Sarrai is currently on vacation as suggested. Though that mostly entails recovering from injuries rather than beach activities so far.

On the Thenican front, Sarghess is still fighting with the Tungsten Teeth across various skirmishes though it has started to turn more towards the Sarghess’ favor as time goes on and they figure out what these aliens are all about and how they operate. Also scout reports say that this has been valuable to see how professional alien mercenaries do things, and specifically that they’re definitely much stronger than most armies we have encountered. If this was a fair and honest fight, they’d definitely have a significant edge. Also they are very good at taking bases and fighting within enclosed locations. Likely because in the Reach a lot of their work would take place boarding ships or on space stations. The lesson of the story being: Don’t let them board us or get into urban environments in the future.

In terms of a strategic analysis of Sarghess, they still rely heavily on out-positioning with fast moving armies and rely on self contained logistics alongside massive arsenals. Wherever they need artillery, it appears there overnight. Same for their anti air weapons or similarly specialized tools. While the tungsten teeth are clearly better outright fighters, Sarghess is pulling ahead upon realizing these strengths and weaknesses and focusing on positioning their assets right where they need to be to exploit these problems. The alien mercenaries keep getting caught while moving locations in open fields or having once safe positions bombarded in the middle of the night by artillery that was a thousand miles away the day before. That and vampiric drow from beldobaan are probably, albeit discreetly, causing havoc in ways we’re not quite catching.

Nah division reports that the fight is effectively over, Jaal’Darya has sent people to deal with it and aside from their naval control that grows every month  – they developed bioweapons that specifically kill the dominant races among the Teeth mercenaries. Sarghess has been deploying it with their own people and while the fighting appears to still be ongoing as of now, they estimate that by next month the Teeth will be crippled.

Analysis aside, Alnae refugees are still being evacuated as best we can though there are a lot of them. More than had even gone to Moncayo in the first Nelta invasion – largely because of communication of ‘what is going on’ is better between warlords than disparate groups we find roaming on Thenica.

Essentially there are a lot of logistics going on as we prepare to attack Beldobaan after Shetou moves in which could take a bit since that hinges on getting the refugees out, then letting them fight the last warlord.

Zenaka has experienced an escalation of violence as now several territory lords are attempting to assassinate Valen, some of the other lords are trying to assassinate them for assassinating Valen, and Valen is currently occupying one of the territories with most the available forces she has for offense while looking for a particularly sneaky one. So business as usual.

The shadow reports that in their opinion the power dynamic is largely between everyone other than Ankathi, and Ankathi. Purely because she is the only one that knows how to kill other deities efficiently, at least supposedly. If she can actually do this, she’s the only one who can resort to brute force in the entirety of the council. Other than discovering the method to create planar entities, that is sort of her only claim to her position as well. Between this ability and her powers as The Fate being a little overpowered, she’s in charge by way of brute strength. Though The Shadow is just an information person, not terribly great at Charisma. So they still intended to just make you do all the work with such information anyways.

On that topic, they’ve been trying to figure out how to get to Halaestra. Finding her is extremely difficult since she lives in the void and then convincing her to exit retirement is just as difficult. They were asking if you had any ideas on how to accomplish either, since Halaestra is one of the most prodigal pandem wielders we know about despite their lack of interest or even outright distaste for the art.

For alien candidates, Chancellor Habrah is quite likely to be the university’s pandem expert but Shadow can’t confirm it since no one at Utewa uses binds.

As for Reika, she is waiting for Kanika in order to be recalled. Kanika left to elsewhere in the galaxy after the treaty to pursue finishing her studies, since Yasrena had been a big part of that treaty she left Reika to work for Yasrena for the time being. So to get Reika away from Kar’Soluth, you’d have to cause either Kanika or Sakhessa to recall her. Though with Aureum expanding its fortress defenses by the day despite being in a position of peace, it would be hard to convince them that they need Reika for anything in particular. The Shadow also commented that these girls sure have a lot of K’s in their name.

Haziel points out that Jaerda is a candidate just for political reasons for an empire that is in a state of decline and she just so happens to be very good at pandem magic. The other four of you at least have survived multiple eras of history, enough to see various nations rise and fall. Jaerda’s too deeply attached to Alnae and isn’t ready to take on a position that could stretch on for thousands of years. She’ll have the power to pick favorites before she’s seen a wider perspective, which turns into gods like Lolth. Too attached to one group of people with too much power to focus on them. Druid credentials aside, Haziel feels that Jaerda is going to do something stupid and meddlesome very early into her new career. Which brings up the question from Shadow as to what you think even should be the qualifications for these rituals?

The Shadow also reports that the Demon King will at least agree to the meeting but it will be held at his castle at a specified date, which happens to be during the Council of Lords. This is good for getting a meeting and getting a chance to sway demon lords as well, though I warn ahead of time that this means Asmoday will also be there and that makes the whole thing a little bit more complicated if he decides to have an opinion on the matter.

Evacuations of Alnae are underway but it will take some time to move uh…a few billion maybe?- of people to Enohas. Also in the process of which we have members of the fae migrations still ongoing so Enohas is becoming a mess. Arcurans keep trying to set up arena promotions for nicer land plots and argue that they technically should still own all of it and it is their right to hand it out to refugees by their own governmental system…of get a high place in a tournament for better real estate. Obviously they’re just trying to get more people in the Arena and don’t particularly care about any other aspect of this complicated refugee crisis. The Chosen Wolves are also grumbling about housing so many people on Enohas will result in the overtaking of all its natural elements that had caused them to set up shop here in the first place.

