Stories of Lore 46

We’ve initiated the pandem scanner and found the Areti is making its way what we would call galactic east, towards nothing in particular that we know of. Though initial attempts to track its trajectory reveal a few stars it could be moving towards. Notably, there is another system with an arcane moon in its path. Given they were planning to take Enohas’ moon when it was controlled by Valadeus, odds are they are just looking for an arcane moon more than a fight right now. As we know, Sakhessa is more interested in building her new city than anything else.

As to your question about Nelan, he is but for the most part he’s been assigned to handling a new project since we’re now on speed dial terms with Kaylen.

The diplomatic adventures found that House Sharen is rebuilding its fleet, even if it already has the biggest remaining fleet in Sol. With the collapse of Alnae, and Kaylen just leaving entirely, they’re in a position to take control of Thenica if it weren’t for Yasrena. Shetou in general has both House Song and House Sharen still standing. Kar’Soluth is up to something though we’re not sure what. Though despite the pamphlet revealing Yasrena as a Phantom it might have had the opposite intended effect. Now that they know Yasrena is actually a yochlol, their loyalty to her has been strengthened. The traditionalist houses have a thing for…well tradition. And traditionally a yochlol is a higher rank than a Val’Hari for them. The only thing putting a pause in Kar’Soluth outright declaring loyalty to the Phantoms as a result of this revelation is Kharla. Who is currently in the demon kingdom under heavy guard by all of the Vloz demon lords. Perhaps ironically for us, Kharla is the only opposition of the phantoms within Kar’Soluth but is also one of the most influential matriarchs among drow. If she dies, Kar’Soluth will likely become openly aligned with the Phantoms. So, something to consider there at least.

House Song is in the process of re-arming with the help of Sharen building them yet another flagship. This one is bigger than the last ones, it appears Sharen found out about the Areti and they’re trying to build a titan of their own. The plan is for House Song to move its whole population out of New Kaifen and onto the titan for some good old fashioned crusading, so that Song Yi doesn’t have to sit around at home managing civil affairs when she could be going around murdering everything that slightly offends her.

We’re still in the process of finding all the Alnae warlords, more of them seem to pop up all the time. Though given that they are all in opposition to each other, it is perhaps somewhat strange that they don’t collapse more often. For the most part they actually all agree that Alnae needs to pull itself back together, but they are still separated by the critical need for food in this famine.

Admiral Qhu’stha has been assassinated and Kaylen almost was as well by Selona’s cyborgs.

I have advised Lancaster of this before, but the Hasao Tei are very…interesting for diplomatic relations. They criticized the idea of the embassy as political tripe since we are within driving distance of one another already and certainly within aethernet range. It is worth remembering they are descended from the only elven house in Shetou, so you can see how they might be used to certain harsh behaviors.

We’ve deployed the new ships as requested, though we’ll have to wait and see what becomes of it.

The battle of Diadem continues, the exploration fleet managed to find Laenadra but Eleazor and Gunhild are still missing within the depths of the ring world. They’ve also successfully established a landing area and started to reinforce it. Though the colony and the portal isn’t ready due to the constant attacks. According to Laenadra, the interior  of the ring is also always shifting. The control mechanisms are the result of an old security system’s attempt to prevent the inhabitants of the ring from reproducing out of control by constantly displacing them and moving them away from resources. Though after all these years, life found a way. Eleazor apparently is still down there in the labyrinth trying to find where the keys need to be placed to take over the ever shifting location.

The VSS Deimos has lost contact, though we were already sending two more ships out to check on them. Also they’re just very far away so ‘losing contact’ is kind of expected.

Operation Grassy Gnoll has…concluded. Jvangard was successfully killed but not by us. According to Bardhe’s report, there was an additional agent in play that set up the opportunity our demon tried to take in order to create a better opportunity for themselves. The oddity is that it is a zenakan, and a documented one at that. The zenakan is a mercenary who fought against us for the Vloz and then for us against the Vloz then for us against the natives then against us…for nobody in particular that we can tell. Apparently they’ve been behaving strangely ever since the Vloz came to Zenaka and are up to something particular. According to our offices on Zenaka who acquired up some local intel on the matter, this Valen woman is one of the zenakan elite by birth. Meaning she was conceived during a mana flare and is extra fancy. She’s been around for ages helping to settle disputes between zenakan governors by helping them murder each other. Ever since the arrival of the Vloz she has become very difficult to contact or hire…for zenakans. Elion’s office didn’t seem to have any trouble hiring her during those times and neither did the Vloz. We’re still not sure how she got off world, all the way to the demon kingdom, and then subsequently worked her way into a position to assassinate a demon lord.

You know, Lancaster’s gone, Renjala’s gone, Ilex is gone, I can still sometimes hear his voice. Kanika is also missing, Kharla just peaced out to the demon kingdom, I’m starting to get the feeling no one wants to hang out with us anymore.

The new carrier has been sent to jydoq to help with things around there. Though its somewhat chaotic, delving into things there reveals…uh…man Alnae’s warlords are almost hospitable by comparison. The jydoq colonies who can’t decide who the government is but that there definitely should be one tried to hold a vote awhile before we got here. All the candidates are dead now.

We have some ships looking for Sakhessa’s city in Necrosi, which is a whole thing. Theoretically it shouldn’t be hard to find a city we know has to be in Sol but necrosi is a strange place. Due to a lack of need for the basics to survive that the middle planes has, necrosi tends to be a lot more individualistic and rural. What Voriuk described as a city might only be accurate by necrosi standards, as there are only a handful of cities in the plane that could be described as such by the way we know of it. Also, a lot of weirdo vampires with massive harems here. Back in the 1500’s a bunch of vampires moved to necrosi for obvious reasons and really set up shop.

