Posted on November 6, 2021

Stories of Lore 15

The golem ship is prepped with the route programmed in, assuming the buoys work everything should be good to go. We’ve begun construction on the somewhat minimalist station to push through and see what that gets done, and the order’s new ships are on the way to Enohas.

The arena business is a little complicated, mostly because Laura’s doesn’t have an official location. Also the legalized version has been unprofitable because Laura turned right around and exploited a hole in it that she practically designed. They were paying people to fight, but it was technically an open call for any who wanted to enter it. However not everyone knew about its existence. Laura instead advertised the existence of our new legal one in a very specific way to appeal to people just looking to make rent as a sort of low-contact ‘get paid just for showing up’ situation. Then she registered enough people that it’s ability to function froze since no one working there knows the scene at all. Then she registered her arena’s fighters in ours and just took all the money home knowing the administration didn’t have anyone who was prepared for whatever lunatics she had acquired. Due to the speed at which it was set up to out-compete Laura it has been a stuttering start and stop situation as she keeps exploiting the fact that a lot of money was put into it with only her work on the growing scene to stand on. Turns out the manager of the new arena works for her too as the only people qualified to run the place had ties to her scene. So basically we just bought Laura an arena and she now runs both circuits, harvesting our investment into the prizes to stay competitive with hers to fund the underground one that we suddenly are having a much harder time even finding. In time the staff are likely to be able to stabilize so her influence isn’t as dramatic though she’s not technically doing anything illegal to them she’s just overwhelming their logistics and exploiting a necessary rule in its system to take most of the money into her own ‘team’ of slightly more professional fighters. She then took the money and bought a bunch of land in the southern part of the city and paid for a lot of construction work and we’re not sure what mischief she’s up to now.

Speaking of which, Hylavi is having a new issue. It turns out Laura invited a lot of people to Koura recently by taking advantage of how generous 40th day has been with relocating people. Basically telling people exactly how to get into the system for the relocations and moving people around the frontier on Ilex’s money instead of her own. So she just imported four entire gangs from Sol straight into the city before anyone realized this was happening. She didn’t recruit them or set them on any particularly dangerous path, she just charged them for ‘discounted emigration’ packages. However, those gangs are now starting their own brands of trouble separate from her and keeping the city security busy. We can’t really pin it on her since she’s not pushing them to do anything, but Hylavi is still pretty convinced it’s Laura’s fault.

She combined this with a knowledge of how the Koura Cures trials are going and that program became flooded as well. This technically isn’t a bad thing as she’s getting medical help to a lot of people who need it, it’s just setting up a dangerous situation where a lot of people ‘owe her one’ for getting them out of Sol and their cancer fixed at the same time. They are then going on to work normal jobs and businesses but with a favor they know they owe to Laura which has expanded her network.

There’s a few more schemes she’s up to but basically Hylavi now has an entire department whose job is just to keep up with what Laura is doing. We’re pretty sure she has several more similar endeavors just by watching how her finances keep growing faster than we predicted. Just thought you ought to know since you’ve been rather invested in keeping on top of that particular woman.

Koura Kures has expanded a little more and the tests are still ongoing though has had a notable improvement on the general health of the colony. The problem is the one that went slightly wrong have resulted in another rabid mutated colonist with alarming speed. New Age came by to take them away, though it is a reminder that due to the volatility of this method it has to move slowly otherwise it can basically kill people. Well, that is if you want to do it the Alnae way with clinical trials, approvals, and risk assessment. If you’d prefer, we could switch to the Jaal’darya method and just tell people that its a gamble then hurl the lower class into it in the name of rapid progress.

The corvettes are currently double checking earlier found planets for habitability. We found some micro-organisms in some locations though nothing particularly exciting.

I suppose we’ll tackle Nila as the first order of business. I am at least convinced that she isn’t too dangerous in regards to manipulating the merkas. She seemed much more concerned with getting her bounty and has always been more a loner than some grand conspirator. Though I can’t speak for whoever is helping her. Finding her on the planet will be difficult as the only support we really have is Jamalia, the mining station nearby at the moon, and some of 40th day’s scanners.

First and most obviously, no one should go anywhere alone ever. Her best way off the planet is on the many ships Madhammer has here. We should release alerts with pictures of her and make sure every single staff member stares at it for at least twenty minutes. She got into the Kar’Soluth because no one asked her to take her helmet off, so everyone must not wear a helmet! Self excluded, I literally can’t take this off. Besides, I’m iconic.