Jaerda has been undergoing training with you on this planar entity business, and would probably prefer a new plane over anything else, though this means that despite her ability to maintain the Enohas building codes it is proving sketchy for the refugees.

In other news, Vasia points out that kidnapping Yasrena is pointless since it is just a drow priestess controlled by possession from the yochlol. So step one is finding the yochlol or it’ll just nab another host. The real Yasrena is just some rich girl who likes living in a fancy house and is otherwise okay with not being conscious for days at a time if it means she doesn’t have to get a real job. The Shadow might know how to find said Yochlol since it is  a bind but that’s one of those bits of premium information that’ll cost a significant trade.

She has also determined that space bug you found is a space bug. She just made it sound much more exciting. It’s a life form similar to the Lakaaj or whatever-the-hell Decaelys comes from. A creature that exists in a galactic scale ecosystem rather than a planetary one and is proof that regardless of how insane: life finds a way. She is transferring half her team to Diadem in preparation to tag and observe as many of them as she can since this revolutionizes our understanding of what is actually out there in the galaxy, since its the first non-sapient species to live in the vacuum of space for no reason other than “because it just does”. Vasia also describes them as being very docile, probably not a lot of natural predators in space. They also eat organic matter rather than sunlight or, as their incarnum wings might suggest, souls. It is likely to be some sort of descendant of the silnians with origins in hive territories. Some observations of it have revealed that it eats some of the organic matter floating through space radiating from the hive territories that probably put the fish on Diadem in the first place. It stands to reason that this is a common phenomena in the hive territories, at least enough so that such a large swarm of these bugs could be flying around out there. Though that does it make it strange that such a large collection of them is flying away from the hive worlds towards Diadem rather than anywhere else with radiating organic life, energy, or any other resource usable to such a creature. It’s on her list of ‘needs more observation’. That and instead of developing sapience with their essentia they developed space wings and the ability to survive such. So it is on the list of one of the many ways something might evolve into existence. Instead of a fully formed sapient incarnum soul and psyche, they opted for space flight.

She also questions what you consider mental scarring because Larazja gets traumatized by practically anything.

To summarize Echo Prime’s explanations of degradation-

It should happen within a few centuries of its own accord but it does depend on the lifestyle of the voidforged in question and their own ability to keep their shit together. Chevalier was used as an example for “probably fine” but Vanessa is a hot mess waiting to have a mental breakdown.

As for the why, apparently its a fault in our core design but by her description it is less of a severe fault made by poor engineering and more so a fault found in almost all living things except for the true immortal beings like Decaelys and the Lakaaj. Essentially, we might be mechanical but we can still get old. Replacing parts accelerates the mental degradation aspect when we would have to relink to a new shell. Also lil bit of that old parable mixed in, how many parts can you replace one by one on a ship before it’s not the same ship?

The how kind of went over my head. Something about mana corrosion leading to psyche degradation despite the two needing to exist simultaneously for essentia to exist. This in some way related to how damage to the psyche can cause it to repair itself in a way that produces more mana in the process. It is part of Renjala’s studies about how basically every crazy powerful mage tends to have very depressing backstories. The process of psyche reparation causes an increase in mana production which in turn accelerates the corrosion of our psyche. Many species experience a collapse of their physical bodies before their mental abilities, especially with an ordinary lifestyle. It is likely that we would wind up like pre-operation Haziel over time. If your body can outlast your mind by a long enough expanse, you start to see the impacts on your mind before dying of old age. It was the reason Haziel couldn’t remember the names of her own children or the many adventures she’d had over fifty thousand years but with the mental capacity for a hundred at best. All of this was part of Kanika and Eliza’s research and one of the main focuses of Kanika’s work.

There is massive individual variance if you count fringe cases. For example, those who upgraded beyond their anatomy. As a human, Sakhessa should be a puddle of amnesia like Haziel by now but Kanika patched the problem of human anatomy to extend her ability to avoid degradation. If you don’t count the fringe cases who upgraded or escaped their anatomy through various means, you see variance of about 50%. For some humans the problems begin at fifty and others at a hundred but all of them have it by a hundred and fifty barring external means to combat the issue. It’s a limit of their squishy brain. Using a mechanical example, the Exerlus themselves have upgraded themselves far enough to avoid the problem for thousands of years at  a time but they still usually shut down and clean out their memory for some maintenance then reboot as a refurbished consciousness that can access its old information through their collective network memory storage.

This is how they prevent the problem in particular, routine maintenance and memory wipes. However, they are a collective networked consciousness similar to the Silnians. This makes them less individualistic but it also means rebooting their individual consciousnesses is less of a dramatic impact on them. Voidforged are highly individualistic since we were modeled after the elves that built us. Which might be a part of why our core’s lifespan is very similar to their brains. We do not have a networked state of being and as you have noticed we all have very diverse and unique personalities. If we didn’t, then you wouldn’t be rejecting my funding requests all the time. They’ve also determined that my crab master 2000 might have an abnormally short lifespan because of this. To be fair I am just learning about all this too.

It can be detected but only by advanced technology far beyond what we have. The Exerlus can scan a life form down to its atomic composition and as a result notice patterns in their collective database. So while it isn’t guaranteed that everything they said about this process is correct, apparently our cores exhibit similarities to a few thousand other mechanical races that indicate this is likely to occur.

