Technically Ehan is still there and in power he’s just in a bunker under the claim that until it’s safe they really shouldn’t have him just wandering around. The rebels being uppity are mostly doing the old “sneak in then hit and run” style of being annoying and are now primarily targeting VSEC facilities with varying levels of success.

As for the hunt for Diadem keys, I’ve sifted through the collective rumors, made up random crap while trying to ask for money, and people who may have heard from a guy who heard from a guy. Also some talks with the various Ika we have about. Rumors corroborate the theory that the Blaiken probably have one. Given that they used to be one of the major members of the alliance that built the ringworld it wouldn’t be unreasonable. We already have the one the Exerlus had, but it is possible the exiled consensus has another of them. Along with Nelta, there is a theory that Utewa would have one or perhaps more just by their nature of being collectors.Though that one is just a “it would make sense if” kind of rumor and Utewa are known for not sharing secrets such as that.

The Jydoq are at least interested in this proposed council seat though it comes with further discussion and negotiation. Given that we’re not the only ones involved in their affairs as of late they are in a weird spot overall. Since they have some nine governors this month, there were some mergers and one split again, they’re generally curious as to who takes the position. That’s more of a matter on their own end to resolve I figure but its whats slowing the process down. Not to mention a few of them are more involved with Kar’Soluth who is becoming more problematic by the day. I’ll get back to that one. Essentially things are moving along while they try to sort out if they should take the deal, it does appear that at least one or two of the factions is interested, but they’re sorting out who would be their director representative. Apparently a small but notable minority were considering voting for Kennae for a moment there since he’s been vigilante’ing around the planet for awhile now.

Haleh reported back with news from Sakhessa, apparently Kar’Soluth getting a bit more uppity isn’t just an exclusive thing on our end. Yasrena has suddenly gained a lot of influence within the Hassani. Apparently she’s recently been in contact with Selona after figuring out the whole dynamic that he always uses and how to enhance her position with him specifically. This all comes with Kanika not even being home right now, she left recently to go continue her journey to figure out psionics in particular. Which has left Yasrena able to operate a little loosely. Kanika showing up if we attack Kar’Soluth isn’t the issue since she’s not even around right now, though Sakhessa doesn’t know why Yasrena very suddenly became much more efficient at her job. The issue is more so that if we attack Kar’Soluth, Yasrena herself is going to be the problem.

Have fun on date night try not to be distracted by contemplations of war with some sort of super charged drow empire. Obviously Alnae is invested in helping with this and Shetou wouldn’t mind poking their heads in since they don’t get along with Kar’Soluth much though they’re not committing to anything. I’m noticing a recurring trend there.

We have managed to find some clues to the whereabouts of Councilor Jaerda, she’s with one of the other Alnae Generals and we’re not entiiiirely sure if that protection she’s enjoying is mandatory or not.

Eneas has offered up some names of “replaceable staff” as she puts it that could come by to swap notes at least. Some of the other university staff who are not as busy with running the school.

As for meeting the head of Utewa’s pandem department, it turns out they’re less amicable than Eneas. Very shadowy and reserved, likely because the pandem aspect of Utewa is one of their more guarded secrets and they don’t actually teach very much of it to others. They focus more on the dangers of it and conveniently omit that this is the magic that lets them warp their planet out of existence.

Haziel gave the warlord a poking but little more then that. For the most part they expressed a concern with matters going on back on Thenica making the idea of moving to Jamalia an odd idea.

As for setting up said sanctum for the Pantheon in the Astral Wilds you kind of hit the same problem but now you’re on Ankathi’s home turf. So Ankathi approves of the idea of course.

Also why is everyone getting asteroids lately…whats the real estate market on those like? Should I want an asteroid too?

Selah mentioned that Ankathi is currently letting Kharla rest since even for her sustaining all that Ankathi has taken a definitive toll on them. Ankathi herself apparently told Selah to tell you that she’ll be dropping by for a visit soon anyways though because she’s curious as to what this whole ‘Shadow’ business is that was going on while she was busy. It does occur to me that they’ve never actually met. Ankathi suggested a formal first convening of the pantheon in some way to iron some things out and, as mentioned earlier, is completely fine with it occurring in the Astral Wilds. Haziel voted for ‘anything else’.

The Order of Shadows has been getting its wing underway with being built at the palace. You’ll never guess their interior decoration choices! Yeah they didn’t install any  lights whatsoever, though weirdly enough The Shadow has been oddly specific about getting some statues made to spruce up the place.