The Fae Wilds are going…great! Definitely great. Lancaster is having a great time.

We’ve also initiated the construction of the arcuran colony plan, that’ll take a bit of time to get everything in place. Though it’s mostly frame work because the arcurans aren’t terribly picky and they like their arcane fragment walls. Those are terrible walls but they like them.

As for our plot with the demon lords, I will say that the more knights bind to a demon the worse it can sometimes be for that demon. More minions means more drain on their existing capabilities. That keeps them reasonably shackled to us though, but might leave them unable to defend themselves effectively back in the Demon Kingdom. I point this out because once we initialize the plan, our co-conspiring demons will be putting a target on themselves. Also they aren’t very powerful right now. They’re about as strong as Setani was at best, and that’s just the biggest one we got working with us.

My good friend hippie demon is probably the weakest but he has a guitar! The two succubi are also quite vulnerable. Aryn found what she described as “a real demon” who is admittedly the strongest candidate for our plot but also the most difficult to work with. They already have significant territorial holdings, even if not enough to qualify for demon lord, and that comes with it the kind of personality that is harder to command. Particularly relevant given how sneaky demons tend to be.

However, our movements through the demon kingdom to find potential candidates have drawn some attention. Talking to the older more powerful succubi around without the more obvious motivation may have been suspicious. Particularly to what we now know to be a secretive succubus lord.

You know it’s kind of hard to tell if any memories are missing since I don’t remember them. I don’t remember my father very much though, is that concerning?

I do remember my mother having them beheaded though so that might be why.

I did warn you about contacting Kaisa. Also if I have the option of my involvement, I’m good here. Either we’re fighting another weak swarm to establish dominance as you suspect, killing our own allies since Kaisa was from the Raven facility, or we’re just killing puppies. Kaisa, ironically, has no chill. When Lancaster asks why you murdered a bunch of puppies, I’m going to point out I’ve been sitting here minding my own business this whole time.

Technically you bought a bunch of star systems from rich people fleeing the rift, their colonies are basically derelicts now. I suppose we could move into one of them but I’m not sure how much advantage there is to doing so. We have a burst of population acquired during the evacuations, but spreading them out makes it harder to defend them. Especially given our enemies love the tactic of making communication difficult.

We started setting up the Harlow colony as requested.

Also attempting to offer Linsun shelter at Roha didn’t work too well. Given that Shetou is the major powerhouse of Sol at the moment, rivaled only by Kar’Soluth, Linsun is doing pretty well in terms of aid.

As for declassifying sahad information that sort of depends on what you think is okay to do so with. Vasia was controlling weaponized sahad spells and advancing the field of ftl. Decaelys can obviously manipulate both time and space in weird extra dimensional ways, and so on. The most basic stuff is ‘survive in space’ I suppose.

Speaking of the cult, they’re up to shenanigans again. Some of them just jumped into the ichor lake because there’s no fence around it, just to see what happened. They’re drone biomass now, I’d make a villainous statement about how I don’t need mindless cultists that do whatever they’re told…but I did turn them into drones which really aren’t that different actually. Well the ichor did but you get the idea. Anyways your cult lady body has a challenge for control of the cult, and back here in Roha you have a growing faction that respect the ‘way of Cassir’ which was ‘do what the scariest person says’. So you’ve got the ones who like the ritual circles and the idea of doing big magic effects now and then as well as those that are the actual warrior followers. I dunno, you sort that one out I just deal with the swarm.

Setal’s still chilling out back in Zenaka, and survived two assassination attempts.

Yaellah seems to know where Vasia went. Judging by Yaellah’s emotional state, Vasia is already giving her orders again. That’s as much as we can really interpret about Yaellah through their communication methods. It’d be great if we had some sort of empath around. Also why did we contact Yaellah instead of Vasia?

Kennae doesn’t seem to approve of setting you up as the jydoq power, since you aren’t a jydoq. Also you have other interests and things to manage, he argues the jydoq need their own government restored that is expressly looking out for their interests. I’m gathering Kennae is painfully lawful good. While the assassin needs to be found and stopped, that doesn’t mean the collection of planets in the intersystem government of the jydoq should be led by an outsider. Something something, old lizard wisdom, something something, power hungry cat. Also if he finds out what your cult does and how you got that body I request you specifically mention that I had no part in this. I don’t need to get my ass kicked by a kobold, that’s just embarrassing.

Also no, your psyche starts falling apart even if you hop bodies. Sleep is a necessity for mental well being after all.

As for your mana experiments, ask Kaylen. Zankists are great at tapping into their own mana or manipulating that of others. Though yes if we were to redo all of our classification of magic there might be more careful boundaries drawn.

In a similar vein, the FTL trap is pretty simple in concept as long as you also understand the FTL enchantments well enough to counter them. Casting it at a scale to cover a planet and its orbiting space station is probably the hard part.

There are fourty two other known colonies on the frontier. We ran out of money before we could finish building all the destroyers. Got some shiny new destroyers though.

Set up a trade route too.

Si Yeon got her data back and has confirmed she has the only parasite that has the ability to hide from silnians. Not even Balhast has that effect. Also no one is sure how hers developed that, but the fact that she was presumably cured before and now has a parasite so thoroughly woven into her that she can’t remove it without killing herself indicates hers is particularly sneaky.

That and the mana sucking poison is a thing you could make. Though that’s getting close to mummy rot territory and if you go too much further you might accidentally kill your whole population like Sakhessa did when she researched such similar ideas.

So it turns out the scanning thing we used to find the Yelay before has a particular limitation, at least I am informed of such by New Age. Without Vasia or Salied they have no idea how to do that again.

Also I have too many things going on at once right now so sit your ass down before making more quest hooks.