When it comes to prevention and treatment we get into some weird territory especially since we are such a young species, to the point that we haven’t even observed this happening yet and are going entirely based on the prediction of a glorified scanning probe. Prevention measures suggested have included: Don’t replace limbs in such a way that it requires re-calibration on behalf of the core. Replacing the shell of a limb is one thing, replacing the circuitry and bones is where the problem comes in. Don’t plug in an aethernet cable between two cores as to avoid a level of communication where it becomes hard for one core to differentiate its thoughts from the other. Also, because we are based on Solians, deprivation of agency is theorized to cause additional problems. Which we theorize explains why Arsene had mental issues mirroring that of solian humanoids. They couldn’t move very much nor could they interact with their environment as they were too large and had no tools for manipulation, but they lived in a world built for much smaller creatures with fine motor control. Other prevention measures would be to avoid any scenario with a static environment for too long, otherwise known as a lack of stimulation – we can get bored basically. This really all sums up to us being more like our creators than we really appreciated. Despite the scale of the differences when comparing a human to a demon and then either to us, comparing us to an lakaaj or an arcuran is a much greater difference. Apparently energy based creatures are better at maintaining long lifespans without mental degradation since they don’t really have a memory limit determined by their material properties.

Other treatment and prevention options get sort of into the realm of immortality. Our solian counterpart solutions being prime examples, becoming ‘other things’. Mummies, liches, gods, elementals, and so forth. For us to do something similar to that…well I have some experimental ideas. First of which is to find a voidforged who can learn incarnum or pandem without immediately shutting themselves down on accident.

All of this is to say: Our lifespans and signs of degrading are mostly mental rather than physical, and as such doing things that impact us mentally are far more damaging than it would be to other races. Though how dire it is has yet to be seen and its worth noting that things which would rapidly degrade the physical condition of solians do not apply to us. Rather than us being particularly susceptible to mental degradation, it is simply more prominent to us because physical degradation doesn’t apply as much. Even if our cores can age, decay, grow weaker, and then shatter on their own – it is likely that our cores can physically outlast our minds. So these mental issues are at the forefront of our potential problems of mortality. So it is more likely we develop dementia before we develop cancer is basically what I’m saying. However, because our cores cannot physically modify and repair themselves like organic brains, these problems can be accelerated by external factors more so than organics as well.

The universe is a bitch like that.

Stories of Lore 57

Valen reports back that her current plan is slightly repetitive but now with her insight as someone who has been a member of these types of affairs. Though specifically, by presenting herself as a new leader with FVS backing that is also a Zenakan elite coming by to ask people some questions, she is able to find them and in some cases just shoot them right there in their own offices. This was her solution to avoid bombardment or invading cities such that it might alert those leaders that they should run and hide. For the most part she is just writing down which ones are especially problematic as well as their successors to have a territorial lord she promised FVS salary and emigration to continue to pose as one of the rebellious ones who will call a meeting later so she can just blow that up with all of them in it at once. For now her main focus is on getting control over who replaces them to try and avoid it turning into a cycle. Though she has also invaded multiple areas and just blown up at least half the city near the border areas to slow down attacks.

However, one complication she’s found is that FVS forces are now in greater danger than before and the skirmishes are becoming more costly in both manpower in equipment. The offworld weaponry that has been slowly spreading has been equipping the rebels with the tools to actually damage our assets rather than just the standing prior constructions of the native zenakans. This is leading to situations where what should be at best a street gang are now making plays for territorial control against their territory lords and muddying up the process.

Jydoq doesn’t seem particularly interested in commissioning a new space station, they technically still have a couple in orbit as well as in the nearby star system. These haven’t been damaged but they’re in a sort of Alnae situation where different miniature governments control different things.

The strike on the new machine within the other section of Diadem was a success albeit an expensive one. Details in the battle report.

The Caelkians have been poking their head through our portals ever since formal access was granted. They are however newly galactic and their ships are taking forever to get anywhere so progress with them has been slow. They’re still trying to figure out how to install communication systems that could reach as far as Diadem back on their own planet.

Gasaba has accepted the deal for the pathian crystals if nothing else that helps us spread them around as potentially useful resources. We’ll see what kind of ship they come up with that as well.

Also it turns out the huge chunk of biomass is a swarm of alien bugs just sort of cruising around. At least its not hostile or anything, but it is a curiosity. Also why are there so damned many?

We’ve arrived at Zero north, very swanky. It’s like…a bunch of diadems stacked on top of each other or something. Imagine what we could build with access to that much energy…like a giant star crab of some sort.

Perhaps got carried away. Anyways, according to Echo Prime one thing to keep in mind with the destroyer is something called mental…uh..health or whatever. I dunno, anyways the destroyer prototype is technically working!

So far Renjala seems to be just chatting it up with the elves while we get into fights with dark skinned elves. So far as I can tell the Tungsten Teeth aren’t doing well and just taking credit for us over here on the side but no one can tell the difference between them and us, heh.

No luck finding any details on that stealth ship, obviously it was very sneaky and just cruised on out of there afterwards, perhaps never to be seen again. We can say it is definitely of alien design though. We don’t build ships that look quite like that at least. That or some art major is somehow part of the project.

As for re-recruiting Nila, odds are low. Last we saw her she intercepted and crippled Haleh with new glowy eye bits. I’m guessing she has since entered into the Selona Cyborg program, or maybe the Daiheb one…it’s hard to keep them all straight. Though I’m still assuming she is largely working for Selona directly now. Either that or cruising around and causing general mischief.

