with him like we once had with Laura. Remember how Lancaster kept talking about the enemy she knew and all that metaphorical jazz? Welp, she was right. This is so much worse. We can’t even track him down, he has the training to avoid us and kill anyone that comes looking for him.

Auwana as a whole is spread too thin right now with the war in Zenaka and Enohas. In the absence of so much of our influence, others came in to fill the gap.

So…that’s a lot going on. Meanwhile back in Sol…

Quick summary. Song and Vloz are still hanging out together, orochi ate so many exerlus he became a dragon the size of a battleship and is cruising the stars looking to eat more exerlus, Nelta is still claiming more ground by the day but pockets of resistance led by the phantoms are expanding.

All the empires are in ruins and Valdir’s homeworld of SR3 is now a wasteland. Azilath is alive but the exerlus destroyed the ichor lakes around the planet as best it could, and it did a good job. Valdir has fallen within Sol, but it cost the Exerlus dearly and now Orochi is on a rampage.

Alnae is now just Kaylen and basically thirty million people. Everyone else is dead or joined splinter factions. Only four members of the high council remain alive, they’ve retreated to SZ4 where the Siwa factory was. The warforged have come to light and are a large portion of Kaylen’s forces now. Apparently she and Siwa came to an agreement and they gave her the whole army.

Shetou is either doing the best or the worst depending how you look at it. Multiple great houses are now operating independently but this was always a feature of their empire. In times like these, this means they’ve shattered the empire entirely or it means that it’ll just come back together once communication is re-established. House Song and Sharen are the major remaining houses that keep fighting and also are in charge of protecting the Val’Hari.

Kar’Soluth still has the Vloz, Beldobaan, and Jaal’darya so they’re actually ahead by a whole great house. Though the Vloz’ allegiences have become questionable. People speculate a third coaltion of houses is forming, but now between House Song and Vloz. This speculation comes from me, who knows the Phantoms exist. It would be very inconvenient for them if those two houses teamed up instead of kept fighting each other. Sharen doesn’t seem to care about this development and is just trying to stop all their stuff from getting blown up by the alien invasion.

There are now thousands of independent groups purely because no one can contact each other. They don’t even know what state the rest of the empires are in and are just forming temporary governments to keep things together as best they can. The only reason we know all this is because this was all the Phantom’s plan and Faelyn is the last bastion of communication between all of the many worlds of the Sol expanse.

Headhunt is ongoing, we’re currently busy in Zenaka and the headhunter is in Auwana which is practically on fire. Aryn’s got a lot on her plate right now as it were.

You were already at…okay back to Moncayo then. At least you have your skeleton crew and the carrier. Don’t get blown up out there alright?

At Zenaka Elion is doing well enough to hold the borders of the most sympathetic nations to the situation while Ilivayas seems to be content to just keeping us contained while she builds up her forces working through other sections of the planet that are more interested in the Vloz way, either by preference or survival instinct makes no difference for her.

The natives actually have had very little to no contact with pandem magic up until now, which makes the Vloz somewhat bizarre. They’re pulling from Finsir instead of Finsor in order to perform demonic army summoning, as is their style, and the zenakans are a little perturbed by this. Which sort of leads to the main split in their point of view. Some are fascinated by the Vloz ability and others are pretty sure its evil.

More and more are being swayed to pushing back against the Vloz now that they have revealed their actual strategy really is “burn everything that doesn’t obey us” which is helping our efforts to build up what we can. Though the aggressive expansion of the Vloz’Khress forces aren’t giving some people time to really think about it and weigh their options too carefully. Also those that have already submitted seem to be doing fine which is helping that angle of the propaganda. It’s definitely likely to produce some long term effects that the Vloz’Khress are not totally accounting for, likely because before the invasion of Sol they had the power to just take the whole planet but now a long term occupation might be risky for them.

We had the radar scan through and Ecsanul is one of the more dangerous binds present which we already know can be summoned by Ilivayas herself. There is another demon lord known as Yellari who is bound to one of the other commanders under Ilivayas’. These would be the two big ones, though given her specialty for summoning based tactics its no surprise we also detect a huge variety of major demons among them as well.

Overhead, Koda keeps the fleet managed and most of the attrition is just the Nomads showing up and messing with the Vloz’Khress fleet whenever they get a chance to, as Koda’s fleet just isn’t large enough to risk getting in range. Though due to the orbital cannons we’ve set up, their fleet isn’t too eager to chase down Koda’s while it rests in orbit above them. Though we’re locked down to that area and can’t do any bombardment since leaving the borders of the cannon coverage would result in very unfavorable losses to the Vloz’Khress battleships. Which are abnormally difficult for the pirates to take out due to them being staffed by summoners. Not that it stopped the Nomads from stealing one of their destroyers in the meantime.

Most of our fleets are in Zenaka so what remains isn’t well equipped to move into Sol to find the rest of the 314-C at the moment as the alien invasion is still underway. With the death of Yunalesca they’re currently working under Kaylen’s command.

The Koukou has been able to sneak around Sol though and see what it can find to pick up as long as it avoids a specific type of Nelta ship. One of their civilizations is an expert in scanning technology and can find our stealth cruisers but it requires some level of proximity.

Hylavi reports that Laura’s people have become hard to track. The defenses have had security increased across the board so no one approaches them but it is a notable concern that in the chaos of the revenant attack, we can’t tell who works for her very well unless they act very overtly for us to rebuild our intel on them. Which leaves her a lot of room to hide important people.

I’ve had the armor supplies for Hylavi placed aboard Somnus so they can be deployed to Koura in a reasonable amount of time, getting them from Koura up to here is a lot harder. Though they are kind of cramped here on Somnus.

Nelan isn’t even sure what Alnae needs right now since he can’t contact them with the Aethernet down. He’s fairly certain that what will matter once everything settles down is relief supplies given the scale of destruction that the invasion is causing.

So among the refugees of Moncayo we found a well educated druid to help with building up a druidic chapter of some sort. Regardless of wherever that goes, Bill’s pretty good. Alexander likes him at least. We’ve had him sent to Enohas to see how he gets along with the wolves, who obviously see Haziel as the general leader. And so begins the age of internal politics that comes after a large growth.

Moving on, Ki’Ralcht is doing pretty well on Zenaka all things considered. To the natives, the bizarre appearance of Ki’Ralcht is just chalked off to her being an alien and they haven’t really questioned just how different she is. Though she’s been getting involved with skirmishes with the Vloz that escalate quickly as she faces off against other summoners and reduce county areas to decaying wastelands.

Renard’s rifts are still feeling out the situation, they do not have the knowledge we do of how the war is most likely to go. So they aren’t quite ready to be assimilated into the order or anything yet as they aren’t aware how little they will have to go back to any time soon. So we’ll just keep an eye on them for now as they start to come to terms with the reality of the situation on Thenica.

Jamalia has been prepping its defenses for the inevitable second wave when the Invasion bounces back outwards to the frontier. Though Nelta clearly doesn’t know which locations have what kinds of assets. The larger bulk of the force is heading towards Somnus and Enohas will likely endure far less since most of our warriors are elites, thus throwing their headcount’s predictions askew. They should be here next month if you have any other preparations to make.

Eden has agreed to the temporary binds to assist in the effort, though has little context to what war actually is like. So this ought to be an interesting experience for them.

Helym stands unused at the moment, they use it as a staging ground for some hunting sports but the convenience of Jamalia after its renovations by Steamworks™ makes it a bit more appealing overall.

So the ritual with Cassir seems to get her up an extra notch at least. Neat. Also who eats lasagna from a bowl ever?

Anyways catman, I can make a new fishtank we can use to pose as if you’re still in such a thing so no one knows about the cat thing. Don’t worry I’ll kill them once I put them in so they don’t have to spend a lifetime in sensory deprivation, I’m not a monster. Only need a corpse to hang out in a prop fishtank after all. What? Have someone else take over? Oh…yeah I suppose that is also a reasonable solution. Not like anyone would be surprised if you died out here at Que. Though I suppose the natural option is Cassir. That would explain why you’re close to her all the time as her cat for ritual shenanigans and she has a tendency to be respectable but likeable. That and her existence isn’t a secret like mine.

Faelyn has made arrangements for the rest of Que to remain at Moncayo for the time being after updating them on the situation. I have a feeling she’ll absorb their fleet in due time.

So…remember that whole Aethernet going down thing? As was pointed out to Renjala during the summit conference thing, it’s currently very hard to track people down. Specifically, Kanika herself is just missing. I doubt anyone short of Arkaric could find her again right now and no one wants to ask him. Well Aryn might be willing to but…long range communication is down. So its hard to find where the Raven II is parked in space while it waits out the initial hit of the invasion.

Though on the topic of arcane engineers, apparently Winter made you an ethi cat collar with a shield on it to protect you from stray bullets at the least. Though she’s over on Somnus so we’ll get that whenever we get back there. I think people keep forgetting Winter has a skillset.

Also I already ran scans, you don’t age like a cat. Actually you’re biologically immortal, as are all silnian creations. Easy version to explain, their DNA is printed and stamped and then it just stays that way until re-programmed by the ichor. Since things are grown at full size within the ichor instead of aging and growing up normally it has no need to be malleable. This is why you’re not a kitten or anything. I still think a lobster would have been more fitting, that way we could throw you back into your old tank.

Alexander has the Ichor at moncayo at the moment but their spaceport is kind of full due to all the refugees going on there. Just a logistical clusterfuck.

As for the possibility of the Ichor being emotional, I guess technically anything is possible. Especially in my line of research. Though I’d say the odds are low given what the purpose of the ichors actually are as well as our previous examination’s results. Though until confronted with new evidence towards the contrary there isn’t anything to suggest otherwise.

Larazja is still coping with the reality of being a giant fluffy snake monster. She’s adapted to controlling the body but I suppose there is something to be said to the more existential nature of it. The cold creeping realization that your body is just another thing for the powers that be to toy with. In a galaxy of biomancers like the silnians, cybernetic rebuilders like Kenin and Daiheb, and soul writers like Kanika – there is nothing for the weak to take solace in truly being their own. Larazja is just now realizing the depth of futility in her meaningless existence as a commoner in a galaxy of those who can harvest every last piece of her as just another resource to their ends. I am informed by Cassir I was not supposed to answer all of her questions so honestly, but only after the fact.

The important thing here is it means her progress on controlling the drones is going slower than we might hope. I have reason to suspect her mental state is a part of the problem, you were a bit more enthusiastic so perhaps for you it was easier. Along with being an already powerful psion. She is making progress, but slow enough that I handed her off to one of my other researchers so I can get back to research with a higher yield potential.

Speaking of which, Balhast has survived ingesting the ichor though is now a bit worried about any food I offer him. He has also remained in control of himself. This somewhat showcases that the silnian ichor definitely has its limits. While it was incredibly stacked in Balhast’s favor, it still proves the mutating powers of the ichor are not infallible.

One of my field agents went to meet with Seiyomi to sort of tease him a little. In the process of which, Seiyomi has not really agreed to start working for us until he’s met…I think you? Maybe Lancaster. He wasn’t really clear about it, though I suppose that’s because we weren’t really clear about. Either way he has an interest in meeting with whoever is ‘actually in charge’. Which is a confusing thing for us to answer ourselves at this point really.

Cassir points out she doesn’t find the cat thing all that humorous as others. Given that she has similarly lost her body and had to have it reconstructed to a heavy extent. Also I’m fairly certain Cassir doesn’t smile or laugh. I don’t think I’ve seen her do either since we met. I on the other hand find it hilarious.

Also she’s not effective as a synapse relay, though that might be more to do with not knowing the method of how to do so. We know Que was researching how to do just this, though it might take awhile of going through their notes to create a psionic method of imitating the effect they had been working on for so long.

Well before you do the mass ritual method of connecting the ‘who is where’ database, and while we’re still building that database – I feel I should point out there is a perhaps easier way to do this. If Lancaster is going to be away at Zenaka the whole time and not using the Rena, we could just send someone with a clipboard from place to place to pick up and ferry about the lists. I mean it’s not an instant method of updating all three locations, but it’s less taxing on the cult. If you prefer the faster way, we can do that in a month or two when we finish compiling the databases.

The cult has been recruiting a bit with the general emotional scanning as you mentioned, though they’re not as good at it as Cassir is and Moncayo is a clusterfuck at the moment.

So you still didn’t say “build x number of ships” so I just started replacing battlecruisers in the meantime with a wild guess at numbers for you. Also got the defenses placed on the other colonies and a lot of our resources sent to Orchard to stabilize that area before it becomes a mess.

Okay so we have a lot of species from Thenica and making a viable population of them all might be a bit heavy on the space requirements for the Vivarium. We’ve made little eco system chambers to work on it for now though and see how many we can do. Though a few of the larger more secure containment units should be available as soon as I’ve moved my labs into Phoenix. Then we won’t need facilities for holding things like the Makers on standby at the Vivarium since my new lab will have…plenty…of containment units for any new samples we should acquire.

Anyways I’m hitching a ride back to Somnus while you’re off on some adventure with Lancaster. I found a patrol of Solvang pirates cruising through the area looking for any  ships to pick on and figured pirates wouldn’t pirate other pirates. So I just paid them to take me back to Auwana to save some effort. My freighters are still stuck here but I need to get back to my actual labs and check on Salied. Have fun.

As for Ilex’s idea to get bio samples of fallen heroes, we would need to figure out who to send on that kind of job. I suppose Vaeri is the best bet since she’s the sneakiest of those on our employ and that is an active warzone being constantly scanned by the aliens to just shoot any humanoid down wherever they might be found.

We’ve got the alien problem thrown into a holding cell for now until we figure out why it is contacting Nelta again given what happened last time.

Greetings board of directors, I’ll be taking over keeping track of the war since this is sort of our thing in general.

First off being the primary threat to our assets, the Nelta raiding groups that intend to attack the frontier to weaken our ability to bounce back from all this. We have about another month or so until they get here however it seems they are only sending a fleet that is far too small to actually attack Auwana. Specifically because of Somnus. However, this fleet started to hold a position out of our reach and seem to be just keeping an eye on things at the moment. I suspect their plan is to attack the other locations before converging on Auwana with a larger force. They seem to have figured out that Somnus has a lot of firepower even if its attending fleet is currently not there.

This means the assault on the other colonies will be a bit more important than expected as those are an opportunity to whittle their forces away before the large “deathball” can converge to move on Somnus. Hopefully by then Lancaster gets back with all her ships too. These frontier cleanup groups are not as dangerous as the invasion fleet as they are having their own problems that prevent Guardian from attacking us.

To a similar note, Moncayo remains safe. It is likely they do not even know how to find Moncayo within the Abyss. Either by scanning or by actually reaching it as many aliens are not comfortable with navigating the inconsistent physics of the abyss or the weird dimensional fold that Moncayo is hiding in. Which allows Faelyn to deploy her fleets more aggressively to protect and evacuate all other colonies as needed. So while they intend to converge on Somnus eventually, they don’t seem to have any plans that indicate an awareness of Moncayo’s presence at all.

Back in Sol, things are unfolding bit by bit. Satsujin and her elite strike force has dealt a major blow to Guardian with the help of Selona’s weapon technologies she noticed being demonstrated by Lyli’s battleships and securing the assistance of the Alnae ultra carrier. She managed to board the Guardian by going out in a space suit and drilling through it while fighting waves of exerlus soldiers…in space on an ever reshaping hull while the ultra carrier dumped hundreds of thousands of strike craft into space and just as many soldiers onto Guardian. It was the stuff of legends worthy of three books and a movie. Turns out Eleazor was really useful here because his abilities work to disrupt even exerlus mechanisms. They managed to destroy Guardian’s main core with what I would describe as a nuclear disintegration spell. The main core was responsible for providing the energy output needed to use its titanic form of interlocking exerlus energy cores. It could still assume that shape as is with consensus based cooperation but without that core it doesn’t have weapons and shields as powerful as it would need to justify being that big of a target to our system’s battleships.