Fortunately for us she is on the opposite side of the planet without so much as a tricycle to help cover distance. So it’ll be awhile before she can reach Jamalia and the ships. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of ground for us to cover to find her before reinforcements come to get her.  Extra bad, reports just came from Faelyn, there is a starship coming towards us from Sol. While not a particularly large threat to our assembled forces, they’re definitely going to try and pick her up if she doesn’t escape by then on her own. Our destroyers from Somnus will be on the way though construction and travel might make that a bit of a tight race. Because this is a golden world scanning for her from orbit with 40th day’s scanners is making very little progress. She might have figured out to turn her APT off just in case we tried to find her that way.

The current best bet might be to send out the gnolls to try and track her down. Just…under very heavy guard. Oh also one of the knights can summon a few hunting hounds from noctis. That might help. We could also try to bring in Adryn, this is something of a specialty of his. Better chances of finding her but it’ll take him awhile to arrive so we’ll be against the clock on that starship which could lead to some…escalated conflict. So safe option that might not find her in time, risky imports that might get us involved in a skirmish with her and whoever is on that ship, or just spread out hunting hounds and then try to track her based on which parties go silent during check ins.

The pandem radar can tell that you are linked to Irae, though it doesn’t seem to find anything related to your phylactery at least.

When it comes to the less popular planes there is perhaps a phenomena worth noting. Imagine an hourglass, wide on two ends with a bit of a bottleneck in the center. There are some areas of the murky swirl that is cosmology that function similarly to this in concept. Where only a few planes, usually lower ones that come and go into the fabric of the universe, can be followed. As you know, since your coordinates on one plane will match up on another, this means that these planes going through the bottle neck must be entered traveled across, and then exited in order to reach the murky swirl of planes on the other side. This is…highly  theoretical math stuff as reaching these would involve traveling on a temporary lower plane across an impossible distance. Such as going from one side of the universe to the other, beyond galactic super clusters tenfold…in most cases at least. So if someone were to stumble upon something like the Astral Warrens and find a way into that other side who knows what would be there. It would be far beyond any technology or spell we’ve ever devised to peer into the other side.

This is why Alexander is the knight chancellor. He loves quantum pandem theoretical math shenanigans.

Further more! There exists another few oddities. Imagine a cosmology IN a cosmology IN another cosmology and you have the celestial plane for example. It’s natives at one point could basically create new planes with rules that they happened to like. In the olden days, the gods controlled these realms and created their own planes of reality that were technically all inside of the celestial plane. This is another observed phenomena with lower planes every now and then. The abyssal plane likes to do things like this too, as indicated by the location of Moncayo which is on another dimension within the plane it’s already in. In theory, if one were to be within one of these sub-dimensions that found a way to latch onto a more stable plane while its host plane was collapsing you could escape the astral plane itself. That theory doesn’t hold up well but there’s a ten percent chance it works that way maybe.

There are also hypothetical beings that can create these sub-dimensions or even whole new planes at will. They are a new field of science and might be Vasia’s domain but according to the current understanding, these ‘cosmic entities’ are beyond our comprehension in many ways. Important for our interests, is that they can warp and shape the astral plane. Theoretically even escaping it, and thus all of the known universe, into other universes or perhaps even a cosmology that the astral plane is tied to. Though going out beyond the limits of the astral plane is a recipe for all known logic to break down. Even the void could only help you gaze into the possibilities of a universe beyond our universe. No bindings to the major planes we know to determine its rules, beyond the astral sphere all understanding and concept of all everything would cease to function. Wait a minute, I think I just understood sahad for a moment there. I feel small…

Anyways, these cosmic entities, the alpha entities, can theoretically alter even the astral plane. As mentioned before, we have reason to believe one such entity created the Astral Warrens. Perhaps there are even more planes yet unknown to us that they created just like the Warrens that we cannot find because they do not need to obey the typical rules of astral cosmology.

Another possibility are the micro-planes. As you know, the Astral Warrens has a unique shape similar to a tunnel network. By our standard understanding of the planes, reaching the edge of a plane is nearly impossible but within the Warrens it is so small that these tunnels are only a few lightyears across. I have been working on a hypothesis that suggests more strange undetected planes could exist that are even smaller. Perhaps even mere atoms thick. I hope to publish my theories by next year actually. At the very least let it make the rounds at the universities with libraries who delve into the theoretical. Though if I could find just one such plane and document it…

What were we talking about?

Sarnai’s bind.

Oh that, I’ve got nothing.

Moving on before he makes us brew tea and sit in the library for the rest of the night discussing theoretical quantum pandem mechanics. Though on the topic of education, when it comes to the ‘top thirty most dangerous individuals we know of’ how are we ranking that? Because there are more than thirty demon lords just to start off with. Do we prioritize at least the ones who we are likely to encounter, the ones with aggressive behavioral tendencies, or just the top thirty of all time?