Our investigation into the Kuhas security forces has revealed that they are all clones I think? There is very slight differences so at the very least they aren’t perfect clones but they’re definitely strikingly similar to one another. They all look like the administrator does.

Stories of Lore 56

The Tungsten Teeth reported to Rampart that they have been delayed by a fleet conflict with what they described as “A big gun with engines on it”. Apparently their invasion of Thenica was slowed down by Faelyn who destroyed a quarter of their fleet upon contact. They continued to land on Thenica as a rather contested drop with their assault carriers but their remaining fleet is fleeing across the local stars to try and escape Faelyn’s fleet. Which, as we now have an update of what they’ve been doing at Aureum, is now larger than before. The Tungsten Teeth ran into an immediate issue upon assaulting Sarghess in that the Kar’Soluth was ready to meet them, likely having detected their violent entry plan via sensors from some distance away. This led to a battle on the ground and now the Tungsten Teeth are split apart fighting smaller skirmishes as they try to outmaneuver Sarghess to whittle away at their troops. The Tungsten teeth are generally comprised of stronger soldiers than Sarghess on a troop for troop comparison but they are woefully unequipped to outmaneuver Sarghess on Sol’s homeworld. They are barely even aware of how extensive the underdark really is or how Sarghess keeps moving around so quickly. Most importantly, Reika was there and the Teeth did not do well against an enemy who could heavily mitigate all of their artillery and bombardment strategies.

The fighting is still ongoing, but it mostly consists of the commander of the Tungsten Teeth trying to find a way around and through Sarghess to get to Reika before Reika finds them first. Matriarch Alystra Vel’Sarghess is also involved in personally commanding the troops. This has slowed the offensive on the Alnae border while Sarghess is busy dealing with all of this.

Combat assessments reveal earlier projections were missing some crucial data about Sarghess operations. Among which was that they have some elite units that were unaccounted for. They have an alarming quantity of highly trained veteran soldiers. The matriarch herself is also much stronger than we would have thought and we suspect it has something to do with her pandem bind that no one really knows much about. Another such factor is that Reika is currently with them though we’re not entirely sure why or to what extent. What it would mean for any simulations is that bombardment by any means will be heavily mitigated and if she is near the Alystra Vel’Sarghess all of our WTC tactics would be effectively negated against the matriarch. Probably a good thing we hired mercenaries to reveal this information to us before we did anything.

Valen has left for Zenaka to begin on that assignment, and clearly unhappy about the restrictions placed on it. For now she’s meeting with various people to assess the political situation more carefully to look for some options. She has gotten Ehan to come out of his bunker though has not turned him over to VSec, stating that if you get rid of him the next replacement will be just as annoying but less competent at the same job. This hasn’t particularly slowed the skirmishes and border cities are being bombed by the infiltrating Zenakans. While the shields on our station held up, it might be worth noting they launched missiles into orbit at the station.

We’ve also seen a rise of violent crimes in residential areas deep within the federated space as sympathizers are targeting federation supporters in their own homes, often with improvised arson techniques. Leading to an increase in paranoia and a new figure has popped up. A group of Zenakans have formed a heavily armed independent gang selling weapons that are not locally manufactured. Either federation weapons from our own armories that they somehow got ahold of, but most concerning are the weapons from Sol in general. There have been three reports of discovering Selona weapons in circulation.

Related to this, Vasia has discerned that the ships we shot down that were approaching from before were members of the Reach who managed to convince Utewa to let them into Finsir so they could try to ship more products to Zenaka.

Jydoq continues its ongoing developmental struggles, we did get some new immigrants though out of all this. It is also becoming clear that the conditions on the planet are slipping back deeper into destabilization. Kennae remains on the planet continuing his quest to help the region. Notably, reports have spotted Kaylen here. Though we are not sure if she is here just to visit her former teacher or if she is continuing her crusade with what little she has left by targeting Kar’Soluth.

Gunhid and Sarrai report that after going deeper into the neighboring ring they found a evidence of material shortage that explains the decline of the attacks on our border. They have been producing a much larger machine and most of the machines we normally encounter have been refitted into a new model they don’t recognize and are standing guard over the new machine.

This comes at the same time as a report from Gem Station that “something” is approaching Diadem from the direction of the Hive Worlds. As far as the station’s sensors can ascertain, it is approximately 1.8 billion tons of biomass with no significant presence of metal or electronic signatures. So, not a traditional fleet at least.

Koda reports in on the investigation of the rumors about keys in the hands of the Utewa and Exiled Exerlus. In order to find out more information about if the Utewa have one we would have to undertake significant investigation. The rumor comes from the fact that Utewa has thousands of strange and probably extremely valuable relics. Apparently they are collectors of them for purposes of academic curiosity. Though they are also very secretive about exactly what they have or where they keep them, as pirates on Kuhas already know that Utewa has several storage locations for these to make it hard to steal more than one at a time. The running theory is that there was probably at least one still in the Reach after the Terlim Wars, and if it would fall into anyone’s hands it would be the Utewa. This also turned into a tangent from some of the people being asked about it stating that the factory flotilla wandering around would be another candidate to find or keep such a thing.

