Stories of Lore 53

 

Through perhaps dubious means and convoluted upholding of their own traditions – Zenaka appointed a man named Ehanxelvun to be their new planetary ruler. They use the title that our translators pick up as ’emperor’, not sure if we should be concerned about that. Ehanxelvun promised to deal with the many lords who did not attend the summit for you though has requested military assistance in doing so and asked for the orbiting station to open fire on six territories until he’s satisfied that the lords in charge of them are dead.

Suffice to say, as is according to their traditions, they appointed a rather vicious fellow. He’s a former equivalent to Sethis but for one of the territorial lords who murdered his boss right before the summit and attended it in their place before anyone could figure out what happened. Murdered two others and put puppets in place to help secure more votes for himself, and is definitely in a hurry to blow up certain other territories that might threaten the security of his position before he can cement it.

Technically by their own traditions, he’s qualified to do all of that. Even if the federation has a rule against murder, he wasn’t part of the occupied territories yet and just attended the summit as a rogue territorial lord with an argument to make.

As for the Alnae virtual summit, which took a lot of work to establish enough communications to do that in the first place, they are somewhat used to council leadership so its not like they all need to be the one at the top. However, until the federation can actually feed all of them – which we can’t by the way, the Alnae population is several times our own – they keep running into issues of dividing who would get what and the whole thing with sending workers. A lot of it came down to them arguing over how much food any of them get if they send people to work the Vittles farms and trying to calculate who gets what and when. While Diadem has the space for such a scale of farming, things take a bit to grow and in the meantime they have the same ongoing issues. So progress was made in the form of them agreeing to send millions to Diadem to help with the farms, but actually uniting them awaits progress on that front.

To that end, Kar’Soluth is being uppity, the new House Kenduis took over more territory from the former Alnae and Jaal’Darya have been expanding their influence on Jydoq while they expand their fleet bit by bit.

House Sharen’s scientists and medical researchers arrived at Roha and have been poking around.

To clarify, Valdir doesn’t need a fleet for trade. They need things to trade in the first place. The nature of galactic shipping being done in bulk lowers the ease of trading the various small individual things their people can actually make or do since their empire doesn’t really rely on industrial production.

We have our diplomatic corvettes on the way to Rhuplais and the Vessians to check in on them and see whats going on.

According to people asking around, there is a figure named Gasaba who represents the factory flotilla who can be found usually between the heart of the Reach and the northern point of Kuhas on various stations. Though their appearances tend to be random and only when they have stuff to buy or sell. They were last seen Halfway between Elasyn and Kuhas at some random station though that was a little while ago as the person we heard that from had also been there and has since then worked their way up to Kuhas.

It turns out selling fully functional mechs on Kuhas wasn’t that hard.

Also we’ve hired a ton of people from Sol News but not Exme, so not sure what the status of your information war with them actually is since they’re operating out of Desoir territory.

Meeting with both the Utewa and the Vessians proved to be surprisingly mundane. To them we are just another wayward civilization of the Reach, of which they have met thousands of. So they’re a lot less interested than when we met Zenaka or Enohas populations for example. Granted the Playatis, or rather Zaikies specifically, were a bit more interested.

To sum up the meeting, we’ve learned that the Utewa disappearing planet trick is actually that they have the ability to open a planet sized pandem rift. So their planet doesn’t quite disappear, it just goes into other planes but very few in the galaxy are good enough at planar travel to even figure out where it went let alone chase it.

The Vessians are, as described by Quinae, very hungry people but we’ve noticed they share a distinct similarity to solians. Also Jiyan found out that this is where one of the warren exits is. Similar to how Koura’s parasites were bled onto it from its own warren rift, it is likely their magical ‘super planet’ is the work of something that once lived in the Warrens. Similar to the entity that Vasia captured for us at Koura. Though judging by the pattern, and previous rumors, it isn’t unreasonable to suspect that Grand Chief Amasis is the entity from the Warrens or at the very least in some way related to it. However, getting an audience with them is harder than meeting with the actual vessians. Partially because they aren’t even on that planet at the moment.

In other news, the Diadem shipyard facilities and expansion have finished and they are now capable of producing titan scale ships.

 

Holua seems more or less fine with the squire life though as far as he understands it, he gets paid to punch things sometimes and other times he just continues burrowing around the city.

We’ve established the company of Riftmancy so that we can more reasonably start exporting portal crafting, as this isn’t the first time people were asking about that. I suppose being the galactic highway builders is probably a pretty profitable business.

Valjala seems to be a chaotic lower plane that makes no sense, kind of like you. Though its a place where things are always moving for some reason or another. Entering into it is kind of dangerous since, like the Fae Wilds, you might not come out quite where you thought you would. Less due to planar positioning and more so due to the fact that you can’t stop moving within it. So the plan to put a couple stars and planets aligned with literally anything is out the window, because if you put something somewhere it goes somewhere else practically of its own accord.

People are already trying to make ships and cars out of this in some way. At least those that knew it happened.

Also this was a lot of work to encrypt a book.

Part of our deal with the Sharen has definitely revealed to us just how prevalent their own colonization efforts have been. They went the other direction, further towards the borders of the galaxy rather than towards the center. I suppose it makes sense that drow wanted to be as hard to find as possible. As well as your whole student exchange program.

Bill wound up going to Utewa to serve as our diplomat, mostly because he was curious about it. Establishing some connection to the Utewa academy and returned with some negotiations to have some of Utewa’s warlocks come visit and see what we might be able to show them.

The Thing in the Dark, also known as Friend, has pointed out that the warlocks Utewa wants to send are bound to a demon lord from outer spaaaAAAaaaAAace who they have not mentioned nor have we heard about before. Basically they have an alien demon lord for a patron hidden somewhere around the Reach likely on Finsor. Also that this patron has in some way played a part with the events of the Reach since before the fall of the Ika. Possibly through predecessors and a continued lineage.

 

Some of the Sharen House medical people have shown up to work on that whole “what the hell is mummy rot” joint project.