In the meantime I’ll invite Exme for the interview.

Reika is somewhat of the opinion that as long as the higher members of the merkas hierarchy continue to live, they won’t be able to let the millenia long genocide of their people just slide. Since it isn’t just history to them but their origin stories. Kind of similar to how she and the Vloz’Khress are just never going to get past their issues. Their happiness upon persuading them for peace is moot, it won’t happen. One of these two races is going to die off or they’ll pick opposing sides on the galactic battlefield as they enter into it. She believes we’re better off just wiping one out and taking the credit for it.

Counter point-

Begone shedevil! None of your ideas can possibly lead to anything other than history remembering us as monsters. Someone turn Irae off.

Oh hush, I’m merely presenting options and a wider point of perspective. Anyways, as I was saying. We have a friend who IS a necrocarnate and can rewrite primitives with ease given how little defense they have. We could make the merkas more…amicable to our ideas by force without them noticing we did it. The young will follow and will be long dead and gone before they’re educated enough to understand that rewriting is even a possibility. Most in Sol only know of it as a myth or a legend. But I have this new friend, and she has this friend, and she can turn anyone into an zealously loyal minion.

I have another friend who can make anyone look like  merkas. Just swap them out for our guy and call it a day. Better yet, just make a male one. Their civilization won’t know what to do if they discover one last male exists but is against their current leadership.

Okay but quick question, is there any way to solve this conflict that isn’t INCREDIBLY evil? So far our options are genocide, soul manipulation, and falsifying a messiah.

I don’t do the whole…ethics thing. I gave you some options that are highly likely to succeed using the resources we have available. Ask Lancaster’s lap dogs if you want some high investment low yield lawful goody two shoes answer.

Hylavi says move one group to Moncayo, and move the other to Koura, and let them get distracted with fitting into the modern world such that they kind of forget their grudges and then when they find each other again they’ll be too occupied trying to scrape a living by as best they can in a foreign economy they are vastly uneducated about yet forced to start at the bottom of. The death of their people will become a foreign statistic once they realize they alone cannot do anything about it, forcing them to just try to eek out their own little place in the galaxy and let everything else fall to the wayside. Let taxes and capitalism grind down the fucks they have to give about anyone other than themselves.

Wait a sec…uhh someone tell Nicole to keep an eye on Hylavi’s mental health. Actually maybe send Ohalyn to a therapist too now that I think about it….also all of our slaves who work for us because of- oh fuck someone pull me out of this rabbit hole.

Sarnai is a bit cranky when given advice about her most recent performance. Also with how much Alexander is poking at her trying to figure out more information about her bind while the whole base is also trying to find Nila. She responds to things by just scowling at the moment.

As for the alliance, the only other major single colony of note is called Que. They have a fleet and army as we and Faelyn do that they have been investing into regularly. So it turns out they’re a Valdir splinter. A rogue group that decided to go out and colonize things on their own since the mothership left. It’s composed mostly of curious scientists exploring the possibilities of the silnian science. What’s peculiar is none of them are a synapse, they use technology to try and replicate the effect and control their worker drones. Attempting to simulate a mothership’s level of presence through a huge array of psicrystals. It kind of reminds me of the origins of Tykel, a colony devoted to the science and exploration of a particular topic. They seem to be looking heavily into terraforming based technologies and chose a system with a lot of moons and planets to work on. Apparently the reason for their military is actually a minor paranoia that an experiment will go wrong and silnians will eat them all, also the lesson Tykel taught us about how incredibly wrong a well intentioned research facility can go with just one clever person showing up.

There are many other smaller colonies brewing but they’re still highly developmental. Auwana, Cayetano, and Galeim stand out due to their larger populations and economic status. Most other colonies are the entire group’s life savings pooled together to just get some prefab shelters and farming equipment shipped out to the middle of nowhere. We just happen to have a lot of wealthy people in one place for our starting investments. Jamalia is even grander than most of them, the alliance is definitely a little shaky overall in terms of how much everyone can contribute though that is sort of the point. To help everyone get up to the point of being relevant at which point the alliance will become a proper contender in politics.

So upon mentioning the rift tunnels to Faelyn she offered a contract to build one of them, we’d be looking at roughly a 250 million profit for it. She wants to connect Moncayo to Thenica’s terminal hub, which kind of loops right back around to what her original plan for Moncayo was. Makes sense. Though we’d have to send Alexander or you to do it as this is a rather large and technical undertaking that will definitely take a lot of time.

I contacted Sharen about the whole Nelta invasion thing. Apparently they’ve been in talks with Faelyn about the very same matter recently and while they could loan us a carrier and a pair of battleships they still have to worry bout what Alnae and Kar’Soluth are doing at the moment right now.