The ultra carrier was destroyed in the battle but so was Guardian’s main core which means all that remains of Guardian is the consensus of soldiers, a much more manageable threat instead of the titan killing behemoth that it once was. Though it is still a major threat as the ruins of our planets provide it with a lot of material to work with. However, the Valdir are contesting them at several key points. The ruins of war provides just as much biomass as scrap metal and we are witness to a smaller version of a conflict billions of years old. Exerlus and silnians at it again. This is the main reason that Thenica is now considered a ‘place where people don’t go’ anymore. This ongoing conflict is ceaseless and brutal on a level we haven’t seen since the Thousand Legends between two armies that can continually resupply based on the wreckage of the battle itself. Nothing less than a total victory will allow the fighting to stop as each point of interest is taken and retaken for more assimilation material to rebuild lost forces.

The war with Nelta on other planets is also not going well but at least its a bit quicker in figuring out which way it is going to go. As the Phantoms promised, the old races have risen up once again to assert their supremacy and build followings who in such desperate times are willing to just ‘go with it’ regardless of who their savior is. Though it is not as smooth as one might hope, as others still remember why the purge was conducted and blah blah complicated. But it’s still a start and given that we will soon see Moncayo – who has most of the refugees – adopt the return of the monsters for their ‘heroic’ actions it is likely to say that soon their plot will come to light.

On the other end of things, their plan to weaken Vloz’Khress and House Song is not going according to plan as Kharla and Song Yi seem to be finding some common ground in such a dire situation. Admittedly both are in a weakened state as their empires fall apart, it’s still definitely not preferable to the Phantoms that two entities they fear are allying with each other after being such reliable enemies for so long.

Eliza has taken over House Jaal’Darya formally now and leads them to war against the alien invaders. Their idea of war being to sneak out, salvage the corpses, and make plagues. This happens to be extremely effective except against the exerlus, so it is at least making good progress.

Moncayo is overrun with refugees that are being shipped out on carriers by us really to other colonies that might be able to contain them but it is taxing the limits of what any given place can support. The economy of Auwana is not only unstable but plummeting from the number of refugees it has suddenly become host to. We’ve hit the point where vittles can no longer sustain Auwana, people are starting to go hungry for the first time since we took over the system. Jamalia is starting to feel the strain as well though the local Merkas are able to help.

Jydoq space is under similar assault from the Nelta forces for having allied with Sol enough to integrate between the cultures, they didn’t have the same military presence that centuries of imperial conflict created on Sol and did not have much assistance from us as we were concerned with protecting Sol. They aren’t doing so well.

In a rare appearance on the middle planes, Satsujin managed to recruit the Demon King to come out and help defend Sol. He chose to lend his aid to Thenica, specifically the area where Kharla happens to be. While he does so on behalf of Satsujin rather than Kharla, it is likely the demon lords convinced him to at least hang out in that area. This marks the first setback for Nelta’s infamous Chief Rikoy, who could not overcome the ancient demon.

The abyssal lord Valnacht has also made an appearance in Vermasih. Sending the aliens back quite a bit, despite their overwhelming firepower advantage strikes like these are hurting them since they cannot resupply so far from their home systems. They are encountering our most dangerous creatures regularly now between the interplanar monarchs and the return of the Phantoms. Nelta is lost and confused as to just how many strange creatures our system has access to, as no other civilization they have encountered barring the silnians have had this much bullshit to throw at them wave after wave.

Tykel has also halted the Nelta invasion entirely, forcing Guardian consensus to send as many forces as it could to deal with a city armed to the teeth with anti-alien weaponry that just so happened to work really well. This is when Guardian learned of Arkaric’s android race, this is also the first time most of Sol is learning they exist. Beginning a struggle that has finally wounded Tykel with the sheer expanse of the combat reaching throughout the city unlike the last invasion, but the exerlus are confused and out of sync as they come up against the androids. Not to mention Orochi has one very specific ability we didn’t know about but just learned from these reports. Arkaric designed it for this fight, and Orochi can consume exerlus to enhance itself. It’s getting bigger with each passing battle, and people are getting nervous.

So basically, everything is over the top, destructive, and Nelta’s advantage is being whittled away by the appearance of forces they didn’t know exist and the brave heroics of a lucky and successful few.

The Jankest important update

Also the time cycle was 2 months

So first off, the invasion of Sol has begun and Thenica has
already fallen. The underdark is the only place left where they could
survive the bombardment and most of the planet is in ruins. All food
production from the planet has been halted, the aethernet is down, and
the planar terminals are gone. In terms of wider impact, we no longer
have a way to contact Sol or retrieve information from it without the
aethernet without going there personally.

Market wise currency just crashed as it needed the banks in Sol to maintain tracking.
Remember the attack from Jicho that messed up our local Aethernet as well? Money is currently in
a tenuous state. Moncayo has begun rebuilding a banking system to get this under control but right
now expect bartering systems. Currently popular currency stand-ins are food and gold…again.
Mostly because Moncayo put gold to a fixed conversion with credits so that people could use
something physical as a currency until things calm down. It just so happened that they had a huge
stockpile of the stuff due to the décor they used which have been converted into coins. Perhaps a bit
of dark humor given what we know about Faelyn, the coins bear striking resemblance to historical
examples. The ones we used during the Era of Rising. This had an odd side effect on the coin
collection market. Since now those kinds of coins are back in use, the once valuable historical relics
are now worth just one coin all over again.
Since we control Vittles and the physical assets of Auwana are intact we’re doing well its just
a matter of helping people through the confusion of ‘why did the aethernet stop working’. So
electronic banking is not a thing right now. Carry coins!
Other problems include all security checks, ID registration, and so on that used the aethernet
are gone. So guess whose right back at it again? Laura King’s gang suddenly grew explosively
larger and now they have a lot more guns. Due to how hard it is to keep track of everything right
now, Koura City has split into two states that are divided by a highway. With the north side still
under the control of VSEC and Harlus. The south side sees Laura as their governor since she has the
manpower and connections to operate as a governmental force now that we can’t background check
or even get security cameras working for all those people that just popped up working for her.
On the upside, new data is easy to store as Aryn fixed the servers. So we can resume policing
things via security camera but all previous data was lost. I think this was the Revenants trying to
help make Sarden and her friend disappear but it just so happened to be really inconvenient for us
that Laura has always been a problem that’s hard to keep track of.

Other news, mass migration obviously finally kicked in hard. Nine thousand people just
moved to Orchard. Half of them didn’t even tell us they were hopping in a shuttle and going over,
and the aethernet is down so we couldn’t do much about that. Apparently people want to be close to
the food right now given that many of them escaped the destruction of Sol the first time around and
faced famine. Now they want to make sure they don’t have to go through that again. The challenge
here is that orchard is relatively inhospitable still and now its population just increased by 4500
percent. It doesn’t have the infrastructure for this, but people are just pulling up in starships and
living out of them while they continue construction. Notably, Zhuan is the governor of orchard now.
Also notably, a lot of those ships are stolen but we don’t know from who or where. I can guess who
stole them and told everyone this was a great idea though.
Hylavi is keeping calm despite the world crashing down around her and just focusing on one
thing at a time. I guess her apathy helps her in situations like these. Everyone she delegates any part
of her job to is having some stress related issues as we might expect. At this point she’s just trying
to stop the looting. Several fortunes just disappeared in an instant and now people are looking to
make sure they possess as many physical assets as possible. It hasn’t devolved into outright riots or
anything, but they do know its hard for us to keep an eye on security or respond to reports of minor
theft so they’re just kind of sneaking off with things now and then. It’s not too bad, Auwana’s
stability in the wake of the first invasion has kept people fairly mild mannered. Also we’ve been
able to fall back on Madhammer as a display of still controlling things. I wouldn’t really worry
about it, Hylavi has it under control and the rise in theft is still just a minor hiccup since Vittles
made sure that starvation hasn’t really kicked in. Just keep an eye on the growing appeal of Laura to
the people.
Somnus on the other hand is pretty much stable. The crash of the economy has some people,
especially those who received the parasite treatments, moving down to Koura to get a hold of some
land they can work. Also several members of Koura are doing this as well. People going off to start
their own farms and small self-sufficient towns to weather events like these that are predicted to
start becoming all too frequent. Not a major problem, but we can’t really tax them or go over land
rights. However, it’s a planet. There’s plenty of room and we’ve opted to just let them do that since
at worst they come back to the city looking to loot supplies and at best we get some new towns and
civilian run farms out of this.
Piracy is on the rise across the frontier though Auwana isn’t doing too bad on this front.
Somnus is a very large and militarized station, so we’re not the easiest pickings and most of these
pirates are former civilians gone rogue. Not quite professionals like Solvang or the Nomads, so
they’re not equipped to challenge VSEC just casually patrolling the system. However, reaching
Jamalia is a bit more complicated.
That’s the basics at least. So anyways, FO-234 is now under Kar’Soluth siege. We don’t have
the forces to stop that invasion and are now focusing on extraction and evacuation of civilians who
are at least cooperative with us. It’s bad enough that the fleet is equipped for planetary conquest, but
the next issue is the sympathizers who like Vloz more than us due to whatever propaganda is going
on around there. Koda is doing his best to keep things under control but he’s up against a fleet with
outright more firepower. Not to mention our carrier from Moncayo is on a bit of a delay thanks to
all of the ongoing problems. The only thing keeping Koda afloat is probably the Nomads, who got
aboard one of the assault carriers after it had deployed its forces a bit too eagerly and then they
managed to sneak in. They couldn’t take the whole ship, due to size, security, and standing forces.
Though they, and the Iron Gnoll, took the engine. As in they detached the engine somehow and
turned it on so it crashed into the star. So one of their assault carriers is now a space station.
As for exploration of the rift, the first thing to take note of is the planet that the sahad entity
was guarding. We were only able to visit it briefly before encountering said entity, now we’re able
to land on it and really poke around. It’s a misshapen mess with different atmospheres in different
areas. We think its actually a testing ground where this entity would try out new life forms, largely
because the koura parasite is in all of the continents on the planet. Apparently it really liked those
things or was using them to some other ends we’re not currently aware of.
Exploring the tunnels through space has been slow going as we map them out to make sure
no one flies off the edge of the universe on accident. Speaking of which, we threw a probe off the
edge of the universe to see what happens. They were never found again. Though with the aethernet

down that does hurt the range they could be detected at.
Khymin and the Golbotics company are currently working on more golems to help with the
new settlements that are popping up independently by all the refugees and citizens who just don’t
want to be in the big city anymore. So thats going well but the issue is selling them is a whole other
headache.

So Sol’s on fire, that’s bad. Jamalia is fortunately self sufficient ever since
Vittles moved into the neighborhood but being cut off from the aethernet is a
major blow for us. Auwana has Nah division and Aryn to restore functionality
and maintain networks to some extent. Jamalia is now an isolated colony filled
with pandem people who already had issues operating the aethernet properly.
Only top level commanders have any access to remote communication and they
often need Aryn to manually assist with getting messages across, as I’m doing with you now.
So the phantoms are currently mildly agitated because one thing did not go according to plan.
Song Yi and Kharla have been talking to each other without jumping to murder one another. This is
kind of why they hate Kharla, she’s a bit unpredictable. They’re not exactly getting along but right
now Song Yi is hiding out in the underdark with the Vloz’Khress.
Song Yi also pulled another fast one on Kanika, really more so Laesaaria did, and brought
back one of the older heirs instead of choosing a new one that Kanika could make some sort of
easier plans around. Auni Kuu, who apparently Nah division has a history with, returned as the heir
to song in the wake of Adin’s death. So that’s a thing if you notice Valadeus being a bit cranky about
the whole situation.
This comes at the same time as both Adin and Yasice died, thus making the Sharen and Song
alliance a little less solid so who knows whats going on with all the Great House relationships.
With the death of Yunalesca, 314-C are just a handful of stragglers now who are operating
rogue since the Alnae government is collapsing. Zarra Sarghess also died which has put House
Sarghess into a bad position as they desperately want to power struggle for a new matriarch but its a
really bad time to do so. So they tried to do it quickly and sneakily to get things back on track but
then eight people tried to do it and now they’re imploding while also being shot at by aliens. It’s
dumb.
This is in part due to the absence of contact from Yasrena, she’s not that far away. She’s on
Thenica still but with the aethernet down and having to rely on very limited communications range
they’re just shooting themselves in the foot without someone to tell them to sit down and shut up.
As planned, Eliza Pierce has taken over House Jaal’darya.
Frayne Ankou, Arkaric’s trusty lieutenant, also died during the invasion which hasn’t really
affected Selona’s organization much but he’s not terribly happy about it. This has resulted in
Shanhai becoming his new trusty lieutenant instead of just his attack dog.
Meanwhile on SR3, Azilath is up against a wall after being bombarded by the alien fleet. The
Valdir forces were split across several planets to help out where they could, but the aliens very
specifically went after SR3 because they don’t like Sol having access to silnian technology. Azilath
and the other valdir monarchs are still putting up the meanest fight but they’re also being directly
focused on by both the alien invasion and the phantoms. Not even sure if the Emperor could make
that much of a difference, he’s not so good with the fleet combat.
Meanwhile one of the members of the Phantoms was assassinated, amidst all of this a good
few of the new recruits along with one of the higher council members were taken out by the
Revenants. We’ve also learned from the attacks that Sarden and Morylan are a part of a trio. Sarden
is the youngest of the three sisters, meaning there is a third and more dangerous one. All three are
expert melee combatants and assassins. We don’t know who the third one is, just that they were seen
by the phantoms during the assassinations and were very apparently the best of the three. Baltun has

been looking more into this and why its useful. I’m just keeping an update on the rosters and what
they’re doing.
That’s sort of the general report of what all the big shots we keep track of are doing.
The merkas integration isn’t really affected by this as they were already a tribal society who
had never seen the concept of a credit card before so I doubt they care too much. However their
culture and knowledge of the land is bleeding into the knights as much as we are bleeding into
them. Especially with the new makeover of Jamalia, which the merkas who now live here have
started decorating. With a lot of bones, sticks, and furs.
Aku has settled in well to taking over Jamalia’s management since he’d already been here as
one of Reika’s apprentices for awhile. He’s pointed out the overall merkas integration has a quirk,
they’re responding more to Haziel than to us. Partially because Haziel just appears wildly all over
the place and despite our massive technological advantage, they have no idea what all the shiny
things do or why they’re impressive. They can very quickly figure out why Haziel is amazing since
her abilities play with their understanding of the world more directly. Fortunately, Haziel is helping
us in this regard but its having an affect on the culture of the integration.
So there’s a new cult going on in Jamalia, they call themselves the Chosen Wolves. We can
definitely blame this one on Eerihild. Currently they have no real recognition or standing. It’s kind
of a gang that formed on its own that is led by the Order. Basically its a clique composed of Squires
led by Eerihild and by now a fair dozen merkas and a couple of arcurans. So this group pretty much
worships Haziel so strongly that the racial tensions broke down in favor of mutual fear of the giant
wolf monster that tore apart several villages. You know, Haziel’s werewolf form that is the size of a
damned barn. Turns out putting the fear of god into people makes them a bit less concerned about
how much they dislike each other. That and they were all given lycanthropy by Eerihild, who I only
learned can do that just last week. I mean it makes sense but I just didn’t really think anyone other
than Haziel could, but I guess it does have a means of spreading after all. So now they’re all
convinced that they aren’t merkas or arcuran anymore and are now wolves. Reminder, they’ve never
actually seen a regular ass wolf from Thenica. So…they’re furries with swords, fangs, and a cult like
mentality of believing Haziel is a god. She says she’s not but its hard to convince the merkas or
arcurans that she isn’t one since they have nothing else to compare her to.
Speaking of which, did you know arcurans could contract lycanthropy? I didn’t. That shit is
fucking scary. Anyways I don’t know if we should do something about this behavior. The squires
seem to like having their own little gang that gets wolf powers, and its creating a group with less
racial tension between these two I guess. A small group at least for now. Encouraging the behavior
might help with establishing a nation on this planet, though could result in a cultural shift within the
order itself. Right now Eerihild is the main component of it though she’s still only a squire, this
would kind of put her on track to becoming chapter master of some crazed wolf cult. Though
technically they’re rixa specialists who are extremely effective in melee combat. But it kind of
creates an actually separate group just a little? I mean Alex and Reika have their own teams and
bases but they’re still largely ‘go team astral’. Suddenly we could be dealing with Reika being the
celestial lord of lightning, Alex being the keeper of pure knowledge, and Eerihild leading ‘wolf
knights’ all over the place.
Alex thinks there is merit to specialized groups for different planes, even if not for
deployment the individual groups could help with training. With the advent of the mono-planar
knight it might be a worthwhile exploration of the idea. He’s also pretty sure it won’t get too far out
of control, just on the basis that Eerihild is a teenager having fun making a gang and not a serious
threat to unity so much as someone just exploring their potential. That and the real threat is if Haziel
wants to start anything since she’s not an official member, does not take orders from us, and could
take Enohas from us on a whim if she felt so inclined right now. Though her whims currently seem
to be hunting giant monsters in the woods and messing with the merkas settlements in ways that
favor our goals since she needs us to take over the planet for her to get what she wants from Kanika.
I asked Reika as well and she just stared at me for several seconds trying to figure out how to
politely inform me of how little fucks she gives about any of this. She has bigger issues.