Vasia is going about as directed though some of the officers noted being concerned about her behavior. She’s not as erratic or energetic as usual. Almost as if she’s just clocking in and out by necessity, which has never really been the description of her. If anything that’s actually always been the problem with her now that I think about it.

As for violent species in the hive worlds, as it turns out there is no shortage. They outnumber the ones who will talk to you by about a thousand to one. If anything the issue is finding one that Larazja can actually deal with before they deal with her. Also Larazja is whining that she’s a governor now and shouldn’t be expected to go on dangerous missions. As usual.

On the note of artifacts not in the possession of the Hassani, we at least know a few. Naexi and the revenants are still wandering about, we know where Alakira went, and Kaylen has a third one. Also the Ryner is still somewhere in Kar’Soluth most likely. Actually now that I think about it, Yasrena has been awful uppity lately.

Si Yeon probably could learn pandem but she’s definitely not interested in the practice. She also has to spend most of her time learning more about Sahad.

Reports are in from our shadowy friend about the Lucid Cult issue, we can say just by a pattern of behavior that its our old buddy the Director’s Doppelganger. Same one that appointed Alexandria and posed as you at some parties on Thenica. The Shadow knows they were at some point on Cayetano again but have since left and likely are back on Thenica again. The technically appointed new leader of the cult is just some cult member who is pretty strong, but I imagine that is secondary compared to who appointed them…again. These fucking cultists man. It doesn’t appear that the cultists themselves are malicious towards our authority over them, at least intentionally, just that someone somewhere is up to some weird shenanigans.

As another report they thought to point out that going to war with Yasrena is going to be biting off a little more than we might be expecting. She’s recently gained a lot of power though the means of which are somewhat unknown. Perhaps lessons or inspiration from Kanika’s recent return. The Shadow knows she’s already watching us and waiting for us to do something. She’s been talking to Selona a lot lately and that might be a little concerning.

Uhh…I’m not sure if going to Thenica yourself is the right move there. I know you’ve been training and all but I’m not sure I like your odds if you have to fight a drow vampire matriarch thing.

The agents on Kuhas station have at least come up with a plan to see about abducting a security guard. Most of it involves a whole lot of wards to block out any weird communications it might have with the rest of the security forces. Though these are aliens with alien technology so the odds of success are a little hard to determine.

According to the Order of Shadows from Renjala’s crew over there, the Director Doppelganger is up to some mischief yet again and we at least know they’re somewhere on Thenica. Not that it narrows it down terribly but thought I’d update you on the matter.

We’ve prepped the best we can for a conflict with Beldobaan, we’ll uh…see how that goes.

Well I can think of a few news headlines about us showing up and engaging in a war on Thenica that might not be good for diplomatic issues but naaah it’ll be fine. We’ll just blame Lancaster for it and say she told us to do it.

Also your dreams of the Alnae op not becoming a long slog are optimistic at best. Lancaster is trying to defend somewhere not destroy somewhere else, my  money is on that taking forever. She still has to leave battalions here to keep the defenses up against the exerlus warbots that are attacking us on Diadem all day every day.

Experiments with the ships are coming along, there is something to be noted that if we just place multiple cores that could work too. Just a big array of cores about the size of a refrigerator could represent an entire crew. Definitely less space than a typical crew. At least thats the idea I get from seeing how modern ships use psi crystals to link all their systems together.

One limiting factor on the engineering department so far has been that we still haven’t managed to catch these hands and figure out Adrienne’s magic touch, or my own for that matter.

Also whats budget restrictions between friends eh Lancaster?

The WTC-3 is making slow progress, mostly because it keeps falling over due to how large they’re trying to make the cannon that is sort of the signature of the series.

As for the simulation of our forces against house Sarghess, there was a notable issue in dealing with their previous tactics that we have seen on record. In particular they spread out and move much faster on the ground than the average force will. The most significant effects dealt to them came from our aircraft. Another aspect of the simulation is the assumption that we will be out of position at the time of their attack, as their last six out of eight battles were conducted with a positional advantage. If we assume they start on the opposite side of a battlefield from us, we do about 60% better. If we assume otherwise, simulations project heavy losses. It is likely to depend heavily on the location of any such conflict. We basically want to fight them in a large open area to have the best odds.