I brought  you one of the toys. Its a wind up fish. It felt appropriate. Also I don’t drink that much wine I’ll have you know. I actually prefer margaritas. Sometimes I just drink the mix really, I like the tanginess.

So the ship cores continues. Turns out they’re made out of a material enchanted by arcane methods, the yelay taught us how to make it. The outer shell is just…anything durable with an illusion enchantment and the inner core is a magically engraved diamond network with a few other enchantments on it. We’re having diamond cores shipped in from a manufacturer so we can start experimenting with that. It’s not too complicated, materials wise at least. While the yelay did know how to make these from scratch as a civilization, the ones we have only have passing knowledge of how they work. At least the programming part of it. Since they’re not reprogrammable and apparently require a lot of machinery to produce, there was no need for the astronauts to need to know how to build them from scratch. Though even just the rough idea gives us some places to keep looking through.

Uneloj however knows things other than engineering. He’s a mage and knows spells and stuff. So here’s the problem…we have six new cases in the containment cells after he tried to show people one of the spells. He is also perplexed by this response as apparently his species does not become catatonic upon witnessing it, that or they see it so early on that no one notices its abnormal effects of being learned. So we’re working our way through all that. But that’s what he has to trade, spells.

Cassir and Peter are on the way to Enohas to look into things over there, once the ship gets there. Also Cassir laughed at the warning about Vasia, apparently she learned from meeting her that consent is not something Vasia should ever have.

Vamon is still coordinating with Faelyn’s forces, though we have a bit of time before the invasion actually gets here. Meaning he’s also just hanging out and taking Alexander’s place as the diplomat to keep tabs on whats going on around there.

I’ve run some numbers, okay really I told the engineer to do it but that’s the same thing. We have an estimate on what it costs to attempt to build the exerlus engine. It’s estimated to be…lets see…wow thats a lot of zeroes. The budget to even attempt this would be in the trillions, and that’s not accounting for the likelihood that it doesn’t work on the first try. For now they’re working on a small scale proof of concept, but don’t expect an engine for a little while. That being said the Nelta engine is a lot more reasonable in theory though we’re still trying to figure out where the quirks in it are. The exerlus one is very precise and the Nelta control core is as well but we’re not sure how much the rest of the construction is dependent on this level of precision. It appears to be less finnicky at least.

The Vivarium construction project has begun, also as an update to the DNA library, we’re up to thirty eight samples of various small critters people found in interesting places we didn’t ask too much about. We’ve also gone through with maintaining what i’ve named the fenalis and despite my desire to immediately sell them I am advised by the vivarium staff to let them finish testing their behavior under domesticated environments before spreading them everywhere. I’m still keeping mine though, but they’ve postponed advertising them until they at least figure out if they carry anything that can affect humanoids.

Also it turns out the Yelay utilize a method of reproduction that I can describe best as ‘like growing a potato’. So they don’t actually need much help from the technology we have, it’s more so a matter of a suitable environment to begin that process.

Adryn is ready to come back if you have something else for him to do. Until picked up though he’s still out running around. This is the problem with Sivataurs…they really enjoy their job.

We found someone among their detectives who seems suitable for the position. They lack the more professional experience Vaeri has but she is definitely not a common occurrence. Hopefully they’ll be up to whatever your plans might be for them.

Anyways moving on, getting Kaylen off of Thenica is difficult since Alnae definitely considers it necessary that she be there. She definitely outranks arms dealers and they’d have to bend for her convenience so an arms deal is unlikely to get her to leave the planet given its current state of martial law. Though with the ongoing Nelta business, if we can get the alliance to push forward so Kaylen will need to come help fight Nelta that would definitely get her off the planet but kind of prove them all right about why the alliance is a bit of a bad idea for their individual politics. Though it’s not like we haven’t done that before. Other options include creating an opening in the Alnae Ultra carrier she can go after. She is one of Alnae’s champions and would likely partake in that kind of operation personally as we saw in the most recent territorial conflict. We’ve also seen that she has a lot of motive to get rid of that thing as its holding up Faelyn’s plans to bring everyone together to get some stuff done so we can do the interception plan against Nelta.

Though as you may recall, that carrier is not easy to assault. Even with its full schematics and any kind of weapon you could ask for, it simply can’t be taken with a surgical strike. It has to be won through a war. However, I have an idea. We don’t need to take the whole carrier, we just need to force it to move somewhere an army could assault it. The problem is that Kaylen’s army can’t assault it in space since it would take down most ships sent to deploy boarders and it would require colossal resources to move that much firepower onto it. Getting into the realm of being a planetary invasion.

