War reports. Our fleets arrived at Thenica and then things went fairly south. Upon engaging the Solvang pirates, the treaty fell apart. While it is a murky area whether or not that should count if Kar’Soluth didn’t, Faelyn’s retaliation definitely does. We currently maintain significant superiority in the orbital fight. However, the Iron Cradle is under heavy attack and has been boarded. Also communications with the cradle indicate that Preacher might be panicking.

The 4th Cavalry managed to force Vloz and Kenduis forces to retreat to the demon kingdom via pandem portal. They began to move towards Beldobaan afterwards though only half of their forces have been able to enter the cavern thus far, encountering heavy resistance from Sarghess forces holding the cave entrances. The only way through so far has been an area that Gunhild managed to damage enough for them to force through. However, soon after our fleet arrived in orbit, Azarov entered the conflict at Beldobaan. Given he is an elder black dragon, he is particularly problematic for mechanized forces to deal with since his draconic abilities disintegrate metal.

With our forces retreating from Jaal’Darya’s territory, Sarghess sent most of its forces to Beldobaan to reinforce the area. Reika is currently in Beldobaan with this deployment. The fighting in the Beldobaan capital is back into full swing now that Beldobaan agents have secured a position that can be used to bring Sarghess into the city.

Renjala opened a rift as he planned for if the Phantoms began to assist at Beldobaan, which probably saved a few lives.

The 5th currently has occupied Vloz’Khress territory and has control of it. The actual members of the Vloz’Khress forces that were fighting with the 4th mech cavalry have retreated to the demon kingdom alongside kenduis forces to regroup after some further fighting that went in our favor.

Kanika herself has reappeared at Thenica but she is primarily interested in the Valdir. She has summoned the Tarrasque from her personal castle to help fight them. The independent colonies around the wastelands of Thenica have also begun mobilizing, as many of them were under the control of Phantom operatives. The ones that weren’t are at the very least scrambling to get off world.

Prisoners of war have been turned over to Shetou as requested.

5th Madhammer is currently stomping around on Jydoq sucessfully as most Kar’Soluth forces are on Thenica right now. Though they are encountering fortified position and local garrisons of jydoq people.

Forces on Zenaka report that “cleaning it up” is a bit of anyone’s guess. Technically the local forces should have been able to hold control now that Valen dispatched of most of the territorial problem children, but with the ongoing plague and the tens of millions dead unrest has started to pop up again. Also Valen herself has become bedridden with the same plague as the other Zenakans.

We also have reports that infections have been spotted in Adelaide and Laura has responded to this by doubling down on her already extreme quarantine measures to try and prevent it from spreading as badly as it has elsewhere. Her gangsters are patrolling the streets now shooting anyone who leaves their houses and she has created a government logistics program to get food and necessities around without people having to leave their houses. The problem for her has become the Vessians. They’re not big on the whole ‘stay inside’ idea and they’re also all too strong for Laura’s gangsters and cops to actually apply much force to. She said to ask if we can send anyone who can actually control the Vessians. Technically her first ask was whether or not a certain someone she only has clearance to know exists because she was once an advisor was busy or not.

The newly renamed VSEC Medical is collecting samples as requested and they have found ways to mitigate at least two of the plagues if not outright prevent the spread of one of them. Though they also found another strain had popped up in Moncayo.

Apparently Azilath wanted to speak with Haziel if the galactic keepers of the cycle had ever found a way for a silnian to leave the synapse. Just to weigh her options. The answer was no but I imagine she’d really like some alternatives now that the treaty just went tits up and Kanika is coming for Azilath specifically it seems. Turns out despite the unending horde of drones that can just eat all the trees to make more of themselves, Kanika has a lot of experience with burning countrysides. Also the fucking tarrasque is loose now and oh dear christ I am not going anywhere near that fight. It’s likely that more of the Phantom’s forces will be creeping out soon and this is just the initial wave of “people who were already hanging around nearby”. We’re not sure if Sakhessa will send her forces away from Aureum as she likes keeping her fortress world safe and cozy.