The jydoq colony is doing fine for now at least, everything is nice and ooze-tight so that hopefully nothing gets in. Though progress with the local leaders can be summed up as “want food”.

Rhazin is going about subjugating the peoples of Viowei by force though the fact that he can’t talk isn’t helping him pursue many other methods. Though the takeover of a planet is definitely a long affair, so he’s working on it. At the very least the people are somewhat confused as to why Agallias left, so they’re a little disorganized at the moment. However, they are not spectacularly aware of what a silnian is so their fear levels could be improved.

Averill is on the way to Rhuplais to see about the Utewa academy, though not sure why you need him to get into it if he’s just trying to figure out what the jydoq creature is all about. Unless you meant literally to walk inside of its doors and ask someone who might know, I’m not sure if I’m taking you too literally or not literally enough.

As for your “first spark” experiment, as your advisor I have to say this sounds like a bad idea. A really bad idea. The phrase ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ comes to mind. Also death is literally defined as ‘the moment your essentia goes away’. Removing your own and hoping to survive seems like an iffy proposition if you ask me. Though we’re waiting for Renjala to finish playing with his new toy I suppose.

The party rocks are still excavating the mountain of rubble on Diadem but they’ve at least managed to compress it. They also keep sledding or rolling down it on their breaks. Of all the elementals to be ‘the fun ones’ I don’t understand how it wound up being the earth elementals. They are at least capable of packing it into a more solidified form and adding rock structures to reinforce it.

We’ve had some freighters designed as ship booby traps as you asked. Also gotten some drop colonies together for Sharen though I’m not sure how much they need those.

 

Macrohard huh? It’s amazing how long a company can go without a name. Good ol N/A divison.

We moved some of our assets around and sent a bunch to Enphidia to keep up on things there.

Allison and Rampart are still doing well cutting out a nice slice of territory for themselves, that now seems to include Vittles. Which has drawn in other businesses to Rampart’s protection just because Vittles is pretty popular by default since it has food.

Our agents are off and away into the galaxy to try and figure out anything they can about the jydoq assassin though it is sort of all over the place at the moment. Though apparently Ilex is also sending Averill to Utewa, and technically Bill is already there but he’s on another mission entirely. So everybody is combing through everything everywhere all at the same time.

We’ve reinforced Enphidia, making it the most well defended city on the inside of Diadem. We are now fully prepared for an invasion by those rich bastards from Adelaide.

Wait when you say lend a hand to Preskian, do you mean in helping him convince Kar’Soluth to attack Alnae harder or with shipping and handling of handouts from Lancaster? Not sure how much freedom to give the agents on helping the guy out. Though the oddity of a drow secretly helping an elf but only because of screwing over other drow is mildly amusing.

New problem, we lost the engines to the gas giant. So we’re back at Diadem after a handy portal from the Astral Knights. It all was going fairly well when we were just fighting the fleet though it was clear they were just trying to damage the engines and sent a whole lot more strike craft than we were anticipating just for that. Also boarding, we did well with that. Though the damage started adding up and once the second fleet closed in on us while we were setting up shop at the gas giant, the conditions of the gas giant finished off the rest of our engines. Fortunately, all this was before Rahlken even got caught up to us.

Also amusingly, they pursued us through the portal and straight into Gem Station’s range. So that’s a fleet dealt with. Technical success? We’re undergoing repairs at the moment. Though I don’t doubt this will be a continuing issue once we set out that way again. This time they’ll probably be even more prepared for us.

At least we survived all of that, but it does lend some evidence to why Lancaster has had so much trouble with sending scouts around the galaxy as of late. Even a ship as large and heavily armed as the Cradle is a target to somebody somewhere out there. We barely made it out of our galactic neighborhood before that happened and we know we’ll be crossing into some sketchy territory further down the road.

I’m not sure how much better we could possibly prepare though. All we can really do is fix ‘er up and try again. That or somehow dispatch Rahlken before trying, then dispatch the next thing that sends us home, then do it again. Rinse repeat until we can get to the other side of the galaxy.

 

 

 

Stories of Lore 52

 

For awhile the occupied territory of Zenaka has been able to start extending more diplomatic efforts to their other territories under the general leadership of Uxam. His sales pitch is largely ‘we have need gadgets’. Though not long after news of the treaty, an alliance of the other territorial leaders launched a campaign against the allied states. The leaders of this alliance state that they are dissatisfied with Zenaka being under the control of a bunch of aliens and are re-enacting the plot of about twenty movies about alien invasions. The occupied territories do have our guns and soldiers to defend it, though a few defenses were destroyed by somewhat smaller teams targeting them. The first few attacks were carried out simultaneously earlier this week. Notably Vasia came up at least three times in their speech about how we’re an evil colonial force. They did not address the matter of what they were doing in those facilities before she showed up.

This has nothing to do with you telling them to get their shit together this month actually, they just picked a really coincidental time to suddenly make a problem of all this.

In regards to the phantom infiltration of a military organization issue, you should be careful about listening to what Larazja says. She speaks in exaggeration and hyperbole a lot. Though on that regard, it should be assumed that because of Kanika’s ability to manipulate people’s loyalties that the Phantom’s ability to infiltrate anything is quite significant. The greater strategic concern is if she has people in critical areas of security. For example, Roha’s food supply chain.

The WTC-2 design has been ironed out and is now available.

We’ve lost all contact with Jiyan and the outsider, though this was expected and she called in a final report before entering the Warrens. She is going in deeper and isn’t sure where the next exit will be.

Virtual simulation of combat might be possible for the convention tournament. Though it would take awhile to program and present in any way that is interesting to onlookers. Though that would be Ilex’s realm of expertise. I’m just a maybe-sentient robot assistant.

Kaylen was last seen headed back to Thenica, apparently to talk to House Song and likely the Revenants.

A farming operation of the desired scale for Vittles can be managed with help from the druids. Mostly due to the fact of how many seeds that will require, though staff for it might take awhile to drum up if you want to do something of that scale. The immediate problem is security, while right now the invasive machines are currently focused towards the inner layers, putting a lot of civilians on the surface might draw their attention towards there. While Gem Station, our fleets, and the mechs won’t have any issues with that I do imagine it’ll slow down the number of people terribly excited to work there.

