Following the evacuation of Alnae Madhammer and the rest of the forces on Thenica launched the assault on Beldobaan. Initially the strike went well as ground was taken but attempts to reach the Beldobaan capital halted momentum and turned into a siege. The Madhammer batallions reliance on mechs in particular didn’t help since the Beldobaan capital is deep underground and well defended.

Over the course of taking the territories leading to the entrance of Beldobaan’s capital, Sarghess redirected its efforts. They have begun bombardment of our own forces with artillery. Though that also turned into another mess since uninvited and unannounced House Song showed up to fight with Sarghess and House Sharen are largely floating around in orbit playing a game of chicken with Faelyn’s fleet. While Sharen’s fleet has the advantage if Faelyn wants that fight, if they open fire on Faelyn that runs the risk of drawing Hassani’s attention. Yasrena is kind of doing their own thing and Sakhessa is just trying to stay out of it, but Faelyn is one of Kanika’s dragon henchmen and if she is attacked then all manner of problems can pop up. Though she was chasing the Tungsten Teeth around lately so wasn’t present over Kar’Soluth territory at the start of the war. Pending arrival to see how Cazvallow handles it.

There are multiple entrances to the underdark that Beldobaan can deploy in and out from, and while we have control of the main highways the Sarghess, Kenduis, and Jaal’Darya are entrenching to deliver support. If we lose the siege, Beldobaan might be able to get out and then our forces will be surrounded quickly.

We are currently mobilizing and preparing to send even more forces to reinforce our current offensive. According to Sethis, so are they.

As for your other emails in this list. The WTC-3 works well enough but has some terrain limitations that mechs can often manage but that tanks cannot. It has more power than an equivalent weight of mech just less mobility. In this case, it tends to really need large flat open areas or roads to get anywhere since it is so large.

We managed to catch the giant stealth ship moving through the galaxy with its systems down while we spent a week scanning for it. It stopped to refuel again. It’s currently moving across the galactic north and heading for the eastern side as far as we can tell. It’s behavior indicates that it might be newly constructed and performing a test of its ability to handle a voyage as well as its other systems. Though from these scans we can determine more concrete information about what it is than the account from Kuhas residents of “it was big and painted all black”. It’s a rather unusual ship that appears to be a hybrid design between a super battleship and a stealth ship. Similar to the closing statement but it doesn’t have the same level of armaments as it should for something of its size. No luck figuring out its origins though, but the fact that it is having hiccups out in the middle of space definitely implies its a prototype and practically rules out the exerlus being involved since they wouldn’t be having technical difficulties. However, some of its designs match elements in our database from the Reach. Implying it is from the Reach and likely its stealth tech is intended to thwart pirates or conduct extreme piracy.

As for central neutral places in the Reach, obviously there is Elasyn by their own standards though for obvious reasons we might not consider it quite as neutral as they do. Alternatively we could just pick a random planet right off the interstellar highway to develop though it wouldn’t be quite neutral if we were the first ones developing it. So obviously everywhere is owned by someone or is a lump of dirt, though the various stations all over the Reach specifically not owned by anyone particularly powerful could function as neutral ground if you could convince anyone to go there.

Valen reports that Zenaka is still an ongoing clusterfuck and while she has the upper hand she still hasn’t caught the remaining territorial lords who are particularly crafty. While a civil war has been prevented, by her murdering sixteen of the former territorial lords and their heirs, now VSEC is dealing with guerilla skirmishes. Also the orbital station reports the smuggling issue is getting worse. Ever since we blew up that one trade group they stopped using the station as a landing point, which while it has slowed down the smuggling operations the operations have become more dangerous to deal with. Several response teams from the station have been destroyed upon trying to apprehend anyone. They’ve destroyed just as many but essentially the situation is escalating in violence is the summary.

Well as predicted, the space bugs are just trying to eat everything on the surface rings of Diadem. Though they’re not exactly ravenous there is a lot of them. They tend to just sit there and munch on whatever they are on for hours on end. Vasia caught a bunch and sent some samples over for you to bind with and mess with. They are kind of fuzzy and nice to pet at least.