Meanwhile the movement spawned in the wake of Nihlav’s death continues to find
sympathizers, they aren’t much of a threat though but it has sort of infiltrated into other merkas
cities by way of tall tales. Also the fact that Haziel has made an arcuran named Okkal one of her
prominent assistants. I say prominent assistant but every merkas and arcuran is definitely saying
something in their language a bit more similar to ‘prophet’.
Back in Auwana, Riftgard construction has finished and become a major launch point for
VSECs explorations into the Astral Warrens. We’re still moving things around in there but its at
least operational enough for that purpose. Also not long after it finished a demon appeared aboard,
one of Valadeus’ officers. They haven’t really done much, they’re just keeping an eye on things.
They informed us that they were considering the possibility of the location for phantom operations
compared to that of Moncayo. While Moncayo is already built and extremely well defended and
made to suit the various anatomies of the Phantoms, the astral warrens are a very interesting
location especially if we can find a route to get closer to Sol. So basically they’re just surveying the
area to see how interested in it they are.
The carrier has deployed towards Enohas with its first load of people from Moncayo. So
we’re getting a population boost but its likely to cause friction with the local still-developing
culture. At least that is Aku’s concern. The merkas are just really coming into the reality of a larger
galaxy to explore while also finding their place within it. As mentioned, Eerihild used this to start
her own little gang and they’ve been experiencing a cultural revolution. However, that revolution is
taking place within the presence of the Astral Order primarily. A sort of safe and understandable
space, once we have thousands of refugees from all walks of Sol it might make things a bit messier
for them. Not exactly a huge issue, just something Aku is keeping track of.

Cats, your a kitty cat, and you dance dance dance and you dance dance
dance. Hehe, oh I’m going to put so many videos of you on the aethernet once
that’s back up. Anyways, at least you’re not goop now.
We’ve been keeping tabs on the frontier colonies after ferrying people
around them and the general impact of the fall of Sol. As it turns out, Solvang
was completely untouched by the invasion since they knew it was coming and had no assets that
they couldn’t just move. While their old asteroid hideout everyone knew about is gone, they now
have just picked up all their ships and taken off into frontier space where they can be safe for
awhile.
Traveling among the frontier has become extremely dangerous now as a result. Basically 40th
day is now locked down, pirates took out 4 of our ships and all of the refugees on them and we don’t
know where they went from there. Our friends at the Nah division have found out they set up their
own aethernet beacon network on key ships that is on a private channel. So they can still contact
one another but no one else can find them, probably to avoid everyone asking about their bank
accounts right now. The Nomads however could probably still figure out how to get in touch with
them if they wanted but they’re busy. The main point being, do not leave Que until ARC is there to
escort you or our odds of getting kidnapped go up dramatically.
Other colonies who relied on trade to keep themselves afloat, particularly in terms of key
resources, are crashing fast. In their desperation they look for anyone with enough of a fleet to help
them re-establish trade routes. In this desperation they found Faelyn once again, whose fleet helped
at the ambush but is still mostly intact. Though piracy is on the rise and some colonies are just
being completely overtaken by pirates since those are the people who can get them what they need
to survive. I’d say this is the only competition Faelyn faces for being Empress of the frontier, but we
know the pirates work for Asmodan who works for the phantoms. So basically the Phantoms now
control the entire frontier in a very direct manner. I have a feeling had Renjala not joined them, we’d
be in deep shit right about now.
We also need to be concerned with the frontier as a warzone, Nelta are deploying squadrons
out into the frontier to eradicate our colonies to try and crush Sol out of the galactic scene. So since
we’re stuck here at Que for the forseeable future, we might want to do something with all these
drones still roaming around the city. Maybe just throw them back into the ichor pit for some
reconfiguration.

The aethernet backup project, as you may remember, failed spectacularly and we lost a lot of
the pre-existing stuff. We tried to download more stuff while we could before the aethernet went
down but we didn’t get enough to consider that significant. Most of what we have is just technical
stuff for science and so the vivarium doesn’t go backwards in progress by losing all our
encyclopedias of animals we know about.
The Iron Gnoll has been with the nomads for a bit now, we’ve just been mostly focusing on
the alien invasion that is burning Sol and leaving them to their own devices. If you’re curious, he
caught up with them by crash landing into the middle of a firefight and then proceeded to attack a
bunch of aliens, maybe a couple of civilians on accident, and then ran off screaming around the
block. Two days later he ran back while still screaming and attacked more things. The Nomads don’t
seem remotely phased by this behavior and Andal is good at directing him to run screaming in the
correct direction.
As for Sarden and civilian casualties, its worth noting that the Revenants definitely see
themselves as chaotic good. They’ve never hurt civilians before and their attacks are timed
specifically to keep them away. They had a brief meetup with Jhaeros during the terror of Toxyn
and he’s a bit crazy but as you’ve noticed by now he’s not really a member of them. So you don’t
have to be too concerned about stuff like that.
Getting Larazja to therapy might be tricky given that she’s still here and we left the therapists
on Somnus. Though fine I won’t dissect her, she’s been cooperative anyways with Cassir keeping an
eye on things. Speaking of which she’s out of her cage and just hanging around with Cassir.
Everyone likes Cassir apparently, which is useful for me. As long as you don’t forget to take her
with you when going to unexplored places that are covered in undead alien monstrosities. If you try
to go somewhere alone again, I’m locking you in a kitty carrier until you put all your assets into my
name so that if you die I at least keep my funding.
As for the science, Larazja is the ichor’s queen of the synapse. At least she’s designed that
way, and she has mild psionic abilities due to the mutation but no real skill at it. At best Cassir has
taught her how to meditate quietly. After a few exercises it became evident that she could control
the drones wandering around the ruins of Que, not quite easily but she has the potential to do so.
Though we were able to get you to replicate the same results in about five minutes, advantages of
being an already accomplished psionic I suppose.
As for the Ichor in general, it is kind of an abused puppy at this point. Prone to lashing out
and creating monsters to protect itself due to what it went through after the last year at this facility.
It doesn’t really have as much feeling as the statement implies but it was the best way to get you to
understand what its doing and behaving like. Ever since the suppression beacons were removed it
has been behaving a bit more aggressively. As if it believes it won and now just needs to expand, it
keeps making small vermin-like creatures to bring more material back to it and help it grow the
biomass collection. Scans indicate there is a much larger life form inside the ichor being formed but
progress is slow, too slow. I think its trying to collect enough material to finish the project without
risking everything it has left.
It is somewhat fascinating to learn how even the simplest life forms of silnian creation can
demonstrate this level of adaptability and strategic thinking. It shows a clear ability to respond to its
situation and interpret ongoing events. As well as an ability to plan for the future and assume
multiple possibilities and outcomes. Were it not for the fact that Cassir can outright tell its not
intelligent I’d assume it was. It’s more of an extremely complicated AI program, lacking true
sapience but having advanced problem solving abilities anyways.
Moving on, I fed the ichor to Balhast just to see what a parasite advanced as him does with it.
He’s in a containment unit while a war between bio-mutators with different origins battle for control
of his biology. I was curious if a highly developed parasite could hold up against a silnian ichor
brought to its lowest point. A battle between the weakest of ichors and the strongest of parasites
created by a sahad entity. So far it seems pretty even. Just don’t open the door even if you hear the
whining noises. It’ll sort itself out eventually.

Salied is also moving again now that she’s at Phoenix. The disconnect from the aethernet
seems to have helped her, which is strange. Usually only psionics can feel the presence of the
aethernet, but I guess that is precedent for it to be possible. She’s currently just wandering outside
and trying to figure out what is going on all over again. I’ll head to Phoenix labs after we’re done
here to check on her personally. In the meantime the scientists are keeping her occupied and
checking for relapses in her behavior.
Peter and Madhammer made contact with Seiyomi. Who is, as expected, slippery. We didn’t
even notice he was on Koura until he made contact with Gunhild. As it turns out, he is indeed part
of a much larger hidden network. This network is a less so a combined operation like the Phantoms
or Nah division and is more of a loose collective of people who know certain truths that others do
not and operate independently of one another. Their collective is more of a forum they can all
access, and they are most interested in the existence of reality shattering phenomena. This is a group
that deals specifically in the study of things that defy all known laws of existence. They’re a bunch
of nerds with a chatroom, but all of them are learned in deep secrets and conspiracies. They chase
after cosmic entities, the legendary artifacts, time travel, and negentropic magic. Seiyomi also
revealed that the things he calls ‘the legendary artifacts’ can be traded to someone who grants wishes
in exchange for them. As proven with Nila, but this is a bit less of a wild ‘I think I know a guy’ and
is just part of his collective’s introductory brochure. This group has its fingers in several other
organizations, though more so to collect sightings of interesting phenomena rather than
manipulating events.
Short version, he’s a nerd chasing after big foot but he actually knows where nessie is. Peter
was able to at least keep his attention for the time being so he doesn’t just wander off into nowhere.
However, the catch to that, is they had to tease him with the existence of a scientist who was able to
capture a sahad entity. So basically, he’s waiting for me to come back to Auwana and have a chat.
I’m debating if I just send an agent, not sure I want his collective to know my identity or where I
work out of.
The salvage teams noted that they did not find Vamon’s ship. They also didn’t find a few alien
ships they were expecting to find in the area. The problem with this is that the Abyss is an odd place
and normal methods of tracking where they might land could be pointless. They’ve just been
throwing probes into the literal and metaphorical abyss to see if any of them find it.
Also when you say ‘rebuild the fleet’ I don’t know what you want me to do with that. Just
spend all your money on ships or just get five ships or what?

The vivarium has shipped its first male merkas to Jamalia to just sort of see how that whole
thing pans out. Also sheep have never been endangered so…yes we got a few of those for wool
production.
Ihaslu and the gang are having some mild panic attacks that their own world was destroyed
and now the new one they’re hanging out at just lost its homeworld to alien invaders they didn’t
know exist. Kind of a matter of understanding the scope of things I suppose. I haven’t been keeping
much track of them. Speaking of our other alien visitor, Nah found him trying to contact Nelta to
get a ride out of here once again. Though not having the best luck it seems, I’m willing to bet the
reason he wasn’t able to contact them before was due to some sort of disruption. Almost as if
something very deliberately makes sure we cannot establish contact with them until its far too late
to stop this war.
Also Adryn is here, though he arrived a little later than Cassir who was the first responder.
Also Cassir just sort of handled everything on her own. There are no other colonies under Que’s
registration. They just worked out of this base, their fleet was at the pandem ambush ordeal so they
weren’t around to help or notice why it went quiet. This has put them in an awkward position
overall and they’re currently parked at Moncayo.
We’ve lost contact with Bardhe and money is currently of very questionable value. Aethernet
down and all, so he’s just out there in Sol somewhere doing who knows what.

For our part we’ve been focusing on the general movements of political
factions and keeping tabs on how the war is affecting their relations with one
another. Right now there is a bit of unity among them due to the common enemy
though its clear that we’re about to enter a tumultuous time of politics very soon.
The Alnae empire is already splintering a second time but this time due to
lack of ability to contact one another. There is an ongoing feud between Kaylen and that councilor
we were supposed to kill before this happened, between the continued powers of the high council
and that of the Grand Marshall. The Ultra Carrier of Alnae’s was destroyed by a direct conflict with
Guardian which has muddled politics up even more in these uncertain times.
Shetou and Kar’Soluth on the other hand seem to be doing better than expected. With both
returning to the underdark for safety. Alnae may have fled to other planets to regroup, but Shetou
and Kar’Soluth now have the only remaining bastion of civilization in the underdark. While tensions
between them are still particularly strong, it is notable that Yasrena is what is keeping these tensions
propped up more so than the expected Vloz’Khress. With Kharla unexpectedly saving Song Yi and
her house to protect them in the underdark, the situation is volatile but under development.
Valdir is doing fine in terms of unity. They’re not doing great as they’re taking the most of the
attention from the invaders but their zealous faith means that even without direct communication
they stay on the same basic page and can reconnect with ease. Their ideologies aren’t diverging
from one anther at all and there is no friction between the various factions. At least politically, the
rankings of each of their power is definitely changing as each group fares different levels of damage
from the ongoing bombardments. Though even if Azilath has lost the most, they still seem to agree
she’s one of the major queens and her power not at all diminished. Blind theocracy seems to be a
very sturdy political structure in the face of this kind of situation.
We’ve also done our best to keep tabs on the revenants after Elgrim managed to get a tracking
beacon onto them. Which became relevant when Sarden and the gang assassinated a prominent
member of the phantoms. This led to the revelation that there are three of these blademasters who
use true strike and a bunch of other ethi augments to suit their style. The third of which being
largely unknown due to being just better at her job and thus harder to prove exists. Though knowing
that there are three legendary assassins working together like this gave us something more to go on
in the effort to research what we can about the revenants.
First off, the three sisters have too similar and specific of a style to just be random chance and
it gave us something to look into. It is likely that they specifically come from a Shetou house at
some point. We know all three of them use very similarly styled swords, which indicates they are
likely from the eastern houses of Shetou at some point. Given the rumors of their relationship we
don’t think they’re actually biologically related. We saw Morylan when she broke out Sarden and
she was clearly of a different ancestry. Likely a half drow, this also indicates more towards the
Shetou theory as Shetou culture features very liberal adoption policies. With people declaring
themselves family members being quite common. Also, not to sound racist but drow are definitely
the place to go if you were wanting to learn to be some sort of ninja assassin like the three of them
clearly are.
We also took some time to look into the identity of the third member, supposedly she is not
the oldest but the strongest of them as warriors. Rumors state that she can stand up to warriors like
Reika based on pure skill. There is no rumor that indicates she specializes in any type of magic, just
has a lot of unique gear pieces. Some say she was trained by Indal but we’re pretty sure that one is
far fetched and just a guess based on her being an expert warrior over any other type of combatant.
So things being what they are it’ll be hard to track them amidst the collapse of Sol but we at
least have a way to narrow down where three prominent members of the Revenants are from. There
is also likely to be several more of them, the three sisters not being the head of the organization but
the acting field agents. Jicho being an example of a much more powerful influence among them.