Zenaka is slowly becoming more chaotic with the rebellious factions being somewhat upset at the ongoing matter post-summit of being declared a part of the federation led by Ehanxelvun. Their skirmishes into the federated areas are becoming more frequent. Ehan has moved to a secure location on Zenaka and left us information on how to contact him. Apparently he is at some sort of fortified bunker that has sacrificed communications facilities to enhance security as it is a very rustic base with a notable distrust of magic. It kind of reminds me of Renjala’s steam technology actually.

We’ve started shipping some of the Vittles crops around to Alnae.

In regards to Kuhas station. Most of the people you’re buying out just take the money and venture on back into the Reach to find out what to do with all the money. Also yes Renjala’s refinery makes the same basic fuel they use. Though he would be considered to be producing a lower quality version of it, the most common stuff. Utewa is one of the few places in the Reach that can refine fancy fuel but most people don’t find it worthwhile given how many stations can easily be found within the Reach. That or they aren’t operating ships that require that stuff.

Some of the Vessian tribes who came to investigate the food outreach program are definitely interested but our logistics are hitting a problem of sustaining them before anything is finished growing. We sent a large amount of food to Alnae and most of our food on Diadem is still being imported from Cayetano. Keeping the Vessians fed long enough to yield any crops is an issue, while there are only a few hundred of them here they eat more than some species who are considered monstrous for their appetites. The few that are here are manageable but scaling up to having more come and visit would be a logistical impossibility with our current production. So far the best idea Vittles board of directors has is to go in slowly expanding phases as more of them can come.

As for discussing diplomatic relations with them, obviously the food is a big leverage point in their interest with the Federation. Though they are also not governed the same way most larger civilizations are, so its sort of just holding up a “sign up here” billboard and seeing how many show up compared to continuing their nomadic lifestyle. We considered offering to help terraform their world but by the sounds of it, their world was beyond the terraforming ability of anything we could do barring the entity of Rixa-Thenica and that one is just a maybe.

To another end, as the Vittles farms expand we’re seeing more accidents occur due to that whole “Haziel hates everyone” botanical update patch. Not that farming anywhere other than Diadem would alleviate the issue for those involved, but it is worth noting that food production is scaling up to the point that the druidic order of Renjala’s can’t keep up with making sure nothing goes wrong all over the place all at once.

As for smaller planets, we do know about that semi aquatic race who even entered into the Diadome tournament that lives nearby. They are at least space worthy. Other then that the explorers would likely have to find some other small planets to make an offer to. The aquatic peoples are actually quite interested since we seem big and spooky and we’ve learned they are a little terrified to come to galactic awareness only to realize they are surrounded by the most lawless part of the galaxy and nowhere near any other sane civilized people. Also that there are far fewer aquatic people in the galaxy, at least to achieve space travel. Though given their aquatic nature they’re concerned that we don’t have enough water on Diadem, so currently our diplomatic corps are talking them into visiting Cayetano, which is almost all water.

Before you ask, yes Jiyan really should have reported something back by now but we have no idea how far or how deep into the Warrens she went. She said she was fine last time we saw her and knew she was going to be gone for awhile though so I’m not sure if its worth being concerned yet.

Eleazor and Valen have departed Diadem to chase after the jydoq assassin into the Reach. All they know is there are six possible places they might have left to if they have left Diadem at all but we definitely lost track of them.

For now the Jydoq government should be a little safer than usual since we know the assassin is on the other end of the Reach from them. Ranwe also isn’t struggling too much as civil unrest for the Jydoq isn’t particularly violent. It turns out the Jydoq are instead prone to experiencing mass depression. So for them “civil unrest” is more like a steep drop in productivity and their economy. I am reminded of how Hylavi expressed herself by being just apathetic at all times and it kind of makes sense if you ask me.

However, the Jydoq are wary of joining the Federation for the same reasons they never joined Nelta, they’re quite used to remaining independent. This apparently has some history for them with being approached by many other civilizations for various alliances including the Tungsten Teeth, Hassani, and Utewa at one point. Not to mention the Kar’Soluth are also here and pushing for many of the same things. They don’t mind trading or negotiating certain terms, but they don’t particularly like being beholden to an authority that spans further than their own interests. Their initial point is they would only be liable to consider it if they were immediately given a position on the executive board as to make sure their own unique interests and needs were represented at the highest possible levels. Though they wouldn’t mind making immigration easier in both directions and setting up trade routes. Also on Jydoq, a similar summit was held by the Kar’Soluth though we’re not sure what they’re up to over there. We suspect they’re looking for a new person to make an official leader of similar to what they did with Merlan.