On Enohas the evacuations and construction plans are underway now that most of Alnae’s Thenica population has been relocated. Which led to a whole other can of worms. On that front, Sethis reports that Rahlken is approaching Enohas.

We’re also in an awkward position of hearing intel from Sethis that the Demon Kingdom may be sending reinforcements to Kar’Soluth in response to the attack on Beldobaan territories and the siege of their capital. Which won’t bode well for our upcoming meeting with them in three months.

Meanwhile back at Panemperia, the campus reports that three of its staff members have not called in for a week and all of them are missing. Local security checking up on them couldn’t find them at their residences either.

With the war against Kar’Soluth formally starting, Dr. Si-Yeon is currently trying to manage quarantines in Moncayo and Diadem in particular as the Jaal’Darya “plague bomb all the civilians” strategy begins to kick into effect. Fortunately, they didn’t deploy the mummy rot stuff since Sakhessa is still sitting out of it for now. So its not spreading through power lines like the rot did. Si Yeon complains that Vasia needs to stop playing with her bugs and help, though then rethought that statement when I asked her to consider whether or not Vasia would make the situation better or worse. She can quarantine people better than anybody else, true, but Vasia is one hundred percent going to start killing people herself in the process.

Hasao Tei is also screaming my ear off about the fact that we wound up picking a fight with the exact people they were worried about fighting before. Though half of their recent complaints involve being unable to contact Haleh who is off wandering around the Reach rebuilding her ‘crew’.

Further examination of the VSS Raptor, via long range pinging because that planet fires missiles at anyone who gets close, reveals that it is currently in an inoperable state. It doesn’t receive any data transmission attempts and we believe it is currently being scrapped. It might be a pirate station and or salvage operation.

However, the station it is docked at has unfamiliar designs and readings. They are several generations of technology ahead of us. The Western Reach we’re keeping up with at least a little by stealing some of their tech as we go. Though this particular station is halfway between everyone else we encounter and the Exerlus.

Echo Zero doesn’t know what that planet is, just notes that it was previously a world dominated by a primitive humanoid species. At some point a few thousand years ago they started showing signs of industrial growth, but not long after that they experienced an extremely rapid acceleration of technology and quickly became hostile towards outsiders following a war in the northern section of the galaxy. The Exerlus were, as usual, respectful of such things and haven’t been checking in on them lately.

Other probing of the local area reveals that passing through is likely to be an issue with the size of the cradle. Though instead of pirates this time it’s bureaucracy. The major routes in and out of the northern part of the galaxy are under tight control by the two former alliances in the north and now several smaller broken down warbands. Originally, a strong border was built up on the western side to keep the hive worlds at bay and the eastern side was under tight control to keep an eye on things involving the Jesai sector of the galaxy. Half of it to prevent their own people from going over and pissing the Jesai off, the other half being to prevent the Jesai from moving unnoticed. While the current state of things means they don’t control it nearly as tightly as they once did, according to Echo Zero we can expect any further ventures eastward to involve someone asking for our license and registration. If they don’t immediately open fire on us once they detect we are a mechanical race. The war between the two exerlus factions has everyone sort of jumpy around robots.

Because there are so many factions its hard to really narrow it down but I have some initial reports from our probing around of those nearest to Zero North. I suppose Zero North itself is the first place to be considerate of. Exerlus and all that who at least owe the federation enough patience to not kick us out immediately since Eleazor helped them out. Though they are still awfully wary of the fact that the destroyer of Zero North came from Sol.

The dominant descendant of the western alliance are called the zhulkites and are particular experts of sahad magic stemming from centuries of poking around with it. They’re kind of freaky and xenophobic but particularly towards organic super races. They were the border patrol to keep the hive worlds from infecting northern space. If we can prove to them we’re not exerlus rogues they might not mind us too much. Though they are to the west of us and technically that’d be backwards progress on our journey to the east.