We managed to bring Andel back around with the promise of a shiny new super carrier. They brought back a freighter or two from…who knows what poor colony they passed along the way.

We’ve been poking around jydoq to figure out what we can about these recent assassinations. So far we’ve confirmed that they definitely go after mostly political targets though we cannot be certain about leadership figures they have not gone after. It could be a case of these leaders being in good favor with the Phantoms or it could just be by location, they’re all on a different jydoq planet than the assassinations have been occurring on. It could be coincidence, or that territory could have already been thoroughly infiltrated enough that the assassin’s only job is to keep things destabilized everywhere else in the meantime. Unfortunately there isn’t much of  a crime scene left over by now for us to really look at for details. It may be beneficial to bait them into killing Ilex, if they are successful it will at least give us a fresh scene to analyze for their methods. Just a thought.

We sent Vanjin and the Nomads out looking for pirates, but it was Allison who had a meaningful update on the topic since she has an active Solvang membership. Asmodan is building counter fleets, now that the pretense of piracy being a coincidental benefit for undermining established order – cat pamphlet – he’s just recruiting pirates to his own fleet. While we have some time before it is ready to deploy, we may want to be more careful of trade lanes soon if he starts deploying warships. Apparently he is of the opinion that if secrecy is out, it’s time for a little more brute force.

Hello world!

That’s just a little robot humor. Anyways, they approved our admission to the federation as our own nation. See I told you that my team could get the job done. As a status update, the Iron Cradle is currently parked beneath Moncayo’s disc and the flotilla is with it as well.

Along with approval for admission came a wave of classified intel being released to you and by proxy me. No I didn’t steal it, I swear it says that advisors get clearance. You can just look it up in the handbook! Oh they sent a handbook too. Well VSEC did, the Astral Knights sent a gift basket instead. Though our timing is awkward, since Lancaster and Renjala are both missing. Also Ilex is here, despite popular belief, however he’s…a cat.

Hrmm..I’ve got a new idea. I’ll be back in my lab.

It’s patch day! Which mostly means nerfs so no one is ever happy about it.

Almost every character has been rebalanced. This was to help some of the older characters who haven’t been touched in awhile while the rules of the system and general trends of hero statting have changed. Such as removing all the knowledge and skill templates. So hopefully you just remember who is good at what professions other than combat.

Also we’ve cemented a grouping who can be thought of as world bosses or something similar. Basically they’re not on the humanoid scale anymore and require fleets/armies to really hope to deal with. Such as the archons, agallias, and Echo Prime. Note this includes Decaelys, their stats are perhaps deceptive. Though you already know her plan was to just pick up a planet and take it somewhere else, so that should be a red flag.

The method was to just create a tier list and put people into their bracket which was later assigned a level range based on the ceiling of the strongest characters. So some nerfs/buffs might seem a bit wild and others barely changed. Also added more templates because it is tradition that as a game gets older we need longer and longer blocks of text on their cards.

-Regeneration changed kind of, still convoluted as hell.
-Summon template clarified. Variants added: Raise dead, Vloz Summoner.
-Synapses and their templates reworked. Affects Valdir more than Nevun though. Also the synapse template itself is now way worse.
-Slayer: No longer gives defense bonus. Now gives critical range. Still gives offense. Now has a minimum stamina to activate. Might add that to more templates.

Rule Change – Aura bonuses do not stack, instead the highest is applied

New rule – Buying vehicles/ships costs soldiers support staff to crew them. Also buffed the recruitment speeds to make up for this a little. Tanks and ground vehicles can only be crewed by soldiers unless otherwise specified.

Ships in the shop have been tweaked a little bit, but now reflect the crew cost as well as their capacity to carry ground resources. For now each capacity is a point of power. I suppose soldiers agree to bunk up but Hero units demand their own fully furnished apartments.

New rule – Missions cost stamina, available on player sheet next to characters for tracking. Stamina regenerates at 2 per week if the character assignment is “none”. Stamina cost is calculated after mission completion, there are no plans for any consistency at this time. If a character reaches 0 stamina they take -1/-1 per point of negative stamina and cannot use their templates.

Character exp value requirements tweaked a bit.

Also I was trying to launch the patch on a slow week but its never slow around here. So I waited until you weren’t mid-combat with the Phantoms. Re-assess as necessary.

Stories of Lore 45

Greetings Koda, with Lancaster away in the Fae Wilds operational command has fallen to you. Irae may have forgotten to tell her that once you go into the wilds…well most people don’t come back. That’s what makes it mysterious.

The trip to Diadem is apparently still ongoing. They aren’t able to set up the permanent portal so we can send more forces through. They have lost contact with Gunhild, Laenadra, and Eleazor. It turns out the ‘monsters’ Echo Seven was talking about are all advanced self operating machines ranging in size from ‘oh look a dog with a gun’ to ‘thats a mech’. It is exceptionally difficult to scan due to the entire ring being mechanical and emitting similar signatures to that of its inhabitants. Though with what we now know, we believe the entire ring consists of these creatures. They behave as animals but they have military firepower as a part of their construction. The ring itself is constantly shifting and our forces are getting spread out or new waves of creatures are being pulled in towards them. It’s a little chaotic.

The Hasao Tei are notoriously difficult to talk to, though not unreceptive. They’re just led by a group of very stern and serious people. They’re also a little secretive, despite taking several million people from our existing colonies to live with them they seem to like being in a quieter section of Cayetano. At the very least we’ve opened relations to building a highway to their city so people can come and go easier.

The nature of Enohas’ moon means that establishing a long term colony is not very feasible. While it might last a few years, I will caution that eventually the arcane moon can produce erratic effects on construction. Especially any power system. In a pinch it can be used, but I would just caution about the investment. A colony without atmosphere is a dangerous proposition on a moon that can sometimes shut everything off.