There has been a sharp spike of immigrants from Moncayo to Adelaide in the wake of Laura’s whole ‘marketing thing’ as people get settled down and figure out what sort of place it actually is.

General Preskian reports that right now the big issue facing his faction is that Kar’Soluth has suddenly started directing its attention towards many of them. The warlords are actually doing fairly well at uniting against a common enemy. They don’t particularly hate each other in the end, it’s just that no single government can account for all the needs of their respective people right now due to the resource shortages.

A large part of the ongoing problems for Alnae have been not just the food shortage, they were quick to start trying to regrow crops. Alnae had always been structurally dependent on the elves controlling all the wealth to keep the masses from trying their own thing. With the current state of things, many are willing to start their own gangs and try to create more independent nations with ‘the same but slightly different rules, also with me in charge’. His other idea is that instead of defending Alnae from Kar’Soluth, if you could convince Kar’Soluth to attack much harder it might forcibly reunite the former members of Alnae against a common threat. Not to mention the war would probably cut down on the number of mouths to feed and solve two problems at once. Alnae is so scattered that even Jaal’Darya can’t get them all, but if Shetou were to get involved in an attempt to win that centuries old war  or perhaps stop Kar’Soluth from expanding then that would be more than they could possibly handle.

His other idea was to get Valencia to bankroll this whole thing so that someone would have the wealth needed to get the other’s attention and get them following someone again. Though she has refused to as she doesn’t see much potential for return on the investment.

As for the sneaky negotiations with Shetou, they don’t really care about Kiel’Nada. Convenient because Ankathi has her now alongside Kharla.

Laesaaria points out that whoever fights the Hassani will die and whoever fights second or even third is the one that has a chance. For now she foresees the most likely path forward to at least stabilizing things would be to get more alien allies. It is highly likely that the Phantoms will ally with the Demon Kingdom in the near future as those two have similar grudges against the Era of Rising and have worked together in the past. As for researching a protection from mummy rot, Cazvrath Vel’Sharen was definitely interested in that and suggested allowing Sharen’s experts to go to Roha where the dormant infections are still present for studying it. They don’t exactly want to bring samples into their territory for obvious reasons.

In the spirit of cooperation, House Sharen is a logistical super power due to the size of their navy. Though they’ve been careful about expanding because with Vloz’Khress gone they don’t have a Renjala so they don’t have the same easy access to a more convenient transport network than actually flying in and out of places. They have twenty eight colonies in various nearby systems though they want into the Reach. They’d be willing to pay the Astral Order for the job of establishing a few for them.

Laesaaria also pointed out that as nice as the thought is, she isn’t really the best representative for the ‘age of drow’ given Shetou is dominated by the other races. Of her three remaining great houses, only Sharen is drow. It just so happens that the year Sharen and Song’s heirs married and united to form the Shetou as a proper Empire, she was on the throne at the time and it was easiest to settle “who gets to be in charge” by just letting her keep the position. Not that it matters terribly to your point, she just thought she’d let you know how the culture has evolved since the secession of Kar’Soluth. A few other smaller houses are still around but with the old system being gone, there isn’t as much relevance to them to achieve the Great House status.

Talks were less effective with Valencia. I think we only got as far as her secretaries secretary. Who requested a more concrete outline of the plan before she would be able to present it to her higher ups who might then be able to take it up with Valencia herself.

Azilath is easier to talk with given our previous relations with her. Though she was mostly curious what Ilex and Larazja are up to these days. Though she doesn’t really need help finding worlds she would want to expand onto. Valdir contains the collective knowledge of its mothership that has gone across the galaxy and back. They’re actually aware of more places of interest than the rest of Sol combined. Right now the Valdir sub cells have already taken consumed a few worlds. Though the thing they’re most curious about is money. Indal left almost everyone with their full personality intact, and many of them like shiny things. Though their civilization is still based on the fact that it can behave as a gestalt consciousness as needed. No one gets paid around here, they just get everything on demand. The problem is that doesn’t work great for online shopping and grandma selling handknitted sweaters she has all this free time for making doesn’t translate well when the only trading partners available are light years away. Galactic commerce is often done in bulk for that reason, and Azilath greatly lacks the ability to do that.

On to other matters. Vittles set up a storefront at Kuhas Station inside of Allison’s new territory so that should help out with paying off gangs for security. Also the plan to buy a percent of the station led to a very confused talk with a representative of the station as to what you even mean by that. After some discussion they’ve offered to let you build another extension onto the patchwork station if you want.

After a talk with Quinae we figured out who some of the big powers in the Reach are. It’s a bit of a confusing matter though. Technically we’re among the top one percent of factions in the Reach, though we represent a percent of a percent of how many there are. That and if anyone gets too big, people tend to flip around and gang up on that group.They are also shockingly easy to rally once contracts for war spoils are settled. Quinae advises treading lightly.

To summarize if you want to send some messengers to say hi:
Utewa: Private education, big shipyards, and a disappearing planet
Tungsten Teeth: Mercenaries born to mercenaries who were killed by mercenaries in order to become mercenaries that were recognized by other mercenaries. Also super slavers.
Vessians: Tribal race with a big punch in a small package. Alien dragons kind of, or demons…or vampires… we kind of have a lot of people with super strength it now ocurrs to me. Starving nomadic hunters who are probably experiencing the collapse of their people due to Arkaric’s meddling in their paradise homeworld.
Mysterious Factory Flotilla: Gotta find them first.
Elasyn: Where all the great powers like to meet and hangout, which explains why Selona opened up shop there.

To be noted, Eerihild cannot heal anything and everything for everyone. The tournament idea has a problem with the fact that first off, she is liable to be competing, and second the damage that could be inflicted in a ‘no holds barred’ match includes death. She can’t heal death. Even the Ika medical bays, that they are afraid to ever go near again, can’t quite fix bullet holes to the head. I think the only people we know of that could possibly allow for that would be Elym and Decaelys.