As for opening portals to a star, doesn’t really shoot out of the rift but it does make it really toasty for whatever is in front of it. It actually pulls things into the rift rather than spits things out, so the test rock just got sucked into the sun. Likely because of the gravity of the star itself. If you opened a significant enough rift to kari on the other side of the rift to make it spit star stuff that might…uh…break a star but it would be really cool.

Also, second lance just came back with the rest of VSEC. As per earlier plans, the Hassani are involved now and even if it wasn’t Kanika herself in Beldobaan, Azarov was a significant enough problem when backed up by House Sarghess. Azarov is a particular problem for VSEC specifically, as a black dragon his acidic breath causes absolute havoc for mechs in particular. Eerihild was the only one holding him off while the rest were retreating since she’s all fleshy and regenerates. Definitely don’t want Holua to run into Azarov for that matter. Vairatoa was largely okay too, acid doesn’t do much to a walking fireball.

Irae and Ankathi have been on a long ass adventure through the shadow plane. You would think there’d be a much more detailed retelling of it but apparently surveillance equipment had issues in the absolute darkness or something. Either way the main point is they found out what the Revenants were up to. This entire attack was to keep The Shadow busy before The Shadow could realize they had discovered its identity. They pretty much just heisted the Black Library and we don’t know where they took it because The Shadow was sealed with old school anti-demon magic (that apparently just works on all planar entities). We also learned that Sarden and Morylan are a significant problem for Ankathi specifically. They didn’t have any trouble dealing with the aura of fate. Irae did some analysis and it turns out that since those two rely on true strike weapons, the power of fate doesn’t do much to them. This was bad news for a lot of the celestial forces that went with everyone, but the fact that they severely wounded Ankathi is…at the very least interesting. Though as it turns out, Ankathi is still one of the greatest warriors of her time and they couldn’t beat her sword technique straight up once the surprise factor wore off and Ankathi realized she had to actually try.

Also they found Yoshai. He wasn’t even in handcuffs or anything. He was technically their prisoner and any attempt to get away probably wouldn’t have gone well for him. Though he definitely didn’t try that hard. I’m not sure if we should blame the fact that they managed to seal the Shadow for his lack of morale or the fact that he was surrounded by a bunch of possibly attractive women depending on what those masks are covering. The sealing magic itself was broken quite easily but it had been keeping Shadow stuck in place this whole time while they heisted the library. However, Shadow informs us of the ramifications of this. Without Yasrena, Kar’Soluth’s war has been running on its own without guidance. Their exact words were “If I don’t get back the treaty will fall apart”.

I guess they were right about that.  Shadow is unhappy with this development. In their own explanation, this could lead to a Thenica controlled by a single group. Which means Selona might start getting more involved and the entire war was the only smokescreen they had. Shadow suggests that with this development it is critical to tell Jaerda to hurry up with the Astral Wilds business and stop doing councilor things for awhile before Selona decides to meddle.

Irae asked what you want her to do about Shadow because she can’t tell if she should be finishing the job for the Revenants or escorting Shadow back to a more secure position. In the meantime Ankathi is personally offended that any group had any means of hurting one of the pantheon  members even if it was just an old fashioned sealing spell. Let alone a group she has so little respect for as the Revenants. Starting to see how the old gods would get really pissy whenever mortals managed to thwart their plans.

Steamworks reports that its currently unable to contact Preacher since he is busy with the war on Thenica. Though they can probably figure out how to just put a big stick on diadem. Though the plates move slower than his ship and atop of that he is liable to just steal the stick itself. It’d be billions to make a stick that big that can also rotate enough to put itself in his ship’s way if he didn’t just sit conveniently right by it. It would also need to be able to extend from under the plate so that he doesn’t know where it is or what it could do before it tried to swat at him. I feel like they took this suggestion more seriously than you intended.

Though the portal to a bigger gun tank idea is a bit more feasible, it has a problem that whatever it is shooting at could ward the portal before it opened. That aside, the rest of the idea isn’t too hard. Though rather than a battleship they feel you would want just a gun strapped down to something that isn’t going to drift around in space. Probably by using one of the higher planes for more positional stability.

