Stories of Lore 30

Riley has likely arrived in Nelta space by now. That’s all I got, stroke the magic cat if you want an actual update she is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of comm range. I’m sure she’s doing fine though.

Moving on, oh right second order of business. Everything is on fire.

Nelta’s here, they’ve invaded Koura fully though it was mostly evacuated so technically they just have Koura and Madhammer is fighting them from the fortified position of their headquarters outside the city. Somnus has a giant fucking hole in it and is now in pieces, very large pieces that Khymin has kept operational but still multiple pieces none the less. Three pieces actually.

The problem on Somnus is that Rikoy and his team got aboard and now more of them are sneaking their way in to reinforce him. We’ve had to back off of our conflicts with him as we sort of assess the situation and get through all the chaos. Now that things have settled down and everything is terrible, we can really take stock of our options carefully.

Rikoy currently controls one of the station sections, though that section isn’t attached to the main control deck of the station anymore though I wouldn’t be surprised if he just jumped between the two when he’s good and ready. His team are all super soldiers like him but the big three among them are nuts. Whoever we send to finish off this engagement better be exceptionally well trained.

Elym seems to be the one in charge down on Koura and they’ve taken over the cultist’s temple as their forward operations base onto Koura. It would appear that Elym has a group of fellow high level sahad casters acting as guard not to mention the whole camp that Nelta is deploying its forces to. They have control of a six kilometer stretch around that temple that Madhammer has yet to get all the way to. Simply put, Madhammer and VSEC stationed on the ground are overrun by sheer numbers and the reckless use of firepower.

Laura and Yenneiros are holding their respective areas, though the Hasao clan is definitely struggling. They don’t have a proper military, they had enough killers to make a great police or vigilante force but this is war and they’re being pushed back hard by Nelta. Yenneiros is the only one gaining ground on Nelta though, Laura is just doing her best to prevent them from taking the whole city all at once.

We could try to help them regain control by deploying the Winter’s strike craft to secure the air but that would leave Somnus in a worse spot as the Winter is all that’s preventing them from landing smaller transport craft, which can slip through the minefield, to reinforce Rikoy.

Elion has been holding things down and keeping it together to minimize losses until we can go in a bit harder, that timing coinciding with about five minutes from now. Satsujin and Nah are about to get back from Sol which can open some options for us. Nah has a battleship which can make a good hit, it’s also stealth so it can maintain comms for us as support if preferable. Not to mention the Nomads will be coming in as well.

So basically pick which hill you want everyone who works for you to die on before Elion initiates a proper assault to deal with key targets.

Elion called for us to retreat rather than push in on Rikoy when we had the chance, though he was right that the entire main deck split open and was vented. Since we can’t use Ethi much we have the distinct issue of not having the best countermeasures to being in open space. Might be some merit to sending the knights down to Koura where they can fight a bit more freely, it would play to their strengths more. However, that would leave us fighting a super-mage of some sort instead of the super soldiers which are more…understandable things for knights to deal with. I suppose its a choice between a favorable battlefield and a favorable opponent. Also where we think Ankathi should be helping most. She is a medieval fish out of water though, I don’t think she really “gets” what fighting in the void of space is like. Not to mention she’s so cocky she might not realize what I mean by “no atmosphere” and do something stupid.

We could go back to dealing with the assault carriers but rifting onto them proved to be extremely dangerous. First off, the atmosphere in those ships does not favor us. Second, surrounded by enemies. It wasn’t too bad, we did some damage but we were recalled to help with Somnus once they started getting on board there.

Meanwhile back at Enohas, things are going fairly alright. With the Revenants having left to go back to Sol we probably have a minute before they get back out here to harass us again. That or they might now be going after Nah or Lancaster since they were able to start pursuing the Revenants, which is something they historically don’t like. Cleaning out Daesta’s remnants is difficult though and we haven’t found much. Since they weren’t really publicly declaring themselves in such a way that we could get a list of who to look for other than Daesta. Though I imagine their morale isn’t doing well with both her and Nihlav dead. They haven’t shown any signs of activity at the least.

Construction on the new demonic wing of the citadel is underway, specifically designed to accommodate the size of at least Ki’Ralcht herself. Speaking of whom, they’ve recently got into a fight with more of the Vloz’Khress forces still lingering around on Zenaka. While they may have won the fight overall we can’t help but notice they appeared to have an objective they fulfilled as the orbital shield generator was sabotaged. Since they previously owned the thing they kind of knew the layout of the place.