In other news, two of the western Alnae members on Thenica were recently crushed by Kar’Soluth. A large chunk of their population is here on Diadem farming, and whether or not that caused a gap in the defenses is hard to say. Reports are that Beldobaan in particular made a sudden and aggressive attack that led to the death of one of the generals and their base of operations has been captured.

The idea of putting Arcurans in a combat mech definitely excites Arcurans. They have already broken six of them in gladiatorial combat. I suppose it counts as training.

Friend has become known as The Shadow upon taking over the plane of shadow in the process of their ascension. Didn’t even know that was an option. Well technically Haziel did it but she had a fragment that made her the legitimate heir to the plane. They’re still settling in though but it is notable that without Ankathi here, since she’s busy at the moment punching angels, we have no idea what their powers actually are. Other then that they can eaves drop anywhere there is a shadow being cast, and we do not know the limit of that ability. It is implied there is some sort of rules and limitations to it but if nothing else, they are known for being a bit secretive.

As for detecting Zero, it was notable that this close to the cluster there was less going on compared to your adventures in the deeper parts of the Astral Wilds. It is also questionable if they are ignoring you or slowly drawing closer because they can’t cast FTL.

It actually isn’t that hard to create stability in Valjala as long as it is something in motion. Such as your idea for Vasia’s asteroid. However, I would advise that hosting the pantheon in your domain might be a bit of an awkward meeting ground. Since it is where you are most powerful and sort of imbalances things a little. It would be like Haziel hosting it in the Fae Wilds, a place where she has all the physical power over any other attendee.

As for my fiance, she works at the bar I play my guitar at every other month or so. Gets me free drinks too!

Eneas points out they can’t stay to take over a temporary professor role since they also possess an administrative position back at Utewa. They only reason they came themselves was to see how things were going on the formerly abandoned ringworld. They also had a lot of questions about those Ika they saw walking around during the festivities though didn’t give any actual opinion on the matter.

Most Reachers despite enjoying the tournament are still nomadic in nature and not terribly interested in joining a formal navy. A few recruits here and there, though mostly those interested in settling around Diadem rather than joining a navy.

Of those invited to the formal founding of the Pantheon, Haziel said sure, Mahuea said he’ll send Vairatoa since his presence would literally incinerate reality around himself, Mokihi said nothing but Waianoa said she’ll represent the quiet turtle, and Eden is just always following you around already anyways. Technically a good start all things considered, its just the Archons are a little difficult to work with since they can never leave their domain without causing severe ramifications.

Vasia in the meantime points out she still needs a ship. Preferrably one large enough to carry Kaiju freighters for collecting samples. Though if you want her to look into the Selona matter, she needs to get to Aryn and Allison to figure out the nature of their cybernetics. Barring that, she needs to find one in the wild that isn’t close enough to Selona to draw his immediate retaliation.

Larazja’s response can be summed up as “she’ll be at the lake”. After being working class for so long, being royalty with a private lake is cushy enough for her. She remains extremely difficult to motivate to do anything. I suppose technically if she is the governor of Roha they just have to have matters of governance directed to an outdoor office with a giant snake woman sunbathing all the time?

It should be noted the Lucid Lance is behaving strangely. They’re mostly going about business as usual but they keep mentioning their leader, and not in the past tense. They also keep undertaking operations we didn’t tell them to do. So far nothing too dramatic, mostly just setting up new bases, but I’m sort of wary of a bunch of cultists suddenly acting on their own.

Well we set up shop at Diadem for now, two more made it back who knows where the other two are. We should probably figure out what we’re doing now. Not many ongoing projects.

Well that was a bad idea. The only three portal locations available were 1) A dead solar system the jesai destroyed 2) Another dead solar system that Vasia destroyed 3) The Nelta military headquarters. Lancaster chose Number 3.

As your advisor I feel before we launch this that I should point out in no uncertain terms, we will be arriving via portal into either an actively occupied territory in the middle of a warzone OR the military capital of Nelta. They do not like us and have an active practice of ignoring our comms now because of what Vasia did and what Selona has done to them three times now.