We could try to virtualize the whole thing with help from Ilex. Just sort of store people in psicrystals and connect them to the game albeit not sure how comfortable they’d be departing from their bodies for that long. Also could maybe drum up a couple of temporary phylactery set ups though that costs people their bodies permanently so actually forget I said that one. We could also finish building your plane and you could just grant everyone immortality while on the plane. Might slow things down to getting everything set up and started but on the other hand you could get some clerics of your own to go open rifts all over the place so people don’t have to travel terribly far. Might ruin some of the cultural fair though if its not actually held in diadem. Maybe you make a spell for this and just leave a rift over the arena.

We started up SenshiCon so they can work on handling all of this.

We’ve seen a large boost to Jamalia’s population in the form of the fae migrants who just want out of that hellhole that is the Fae Wilds. Recovering from all the recent disasters the place has had, I’m sure nothing will go horribly wrong this time. Apparently they’re led by a kitsune named Yaezuki.

Speaking of putting a perimeter around there, Fae are kind of just popping in and out. We’ve learned that as long as the rift portal is open they can kind of slip through and no amount of security seems to catch them all at customs. Some have just walked back in through the front door of Jamalia after realizing they would need a ship to get anywhere else. Which explains how General Vaquinal got into contact with them without us knowing about it. It was less to do with him being sneaky but with Fae being sneaky. They already stole a shuttle once or twice. I’d say its a problem mostly caused by the initial surge of ‘get us the hell out of here’ and will likely calm down with time but for the immediate future it is notable how difficult they are to contain. Also we keep finding piles of fae clothes in random hallways.

General Vaquinal himself is a bit of an odd fellow. I suppose you have to be to reach out to the Fae for help instead of the druids though Eerihild figured out the reason behind that. While the theory that elves are somehow descended from the fae is up for debate, another large part of why he wants the fae’s help is because he is the one closest to Kar’Soluth and in particular has been dealing with Beldobaan. Perhaps it was a bit of an assumption to say he’s an odd fellow, he might just be turning into a paranoid maniac due to what he’s going through. His ‘we’re related’ pitch is mostly because he has nothing else to get the fae’s attention but he specifically was after the fae for help with drow infiltrators since they are equally as tricky. Apparently he is also trying to prove its even Beldobaan that is messing with him, also he has no evidence of anything. If it were anyone other than Beldobaan I would definitely say he’s just crazy. He might actually just be crazy for all I know but it’s about 50/50. Given what Sethis learned about that house, and that somehow no one knew that she was basically the queen of the dajer vampire and could rehabilitate ferals, I am willing to believe its really hard to track what they do.

Speaking of druidic spy candidates, starting to think we have a lot of fae with no ties to anyone else, come from the origin of druidic power, and who need jobs. Though they aren’t exactly trained for even operating in the middle planes at all, let alone grew up here enough to know how to work a door. Might be a terrible idea, might be a great idea, not sure yet.

The chapter with the Hasao Tei you could say have a low rate of interest in zankou, mostly because they were interested in pandem and dedicated their lives to that to the extent of joining the order. A few have been experimenting with it but only lightly.

What fortuitous timing for the second lance to get to Zenaka, they’re invading each other again.

Meanwhile on Jydoq, the twelve leaders are mostly regional based on how far they can actually keep track of things. The whole situation evolved out of their best efforts to stabilize a situation that is being constantly disrupted by the death of their leaders. They tried to form a council of these originally eight powers since that was their old government in the first place. Then all eight of them died and the next six in line. Then it became twelve of them. So sharing power isn’t the issue, its maintaining a chain of command for longer than two months.

We know two of them are tied to the Jaal’Darya and are reliant on them for help. Notably those two are coincidentally the most stabilized. Three are buddies with Shetou, one is technically allied with us through previous efforts we put in and Kennae. The most powerful single faction among them is outright controlled by the Desoir family who took over managing affairs since they owe Desoir a lot of money right now. The rest are just rogues right now. Worth mentioning the two with Jaal’Darya, one with desoir, and one with us, are all at their homeworld. Though they had multiple systems settled and the rest are based out of their various colonies that were hit a little less compared to the homeworld by Selona’s Shenanigans.

We’ve established Panemperia as a more official brand. I just hired people from Renard’s Rifts for professors. They have a bunch of people who know what they’re doing and wouldn’t mind sitting around and taking it easy on Diadem. Couple knights too. Though Renard himself said and I quote “I ain’t that old yet.”

Halaestra demanded an unreasonably high salary to consider doing it, though I suppose to be fair she does have a lot of money so it takes a lot to make her actually show up to a job on time.

Plane Builder

Meanwhile back on Jydoq, as was covered from intel reports by Nah, the leaders are all over the place. For our purposes, the cult has just been shoving food in people’s mouths. At this point everyone is motivated by food and Lancaster has invested a lot into setting up farms everywhere we go. We’ve sent someone to offer moral support to the faction that just had its eighth governor killed by this assassin. So we got some more immigrants who just want food around Zion.

You declassified yourself months ago, everyone knows you are a cat. You didn’t say ‘declassify myself except for that one part’ so it’s actually been the best advertisement the cult has had in awhile to point out the leader can do something like the overmind technique effectively enough to transpose himself into the body of a cat. Technically it’s that you can jump your way out of the cat body as that is your original one but people seem to forget that detail. Also been using it to point out that the giant puddle of ichor in Roha has you in it, which is also good for our PR.

Agallias has been withdrawn as promised and most of his loyal population went with him to conquer a new world. That leaves us with still a little bit more to do though as it wasn’t quite as simple as showing up with a flag. Particularly dealing with the natives who are now leaderless just in time for us to show up.

As a bit more detail, Viowei is home to already large life forms. It was probably what got Agallias interested in it. They aren’t exactly huge but they are definitely an effort to cram into a solian building. With Agallias gone their government is in a state of disarray but he didn’t exactly say “bye now that new guy is in charge” on the way out. I imagine there will still be some resistance which leads to us needing to make it clear that we’re taking over. So we do still need to invade them just a little bit. Though its likely any resistance effort can be dealt with under the parameters of ‘not killing civilians’ a lot easier if we’re not dealing with an organized force. The swarm commanders can handle that much.