Haziel reports that if you want to use her sanctuary in the wilds, you caaaan but the problem is that its in the Fae Wilds and that means getting in or out is hard. She created sanctuaries that she can send people to other than the primary fixed location that Enohas uses, since distance is a problem when she’s working across the galaxy. A large part of how these sanctuaries work is that for many the option is to take their chances in the fae wilds or die to the imminent threat of silnians, jesai, and exerlus who have been causing the collapse of entire planets lately. So technically yes but don’t forget it should be generally expected to be a one way trip.

As for pantheon surveys about Indal, Ankathi wants to make him work for her somehow. Haziel doesn’t like him too much since he’s destroying worlds with his civil war against the silnians. Shadow is neutral on the matter but isn’t terribly happy with how hard he can be to convince to do anything. The man just wanders off and smacks things and no one can really convince him to smack what they want him to smack. Either way until his war in silnian space is over with it isn’t like he could be convinced to do much else. Jaerda, who should be a member eventually if she’d focus up, says she doesn’t know him personally but if he were to cooperate with us in any way he’d be a massive PR boost. After the Thousand Legends he’s basically Sol’s chosen one and if she could get him to show up to a single photo op she imagines approval ratings would go up. Jaerda also seems to have no concept of what we consider Indal though. She wasn’t at the battle and has never seen him in action. She thinks of him as a war hero that took credit for leading the Thousand Legends and is thus fairly popular. In her mind, it’s his armies and charisma that make him who he is. She has no ability to conceptualize that a human could do anything we know he can do. Or that he has the charisma of a potato.

Given that Adelaide recently had an infection issue, yeah probably time to stop people coming and going from Eden City.

Also we sent our fleet to Thenica with the VSEC fleet. It’s absolute hell.

In other news, with Shadow back, despite how well laid your plan was to contact them from afar it turns out they would have just been stuck floating in space until someone went and broke the seal for them. Though that does mean your proposal can more easily be responded to now.

To which they offer the counterpoint. Yeah crippling Kar Soluth isn’t going to help much. Alystra is its last member to be particularly threatening to the Federation. If anything, Alystra would have become the new Val’Hari in the absence of Yasrena since she’s been able to get things done even without Yasrena’s help. Also Reika is aligned to Kanika not Kar’Soluth, she’s just on loan while Kanika was busy.

They also revealed a slightly sentimental side. They are actually fond of their drow worshippers as a memory to their own origins. Proceeded by a rambling tale of all they had accomplished despite being one of the most fucked over races of Thenica. Even if now technically they can lay claim to being the patron god of the shades, the drow still are special in their own way.

The real issue here is all the Selona business as mentioned before. Also Shadow…slash Yasrena? Calling deities by their title all the time wears my mouth out, hence we just call her Ankathi and Haziel instead of by their deity names. Whatever, dark’n’spooky still intends to keep themselves playing in all sides as necessary until the threat of Selona is otherwise mitigated. It’s good to have a vacation home in case one empire falls into a civil war, and Ankathi is the most interesting thing the Federation has to them since she is the only one who is truly immune to Selona. Since she both can control future events and her main powerbase is so far away that not even Selona can influence it.

Also they point out you were correct that Lancaster wouldn’t retreat in time and that all this was bound to happen and now things are about to go really sideways.

As for meeting with Valencia, their main question was whether or not Eden would perform the cleansing because that’s the whole reason Pandem sucks. Then several questions as to your motives as that came out of nowhere and you didn’t even ask for anything. Then she just stalled it. Yasrena’s text messages blew up quickly after that meeting and pretty much confirms that Valencia doesn’t trust the offer and is investigating us heavily now. She isn’t a stranger to some really bold plays, though she also is aware that last time she tried such a thing she almost gained control over all of Sol. So extreme offers must come with extreme rewards for you that she can’t figure out just yet. Apparently “unifying people and stopping galactic chaos” is a very untrustworthy motive to her.

Also, yeah still no luck recruiting Jhaeros. I don’t get it either, he’s kind of a weirdo. Maybe we need to ask Renjala to make a love god and ship the two of them so he’ll calm the fuck down already. Don’t tell Vanjin I said that.