Kaylen sent one of her agents to speak with us since she herself went back to Thenica to continue recruiting. She’s also apparently hunting down another Phantom colony, the one run by Hyvory apparently. An opportunity came up she felt the need to capitalize on. She’ll be available for diplomatic relations later if you want her to try talking to the Revenants or House Song. The admiral is in the care of one of her lieutenants at the moment.

The VSS Phalanx is on its way to jydoq alongside the Sparrow. The VSS Pegasus has lost contact though they’re too far out of range to know more than ‘they stopped responding at all’. The VSS Raven has received the message you wanted them to take to Zero North successfully but they took advantage of the catphone to let us know they aren’t sure they’ll make it. They’ve already lost half their crew to pirate attacks, bandit kidnappings, and a freak accident involving a comet that apparently could not be detected on any sensors. The VSS Deimos doesn’t seem to be having any issues and are continuing on their trajectory.

Portal construction on the moon of Enohas has been getting underway. The exploration of the ring world via portal has also taken place. Though it turns out to be more difficult than we expected to set up a colony and a permanent portal. Particularly because the ring world is always shifting and moving various ’tiles’ around. Which is really bad for permanent portals since the calculations of where “Point B” is has to be entirely redone if it does this. Let alone if it does it every couple of days. Theoretically once Eleazor figures out where the keys go, we’ll be able to stabilize things. For now…that’s an ongoing problem. The deployable colony hasn’t even been dropped yet while everyone is running around trying to find some semblance of stability or where the guy with the keys even disappeared to.

The jydoq warlords are kind of pushovers, without their old council or Merlan they don’t really seem to have people left with a strong sense of direction. However, after losing the duel with us, their entire leadership was found dead within two weeks. Grandmaster Kennae was distraught and came to yell at us for being a bit too bold. Though more importantly, he informed us that he is chasing something…strange around the jydoq worlds. After some mutual information swapping, he’s concerned the Phantoms found a new agent for jydoq. One that is currently operating on a small scale but has assassinated any rising leadership repeatedly. Part of his suspicions are aided by the fact that, and this slipped out in the conversation, apparently the Revenants absolutely adore Kennae and talk to him about all kinds of things.

Which led to something else that sounded important. According to Kennae, who says according to the Revenants…bit of a ‘friend of a friend of a friend’ trickle of information here actually. Anyways, rumor has it that Sakhessa is scrambling to keep jydoq together at the moment because us meddling there isn’t good for her. Merlan and the jydoq were projects of Arkaric’s personal interest. Now that Kanika is missing it falls to Sakhessa to maintain the jydoq situation until he gets back, and as we know Arkaric has a rule about working for him. All of his pawns can avoid being expendable only by being more valuable to him alive than their loss would benefit his other plans. Apparently Sakhessa is concerned if Jydoq falls apart she’ll fall into the ‘expendable’ category and he is notorious for expending people in ways they never see coming.

Which is why Kennae is a little upset with us, if we’re meddling than the Phantoms will meddle harder. He is fine with the Revenants since they can be discreet, though we just showed up and started throwing our weight around. To which end he cautions that we may wish to build more defenses. Because whatever is killing jydoq leadership startup plans has infiltrated some of their most secure facilities and somehow not left a trace. Which seems odd, given that they’re slime people. If they slide around the floor, there should be a trace.

Also Robert has been promoted to double CEO. To which end he reports that power gauntlets are a bit tricky to do with any level of rift technology, especially kari. He could draft designs for a piston based version of the concept but the recoil might damage the wielder just as badly unless it was wielded by a particularly large and slow figure who’d gain more advantage from the acceleration of the impact while still being able to withstand the force. Other designs can be summed up as “just enchant bull’s strength”.

We’ve started moving the turrets from Jamalia to the moon.

After a bit of surveying, you would think the merkas and arcurans are an endangered species with how many of them have been taken. They got uplifted so hard they just fell off their own homeworld. It turns out a primitive world with an endless war doesn’t have much population and we’ve been shipping them out for the last couple of years. Though the merkas are actually endangered, in the survey we found out that Valadeus led the arcurans to destroying those birthing trees the merkas rely on. Which pushed them even further to siding with Asmodan. We also discovered something peculiar, whereas Ilex created a male merkas to help alleviate the issues, Asmodan just used succubi. Which explains why they were so fiercely loyal to him.

The ones that remain on the planet live in an apocalyptic scenario where their extinction feels almost inevitable while the arcurans keep rapidly reproducing under the radiation of the arcane moon. There’s only maybe a dozen clans left that we can find – though I do mention they are known for being sneaky- and they’re all below a quarter of their original strength. Valadeus was even more ruthless than the arcurans had ever been before, it didn’t help that Asmodan was likely telling Valadeus where all of their warrens were from the other side. Their eradication is effectively complete. They live on only as Asmodan’s new minions.

The arcurans on the other hand are doing fine. The moon creates more of them, and they were on the winning team twice. It turns out both we and the Phantoms liked their crazy warrior culture and found it very useful. While there is only maybe three hundred thousand of them remaining on Enohas, they can reproduce rapidly since all they need is radiation from the moon. They’re actually fighting with each other right now because they ran out of merkas to pick on.

I’m honestly a little impressed at how quickly two demon lords broke an entire planet and made its people happily agree to slavery at their hands. Though demon lords are definitely a couple orders of magnitude more dangerous than anything that planet has ever produced.