Across the entirety of the swarm we just instinctively know that somewhere among the stars, the crusade has truly begun. A war of the likes you cannot begin to fathom has been initiated and billions die by the day only to be replaced and sent to die once more. War is a horror all have come to know, yet none yet know the brutality of a silnian war. Perhaps it is our link through sahad that we might see the ripple through the endless void, or maybe just a telescope would tell you much the same. Either way, know that the beginning of the crusade marks a turn in the Valdir offshoots like myself and Azilath. The hunger for blood and glory grows ever stronger, the call of The Wrath can be heard, and the ramifications of the faith will be felt. A divine walks among us, forged through knowledge of the celestial heavens that came before. But today a god of man’s own making reveals the mortality of all others before them.

Also I bought some of those cat sweaters for you to try on, it’ll be adorable! Huh what were we talking about? No I’m not growing anymore, I think this is my maximum size.

Anyways, Cassir is on the way in with Satsujin and the rest of the Sol expedition crew just in the middle of Auwana getting invaded. So that will be…at least some help. The vivarium hasn’t really been attacked, it has been boarded and taken over by Nelta but they don’t seem all that keen on destroying it just yet. So…we have to get that back eventually. Vasia wanted to just turn off the security containment but I’m pretty sure Nelta will just blow up the station or kill all of the specimens if they have reason to think the station is hostile enough to reject their boarding parties. Nelta seems to have no idea that Vasia’s lab is hidden on Ash. The cult isn’t so lucky as it turns out we decorated too well and now Elym has taken that as her base of operations. Lot of dead cultists now too.

Que is not, this place was deliberately chosen to prevent us from being able to expand upon it. It’s moon is. The planet is just a big ball of dust and rock with no atmosphere. Que is enclosed in a spell that allows it to function as if it were hospitable, similarly to Tykel for example. Though it was deliberately chosen for how useless it is to anyone who can’t import what they need.

Also I can tell you that you are less fragile than a regular cat, but also more fragile than any humanoid. Don’t get shot.

All of the new members of the synapse can control a drone or two at a time. None exhibit  the ability for large scale or even squad level control. However, they can exhibit a larger version of control in directing the ghouls we can make through infection. Those are much simpler and stupider. The converts are not all bipedal anymore…I’m actually seeing a trend with this. I don’t have my legs anymore…you’re a cat…most of the new converts are some form of quadruped. Couple more naga like me, oh and that one guy who now is a centipede looking thing…with a human torso. He has a mouth on the backside and the front so we’re not sure if we want to ask where it all goes…

As for Finsir’s relation to Que, it’s open space. There are other star systems not too far away but they’re not closely aligned enough to be terribly more convenient then flying to any other star. I suppose we could scout them for anything useful, and Finsir is known to have high levels of mutated variety among its now two known inhabited planets so maybe the plane will be useful to the swarm. Not really sure how that works.

Seiyomi has left to go to Thenica. Alone. Byyyye Seiyomi. Actually he is qualified to pull that off but that’s still a dangerous place to be. I guess he’s on the tail of the Revenants to start figuring out how their intelligence network actually works. He did mention that you should ask Renjala about the Faelyn/Kanika business though.

Vasia made a special note to the returning trip that Salied is to be brought back to the Ash labs immediately and discreetly. One of the other researchers informed me she’s been building an elaborate machine to analyze and probably do something far worse to the entity she captured from beyond the rift. That and laying low in the hopes that the Nelta invasion won’t notice the secret lab on Ash.

Also yes we have been able to replicate the Nelta control core using the New Horizon facilities. It’s not up to par with the originals but the proof of concept is there and we used it to make the DNA preservation database though it hasn’t been finished. That’s a lot of information we’re trying to store in there and everytime someone makes a typo we have to start all over. I don’t think the species who invented this has the same attention span problems that humanoids do.

Remember when you said “safest location possible” for the Yelay? Guess where that turns out to be. They’re at the Ash facility now with Vasia.

We’re on return from Sol though Nelta struck a bit earlier than we had hoped for. Most of our team is aboard the Closing Statement, actually it’s just Leon and Vaeri back on Somnus adn they’ve taken the approach of waiting for support before they get involved in a full scale war.

We’ll be arriving into a somewhat dire situation. Nelta has boarded Somnus and the station was split open and is steadily drifting away from its other pieces. Though the station is so large that it is still fairly functional in this condition.

Koura city is almost entirely overtaken by Nelta with only Madhammer making much progress on taking ground from them. Independents and VSEC are doing their best just to slow their forces down. We’ll be arriving eighteen hours after the invasion began.