Also the Metal Maker was lost with the Vivarium so we can’t exactly feed it to the ship.

Averill has made his way back to Jydoq, though Quinae has been left at Diadem since that’s where their whole guide job is best executed from.

Vasia has once again returned to experimenting on pregnant women on Zenaka. Though with things warming up over there due to the independence movement using her as ‘one of the reasons these aliens are assholes’ she was last seen petitioning Lancaster to let her have some prisoners too.

 

First off, we have a problem. We left a starship at Kuhas when we passed by to follow us later and make sure no one was tailing us. Rampart assisted in hiding them among usual space traffic departing Kuhas and they found that we’re being chased down by a fleet our sensors cannot detect. It’s Rahlken again. Our starship scout crew was able to get visual confirmation since their sensors couldn’t detect the ship even while within scrying range.

An interception fleet is heading towards us though they aren’t as fast as Solian ships. It has been counted, again visually so accuracy may be compromised, of at least eight battleships, two assault carriers, a regular carrier, and about twenty two cruisers. Handful of destroyers too but our scouts were unable to confirm the presence of anything smaller. While we should be able to handle that, if it slows us down and Rahlken catches up we don’t need a rematch to know how that will go. However, unless they slow us down we’re faster than Rahlken’s own ship.

At this point we are in the hive territories, there aren’t as many stations out here and we’ve already seen what that ship can do to Gem Station. I estimate at current speeds it will take them a week to catch us if we continue our current course, the actual fight could go either way. If we deviate to the most ‘away’ direction, we can get up to three weeks. However, another of our starships has detected a nearby fleet coming from the opposite direction though they lack the stealth technology of the other and it was found via sensors. So while we can’t say for sure its allegiances, the scouts report it doesn’t look like his stuff but it looks a lot meaner. According to intel from Rampart, that might be a fleet of Tungsten Teeth mercenaries.

So to summarize, Rahlken is on our tail but too slow to catch us. There is one confirmed fleet sent to intercept us and slow us down and another that may or may not even be hostile but is catching us with the ol’ pincer attack if it is hostile. If Rahlken catches up, we’re screwed.

We have at least a week on our current course and three if we divert. If we do so, we might be able to get somewhere safe for a crash landing at least?

Meanwhile, on to catchin these hands. You are sort of right that the cores who are best at making hands come from the same source, but its the Siwa Factory we came from and the generation that shares you and me within it. It is likely there was a specific engineer who was committed to this, and the others of our generation and model were their failed attempts at the same thing we’re trying to do. The three of us being the success cases. Though our own construction, sans Adrienne the mystery, had a whole team working on it. The head of the team being a now-dead elf who may or may not have even been a significant contributor or just taking credit for what the team did. Humanoids do that a lot I’m told. The Cradle is the very same factory so we have all their work here but I’ve looked around for any further information on what exactly made it work and there’s nothing about exactly what went into it.

As for placing the core into other fancy things, I made a larger mech shell that can support the modern swappable cores. Notably all of my models can use it though older models without removable cores cannot. That includes you, myself, Adrienne, Chevalier, and Sylvaine. I built Vanessa and Sacha though so they can use it. So can a lot of the young’uns around here but we only just recently started large scale production of those. Also Sylvaine is already pretty much a mech.

 

We’ve managed to get some more details on the jydoq cannibal assassin thing.Though oddly, it came from Allison at Kuhas station. They know of something similar to this story specifically but its down to rumors and ‘some guy said some stuff awhile back and I kind of remember it’. However, there are stories of people who fit this creature’s description. It is quite likely that whoever this assassin is, the important details of their story are in the Reach not on Jydoq itself. Apparently in the southern parts of the Reach there are similar stories and it might be worth poking around there. Specifically it was mentioned that the Utewa might know something.

Mike’s back. He was confused as to how much has changed in what he felt was a relatively short time away. Also he keeps taking a lot of showers, apparently he had to do things with beholders and whatnot he is not proud of.

We built the station over at Cayetano and started setting up a city at Diadem. Not sure how I went from managing an intelligence agency to a government in here though but I suppose that all got started around the time of the Nomad Flotilla. Makes you think though doesn’t it?

Allison has been getting more established in Kuhas. Lot of gang violence around there.

Also speaking of relevance for the computer parts manufacturing, we’ve learned that is basically currency within the Reach. They can’t use credits or any sort of easy currency everyone can agree on due to people stealing it all the time, so they use ‘anything that had to be manufactured with any degree of expertise’. Already have large orders from Lancaster to convert credits into ‘stuff that the Reach will trade with’.

The Nomads have taken to probing around in the Reach and discovered some valuable information while they look into various stations to hang out around. A lot of pirates in the Reach does the kind of stuff they do. In Sol it was somewhat of a ridiculous notion for a pirate gang to be stealing much larger ships, but in the Reach that is a way of life. So be wary of putting literally any ship into space out in this region.

 

 

This is Exme Faythe reporting for the Sol News Network, brought to you by Koura Burritos. Koura Burritos, who knew aliens could taste so good?

Following the taking of a foothold aboard an alien ringworld now called Diadem, the Federated Void State has surrendered to the Hassani Empire after years of conflict and entered into a treaty limiting further armed conflict. Information of this development has caused political ramifications throughout the Sol Territories.

With new alien civilizations being found every few months, public opinion leans towards exhaustion over internal struggles and in favor of ending hostilities on the frontier. Many frontier colonists had hoped to escape the conflict in Sol between Alnae and Shetou in the first place, so seeing the two frontier governments reach an end to hostilities has proven favorable. This comes not too long after the revelation of the Hassani’s monstrous populace that resulted in them gaining significant foothold on Thenica in the form of independent colonies.