With VSEC invading Jydoq to assault Kar’Soluth, things have been getting crazy here. Though this has helped us with tracking the assassin since now they’re targeting VSEC officers. Problem is, four teams are dead from trying to intercept them whenever we get a good lead. Aryn can sometimes track them down but they’re never in a place where we can get enough personnel to deal with it in time. Kennae did fend them off once but they managed to escape. Judging by the encounter we’ve seen from Vanjin, they’re very dangerous and we might need someone with more combat experience than you three and more lethal methodology than Kennae.

Also using Kuhas as a launch point Haggard was able to find four Tungsten Teeth batallions in the market who we could hire.

The Nomads are currently aboard the Iron Cradle trying to help with the ongoing boarding combat happening there. Taking over other ships is somewhat difficult as they’re constantly exploding.

Also we’ve reports of some small pockets of infections happening aboard the Nomad flotilla. Since its a bunch of ships it is sort of naturally quarantined and it is unlikely to be as big of a problem as it is elsewhere, it is still notable that the Jaal’Darya did find a way in at all.

As for finding Kaja the punch man, he retired after the third nelta invasion and after Madhammer was absorbed into VSEC. He’s currently on some frontier world building cabins.

Our sources report that for some reason Kaylen has left Jydoq and headed back to Thenica. Can’t imagine why.

We have joined the orbital war over Thenica and engaged in combat. The problem is our ship is so large that apparently every assault carrier decided we looked really juicy and we are being boarded as I deliver this report. The ship is so large that the fighting inside is starting to look a lot like the fighting groundside. Next problem, along with regular boarders, that exerlus ship cut into our hull and deposited some weird elf girl with two pistols and we have lost every corridor she walked into. There are solvang pirates everywhere and I already tried venting the place but the space pirates had space suits. Was worth a shot.

Not all of our missing turrets were destroyed, we just have lost control of the sections they’re connected to and the boarders have taken them offline. Though the shields are strained as well, we lost one of our power generators in those sections and we’re being fuckin hammered by Agallias.

Chevalier has retaken control of some important hallway sections but Vanessa and Sylvaine have been destroyed. No news on whether or not their cores can be recovered just yet as we don’t have control of the area they fell in.

Interior automated defenses are holding up but these pirates seem reaaaaally good at this whole boarding thing. I’m also told the big guy who just tore Sylvaine in half is named Deinuu and his presence is part of the reason our generators are experiencing major fluctuations.

We have majority power over the fleet conflict and our guns are putting in work, especially now that two of the enemy titans are down but they’re keeping the Areti well protected and its gun hurts. There are more ships incoming to board us and I suspect that some of the enemy assault carriers are being used as staging points for Kar’Soluth to rift people aboard and then send more waves in through the MASSIVE HOLE in the eighth district hull.

A-hem, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Stories of Lore 61

We really need to stop Lancaster from leaving her office, half the time she does this we don’t see her for months.

First off, war reports. Beldobaan has switched majority control back to Kar’Soluth when Sarghess sent a deployment of mechs to assist the area, pulling them away from their Jaal’Darya front. This comes largely in the form of piloted mechs but it has pressured our forces into cover which has made dealing with the Beldobaan natives difficult. Gunhild is currently stranded in Beldobaan with her team. This seems to happen to her a lot.

The battle at the Jaal’Darya compound has seen heavy losses. Sarghess is thoroughly entrenched into the position and Jaal’Darya has been releasing more chimeras. We’ve seen a large shipment of Sarghess mechs on both battlefields as they decided to purchase more and take their soldiers off the field to crew them.

The attack on Kenduis and Vloz went heavily in our favor. The Kenduis conscripts were not terribly reliable and there were several mutiny attempts into surrenders. So we got some prisoners out of that, notably  they are from Alnae originally. However, this battle took place close to the Alnae border, we have received information from Larazja that the Valdir will be attacking everything within a certain range of themselves, leaving us in that range. We already have confirmed the mobilization of Valdir. With what we know, we expect them to reach the Kar’Soluth border within two months, though whether or not they continue into Kar’Soluth territory depends on further orders from the synapse depending on Azilath’s progress.