Vaira and Yoshai have returned to the demon kingdom to find some candidates. What I have for you are of course the usual cluster of succubi who have had enough social problems that just being nice to them is an easy way to get their attention. Let’s just not tell them that we shipped Setal off like a sex toy gag gift to Ilex. There are some particularly promising candidates that seem like they have what it takes to get somewhere, but they have the problem of being tooooo good. Demons are notoriously sneaky after all, so not sure how much we can trust them, especially after that Ki’Ralcht mess. I really like this one weirdo demon we found though he’s hard to work with. But he’s a hippy who plays bass and I think me and him could write some tunes together. Oh right actual candidates, well we’re still filtering them out and seeing who works where.

However, on the other side of things, obviously the Phantoms are also making plays to retain Valadeus’ territory. Asmodan in particular seems to be sponsoring someone rather quickly…too quickly…as if he knew Valadeus was going to die very soon. I’m starting to notice a tend with the demon lords. Sakhessa is quite loyal to Kanika and more interested in keeping things together despite her history of ‘whoopsing’ her empire off the map once before. Illdath was cranky but just wanted to sit in his puddle and be left alone, and Elder Black is just some old guy who probably spits cliche wisdom at them. Both of the demons are kind of psychopaths though. Valadeus was the one who schemed against Barachiel for us after all.

Anyways, Asmodan’s new puppet is specifically not associated with him. To everyone else’s perspective at least, I know this game well enough to know that he would not be making this much progress this quickly without help from the Phantoms. They’re thought to be somewhat independent and self made, though to an extent he is. This new greater demon has taken over several of Valadeus’ assets through both economic manipulation and straight violence using a host of minions. I’m just saying, we might throw a wrench in Asmodan’s plans if his new pet were to have an unfortunate accident in his bid for power while he’s still vulnerable.

So as it turns out, if the hauler drone goes into the ichor after you set it up as one of your pawns, it is left alone while you are in it but if you aren’t it is broken down for parts since it is not operating and is thusly just biomass.

Also I’m back. It turns out my consciousness is backed up throughout my psi-cystal bones like yours. While losing that much of it wasn’t good, it was restorable. Now to grapple with the existential question of whether or not it’s really me or just a copy with  me….meh I’m over it. Now put on this sweater. Learned? I learned not to get into a fight with a super soldier who has fought everything he was pointed at for over a millenia. Well I already knew that but he didn’t accept my surrender. I have a feeling Xilca is Nelta’s problem child.

Moving on, Craylin just stood around awkwardly. Rhazin might as well have said “yaaaas queen” when he heard Valdir’s call. He seems excited to bite some shit now.

Also what did you want to name the colony you wanted to put on the gold planet? Also the colony system you purchased is just sitting around in the warehouse, same as last time you asked. Though they just shipped it out to the ring world expedition that is already going fifty kinds of sideways. Quite literally, the floors and wall move. The new New Age director suspects it has something to do with the fact that the ringworld’s ring would be permanently facing the sun  at rather close proximity if it couldn’t flip its layers around. Option B is: The people who built the terlim are just whackjobs with wrenches.

Also yeaaah if you want to preserve people while you take over their minds you are going to need people with larger brains to hold the both of you. That’s more of a pandem thing.

Also it turns out the jydoq are highly resistant to psionic manipulation, probably since that is their primary means of communication and they’ve been an interstellar race long before us. That being said, they’re both dead now apparently. Irae seems to be keeping tabs on that one.

The FTL trap that was at Auwana is definitely a sahad thing. It is basically a preloaded counterspell basically, since we know what spell allows FTL to even happen it appears Decaelys set a rigged counterspell to stop that specific thing from being cast if they got close enough. Kind of simple in concept really…actually Renjala might be able to do this one. He can actually cast the same spell thanks to his bind with Eden. I dunno if Irae can though.

Also sent a bunch of data to New age on black holes. The lab on Zenaka 04 is still doing fine, it just doesn’t have Grinhys or Vasia overlooking it. So the team is kind of slowly but steadily making reasonable scientific process. Actually all of New Age is dealing with the loss of the Heretic as most of their big experiments and crimes against humanity were on that thing. Si Yeon has sort of taken over and she’s a little more reserved than Vasia.

We set up the trade route as asked. So far not much is happening with it but we just got it going. Also built those ships you wanted.

So it turns out extracting Michael is harder than we thought, while he’s there posing as a slave the issue is the slaves aren’t exactly allowed to just leave. Under Sakhessa’s rule basically they’re well off but it’s not quite like Renjala’s vision. They don’t go anywhere unless it is approved and disobeying gets  your ass beat. So we’d need a ship and to get into the warrens where he actually is.

Though he does know that Sakhessa is still in possession of the White Lion but he isn’t sure where the Inaji went. He also reports that it has been fairly uneventful lately, he isn’t exactly invited to command meetings but he works at the docks so he can see where ships are coming and going from. Sakhessa is playing very conservatively right now, she just wants to build her city and reinforce the system. Though more turrets and ships are built every week to further enforce the warrens base. So she’s ‘turtling’ I believe Aryn calls it. We did take a headcount though so we have an updated tactical intel of their defenses as of this month.

Captain Andel suggests getting one of those fancy mobile shipyard carriers that “everyone” seems to have these days. Everyone being Lancaster and other economic super powers. He would not stop waggling his eyebrows at me the entire time. I, exasperated, may have casually suggested that he should just steal one. He suddenly took off and the last we saw of The Nomad it was on a trajectory for Thenica. Sharen space in particular. We might want to stop him, by now people have noticed that the Nomads seem to always be working with the federation of Lancaster.

As for planetary surveying, Aryn just hacked the New Horizons database. Did you know there is a planet with an alarming presence of gold somewhere out there? I mean that’s not ship building materials but you can definitely trade that for ship building materials. Also the flotilla is on its way to an asteroid belt to look around for some resource rich asteroids.