The reasons it doesn’t need to go anywhere is because it is self sustaining and supports its own population of experts. So even if its engines or its solar systems were crippled they could wait it out until their own engineers repaired it without needing to dock. I don’t really have a full plan for the matter though, it is well defended and could easily bring in more people while it waits carefully in its position. My point being though, if we can find a way to force it to dock and let Kaylen know when and where it will dock we might be able to make progress. Especially if it were to happen to lose power to its engines while docked.

Alternatively, we pull an Ark and find a way to cripple their food production. Food can’t just be repaired, if we can take it out they’ll have to do something and at the very least interact with everyone else again. It’s not the same as taking the whole ship, but at least it would shake the status quo enough to present new opportunities.

Also about that Uneloj thing, Ilex’s boys are definitely probing the matter. So there’s that to be resolved to see who is doing what. We can’t really recruit as openly because of the nature of our division. I have some thoughts on that matter since the issue has come up twice in a row as of late. We used to have Sophia we could use as a front for a lot of our more public operations alongside Vanjin. Our efforts to re-establish the criminal gang division have been sketchy due to how meticulous and difficult to sway Laura King has proven. However, we do have The Nomads right now. If we were to get a few more ships on hand we could follow in Mr. Vandross’ example of using a pirate team as a front for bolder operations. This would be a good way to look into more open moves of recruitment to give people a tryout period, and the Nomads know we exist and haven’t said anything to anyone. Largely because they like Aryn and we haven’t given them a reason to at least. But it might be worth it to try and recruit Uneloj to the Nomads as part of an…aggressive pirate expansion. Though we’d likely need to find a new place of operations for such a thing, I don’t think Lancaster would appreciate us creating a pirate fleet spearheaded by the Nomads on Somnus. The illicit nature of criminal fronts happens to be convenient for testing people’s abilities to adapt to the kind of environment required by the division. Since keeping quiet and doing some dirty work now and then is part of our day to day routine. Just a thought at least.

Vaeri is still out there trying to infiltrate Siwa’s inner circle enough to figure out what is in that basement though obviously its a well guarded secret, she’s getting closer but as I warned, it does take awhile for that kind of work to manifest.

A minor siege was made on Helym to prove the effectiveness of our soldiers and their arsenal. We managed to demonstrate what a real modern soldier is capable of despite the difference in numbers and size, also introduced them to the concept of artillery which shook them a little. They had some questions about the resilience of our race given that our meatbag nature leaves a lot more vulnerabilities compared to their energy based life form. Then they made fun of my scars.

So we blew up Helym and “recruited” the entire population. We’re going to help clean up this Nila mess and then we’re headed back to Koura for boot camp and gearing of our new recruits. I’ll be acting as a substitute drill instructor while we’re still here on Enohas. Did you know they in fact, can be physically exhausted from exertion? At least, that is the current theory judging by their behavior and reaction to the drills. Results pending Gheir’s peer review of my findings.

Posted on October 30, 2021

Stories of Lore 14

Patch notes!

Arsenal – Can shift arsenal stacks into offense or defense as desired and declare weapon/armor types as desired. Can upgrade colors instead of enhancing number as desired.

–It was always kind of supposed to be the ‘batman’ template in terms of using gear to prepare for the situation. This is an attempt to convert that into a mechanic that came to me at random, so now its patch day.

Lancaster – Lost some raw stats since arsenal now does a thing.

Renjala – Stats updated to Ryner sword’s bonus. Level up: Cosmology replaced with Durable, which gives extra hitpoints.

Alexander – Terror template changed to fire resistance. Because as I have written a lot more with him now, his personality has shaped into not quite what I expected it to be and terror no longer fits too well.

Sarnai – +2/+2 to reflect training. Lucky template added due to level up.

Vasia – +1 sahad

Vanjin – Replaced hunter with Arsenal 2, as this template kind of properly defines her entire character gimmick. Lowered slayer and offense by 1 because of arsenal buff.

Gunhild – Mass destruction lowered to 2 instead of 4 due to loss of Inaji rifle. Keeps template due to madhammer specialty.

Ecsanul – Lost one point of offense, defense, and mass destruction as a side effect of being banished. Note: Stats are unchanged in true form instead of bound summons.

Yasrena Val’Hari – Actually statted instead of memed now. “ow’ replaced with 3 and mass destruction 8 added.

Laesaaria Val’Hari – Same exact patch as above.