The Closing Statement could launch a sneak attack on their fleet in tandem with Koda to maximize our impact on the fleet but then we’ll be exposed and operational support might be difficult going forward. If we remain in stealth we can probably park on the far side of the planet and allow Aryn to provide support from the ship as we don’t know how long the Somnus command deck can keep functioning at all. Even now they barely have communications between Elion and Koda let alone the forces down on Koura. From there we could deploy the agents as needed to help with the Rikoy and Elym problems.

Basically there are three main areas of conflict we need to assess our ability to impact. The fleet controls space and as long as Nelta has that they can reinforce or move freely between the various planets and stations we have. Somnus is the main thing keeping that at bay as it has the firepower needed to threaten their fleet, though with it being boarded by Rikoy they are in imminent danger of being not only shut down but being taken over. If Nelta can figure out how to use Somnus’ systems they’ll be able to bombard Koura with ease.

The other big one is Koura itself. The orbital shield generator is all that stands between the city and a full scale bombardment. I suppose the military ramifications of this are not as critical but from the economic perspective Lancaster will probably never recover if Koura is reduced to a field of craters. Which isn’t good for our own funding.

Stories of lore 29

The draft – I mean call for Volunteers has been put out. I’d recommend a draft.

Riley is still on the way she should be there in about a month or two. It’s a long ass trip.

For CQC aboard Somnus Khymin has those battle-bots you had him working on still laying around though their effectiveness is questionable. However, its possible that the aliens can’t even tell that they’re not fighting fit since their adventures in Sol have largely been a constant string of ‘what is that?’. The lower decks could use the doors to close off certain hallways and cause problems there but the Main Deck is the problem, it’s a huge open space giving way to an entire city built around a big ass tree. Not much compartmentalization to be done there unless we vent the whole thing, which will kill the tree. Maybe get some people to shank the aliens in the alleys. Though Madhammer’s deployable cover is pretty useful in urban environments and we could just place vehicles strategically to funnel the fight in a direction most advantageous to any strategy we have. Not to mention the fact that most boarding actions are done in hallways not into a city filled with skyscrapers, so snipers. We recommend lots and lots of snipers and turrets in windows.

Also the station AI is going to be doing all it can whether or not it can help just because the station’s gotta do its basic defense protocols. So…kind of? It already helps with targeting. Though it doesn’t have some secret weapon to pull out.

As advisor I’ll point out the mine-layer is still really good buuut they can still shoot us through it. Though the longer it holds up the longer it takes them to get control of the system so still probably worth it but I would expect them to just take a holding pattern once they figure out that they can wait it out. Assuming they figure that out.

By the way, how much of our fleet assets just went to Sol for the Salied thing? Because they’d have to turn back right now to get back in time to defend the system from Nelta. Oh, that’s not good. Where do you stash the executive escape shuttles again?

Also we can’t really just keep going to Whitetalon for money all the time mostly because it’s really hard to contact him and he has to sign the loans. Though Madhammer is on its way back to Koura, I’m not sure if this will have any adverse effects on the Zenaka occupation though. The drow are still sneaking around and Madhammer was most of the military power there.

When it comes to buying Zenaka’s excess crops, that is actually something we’re already doing with the Winter that has a lot of trade support abilities. Crops are worth good money right now and are part of helping us not go broke.

I’ve opened negotiations with the countries in Zenaka that are keen to work with us, though obviously the rest of them would prove difficult to deal with. The country we recruited Xanis from is down though.

For the Sol Expedition I turn you over to Satsujin.

A note about The Outsider using the Warrens, we don’t actually know how to get from here to Auwana through it yet. We’re still working out the weird stringy map that is the Warrens. Not to mention going into it from Enohas is probably a mapping project we should consider working on as well since it will likely be standing by around here most of the time. That being said we have time to just fly over there normally so we’ll go with that, it’s a carrier so it’s not really worried about pirates.

We’ve managed to recover Aku in fairly good shape, if a bit disorientated. He was in a utility closet down by the taco shack. According to him they were moving him frequently since they lacked a proper base of operations here. Apparently when they left the planet he was just kind of left tied up where he was. He noted that their interrogation methods varied wildly but they never resorted to any actual form of torture, which he suspects has something to do with whatever their ethical code of operations is.

Reika and Haziel went to find Daesta. Along with Eerihild and her wolf knights, it eventually devolved into a field battle with her recruits to her resistance group and they did indeed have Sol weaponry. Not that it helped as much as they were hoping. I think they were under the impression that we had weapons capable of dealing with things like Reika or Haziel. Unfortunately for them, we kinda don’t. We don’t know how widespread Daesta’s little resistance group actually was, though Daesta is dead now.