One of the more relevant species from the eastern side are called the engurians who used to deal with Jesai space shenanigans is one of those aliens comprised of energy instead of fleshy bits. They are currently poised to come out of all this on top because they don’t need organic food and can extract energy from a stars radiation. They’re very solar powered. Though given they are in a state of downfall from the ongoing war with the exerlus skirmishes they’re a bit jumpy around robots.

Then there is the exiled exerlus consensus locked into a never ending war with Zero North. Both sides are capable of replicating at phenomenal speeds and while they aren’t directly targeting the others around here, due to the scale they operate at there is a lot of collateral damage. Which really are trade routes being disrupted by conflicts so large that neighboring stars to the conflict can get wiped out. Largely due to the fact that both sides are self replicating machines who just need raw materials and send out replicators to anywhere they can find with more material to try and produce more forces to win the skirmish. One fight has been going on for the last year non stop and flying through this area is just asking to get turned into exerlus scrap metal. These conflicts disrupting major routes in a time of massive food shortages has caused logistical nightmares that are not helping the local area manage the crisis. A huge part of this war was that the disruption of Zero North lasted long enough for the exiles to build up enough forces to actually survive fighting against Zero North at all. Said disruption being the Orochi incident.

The main problem for us and our original mission is that we are a very large ship made of a lot of metal. Either we’ll be mistaken for exerlus or eaten by exerlus if we’re just passing through and several major routes out of here are either under constant attack by the exerlus wars or are tightly controlled by the shattered alliances of the northern galaxy. Going around all of this becomes more of a fuel issue than anything else since moving the Cradle takes a lot.

A few reports from the overall war we’re now in.

Following the attack on Beldobaan from Lancaster and the attack on Sarghess from House Song it seems they were ready to retaliate. Which I guess is obvious since drow are paranoid that everyone is out to get them. No offense sir.

Anyways, we were watching for it so we caught on to the early stages of Jaal’Darya’s usual gameplan but they’ve already gotten to Moncayo annnnd here we go again. Quarantines have been established but we haven’t had time yet to figure out how bad any of it really is.

We also know from the radar facilities that Rahlken is approaching Enohas where all the Alnae were being evacuated to. We’re also aware that the demon Kingdom hasn’t finished mobilizing yet, but Vloz’Khress has made some deals with some demon lords and they will be at Thenica soon. There was some politics involved with the members of the kingdom placed in Kar’Soluth’s territory before the invasion but the short of it is that they’re showing up now.

Fortunately the Hassani proper haven’t been moving around very much. They seem content to sit around Aureum and call it a day, especially with Kanika being away. However, if Faelyn gets involved that could open a route to their involvement. I currently doubt that Sakhessa will formally enter into the war if she can avoid it, though other members might take the opportunity.

Unfortunately, we lost track of thousands of pirates we’ve been keeping tabs on and Asmodan is also missing. Given that Asmodan and Yasrena had been in agreement of just murdering everyone, I imagine he’s going to pop up very suddenly in a place that is not good for us.

With all of this suddenly keeping Kar’Soluth busy, we’ve caught wind of Kaylen attacking them on Jydoq as well.

Azilath has reinforced SR3 with a massive swarm though she is still largely away and focused on colonization efforts in other systems. The defensive forces appear to be just to make sure no one gets any ideas of attacking them again.

As it turns out Sethis has a half dozen sisters he never talks about. And just as many who are a little too willing to participate in the plan.

Consultation with the Nomads about Faelyn’s mega ship has them pointing out that if they were doing it they’d board it the way they board everything else, by drilling through the hull. Which is still a bit of a unique approach that they’re known for. The issue being that once their aboard the crew of that ship is far more numerous and likely powerful than the average ship they steal. With infinite resources they’d just throw wave after wave of disposable soldiers into it until progress was made. They also say to figure out how much it costs to get Haleh to go since they don’t have a dragon to tackle any of Faelyn’s aboard it.

