Everyone has made it to Diadem to begin the first stages of the expedition, though the ringworld’s sapient controller is definitely aware of their plan. The upside currently is that the shifting modules are so large that we can comfortably fit battalions on each one, so it can’t split the forces up that much. Though from here on out, they will not be possible to reinforce unless they manage to retreat to the surface. Whatever they have is what they have now.

Initial landing was better than last time since we have a camp established to assist in landing and keep the robotic defenders at bay. The behavior of the ring indicates the exerlus is aware of how bad its position is, our expedition teams were looking for ways below the surface while not terribly invited into it. Eventually it became a matter of stalling until the exerlus had no choice but to lower them into the ring to increase its options. It is still contending with the invading forces of its neighbors and needs to reinforce those border modules eventually. One batallion was able to hitch a ride on one of the modules retreating in to rebuild after its conflict with the other robots. Another was taken down from the center, this is clearly a move by the machines to force them to contend with the volume of the interior modules so it can focus its efforts on the surface to stalling the other exerlus invaders.

Upon entering the ring’s interior, they were immediately met by the subsurface units. Further supporting my analysis that it is letting the surface units fight the other exerlus while using its interior ones to contend with us out of necessity. So we can say that progress is being made, and thanks to the study programs by the Voidforged we have some ideas of where to go and how to navigate though that doesn’t make the ever shifting modules easy to get through.

As for the rescue team exploring the galaxy, Jiyan reports that they’re doing fine all things considered, just trying to figure out why their ship is suddenly eating itself. They may not have been in range to hear the news that Haziel changed the rules of botany. So we may need to rescue them just to drop off spare parts. Apparently Jiyan has been using the comms to find other aliens and has traded with some passing salvagers for parts and materials. They’ve made it halfway back though they’re still in the Western Reach and have to constantly stop at various alien stations to repair. She says the real problem is that no one really wants solian credits so she has to constantly barter and she’s running low on things to trade and her engineer keeps having to work with alien tech to salvage. The VSS Raptor is held together by duct tape at this point, literally.

Shipyards are finding different solutions to the ‘ship that eats itself’. The Astral Knights are ahead on this compared to most others. Almost as if they knew what Haziel did before everyone else. Steamworks is also going full steam ahead on production of more stable methods of power generation and storage aboard ships.

With the portals constructed and in working order, all the advertising for population emigration to the Iron Cradle has started to take effect now that it is more reasonably and reliably accessible.

Funding to Quylla keeps her relatively stable in a time and territory enveloped in anarchy. As that keeps her as one of the major contenders in the territory despite the ongoing war between existing demon lords and those seeking to become one. Quylla in particular has a long standing reputation to draw upon and at the very least the funding we supply her with gives us an eye on how things continue to develop there. Though she only points out that things are chaotic right now. The appearance of Kharla and the death of Voriuk has produced a lot of extreme reactions between those who will risk everything and those who are just hunkering down and hoping things blow over soon. Even in the Demon Kingdom, Kharla is a well known and universally feared figure. Many of those vying for the territories of the fallen lords are seeking to join the Vloz and become her new demon lords. It is likely with the current absence of Vloz lords that Ecsanul has been promoted though this is just speculation. As the territories rebuild, the remaining strength of the Vloz is definitely leaning towards assisting those who seek to become Kharla’s new binds.

Asmodan is also doing well as the hero of the kingdom who helped repel VSEC despite the loss of Kharla’s flagship. Which has given him a lot of sway over things despite losing one of the cities in his territory to Kharla’s battle with Reika. The Phantoms also seem to be recruiting in the area for those who might become lords loyal to them. Not a lot of grassroots lords coming up except for a few whose life expectancy we’ll check back in on later.

Steamworks reports some working prototypes of higher end batteries and generation methods that don’t require much living mana filtration, but requires a lot more space for power storage aboard the ship to perform longer term deployments. Similar to how strike craft tend to work.

Bill is back from his adventure to Rixa with some spare time and managed to ‘balance out’ a ship to maintain most of its original design and functionality. Though the problem with maintaining the old method without a druid on board is that if the ship experiences any issues or takes damage the defense mechanism in its plants might flood the ship with toxic spores. Competing companies are trying to find what methods of living mana filtration don’t do all this stuff, Bill says they’re going to have it a bit rough given that Haziel intentionally made this difficult to do on a large scale. Really she made everything to do on a large scale.

Ever since the Revenants blamed two more assassinations on us, we’re definitely not terribly friendly with the demon kingdom. Neither Vloz or the Phantoms seem too keen to defend us either. There have been some official policies and security things put in place though that was obviously going to come about eventually.

Sooo…time to hang out with elementals instead?

We’ve gotten the refinery back up and running successfully. At least the mining operations so far.

Si Yeon did some studies on the aether as requested and pinned down that the rot belongs to Deinuu. While we’re at information gathering, we have the psionics interrogation agency that apparently now exists reporting that Alexandria doesn’t seem to be all that special. Though the bigger threat behind her was a mysterious shadowy figure who never met with her in person and was known only as a “director”. Like a certain someone in a tube I once knew…I’m starting to see how she might have thought she was the newly ordained leader of the cult. Ever since a certain someone in a tube disappeared, not to mention Cassir as well, a bunch of cultists might have made contact with a powerful psion with a lot of money and had differing opinions on which one was the real one.

Containing the rot is so far proving incredibly difficult due to its virulence and ability to spread through practically anything. We already had those infected volunteer to cut power lines throughout the city to better contain it. The city is still on lockdown enforced by the Hasao Tei. Si Yeon has left the city as well to return to the research facility in the Zenaka system on that cracked open planet. She says its nice and quiet out there. Most of the projects at Roha have been moved there for the time being to keep them safe from the rot. Again, mass deaths among the civilians.

Spinning it as a Phantom Attack takes very little effort, since it probably is and everyone knows the Phantoms have a mummy as their leader. To which end, Sakhessa has become relevant in politics all of a sudden. Aureum is one of the largest fortresses in the Sol territories as she continues an arms race with Lancaster for “who can buy more turrets”. It also has a large population thanks to shipping in assets from all over the place, including slaves. Which we just learned has had a sudden spike in market demand. Many are willing to trade with Sakhessa despite the whole pamphlet thing. Their own PR team is still doing a lot of work thanks to some vampire.

Several Alnae warlords already recognize Sakhessa as an empress of her own land and have extended all the political fanfare associated with such official business. Obviously Kar’Soluth is all but outright a Phantom subsidiary. Laesaaria, Empress of Shetou, is screaming about the matter though along with Kaylen.

This got to the point that there are now the Phantoms are recognized by the more official title of the Hassani Empire. With Sakhessa as the current Hassani Empress. I feel this is important to mention, assaulting this fortress to get to Deinuu is basically impossible. Also provoking them while VSEC is busy at Diadem for the next half a year or so will leave us terribly undefended should they retaliate.

Not that they aren’t having their own problems though. Now that they are a public entity recognized as a government, the Revenants are all over them. Not to mention that on the galactic scene several civilizations have come forward with “hey they ruined our lives, fuck those guys”. Apparently there are fleet movements from an alliance other than Nelta but still including Nelta that are looking to take a swing at Aureum soon. I’m guessing that without Kanika there, the remaining leadership of the Phantoms don’t really understand Arkaric and that establishing an empire invites his attention.