This is as much as we can get for now though and a lot of it is admittedly guesswork. The stealth
cruiser is currently moving through Sol to try and figure out some more details.
Right now we’ve managed to regroup most of the team back here on Somnus. So everyone’s
home except for the Nomads who are still helping Lancaster deal with the FO-234 situation.

Posted on January 1, 2022

Stories of Lore 22

So…while you and almost everyone else were gone. The revenants started acting up again. Apparently Sarden has a colleague who came to break her out. During the process of which they took the entire station offline and crippled our own aethernet, apparently having snuck malicious programs in through our mass aethernet backup plans. I suspect they were also waiting until the invasion was too close at hand for us to focus too much on them, that or just because we were down such a large portion of our staff. Either way, Sarden is loose once again. We’ve managed to recover control of the station, interestingly they never even tried to crash it. Just disable it long enough to get Sarden out. Interestingly, no one died. A few security staff are in the hospital, but they’re alive.

So the thing about that carrier is its a very large ship and that is a lot of additional strike craft. It’ll take a moment for it to all be ready, let alone deployed to FO-234. Everyone we deployed from somnus, are on their way to Zenaka. So it’s still just Koda and the pirates for the most part. They’re still playing cat and mouse with the Kar’Soluth ships in orbit as well. Contacting the locals has been difficult, Koda has taken over making first contact since the rest of our team is still on the way. At least one group is interested in the offer for help. Another considers us the losing side, another just straight up likes the Kar’Soluth, another hates all aliens now, and the various governments all can’t agree on anything. So…politics.

Within all of this, we’ve recruited our new diplomat for the job from Zenaka so we don’t have to worry about recruiting and shipping from Somnus. A peculiar member of their planet with a rather high position in the local government we’re working with had offered to join VSEC in exchange for a gauranteed extraction regardless of the aftermath. They seem mostly interested in seeing space instead of languishing around a planet post-interplanetary war.

We’ve been setting up to work with the group who wanted the help though, they’re in the southern hemisphere. If things go well we can hopefully sway some more to our side. Koda has explained to them what is about to reach them, apparently they like his curt behavior, seems honest to them. So there is an interest in civilian evacuation that we can provide with the freighters, once those get there. They’ll be there at the same time as the Kar’Soluth fleet and the invasion of Sol so prepare for a rough and violent week.

In regards to opening the rift up to travel, we still don’t actually know what lays beyond it. The explorers are out elsewhere and having crew ferried around to support the larger ships. So while some people are poking at it, results might take a bit. People have to actually find anything interesting out there. Though Faelyn is asking what exactly the void state is and its overall plans. Likely because it seems like we’re trying to recreate the alliance from within the alliance to position ourselves at the head of it instead of herself, though she wasn’t as overt as to suggest that. Just my hunch, and given what we know now about her I don’t think she’ll just stand aside and let us usurp power from her.

This being bundled into a recon report from Faelyn’s radar that 2 more ships of battleship class alongside another carrier have left Sol and are on the path to FO-234 to join the action. It might be that they noticed we keep funneling more and more resources in that direction.

As general warning given your distaste for economic uncertainty, things are about to get odd once the invasion happens I’m sure. So just be prepared for that.

The experiments on other knights for Eden’s procedure is underway. Though as you may recall this definitely took awhile last time so we’ll have to wait a bit on that, and never release any camera footage of the operation just to be safe for our volunteers pool.

Also Luci agreed to the marketing campaign though pointed out the time it takes to initiate it and then ferry people there is a bit longer than we actually have. Though one of the actual advantages is getting people familiar with the name as a potential destination once hard times come upon everyone, and before it becomes hard to make anything into a household name.

Construction of riftgard as begun, I’ve also alerted Valadeus to the project so that he can make whatever preparations he had in mind for it. I contacted Faelyn about the Que  situation, apparently it was fairly bad news and it was not their intent for things to go that wrong. She and Kanika were helping fund the research out of curiosity though never pushed them to overshoot like that. So they’re out a lot of money and consider this somewhat of a major loss. They also noticed that Ilex is looking into a similar experiment project though and are now keeping an eye on him instead.

Ground to ground rift tunnels cost approximately 75 million per pair of gateways with a maintenance cost of about half a million.

We’ve begun the process of creating Kelsingra, Haziel has been hunting down arcuran encampments to be sent either to Madhammer or eliminated. Though Daesta has initiated a resistance against us and is being kind of difficult to find. As well as her conspirators which sabotaged one of the other merkas cities. Apparently the death of Nihlav made her something of a martyr that is about to cause some issues in the process of unifying the planet under us. While they aren’t being particularly effective on the grand scale of things, they are still a slight annoyance and the brutality of how Haziel kills them once caught is not helping the PR department. Also the arcurans are gathering in larger groups across the planet in response to us hunting them down which isn’t doing anything just yet though I have a feeling they’re gonna do something soon enough that’ll cause a mess of paperwork.

Alex looked into the guardian’s coordinate system though with only one sample and knowing roughly where it was he isn’t quite sure how it works. If he had three coordinates he might have more luck though unless zero zero is the dead center of Kari or the Astral plane he’s not really sure what else its methods could be using. That being said even if that was the case, he isn’t sure if the numbers are tracking something within planes or within the astral plane right now.

We’ve sent more lances to assist at FO-234, so its just a constant stream of reinforcements and late arrivals over there. Ilivayas will arrive soon as well, so we’ll see how that goes. At least we have a place to set up camp for the time being.

Our forces at Moncayo are continuing the evacuation and Faelyn was nice enough to hire Renard’s Rifts to work on maintaining the rift tunnel so they’ll be in Moncayo once everything goes down. Moncayo itself has more refugees than it can really handle, especially once the gates close. They have enough physical space though many of the refugees are living in makeshift tents in the plains outside of the city and food supply will become an issue once the gateway closes.

Yeah so all that aethernet backing up has actually put us in an even worse position than before thanks to the whole Jicho attack that crashed thousands of servers. My labs are fine as we’ve been disconnected from the Aethernet since day one for obvious reasons. Interestingly, Salied experienced a strange reaction to the station being disabled. She became fully functional while it was down, and then went back into her lost little world once the power came back on. I’m currently with you here at Que but once we get back I have an idea for her.

As for all this goop processes you’ve come up with, we’re ready to do whatever on a somewhat advanced timescale so you can fully weigh your options now that we know what is going on with the Que ichor. Choose wisely…

Oh and as for this Larazja girl, she has great scientific relevance as perhaps the only opportunity we’ll get to dissect one of the people the ichors decide to empower. Indicated by their change of general size. Though I have a hunch you’d probably prefer I not throw her back into the labs just after she was rescued from another one, that and Cassir is glaring at me every time I consider it. That being said, I have the data from Que’s lab of everything they already did to her so there isn’t as much to gain anyways. I can throw her in the vivarium or one of my containment units if you like, or you can throw her at one of the therapists. I hear Rhea’s has an open time slot now.

As for her Fenalis I left them with a sitter since…well I’m here with you guys. Combing through a deserted research facility gone wrong is too attractive for me to ignore, especially given their work with the koura parasite. As for helping Peter, I can put Renjala in a cage if you like? Sending Seiyomi towards Gunhild though shouldn’t be too hard. If anywhere in Auwana is secure, the Madhammer base is definitely a good contender. I’ve had some rumors dropped here and there that should hopefully make its way to Seiyomi and Peter is on the way back to Koura to keep an eye out.

As for the membership of the cult of Lucidity we have more members than you might think but its worth considering how their membership works. There is a ten to one ratio of circle ritualists to actual warriors. Not to mention those in training. The temple on Koura houses quite a few of the ritualists but there are only a few warriors ready to make use of it.

As for relocating my laboratory to Phoenix, the process of getting in and out of the atmosphere is underway. We’ve developed a special kind of freighter at New Horizon’s for getting in and out of that place specifically to make moving around a bit easier. I’m sure Lancaster will appreciate not having me lurking in her basement all the time.

Fleet reconstruction is underway while we’re at it. Though this will hurt profits in the short term, we need ships in a hurry.

The vivarium has successfully created a merkas male with the help of the pile of corpses Haziel has been creating on Enohas for any ‘resistances’ that pop up here and there. Though its still an infant and might have some defects, they’re looking into the specifics.

The Yelay are enjoying their suits and the ability to walk around now. They’ve been allowed passage to Somnus so they can visit us a bit more in depth than just the staff at the vivarium. In case you were curious what they were up to.

Bardhe has rejected the contract on Ilivayas, pointing out that one is beyond his reach. She is moving into frontier space, where he doesn’t tend to operate, and is aboard an assault carrier full of demons. He pointed out he might be able to if she were to return to Sol and stop sitting around amidst a giant military force though. Well at least the man knows his limits.

The Vivarium has acquired an archive from Alnae with samples of Thenican life with some help from Nelan. So it has definitely expanded our collection. I had them test some of the samples by trying to grow cotton plants. Once the travel network is messed up, it occurs to me we don’t have a source of materials for clothes as we’ve been mostly focused on food. So it seemed worthwhile. At least for those of you who need clothes.

The salvage teams have been combing around looking for Vamon while we pick up the useful scrap.

We’ve made the expansions to the vivarium, its larger than Somnus now though its a lot less dense since we’re synthesizing local habitats of creatures who need a lot of room to move around. Still amusing that its now bigger.

Aryn confirms an entity known as Jicho managed to hijack their way into Somnus servers through the mass aethernet backup project. Their attack was mostly aimed to breaking out Sarden. We have reason to believe this was going to happen one way or another due to the timing of the invasion rather than the opportunity for Jicho to insert themselves into our networks, it was just an unfortunate coincidence. This cyber attack could have been far worse, though it was evident in the aftermath that they didn’t even attempt anything dramatically destructive. The revenants have no desire to crash the whole station and everyone on it, they just have specific people they don’t like.

Aryn has been wiping and salvaging whatever computer hardware she can and our internal systems that are always disconnected remain fine. She’s also been busy trying to fix the entire station which she noted was not that hard. Jicho’s attack was mostly to disrupt rather than totally destroy, the major problem is making sure there’s not anything remaining inside the station’s systems.

During the breakout attempt Elgrim was severely injured and Elgrim is now back to normal. It turns out he can regain entire lost limbs if given enough essentia and a little bit of time to do so. He did get a tracker on Sarden though, and we know they’re headed to return to Sol. However, with our own aethernet network currently crippled across Somnus we’re not going to have precise tracking for long.

That being said, Aryn will be busy for a little while just fixing and maintaining the station as well as our systems with external connections to clean up any potential security risks.

The Thenica team is on the way back at least.

With the upcoming invasion threatening all ongoing operations, we’re regrouping to prepare for redeployment once we can take stock of the new situation. Exception to the Nomads who have their own ongoing job.

Posted on December 24, 2021

Stories of Lore 21

The logging and manufacturing company has started to get set up, still getting all the equipment together and setting their base of operations up. As well as hiring people to actually work there.

Khymin has some progress on his robots to the point that they could actually have some sort of fight in the arena though they’re still a bit sluggish and it’s a little dry since they will use the same strikes and defenses in very similar patterns. One notable thing is they can get caught in a counter strike loop where they both keep blocking and retaliating the same move over and over again until either one of their arms breaks or Khymin just turns them off. That being said we’re making a bit more progress thanks to Nah division since Vaeri brought back some of the warforged ideas that she saw on her latest mission which is useful for Khymin’s work. Though it is also proving just how difficult this line of craftsmanship actually is.

Eleazor is on his way to go find Satsujin as they prepare for the upcoming invasion.

As for the old Kar’Soluth station, we’ve begun enhancing its construction to have some more amenities for any who might want to come visit it. Though the Nomads are currently raiding FO-234 and fighting with the Kar’Soluth fleet so they can’t really come by and work on helping set it up with interesting things just yet. As for trying to convince Laura to govern it, she declined on the grounds that its an unpopulated space station inside of an asteroid in the middle of nowhere. It’s just asking to get shot by Shetou if it does become anything interesting and it’s also so far out of the way of anything useful that any businesses opened there would just be fighting the constant costs of shipping and handling. Essentially, she has no interest in some startup she sees no potential in.

To that end, we cannot find anyone to run the place for the same reasons. It’s a small space station built into an asteroid with nothing in it’s own system to use for resources. You will have to assign someone such as Riley to it since she is obligated to do whatever you say. Stop looking at me like that.

The battlecruisers are still in the process of finding some crew before they can go join Koda, who is already at FO-234 and we’ll get to that clusterfuck in a second.

As for finding a carrier, we can procure them from one of Faelyn’s shipyards. As for the Nomads, they’ve been constantly employed by Nah to do things other than steal all the ships and sell them back to us so they haven’t really been doing that as much as of late.

Now back to FO-234. The Nomad’s managed to steal one of the ships and outright crash it into another one before retreating onto the surface of the planet to lay low for a bit since now they have Kar’Soluth’s attention. Did a significant amount of damage though, but they also discovered that Kar’Soluth has a major sway on FO-234 by now since they’ve established a sort of embassy system with the natives upon first contact. Though the people are getting nervous now that ships are being destroyed overhead by pirates and are definitely getting the Kar’Soluth propaganda version of the story. Koda arrived to start harassing them with proper naval warfare, circling the planet to keep their fleet from being able to pin his own forces down and avoiding direct conflict with their entire fleet while the Nomad’s peek in and out forcing the Kar’Soluth fleet to stay together or risk being hijacked by the pirates again. Fortunately, the Kar’Soluth ships are not the fastest or most mobile compared to something like an actually dedicated fleet specialist such as Sharen. Really starting to see how much they were banking on Sharen leaving Shetou to join them.

However, bigger problem. In response to this aggression, the Vloz’Khress are sending Ilivayas Vel’Vloz’Khress to deal with the situation with her own fleet in tow. It’s embarrassingly slow, the Vloz are definitely the worst at ships due to all the pandem, though as we’ve seen before once they reach the surface of a world they can cause a lot of problems due to their summoning talents. Basically you have two months of advantage on FO-234 to work with before a demon army shows up to retaliate.

The people of FO-234, which we’ve learned they refer to as Zenaka, are in a state of mild panic as they’re getting caught up between a war they had no idea even existed and some members of their populace are turning hostile towards all foreign entities. This isn’t like Enohas though, while they can’t match us technologically they still have dangerous weapons and well trained militaries. Not to mention they’re basically alien demons and are abnormally powerful as a species with magic of their own. The Nomad’s are doing fine, they’re good in these kinds of situations, though the Kar’Soluth embassy was bombed by some rogue zenakans. Problem number two, the Kar’Soluth sent members of the Jaal’Darya so promptly after this bombing the Jaal’Darya responded by just dropping a plague on them. Though they’re wearing masks and quarantining effectively so the plague isn’t wiping them out as quickly as it could, but it will keep them somewhat suppressed and weakened until Ilivayas gets there with an army. They’ve switched strategies from ‘contact’ to straight up conquest now, and it turns out demon binding spells work on zenakans. It’s turning into chaos while the Kar’Soluth just start capturing them outright, though the natives can defend themselves and are using guerilla resistance strategies alongside with their government arsenal. They can definitely repel the Kar’Soluth emissaries, though once Ilivayas gets here I predict that won’t last.