Koda points out this might be out-scaling their expertise of capturing and taking over ships by forcing a surrender of the crew. It is unlikely that Faelyn wouldn’t put some dragons on there just for dealing with boarders and this thing is basically a space station with engines strapped onto it. Initial observations point out that its slower than Iron cradle. While it likely exists as a response to the mobile station of the Cradle it isn’t controlled by one massive living voidforge and probably has several optimization issues. The Iron Cradle does as well but mostly born from the fact that its a bunch of space stations tied together, Faelyn and Sharen’s big ships were purpose designed as responses to it and the Alnae Ultra Carrier at the same time and they still aren’t as well put together as the Cradle itself. He’d consider that it and the Areti are both a bit on the slow clunky side and just attempts at putting raw firepower into a fleet of otherwise very modern and effective battleships. So even though he wasn’t actually asked he says just keep strapping things onto the cradle to make Faelyn keep wasting money on it so they don’t build more battleships which are their actual best threat.

Meanwhile back on Zenaka, Valen is still running around doing murder politics but has requested we send her Gunhild at the very least to help deal with a few remaining issues that so far have been able to best typical VSEC forces.

As an update on the WTC-3 project, it kiiind of works but its definitely not a traditional mech. If you want to call it a day, they do have a big machine with a big very accurate cannon but its more of a tank than a mech. They couldn’t get it to stay upright when firing it’s primary weapon reliably so they put treads on it. They’re still working on that bit.

Our exploration crews along with the Voidforged found the VSS Raptor in the northern part of the galaxy dry docked at a station for some peculiar reason. Though it is over a planet with a suspiciously familiar level of hostility.

In other news, Haleh is back at Diadem from her latest trip into the Reach and is for some reason commissioning a rather large pair of carriers from the shipyards and when asked why she just said so that she could get back to recruiting.

The evacuations of Alnae should “done enough” by next month and complete in two.

The next Council of Lords for meeting with the demon King will be in four months. So just don’t do anything that might piss him off until then I suppose.

With the pantheon meetings concluded, Ankathi fucked off back to the celestial realm and now I’m wondering if we should be concerned about whatever she might be up to over there.

Haziel has also returned to the galaxy to do whatever this weird galactic keeper business is. Apparently she’s currently dealing with two civilizations engaged in some sort of war that assures mutual destruction and getting a bit too close to pushing some sort of world ending button. Apparently, despite being one of the oldest and most powerful figures of Sol she has to do intern work to learn the ropes over at the fortress of vague but menacing star druids.

The shadow is off to try and hunt down Halaestra, from having had to organize such things on your behalf before…yeah good luck with that hot mess.

Jaerda is still in training with Selah to handle the Astral Wilds for longer than the split second it would take for her to be torn apart from seven dimensions.

Also we’ve tried scanning Yasrena before, though results weren’t good then and aren’t good now. Her bind specifically is fantastically elusive and if I were to interpret the machine’s output literally the implication would be that they are in one hundred places and multiple planes at once. That or they are somehow actually some sort of hive species now though Yochlol aren’t exactly known for that.

In other news, the Ultra Carrier is at least willing to ferry people around as long as the order comes from Jaerda specifically. Also as long as no one asks for any of their food. They’re still pretty picky about their food reserves.

The rest of the refugees are still settling into Enohas as construction is ongoing. Though the Arcurans don’t care too much, the Chosen Wolves are a bit cranky about building stuff around there. They’d probably be crankier if not for the fact that I have to keep reminding them THERE IS A PORTAL TO THE FAE WILDS RIGHT GODS DAMNED THERE. Just go through it more often! Also they spend half their time on Eden anyways. Also this is a lot of portals.

Vasia reports in that catching the bugs is pretty easy, you just grabbed one out of the middle of space. Also that they’ll be at Diadem next month. Just get a big net on a stick maybe, though if you prefer a more elaborate plan she could probably build a really big net on a really big stick. So far she suspects they’ll either fly past Diadem and we’ll need to use some freight ships to catch them out of space, or they’ll land at Diadem and start nibbling on things at which point you could probably just send some people out with trucks and net guns. Also that protecting the crops was probably a good call before you got invaded by space locusts.