This treaty also brings the war between the FVS and the Demon Kingdom to a close as the FVS withdraw their military interests from intervening in the Council of Lord’s affairs. The Demon Kingdom has appointed a new lord to their council as the former lands of the Vloz’Khress enter under the joint management of Ecsanul and Aikane.

Mysteriously, Matriarch Kharla Vel’Vloz’Khress has suddenly resigned and the house has been taken over by one of her daughters. As one might expect, we here at Sol News Network do not have the resources to fully investigate just how it came to be, but after a brutal power play between seven of Kharla’s children, daughter of Kharla and Demon Lord Aikane – Sayane Vel’Vloz’Khress has taken over as Matriarch and been formally recognized by Yasrena Val’Hari. Many were surprised, since they did not even remember that the 16th daughter even existed due to how quiet she had been. It is theorized that the Astral Order had pushed her to power by working with Aikane. When reached for comment they said-

“No we…wait a minute….THAT BITCH!”

End quote.

Demon Lord Aikane has also taken over a large stretch of the Vloz’Khress territory that once belonged to other demon lords and as mother to the new Matriarch has seen quite a rise in power within the Council of Lords.

These developments have left Shetou in an awkward position. House Song still adamantly opposes the Hassani Empire but House Sharen sees this as the end of a stalemate and time to recognize the Hassani as not to get into a losing battle. Laesaari Val’Hari has declined to release any statement on the matter at this time as things are still developing.

This all comes soon after the return of the Hassani’s true empress. As Sakhessa stated, the empire was made by a Dracolich named Kanika Hassani who was just indisposed at the time of formalizing the paperwork. With her return and Sakhessa’s quick surrendering of the throne to this figure, many foreign nations both native and alien are experiencing diplomatic whiplash.

Kaylen Yuriko of the Heroes Guild has left the Federated Void State in response to the signing of the treaty. Promising to continue fighting against the monstrous Kanika Hassani no matter the cost. Though without the Federated Void State’s backing she has fallen from political relevancy and even her former home nation of Alnae has not bothered to acknowledge or respond to her developing situation.

When reached for comment, Azilath stated that she had no interest in any of this and would be continuing to focus on expanding the Valdir into other worlds. While no one has done anything about the growing Valdir, many are concerned that if left unchecked Azilath will become an overwhelming super power. However, it appears that no one wants to be the first to do anything about it.

Colonists are leaving Sol in large numbers as they are promised a new home in the Auwana system where the Hassani Empire capital is located. This has left Thenica in an even worse state as a large fraction of its economy is emigrating away. The Alnae Warlords continue their ongoing campaigns to reunite Alnae and continue to experience food shortages. Shetou continues to exploit the current situation and annex pieces of Alnae territory from individual warlords.

While former elven nobility are maintaining their position as best they can, the average citizens are struggling. Many of them finding the roles reversed as they now work for orcish gang bosses as their only option for protection during these violent times. With many others being captured and sold off to Kar’Soluth as slaves. The conquest of new territory and new populations has resulted in the sudden rise of a new Kar’Soluth faction known as the Great House of Kenduis. Lead by Matriarch Angaste Vel’Kenduis.

Many predict we are seeing the final decline of the Elves but a further rise in power from the Drow. Many Alnae Warlords are starting to turn to outside powers for help. With General Preskian turning to the Void State Federation in the hopes that their similar governments and technological ideas will help them find common ground. While they have stabilized their food shortage problems, they have been unable to take further territory and are having to disallow further members in order to avoid running out of food again.

Meanwhile General Vaquinal is exploiting the newly opened portal on Enohas to the Fae Wilds to try and get in touch with the Fae, who are closely related to the Elves by common ancestry. Since the Fae now have a route out of the Wilds they are hoping that in working together they can establish a new government that will benefit them both.

General Aramys is suspected to be consorting with the abyssal lords and the demon kingdom for bartered aid. Though whether or not they have made much progress in these negotiations remains unclear.

General Helefiel has found allies in the form of elementals from the elemental plane who have also recently been expanding their own operations into the middle planes.

In all, it seems that the collapse of Alnae brought on by the Silnian invasion has resulted in the former elven oligarchs needing to find help to defeat one another and rebuild Alnae. However, many elven citizens are emigrating to other frontier colonies in the hopes of re-establishing themselves rather than continuing to fight over the ruins of Thenica. Some are even petitioning for Grand Marshal Yuriko to return since she was the last official appointed by the former Alnae council.

In frontier news, the legendary Phoenix has returned even if for only a brief visit. The eastern houses all showed up to Cayetano via the portal on Thenica to see her reappearance. It turns out the Phoenix has several half bred children that no one knew about, one of which being a dragon named Haleh who is now a member of the Federated Void State as the leader of her own member state.

A new colony has been opened by members from the fae wilds on Enohas, where a portal was placed by the Astral Order just recently. It was apparently done without the knowledge of the Astral Order and many are concerned given the reputation fae have. When reached for comment, new colony manager Yaezuki stated that she was just interested in getting her and her people out of the fae wilds. Stating that the stories don’t do it justice and that the place has become a living nightmare to reside in. She hopes that by starting her new colony she can find a new more peaceful life. Many are unsure of what to make of this development.

Both the Federated Void State and the Hassani Empire have made contact with a civilization known as the Playatis. A modern galactically aware civilization who acts as a trade station between our area of the galaxy and the eastern side of a place called “The Dead Zone”. Prospective explorers and colonists are advised to remember that this zone of space is considered extremely hazardous and should not be settled or lingered within.

More and more frontiersmen have been exploring the Western Reach ever since the establishment of Diadem and the revelation of a place called Kuhas Station. FVS Officials warn that the Western Reach is just as much if not even more of an lawless place than the Thenican wastes and not to expect any assistance if they get lost within it. Though many have found success already as traders within the vast network between the stars. Frontier traders might find familiar faces in the jydoq, FVS, Selona Syndicate and the Desoir family while they are out there.

Despite all of these exciting developments, space traffic and trade is actually down significantly overall due to the ongoing problem with ships corroding abnormally fast ever since the Astral Order went into the fae wilds. People are still unhappy with them about that.