Option A: A jesai deletes us from existence. Option B: We test those shield generators and anti boarding measures against Rikoy. Who by what I’ve heard, is much more dangerous than a pirate. Rumor has it, started by Lancaster, that Rikoy might have beaten Rahlken so bad that the latter never returned to the eastern side of the galaxy again.

The whole reason for going around was because we wanted to maintain a distance from all this, if we portal straight into it I just need to make sure I have the ability to say “I told you so”

Upon further investigation of Kuhas, no one knows anyone who works for the security team. No friends, no bartenders with a regular, no family members. Every member of the security team is a helmeted soldier with no outside relations. No one has ever seen any of them without the helmets except for Layilli.

Kennae’s main job for you is to find that damned assassin so he could beat the tar out of him again. Though that has little to do with your training I think.

Also that assassin is definitely not a match for the Revenants. For one all the Revenants are solian and for another they all use weapons. The assassin makes weapons from their body instead. That and honestly Sarden probably would go after the assassin herself if she could find them.

Stories of Lore 54

Senshicon was a reasonable success. There have been a few complaints about the format of some of the tournament rules and seeding but that can be adjusted for in the future. It was the first run of it, can’t expect everything to be perfect. It definitely did draw a lot of guests from the Reach thanks to the company’s marketing efforts around Kuhas in particular. A great chance for diplomatic greetings with some people in particular.

It is quite certain that some were here to scout us as much as we are scouting them. Likely leading to credibility of Cazvrath’s suspicions that the mage from Utewa threw the match as not to reveal more than she wanted to. Also Chevalier’s victory might have made people wary of the Voidforged in general. Even if most of them didn’t get to top 16, people just remember who the final winner is. Oh well that’ll be a problem for Hex I’m sure.

Also we sold a lot of hot dogs. Reachers apparently like those.

Meanwhile back at Zenaka, they’ve suddenly started moving the bureaucracy really slowly. Citing that the paperwork is complicated, even though they had that down surprisingly fast just a short  while ago. Though as it stands now, Federated Zenaka isn’t really  moving that much but the rebels are still being rebellious even if they are smaller in number ever since the summit.

Larazja commented that as far as she knows she’s just still in charge of her puddle in Cayetano. Vasia being in charge of Roha means that as far as she’s aware she now listens to Vasia and isn’t entirely certain what the Nevun being a member state actually means.

Despite being Ilex’s advisor for so long, clearly she wasn’t paying very close attention.

Friend is working on their plane shenanigans at the moment, apparently it takes awhile. So by the way in the five years you were gone did you know I had a kid? Eerihild said I should probably mention that.

The tournament was a bit of an upset but also…kind of makes sense? Eerihild learned that Vessians are pretty good at dealing with savage tactics and Haleh learned that Chevalier is very very good at one on one combat. There’s been some dispute about the rulesets favoring certain fighting styles, though all of the top four were melee experts so not so sure how big that complaint really is. Though if Nila had shown up I do wonder how this would have gone.

Meanwhile out in the Astral Plane, no sign of Zero but its a big place where all methods of detection don’t work. I imagine though if you just sat out there long enough Zero might find you judging by how you found the Raven II the first time. Astral gravity or something like that.

Isn’t Irae already knight champion for Valjala? if not her than Holua. Either way you have too many people to keep track of.

The celestial situation is a bit of chaos. To some of them they’re fighting for the continued independence of the celestial realm from planar entities like Ankathi, some just don’t like her specifically, and others are of Selah’s mindset of “well clearly there’s our new god”. Though notably, we’re not getting as many refugees as we might expect. I’m guessing Ankathi is trapping them in some way. Selah says we should probably stay out of Ankathi’s affairs since she’s directly involved in this one. That and they kind of aggravated her with their initial attack and “you know how she is”.

The Lucid cult is still figuring out whose in charge right now as all their leaders keep dying over and over again. To the point that some are wondering if its dangerous to be in a cult. A few are trying to experiment with that mech project at least.

Hrmph, weird station. Apparently we just missed a tournament of some sort. They have some sort of…farming initiative going on. Anyways while we’re here for a little bit, we should see what they ferment here. We’re still waiting for the other team to get back from their latest mission.

Ahhhhh we won. That’s good ol Preacher engineering for you.

Sooo the assassin isn’t here at Jydoq anymore. I just received word from…you sir…that they were at the tournament. Defeated by Gunhild though. Then they disappeared off into the crowd. We can only guess as to their motives. Though Kennae confirms that was them. Which explains why they’ve been so quiet around Jydoq lately, they’ve been out in the Reach.