Eliza Pierce – +1/+1 from level up after completion of Koura parasite research

Roster additions who were already characters but not accounted for: Ihaslu, Peter Harlow, Echo Seven, Aato Jousen, Mikael Lehtin

Well with Lancaster out of aethernet range at best I can convey an occasional chat through Renjala…so he better not leave Somnus for awhile. In the meantime, I’m on the way back from Moncayo. So I am contacting Sethis through the comms so he can tell Renjala what to tell Irae so she can tell you what I said. This is going to be a bit rough.

Also Ohalyn’s trafficking isn’t a criminal enterprise, we never banned slavery. So I’m not sure just how well that conversation will go. Not to mention as the major supplier for New Age, her stopping those operations will open it up to Laura King to take over. Ohalyn may be somewhat jaded, but I can imagine what happens to the slaves when Laura takes over the enterprise.

You’re already there at..alien planet so I don’t need to keep you up to date on that at least, nor do I need this conversation to go on any longer than it already has. This many waypoints to communicate is aggravating enough, so you can just keep that knowledge to yourself for now until you get back.

Meanwhile back here, the KouKou has been thoroughly examined. Everyone who should be here is in fact here and we found no stowaways. That being said, there was an oddity. Rations wise, it seems like there is or at least one extra person on the ship. It seems like no one is missing, but someone is extra. However, when we take a headcount in the quarantine we come up with the right number. There is a chance that plus one is still on the alien world with you.

Hylavi also asked if we should be stopping the birth of an arena. Apparently as a sport someone has been running an underground arena like those found in Kar’Soluth. Formerly Shetou, though the eastern houses never liked the bloodier version where people can actually die. They’ve been offering people prize money in exchange for just surviving a fight, and so far no one has died. Most fights end before they get too out of hand, though there has been quite a few broken bones. Apparently it was born out of some of the wealthier denizens of Koura city realizing that a lot of the immigrants we take in are sort of desperate and penniless after fleeing Sol for greener pastures. Hylavi was contacted by Ohalyn about this arena looking to purchase some slaves. Which is usually what comes right before it becomes a true blood sport.

Also you’ll never guess who one of the major financial players in this arena is. Our dear friend Laura King.

I hope you’re cozy at Somnus, I’m still stuck back here at Enohas. Though after you left things have definitely wound down. As I told Alexander, Nihlav and Daesta returned to their city to take their lost and found back there as well as ready defenses in case Kar’Soluth reach them. We know Nila is still somewhere on the planet, and definitely low on ships at the moment, though I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing for us.

We’re repairing Alexander’s corvette at the outpost as best we can, though we don’t have a proper shipyard so it is taking a little while. At the very least we were able to get back to Jamalia on it.

New problem, something was horrifically wrong with Sarnai. She was vomiting blood – which is glowing by the way – and a bunch of other symptoms that get all the more gross the further down the list I go. However, upon analysis from Alexander, her pandem corruption was at record levels. Previously it was barely present, she struggled to even open a basic rift. Then it skyrocketed to sixty eight percent. For comparison, you are the most corrupted and powerful pandem caster we know. You’re at fourty three according to your last checkup. He described it as she created a vortex of corruption around herself. I couldn’t even get my APT to work if I’m standing too close to her. This leads into the big problem, the medical teams couldn’t examine her. If they got near her with any ethi tools whatsoever they would malfunction. At best they could use some traditional hand examinations, but that didn’t turned up anything useful. Also her glowing blood made a microscope shatter when they tried to look at it. That being said, over the last few weeks, we’ve been keeping an eye on her of course. Her corruption level seemed to be deteriorating the more mana she steals from things around her. We put her next to the corvette engines for awhile and she returned to normal levels of two percent corruption after sleeping next to the engines for a night. She’s back up and completely fine, but Alexander has concerns. As all this happened after her bind possessed her, which admittedly saved her life and Reika’s.

We’ve never actually seen corruption be undone by draining mana from other things to basically purify itself. Alexander thinks this might be a hint as to what her bind is. A similar phenomena is known to take place in certain entities where corruption can be avoided entirely. For example, Setani experiences no corruption since she only links to the demon planes but she is actually from there. So its possible Sarnai’s bind, despite how hard it is to track, is from her native plane and is just some sort of strange creature. It would explain why during her possession she became an absolute master of humanoid on humanoid combat with a sword, as if she were familiar with that situation and those specific weapons. His current favorite theory is that she’s bound to some sort of creature that drains mana. His second theory is that she’s bound to something natural, something that can filter and purify mana on its own. Like maybe a dryad. Third theory is that we should talk to Vasia. Fourth theory is that we make absolutely sure not to talk to Vasia.

This leads to the problem Alexander now wants to solve. We don’t know where Sarnai comes from. His theory that her bind is sneaking around on her native plane means we need to solve the problem of Sarnai being an orphan from the streets of SV3. It could be that she is indeed from Vermasih, but well…is it ever that easy? Though to be noted, we have no idea if determining what plane she’s truly from will help at all, it’s just the next best lead he has.