We have a few basic angles of response. We can try to meet them militarily by sending Madhammer, our own forces, and maybe ask Renjala for some knights though that will be a long and bloody war right as Nelta is getting here. However, one of Ecsanul’s major binds will be there so at least the knights have some motive to get involved. We could also try to at least find some sympathizers and work with the people on evacuation to get as many of them out and over to Somnus as we can before the Kar’Soluth take over the planet by force.Though before you go, figure out what you want to do so Elion can figure out if he needs a small team or ‘everything’ to go wage a war with the incoming Vloz general.

In the meantime Riley is wearing a flight suit almost all the time but at least she seems like she can do paperwork. It’s really not that different from her normal outfit to be honest.

Alexander is helping with the evacuation effort of Thenica through Moncayo, though Thenica is having quite a few members of its population refuse to leave their homes and take up arms to repel the incoming invasion instead. At least this time they’ll be ready. Though there is a growing sentiment that evacuating to the frontier is a worse plan than standing their ground besides the largest military power in the Sol Empire. Since Shetou and Alnae’s main capitals are still on Thenica and they’ve always been pointing a lot of guns at each other, that’s a lot of guns that could be aimed elsewhere in a pinch. It will likely be one hell of an assault to try and get onto that planet, though it does seem that Nelta definitely intends to do this.

So…Enohas. After the death of Nihlav at the hands of Yonam her people have become somewhat despaired. They’re not doing so great in terms of morale but are much more cooperative with us now, just nodding and doing whatever we ask. Since Nihlav was sort of their champion who was doing all the good works, they don’t really know what to do anymore. They just nod and do whatever we ask, they definitely believe Haziel to be something of a cruel god. Yonam is returning to Koura to regroup with Madhammer.

The other more cooperative cities have begun integration processes. The arcuran settlements however are making it somewhat difficult to protect these kind of things as they’re still roaming around attacking merkas wherever they can and as we draw attention to the cities we’re working on, that whole problem crops up.

All the squires are moving around as asked and Ki’Ralcht is heading towards FO-234. Also I have some design templates for you to look over for the expansion of Jamalia for all these incoming recruits. We have steampunky, which seems to fit steamworks so minimal interior decor needed. We also have ‘all the trees’ because Haziel is here, I like this neonpunk look though. Pandem people aren’t used to being surrounded by usable modern tech, so we just spraypaint steamworks’ stuff and add more glowing stuff so it feels like the one place they can live in a super modernized environment. Oh we also have the ol ‘build a castle’ style. Everyone loves a good fortress castle. We could also go with ‘big ass colony’ and keep the theme consistent with the deployed colony outpost we already set up. Lot of plain colored metal and clean glass windows. Also we need to pick what kind of carpet we want, I brought sample palettes from the home improvement store.

So in offering monoplanar pandem corruption removal surgery, there are…a lot of volunteers. Valadeus warns that a lot of pandem casters wind up where they are due to the options that get closed off upon becoming corrupted and that this could hemorrhage recruits once they have more options. He suggests offering it as a reward to those who become particularly noteworthy and reliable knights. A method of indoctrination so those who see the hope of receiving this blessing will be in too deep to really leave by the time they are granted it. Not to mention that across the system this could be such a popular thing that monetizing it might also be a good idea though will keep eden flooded with work. Not entirely sure she it they signed up for just doing surgery all day every day though. As I’m noticing, pretty much everything Valadeus suggests is…smart but morally dubious. I suppose he is a demon lord for a reason. He left you to decide how you want to do that, but he made some really good points overall.

Also Alex texted back about the star thing, you’d have to get close enough to cast spells at the rift to do that. Which is at the center of the star. That or you’d have to find the rift in Kari, which involves going into Kari. Then you’d have to be there as it starts to explode. So basically it’s impossible and certain death to even try it unless you found ways to circumvent all these issues.

As for giving Eden snacks, essentially just throwing things onto the surface of the planet counts as feeding them due to the way it has always been growing. Though they’ve expressed an interest in some of the things they’ve been finding in Ilex’s Vivarium. If nothing else it gives them ideas on how to expand their planet in new ways as they’ve never had independent organisms there except for that tentacle monster hanging around. Eden has never seen a self sustaining ecosystem that relies on other creatures separated from the central mass before.

We’re sorry, the number you called is not available right now. Please leave a message after the tone.

Well while you’re sitting there awaiting a potentially inevitable death, I can at least update you over the comms as to what is happening. Maybe it’ll keep your mind off of things. Though maybe I shouldn’t disrupt your focus. Either way, Cassir is already on her way so hang in there.

Evidently as you can see, Que has gone horribly wrong in every possible way. I don’t know the full details though I’ll look into it if you want after this entity business. It’s funny, I thought capturing the entity would be the highlight of my career and the biggest news of the week. Now it feels so insignificant in comparison. Rhea’s dead, Vamon is dead, you’re two inches from death, Nihlav is dead, the phantoms are acting up, the ambush fleet has been decimated, and Lancaster has awoken the beast that is the Vloz all in one week. I uh…subdued the entity though. It’s in the vivarium under heavy sedatives since it can phase through physical material and magical wards. I’m working on that part still.

As for the Raven’s proximity to us, I’m guessing because they were having a meeting out here. Renjala and Faelyn both being members makes it prudent to be parked in the frontier I guess. It now occurs to me, Faelyn’s comically oversized throne room might not be a failed project of grandeur…but the new headquarters of the phantoms. That place is a fortress built with wide roads for big things to easily move through. I guess you win five credits for calling that one.

Qhalord was distinctly absent from the meeting so he’s definitely not a member of the phantoms. Renjala’s probing around reveals that he is going to be ‘unearthed’ during the invasion after the aethernet starts collapsing to bait out Song Yi and specifically her during a time when communication is difficult.

We’ve sent out the salvage teams with a bit of a delay after the pandem ambush, partially because the area wasn’t totally secured. So we waited until they left to go scoop all that up. Up to 780 million in profit so far though.

As for blowing up a star, need pandem to do it or some sort of reaction that can use the energy of the star to sustain itself and spread outwards. Technically if you close the kari rift you can unbind the star which isn’t the same as a supernova but if someone is too close they can get eaten by this now unleashed star. Not as great of a range on that one though and not as fast. The entity I’ve drugged and knocked out probably knows how to do it but for obvious reasons I’m not waking that thing back up for awhile.

The 004C specimens have been brought back in as you requested and are being bred for more experiments. Speaking of which, Balhast has improved his vocabulary to being able to form some basic statements. I even taught him how to do basic addition and subtraction.

Peter has found some bait for Seiyomi, the problem is the bait is Renjala or Gunhild. Similar to Nila, Seiyomi also has something of an interest in strange artifacts. So getting his attention onto one of those two could be a bit of a gamble given how elusive and sneaky he is. Odds are unless we vault those weapons with extreme security measures, he might be able to steal it outright without anyone being able to talk to him for five seconds. So…good luck with all of that.

As for the colony ships, technically we could drop a hostile colony onto any inhospitable rock we wanted to and there are several of those. Space has a lot of planets that aren’t really doing much useful. Though planets are quite large so if you want just ‘more colonies’ you could just set up more on the existing planets we are settled onto. Would also make them less expensive to upkeep since they’d be within easy range of current shipping routes. So depends what you’re really looking to accomplish with the colony, do you want another deep space system to call your own instead of living under Lancaster or do you just want to set up more tax income?

Also I’m not sure how to tell  you this, but you’re in the news for shipping desperate colonists to Ash. A world with no aethernet connection possibilities and isolating them. People suspect you’re using slave labor down there for something truly terrible hence you would hide them on such an uncontactable world. So…okay we expanded it and still no one wants to go there. The first thing the first wave did was make enough money to fly to Koura. That being said…I wouldn’t mind the place. Since New Age is the exact kind of company that benefits from the atmosphere that blocks all contact by comparison to regular people who rely on communication a bit too much in the modern day and age.

The merkas project is going slightly awry since now the Arcurans are about to rule over Enohas ever since the events of Haziel happened and Nihlav died. On the other hand, our project is nearing completion to produce the merkas male but the general reward for doing so got a lot less worth my time. The Vivarium is doing it though and handling the yelay space suits, so not my problem. Also they finished the yelay suits thing.

The metal maker has been moved to a further point in the vivarium from its mom. Do we still call it a mom? The makers don’t have genders and reproduce through construction so not sure what to make of the terminology there. Giving them sunstones result in glowing monsters, they look kinda neat at least. They still bite though.

Adryn says he doesn’t really know anyone on Sol he is worried about, though he’s low enough in rank that we don’t tell him about the phantoms so he doesn’t know how bad it’s about to get. That being said, he’s a sivataur vampire and so his entire clan are probably going to pop raging boners once all this happens. If they don’t get wiped out.

We’ve had Bardhe moved to a secure facility on a Solvang station. Given that Solvang’s leader is a member of the phantoms, that is probably the safest place for him to be short of inviting him to Auwana which could be a baad plan. Though as long as he still has work to do he seems fine taking our job offers.

We’ve set up the computer and general electronics factory. In the meantime I still don’t really know what you’re waiting for in particular.

However, the odds of the councilor job have gotten worse since the incoming Nelta fleet have caused Alnae to raise security practically everywhere especially around their VIPs. They no longer leave their bunkers at all as they await the arrival of the invasion.

I might also point out that our teams keeping a lookout on them are still on Thenica, which is about to be blown apart. Fortunately, we do still have the old facility we used to use underneath that shopping mall which survived the first invasion so they could just head to operating out of there once again if they need to remain on Thenica.

Posted on December 5, 2021

Stories of Lore 19

We’ve started with the construction efforts of integrating the broken station into Somnus as some extra space. Subsidies and laws have been put in place to help with the civilian side of thing. Hurt our profits but helped our growth.

Hylavi has managed to curb the rampant growth of Laura’s enterprises, thankfully. Though we’ll see how long that lasts once Zhuan becomes a potential problem. As for the buildings she bought, they’re still under heavy renovations. As far as Hylavi can tell, they’re being designed as something resembling a factory. That being said, she spent the better part of a week chasing the Iron Gnoll around Somnus and Koura because he got here before anyone escorting him did and that…was an issue.

Satsujin has taken us up on the funding offer, as well as Alnae and Shetou’s offer. So we’re sort of all funding a fraction of her endeavors. She seems to be intentionally trying not to show any favoritism to all of her financial suitors while still getting things done.

As for vacation places, I like the idea of Koura. It’s nice and nearby, no need for using the prototype cruiser. Lot of nature destinations, the quiet might do her some good.

As for the Kar’Soluth station, sure though unless you plan to monitor Shetou I’m not sure how beneficial the location would be other than simply being out of the way. Which we have the lowest decks for at the moment. Not to mention that colony on the so-called “Ash” planet that is pretty much completely inaccessible to anyone passing through.

Improving your current armaments… I suppose you could buy a mech? I mean you own a space station, how much more power armor do you need?

Also we went looking for a new captain to help on some of our newest endeavors. Given the general unemployment rate of such individuals being quite low we sort of snagged one from Shetou instead. Being good at hostile negotiations counts as diplomatic credentials right? Anyways here’s a profile on Captain Yorikane.

Oh and we got a report from Faelyn. The Pandem intercept team has launched with whatever they’ve managed to bring together to weaken the nelta fleet. They will intercept in two months, and then one month after that Nelta will pass through the frontier. Another month after that, the second invasion will begin. So basically…clock’s ticking. We have a limited amount of time to position people where we want them positioned once everything goes to hell. I predict we won’t be able to maneuver as freely once Nelta gets here, I advise measuring the value of opportunity versus safety.

The First lance continues its push towards exploring the area. More settlements of both arcuran and merkas have been found, they definitely trend towards certain personalities but it is always interesting to see the differences due to the expanse of distance between them all. We actually found a bunch of arcurans who are obsessed specifically with hunting giant monsters, and a group of merkas who once tried to just establish their own village and live peacefully along a river. They were raided by a group of arcurans and are now filled with hate and vengeance just like Nihlav after their tree was burned down. Even when the slightest bit of progress towards peace was made, someone had to go and fuck it up.

Yoham is on his way back to Enohas, completely unaware he’s about to be a diplomatic sacrifice to the merkas so he’s not chained up just yet. Setani is recovered but still a bit sore. I’d say she should be fine given her physical prowess but she’s not exactly in tip top shape for getting involved with a beast like Elgrim once again.

Eerihild still sucks with weapons, she doesn’t really do well with ‘extensions of the self’ since herself can extend into a fucking werewolf. Though we built a special practice sword for how large her hands get when she transforms…even if she’s got no technique do you now how scary a werewolf with a sword is? In that form she has enough physical strength to rag doll an orc with just her teeth, a practice sword is basically a club. Worse results because she keeps having to think about it unlike with her claws, and notably in her humanoid form she can manifest an incarnum version of her claws over her hands. The knights still think the training is worthwhile though since it keeps her focusing on technique over just running things over with brute force. A sort of taming of her mind to remember to keep track of more than just the throat of whatever she’s trying to kill. She still isn’t the beeest at teamwork though. An effort is made, but it is more of just staying near them and not running ahead. In a fight she’s just a little too wild to do anything like a phalanx for example. She’s also a bit too eager for just standing around holding up a shield. With one exception, the only person Eerihild works well with is Sarnai. The two of them seem to be getting along well. While Sarnai can barely fight to the standards of a knight she does understand teamwork. Eerihild on the other hand can body a knight in a matter of seconds but can’t work with anyone else. Together they form…a fucking mess but it’s the only pairing that gets Eerihild to remember she even has a teammate after the bullets start flying. Though Sarnai is getting the most out of this relationship from a training standpoint. Sparring with Eerihild during their spare time is definitely getting her used to the shocking reality of combat, because Eerihild is kind of scary and always seems angry enough to forget its practice. The thought that she miiiight just forget to go easy and actually bite your head off is sort of always in the back of your mind.

Alexander’s project back at Moncayo is going well, though for the most part its just a matter of construction right now since it is absolutely huge and a lot of infrastructure. Not to mention the other half of it being built on Thenica.

Third lance is hanging around on Eden…which is a weird thing to say. If you think of Eden as it’s avatar then that sounds like an innuendo waiting to happen. Don’t think on it too much. Though we’ve received some mysterious donations of an unquantifiable resource through some unknown machinations of Valadeus if you wanted to open a rift tunnel to get everyone back home about now.

Speaking of Eden it seems to not like the idea of construction on herself and is already planning to eat all the colony prefabs that were placed on them once you all leave. Though it offers a snazzy custom cave network behind a waterfall guarded by a giant tentacle monster if you want to just place furniture and stuff in there since they’re less picky about rocks being drilled into then dirt having stuff placed in it. Not sure what it’s reasons are.

They also can definitely build more avatars, Eliza is working on one of them. Eden uses the one Eliza created as its current manifestation, and then there is it’s own replacement for the one that got blown up by that gnoll. Apparently the caveat is that Eden can only let a small number leave the planet at a time due to the links they must sustain to keep it working. “Small number” to a planet being a number over a hundred though. I feel small again.

As for the surgery, teeeechnically they say they can help you though they seem to think you have any skill in this field whatsoever. Actually even Dr. Taz can’t figure out what the hell Eden is doing that enables such things to be done. Umarlen can’t fathom the precision required. While everyone tries to unravel the mystery and techniques behind it, Eliza just needed to see it done in front of her to replicate it and is now practicing on Eden’s avatar  while the other four scientists on the trip are still stuck on figuring out how to do any of this without a microscope and a robot arm. Dr. Taz says it’s making him nervous to wonder how much practice Eliza has had that she can be so precise and quick with just the claws on her hands instead of scalpel. Not to mention without a microscope. So while yes, Eden can help you do the surgery there is a less than one percent chance you can actually do it unless you give up your life of practicing pandem and incarnum to spend a few centuries practicing medical surgeries. Fortunately, Eden can apparently do this hundreds of times at once since all of their avatars can do it.