We’ve contacted Kennae, apparently the temple of Lucidity was infiltrated and destroyed soon after you left from the inside. He advises that you do not return to the body you left on jydoq, because its the only one left in the entire temple. So clearly the assassin wants you to return to it. He did get a chance to encounter this assassin we’ve heard so much about. They are of jydoq origin but he described them as being unlike any other jydoq he’d seen before. Local legend suggests a subspecies that was known for its cannibalistic habits, a sort of mythical creature that forms its structure entirely out of the ‘brains’ of other jydoq rather than the typical pliable ooze stuff. In time it grows to become capable of solidifying itself to any color and texture, kind of like an octopus but made out of psionic mass.

Basically, Kennae recounts encountering a legendary monster of the jydoq homeworld that might have been upgraded by the Phantoms. Not so eloquently but its what we’ve pieced together from the conversation. He’s still out trying to chase them down. Though it would explain the collective fear the jydoq colonies are experiencing if their equivalent to a Kanika suddenly appearing.

Rhazin has taken off with one of our kaiju freighters to NR147-3 to begin harvesting some biomass.

Craylin, with help from Si Yeon, got the 004C’s back to the lab.

40th Day reports the kinda not a plant trees also have the same mechanisms that others do when it comes to trees eating ships. Turns out a lot of wildlife in the galaxy is probably tied to the Fae Wilds.

We have not confirmed the location of Pierce or lack of location.

White doesn’t have too many new spells, and Nova is essentially functional though application of it remains the oddity.

The psicrystal experiment could be developed over time but only by another psion who can continually modify it. Letting them be self developing runs the risk of them suddenly becoming a bit too smart for their own good I imagine. At least that’s what has been on your tv station’s movie hour recently.

While Setal is the queen of Zenaka, that is mostly in name when we were setting up to position her for a demon lordship. Though that has gotten iffy now and technically the actual assets of Zenaka is owned by VSEC. Setal does some administrative work but it’s mostly a front for that whole demon lord project we had awhile back. The whole place is actually owned by Lancaster.

We have a report from Allison that recently the slave trade has exploded back on Thenica. It is the primary thing everyone seems to be shopping for. This has largely been caused by people with actual remaining wealth and power taking a sudden interest in this. Several Shetou and Kar’Soluth houses have suddenly taken a great interest in buying a lot of slaves in a hurry.

As it turns out, this spike in the slave trade is related to the sudden collapse of traditional ship building methods thanks to Haziel. The other type of ship that still works is the one that uses slaves as mana batteries instead of plants. Given that no one has a viable alternative and we’re in the middle of some chaotic times for the galaxy, a lot of people are turning to those designs to maintain military power.

We have reason to believe that Kharla is not too far away, and is just being temporarily held at the demon king’s castle until Vloz’Khress can stabilize, if it fails to do so she would likely end up as one of the King’s assets. Though we do not have confirmation of that, it’s just a suspicion. The problem is if the king is involved then he could use his influence to hide her anywhere in the kingdom. We don’t think she would be too far from the more chaotic territories though, just under careful watch by people better at preventing people like us from knowing her every move for the time being.

As for the reconstruction of Kharla’s original lair, Yasrena seems to be using it as a PR move. We think she originally planned to bring Kharla into the club as one of her assets and was trying to make a friendly gesture. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yasrena feels that she can keep Kharla under control enough to not be a threat to the other Phantoms. In doing so she would be much more powerful as well. Though the territory wars in the demon kingdom might be making her plans a little bit more complicated than when she first started the project.

Looking into Beldobaan reveals she might actually know of a vampiric secretive group that is propped up by the Desoir clan. Sivataurs who are a little less maniacal and a little more militant, but know how to play the part. A method of conveniently having the sivataurs hunt down problems for the vampire clans that can be explained away. Jhaeros might have been a member of this group.

Arsene has gotten a date on some sort of aethernet dating app by experimenting with catfishing using a profile picture of Vanessa’s illusory form. It didn’t go well after that, but it’s good to see that Arsene is trying unorthodox methods of accomplishing their mission.

Chevalier is on the lead team trying the hardest to reach the exerlus within along with Eleazor and the shut down keys for the whole place. Predictions are that it will be a long expedition, going through a moving mass the size of a planet and all. Sacha and Vanessa’s teams are apparently being a little more chaotic just to stress the focus and defensive abilities of the exerlus in charge of that neighborhood.

Reports are in that they’ve already encountered heavy resistance in all its various forms. I suspect the exerlus is probing the assaulting lances early to see what they can handle easily and what is more challenging. It already has an idea of what the battalions can do in a direct confrontation as proven by their assault on the surface. It is trying alternative approaches and different designs now. A lot of sneakier things trying to pick people off when they stop to rest followed up by moving modules with enough machines for a direct assault. At the very least we are confusing its data about how to deal with the organics, who it seems to be trying to sleep deprive. Our contributions are a lot less vulnerable to this tactic.

Also I managed to put the turrets on the cradle as asked. We’ve also experienced an immigration surge of organics thanks to VSEC’s advertising campaign. So we’re keeping a close eye on the life support systems to make sure we don’t suffocate them all on accident. I think that’s what I was supposed to prevent at least.

Project Vasia has made very little progress and attempts to recreate the effect have destroyed two labs. The trip to NELTA is still ongoing, it’s far away.

The VSS Raptor reports successfully rescuing the previous crews of the exploration cruisers who were stranded by pirates. They are currently on an arbitrary planet stranded for an entirely different reason. Remember when Irae decided it would be a great idea to let Haziel wander off and change the rules of reality? Ships around the galaxy are experiencing maintenance issues now that their nice wood panel walls can suddenly chew through the wiring. Those close to shipyards are at least managing it but the exploration teams are having a rougher go of it. They’re currently on some famine stricken planet that is trying to maintain order by doubling down on some sort of dictatorship, they’re a little primitive so its not too bad for the team but just an update on what they’re up to.

Our exploration team looking for Arkaric at least found out that Otoroshi has been spotted in the northern part of the galaxy, though not sure if that accounts for where he is or if it just has its own mission. This is mostly derived from talking to the locals looking for rumors and stories so no one knows exactly what its going on.

The portal has been built on Gem Station as teams prep for the expedition into the labyrinth. I’m sure you’ll all be fine. The expedition teams have started heading down to Diadem and preparing to enter into the sub-layers. Good Luck.

Also a classical comedy sitcom has been recovered among the other data we’ve had the teams buying from the salvagers back on Thenica. My sarcasm modules have been upgraded by fifteen percent.

We’ve retreated back to Moncayo along with our candidates sans Quylla. She is somewhat dedicated to her succubus revolutionary shelter…thing. So she isn’t particularly interested in leaving it for better or worse.

Hina on the other hand is running around Moncayo having a bit of a tourist sprint.

Haziel specifically appears to be heading to the Rixa plane. When Bill asked, she said someone was waiting for her there. Bill promptly ran away once a sahad entity appeared and apparently ordained her as The Wilds. Leaving room for a lot of conspiracy theories about the origins of certain deified entities open for interpretation in the process. Thenica itself is not keeping its cool, one of the most feared boogeymen of the old eras just showed back up and has taken position as a deity. The general public doesn’t know about Ankathi or what Renjala is trying to do, but their first encounter being the return of the Queen of Wolves is making them nervous. Even Kaylen is a bit concerned about the whole affair but is trying to keep focused on the Phantoms for now.

We lost track of Haziel after that.