Also, of course, we cannot get her bind to answer any questions. Sarnai mentions that while she is in communication with it from time to time, this is sporadic and not under her control. Often it seems to be only one way communication, she can hear it but it can’t hear her, or chooses not to.

In other news, steamworks completed its new project in transportation. Or more so its proof of concept prototype. Basically its a bike. It keeps falling apart because the engineers keep trying to put a huge engine on it and its kind of bulky. They also insist on offroad tires. They call it a panzercycle. We’re working on stability and consistency still, kind of neat though.

Well Eliza’s willingness to help anyone usually comes based on what they can trade with her. Money doesn’t seem to work as we noted last time when Sarden approached her. Especially now that she’s backed by the phantoms. She’s practically richer than Lancaster now, at least when it comes to funding her projects. So she said she wasn’t interested outright, though I do believe if we can get her something she wants she might be inclined to help. As your advisor I can tell you right away that we can afford her, and that it also might be a bad idea. If we give her access to the Maker in the vivarium she would probably bite and agree to do the operation. I have no idea what happens after that.

Also, you are correct. You did not send Cassir as Vasia’s guard. However, you did sort of give a blank approval to Vasia’s requests. She decided to take Cassir and I kind of just…stamped that one and moved on since I figured everything she wanted was approved. Though in hindsight, I don’t think she wanted Cassir for a practical reason involving the mission. I mean it was beneficial to have an empath there, but it was more beneficial for Vasia to get to meet Cassir on her own terms. I’m betting Vasia wants to get Cassir to the point where she’s cleared to know about New Age Labs so she can be properly utilized by Vasia. Possibly dangerous, might give Cassir something to do though. Just in a quirky direction.

New age has been delegating Vasia’s schedule and is investigating Uneloj discreetly to see what they might learn from them before they find a way back home. Apparently they figured out that we don’t know sahad and are now offering to trade some knowledge on the matter for passage home. They’re very astute to economics.

Aside from that, the race now known as the yelay that we picked up recently have been settling in. We’ve gotten them to explain those black spheres from the ships we’ve been salvaging. Apparently those are indeed the control mechanisms for sahad devices. They use light for computing, making them vastly more powerful in terms of processing than most methods we have. This is also the reason they are such a deep black, because if any light gets into or out of them it could basically cause a bug. However, Vasia was right that you can only make them once. The pathways in them are not malleable like our psionic computing is. So if you mess up, you have to start all over again. They’re basically clockwork computers, and once constructed they can’t be modified. So while powerful for their size and energy requirements, you’d need to be really confident that you never wanted to add new features or fix a glitch. It is likely that a civilization without access to psionic computing invented this as a solution to their issues and mastered it enough to mass produce it as needed. For our uses though, we mostly want to be able to read them so we can figure out how things work rather than replicate them. Humanoids like the ability to rewrite things, and perhaps we’re more willing to make programming errors in the interests of speed and project completion since we know we can go back and fix small problems later.

Orchard is the definition of having space for workers at this point. Phoenix however is another story given how difficult the planet is to work with. Speaking of which, Adryn hit the jackpot down there.

Lookit! It’s adorable and fluffy and it eats practically anything. I just let it lick my dishes clean and eat the leftovers. It also eats cardboard boxes. A great find for the vivarium. They breed like crazy too. Pet shop time. I already got him to send me three.

Oh right, refugees. Yeah we’re shipping them around where we can, whatever.

As for the exerlus engine…it could be going better. We did confirm the atomic construction is an actual necessity. Also we blew up a workshop learning that. We’re having more luck looking over the scavenged ships for their engines than the exerlus one. Granted the exerlus one is uh…fast. Echo Seven confirmed they could reach where Lancaster went through the rift within about thirty years. So basically around ten times faster at FTL. Though that number is somewhat related to the fact that the exerlus don’t need life support or anything else and can focus entirely on speed if they really want to.

…are you saying I’m not socially talented? I’m hurt sir. Though among the Somnus security forces would likely be our best bet on that, since they have to talk to people and defuse situations all the time.

Also in searching for the leak that got to Laura King it was surprisingly easy. It wasn’t that Laura found out, it was that Selona did. How do we know this you ask? Aryn called her big brother and asked if he knew anything about the suspiciously overpowered weapons Laura had for Vaeri to use in this cover op. They’re actually his prototype battleship class weapons intended for countering alien ship designs based on intelligence from the New Horizon’s shipyard salvage that Laura DID find out about through her own connections. She is also selling him the information on what Siwa factories is up to after we give it to her.