The battle in orbit has become a bit clearer. Sharen’s allies consist of foreign fleets 1 and 3, they are aliens we haven’t contacted before and obviously now isn’t the best time to figure anything out about them. Foreign fleet 2 turned out to be from Jydoq and represents Kar’Soluth. The fighting got a lot more violent due to orbital positioning and the presence of Agallias causing a lot of problems.

It turns out Rahlken doesn’t  understand planes very well and he hung around the coordinates of Zenaka on the wrong plane for a few days looking for the planet before leaving and heading in the direction of the Reach.

Haziel extracted Song Auni and sent her back to Song Clan’s capital city.

The Vampire clans all appeared in the Sol system though they are parked over SR2 on Rixa instead of Thenica. It appears they are amassing their forces, similar to the nations of Necrosi and the elemental plane all preparing in case this spills into anything larger.

The blockade on the Hasao Tei has ended as peacefully as it could, with the Hasao leaving with the Hydra’s ships to go hang out at Koura for now.

In local news. We discovered that the Caelkians became galactically capable very recently. No one could explain it specifically but after piecing together the story we figured out that their FTL capable ships only became possible shortly after Haziel messed with plants and how they interact with both people and mana. Their fleet is young but is actually better equipped for galactic travel than most standing fleets who are playing catch-up with what Haziel did, as theirs are entirely based on that new property.

Also Diadem reports a bit of a minor problem. Due to the quarantine we’ve had to be a bit careful with alien visitors from the Reach. However, this is also happening at a time when the Reach is feeling us out and the quarantine is not helping our PR.

Jaerda has been at Panemperia for her studies towards surviving the Astral Wilds, which is why she wasn’t at Jamalia. Though we can send her back to Jamalia, if nothing else that is at the forefront of her mind right now anyways.

As for Yoshai, we know the Revenants grabbed him and went to the Shadow Plane. Which seems like a bad place to be in order to combat the god of the shadow plane while trying to hold their prophet. Then again I suppose they are threatening a direct confrontation. The main guess is if they would have gone to the library again given that Shadow created it but it is still one of their main bases of operation. Not that we’ve ever been able to find it. Either they returned to a place that is Shadow’s seat of power to fight for it, or they went elsewhere to establish another base.

However, the situation has developed a bit while we were looking over at the war. Ankathi has gotten involved directly, sending Kharla and several celestials into the Shadow plane after them. At the most recent meeting with Selah, it appears that despite recent developments Ankathi would still rather keep her pantheon together and finds Shadow valuable enough to see about rescuing. Maybe I’ve been in this Selona business for too long but I’m not sure how I feel about the one person who knows how to destroy a plane going into the plane that their enemies are trying to destroy. Does that feel like a trap to anyone else or am I just getting paranoid? Not that Ankathi would listen to me, or anyone else for that matter.

In other news, the Federation sent plague samples to Eden to see if she can synthesize a cure. Three of her avatars have died in the lab attempting to do so. It is extensively quarantined so it hasn’t spread anywhere outside of the lab, but worth noting that one of the, now nine, diseases is especially dangerous to Eden. Also it doesn’t help that she went through two avatars before agreeing to use a damned suit and some tools other than her hands. Which has stabilized the research now that we have convinced her of the importance of personal protective equipment, though she definitely operates slower with tools than her hands. Though we have learned they are constantly introducing more types of plague agents to the mix as they go and are actively adding more to the pool of areas they could infiltrate. Notably, half of the Nevun swarm in Roha has dropped dead and are rapidly dying off. Vasia had extracted Larazja but now Setal is in a quarantine hospital. Samples indicate that they infected the ichor lake itself and if Larazja ever goes back to it, she will be infected quickly as well.

Vasia points out this is important, because Silnians are supposed to be completely immune to almost everything. Only the rot had ever posed a threat to them. She suspects the fact that they are in the Abyss instead of Rixa has an impact on their mutation speed. Though it also means that Eliza has been messing with silnians of some sort some how. She should not have had anything that could effect them. As an experiment, they released one of the koura parasite…dog things that Vasia made and it also got sick. Which is another life form that is immune to almost everything that Eliza definitely shouldn’t know how to infect at all. Every one of those experiments has been constantly accounted for by New Age and only left the labs once or twice. Vasia says she hadn’t sent any data on them to Eliza or anything so she isn’t sure how Eliza figured out how to create something so sticky that it could affect biological mutating super organisms.