Selah reports that Ankathi is difficult to contact by comparison to how effective Sarnai was at it. Though it falls to her as the highest remaining rank among those who are bound to Ankathi, deities don’t quite have the one on one relationship with their binds that most do. Otherwise they’d probably go crazy like Kharla did, now that I say that out loud I’m questioning what Kharla was attempting to do in her early days. So Selah has no direct available answers at the moment. That or Ankathi is mad at not speaking with her, one of the two.

Steamworks continues rolling out new developments for replacing trees in the field of ‘tech we don’t want to see get eaten alive’ though it requires stopping off to fuel up every now and then. Not quite the long term deployability that mana reactors typically have.

Eerihild reports that Haziel already did make everyone’s plants extra angry so technical success.

When it comes to the agricultural revolution brought on by what Haziel did, the key difficulty in working with plants now is their defense mechanisms. Having large fields is great and all until just one of them feels angry and starts releasing toxic spores onto all the ones next to it. In theory a well maintained farm can be any size, but if one part of it goes wrong it all goes wrong at once and farmers might die or at least be very sick if they don’t realize it has gone wrong until too late. Biologist Bill is on the case of figuring out what the conditions of plants feeling ‘threatened’ actually is still. So far it varies from plant to plant. Fruit trees don’t really care if you take the fruit but they don’t like it if you cut branches off and put tar on it so they don’t grow back for example.

Also when asked if Eden can grow fruit her response was a series of uncomfortable questions about eating her reproductive systems. I mean it was all scientific and stuff but Yoshai introduced her to ‘humanoid reproductive entertainment and the art of innuendo’ and now she questions our motives on the whole thing. He also keeps hinting that we should open an embassy in the elemental plane with your new girlfriend and he should be in charge of that embassy for that matter. He also suggested the same thing about the succubus coven…and the Revenants.

We’ve experienced an influx in fae visitors who came with Haziel and have been setting up shop in Bill’s section of the jamalia colony.

In international news, the Revenants went after Kharla given her current state and managed to assassinate Rhelyera and Nacho man. I supposed there is a lesson here about staying in hiding. Though they did manage to blame it on us and now our political standing with the demon kingdom has certainly worsened. Kharla has since disappeared into the demon kingdom and for the first time in centuries we don’t know what she’s up to.

Asking for an update on what is being researched at New Age would take us a week to go over. Vasia’s theory was ‘just throw shit at the wall, write it down, do it again just to make sure it didn’t work’.

Si-Yeon says it varies from sahad locations worth investigating to ‘why doesn’t this spell work for anyone other than me’. That and alien monsters. The 004C’s were mass produced as part of an experiment to see how good they would be as sniffing dogs, Vasia planned to eliminate them through trial and error to see if typical selective breeding would improve results over time though she disappeared before that really got underway so Si Yeon just had a bunch laying around. Also since she has a koura parasite just like those that made them, she has a slight attachment to them as her pets.

She is protesting the order to kill all of the females. The whole project was intending to breed them to see what results came of that as so far no 004C has ever bred due to it being sort of a new species. That and sending Rhazin after the 004C’s has made the situation get just a little bit more wild.

Aside from torturing inquisitors the fight with Alexandria was shockingly simple. She…really was just a bit above a civilian honestly. The reward money you posted had her own inquisitors turn her over. Though there is no evidence that she is the source of the mummy rot infection that is going around. Between you and Si Yeon she didn’t really have much of a chance but that leaves us to wonder how she took down Rhazin. Might have been that whole cult ritual propping her up though. She’s been taken prisoner by Roha’s local law enforcement for the time being.

You’re reinventing cybernetics with crystals so you know. Which we can already do. Si Yeon actually knows how to do what you’re trying to already, not that it’s been done with synapse psi crystals but rather regular ones. The main obstacle is actually programming the crystals to do what you want as they do not use typical networks like ours do. That also means you need control over the ichor’s production to program them to do what you want.

The mana poison experiments shows that it does indeed hamper their internal regeneration of mana as well as disrupt existing reservoirs in their system. In too high a dose this just kills people outright but if you get it measured just right it disables or at least severely limits casting provided they have a circulatory system. Doesn’t work so well on zombies, vampires, and druids. The latter one is just cheating though.

Also the temple on Jydoq has ceased communicating shortly after your departure. We can’t get ahold of Kennae either. VSEC sent its team out on an unrelated rescue mission into the Western Reach. So now…we’re out of support on jydoq. Gonna take a wild swing and say your paranoia isn’t as strong as our jydoq friend’s paranoia.

As for NR147-3, the plants there are still doing their own thing. Well the not plants. The not plant plants who photosynthesize. If anything the changes to the Fae Wilds has had little to no observable impact on this mostly quiet world.

I’m told the Vivarium was destroyed during the Nelta invasion.

The remains of Kharla’s palace has proven worthwhile to keep an eye on. As mentioned, Yasrena is having it reconstructed. The place is basically a large scale clean up and construction site right now. So relatively easy to infiltrate, even if the agents are complaining that they didn’t go through all this training to work wheeling concrete around. We have reason to believe Yasrena is trying to bring Kharla back onto her side of things, a plan which we unwittingly helped her in accomplishing. With so many of the demon lord’s dead, Kharla’s main managers are Kiel’nada and Aikane who are both much easier to work with than Voriuk. If Yasrena can get Kharla to reaffirm her position in the Kar’Soluth than it would tie up a lot of problems Kar’Soluth is having ever since the pamphlet dropped. Atop of which, it would put Yasrena as either the new leader of the Phantoms or at the very least the co-leader along with Sakhessa.

The hall of dolls were destroyed during the Revenant attack awhile ago while Kharla was attacking Zenaka. Actually that’s why its undergoing reconstruction right now. We might have even inadvertently destroyed Riley’s doll which was likely aboard the monument. They might be kept in whatever her newest house is but it is a distinct possibility. Though the vast majority of her collection were very intentionally put to rest by the Revenants.

The trip to the demon kingdom is proving more difficult though. We aren’t actually sure where Kharla is anymore. Ever since the Revenants killed two more of her demon lords they’ve taken special efforts to place Kharla into hiding. Current investigations suggest it is actually a collection of independent demon lords and possibly the king himself protecting her. This might not even actually have much to do with her talent as a pandem caster and could just be related to their centuries old treaties.

Good call to look into how other vampires feel about Sabrae, turns out they like her. A lot. Our agents never felt so unsafe during an email exchange before. If anything we found another link as to how House Beldobaan has remained in power for so long. She is the matriarch of not only House Beldobaan, but of the Dajer clan. A clan that notoriously is problematic but necessary for bringing feral vampires back from the edges of madness. She is something of a saint in the vampire community, the one they go to when loved ones turn feral. Though this is also a route to gaining access to her, apparently the other vampires know how to make some phone calls to get an audience with her. Meaning going after her could result in Sangui D’Rex, the Desoirs, and possibly the Sivataurs all coming to look for us. Though all this has unraveled several mysteries about the elusive matriarch as well as figuring out why no one has managed to dethrone her despite how Shetou politics always worked. Between her hidden relationship to Kharla and the Dajer bloodline being able to remain secret for this long, I have no doubt that going after her will result in a war of espionage and assassins. So if we’re just doing this because Irae wants to piss off Kharla, there might be better options. We’re already dealing with the Revenants and the Phantoms all the time, both master infiltrators. Beldobaan apparently is also a big player in the field of espionage and shadow. Though on a hunch, I’m willing to be those ‘other secret societies’ that Seiyomi once warned Ilex of are somehow tied to this house if we do care to delve any deeper.