That’s all for now, see you next time here at the Sol News Network.

 

With regards to the convention, still need to know what events you want to hold and when.

With the peace talks settled down and everything signed off on, there’s a lot of further paperwork and logistics moving around while all parties collect this or that for their various ends of the deal. Good thing we live out here in the Reach and don’t need to see everyone else in meetings or anything.

Haleh has wrapped up whatever she wanted to talk to her mother about and has departed from Diadem to reassemble her crew. Also possibly to escape the constant pampering of the Hasao Tei.

With the Iron Cradle’s trajectory, they are currently stopping off at Kuhas and that fits into the overall plan to find the habited worlds of the Reach. As many are not exactly an undiscovered mystery anymore. The one nearest to Diadem is on the other side of the border within the Hive Worlds. Immediately demonstrating one of the great oddities of the Reach and its way of life. The civilization living there are not technologically advanced but they have space ships. Basically they don’t understand how anything works but they keep trading and getting stuff from people who do understand how it works.

Also recent events have drawn some visitors to Diadem to see whats going on, so we have a few unexpected guests now and then. It turns out Laura was quick on the marketing and had connections in the Reach to spread the word to come and visit. So now we have twenty aliens sitting in a hangar bay selling random junk.

The nearest modern civilization to Diadem is a hop away to the south where a planet called Wula is host to a species known for its colorful semi-aquatic nature. They aren’t particularly known for participating with the rest of the Reach though since they are on the galactic edge and one of the furthest worlds from the heart of the Reach. They are also only recently capable of galactic transit by about two centuries and largely focused on matters regarding their own star system and two neighboring ones they have been attempting to colonize.

The Winter is on its way to Kuhas station though from Averill’s reports it seems not that difficult to set up a shop on the station.There are new vacancies almost every week as people get robbed or murdered for various trivial reasons. It is also a major hub for galactic travelers so they don’t have very many questions about us strange new aliens, we’re a drop in the bucket as far as they’re concerned. Though Sethis has already started to set up quite a large office there.

Which all brings another question in what you would rather focus on for the time being. Right now we have a significant fleet and military presence, the Reach is vast and filled with all sorts of civilizations, gangs, nomadic flotillas, station-state governments, and so on. We have the ability to likely overpower some of the more isolated or primitive members if we wanted a repeat of the incidents on Enohas or Zenaka, though there might be more to gain in dealing with the various greater powers that be. Also to be noted the idea of establishing contact with the super powers of the Reach that we definitely shouldn’t be picking fights with but could be a good start in making progress towards our goals. It’s a lot less random than before since we can just ask for rumors on Kuhas station and so on.

 

I see negotiating went as well as one could hope. Now to prevent Lancaster from realizing any details of it in hindsight.

As for the convention, we’re still in the process of finalizing the details of what its all about and how to present it to people at large. No doubt Sol News will show up just to see if there’s anything worth documenting as well, so worth considering what the rest of Sol will see. Also whether or not we want to advertise it to the Reach, not that they  will care unless they hear of prizes.

That being said, Lancaster is pretty rich by the standards of the Reach and offering substantial prizes for various concepts might be a sneaky way to feel out what they have out here in this region. Do a combat tournament, once we work out how to make sure no one kills each other, and then you can probably find out how strong the Reachers tend to be. Some sort of engineering contest might help you figure out who the best builders are. Maybe some sort of freakshow for just seeing some weird alien shit, I dunno. Worth considering though I think. Basically if you want to have a more local festival in celebration of the FVS, maybe stick to food stands and games. If you want to spy on the international community, prizes! Also some marketing.

Speaking of which, if you want the other areas of Sol it could be a little tricky especially for the first festival. It might be worth directly contacting and sponsoring likely candidates just as a way of showing off its international intentions and establish the tradition. Whether that be for their food stands, showing off fancy ships, or any sort of tournament. I doubt the Phantoms will be bothered to show up to humanoid festivities. At best we could convince Haleh to show up.

Marketing wise I do feel it better to focus on the demographic based on the region you host it in. If it is being hosted at Diadem, I doubt you’ll get much interest from Sol just because regardless of the portals it then begins to feel more like a frontier festival. If you held it on Thenica it might be of greater interest to other solians but definitely not getting any visitors from the Reach we haven’t even established ourselves within yet.

Kharla is on the way to Cayetano as Yasrena promised to meet up with Selah. We’re not entirely sure how that conversation went, though with all of our attention on House Vloz it does seem that some threatening pressure was applied. Kharla herself isn’t terribly affected compared to Kiel’Nada who seems more aware of how the situation has actually changed for the two.

Sooo what else are you doing on Jydoq? Other than fighting the assassin we still have the issue that we’re just sitting there not doing anything. I prepared an intel report on some basics for you to work with at least.

Ah-hem.

So as it stands, Jydoq is just as fucked as Thenica. The most notable thing we’re doing is fighting a cannibal so almost beat for beat. Arkaric really messed them up and used Merlan to make things even worse. They are currently split into a dozen or so smaller governments instead of the unified one they once had and those leaders are constantly arguing with each other due to resource scarcity.

They are all in various levels of being in touch with Solian powerbases with several having emigrated to the frontiers for some sanctuary from the wars on their own world. Many of them escaping into the Western Reach in particular, they’ve been quite familiar with that area of the galaxy for awhile now.

We know that Arkaric intended to integrate them into Sol though we’re still not totally sure why. However, it explains how so many different groups of them wound up talking to different powers from Sol and emigrating to there as well. Cayetano has a few hundred sitting around working day jobs and trying to lay low. One of the major corporate powers at Adelaide is a jydoq as well. It also explains why uniting their government again will likely be difficult. Every time they get close to reuniting anything, something goes wrong but often in subtle ways. If subtly isn’t working, the assassin hits the governor who is making too much progress. Worth noting, there are thousands of planets across the galaxy in similar situations. Where no matter what they do, for some reason events play out that force them to spread out into the galaxy and lose having a unified civilization.