Also as your pandem bind you can cast a few of the things Eden has though its a short boring list brought on by survival rather than exploration. Mental communication is probably nice though, you and Ilex can just phone each other up whenever you like. The FTL spell will obliterate your body instantly though. Notably Vasia has had better luck figuring out what Eden knows about Sahad. Even if you are bound to an entity that knows sahad, 001D has not triggered for you otherwise I doubt we could have this conversation. You’re definitely a bit more robust and you seem to have put on some extra pounds to your bench sets. Not to mention if you use embody bind you’ll become..quite large. You can rift to their giant tentacle monster though, and there is definitely a lot to be explored. Eden doesn’t have context for their own abilities nor have they entered into any conflict that demanded they be refined. A living planet with no one else to encounter out in the vast emptiness of space only needs to keep existing within range of a star, so there is definitely something to be said for the education process. As opposed to something like Valadeus who has mastered all of his powers and knows how to teach you to use them.

As for anything else they’ve met, apparently Eden has met the giant tentacle monster living under the waterfall. It was once some alien cruising through the galaxy that never left once it got stuck on the planet. It’s not exactly intelligent, and likely has a similar origin story to Eden themselves but became Eden’s pet entirely by way of being significantly smaller than Eden. Other then that they haven’t met any other life forms.

Apparently Qhalord is not being used for anything we think he’s about to be used for. Recently credit for a major attack on Shetou’s rebuilt areas was, let’s say, given to Qhalord. He was abducted not for lack of joining, but because he was so insignificant to Kanika that he could be expended – as bait. The phantoms are up to something involving targeting House Song most likely. So that’s foreboding, and also bad for Qhalord’s lifespan.

Bit late to the party on the Elgrim thing. He’s already been captured and sent to the Raven II by Shanhai and Orochi. We probably would have caught him ourselves had it not been for Jhaeros deciding NOW was the time to make his grand return.

Vasia got some samples of Eden to bring back but if we replicate a planet that ought to be…interesting.

Peter made it to Jydoq space on the hunt for Seiyomi only to discover that Seiyomi is already elsewhere yet again. Took him weeks of hunting around the planet to pursue various leads to end up in “Seiyomi took off into the Abyss for reasons unknown”. Seiyomi is not a pandem caster and the jydoq are only recently learning what pandem is. We don’t know how he did that, we don’t know where he is going, and now Peter has to get back to Sol to find a rift to get into the abyss and then navigate that confusing mess to a general position of jydoq where Seiyomi may or may not be by the time he gets there. Apparently, he’s not even the only one looking for Seiyomi and the representative of a psionics group from Sol is also on the hunt but they’re going to Enetsu near jydoq space instead. It’s starting to become apparent that this is…this is going to take some effort. Peter has decided to stop hunting Seiyomi directly and instead hunt down his backstory to try  and find any way to lure Seiyomi to somewhere that Peter can actually find him. Because chasing this trail from behind is just proving to be impossible.

The Iron Gnoll beat Adryn to Somnus station. He then proceeded to run around the city looking for Adryn wondering why Adryn wasn’t there. Who he ditched back on Tykel…. While he wandered about he happened to run into Echo Seven and challenge her to a duel. She politely declined, so he hit her anyways and ran off. Like…just slapped her with his axe and then sprinted off into an alley. Echo Seven didn’t seem to notice and went back to whatever it is she does. Hylavi had to chase the gnoll all around the city for three days before Adryn got there. After a day of fruitless searching they  learned he had found his way to Koura and was now running amuck down there. He found that whole arena business, foiled Laura’s latest scheme and took the prize money which he promptly spent almost all of on drugs and hookers. Now you might be thinking, that seems normal for a prize fighter right? He made the hookers do the drugs and let them loose into the street, didn’t fuck a single one of them or take a single drug. Just took off into the night and was found the next day on Madhammer’s base trying to steal an artillery cannon with rope and some elbow grease. Gheir shooed him off and the Iron Gnoll would not be seen again until he reappeared operating a Koura burrito cart that he somehow now has a franchise stake in and was just…selling burritos on the sidewalk for a whole day. We finally caught up to him and Hylavi arrested him for assaulting Echo Seven, only for him to break out of the shuttle on the way to jail somehow and disappearing into the night. By the time Hylavi tracked him down again, he had found the temple of the cult of lucidity and convinced an entire ritual circle that he was one of their warriors. He knows no psionics but was so convinced that it was working that he fought Hylavi and Adryn both, won, and then ran off once more. We finally caught him when a regular security officer tackled and cuffed him. We have no idea how just some random schmuck took him down when Hylavi and Adryn couldn’t. He’s in a jail cell right now and demands to be let out because he’s an important businessman who owns a company. That company being his burrito cart. He tested negative for drugs.

Cassir is back en route to Enohas to see about handling the merkas situation. Maybe she can work on the samples the lab needs to work on the merkas male project while she’s out there.

Also we’ll have people at the church on Jamalia once Cassir gets there…since they were aboard her ship in the first place and she got rerouted she now has to reroute again to get the initial people there.

Also did you just say recruitment drive, in the middle of a recruitment drive? Did you not see all the problems Seiyomi is giving us already?

A new prefab colony is under construction at the 40th day factories. Also vetting out Laura’s gangsters aren’t hard for the Jamalia trip, since none of them want to even go there. Not big enough for their type of market I suppose.

So the Vivarium is noticing a problem with this metal maker thing. It’s…advanced. Keeping it in a cage made it make a maker that can unmake everything we make if nothing else just because that resource is plentiful. It turns out Cassir’s encounter with the creature accidentally introduced it to the concept of metallic manipulation, something it never had to bother with before in its natural habitat. As well as some of the ways it could be incorporated. It then, very specifically, made a maker that makes metal things out of any other metal thing. Any other metal thing. Even enchanted and warded metals just get scrapped for its junkyard of monsters. So…we kind of just made a fucking exerlus. A baby infantile one without billions of years of advancement, but a creature that can assimilate any and all metal. It doesn’t actually consume it or assimilate it the way exerlus do but it can peel it away with its claws and haul it off to its cave to be repurposed. At this point we should see if it can just test out of getting an engineering degree. The current cage is just purely wards that levitate its entire enclosure and is definitely expensive to keep up but is is the only way we’ve found so far to contain this thing. On the upside though, it doesn’t really seem to be in all of that much of a hurry to go anywhere. It just…sits in its cave and makes drones that guard its cave. The head researcher at the Vivarium says that it is a very docile creature as long as you don’t provoke it. Also we’ve decided not to feed it any more sugar, that made it build faster. If it builds faster, it needs more materials, and that means more cages get ‘repurposed’. So…that’s a thing.

Also a Vloz’Khress val has gone mysteriously missing recently and we had to write a check to Bardhe.

Oh and Vamon has taken off into space with a rather large fleet to the pandem intercept point.

As for the Jaal’Darya, they don’t actually have any Alnae targets. They consider Alnae to be too large of a figure to get out of their way with something as simple as an assassination so they have little to gain from the effort. The scope of their power and interests is rooted in the politics of Kar’Soluth and Shetou.

Elgrim is on file from the phantoms for 450,000,00 credits. Which is definitely on the more premium side of things though I can see why given how goddamned hard he is to kill. They noted he’d still be kind of a psychopath but at least loyal to the hand that feeds. There is a very long disclaimer about the Raven not being responsible if some idiot treats their new acquisition like dirt and then gets killed by it.

The Nomads have taken their new recruits and are off to see about this whole Kar’Soluth business. It’s a long trip but…well that ship is fast and they’ll be there much sooner than expected. That seems to be a large part of how the Nomads happen to people though.

We’ve caught Zhuan and Laura up on things as part as keeping them familiar with Haggard in the first place. As part of Lancaster’s query of investigations, we’ve discovered what those buildings Laura bought are actually for. Apparently there’s an exploit in the laws that Joe had been pushing so hard for that enables a lot of profit to be made with the creation of new factories. Basically meaning that Lancaster is paying for Laura to build a new car factory that she’ll keep the profits from. Not…actually illegal or even all that bad I guess? Apparently Laura is betting that with the farming expansions and subsidies Somnus is giving them that soon there will be more places to drive around on this planet and if she gets in on the industry early it’ll be easy profit. Especially if she can basically use Lancaster’s money to make the investment.

Vaeri has taken off from her mission now that we basically know whats going on there. Abucting one of the warforged models as a sample that she apparently intends to just throw at New Age once she gets it back and let them figure out what it is and what to do with it. We’ve bounced the intel around as necessary and everyone’s happy for now. Except Siwa once Arkaric ‘yeet’s the place as you say.

So we made some power armor for the arcurans. It’s pretty cool looking to be honest. Glowing blue arcane energy emanating from these seven foot tall space marine dudes. I feel like we just committed some sort of copyright infringement on accident though and I’m not really sure why.

Gheir’s got his team together and is off to go look into the Varrel situation and we have some new ships for transporting things around. We can fit less in it than we can in the freighters we typically use but its comfier. So we use it mostly for the crew while the rest of the arsenal gets shoved into the bigger freighters.

Posted on November 28, 2021

Stories of Lore 18

Well at least building structures are cheap on Koura still, so it was easy to set up the academy. Currently it just makes use of a nearby office building for the minimal enrollment we have while a larger campus is built in a more open space. We bundled it together with the same department working on the more traditional education system for the potential advancement of the population.

Koura cures has observed a tendency in those subjected to the process of the parasite’s “healing” to stop showing symptoms of breathing difficulty on Koura despite its atmosphere being a little bit less than ideal. Also an ability to digest more of the local flora than usual. Speaking of which we have a new town down on Koura. Some civilians started their own farms a few miles outside of the city and that caused a few other people to move out there and some small businesses to pop up. Apparently they weren’t so keen on city life.

We’ve fixed up the station that got shoved back at us. At this point we could just attach it to Somnus if we don’t find a use for it otherwise.

Hylavi spent some time gunning down gangsters in New Kaifen alongside Eleazor. Well they say they’re part of a minor house but no one really respects minor houses enough to consider them more than gangs I am told. His wife was to be transported to Kar’Soluth territory to complete the transaction between this minor house and the Kar’Soluth. After some interrogation from the two of them, they were able to determine which ship his wife had been taken on. Which resulted in Hylavi getting a bright idea and calling Sethis to get a favor from the Nomads who are in Sol at the moment. They hijacked the ship transporting Eleazor’s wife and brought her back to New Kaifen. I can’t help but notice that Hylavi is definitely getting a bit comfortable with exploiting the number of strange organizations we have at our disposal. This is the second time she’s made use of the lowest decks to get something done and the third time she let outside less-than-legal forces solve problems for her. After promising sanctuary to Eleazor and his wife she has convinced them to come back with her to Somnus.

Speaking of which, the Satsujin recruitment has been stalled by her running off to assemble a strike team. Between myself and several other imperial recruiters, instead of outright recruiting her we more so triggered her to go into ‘hero mode’ and is now off to assemble a team. Apparently following in the example of Indal, who is the original reason she tried joining the Valdir for awhile, she feels a need to get around politics and prepare for the invasion.

Riley is currently being restrained by Vasia due to her erratic behavior, also something about being wrapped up tightly seems to reduce her struggles. Vasia describes it as making her feel ‘held together’ which is why she’s wrapped in a weighted blanket. She has developed a compulsive behavior of checking that her body is still attached to herself or at least where she thinks it is. Her kinesthetic senses are thrown off and she keeps experiencing problems with coordination as a result. Basically she’s suddenly become very clumsy.

The station we captured from the Kar’Soluth is being occupied but because it is an asteroid stealth base it has very little ability to generate value other than being there in the first place. There is nothing else in the system to really exploit either. So I should caution, it’s going to just be a drain on finances for as long as we maintain it. This might be why it was so small and just used for observation and as a staging point.

Business wise Vittles is doing better on profit without the Shetou part of the deal, even if they aren’t entirely happy about it. Lot less work to just sell directly to Alnae, and a lot less freighter’s going missing. That and harder for the local pirates to find an exploit to.

Yoshai is up and about at Voyager, seems better than he was before actually. His pandem corruption has been removed and he’s been opening doors and operating complicated machinery for the last week just for fun. Apparently Eden set him to being a native of the shadow plane since that was his favorite one to channel. This has had a few side effects on his physiology. One of which being total darkvision. Normally races with this benefit can see better and further in the darkness, though Yoshai can now see even better in the dark than we can in the day. To the point that even in pitch blackness he can tell where everything is somehow. This fits his strategy of opening rifts to obscure the visions of others quite well since he’s now able to channel Noctis even more effectively than before.

We’re continuing to explore the continent on Enohas, the area around us is fairly secure…in theory. Haziel befriended a few of those kaiju things wandering around and has them napping outside the colony as her pets. They’re just…napping there. Ominously. Notably this gave us a chance to actually understand how they work a bit more. Apparently these huge creatures are mostly herbivores and are a little bit solar powered. They’re that size because of the number of options available to them for finding energy and sustenance. Sure if you get close enough they’ll eat you but if you run its not worth the effort anymore when they can also just eat the whole tree right next to them. At least that applies for the specific ones she has with her at the moment. There are some other much more predatory species that go after these creatures.

Reika has taken over the merkas project but stated that they’re not budging since we last talked to them. Nihlav still wants Yonam dead and a more aggressive war against the arcurans. Which she has already begun conducting on her own without us being involved, apparently helping her find all those lost warrens gave them an army to work with and they remembered a lot of what they learned at Jamalia while we held them here. So now they’re making advances in weapons that might help tilt things into their favor for a little while at least. So Reika’s official report is “project abandoned” until you get Madhammer to send Yonam as a sacrifice to advance politics or authorize Reika to initiate a war against Nihlav.

In other Jamalian affairs, Eerihild is trying out the whole knight thing, mostly because of an interest in being rich instead of poor. Despite her mother’s ability to live off the land wherever she might go, Eerihild isn’t quite so suited to being a hermit. She has a general problem of being a young rebellious werewolf who is used to being on her own. So a distinct lack of teamwork on her part, though Sarnai seems to be doing the best at making progress on that front if nothing else because its the only other squire her own age she can hang out with. We experimented with her ‘shamanism’ to an extent to get a better idea of her abilities.

She has no pandem corruption due to the ‘native’ rule again but with a twist. It’s impossible to not be a native of your own mother, and all of Eerihild’s pandem abilities come from that connection rather than planar rift effects. She can’t open rifts to other planes like all of the knights can, but she can cast high level spells just by association to her mother’s ability to do the same thing. Similar to what you and Irae have going on, but with an archdruid instead of a lich.

I’d say your odds of convincing Haziel to bind with you are fairly low.

As for building underground bunkers, I’d estimate around fifty million, as that’s basically a hostile colony drilled into the ground.

Now for the shady news, in accepting the offer of Valadeus Irae successfully convinced Eden to bind with you. I don’t know how to say this, but you look a little fatter than usual. Maybe its just my imagination. Though we learned something unique about Eden they had not previously revealed but in hindsight makes perfect sense. As a sahad wielder with billions of years of experience, the planet can move at ftl speeds if Eden so desires. They just haven’t bothered because they liked their star and weren’t actually sure of what would happen if they jumped between stars, or that the star over yonder was similar to their own in the first place. They don’t really have a telescope or math.