Speaking of which, in looking for her rivals we found out that her greatest enemy is House Song, Alnae in general, and possibly an Abyssal lord but that’s a whole other rabbit hole. However, most have agreed to a live and let live policy when it comes to Beldobaan since they mostly sit quietly in the corner. Which may have contributed to their lack of power among Great Houses behind their walls after centuries of playing it safe, but it has also contributed to having a great deal of allies who would rather they be left alone.

– Drop another 200m on 2 iterations of upgrades for the Flotilla again
– Drop 375m on a battleship, staff with some of the 2100 support staff. Drop 15m on a 5th corvette, geared for prospecting/helping the mining teams, also crewed with flotilla support staff.
– Drop another 10m on 40 emplaced defenses throughout the flotilla, start getting some defensive power going.

Cradle gun is a great name for any weapon. For some reason the meatbags get nervous at that choice in terminology though and I have yet to comprehend why. Though the Iron Cradle does have significant defenses, it is worth noting that it can’t support titan class main cannons. Those are so large that usually entire ships are built around just making them functional. The cradle is formerly a mid-sized space station, not quite a battleship.

VSEC has been sending forces to Diadem to prepare for the expedition. We’ve started leaving some experimental supply caches as requested that they might be able to find later. Though really we’re just putting them in random tiles of the giant space station and seeing if they’re ever found again after they get pulled under into the station. At the very least, they have receivers so they can be easily found we just have no guarantee what position they will be in by the time they’re needed. If we flood it with enough of these though, odds are in our favor that someone will find a couple whenever they’re needed.

Arsene and Adrienne have taken their units down for the initial invasion of the ring. Securing landing zones for the rest of VSEC on their way through the portal. Granted the landing zones have to be mobile and ready to move to a new one of those sliding modules but not having to come in through waves of robot dinosaurs with anti air guns will probably help VSEC out.

In terms of countermeasures, after numerous experiments and observation I can say that bullets are great countermeasures.

Stories of Lore 48

Welcome back Lancaster, I will remind you that I was based on you in order to assist you with secretarial work. I am not programmed for love.

Moving on, the latest edition of your prototype mech is still just sitting in the hangar, you’ve been away in another plane that we can’t access. So you haven’t had the chance to deploy it and see if it breaks too.

The exploration cruisers have gone into The Reach to pick up the previous exploration crews that had some bad luck passing through the place.

As a cautionary tale of scavenging servrers, this is how Jicho attacked us before. It would be a lot harder from an individual server as they trickle in compared to the mass data backup that Ilex attempted, but just worth noting. On the other hand, the Revenants seem busy with the Phantoms at the moment and Jicho is the only cyberwar expert that can compete with Aryn. Unless the phantoms have some sort of cyberdemon we don’t know about, though I get the feeling there were no such monsters back in the day. Though we have started looking for where these might be purchased. Most salvagers of the Thenican invasion tend to live in smaller camps. The Phantoms have made it difficult for them to amass in one place since that is just an easy target for Asmodan. Though we have found a large collection of cloned servers from someone who had a project to restore the knowledge base of Thenica. It’s an elf that lives in the territories of General Preskian working on a library project.

As for generals, lately the best commanders would be yourself or Koda. As the army has shifted its focus from infantry towards mechanized warfare it hasn’t invested as much in troop commanders as opposed to higher end tech.

Valencia hasn’t really ever spoken with us much directly but in discussions about the city of Necrosi she seemed very against it. As far as our ambassador reports, she doesn’t want to see more infrastructure capable of advanced production destroyed regardless of everyone else’s motives. Since she has managed to profit off of the existence of an economy, it works against her interests to cripple even more of the economy by eliminating one of the largest industrial centers in Necrosi. Though she may have slyly implied things that our ambassador can’t tell if was actually implied or not. Mostly in that the people can be replaced easier than the infrastructure if we wanted to damage Sakhessa without running afoul of the vampire clans. Again the ambassador isn’t sure but it sounds like maybe she wouldn’t mind if the population of the city were to experience difficulties in staffing the facilities in the short term. Though any attack of the factories themselves we have been assured will result in bad times for us on her part.

Scouting the city was easy enough at is publicly accessible. The place is toxic to most humanoids, though the undead can ignore the atmospheric problems. It established itself as a major industrial city by just throwing all ‘hey don’t poison the water’ laws out the window. I would describe it is a living pile of toxic sludge. Interestingly, there were non-undead present within the city opting to just wear masks. After the Nelta invasion, a lot of people were looking for new places to live and some found opportunity in the city of Heterna. Since it almost always has jobs for people to do, even if living there for too long gives you cancer. The ambassador noted that merkas were present here, and that they apparently did not need masks. They only saw a couple hanging out and opted not to make a big deal out of it while being given a bit of a tour, but it is likely that the Phantoms exported some of the merkas to this city as well.

Defense wise, it has thousands of anti orbital turrets and a standing fleet protecting it though it is of questionable strength. There are shipyards here so several ships here are uncrewed. Initial estimates are that it is at half the strength of our own fleet since we’re in an arms race with Faelyn, though it is quite likely that this is where some of her fleet was built. It doesn’t have much of a standing army though it has a large police force maintaining order in its somewhat dystopian streets.

It is suspected that the ruling vampire clans in this city have known about Sakhessa for awhile. It is likely that they rose to power by aligning with the spooky mummy and running the city for her as a more public face of the government rather than admitting she existed.

The first fleet deployed to attack the Monument as Irae requested. While Kharla’s navy isn’t that powerful, they had to enter into orbit of the demon kingdom and this turned into a brawl with the kingdom’s own forces. While they were able to destroy the Monument in the effort, losses were enormous. Yasrena showed up along with Asmodan, whose fleet it turned out wasn’t going to Jydoq but regrouping at his own territory to regroup and reinforce. The first fleet was forced to retreat, and only those who realized this early survived.

VSEC’s first fleet assaulted the Monument and managed to destroy it, though in the process of which it seems to have annoyed the entirety of the demon Kingdom. It was unable to provide further support after a rather large fleet battle in orbit.

On the ground side of things, Asmodan’s offices noticed very quickly what we were doing and deployed their own agents to harass Reika’s movements. Including sending Asmodan’s right hand man out, who has been running counter ops against us. Unlike Kharla, they’re much more clever and are specifically feeding Kharla information on where Reika is.

Madhammer has taken over one of the cities in Sabaalios’ territory, violently.

This culminated when Kharla caught up to Reika. The fight was back and forth for a little while up until that one hour window where Ankathi can be there ran out. Then it went downhill from there.

Ankathi killed Voriuk and Sabaalios, one of Asmodan’s cities is kindling, Reika is dead as far as we know, Sarnai is a bloodstain under Rozanis’ foot, and well you’re back here because Rozanis didn’t even notice you had lich abilities…since you aren’t really a lich you’re just bound to one. In hindsight that’s just cheating.

This sort of defaults Saleh to being the leader of the fate chapter.

The demon king has acknowledged this to be an act of war. Voriuk is petitioning the lords to unite to deal with the external threat to the kingdom and submitting our actions in Valadeus’ territory, as well as our part in killing Valadeus.