The Exiled Exerlus having one is just a wild theory based on the fact that they contacted a now-extinct civilization ten thousand years ago that was the descendants of one of the alliance’s council races. Either the key would be laying in the dirt on the radioactive waste of a world, or the exiles would have found it, known what it is, and taken it. If anything they would be most motivated to have it as leverage over the defunct exerlus controlling parts of the ring even now.

The VSS Raptor has taken off towards the southern core of the galaxy to try and see how close they can get to the Blaiken on another plane.

In other news, Jiyan has been gone a bit longer than we expected and the exploration corps are starting to get nervous about not hearing any word from her in so long. Especially given that its possible to exit the Warrens in other galaxies and just get lost.

Also, emissaries from the Caelkians are becoming a more common sight around Diadem. The water people that live at a nearby star. Apparently they have been becoming very interested in our portal networks that lead all the way back to the southern end of the Reach. They’ve been asking about travel rights and border treaties recently and seem mostly interested in the fact that we’re not like the rest of the Reach. They are a recently galactically capable civilization and still not too happy to find out they’re surrounded by anarchy so they’ve been asking us a lot of questions.

The Shadow points out that one of the issues with trying to control their intelligence network is that parts of it operate independently from direct contact. Obviously the library among them, but also executives in various positions of their other holdings have been known to sell things as ‘advertising data’ that if someone were particularly clever could be used as military tracking information just by following money around. The Shadow claims at least direct innocence since they’ve not sold any military secrets about us recently and they’ve instead been busy trying to spy on Utewa. Though unfortunately, Utewa doesn’t seem to know about binds and their use of Pandem magic is much more primitive than ours even if they can perform impressive feats with it through sheer engineering.

We have made a fancy coffee shop. Speaking of which, Ankathi is summoning a meeting next month now that we have it done. She specifically demanded that The Shadow be present in person to some capacity since she hasn’t actually met them yet and has some questions. This comes on the heels of her mostly wrapping up what she was doing in the celestial plane, to which end her powerbase has now expanded significantly. Maybe not the most loyal powerbase at the moment, though definitely expanded.

The first realization Jaerda had was that Pandem Cleansing was even a thing. We haven’t exactly advertised we can do it that heavily and she’s been living in isolation for awhile now. So that kept her distracted for a large part of these negotiations. She points out that the snap elections don’t need to be held, she feels the warlords and their staff will win the vote almost by default since they’ve been keeping people alive this whole time. Not that they don’t deserve the public affection for them but rather than it’d be a time consuming formality that solves none of the ongoing problems.

Then the matter of turning her into a member of the pantheon got into a mess of her trying to understand how you even figured out how to do that then did it three times. Now she wants to meet The Shadow and uh…Ankathi out of at least curiosity as to what this whole pantheon business even is.

She also points out that the remnants of Alnae will pose another issue with joining the Federation as a member state. A lot of the leaders are old and stubborn, herself included. Getting them to reunite is one thing but to join as essentially a lesser house to a group of colonists that started on Thenica will be a harder to sell them on. To an extent you’ll end up leaving behind several of them here on Thenica in order to take the others to Enohas.

In unrelated but relevant news, Sethis found Reika. She’s currently presumed as being Alystra Vel’Sarghess’ bodyguard though we don’t know why or to what extent. She was just standing around there and dealt with the Tungsten Teeth mercenaries that took a shot at the matriarch. She is in fact still holding the Ryner, so we found that too while we’re at it.

Hrmm the one with horns was someone they were talking with not shooting. I suppose the dark skinned ones are to the east. GET THA TRUCK!

Now to sit here and wait for someone to do somethin’. Since they’re just sittin around waitin to be attacked. Weaklings.

We got some more turrets built as requested. I dunno how you have the budget for that but not for meeeee.

Also reviewing the recon report from Gunhild, I can confirm that the exerlus next door is building “a big thing”. That is a war mech if I’ve ever seen one and notably the new models also captured in the report have weapons clearly designed to penetrate the Federation’s mechs.

Which is bad news for us too as we’re made with the same materials and build philosophy. Basically it appears that the neighboring Exerlus has realized we’re not the same opponent it has fought for a few thousand years and now its changing its designs to deal with us specifically. Which means those border lines are about to experience a significant increase in casualties. Also if this information somehow spreads through Diadem we could be dealing with all future pushes into these rings, should we find more keys for example, to be much worse than last time.

This also reveals something critical, these new designs are not just targeting the front line mechs we’ve been using. Some of those weapons look designed for other purposes and if I were a sapient machine designing weapons to destroy my enemies, ah-hem, I’d only make those if I knew what they were intending to hit. The implication here is that there are machines in Diadem also performing reconnaissance on the Federation.

So I’d be concerned that we’re about to get hit by a wave of new machines meant to kill us specifically instead of other exerlus robot dinosaurs with laser beams.

Rampart is always keeping an eye around Kuhas and it might be relevant to know that a very large ship passed by the station recently. It was painted all black while possessing significant stealth technology and practically snuck up on the station and sent people into a minor panic about what it even was. Typically stealth ships are smaller and rely on a variety of techniques which tend to become quickly outdated. So there is no reason for it to reveal itself to Kuhas station just to stop by for gas, I suspect it was a systems test. Someone is testing a very large and powerful stealth warship on purpose which is very unusual. Though as a result, we also know that somewhere in the Reach is a strange ship that is almost undetectable. Visual confirmation from Allison reports that it is definitely a warship, and its main cannon is unlike anything she’s ever seen before. The ship refueled and left without further incident.