They’re definitely too far away for us to bring back to the frontier in any reasonable amount of time and far too large for you to rift tunnel with us beyond just their avatar. Though its interesting to know that they could just…move the whole planet at will. It also puts into perspective how docile Eden really is, had they wanted to they could have destroyed Lancaster’s whole fleet by taking a step to the left. So maybe don’t send them to war.

Well this has been fruitful. At least we’ve learned a lot from contacting Indal..though really we contacted Kaisa and Kenin I suppose. Azilath has agreed to help in the invasion after all this but is definitely in need of some therapy now. Oh look at that, we have a whole team of those. We should probably keep tabs on Valdir after this little chat, they might start to do some…erratic things.

We actually have some trackers we aren’t sending anywhere at the moment. They work for Vasia and procure oddities from around the galaxy. Some of them are on other colonies on the frontier “investigating” certain anomalies and people. She said not to bother with bringing it up unless significant progress was made.

As for the therapy plan, I suppose more doesn’t hurt though they’re just hanging around Somnus and Koura helping out with problems here and there. Actually we’ve found great use for them in helping colonists relocated by 40th day in particular who are dealing with varying forms of homesickness.

Salied has been allowed outside to visit the manor of the Astral Order, which she seems to like hanging around. Though anyone would like hanging out in their mansion. They had a slip’n’slide running down a hallway while Renjala is away. At least for the duration of Salied’s visit.

Vasia says that if she was a phantom she would have a bigger facility and more funding for her work.

Cassir used the ritual to contact Qhalord, it appears you were correct that he was indeed abducted by Kanika.

Peter has found a new lead on Seiyomi’s whereabouts that both make sense and no sense at all. He is pursuing these leads to the jydoq homeworld.

As for improving the scanning, we kind of can though we need bigger platforms to deploy such a thing on depending on how sensitive you want it to be. If you want to pick out specific species presence we could probably fit that into a cruiser. Would still have to go down and look for them though. If you want to pick out specific individuals who don’t want to be found among dense mass of noise, such as finding Nila in a forest, we’re going to need a carrier sized scanning vessel that just only scans things. Assuming you want to do all this from orbit, as that kind of range and precision is hard to pull off from way up there across such a range of area. Theoretically we could mount these kinds of things onto smaller rigs but they would need to be able to enter the atmosphere and get to within a certain range of their target. So…yes kind of but depends what you want to do.

For the merka male project we kind of need to abduct or get samples of more merkas. The particular issue being, they just packed up all their stuff and went home from Jamalia and have become someone closed off from visits and further negotiation due to a general distaste for the arcurans being back on Koura sitting comfy.

So not only does the cage need reinforcement, the new maker just burrowed through the whole station and got to the cafeteria, costing a lot in repairs and shutting down the station’s life support for a few hours. Not a major catastrophe but slightly annoying. We’re still trying to catch some of the birds that got loose when it passed through their enclosure. It did all this and then just sat in the kitchen eating everything with sugar in it. Including the bags of sugar for actual baking. Then it burrowed through the other half of the station and found another enclosure on the opposite side of the station from its original habitat and started setting up its nest there. I think there’s something to the makers instinctively living far away from one another. The planet we found them on had them spread over vast distances. The staff had trouble apprehending it obviously. The metal maker is very hard to subdue, almost as if it were armored! Imagine that. It also took the metal of the station it burrowed through into its new nest that…I guess we’ll just leave it in for now while we repair everything. We’re looking into better reinforcements for its enclosure, which is getting dangerous to approach as it starts making…things. Metal things, with spikes.

The fenalis are currently for sale on a Koura petshop we set up.

Bardhe is still hunting, Vals aren’t so easy to find and approach for an assassin given their status and that they live in a culture were assassination is the normal way to get a promotion. Apparently he’s closing in on one at least. Also remember these are vals who can summon Ecsanul, he has a very limited window to strike or he could get eaten by a demon lord.

Expansions to the New Horizons shipyard have been complete, it can now produce cruisers and battlecruisers. One for practical use, one for shooting things.

That may have been a risky offer. The Jaal’Darya have enough dirty work to get done that they’ll straight up trade us the plague as a reward for doing some of them. One of them is just delivering another plague entirely to another location entirely. So we didn’t tell them where we come from. One of the job offers was to deliver such a virus to Somnus itself, so…we might want to keep tabs on them. Another is to assassinate Adin Va and Yasice Val’Sharen from House Song. If we kill Song Yi herself they’ll give us whole city as a reward and throw in the disease we’re asking for as a bonus. Though they admitted that one’s ambitious given that they’ve been trying for decades to pull that off now. Though its on the table if we can get it done. They’d also appreciate it if we could kill Renjala after his little stunt kicking them out of the city they were holding hostage to keep House Song busy during the Sarghess invasion of Sharen territory. Also a straight up bombing of House Enelynn’s manor that happens to kill one of their heirs. That being the house in Shetou lead by an elf of all things. So there’s a long list of things…all of it is pretty nefarious. I’m not sure if they have no idea where we’re from or if they’re just fucking with us. Because they are favored by the phantoms so they should have an idea of whats going on, but they say everything with a straight face.

Zhuan is on Koura now looking around the neighborhood. He hasn’t done anything overt just yet but Laura has him ‘learning the ropes’ most likely.

Vanjin is limping around and keeping an eye on the councilman. Her ideas for dealing with it still stand at least. Man this mission is developing more and more steps every time we make any progress I’m noticing. Assassinating a councilor is hard.

Vaeri is still snooping around though points out that Laura’s knowledge of the affair is mostly to be sold to Arkaric who is practically sponsoring the mission. Given the information she found, he would probably like to know as soon as possible. It seems the reason for so much secrecy around the warforged project is that they are…distinctly aware that Arkaric and the Exerlus will probably have an interest in the matter as soon as its revealed. So they’re trying to build a large enough army to prevent it from being stopped before it can start spreading through the system. They also intend to hide the manufacturer and location of the factory for as long as possible, so it can only be sold to vetted clients who won’t tell any of these groups where its coming from. I suppose that’s why we were sent to look into things by the people they don’t want to know about it.

The Nomads took a sidetrip to hijack a ship for Hylavi that was transporting a kidnapped princess. Then they just hopped over to the nearest planet and kept recruiting, I suppose their ship being so alarmingly fast is useful to just have sitting nearby.

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Posted on November 21, 2021

Stories of Lore 17

Ah yes the golem ship. It’s sitting in space where we told it to park, near the exit to where you’re at. The comm buoys are up, hence we’re having this discussion without the usual long chain of pandem comm lines that we had to do for awhile. At least they work.

Also the space station plan hit a bit of a snag that will cost some millions in repairs. Once we boarded it, nothing really happened. Once they walked to the other end of the station, then it pushed the station. Stations are not really designed to be shoved around like that and a chunk of it broke off, then we had to take some emergency measures to stop it from drifting back through the rift and into anything on Somnus. Which broke a few more pieces of it. Still manageable amounts of damage, but definitely some repairs needed.

We’ve sent our ship running around to get Setani to Enohas, within the next day or two she’ll be there. At least her decline isn’t too dramatic and the doctors are keeping her fairly alive for the time being.

So without Hylavi, the security force is having a bit more difficulty in regards to dealing with Laura. Atop of that, while we’ve managed to disrupt some criminal activities we can no longer differentiate hers from the other smaller gangs that recently arrived. With regards to the arena, she found another clause in it about medical coverage and other various quirks to the way its being run. The underground arena seems to have mostly closed up since the investments into our own have been high enough to choke it out at least. Though now we’re losing money on it and she’s running the behind the scenes section of it through her proxys, that we can’t tie to her directly. So in short, the arena is going pretty well. However she has moved on to other projects, ones we haven’t quite figured out yet. The large property she bought awhile back has been converted into a kind of mundane shopping area. We’re relatively convinced that there is something going on with it beyond its surface level operations but have yet to prove anything.

In other news, the Vittles operation to sell food to Alnae and let Shetou ‘steal’ the rest has hit a snag. Every shipment intended to be stolen by Shetou has been stolen by other pirates, notably sharing something in common with the host of gangs that came into the system through the exploitation of the 40th day system that I mentioned before. We’re not entirely sure, but we’re pretty sure that Laura has some hand in this. Also the absence of Hylavi and a large portion of the security force is not helping, soon as she left they became a little more bold.

In other news regarding the less than prestigious individuals, Ohalyn refused therapy with all the apathy she could muster.

As for Satsujin, competition is a little tense. Particularly, House Song sent an orc named Kekoa who has the house’s long history to stand on in making an appeal to her. I’m kind of still working my way in on the guise that she isn’t one hundred percent of my reason for being here and pitching the exploration angle a bit instead of something purely military. Alnae sent her own former commanding officer. She has definitely attracted a lot of attention.Though fortunately, its mostly quite cordial.

Hylavi has arrived in Sol and worked her way to finding Eleazor while he is on his manhunt to get his wife back. You could say he was a little surprised to find an alien cop there with such a vested interest in the subject. Currently the two of them are investigating to figure out where his wife is being held.

We began our attack on the Kar’Soluth station which resulted in some…losses. While the station wasn’t too heavily defended, it was still tucked deep into the asteroid and we could only fire on it once it was clear that we were there to fire on it. One of the destroyers and perhaps a hundred personnel died in the assault, though we have taken the station.

The small fleet has arrived at FO-234, now established to be known as Herastes. The aliens kind of look like flamboyant demons. Still some similar features as their planar cousins but much more colorful instead of just black, red, and on fire. Though they also display the radical variations in physical shape as demons tend to, we have reason to believe the plane itself lends something to this particular occurrence Technologically they’re well progressed given the average we come across on these adventures. They have cars and long range communication, they’ve even landed on their own moon a few times but haven’t really colonized it. . Now for the bad news, one of the corvette crews was killed by the Kar’Soluth strike force who clearly don’t want any competition. The other two retreated out of the space around FO-234 before being destroyed.

As for an academy, I suppose we could expand to a more militarized university. Might take some time to yield any results, as currently there aren’t too many younger individuals to go through such courses in the area. Speaking of which, here’s a picture from the hospital of the first baby to be born on Koura. Just a keepsake.

Oh and, Riley and Umarlen are obviously not doing well. Though at least we got them back.

The squires have been transferred officially and are en route to Jamalia. Though we recruited another one on Somnus and also promoted one in the first lance too. So still no nice divisible numbers at the moment.

Reika recommends we send more to Jamalia if she’s going to be remaining here. So they can be trained by the champ. Also she seems concerned about the recent interaction with the merkas and may or may not be planning to build an army around herself.

Alexander is on his way back to Moncayo to take the job from Faelyn for the big rift tunnels. This should actually help our recruitment as well if it brings people from Sol to Moncayo where one of our chapter houses happens to be.

The rest of ongoing affairs should be evident for you since you’re…involved in an awful lot right now.

The Nomads have gone along with Adryn to Tykel, that turned into…an adventure in all of five minutes. As it turns out, the Nomads have enemies on Tykel. Small time and easily dispatched, but they still opened fire five feet out of the docking terminal. Apparently this kind of thing is normal there. Never go there. The other problem being that the so called Iron Gnoll is, as Andal puts it, “sparky”. We found him running around downtown stealing food and getting into fights with gangs he stole drugs from. Drugs he didn’t even use by the way, he just stole it for the amusement value and then later threw it into a nightclub before running off into the streets once again. This all happened within a two hour period where Adryn lost track of him and had to find him a second time. He caused all this mess so quickly that Adryn was constantly just trying to catch up. He found once again in the sewers chasing rats. The sewers are not large enough to stand up in, he was belly crawling through the pipes. Chasing rats. After being offered to come to Somnus he agreed to come check it out.

In between walking from the sewer exit to the docking port, he wandered off again while everyone was buying snacks from a food stand. Stole some other ship and just took off. Amusingly, he was headed for Somnus. Adryn is hot on his tail while the Nomads stayed behind to keep up their recruiting efforts. He’ll be here soon most likely…without an escort. I would advise Hylavi to be on alert but guess what? She’s not fucking here. Prepare for a potentially rough day. I’ve asked Madhammer to send someone because if he gets here without someone to greet or possibly detain him then Lancaster is going to throw a fit once he somehow disrupts half the economy on a caffeine fueled rampage through the plaza. The Nomads said they’d take him though if we do get him onto the payroll. Apparently Andal and Taelwynn love him.

Also you were going to Azilath, she can’t leave SR3 or she’d be out of range of the synapse. They don’t really  go anywhere remember? Existential dread and all. Shall I go get the forklift?

As for the therapist project we’re shipping a few in from Sol who definitely could use the employment.

Salied is still watching cartoons yes, mostly because she’s stuck in the containment cell with nothing better to do. Though she is having less episodes of existential out of body experiences. The researchers are trying to talk to her more and bring her back to reality, and she can now produce a starlight spell on demand. They think it might be time to try and have her go outside for a little while and see how she handles being around people again.

As for the Yelay genders, they are chosen during their version of puberty I guess? That’s the best way I can describe it, and also about as far as the researcher explained to me before I zoned out.

Cassir and Khymin arrived at Rixa-Thenica to seek out Qhalord. Turns out his lair really is some weird dungeon filled with deathtraps and undead minions. It also turns out the place is built with very modern technology and prototype traps, so it was a bit of a mess overall. Khymin is the reason they even made it to the end of the lair, but upon reaching the end of it he wasn’t even there. Though the state of the place implies he got into a fight with something big and nasty, his basement dungeon was reduced to ruins and there are massive claw marks as if some huge monster somehow got through the tiny doorway. There was no sign of the lich himself anywhere, we’re not sure if he was killed or abducted.

Peter reports that he has made it to Sol and with Aryn’s help found the last known sighting of Seiyomi. This is just an ongoing issue of trying to track the guy down.

We’ve sent a few of the cultists to Jamalia to establish themselves there though with Cassir and Peter busy we just have a few of the lesser members available to show up. Since both Peter and Cassir take ten people with them everywhere they go.

Vamon is still enjoying the good life.

40th Day’s trip to FO-234 hit a snag. For the same reasons as Lancaster’s ships, basically the Kar’Soluth have decided to just destroy everything that gets close to the place and the survey ships are not good at outrunning things. So…they’re dead.

So far the fenalis projects reveal nothing likely to cause any major issues with my pet shop plan. The yelay would need much deeper and richer soil to embark upon reproduction efforts though they’re wary of trying for the time being given their current rather bleak situation as zoo critters. Also the Vivarium acquired a few fish species, so we’re working on an aquarium.

Meanwhile the maker exhibit spat out something new. Another maker it seems. Though one that is smaller and more humanoid in structure but uhh..not quite. The most peculiar part of it, is that there is metal used as part of this creature. We think part of the design is modeled after its encounter with Cassir. That being said it looks kind of horrifying.

Also Renjala said he can’t even get Haziel to be interested in doing anything let alone the Vivarium. That’s an ongoing project of his.

It appears Zhuan has no real connections to the Gauntlet, at least not that we can find. Again, aethernet breaking down makes it hard to run background checks on people. Though Raiben apparently knows something about this family, they used to make their primary living off money lending, laundering, and just regular investment scams. They had a lot of small businesses popping up here and there and definitely had a respectable territory across the city.

We sent Leon to establish contact with him, they chatted for awhile. That’s about it, we hit that issue again where we can’t really tell him who we are or what we do since he’s from the outside. Though he only caught Zhuan while he was leaving, apparently Zhuan is coming to Koura at the invitation of Laura King.

Vanjin is mostly recovered, though has a bit of a limp still so we don’t have her running around too much. The doctors said she wouldn’t do so well with walking for a little while since this is the second time they’ve had to fix the same femur. So they replaced it with a metal one but its taking her body some time to adjust to such dramatic surgery.