We’ve distinctly learned that Kuhas has extensive background checks before allowing people to join security. Which is weird because no one has a paper trail to conduct background checks with. It seems like a formality to tell people ‘no’. Which now that I think about it, given the rumors surrounding the administrator there might be something fishy going on there.

Ehanxelvun has turned out to be quite good at bureaucracy and filling out paperwork. Given his previous position and activities he’s always been good at that sort of thing and exploiting it to his advantage. Which is sort of how he wound up in this position in the first place. The first thing he did was that constitution which created a method of succession and got it signed by most of the other territorial lords over the last month. Making it so that the position automatically transfers to a chosen heir instead of “whoever is holding the biggest stick at the time”. It has a few tricks in it that basically created an oligarchy with the Emperor being the only one who can forcefully remove others from their position or appoint new ones. In the event that no heir is specified, the position of emperor basically goes up for auction as to avoid the murder clauses as you requested.

Vittles is still coming along with the first harvest though the farms are still expanding in size. Alnae and a few tribes of the Vessians have agreed to come check out this whole open farm thing we have going on.

Though people from Alnae are still trickling in, transport logistics to reach the portal and all. That and people being swayed to the idea bit by bit. Getting news to spread without comms, all that fun stuff.

Cazvrath has agreed to visit Diadem, if nothing else out of curiosity to see the place. Though worth noting we should keep her away from the farms, Alnae and Shetou have that whole long standing grudge thing.

In the meantime,

Notably one of the still present limitations of your abilities is that you need to know where you’re coming and going from. Particularly relevant is that Jiyan went into the Warrens beyond comm range to figure out where things are that you might want to warp yourself to in the future. Until they comm again we’re a bit blind as to where within the Warrens they actually are.

It turns out Ankathi beat you to the punch on visiting the angels. That was what she took off to do with her new Kharla body last month. Using Selah as her minion to help convince some of them…and then she started murdering the rest. Though I’m told by Selah that was more their fault than hers. Given how they treated Reika in the past, you can see how they might sometimes be disposed towards questionable choices. Apparently they forgot the golden rule of Ankathi, she is pinnacle of disproportionate responses. Apparently three archangels actually tried to attack her. The war in the celestial realm is still ongoing and a few seem keen to take you up on your offer if nothing else to get away from Ankathi – who has to take breaks for Kharla’s sake every now and then.  Ankathi’s mysterious blackguards seem to be winning just because of Ankathi doing the heavy lifting. We also saw the first temple being attacked by some of the independent governments of the frontier who Ankathi has been securing alliances with as a side hustle. Most relevant though, for some reason the Sangui De’Rex family was there. Several of their well known elder vampires were just snacking on angels while under Ankathi’s “protection”. Given how vampires react to celestial magic, it’s questionable if Ankathi negotiated with them favorably or if she threatened to smite them all.

So that was amusing timing on your part. Heaven is at war with New Heaven basically.

Friend points out that Ankathi keeps naming people according to their domain, if you would be willing to let them join the pantheon they would be okay with taking on their deity name. Such as you are “The Traveler” and Ankathi is “The Fate”. Notably at the moment, Ankathi is clearly busy and doesn’t have much input on the whole adding Friend to the pantheon thing.

Work on the whole plane thing is underway, it is to be noted that Friend is one of the most powerful pandem entities we know of even if they just sulk around about dying and spy on people. So once you explain the spells they’re pretty much good to go from there just as you were, with one caveat. They must enter the Astral Wilds. I am amused by the prospect of an information broker with severe ADD.

Welp Ilex died in the dumbest way. Jydoq is kind of just as much of a mess as it was the entire time. The Jydoq summit has largely broken down into “no you do it” “no you do it” bickering, the assassin has been a significant problem for them evidently and they’ve gotten wind of what the assassin is. Given its from their own mythology, I suppose I can see why they’re particularly wary of it the way many were wary of a dracolich being found out. They’ve agreed to try and make separate capitals to break things down in the meantime. Though we definitely don’t know which safeguards work or not against this assassin since we can’t tell if Ilex’s latest colony works or if they’ve just been uninterested in trying.

Okay so Ilex is dead, turns out flaying your soul cannot be covered by your psyche under…whatever circumstances those were supposed to be. If anything this data was closest to figuring out how the Lakaaj trick works for whatever that’s worth.