On the Alnae front we’ve learned that Beldobaan has been assisting Sarghess in combating the Tungsten Teeth mercenaries on the ground though they usually attack at night and the mercenaries do not even know who Beldobaan is. So they probably just all look like drow to them. We also know that Jaal’Darya has received a new fleet to add to its growing list, and House Sharen has revealed eight new warships at New Kaifen in response just to remind people they still have the biggest navy. What’s important about this is they’re all hitting the same bottleneck, crew. Kar’Soluth is aggressively recruiting on alien worlds, particularly Jydoq, to get these ships staffed as soon as possible. Sharen has been recruiting around the Reach for similar reasons using Diadem as a launching point into the Reach.

Another movement in the works we caught wind of, Kar’Soluth has apparently decided after the Tungsten Teeth attack that they should expand their forces further through a variety of methods. Though the most notable one is we discovered they are entering into talks with the Sivataurs of SV2 and we suspect they’re trying to get them to join Kar’Soluth as a new house to supplement their forces that are mostly handled by Sarghess. The Vloz’Khress are also still rebuilding, but their new matriarch is focused on finding recruits in the demon kingdom.

Similarly, the Hassani have been quiet for awhile but our embassies have pointed out that they just placed a new facility around the star of Auwana. It doesn’t take much to tell it is a very large gun.

More intel reports say that Nila Whately has been spotted aboard Kuhas station. Allison reports she was just drinking at a bar, but given that Nila has a tendency to cause an awful lot of trouble she felt we might like to know she was around. We also have heard reports that Jydoq members are traveling to Elasyn for reasons unknown.

Stories of Lore 55

Zenaka is largely being run by VSEC federation officers at the moment while Ehan sends occasional messages in and out. Which has actually only made the rebellion get worse as members Ehan had convinced at the summit have now broken away. Upon taking the authorization to begin rooting out the rebels, the situation has declined to open warfare. While the bombs Zenaka launched at the federated territories didn’t hit, shields, it does show their intent has escalated. Valen points out that you should just conquer and enslave them at this point as “its the only language they understand”. That a series of small things along the way have not done well to ingratiate them to you. When reminded that we don’t really do that she expressed disapproval. She’s still not terribly fond of her own world and its culture clearly.

We have regarded the incoming fleet as hostile as ordered, most were destroyed upon approaching Twilight Station though a few fled back into space. Sifting through the wreckage finds a collection of odd aliens we don’t have records of mixed with some of Thenican origin, particularly demons.

Jydoq negotiations continue, the unification of their world poses some problems. First of which being that Kar’Soluth has made similar offers to sway groups of the population. Another growing faction has started to turn hostile to all foreign visitors, most of their efforts are focused on Kar’Soluth at the moment though they don’t like us that much either. Jydoq has always been independent and this faction believes that trading assistance now to retain that in the future to be worth it. While that’s nothing new, their growing hostility is notable and we have some reports that they may have started assassinating members of Kar’Soluth. Sort of sticking to the trend that figures in power on this planet have very short lifespans.

Kar’Soluth have pushed into another of the Alnae territories where we aren’t particularly located. The vittles outpost in that region is on the north western side and they attacked the southwestern one. Which has allowed us some insight into how they’re doing this since Sethis is keeping an eye on things in the area.

Things have been oddly quiet on the diadem front, particularly the waves of machines. They’re still present but its been weirdly uneventful over there.

Steamworks is definitely messing with those crystals, though so are some other tech companies. So far Khymin has the best prototypes to make use of the crystal in the form of a shuttle that is very fuel efficient. The simple explanation is that the crystals amplify movement when exposed to certain conditions. The one caveat is that no one has figured out how to make it spin something in a circle efficiently, so less effective at helping gears and more effective thus far in things like ships that use propulsion. Steamworks has strapped what are basically rockets to a panzercycle to make use of these properties though its a bit clunky still.

Also my point about Kharla being Ankathi’s medium wasn’t about her identity but about the fact that she can kill everyone else’s prophet all at once if she wanted to. That and being obnoxious. Also do we even need climate control in Diadem? Will the cafe be open to the public on non meeting days?

The Shadow points out they can summon Daiheb not quite at will but pretty close. If you want they can ask her to show up for you sometime between now and a year from the initial asking. However, if you don’t have an artifact on hand to trade there is no guarantee she bothers to show up. More accurately there is no guarantee she remembers to show up if her sticky note falls off the wall. She is not described as being well organized.

They also know that you’re right about the Demon King and that this pandem reality of how their magic works is historically the reason why he has been the counterpart to celestial gods. He had the same gimmick going on as they did but no one knew pandem science back then well enough to explain why the Demon King was so powerful. The mythology prefers to think of him as an entirely different kind of being from celestial gods but as a planar entity he checks all the boxes. Which is why his powers can be found interwoven into all demons. Though getting a meeting with him is once again one of those things that The Shadow is equipped to do. As the eavesdropper of pandem binds, they can just tell what the demon lords are usually up to as no one knows The Shadow can do this or that they should be wary of it listening in. Demon lords are very well known for having binds and all. Though they can get a message to and from the king, his exact whereabouts are considered one of those expensive information trades.

As for the crystals, you can open a rift to him and forge a strong planar intersection between your realm and the elemental one right on top of where he’s sitting if you wanted to add more fire to your domain. That being said the experiment resulted in the crystals instead producing a lot more heat when activated rather than becoming activated by heat.