So basically… Selona figured out what Vaeri is up to because they’re also keeping tabs on the Siwa business and the phantoms and the revenants are the only people who can recognize Vaeri and noticed her snooping around. Selona offered Laura to offer Vaeri weapons for her op. Aryn asked if Arkaric knew where she got those weapons. Arkaric did indeed design them, based off of intelligence Laura sold him that she got from New Horizons. Laura is the smallest fish in this chain of informational hot potato and is just the middle man of choice for Selona. Given the way Selona operates, of course they did all this bullshit instead of just texting Aryn. Partially because its the officers doing it not Arkaric himself, and also because that’s just his style to make everything as confusing and convoluted as possible.

The weapons are helping Vaeri’s cover identity though, she now gets invited to the cool parties. With wine and fancy clothes hosted inside garages filled with prototype firearms. She’s definitely deep into the scene relatively quickly, though is still working her way into the inner circles that might reveal what is going on in that basement to her someday.

Meanwhile back at Sol, Vanjin has concocted a plan. The driver for the councilor isn’t consistent, it rotates on a regular basis. Though they’re always elven, and likely have some security clearance she can have Aryn look into fabricating. Then place an elf into the job and maybe replace some other security who might be supposed to recognize the current driver of that day. This is where the plan starts to go off the rails. She wants to get into contact with one of the rogue warlords and organize a full blown attack into the capital city using rioting citizens as a distraction to sell to the warlord and have the invasion to distract the entire platoon of armed forces protecting the councilor, then our driver just takes some evasive maneuvers down a side street and we extract from there. Here’s the problem, the major obstacle to conducting this is getting Kaylen away from the capital when it happens. If she’s there the rogue warlords wouldn’t risk an attack even with some insider information on a hit they could try to perform.

As for Uneloj he’s currently selling sahad knowledge to get a ride home. Given that he was captured in battle and shipped around in a cage for months, he is a bit homesick. Definitely not looking to start a new job in a place he’s never been to before with people he doesn’t know and surrounded by aliens. I think this is why the black market keeps saying ‘cooperation levels may vary’ when we look into these alien slave auctions. None of them want to be here, otherwise they wouldn’t really be slaves or prisoners. Either send them to Ohalyn or expect them to be seeking a way to get back to their homes, people, and families. Though if we can get people to refuse to sell Uneloj transport home for his sahad knowledge we might be able to corner him into needing some short term income to get his passage back. Which is something we could send some agents out to ensure becomes an unfortunate situation for him.

We’ve lost a few more bodies again after the battle at Enohas with the Kar’Soluth. Only one tank, car, gunship and a mech of each model. We only sent one of each to show off to the arcurans so we didn’t necessarily have that much there, though it all got blown up by their corvette. Clearly we should have sent more tanks.

Though we’ve definitely gained some arcuran recruits for all this effort. They’ll need a specialized boot camp, probably throw that one at Gheir, to get caught up with modern warfare as we know it. However, Whitetalon Armaments has a prototype mech concept to test once we can get them back here to Koura. Because they’re made of mana and their shape is malleable…we might be able to create some interesting mech designs for them to pilot. If we could remove all the life support, controls, chair, screens, buttons, and so on…well that’d be a pretty thick mech.

While we’re currently recovering, we still have plans to go blow up the walled city of Helym and…improve our numbers. We might need an extra freighter or two if recruitment keeps going this well. Arcurans are very easy to recruit. Whitetalon armaments is also working on armor suited to their anatomy in anticipation of their arrival whenever we manage to ship out. We’ve also set up a more permanent recruitment center on the planet since it appears this will be a very…lucrative investment.

As advisor it is my responsibility to inform you of possible options and consequences. So in keeping with my duties, I will mention that their primitive society could be recruited in mass if we destroy the merkas city and bring them to witness it. We currently have one hundred twenty seven arcuran recruits. If we destroy that city and they see us do it, I am fairly certain we can expect tens of thousands with ease. That’s just the short term too.

Also as advisor, I will inform you that Lancaster may try to shoot you if you so much as mention I explained this possibility. Renjala too maybe.

We’ve gained some regular recruits as well from the refugees 40th day have been shuttling around. Impending alien invasion sure brings the patriotism out of people, and colonists don’t like the empires as much. We have a very good sales pitch for this kind of scenario.

Gunhild is severely injured. This is more of a job for a mechanic than a doctor. I’ve fixed the bleeding but she doesn’t have much left to bleed. Blitz also broke his leg fighting the Kar’Soluth so he’ll be out for a month or two while we fix that up. I’ve had to restrain him. Do not let him convince you to take that collar off his still working leg.