This leaves us in an awkward position on jydoq since it was largely his project and now uh…poof. Not like I know what we’re doing there. I mean I do but it’s not like I care enough to pick a fight with assassin man.

In hindsight its kind of anticlimatic that Ilex killed himself before the assassin could find some more dramatic master plan to eliminate him despite his overmind.

Speaking of which Averill, as per Ilex’s last request, he wound up visiting the Utewa academy. There are a very strange number of children with guns there. Apparently they teach “self defense” because kids going back out into the Reach need to be prepared. They also have classes about becoming pirates… it’s a weird place. The academy is so large that it just has whatever random junk you want to learn available as a class. Including Biology 238: Cross Species anatomic compatibility. In layman’s terms “how to recognize what aliens you can bang”. I know about that one because that’s the one Averill was visiting.

Not much luck on finding out details about the assassin so far though, might be because he got distracted.

Fortunately we took a rift right back to Diadem and they have finished their fancy new shipyards, so repairs are good to go already.

I’ve put together what we can about Rahlken and had the scouts out at Kuhas and down at Utewa poke around a bit more to get a complete picture.

Rahlken’s primary limitation has always been the size of his team since he doesn’t really recruit people from outside his own family, or specifically his species. Though they cannot procreate any further. However, he has a lot of resources and can evidently hire out other pirates or mercenaries like the Tungsten Teeth.

We did find out that it is very unusual for him to hire any outside help. No one can really recall him ever doing that before, and while nothing seems beyond him to try it is still very uncharacteristic. Given what we know it isn’t unreasonable to suspect that Selona told him to make sure we didn’t make it out of the Reach. If he was acting under orders it would explain his willingness to pursue abnormal means this time around.

His own fleet is largely stolen ships that he can operate with skeleton crews if he needs the extra maneuverability, they tend to be docked within his own ship like a super duper carrier of some sort. This is likely where one of the pursuing fleets had come from. He has no formal base of operations other than his ship, which is now lurking along the northern edge of the galaxy.

We also learned from this encounter that the Tungsten Teeth fleet, though we wiggled around them long enough to take a stand at the gas giant, is technologically inferior to federation ships though they pack a mean punch. That being said, their crews are far more experienced than most of ours. Makes sense given that they’re a centuries old mercenary business.

VSEC has previously sent a lot of ships to try and reach Nelta to establish diplomatic contact. One even made it but they got there around the beginning of the jesai invasion and no one had time to talk to them. That and they were in immediate mortal peril with that war going on. Given our interaction with Rahlken and the known desires of Selona to prevent diplomatic communication between many powerbases around the galaxy, I’d say we have enough evidence to assume he is intentionally targeting any attempts to reach Nelta.

With that in mind, Rahlken won’t be the last problem in our way on this voyage. I imagine if we went around to the south we’d run into the Blaiken and so on and so forth.

The issue we’ve had with trying to find allies is that the people who hate him most are planetbound. Rahlken rarely picks fight with other fleets unless he has a very specific motive. Space stations maybe now and then though. The Vessians like him since he avenged them, and Utewa is immune to him so they don’t particularly care about his shenanigans.

I imagine Haleh would actually know some people with grudges against him, but also against her.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the shipments to General Preskian, and yep there’s a lot of shady stuff going on in there thanks to Kar’Soluth. The agents are trying to handle it. As for messing with Kar’Soluth in general I will remind you Beldobaan is one of the houses here and we did opt not to pick that fight last time this was on the table.

We’ve deployed the team to Elasyn, they’re currently on the galactic highway. Travel time and all.

Rampart is now under Michael and they’ve been rooting out any upstart gangs that might find it worthwhile to pick a fight with them for territory.

The hunt for the fake director has made a little bit of progress. They are definitely focused on Thenica as we’ve heard very few reports of them traveling outside of Sol. All the imposter scenarios were related to Sol territory matters and messing with people along the way. Though they’ve been rather quiet lately, which means either they’re laying low, they’ve abandoned the gimmick since the signing of the treaty, or we could be doing better in actually finding out other incidents.

“Headhunters at the new station and colony mean eventually when they have populations we’ll start picking out candidates for operative staus from them, right? That’s how that works?”

Yes. Also we got those turrets set up at the Aetas station, definitely can’t put that many turrets onto Kuhas since we don’t own it and there are rules against that sort of thing there.