In other news. Haziel is back though she’s headed back to Thenica next for some reason. Debriefing wise, apparently she killed Erlkonig, though he’s a fae so he’s just wandering somewhere out in the fae wilds now. No one really knows where he is reborn exactly. She reclaimed the two souls of her sisters, or more so set them free and has become The Wilds. She is now the patron god of the Fae Wilds, and uh…that is having ramifications.

Like a lot of ramifications. She altered the fundamental rules of every plane connected to the fae wilds, which was a higher plane that most planes are connected to. Except Necrosi, the void, and such. Plants now have the ability to turn metal into food, they’re eating through everything. Most ships that use plants for living mana filtration are subject to random decay. It’s manageable with active trimming but several structures that were built to last unmaintained are definitely falling apart. Plants also are growing out of control, and growing more venomous barbs. Some are releasing toxic gases instead of oxygen, specifically if they are…mistreated. Haziel gave all plants the ability to defend themselves, at least just a little. Though if your house plant is pissed at you, it might just poison the air in your apartment. Ecosystems have started to gain a sort of consciousness. While individual animals might still be dumb, if you piss off the forest they live in suddenly they figure out how to make huge hunting packs for seemingly no reason.

While its happening slowly, plants aren’t exactly super speedy to grow new things, at least Haziel warned us what she did. We literally have Haziel staying overnight at our place sometimes, and Eden is immune to this since she is a living planet all on her own, so its not too bad for us. Careful maintenance and horticulture practices can mitigate a lot of this, but super civilizations might collapse as a repercussion of this.

Whether or not any of this is a ‘good idea’ we’re a bit too late on that. We assisted Haziel in becoming The Wilds and now everything within her domain is getting aggressive. Apparently she actually did it because of the galactic famine and the mass destruction Arkaric’s galactic war caused. So she’s speeding up the recovery process. Apparently Lancaster wasn’t totally happy with all this but she was kind of being held hostage by an entire adventuring party of druids and just wanted to get out of the fae wilds.

Though on another note, the Fae Wilds is now possible to enter. Haziel gained control of Erlkonig’s city, which has the only stable planar connection. It would take a portal that will cost two billion to build, but it would enable access to the Fae Wilds reliably. Just that one specific part of it, and as Lancaster will inform us, that place sucks. Lot of food there, but it spoils upon leaving the plane. A large population could theoretically exist there, but its only a theory based on available resources. Everything else living there might be inclined to eat them.

Steamworks has made a bunch of steam engines and are working on speeding up non magical means of power generation technology. They opened a branch office in Brightland for further research since it was closer to the arcane star of Moncayo.

Caution and calculation are the signs of a strong and strategic leader, but it results in few opportunities for heroes to arise when everything is carefully calculated. Maybe. I’m just quoting a video game. Though Si Yeon is apparently evidence of this, ever since joining New Age she has apparently been terrifying and we just uh…didn’t force her to reveal what Vasia had done to her. We also forgot she is a former mercenary with more battlefield experience than anyone else under your command.

Speaking of which, it turns out that Alexandria poked the bear on that one. Due to Si Yeon violating containment procedures I was able to get documents I’m apparently not allowed access to as an emergency situation. Because of course Vasia has a level for “even my boss doesn’t get to know about it”. So apparently Vasia turned Si Yeon into a tentacle monster by injecting her with Salied’s essentia and…biomass. Okay I say biomass all the time but it just seems even more wrong in this context.

Roha has deteriorated massively due to the ongoing mummy rot spread, combined with the war between Alexandria and everyone else. Si Yeon isn’t helping by releasing a bunch of things out for “field tests”. Craylin has been following Si Yeon around which isn’t making things any better. People are relatively convinced they’re in a horror movie now and the Hasao Tei still isn’t allowing people to leave all that easily. Civilian death tolls have reached about a million from just the rot. Though now that you’re there at least we can finally figure out what’s going on with Si Yeon.

Though your plan to duel Alexandria might be hitting a snag. Mostly because the entire cult is hiding from Si Yeon…who they pissed off. That whole ‘former madhammer’ thing might be more dangerous than we thought. Yenneiros was always too happy to deploy his latest toy at the slightest provocation or opportunity. She was his #2. I have also discovered she encouraged the Hasao Tei to keep people from leaving to maintain a quarantine on the rot. Sensible given that she is a medical professional dealing with an outbreak situation. Though I can’t help but consider that means she just trapped all the witnesses with her.

I miss Vasia.

She reports that the 004C’s were actually used at various facilities to check for leaking effects from testing sahad phenomena. They are trained to hunt sahad, though they can detect psionics. Still heavily under research but that’s the idea and why New Age happened to have them. Vasia’s was the most mature and effective at the task, though the younger ones they were making found work in the labs as sniffers. Also the lab’s favorite necrocarnate is Craylin but they have others. Vasia had been spreading the practice throughout the staff in secret ever since she learned it. Because of course she had.

I feel the joke about the Wild Rift being opened might be lost on Lancaster since she has no memory of it or anything preceding it. Worth a shot though I suppose. Meanwhile we’ve had the ship that you sent this way shot down by VSEC. All evidence as to what might have happened has been lost as a result.

If it makes you feel any better it turns out Asmodan’s fleet wasn’t coming here. It was a bait for him to return to the demon kingdom. Why are fleet movements turning into poker games around here? I miss the good old days when a giant ship full of horrors would collide with another giant ship filled with guns at a predetermined and acceptable location out in open space.

In terms of fleet performance, you’re down to one carrier because you sent a fleet to a situation in which it was badly outgunned. Lancaster also lost a large portion of her fleet, it’s down to- annnd its gone.

Also the four anti FTL missiles requested were sent out to the carrier. Though we weren’t able to build more carriers, we don’t have enough people to crew them. The war with the Phantoms is starting to take a toll on the number of bodies we have available to do things with.

In regards to the Harlow colony, people aren’t terribly excited to move there. It’s growing but…very slowly. No one needs gold that badly right now and people are tried of uprooting their whole lives every few months.

Also we might want to review our plans for Setal and the demon lords. The fleet invasion on Monument, while successful, did not sit well with the demon kingdom. Now Asmodan doesn’t even have to try and schmooze with demons to block Setal from getting lordship and we took a bit long on doing anything with that so the process hadn’t even gotten started.

We found the species on 143-3 Alpha. They are very primitive but they are sapient. Also they don’t like our submarines poking around their territory. They’re basically fish people. Their civilization lives in the ruins of stone structures created by the previous civilization that lived here and then flooded itself to death. Apparently they’re not related to the previous one, but after awhile a particular fish species that found it advantageous to operate technology left behind by the fallen civilization figured out thumbs. They are a young species but are thriving quite well. They have no concept of space though, they’re not really star gazers. We found a few of them who were out hunting while our probes were scouting the area before they could slip away under the rocks. Apparently they are terrified of large aquatic creatures about the size of our vessels because there are predators about that size around here. We’ve encountered a few though they can’t chew through metal so it wasn’t a particularly problematic encounter, though for a civilization still working out the whole “tying sharp things to sticks” thing I could see how they would be problematic.

The infected tech tended to destroy itself too quickly to be terribly useful. An infected phone works for all of a few minutes before it just cripples itself and can no longer interact with other technology. Pretty much if Aryn herself isn’t the one to use it, it’s too volatile to bother touching. It also helps that Aryn is the only computer expert that can keep it propagating properly before it destroys itself and the system its on.