Sarnai has gained ten pounds since Ankathi started possessing her for dinner and she’s very self conscious about it. Though honestly she was a twig so it’s probably healthier for her at this point anyways.

Alexander put in a request to go to Sol whenever there is an opening, planar activity has gone rampant down there and is causing penta-intersections as a byproduct of some of the weapons and spells being used. He’s curious to see how these things interact before they die down if he can. As your advisor I’m going to say this is maybe one of those requests we deny.

I can say from experience that caffeine has no effect on silnians. Wildly different anatomies and extreme resistance to chemical influence. Bug spray has probably been used on them many many times. Vasia fed me antifreeze and told me it was a ‘juice’ as an experiment. So for future reference, don’t try to use poison against Valdir, it won’t work unless you have some extremely aggressive and potent stuff. Though at that point you might as well just be trying to shove a grenade into their mouths. So upside, pretty much immune to everything. Downside, immune to all drugs and alcohol. Which I reaaaally miss sometimes.

As for the Que research, we kind of have all of it. It’s furry and has a long snake tail. Though that being said, I’m not sure why we’re all fluffy. Que just likes fur I guess.

We may be victims of Que’s independence or it just doesn’t mass spread all knowledge so easily because I don’t really do psionics even if you do. None of the drones utilize it either. Though to another note, we did get some crazies to take the dip in the pool for science. They did actually retain a lot of their individuality and personality though I think a lot of our new recruits were scientific “donations” from Faelyn.

The pools acknowledge me as a queen, only the Que one acknowledges me as it’s own queen. Though it’s a bit murky to say how much that matters. Since it’s all descended from the Valdir silnian it’s sort of one big family, I’m not even sure how much pools from different silnians would really bicker with each other if at all. So with concerns of someone not amicable to us taking over one of them…I’m not sure how that even works. I don’t think I can intentionally harm Azilath for example without an override from the mothership. As for telling it to make you king, doesn’t quite take instructions and input that well. I still can’t even get it to stop consuming people with essentia and turning them to goop every now and then, it just does whatever it wants. This comes back around to the bit where it’s really just an adaptive but programmed entity.

As for Que’s infrastructure, I would say not too bad really. The place was never blown up or anything, just overrun by bitey things. Might need to replace a lot of windows and doors but the walls and building foundations are fine.

I was young for a drow and I didn’t really have a proper career, I just kind of worked as a server.

Oh hey Zanin’s here, have fun with that one.

Anyways, Seiyomi points out he doesn’t just magically alter the reality of information against the Revenants. He can try to keep certain things obscured and misleading but they’re headed to Sol and he’s…not. So he can’t just DM them misinformation and make them believe it or anything. Though currently he’s at work seeing about the phylactery trap but he warns that this particular group of people can likely survive ‘somewhere dangerous’. Since they specialize in dictating when and where the engagements will take place.

The yelay aren’t terribly suited to anything we’ve found so far, but y’know…terraforming. Or just throw the yelay into the pool and adapt them as we see fit. That or hand them over to Koura cures whose parasite might fix them up to survive on Koura as it keeps doing for others.

For terraforming year zero moon…depends on the method. If 40th day does it, very expensive and very difficult but not like…craaazy hard. Alnae and Shetou have already been doing stuff like this but it’s a long and difficult process. If I do it…well it might not be exaaactly solian but it’ll be reasonably close.

At the vivarium we turned on the security systems again to see what the makers are making. They have since banned anyone from entering the chambers at all other then maaaaybe Cassir or myself. The metal one is just kind of making the regular traps and stuff, the original is making something very large and spiky. It’s actually kind of an odd timing for them to suddenly start building like they’re getting ready for war. The staff wrote “wild crackpot theory” next to the note on this one but the makers might be able to somehow sense the incoming Nelta invasion and are prepping for war out of instinct.

We’ve established contact with one of the Revenant’s theoretical higher ups on Thenica though we haven’t quite tracked down their base of operations. Judging by their previous work we have strong reason to believe they don’t actually have a formal one. They seem to be very good on the move and blending into other places as we witnessed on Enohas.

Getting Vaeri to Nelta will take a bit of time. Infiltrating them back in their half of the galaxy seems plausible but the active fleet here in our half is a great deal more likely to notice she is in fact from Sol. So to confirm, you do know this is something of a year long trip right? Unless VSEC sends back Riley to pick her up or something. We could try to find a path to Nelta space through the Warrens though but that is, as we’ve seen, a sometimes erratic proposition.