Right now the major problems they’re facing are food shortages and then there’s some ideology conflicts between the various governors about changing the way things tend to be. We don’t have enough food to feed this whole planet, so be careful who and where you ship anything to.

There have also been a number of embassies, ambassadors, diplomats, and rogue explorers showing up here as the first intelligent civilization we made contact with. It helps that we can relate to their apocalypse just a little bit. So our colony isn’t the only Solian thing here. I should note that Kar’Soluth in particular is also here. With the treaty we can’t take direct action against them. Apparently house Jaal’Darya has set up shop on one of the continents. Not sure what they’re up to other than recruiting some goo folk to their side of things.

I am good at keeping secrets, I barely talk to anyone. However, the Phantoms have us infiltrated from top to bottom. If you had taken that war we would have been rotted from within in under twenty four hours. Half our forces would have turned and shot the other half of our forces. That’s how they’ve always operated. We got our start exploring the frontier that Faelyn was in charge of, who knows how many immigrants and colonists actually work for them by some chain of command they don’t even realize. For all we know, Vasia is the actual leak and Sakhessa just dropped my name because everyone would believe it. As a whole, we’re kind of terrible at stopping infiltration. Sethis is good at it, but we just assume if he didn’t find it then its not there. Taking action to prevent them from keeping eyes on us and moving us the way they want would involve turning into a paranoid military dictatorship. They had Alnae and Shetou fighting each other for half a millenia just because ONE of them was assigned to that while the rest did other things. They infiltrated GODS. Just assume they know everything about us except maaaaybe what is happening in Vasia’s lab or aboard the Closing Statement.

We shipped in some earth Elementals to start working on the giant pile of dirt. By the end of the second shift they were hitting on half our colonists and had created a new night club. If nothing else, they are committed to the bit at least.

As for the Rixa plane near Diadem, war. Endless horrific war on a scale Sol cannot even conceive of. The Valdir crusade and all that is in that area. Just uh, keep that rift closed.

From Averill, he’s on his way back. Most of the biotech stuff he heard about from Kuhas again won’t work on an incorporeal being. Though Quinae wouldn’t mind the job of sitting around as a Reach guide if it pays well.

As promised, upon the treaty getting signed the rot suddenly started clearing up around Roha, with such speed that its kind of annoying to know they just casually had an off switch for it. Though the infection itself is only dormant as it is still basically incurable, Deinuu sort of closed the pipe that the mana has to go through for all those symptoms to be showing.

 

We’ve sent Allison to Kuhas Station and she has been setting about getting some offices there to keep an eye on things. Actually pretty easy to do since they don’t really care who is there as long as station security isn’t having any issues with them. Though it has been made clear that station security is a very shoot first and ask questions second so its best not to do anything to piss them off.

It should be noted that the rampant crime on Kuhas is only solved by more crime as it is an otherwise stable social ecosystem. So for Allison to take over as a private security gang, she’s probably going to have to murder a few other gangs to prove she’s the better gang, and to get some turf of her own. Not that she can’t, just stating what she has to do to get set up there. Though she can’t take the vehicles with her very easily as the heart of the station doesn’t allow them to just roam around with a standing ground force that could invade security. They’re relegated to the hangars if they’re on sale. So we might as well leave those around Thenica or bring them to somewhere else until they’re needed.

We also had the super battleship added to the Nomad Flotilla, though its technically still in transit it’ll be there soon. Unlikely that pirates attack something like that at least.

Aryn points out that talking to Arkaric doesn’t involve very many slips of accidental information. He lets her know what he wants us to know. To the point that all she can do is just outright ask about Daiheb and see if he decides to share anything. He did not in regards to Daiheb at least. Though as for Elasyn, he has pointed out that they have his weapon brands and various alien tech as well that he’s collected. It appears that once again he has an arms factory somewhere and once again no one knows where it is. Though given that we produce our own weapons in house it might not be terribly appealing to us. Even if he has collected half a dozen artifacts, they tend to go to Daiheb as the justification for her not shutting him down despite having lost all control of what he’s up to.

As a correction, with the peace treaty signed it is hopefully the end of conflict for at least longer than a year with the Hassani. Basically they completed their quest that took them two thousand years and now get to run off and do their own thing. Without the federation being involved, its likely that no one else in Sol is going to try and take them down. House Song doesn’t represent all of Shetou and Kaylen is basically just a roaming serial killer now if she keeps it up. Us signing this basically ended the war and recognized them as a new empire of the Sol territories with all the gentle touches that politicians like to apply. With Kar’Soluth being somewhat known to be actually theirs they are the new super power of Sol. The age of elven rule seems to have reached its end, and now is the era of dragons. Sure things are still shuffling around and settling down, though we’ve been in this game long enough to see the writing on the walls. I expect she will take a new capital on Thenica, sign off on something with the other remaining super powers like the Demon Kingdom and the Fae, and then to all outside forces she’s the ‘one to talk to’.

As another correction, Kennae is at Jydoq not Zenaka but I’ll assume that’s what you meant and just change your flight schedule.

Michael is on his way back, Sakhessa just put him on a ship and sent him to Cayetano without explanation. I get the impression she was using him to help her get that treaty somehow and now she’s done with him.

Annnnd we are away! So sets forth our great not quite maiden voyage but close enough given that we’re going over a hundred thousand light years! All abooooard.

Man this is a lot of travel time.

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Well we made it to Kuhas station and dropped off Allison and all her stuff for Sethis. Whew boy, this is going to be a long trip.

Anyways, core testing for hand manipulation has proven that some are just better or worse at it though the generations don’t seem to play any factor into how common they are. What we do know is that Adrienne has no serial number and no records of her creation in Siwa database. Wait what if she’s actually a Daiheb android? An android posing as an android posing as a cyborg…that’d be pretty meta. That’s what the kids say right?

Basically we’ve made no progress in replicating or deducing why Adrienne’s hands are so good.

As for the armored core project, on it but still takes a bit. I’ve done it once before though, this whole ship station thing is a voidforged just like us after all. Just takes a lot of awkward wire placements.