The Nomads are redirecting their efforts to pirating Auwana supplies. Their flotilla has had the mining equipment upgrading as well since they’re cruising between asteroids all the time as well. Though the recent revelation that Haziel is tinkering with the laws of nature might be worth keeping an eye on. The Flotilla relies on keeping flora aboard for mana filtration, generation, and life support assistance. Those plants can now grow through and corrode metal. Which…might be an issue.

Allison knows where many Phantom colonies are located, as they tend to be bigger than ones run by anyone else. Imagine that. Though attacking them she warns can be difficult since they tend to be larger, have more defenses, and are guarded by some of Kanika’s super monsters she kept upgrading over the last two thousand years. She has been harassing areas of Yasrena’s holdings that aren’t suspicious for a bandit queen to be raiding.

We’ve sent agents to start setting up bases wherever we can to keep an eye on things. However, the agents targeting House Beldobaan were arrested and taken in. From there we have no idea what became of them. Despite your previous luck with the situation, it’s still worth noting that Beldobaan is very secretive and defended. Placing a base in their main city will be extremely difficult let alone to maintain it. Similar problem with Aureum, Michael is still out there keeping an eye on things but for the same reasons we can’t get him out we also can’t get anyone new in. The place is constantly locked down via the rift to the warrens, so it has been difficult to find any way to sneak in.

Duncheck reports that the Beldobaan Matriarch might be particularly difficult to kill directly. Beldobaan might not be the strongest house but they’re notorious for their well defended territory, since they live in the underdark behind fortress walls. Atop of that, a more precise method of attack will be difficult given that if what you report about her being a secret vampire is true, than that means she can tell when anyone unfamiliar gets close to her. If they have blood at least. Current ideas involve getting a lich to do it, or a zombie. That or creating a large enough distraction. Though this will be particularly challenging as matriarchs live in a society where a lot of people would want to assassinate them, and are well protected against it.

The biomes of the great robot ecology program are relatively easy to map. Due to the inhabitants of Diadem being primarily robotic and built in a controlled environment, the main biomes of interest would be the surface panels, the semi surface panels, and the “never see the light of day” underlayers. It appears most production of new units would occur in the deep underlayers.

We can tell the plates are shifting based on the exerlus needs, we can also somewhat predict that they will move in response to external threats. Specifically it’s being used to keep the outer plates of each territory heavily reinforced while the exerlus keep trying to go to war with one another. It’s convenient we didn’t land there initially.

The weakest territory is probably our first landing point, as we’ve disrupted it heavily and the neighbors are taking advantage of the opportunity to press in. So it is having to defend itself on three fronts simultaneously. Though “relative” is definitely the key word there. Each section of this ring world is colossal.

Eleazor and the expedition have done a lot of cataloging to figure out what is actually down there. Even if its defenses are primitive robot monsters with lasers on their head, the ringworld is vast and its ever-moving nature means that we can’t just dig down to the one spot we want to go to. This has allowed our analysts to get a better idea of how big an expedition needs to be in order to fight…the world really.

We’re gonna need everyone. Reaching the exerlus a second time, now that it is hostile to us, will take enough firepower to conquer a planet. So something on the order of a million guys with guns. At least if we want to gain complete control of a section of the ring world. Our camps seem to be doing okay since the exerlus can only direct their robots so much. I suppose it would help to take a moment and assess our goals here. With Gem Station being built we could continue to just harvest resources from Diadem and hang out in orbit until the exerlus figure out how to build an anti orbital robot dinosaur and deploy it. It takes less investment but then we are just sort of…here for no real reason.

To take a ringworld section, which would have enough space for a super civilization on its own let alone the rest of the sections, yeah we’re going to need the whole federation. Conquering one twelfth of a ringworld is not a small task. Though once we control the plate movements we could live in the lowest layers practically safe from anything. Not even Rahlken could hijack a city armored by such a ring.

Arsene is on dating apps now and Vanessa is confused as to why any of this is happening. It is amusing though.

Kaylen has a whole report that to summarize comes down to “yes she knows where to find some of them.”

On the low impact but safer sides, a lot of the colony efforts by the Phantoms around Thenica that are to raise PR should be easily accessible. They are public and an attempt by the Phantoms to make people less scared of them. Members on these fronts include Hyvory, who escaped Kaylen’s raid on their colony but are currently being hunted by the guild’s scouts. Ki’Ralcht also kind of falls in this category since she is in the Demon Kingdom helping to control Valadeus’ former territory. Though she is a slightly bigger fish than the Thenican colonies.

Scaling up a little are the ‘middle management’ phantoms. Eliza leads House Jaal’Darya on Thenica under the supervision of Yasrena. Faelyn manages the frontier fleet and is definitely a little bit smaller than she once was when she was managing Moncayo. Both of these are on par with any of the federation’s members so it would likely require combined effort to overwhelm them or the full resources of any of the federation factions to at least challenge them.

Then we have the higher level members such as Sakhessa. We know that Sakhessa is in Auwana and Yasrena is somewhere in Sol most of the time in Kar’Soluth territory. On the upside they tend to have their own business to tend to and aren’t as focused on us, on the downside each of them have as many resources as the Void State Federation if not more. This would be swinging above our weight class but cleverly picking at them might help lower them like we’ve done to Faelyn. Kaylen’s report indicates most of these Phantoms have much larger goals in mind so they often have many more problems to deal with than just us. An example being that Yasrena controls several great houses but right now she’s dealing with Kharla and the demon kingdoms.

Finally there are the galactic players like those of whatever crew Arkaric is assembling. This includes Rahlken, Decaelys, Kanika, and Arkaric himself. They are individually powerful enough to be a threat to civilizations. Kaylen has actually been hoping our cruisers would find out more about any other members of this team, particularly whatever that ‘highly aggressive isolationist’ civilization is. She considers this not even approachable until our own forces have some sort of opening and that we had best avoid their attention.

Kaylen’s report considers figures like Ki’Ralcht or the other smaller candidates to be a better starting position for offense as their influence is minor but they play a part in the larger holdings of the Phantoms. They’re also less likely to draw dramatic response from any of the higher up Phantoms. It would be ideal for trial runs of strike teams and a more gentle prodding. Fighting the middle managers should be done a bit more carefully since they can afford to put more of their attention on retaliation and depending how important they are to the Phantoms whether or not the higher members would take notice. Kaylen describes this as trying to always be the second biggest problem. Targeting Yasrena’s holdings seems ideal for this since Kharla is a big enough problem that it would be easier to keep track of her and hide in her shadow so that we’re never Yasrena’s biggest problem until its too late.

To that end, the report also knows the locations of several starting points. We know where Ki’Ralcht is outright, actually Irae has been dealing with that gently already in the demon kingdom. Hyvory is sneaking around Thenica but stealth isn’t her specialty and could reasonably be tracked down with some effort. We also know where several phantom colony startups are around Thenica as they are openly taking in refugees as they find them.

While we don’t know exactly where Eliza is, Kaylen reports investigations into the recent rot outbreaks point to Jaal’Darya as the likely origin of the problem not necessarily Sakhessa. While Sakhessa is where the rot comes from, Jaal’Darya are specifically qualified to work with it. She hasn’t ruled out that Eliza herself could be in Moncayo or at least her agents. Kaylen has a high priority on this investigation.