On the war front, the first and third lances are stranded at Beldobaan, Sarghess sent a mech legion into it while Federation Forces were fighting around the Alnae border with the Vloz’Khress and Kenduis armies. Though Eerihild’s report on the situation was “meh we’re fine at least.” The sarghess reinforcements were their signature C3 mech which has established control of larger targets, but the knights are largely ‘dudes on the ground’ who can move between city streets to avoid the mechs. Granted, the vampires are still an issue and Eerihild is known for being a bit cocky.

Our encounter with the engurians did not go well but it was a rather complicated visit. They demanded we turn back upon approaching their border. However, this hostility seems based around a recent skirmish on their border. Another ship from the eastern side of the galaxy passed through this month, so it was really inconvenient timing for us.

The cradle sent word to the pandem radar station at Moncayo to take a look around. There is a ‘small’ fleet passing through engurian space and it appears that they are moving towards one of four places. Either Zero North, the Zhulkite border, the hostile facility, or uhhh…us. All four are in their currently charted path, though they might be going towards something we have no idea is out here too. The fleet includes a super assault carrier and is accompanied by a couple of battleships and other smaller ships. It actually should not have been able to get through the engurian borders but somehow it did.

I wouldn’t say relations with the engurians are completely broken down just yet, but they are on edge after this fleet passed through their territory and apparently ignored all their rules, then somehow evaded capture and won three combat engagements on their way through.

Tailing the ships leaving the Warrens reveals they go all over the place. To the point that there isn’t anything consistent about their paths after exiting. Currently we suspect they are dropping off supplies and prisoners to the facility but then leaving for other tasks. We’ve been tailing one in particular, Rampart’s logs show that it eventually went to Kuhas. No one at Kuhas seemed to notice or care about the ship. I don’t think anyone knows where it came from, and Kuhas is sort of a large rest stop.

Well we found the jydoq assassin, on Thenica. Given that we know they are at Jydoq as well, this has updated our database on them. There is more than one. All identifying information we have about the assassin matches both appearances. According to Vanjin, the assassin at Thenica had knowledge and interest in Kennae. So either they are rotating or they have some sort of connected memory. We know the jydoq multiply through asexual means, they just split themselves and boom new jydoq. With this information, it is logical to assume the assassin does the same thing to some extent. Though we don’t know enough about the actual rules its multiplication follows.

As for Kuhas, that hits a snag. Most of the gangs have no interest in fighting station security since it doesn’t result in much benefit to them. It is a neutral station that just serves as a trade port. Uniting to take over it leaves someone new in charge but with no clear benefit to the gangs that already exist and run territories. However, the risk is massive. No one can bring heavy weaponry into the station but the station security has such assets. The only way to take the station by forceful revolution would involve assaulting it from the outside with a fleet to get heavy weapons deployed to its interior.

We’ve also had some cryptic words from other Kuhas gangs that we should probably be a little less ambitious. Between the Federation and Rampart making moves, the local denizens have noticed something is fishy. Our proper operatives report that a lot of the gangs are becoming wary of the relationship between Rampart and the Federation. We’ve also learned that some of them have been traveling to Diadem to investigate the Federation as a result.

Stories of Lore 60

The ongoing occupation of Beldobaan has turned to some rather bloody fighting now that the Vloz’Khress and House Kenduis have shown up. The numbers are largely in our favor on this front and the city remains firmly under our control at the moment. The attack on Jaal’Darya itself has been almost entirely routed and current analysis predicts that our current forces will not be able to break any deeper into the Jaal’Darya headquarters before being wiped out. The attack on Sarghess Territory was halted by Agallias destroying the terrain so significantly that reaching the bases with mechanized units was becoming impossible.