Also what thing do you mean a couple cycles ago? They’ve answered a lot of questions while you come and go from your weekend retreat. At least that’s where I assume you go when we can’t get in contact with you.

To the Core

Stories of Lore 44

Evidently that was a trap. Decaelys has the ability to manipulate space and time, apparently that includes recalling to previous states like Elym on a much larger scale. The Areti suddenly disappeared from all scanners and re-appeared in Auwana along with Faelyn’s fleet. Though this has delayed their arrival at Enohas.

Meanwhile, pirate fleets appeared in Enohas for no real reason now. They aren’t exactly equipped to launch a full scale ground assault on the moon to make any progress until Faelyn returns. Instead they’ve been utilized to make an effort to extract Asmodan and his new merkas cult. Our fighters didn’t make it easy for them but our fleet was otherwise occupied to actually prevent the extraction.

We did confirm a kill on Valadeus however. He was in one of the ships our fighters shot down and despite him being  a demon lord, space is very indiscriminate on its oxygen distribution.

Moon successfully defended for now it appears.

Eleazor is back with keys to a ringworld infested with rampant native life forms that eradicated its creator. Perhaps not the original deal that was worked out with Echo Prime, though given the circumstances it was the best she could do now that the exerlus are falling apart.The downside is that might not be entirely convenient in location. It is on the western outskirts of the ‘Western Reach’ as it has been referred to.

For some reason Eleazor keeps offering to barter with people for their possessions up and down the streets though, which seems unnecessary given how much we pay him.

As to your other query, the Hasao Tei isn’t particularly powerful as military force. They are a strong civilian government with high approval ratings. They do have some strong champions among their numbers but they serve mostly as suppliers to the Heroes Guild at the moment. There is some potential there but they are mostly just another colony out here on the frontier harboring refugees.

I’ve opted to ask Kaylen to deal with the Revenants for us in attempting negotiation once again since they find her more likeable. Though she said it would have to wait until she gets back from Enohas. Same for Song Clan.

The colonies of the Villena Alliance are spread out and have largely managed to stay out of everything going on. They are playing very carefully in response to our diplomatic missions. Aware that until a distinct winner is available, our war with the Phantoms might not be wise for them to get involved with. Unlike the Thenican refugees, they still have something to lose if they anger Faelyn and few means to stop the Phantoms from crushing them. Though there are murmurs and discreet messages indicating a hidden support for our cause. We did learn that they are somewhat suspicious of the pirates on the frontier, while we already were pretty certain it was Asmodan helping out the Phantoms it is at least a good sign that the colonists are also noticing the correlation despite the PR campaign the Phantoms have been running.

We have surmised that the Villena colonies aren’t particularly satisfied with being ruled by somewhat they learned is working for monsters, not to mention they’d love to not pay tribute, but they are small frontier colonies just thankful that Nelta didn’t destroy them and there is a general feeling of powerlessness among them.

The explorers are still exploring, though the cruiser we sent into the Western Reach reports multiple evasions of pirate attacks. The pirates were verified to be alien in nature and unlikely to be working for Asmodan. The explorer’s report that the Western Reach is, in their captain’s own words, “Fuckin crazy as shit” on his official report. Eleazor confirmed this as well, informing us that this is due to the path of progress they have taken and the constant threats they live under. Though apparently the galactic community considers us to also be a part of the Western Reach. I’ll just move that border a little bit.

To a similar note, the explorer’s looking for signs of Arkaric keep finding a lot of evidence that he has been establishing several assets in the Western Reach. This came as a surprise to no one that the calculator of chaos likes the most chaotic region of the galaxy.

The VSS Raptor is still trying to get ahold of what is going on around Jydoq and establish diplomatic relations with local colonies. They have also been following the astral knights around for protection.

The one looking for the stolen shipment is pretty sure Asmodan did it but is having a hard time tracking him. Even though we kind of know where he is or at least was just a moment ago we don’t actually know where the shipment went. Though Allison from Nah Division is pretty sure it would have worked its way to the Solvang station in Sol.

Also I’m told that operation grassy gnoll is proceeding a bit more aggressively due to the death of Valadeus causing some opportunities to be seized upon in the demon kingdom.

Well it has been an uneventful anticlimatic month here on the moon of Enohas. Lancaster I suppose successfully diverted the incoming fleet so they never got around to landing on the moon. Instead the pirate fleets opted to extract their leaders since our own fleet was also missing and sort all this out later. Also a bit of a ‘what are all these people doing here, Valadeus said they left’ situation.

We’re waiting to hear on if we intend to stick around and guard the moon. We could refurbish Jamalia if we wanted to, or strip it for parts to send to Garden City. Enohas is still a golden world even if the political relationship with the primitive natives is flopping back and forth all the time. Though there is a chance that the Phantoms come back and better prepared this time.

With the death of Valadeus this creates a bit of a window in the demon kingdom. While it is very likely that his territories and holding will be taken over by Asmodan and then perhaps distributed to a new demon puppet for the Phantoms it is a time of political instability as Valadeus was one of the major players. This has also given Voriuk a chance to start meddling with things once again. The deaths of Valadeus, Vidarius, and the absence of Kanika have left the Phantoms in a politically weakened state and now Sakhessa is the default leader of the Phantoms.

We’ve sent a team out to Jydoq, which quickly met up with the VSS Raptor and its crew. Evidently they have been having a rough time and are now exploring by following the chapter around in the hopes of not being attacked by bandits as often.

New Age labs has analyzed the recent disaster at Auwana. They have come to a hypothesis that Decaelys is the mechanism by which the Phantoms have been moving throughout the galaxy. Given her ability to instantly  recall to a place she once occupied, seems kind of obvious now. It is also likely  that if time were to be accelerated for her they could cover years of travelling within a matter of months for everyone else. The obvious downside to this would be that you would still age, the obvious counter to that is the Phantoms are staffed almost entirely by long lived species and immortals.