We also know where Sakhessa is but the latest intel we have shows her spending eclipses our own. At the current rate, the longer we take to assault Auwana the wider the gap between our forces and hers will get. However to our favor, this means Sakhessa has dropped a lot of the more careful practices required for the Phantoms to remain unknown and Kaylen’s scouts in combination with Nah division have been able to discern a lot of information by following the paper trail necessary for logistics of this scale. More on that later. For now, the latest intel report is that Auwana is growing faster than we are as a federation. She is the current leader of the Phantoms and has started amassing power in this specific location. More cities have been founded and people are arriving in the tens of thousands as they are brought in from many other holdings. Sakhessa is creating a capital for the Phantoms, which they haven’t had while living in secret. At best it was Kanika’s carrier up until now.

Due to the aforementioned paper trail of such logistics, Kaylen has been able to find out where Sakhessa’s major city in Necrosi is. It’s the third largest city in the planar realm, though given how much industrial production occurrs there it makes sense. We’re not sure how her presence there was a secret for so long but at least we know where it is now. We could assault it to slow the rate at which Sakhessa can afford to increase her holdings on Auwana but given that its a city owned by one of the mummies, we can safely assume the rot will be a problem when it comes to bringing people back.

We also know that Yasrena is on Thenica, likely somewhere among Kar’Soluth’s holdings. Which include Beldoban, Jaal’Darya, and Sarghess as the most likely houses to be hosting her presence. Probably doing diplomatic efforts to unite the Great Houses. However, that paper trail thing Kaylen mentioned earlier extends to discovering that Yasrena is rebuilding the church of Lolth that Kharla once inhabited. We aren’t sure if this is an attempt to reclaim it for Yasrena or to get Kharla’s attention.

If you have any specific you want to look into, Kaylen will probably be able to help at least.

We’ve started advertising about the Iron Cradle. Interest is perhaps lower than expected though there is a certain exhaustion in people about having to move so many times in the last year or so with the ongoing wars. Though those who have adapted to the more adventurous lifestyle are most of those who seem interested. While we’re on the subject, there are rumor filled news articles circulating Moncayo’s population about Diadem and ongoing conversation on whether its worth moving again. Mostly around the fact that its very far away from the Sol frontier so its less likely to be invaded. They might not know about the robots with lasers on their heads, or how dangerous they have turned out to actually be.

In the frontier topic, the VSS Raptor asked what you want them to do. They’ve been cruising around Jydoq space looking for interesting things but it is largely ‘more of the same’. They can get a report on various factions and cities popping up but it seems like Ilex is taking over most things going on there. Jiyan pointed out she’s the nearest to the last known position of the Pegasus if you wanted a fast response to the stranded crew issue.

Investigations into the rot outbreak found the saboteur is missing. They were an employee of Vittles but they’ve been absent for awhile. Looking into their bank history, it actually seems as if they went silent before the act of sabotage. Local enforcement believes we’re dealing with some drow bullshit, which would coincide with Kaylen’s suspicions that Jaal’Darya are involved. I have redacted her slightly racist rant about drow that quickly followed.

The battle over Zenaka is…obnoxious at best. Asmodan’s giant rock of a ship just took off while our fleet was being harassed by everything else, by the time we had enough forces to secure the area it was long gone and what remained took off in different directions with groups juuust the right size so that our strike craft fleets didn’t want to pursue them beyond the radius of influence of the super battleships. Radar indicates they split into three major directions, though we’re back to being only able to see a small fraction of them. One grouping is heading towards Auwana, another towards Jydoq, and the last set is returning to Thenica.

We’ve been sending food to General Preskian to keep up relations even with ongoing food issues.

Also Lancaster and the adventuring party that went into the Fae Wilds are back. They’re on some random planet in the Abyss requesting a pickup. Lancaster sounded urgent about it.

We’ve deployed the first lance to hunt Ki’Ralcht. This operation can so far be described as “oh right, Reika is a thing”. Selah also apparently thought it would be a good idea to open another rift to the Astral Wilds. There’s a six dimensional behemoth stomping around the area now and our prospective demon lords, who were not really collaborated with, have questions on what just happened. Irae managed to kill Ki’Ralcht on the mad offense to deal with her quickly as possible. So, mission accomplished. That was when everything fell apart.

Reika’s presence in the demon kingdoms has drawn the immediate attention of Kharla. Who wasted no time in showing up to the territory everyone has been fighting over. While the council of lords might have had some opinions on the matter, there are now two more territories up for grabs after she incinerated their lords for saying anything slightly along the lines of ‘hey maybe you should chill for a second and think about things’. All of her demon lords have shown up with her as well as most of the Vals. Monument is overhead and bombarding the territory with its fleet now. Demon lords are watching curiously while Kharla tears through every living thing. The entire territory is being turned into a crater while she tries to track Reika down.

On the upside, even more chaos for us to work with. On the downside, everything is literally on fire. There are even would-be demon lords just looking for Reika to sell her location out to Kharla. Voriuk and Aikane are the only ones unaccounted for but I’d bet my money that they’re looking for Reika as well.

Work at the rot quarantine has been steady though Hasao Tei has been absent from helping due to Roha falling apart and now the Hasao Tei are making sure no one enters or leaves the city without a lot of paperwork. Though they’re at the point of gunning down anything that tries to leave without taking the one path that they have someone standing in front of with a virtual clipboard.

The arcuran colony on Moncayo has finished construction and arcurans be arcurin’ all over it. They already have elected a new leader by democratically voting that whoever kicks everyone else’s ass is the new boss. His name is Ranwe, Slayer of Ogaba, He Who Stands, The Great Wall, He Who Shall Know No Fear, The Unbound Wisdom, Slayer of Hashhash, Creator of the Silly Hat, The Soul Seer, The Moonborn, The Sun Catcher, The Quiet Roar, The Specter of Nikibalas, Blazing Fire, Like The Thunder, Slayer of Nenanket, Eternal Blossom, He who is Dark as a Forest, Skin of Stars, Thunder that Rolls Over Clouds, The Hair of the Earth, The Night Lion, The Dancing Song, Born to an Elder’s Wisdom, The Mountain River that Cleaves the World, He Who Sees the Final Dusk, The Dawnwalker, Wild Like Killiteket, Slayer of The Eternal Raging Starbeast Who Knows No Equal, Speaks with Heaven, The Gliding Snowflake, Slayer of Sun Rising Above Horizon, Speaks with Star Walkers, Fights with Wolves, Champion of Brightland, and Democratically Elected Mayor of Brightland.

Kaylen insisted we expand the character limit of the ‘name’ field on all paperwork in order to be culturally sensitive to arcurans. You can’t even read his access badge, it’s just a picture of himself and then a bunch of dots.

Bill, Haziel and Eerihild are back from the Fae Wilds, though need a ride back since leaving the Fae Wilds is a tricky thing. They dropped into the Abyss since ‘atmosphere’ isn’t really a concept there then floated their way over to the nearest available land mass. Speaking of which, the botanists keeping an eye on the plants report that recently all the plants started growing faster and can now eat through metal. I do mean all the plants. In the galaxy. Including the ones on ships we use for mana filtration. Haziel just changed a fundamental planar connection and permanently altered reality. Until we get them back for a debriefing, we don’t know what she actually did.

It might be reasonable to use regular stealth technology to hide from the ringworld’s creatures but they aren’t really scanning so much as just wandering around and nibbling on whatever they find.

The rot might be a new mummy, or it might be Deinuu’s or whatever. We’re not sure.