Meeting with Jaerda has proven a bit bleaker than expected. She knows a lot more than everyone else about what is really happening in Alnae and also is apparently the queen of the cannibal elves. Go figure. Building a civilization is hard even in good times but in hard times it is clearly a task to tackle. I’m not convinced though that she’s right in that she should be abstaining from retaking her position as councilor. She has the teeth she mentions needing after all. Cheveyo is a scary bastard and if she can even just project him there isn’t an elven warlord on Thenica that wouldn’t shit themselves.

As for the Ultra carrier, they’re still largely just waiting for things to stabilize since they themselves are self sufficient hiding aboard that ship on cruise control around the star. Rebellions and insurgents aren’t an issue so much as a general reclusive nature for fear of Alnae requesting their supplies that they can produce. They’re sort of a time capsule of Alnae before the fall. They’d agree to return to the authority of the council if the council were to properly reform and prove itself by solving the food crisis that led to their isolation in the first place.

The Lucid “Institute” can only say that lately they’ve been on the path to rebuilding and cutting out the yoga classes. Finding that historically the order took root in a time of secrecy by posing as a thing for soccer moms to do while cult leaders used the collective meditation for power. Then later when the desperate needed a place to stay and would agree to join the circles to empower the warriors. Now that the cult is somewhat exposed in their practices and also no longer in a dire situation since they’re cozy in Roha and Diadem, the whole method of getting recruits is both impractical and unnecessary. The new leader has been focusing on implementing Averill’s system within the circles to instead allow ritual casting novices to be safe yet experience the events of the warrior’s adventures through these psionic rituals. Which all makes sense but knowing what we know about the director’s doppelganger, I’m just more confused as to what they’re up to.

Another specific thing they’re doing is committing several people to deep study and practice of psionics. With Ilex gone none of them are strong enough to cast the infinite range sending spell he had even with ritual help and with several people knowing the ritual. They don’t have another psion on the scale of Ilex or Aberhoff in their ranks and very few exist. Psionics in the modern age is a lot of tech know-how and nerdy programmers. Very few people bothered to achieve the mastery of those like Ilex necessary to cast that spell. Despite your total lack of knowledge, you’re actually the only one who might be able to do it because surviving the astral wilds certainly bolsters one’s psyche. So basically they opened more intense training programs. Notably, they approached Vasia voluntarily for  help in designing these programs. In their mission to create a new super psion they may have gotten a little too ahead of themselves there to submit to her experimental methods of achieving such results. Problem is, they shouldn’t know she exists or  how to contact her. Second problem, she didn’t question that they did manage to contact her and did indeed start laying out some ‘exercises’ they could get started with. Two deaths already.

Vasia asks how she’s supposed to prep in Moncayo if she’s been exiled to an asteroid in your plane. The conversation did not go on long enough to clarify any details before she disappeared to said asteroid.

Troop deployments in Alnae have been largely ignored by Kar’Soluth and they’ve just kept doing what they’re doing and going around our forces. Short of using force to make them stop they can easily avoid using force on us to get around and keep damaging Alnae.

Dem cannibal elves apparently have some sorta boss that now one of the big uns are talking to. Apparently they have antlers. We gotta march up north and get tah shootin.

We’ve made some progress in the prototype designs. It’s basically an assault carrier, but miniature, and with guns on it. Not much headroom though so not great if we have any guests. Very well armored though.

In other news. Chevalier has a dog now. They just…gave it to him. I didn’t know the slave trade was so easy to get into.

In keeping an eye on developing matters between Kar’Soluth and Alnae, our positioning to observe recent affairs have shed some light on why Kar’Soluth has suddenly made such dramatic advances into Alnae territory. They have acquired all the security information of these military bases they keep taking over and are attacking at night. We don’t have any fine details of exactly what happens since one of the first things they do is disable communications and security features. It is likely that after taking over the base they are carefully destroying any recordings of the events. Though this operations are consistent to say there is somehow an active leak within Alnae that spans between the warlords as to feed information to the Kar’Soluth. One in a position to acquire an astounding amount of intel somehow. On the topic was our agents desire to find out how they’re getting so much information on us. Our agents on Thenica report that the information on ourselves are somehow traceable to the same place the breaches in Alnae security are coming from, House Beldobaan. They’re distributing information to the other houses that they are acting on but we don’t know exactly how they’re getting it.

The teams visiting Utewa have reported back that there are dozens of methods but most importantly to the interest of wards is that there is a sahad method in particular we have never encountered before. The only civilization to make practical use of are the three elders though. All other attempts to recreate the method have been extremely difficult and expensive. Likely not a factor since it is just as vulnerable to typical wards and antimagic implements as any other method. We’ll just have the techs add a few extra runes for it. The other methods are just different implementations of similar concepts that we’re familiar with.

Payments have been made regarding the Tungsten Teeth, though there are once again flight times to consider to get from The Reach all the way to Thenica. We’ll have to see how that turns out.

The ongoing affairs of Zenaka continue to turn more chaotic as the attacks inward keep going. The general governing body of the federally allied territorial lords have seen a defection as well as two assassinations. There are reports that a fleet is inbound towards Zenaka from an unknown origin at this time, just an early scan but they are moving off of traditional ship routes and going towards Zenaka itself now. Though the fleet isn’t particularly large nor does it seem military in nature. Initial possibilities are thought of to be a wayward traveler, a diplomatic committee, a transport company, or that one officer who suggested the Jydoq assassin. If it were to be an actual military fleet it wouldn’t really get past the overhead station or the anti orbital defenses on the ground.