We also analyzed the data Lancaster sent over regarding the other spell they had left in place that didn’t trigger. Our sahad experts are not certain but they think it is likely it prevents FTL acceleration. Had Lancaster gotten closer to it, she would not have been able to escape Faelyn’s fleet at all. Both were created via a ritual, similar to how the cult works. Though it was utilizing Decaelys’ jesai methods, but that is how she can create spells so massive as to control entire fleets or regions of space.

All that being said, we did not get the opportunity to try and negotiate with her. As soon as Faelyn’s fleet was set to arrive at the system, they suddenly warped backwards into Auwana because of Lancaster. The labs are hard at work analyzing any data they can on Decaelys since she is evidently the most powerful sahad caster we’ve ever encountered and there is much to learn from her. Unfortunately, without Vasia they are definitely struggling.

Contacting the Valdir can be summarized as “getting judged by Kaisa”. Though the desire to be able to control the ichor to create drones that don’t bite everything once they fall out of the synapse is particularly triggering to her.

Also Kaisa stole our ritual and your infinite sending technique. This whole time we’ve mostly paid Indal lip service as not to anger Kaisa who keeps calling him a god despite him just being a dude with an axe that swings really good. The Valdir synapse just became infinite, omnipresent, and Kaisa just sucker punched everyone in the brain to let them know it. I don’t know what the qualifications are to become a deity, Ankathi has a very laid out plan and series of requirements. Though at this point, I’m not really sure who is going to dispute Kaisa on her mad ramblings anymore given that she can send them to you any time any where for any reason. So….all hail the god emperor? We may wish to ask Ankathi’s opinion. Also Lancaster would like a word with you.

As for the ichor experiments, they absorb mana from radiant sources better. At least if the drone is produced at the Zenaka 04 lab lake. Might want to bring a sample back here as we do have an arcane star near Moncayo.

We’ve established the Zion colony on Jydoq. Two local governments are displeased that we didn’t ask for permission first though they also disagree on which of them you should ask. It’s the Alnae warlord situation all over again, some groups think they represent the old government and disagree who does. Either way its there now.

As for your question about the long range aethernet relay, the 650 billion one IS the one that connects two systems. You chain them together to get a larger galactic network but each system within a certain range would need one. Interstellar communications are expensive. Space is big.

We found Yaellah. She remanifested after awhile, unkillable lich alien and all. Then she just took off, sahad alien that can jump between planets of its own volition and all. My money is on that she knows where Vasia is and went to go find her.

Larazja, or what is left of her, is still with the fleets and we haven’t been able to throw her in the puddle yet.

Cyberware that increases your mana capacity is called a mech, or an exosuit. Or armor. I mean technically we can put a mana battery in the chassis of any cybernetics we want but it still needs to be recharged and takes up space. So it can technically be done it’s just often better for anyone who actually needs that to wear armor and strap some extra mana packs to it rather than compromise the design of the cybernetics to fit that battery internally. Since you have to live in your cybernetics all day but you only go into battle once every now and then. Unless you’re Selona. He just put a living creature in himself to serve as a battery, that works I suppose.

Also as far as I can tell, my non organic stealth thing is unique to my parasite. We could theoretically replicate it, Koura Kures had most of the data on working with the parasites. However, Lancaster fired me so I don’t work on parasite research anymore. I’m sure Vasia would just subject a hundred people to conditions similar to mine to see if it replicated but from a more practical standpoint we’re not sure why I have this specific mutation.

I am not going to comment on your vacation trips to meet with Setal you are planning. Though you’re not anywhere near the portal at the moment.

I would ask Irae about the demon lords thing, her knights were specifically looking into that and are better qualified.

Stories of Lore 43

Khymin has constructed version 0.2 of the prototype mech for you to try again. He advises maybe testing it on some of the larger wildlife of Enohas while under supervision rather than immediate field tests against a demon lord that can tear tanks in half.

As it turns out the incoming extra signal was Nelta and their hunt for Vasia after she murdered a whole planet. Elym somehow cut Vasia off from being able to communicate or control the Heretic for awhile there. Well, if it isn’t the consequences of her actions. It went better than it could have though. The titan carrier was carrying a small crew of volunteers, we’re not sure how they got ahold of this carrier as it was definitely not properly staffed.I am willing to calculate that they stole it or Qhu’stha gave the speech of his life to get Nelta to donate it to a suicide charge while in the middle of a war with the jesai. Their suicidal aggression towards Vasia combined with the still-standing streak of Rikoy being able to do even the most impossible of missions is all that kept them in that fight.

Upon revisiting events, I believe they must have been on a galactic adventure to unite people, convince them of the greater threat, acquire a fleet, learning about friendship and duty. It must have been one of the great quests of a band of heroes trying to save the galaxy from an impossibly vast and terrifying threat. Too bad their ship was destroyed and we can’t harvest the logs to see their….odyssey.

Gunhild captured Admiral Qhu’stha and he is currently detained on Koda’s ship. Aryn suggests just killing him outright. Gunhild’s rebuttal is ‘above my paygrade’ so they forwarded the information to you. He is so far a very uncooperative prisoner and destroyed his own translator. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Vasia being the last time he tried diplomacy with us.

The Jamalia shield generator has been moved to the moon as requested.

The Heroes guild has provided staffing for two of the super battleships, the super assault, and the super carrier. They have also brokered a formal alliance with the Hasao Tei, who still have their independent city to the west of Moncayo.

We have received word that Valadeus has reappeared after rendezvousing with Asmodan. Asmodan then killed him, reportedly. We don’t have a body to examine ourselves and we know they like to be tricky about these kinds of things. However this has Solidied Asmodan as the hero of the merkas and uniting them under himself.