The ship that was on the way back to Roha from Jydoq has failed to report in. It failed to report in at what should have been its halfway point. Where our scanners aren’t able to see it unless Koda wants to turn on the big radar to take a look, we’re not sure where it is. It wouldn’t be far fetched to assume they intended to kill you there because they know about your overmind abilities, but not your ultimate sending technique. Because any other psionic if killed right there, would never have been in range to jump to another body. Though the ship isn’t late to arrive yet and they might just be having comms issues. Can wait to see if it shows up, or go investigate.

Meanwhile, jydoq people do love them some purpose and direction. So the cult is actually not doing too shabby on the planet itself. Though they are a bit weaker and more timid than the Roha branch, notably they lack an inquisitor to get them into the warrior side of things. Do with that what you will but as is, good numbers just don’t expect many useable soldiers to come out of it.

Yeah I already left Roha, Alexandrea scares me. I really didn’t want to go back to Que though. So I’m at Zenaka actually with Setal. She’s basically the queen of Zenaka so her palace can fit me in some of its rooms and she has zenakan tee lee vision. I don’t know its some box, they haven’t gotten quite so good at illusory projections so its all 2D but its better than nothing.

I decided against taking Rhazin with me because you asked him to build his new army and uhh…I think Lancaster would sell you out to the jydoq assassin if I brought him to Zenaka with me. So he’s still in Roha managing that with Craylin.

Speaking of, Roha is now a warzone. The heroes guild has had to ask the Hasao Tei to seal it off from the rest of the tunnels that lead to the other cities. It turns out Si Yeon is fucking scary and in the process of defying Alexandrea’s request to see what remains of the New Age labs, started a conflict that Alexandrea didn’t outright win for once. Si Yeon…won. Somehow. Sure the streets are filled with Balhasts who are specifically attuned to hunting psionics, and the civilians are amputating their own limbs to get their APT’s off before these things find and devour them, but hey…Si Yeon can rumble. By releasing hundreds of horrifying monsters from a lab. We might need to stop respecting her privacy.

Also in the chaos, drones are fighting…balhasts…I forget their number designation and Vasia never named them as a species. The rot can infect silnians, and uh…thousands are dying.

The arcane moon’s impact on the lake is keeping it productive in the night, not quite as productive but decently productive. The lake likes energy sources for its work evidently.

Setal informs us that when it comes to putting a lake in a crater, the entire continent that Kharla destroyed. That’s a lot of space between the lake and everything else. Though she also is a bit against isolating the lake. Then she said some dangerous things about spreading the ichor’s love to all the people.

Sahad labs progress has been stifled a bit by Si Yeon’s absence, since we can’t get messages in and out of Roha she has pretty much gone dark. I mean we can just look over there from Moncayo and know she’s still there doing crazy stuff but its hard to do lab paperwork with her. That being said the nova spell is coming along, though by its nature i’m not sure how useful it will be to the average person. We’ve made a ship cannon version that just depletes the ship’s mana instantly for one big shot, leaves the ship sitting there for awhile afterwards. At least it doesn’t implode like human casters have.

As for sahadist awakenings, as Vasia’s research went over: It generally requires people who when confronted by the infinite unknown have enough space in their heads to accept it really. The better the expression of sahad the cleaner the awakening. Vasia would use a little star to do it, though we know that Cerys – the most powerful sahadist in Sol for awhile there – witnessed the Valdir swarm doing some crazy stuff. It would be reasonable to assume that the Valdir’s sahad expert might know particularly good spells for this. There is something to be experimented with in having the cult do it by force. Just brainwash people then fill their head with sahad shit and see what happens. Though that might be a little too much of a Vasia idea.

The anti ftl missile project can be implemented if you want. How many do you want? They’re four million credits per shot and take up hangar space in a carrier.

Salvage insurance doesn’t upgrade, and using it at Zenaka against pirate ships is indeed likely to be the less lucrative use of it. Use it when we fight Sharen, their ships have gold on them.

While the situation has changed since you asked, Gunhild says it’s not really that normal for Si Yeon. Actually it went from ‘yes that’s abnormal’ to ‘that’s very abnormal’. Si Yeon is normally very direct when asked questions about herself but very good at keeping secrets about others.

The poison’s first trial is done whenever you wanna try doing something with that. We also put smoke around the lake. Cuz the city is kind of smoking as it is already.

Searches into a sapient species beneath the water of NR147-3 are ongoing. While specifically tasked with such, 40th Day has been a bit more directed in this objective and has found more evidence that indicates that there is something hiding here. Though it might also be hiding from us specifically, not that it would be terribly unusual to be hiding from strange aliens with probes descending from space. The search for intelligent life continues.

Having worked with the phantoms before might not give you that much on finding the robot replacements. Especially because there are technically two…that we know of. The daiheb model and the selona. Also there isn’t really anywhere to start. The fact that they were in the heroes guild, we know some just live as normal people, and so forth…literally everywhere. Also even with Aryn as a sample, the only way to detect it is with a little bit of exploratory surgery. It’d be more of a plan to go looking for where you want to make sure they’re not at rather than where they might be. Since they might be everywhere.

Also yes, Chaudret can only be deployed from Aryn’s sword lodged in her arm. You can theoretically deploy it by just calling a device infected with it and hoping it spreads. Though that’s a shot in the dark if the device infected will be able to be called or if it will have lost that functionality.

It appears our assassin was on the ship that Ilex sent back to deal with Alexandria. It implies a couple of things if we assume that it was indeed our target. First off, they know about Ilex and what he can do to at least some extent, furthermore they might know how well defended the spot he’s standing in actually is, and they might have indeed sent Alexandrea in some form or another. Maybe gave her some backing, but the first attempt on Ilex’s life came after she had made herself bait.

Mike, who we still have not managed to extract due to Aureum being on a sort of lockdown, has sent us an updated intelligence report. Still no idea exactly where that giant sword has gone, but Sakhessa has unveiled a new technological marvel of hers. Imagine Selona tech, but as a turret floating around in space. These new turrets have basically more punch but they are also giant magic missile spells that can fired under different settings. As a singular hit its pretty big but it can also disperse its payload into a cluster of smaller spells that seek out different targets. Basically, more defenses around the new Phantoms capital.

They also completed the construction of Asmodan’s new flagship. It disappeared shortly afterwards, though as we’ve learned Asmodan likes to hide his assets.

We have the general idea of the Exerlus’ individual domain. We can kind of tell just by which direction the plates go, there are certain spots where it never goes forward, only backwards…and those spots also tend to be really violent. So it stands to reason that’s their borders they’re arguing over.

We’ve sent the expedition deep into the ring elsewhere to try and establish chats with any of the other controlling exerlus. So far it appears that they’re all very…hostile. The expedition is in the ring and dealing with that nonsense again.

There have been some losses fighting the robot wildlife from VSEC’s 3rd brigade in order to enter into the ring. We suspect a greater toll will soon be taken as well. After a month, they’re still pushing through and trying to find the exerlus at the center. Though as with Eleazor and Gunhild before, we lost contact with them as soon as they went deep enough inside.

Turning one of their factories into a warforged facility might be doable, though we’ve yet to find any of the production points. They are likely guarded deep within the ring, and the scale of these rings is quite large.

On another note, the life support systems have been repaired around the Iron Cradle for whenever we might want to receive guests. With Koda building a new station in orbit around Diadem we might be able to go off searching for organics in distress to join our merry city.

Arsene is still working a front desk back in Moncayo and so far has not had much luck on dating apps.