As an update from the front lines, a few more mechs have been lost defending against the exerlus incursions. They have noted they are appearing more aggressively in the inward layers.

A few of Jydoq’s factions are interested in joining the federation with said seat, but notably not the majority of them and they seem particularly interested in leaving Jydoq. With its ongoing food crisis combined with being in the minority for their multi-stellar civilization, they appear to rather live at Diadem or at least “anywhere with food production”. negotiations are at least moving along faster now that they’ve chosen a representative.

In regards to preparations for Operation: Farewell to Greta, the Vessians are willing to help invade Thenica. Though our intelligence department points out that sending them to a starving world that has a notable cannibal population might produce adverse effects.

The Tungsten Teeth prices come with various packages depending which of their many teams you hire. The larger scale interstellar teams have infantry teams at about 50 million per month which is worth about 50,000 power by our math. The ones with more tanks and other mechanized assets get up to 150 million for about the same overall value to the way we calculate things, but they are a fully self supporting army with access to more tools and logistics. Worth noting that their contracts state they’re allowed to loot any area they are deployed to and there are several salvage right contracts involved in all that.

Shetou offered to tell us that Beldobaan is notorious for thousands of years of being very difficult to prove they ever did anything specific. These last months have actually been concerning as its the first time they’ve undertaken an offensive war of conquest since the founding of their house. They do know that this is tied to Yasrena recently becoming more aggressive in general particularly tied to Alnae. She must have ordered them to stop sitting around and do something and in some way had enough power to make Sabrae consider doing it. Which may be tied to the loss of Kharla. Also that Jaal’Darya and Vloz’Khress have been steadily increasing their naval manufacturing and training with the help of Faelyn.

Vasia returns from her chats with Eliza to confirm that its way too late. Jaal’Darya is already involved and they probably already started doing something. Though Eliza doesn’t really tell Vasia about military movements, the pair of them usually just talk science. It is also worth noting that it was implied that Faelyn will come to Thenica if we show up purely because she has it out for you specifically.

More ships have undergone construction as requested, it sure seems odd that we have so many big ships now given just a few years ago we couldn’t even open the doors on them. I vote we install manual doors on every ship anyways just for tradition. Also for entertainment when guests aboard the ship walk straight into doors expecting them to automatically open.

Doesn’t meeting with your binds in the middle of a coffee shop somewhere heavily favor Ankathi still since her medium is Kharla? Yes I am just still doing this to drive you crazy.

Vasia reports not having much luck with convincing Eliza to defect since she technically already works for Kanika directly by also helping Yasrena with Jaal’Darya, it’s a complicated relationship. Also Vasia said she got the impression that Eliza has already gotten involved. The Order of Shadows reports, or less dramatically Yoshai texted me, that Sakhessa and Faelyn sitting out to work on Aureum isn’t really a sign of a rift so much as the assumption that Yasrena can handle it. Yasrena is already well aware that Lancaster would like to interfere and is simply allowing it rather than invoking treaties and the nuance of paperwork, opting to take us on without the rest of Hassani’s help. This is sort of typical of the Phantoms since they do have a lot of people who operate with a lot of independence. Essentially, once Lancaster interferes on Thenica then Yasrena can ignore the treaty without annoying Sakhessa or Kanika.

Troops mustering ya da ya da.

We’ve established the university as requested. Though its still getting construction and recruitment finished up. Recruitment of both staff and students for that matter.

The team is headed to Utewa to look into other methods of alien communications, bit of a flight though.

As for further studying up on Beldobaan, not getting far with the whereabouts of the Ryner since its actually the Vloz’Khress that probably have it. Also worth remembering vampires are notoriously hard to escape.

The avengers team is now redeploying back to Thenica to assist with Lancaster’s plans to help Alnae against Yasrena ever since they got turned around by first Rahlken and then Preacher’s advice.

We’ve last four teams on Thenica while they were going for the supply lines. Beldobaan is already running counter movements against us it seems. Our teams trying to counter their movements are also finding a few odds and ends here and there. In particular, they sent out ships to ‘not here’ and we don’t know where they went.

Further surveillance also reports that it is likely that Kar’Soluth have allies outside of the Hassani to be concerned with. As the position of the Vloz’Khress implies, the Demon Kingdom is a potentially notable factor.

Yes…Lancaster sure knows a good suicide charge when she sees one. It’s sort of her signature move.

I can definitely attach a toolbox to a voidforged’s hands to act as an engineer aboard the ships easier than i can figure out hands. Though not sure about adding more limbs to hold all of it given that it might overcomplicate the frame. Probably worth a try and just hoping we don’t create a cursed abomination.

Test builds! Test builds everywhere!

I remember back in my day when we fought the Bevenny gangs. If they got ahold of you they’d rip yer asshole out your mouth and use it as a straw to drink your insides. These drow ain’t nuffin. If it weren’t for muh bad leg I’d show em some real war crimes.

Though I can’t really tell these people apart from one another. The boys thought they found a few of dem infiltrators, turns out it was a native. Outranked em all too. I’m told the order of takin a walk had some words with them afterwards.

Anyways I got the gang all loaded up for this ‘ere outing Lancaster be planning. I heard we get a free house if we help out. I call dibs on the one by the lake. I’m old, we like to sit on our porches and stare at lakes.