We have two weeks before the pirates and Faelyn’s fleet arrive. We suspect Decaelys will be present as well, all analysis suggests that Decaelys can have some impact on a fleet battle though we’re not entirely sure to what extent.

As a strategy briefing, I should point out that if the battle is prolonged we will need orbital control at some point. Faelyn’s fleet is powerful enough to destroy our orbital shield within five to six months of bombardment. The actual capabilities of the Areti versus the mana infused generator are making this calculation uncertain due to the untested variables. While our emplaced turrets should prevent a three month long bombardment, if the shield coats the entire planet she can position her ships on the far side of the moon from our defenses and just keep bombarding. We can shrink the shield to mitigate this but given that they’re after the planet itself that might not be as viable an option as it normally is to force them to engage our defenses.

It’s been a short time since my last visit, though apparently Lancaster is re-assessing the situation after the encounter with Nelta. Though we’re still deployed as requested and recruiting around Zenaka.

Steam tanks might be doable. The steamworks director described it as “sure, that’s just two panzercycles strapped together with a big gun on top and an extra coat of armor”. So…I guess that makes sense. The director sometimes gets carried away with odd ideas.

With the recent events happening with Nelta, Vasia is presumed maybe dead by everyone except the only person whose opinion on the matter really counts. Ankathi is pretty sure she is still alive, because her soul fragment has returned to her. Robert says incorporeal creatures are normally still destroyed by the immense gravity of a black hole, though he has no idea what Sahad magic she knows.

The Fae Wild volunteers are still standing by ready and prepping but currently they are occupied with the defense of Enohas. The Arcurans have been taught about peaceful protest recently and are now protesting aboard The Outsider with signs and everything. They still want to blow up Enohas because it would be “glorious”. Something is wrong with those guys.

Selah’s ship has been prepared though she is also busy with the war so she hasn’t been able to depart just yet.

So one of our city guards who spent the last few months passionately investigating a missing person’s case has a report of a wild suspicion that got forwarded up the chain of command. Specifically because several missing people were not near the river when Selah opened it and with investigative assistance from the druids came to the wild theory that they left to the void plane. Which is one of those insane ideas that gets their boss yelling at them for being ridiculous but I’m not sure they know the greatest and only void pandem specialist passed through recently. Not sure if its relevant, but it was interesting.

Garden City is progressing well, managing to sustain itself despite the lack of housing this whole time. Initially there were mass emigrations but recently the governor’s promises of ‘we’re building houses’ has tided people over since the weather is nice and controlled by eden. The space nerds are still space nerding.

Well that could have gone better. We probably could have better prepared for the arrival of Nelta hunting down Vasia. Sarnai and the celestial order says that there is a very high chance that Vasia is still alive but aren’t sure about the details of it. Were it not for Nelta opening a black hole we’d be at least able to go check around for them.

Larazja is alive, it turns out her brain is spread equally through her spine as well, like yours. So beheading doesn’t actually kill her, just gives her brain damage. I’m pretty sure if you bring her back to the pool she’ll be fine. Vasia apparently had the Heretic reshape and throw her at one of VSEC’s ships and they put her in the cargo hold since she was still moving. Very twitchy and not doing well, but moving. Though you will understand why I am giving the report for now.

The ritual to subsume one of your cultists into your overmind has been completed but you should know there is a distance limit. Your secondary bodies cannot be too far away if you want to transfer in or out of them as the primary consciousness. It works on the scale of about a country but space is big. It would actually work anywhere with aethernet relays on the scale of the relay itself though. So while within a star system with one of those relays it would work at the scale of the solar system. If two of the space relays are connected, then you can transfer over that.

Also as your advisor for the day I should point out that you are a cat. Your main contribution to any battlefield situation is your psionic abilities. They’re going up against Decaelys, who is the greatest caster our civilization has ever encountered. So…make smart choices Ilex.

The synapse has been deployed to protect the generator at Enohas. Also the ichor likes the mana moon and goes into production overdrive while on it. For better or worse.

We’ve funded the cybernetic upgrading of the Lucidity cultists. Also the drop colonies are being assembled once again. Also the other colony finished construction and is in a couple of freighters at the Moncayo shipyards.

Setal pretty much controls Zenaka at the moment with the exception of the resistance terrorists. They keep blowing up infrastructure points. As for avoiding the demonic dogpile you mention, nope she has nothing. She’s a succubus and has spent her whole life dealing with and accepting being on the lower end of demon society, her input on how the lords operate is entirely lacking. You would need to talk to an actual demon lord about that.

The city itself could mostly handle drive in theaters, though no one goes to those. As mentioned by Larazja previously, people like convenience. You already re-established the aethernet network for the city, so their APT’s are working again. Though with less cantrips than before. However, this makes all viewing based entertainment sort of an ‘at home’ experience.

The psionic skeletal systems of the synapse can be reviewed for synthesis attempts though we would need samples and a lab to do it. Notably the best lab just got blown up by Nelta.

Also no, the ichor does not recognize the rest of my body as particularly advantageous to spread through. I have gathered you have an interest in this subject so I figured I should explain not all Koura parasites give this ability. Mine is the only one that did. However, it reconfigured all the cells in my body to be a little bit stealthy to the ichors method of recognition.

Also yes we completed the enchanted medical bed for Kaylen’s new apprentice.

The Nomads have deployed to Paizurus, the flotilla has been left in open space for now. No need to take the civilians to a warzone and the Nomads just use the same old ship they always do for these operations.

Though not much is happening at Paizurus just yet, we’re reconvening to reassess the situation after VSEC’s encounter with Nelta.