Exploration report around Zero North as we look for various things alongside VSEC Exploration teams: The northern chunk of the galaxy is home to an alliance similar to ours or Nelta that has been crumbling ever since the influence of the Phantoms messed with everything. Formerly there were two major national alliances with hundreds of star systems and now there are 34 smaller alliances between dozens of star systems.

Initial poking around, which half the time meant poking the Exerlus with dumb questions, reveals to us that this place is in an ongoing state of apocalyptic fall and has been for the last decade. Once again, food shortages are all over the place and the Exerlus have been skirmishing with the exiled consensus who is also invading other worlds for materials. This is one of the most well developed areas of the galaxy in terms of materials and technology though now its breaking down into a bit of a salvage war.

More importantly, we found a peculiar world that is extremely hostile to reportedly everything. The world itself is almost barren and has no atmosphere but we can tell there is some sort of development there that is the size of a single city with an orbiting station above. While this isn’t unusual given how suspicious people tend to be in the ongoing salvage wars, we were able to detect several ships of varying origins aboard the station. One of them matches the profile of the VSS Raptor. We’re not sure how it got there but I’m fairly certain that it isn’t a good sign.

In terms of core resets we also have to consider how to refurbish it, as by then its likely to start experiencing wear and tear. I suppose now we’re just joining our solian creators on the quest to cure mortality, we’re just at a disadvantage of not having yet seen how our end-of-life experiences will be.

We’ve been running counter ops on Thenica and operations are concerned with where we found some of it. We managed to intercept a couple of refugees partaking in the mass evacuation of Alnae who were actually from Kar’Soluth. Beldobaan specifically. Which implies that if we missed any, there might be a problem later.

Also while running such operations to try and track any down that slipped through the net we accidentally found out that Sarden is on Diadem. She was the only revenant we could identify but we know they don’t tend to travel alone, she’s just the one we have caught before and thus can more easily identify. Though we lost track of her soon afterwards, what we do know is she was snooping around Renjala’s new pandem university. Even had a student ID and record, which we haven’t done anything with but its anyone’s guess why she’s there posing as a student. We have no evidence that she’s ever been to any of the classes despite a falsified attendance record, so I doubt she’s actually there to learn pandem.

We also found out that there has been a massive influx of Sivataur vampires from SR2. Obviously they would be landing in Beldobaan territories though they’ve been moving erratically from there. It would appear that Yasrena was able to make that deal to have some of them show up though I have conflicting reports on whether or not they are intending to join Kar’Soluth as a formal house or if they’re just here as mercenaries because they tend to just like picking fights.

We also found out that Vloz’Khress has been up to their old antics again and re establishing their presence in the Demon Kingdom. To the point that I can’t really tell which nation they’re more a part of at this point. As one of Kar’Soluth’s great houses you would assume that but their headquarters and main investments seem to be in the demon kingdom for whatever reason. Though that might be the fault of their patron demon lord being more interested in demon politics than Thenican ones now that they’re down to their last one, granted that one has grown a lot more powerful now that they have monopolized the Great House under the control of themselves and their own daughter. Though we also snooped around and found out that several prominent demon figures are in Kar’Soluth’s territory along with their specified retinue. It isn’t enough to make an army that would deal with Lancaster’s, but if she hits one of them it could suddenly cause an issue. I think it might be a trap.

We’ve had some troubles though, as the Beldobaan agents have captured some of ours as well and we’re going back and forth in this game of espionage. It is hard to determine what information they’ve gotten from us that we’d care about them knowing just as much as they might not know which parts we know about them. It is safe to assume though they have found out where we’re looking for them at the very least. I also have suspicions that they might have located Aryn and yourself even if they haven’t acted on that information yet.

Also by popular request, we’ve kept tabs on Reika for Renjala’s benefit. She’s mostly just following the Sarghess matriarch around and exhibits consistent behavior to what we know about her. It is unlikely that Kanika actually did anything to her essentia. She maintains a ridiculous K/D ratio against the Tungsten Teeth because none of them fully understand that she’s immune to bullets, artillery, missiles, and bombs or that the trick she’s using is based on an impossible reaction time. Anyone that might have figured the trick out generally doesn’t manage to report back to anyone about it.