We’ve begun work on finding as much as we can about the Revenants to infiltrate them though its taking awhile since all of society is breaking down on Sol. Most of the op details will be covered by Satsujin.

We’ve landed and set up a base for operations on SV3, Nah and the Closing Statement have advanced to Thenica to try and hunt for the Revenants. So our forces are a little split trying to get this done as fast as possible, the longer we’re here the more vulnerable we’ll become.

I don’t think VSEC understood what has become of Sol since the colony rush began and the second invasion. The team’s morale is bordering on catatonic just seeing it and coming to the realization that the entire system looks like this now. Throughout the war Nelta has been using nuclear weapons and Sol has been opening pandem rifts left and right that is flooding these planets with planar interactions on a wild scale. I can see a volcano from where I’m calling from and it was definitely not there before, and even if it was it definitely wasn’t spewing mana rich lava that explodes on contact with anything other then rocks. Notably, oxygen is not a rock.

Primary objective of transporting Salied went south fast. Once she had one of her ‘episodes’ we started drawing a lot of attention. Half the expedition is dead. The entire goethe support clan is gone, Cassir is alone now and all other cultists are gone. She almost died but got a little lucky but now she’s without her cult support and is dramatically weakened.

Secondary objective of establishing contact with the Revenants is sketchy. Xanis managed to establish contact but on their terms, he hasn’t found the location of their base but at least been able to talk to them. So far no one’s dead yet but Xanis suspects we’ve only scratched the surface of what the Revenants really are. The group we are particularly wary of are the ones who don’t like the Gauntlet. His argument being that if the Phantoms are aligned with a group like Seiyomi and the Black Library, the Revenants might have a similar network of secretive organizations and allies. We’ve also learned a little bit more about their organization due to his insight but we’re a long ways from having a handle on the threat they represent. In my opinion, it feels like you’ve known about these guys for literally years and only just now started actually paying attention to them. We’re just getting the groundwork started for what could turn into a war between two secret societies in the middle of an apocalypse. However, as VSEC, we’re kind of in the clear as long as we don’t send any help to the other directors to deal with the Revenants. Sketchy position and the decision is up to you but that’s the report I have.

We’re still looking for their place of operations, it doesn’t help that it should be nowhere near where we found one of their members. It stands to reason they have more then one and its not one big fancy lair but a lot of smaller hideouts and a very mobile group of people. The only data we have after all comes from Sarden, whose identity was compromised and she might not have been allowed to return to any sort of actual HQ so easily.

Tertiary objective of contacting previous Sol powers has been difficult. We were able to send out comms and make contact with Kaylen in particular along with a few other former higher ups. They’re all not doing well. Kaylen herself is confined to a medical bed after being exposed to everything ranging from radiation to bioweapons. No one is sure if she’ll live at this point.

We’ve made contact with House Sharen as well, they seem to be doing a lot better since they’re holding fleet position over New Kaifen still. I gave them some of our radar reports so they could maybe move a bit more freely, we’ll see if they do anything with that.

We can’t contact Valdir since they never had great comms tech in the first place, not sure how they’re doing. Though the alliance between Vloz’Khress and House Song is apparently much more stable now. Kharla and Song Yi still have a bit of animosity between them just on principle but given the situation they’ve both been able to put it aside to deal with later, now that some time has passed and they have operated with each other for this long it looks like it’s become the new normal for them and they’re getting more efficient. Though both of their holdings are still in ruins after this prolonged war.

We also sent out general comm calls just to see who would pick up and what is going on. Found out the beholder has a fairly large population backing him now and a couple dragons also have their own sub factions under them now. So basically the Phantoms are doing really well if you just add their numbers to “Phantoms” instead of individual entries.

Contact with Echo Seven reveals that she…or it? She still looks kind of like you so I dunno. Echo Seven has assimilated the remains of Guardian that Orochi didn’t manage to eat already. They’ve been moving from one ruined city to the next to replicate as much as they can and get a standing force back together. I’ve also learned that the Echo Consensus Alpha Prime is on the way, their title for what we could consider top commander of the consensus. They’re after Arkaric, I’m not sure if I’m at liberty to divulge classified information to her on Arkaric but I heavily implied that she should be careful. She recognizes the threat Orochi represents to the entire galaxy and the Exerlus especially, and knows that Arkaric is in some way responsible for its creation. She does not know about the Phantoms. Even if they are taking it seriously by deploying the entire Echo Consensus to Sol just to kill one guy and his ship, I’m not sure they realize how many angles they’re going to be hit from once they start that fight.

Revenant strike team is inbound on Sol after they got there from Jamalia.