The Nomads went to recruit on Tykel since Ilex requested they help him keep his agent out of trouble for the time being since he was looking for the Iron Gnoll there. Also that’s a good a place as any to find a crew for them. They said they’ll try to find some hotshots there who can help act as officers on the battlecruiser’s crew before rummaging around for more desperate folk to fill the numbers over in a slightly more ruined area. They also kind of casually stole a freighter on their way that just so happened to be a little too close to their path of transit.

Vaeri, after months of work, has managed to worm her way into figuring out what Siwa’s secret project is. As it turns out, they’ve made something they call warforged using a captured android of Arkaric’s they came across. They think the androids come from alien scouting parties. Though you might foresee that this could get complicated with how the Echo Consensus exists just because of the memory of their war with a rogue military AI and it might just piss off Arkaric outright who is drawing the exerlus in for…some insane reason. This also explains why that engineer we were hunting around for was so important, she might have been close to knowing about these things.

The Jaal’Darya were easy to negotiate with once we got through the hoops of proving we’re not here for anything other than nefarious purchases. They said they’ll make it for us for just four hundred million credits, though caution that if the infection escapes the carrier we can expect the food shortage to get about twenty times worse. While we were there… some other interesting things came about from some casual observation and conversation with them. They seemed just a little too fond of Val’Hari Yasrena. Knowing what we know about her, it stands to reason their position in the empire is higher than we initially thought. Despite the Vloz’Khress getting the most attention as the spearhead of the new empire, its quite possible that the Jaal’Darya are the actual asset of importance. Because if they’re close to Yasrena that means they’re likely the actual favored house for the Phantoms to work with. We also noticed they were close with Beldoban, as in physically their city is in weirdly close in proximity for drow out to establish a new more traditional empire. This would make sense though, they are both great houses that have been around for centuries. Reliable, functional, and not led by a deranged delusional monster who thinks atrocities are meant to be one-upped. Might be worth keeping tabs on them. Especially now that Eliza, who we know is secretly a Jaal’Darya, is now a member of the Phantoms. We don’t know if she keeps in touch with her old family or not, but if their relationship is anything but sour then we can imagine she would give them a boost within the Phantom politics.

So far the arcurans are still struggling with the concept of ranged firepower. They keep trying to charge at everything for ‘glorious melee combat’. We’ve just started training them as heavy melee for the most part, focusing on getting them to at least understand the threat of ranged firepower even if convincing them to use it is particularly difficult.

Posted on November 14, 2021

Stories of Lore 16

Voice command features have been experimented with before in regards to pandem casters in all sorts of ways. Still doesn’t work.Otherwise that would be fairly standard by now instead of the Astral Order needing slaves over drones that can open doors.

As for Khymin’s projects, lately he’s still automating household tasks to maximize his ability to not do anything resembling chores or taking care of himself. They sell pretty well actually. The larger drones to automate ship crews that were made for that effort are being made to experiment with assistants though due to their lack of intelligence there are some notable design flaws he’s trying to work out. This also being the problem with using them for arena purposes, they just do the one thing they’re supposed to do at the moment. So processing combat options is a bit dull as they will just keep punching each other one at a time. He’s good at building these but not so much the programming side of things, which the recent expansion to the company has hired more people on board for.

As for the arena, well it’s still an ongoing issue. If you absolutely must know the details…basically by adding more rules and limitations onto it so she can’t flood it’s logistics we now have her arena back to being able to draw in all of the competitors who need some extra capital. She…expanded the premise to ‘live training exercises’. Many of the competitors who have no chance will be locked into a cage as a group with someone else and told they can leave if they win or after a certain amount of time passes. The more nefarious element of this challenge is that professional fighters are paying for the service of getting in some ‘full contact sparring’ that leave people in the hospital. Now the death toll has started, with one competitor dying to a slightly crazy zankist. Laura has banned them from the facility and implied full measure of penalties onto them for murdering someone so the arena isn’t completely insane yet at least, though it does have opportunities for this to keep happening.

Meanwhile the more legitimate arena is still dominated by a team of fighters she sponsors, while not technically exploiting anything it’s probably not good that the winnings keep getting funneled to her ‘team’. I’ve also discovered that Paylenus is hanging around keeping an eye on the arena, drow find this kind of thing normal I suppose.

With the increased funding, Hylavi has taken to buying more assault shuttles and security monitoring systems to keep an eye on whats happening around the streets. Also she’s on her way to Sol at the moment to try and see what is going on with Eleazor.

To a similar note I’ve been keeping an eye on Satsujin. She’s definitely been offered extensive packages to join any organization she wants except the more criminal types. Though she still seems to be just wandering about contemplating her life choices and her newly extended lifespan. I’m also looking into what’s going on with the jydoq while I’m here.

We’ve sent the explorers out to FO-234 to see what exactly is going on there, I expect we’ll be meeting up with the Kar’soluth there as well, for better or worse.

Well I suppose her metaphor makes sense, invasive species and all that. With Haziel coming to Enohas, let’s see what happens. I have to say though, I’m a bit curious what would happen if she encountered the living planet thing we found across the galaxy. Does the super druid control the trees or does the organism its attached to win that one?

Moving along, steamworks’ prototype is coming along nicely. To the point I would say its operable but they seem to say there’s always room for improvements.

Alexander said to point out its Reika’s fault that Nila got away after three weeks of tracking her through the forest and several major injuries resulting from the hunt. I’m not really sure what Reika’s up to on that one other than she does have a bit of a weakness for helping people out. Unlike most Nah employees…

As for the offer for the merkas, we’ve been sort of busy tracking down Nila and the merkas left to return home. Since we were stuck to large groups due to the threat Nila represents, we haven’t been able to delegate tasks too well. Though now that the Nila problem is technically resolved, we can head on over to their city in a bit. Particularly Reika, they seem to like Reika.

We’ve also opened Jamalia up for immigration to see if anyone wants to come on by and begin the process of enlarging the colony. This has gone pretty well given its a golden world with a vittles farm already on it. It’s not exactly a huge surge, given the current state of the galaxy and all, but its definitely more than most colonies get during such registrations.

We contacted Que to see how they’re doing, they are definitely interested in the conduit between you and Irae. I’ve also learned they are under the representation of an illithid who is both a little reclusive and also kind of a mad scientist. Though I suppose that was obvious just by the fact that they’re trying to replicate the synapse using psionic technology. Not as crazy as Vasia at least.

You don’t need to be concerned about me sir. My mental health is kept soundly intact just by being in your presence. Its a comforting reminder that I don’t live in a fishtank. Sort of…puts things into perspective. Want another fish toy? Might keep you company if you intend to visit Azilath yourself. I’ll go get the forklift and load you into the freighters.

As for therapists, I suppose we could find a few back in Sol. They’re definitely not going to be one of the highly employed professions in the current state of things, despite the obvious need for their presence.

Cassir has rerouted her course back towards Sol to meet up with Khymin and look for Qhalord. Will take a bit to get there. Though that means everyone who was on the way to Jamalia with her are now also going to Sol.

Peter is out looking for Seiyomi, though as might be implied its hard to figure out where to start. He’s headed to Sol on the same ship as Khymin as that is likely a decent place to start.

Vamon is sitting comfortably with no complaints about how long it takes the extinction event to arrive and destroy his homeland. Also he’s taken over Alexander’s duties as an ambassador while at Moncayo so he also took over Alexander’s accommodations in the form of getting to eat all the fancy food at the fancy dinner parties.

Meanwhile the shipyard has been freed up to resume normal production for the most part with just one dock now reserved for research projects since we’ve managed to disassemble the wreckage and see which bits of them we actually need to have laying around fully assembled for study. So profit margins are back.

40th Day ships are headed to FO-234 alongside Lancaster’s explorer ships.

As for merkas tree samples, we did manage to find a few. Well more so the Astral Order dug up a few already for similar research purposes so we just had to get to Jamalia to look things over a bit. We’ll have the staff join the Order to visit the merkas city soon so we can do all that negotiating at once.

Other vivarium work: Yelay do not have biological genders they have ‘but on the inside i feel’ genders. Though they have twenty seven genders and its more like…high school cliques than relating to sexuality, just not quite a phase. Unfortunately, all the astronauts are the same gender, hence they were all astronauts. That and the potato reference is because they can cut off their reproductive organs and use that to grow a new yelay. These organs aren’t quite ‘junk’ like ours though. Imagine testicles, but they grow in a bunch like grapes and are technically attached to the inner thigh area rather than the crotch. Once cut off, they can grow in soil conditions that are likely highly prevalent on their homeworld until you get a baby yelay.

Meanwhile, the Fenalis project has promising results of no major pathogens being transmissible at least not of our current test batch. Also I’m not sick or itchy and I have three of them. Due to Lancaster being both a scientist and a stickler for procedure they’re still clearing through more tests.

Adryn and his team have been loaded onto their ship and sent off to Tykel, though as your advisor I’m just going to tell you now that you should really send someone shady with them. Sivataur are not good with social cues and Tykel is literally governed by gangsters. I’m sure they’ll be fine buuut…I am concerned they piss off the wrong people and get shot. This is the city where you can find Arkaric’s main headquarters at after all.

Uneloj and the Yelay are getting along well, both displaced aliens in a foreign land. Though Uneloj is still withholding his sahad knowledge until he finds a trip out of here since he knows its the closest thing to currency he has right now. He seems to be leaning towards taking a job with the Nomads to help fill out its new battlecruiser, at least for the short term until he can save up enough to go home.

The Alnae ultra carrier’s food supply is contained on two separate decks. One on its topside and one on the lower end, it spins to distribute sunlight to them on a day night cycle. While these sections are particularly vulnerable to attack given their proximity to the outer hull, it’s still a very thick hull. Options for disruption include setting it on fire, bombarding the hull in naval combat, or letting loose some sort of disease within the crops. Two of those require getting someone on board though, the other requires fighting an ultra carrier. I’d say we prefer the former.

The disease idea is tricky as we don’t know specifically what crops they have nor will we have long to study them. Though add that to something that could actually infect the populace and you’ve got a recipe for a ship that needs to solve some problems. However the catch to that is the only people who are truly skilled in disease-craft would be the Jaal’darya. Who Somnus is not on the best terms with right now. Though we could send someone with much more discreet connections to meet with them, like Haggard. There is also Doctor Pierce but she’s nowhere near in position to do anything right now.

Just setting things on fire is risky because whoever starts that likely will have a very difficult time extracting since their attention will be drawn to the infiltrator the instant all the fire starts. Though it is a nice quick and direct plan of action. Once we cut off their internal food supply they may not need to dock just yet, but they will need to start importing food until they can start a new crop. It might cause them to just leave the system altogether and go settle down on a star in the frontier…which would suit our needs just fine actually. If it goes far enough away, then at least the politics surrounding it would be able to acknowledge that its not in striking range of any planet it wants back in Sol.

We’ve had Michael meet with Laura, though that just keeps us in touch with her shenanigans for the moment as she doesn’t have any major things going on right now except hijacking almost every good deed Lancaster and Ilex try to do for a profit. Which…well Lancaster is still dealing with that. In keeping tabs with the gangs she brought in on the backs of those programs, they definitely seem aware they aren’t the top dog because they know Laura is. I’m also just remembering that literally all of this could have been avoided had we recruited Laura a bit more aggressively given her disposition towards not liking secrecy.

The op to go capture Elgrim went…south fast. Vanjin and Setani were both on death’s door. Though we can blame this mostly on Jhaeros reappearing and getting involved. Also it turns out Elgrim is very dangerous…and sadistic. Fortunately, Selona was also there looking for him. It turns out they had actually been following Vanjin due to being too lazy to do the footwork on their own. We also got to meet Arkaric’s newest…creation. Elgrim was supposed to be exported to the Raven before his escape, so they’re after him as well due to the potential he represents for their business. Which…is basically what we were planning on doing with him anyways. So its convenient that we were there instead of anyone else, since the Phantoms see us as kind of colleagues. Fighting that new…thing…of Arkaric’s to capture Elgrim would not have been desirable. Though since it turns out our plans align well with the phantoms on this one, we can probably still carry out the mission and put in a reservation to buy him from the Raven. We just might need to send someone else in the meantime to help capture him, Vanjin and Setani are both in the hospital. Setani has the worst of it, Vanjin’s regneration is helping her recovery but Setani might not make it. The doctors are trying to fix her up with cybernetics, but Elgrim’s method of attack damaged her soul directly and things aren’t going as they should. It doesn’t help that he just toyed with her, draining her all he liked until Shanhai showed up.

Contacting Zhuan has been rough since we don’t really blend in with criminals as well as we used to. The best we have for that would be the Nomads but they’re still on their way to Sol. Zhuan’s little empire is mostly just a few suburban blocks where he maintains his farm. He’s not really as crazy as some of the other kinds of people we encounter out here. For him, the criminal life was just a matter of maintaining the family business and he’s content to do business fairly as long as no one picks a fight with him. Though while I’m noticing a recurring theme of our recruiting attempts running into some other recruiters, I’m not sure how to feel about this one. The other people talking to him are representatives of Laura King’s family. Offering him a new family to work for since his old one is pretty much dead thanks to the invasion and a method of transporting his whole gang to Koura should he want to try his hand on a newly developing world on the frontier. They’re obviously quite good at hitting the right notes to talk to him about compared to our agents who are less ‘in’ with criminals ever since Sophia retired.

As for Bardhe, we had an easy in to start talking with him since Ilex wanted us to extend some job deals for him in the meantime. Which he took. So I can say that he is currently wandering around Kar’Soluth space looking for vals to assassinate. I guess…that works?

Back here at Koura, Ohalyn doesn’t really seem to mind being a slaver. It seems like whats really eaten away at her is everything that happened leading up to her becoming one. The invasion took everything from her, including her husband and two children. She was a stowaway on a transport that brought her to the frontier, looking for a way to escape the memories of what she lost. Then forced into prostitution which later turned into her current trade. Elves tend to be more attached to their children than even humans and gnolls due to the investments that have to be made by their race to have any. She’s lost so much that she stopped caring about what she takes from anyone else. Which might explain her skill at running the slave trade around Koura and Somnus. Even though Lancaster gave her a much more vibrant and lively business to run, I guess it doesn’t replace what she lost and so she keeps doing the slaving business since its what she understands and is good at. Running the casino is more of a job for people who can still smile. We ran some observation on her and now two agents are depressed upon realizing they’ve been spying on a woman who cries herself to sleep every night and is still trying to cope with the aftermath of the first invasion. Maybe Ilex was right about hiring more therapists around here.

We’ve set the Nomads out to Sol to look for some ‘recruits’. They’re going to work on that for a bit. We’ve handed the battlecruiser off to them and had it refitted to their specifications. Which were extensive…apparently letting pirates design a dream ship comes with them doing mildly crazy ideas. Also a lot of mutiny protections. Though it does seem that Andal and his core team will remain on their little corvette. I suppose they’re attached to it at this point. As for a potential base, they seem fine with working out of the private docks attached to the lowest decks of Somnus. Since it gives them direct access to the station. Though we’ve definitely had to improve their security clearance as a result of all this and now Andal is roaming the offices asking people questions. Not particularly sensitive questions, more so about their holiday plans or hobbies. He took three of our handlers out fishing on Koura too. I caught a shark looking thing that we think wasn’t as edible as we thought. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom again.

With the Nila situation sorted out, we’re shipping back to Koura with our new recruits for training. They’ll be alright I’m sure. Also the men could use some time to rest for a bit I suppose, since a major invasion is on its way. Speaking of which, we might be able to get Lancaster to fund our next expedition if she wants us to go protect anything in particular. If not I imagine sooomeone will pay us to help fight in the invasion, so easy job to pickup soon wherever we wind up going. Time to get ready for that deployment though.