The fleet battle in orbit of Thenica has begun to die down with all sides taking significant damage but Sharen is currently taking the worst of it and depending how the next key conflicts go whether or not they will be able to win. Though as we know two large groups of reinforcements are on the way from outside the system, so they may just need to hold out a little longer to regain dominance in orbit.

Song Auni has reappeared within the borders of Beldobaan to hide out from Kanika. We have promptly received notice to turn her over within the week or we can expect Kanika to assault Beldobaan herself. This will involve the entire Hassani entering the war immediately. We also received word from Sakhessa that the matter involving the Song Clan has taken Kanika’s priority over listening to herself back at Aureum. The treaty can only stand as long as Kanika doesn’t decide to attack and Sakhessa can’t stop her from her relentless pursuit of Song Auni. She cautions to do something about Song Auni before Kanika attacks, once the treaty is negated then Sakhessa says she herself will be obligated to show up and that will also prevent her from continuing to block Jaal’Darya from using the rot infused plagues.

I noted she sounded very stressed and frustrated.

The interception of the Hasao Tei fleet was met by a small fleet that declared itself under the flag of the Hydra. One of the Hassani, who also declared the Hasao to be under its holdings as of hours before our fleet got there. Apparently they convinced the Hasao to sign onto its ever-growing collective of smaller entities to avoid being shot by us. Which poses an issue since that means the Hasao just became members of the Hassani…not sure about that play though given the long history of Hassani’s treatment of ‘mortals’. They might have kind of shot themselves in the other foot this time.

Meanwhile the Caelkians, who have no idea any of this is happening at all, wouldn’t mind help with building a space station. They have their own but they’re all very last-gen and they think ours are fancier. They’re also particularly interested in security pacts because of the abundance of pirates in the Reach. They don’t know the amount of other security threats we’re involved with yet.

So how’d the meeting go?

The lances are taking heavy losses fighting at Thenica but are still overall ahead in terms of overall forces. The Federation still has more firepower available on Thenica. Though judging from the sounds of it, the treaty is breaking down which might swing things dramatically out of our favor.

Also Irae is back, alone. She still regenerates in your plane if she dies despite the loss of the phylactery, and its a good thing it works that way. According to her, things on the Blaiken world haven’t gone great. She and Lancaster were both executed in the throne room and they probably kept Sarrai. Irae is not as terribly familiar with the ‘Lancaster special’ so I’m not sure if Lancaster is dead or if Irae doesn’t know that Lancaster is just half naked in some corner.

Either way, she’s out of commission for a bit to recover from being murdered.

The main issue with establishing an embassy with the Zhulkites is how scattered they are ever since communications went down. While they’re not exactly opposed to the idea, the problem becomes where to put it. Since they have broken down into smaller alliances and territories with the disruption of trade and communication, at best we can ring up some random patrol base and its nearby couple of systems it can reasonably reach. Which is a start none the less, just pointing it out.

We had VSEC send some people to check in on the engurians but similar to our issue with the Zhulkites, its a bit of a trip so they’re working on that.

After some, very long extended observation, we have noticed ships that do come and go from the facility. This planet is a warrens exit but it does not appear to be an entrance. Ships will occasionally appear here from a Warrens exit but then will fly off elsewhere into the galaxy.

Rampart has been continuing their work assisting Lancaster with trying to expand influence on Kuhas. Though it has been hitting a weird ceiling. Kuhas is still operated primarily by their own security force, and their word is law since they will just shoot anyone who doesn’t obey them within three seconds. Every time Rampart expands a bit further they get shut down in minor ways by station security. Who we can’t ask for further details and as mentioned before, will open fire very quickly if disobeyed. Knowing what we do about them, this behavior is within the realm of automatons. Though it hasn’t been just us having this issue, other major gangs on Kuhas have similar problems where the larger they get the more often they run into security and get entire operations shut down by some guys dispersing them as if they were a normal crowd in a place that a crowd should not be. It doesn’t necessarily seem targeted, more like an automated response to certain but inconsistent parameters.

Meanwhile at Jydoq, Kennae is still wandering around playing superhero with his sidekick Kaylen with shockingly little of a plan. Though he has a following of jydoq who have become interested in the zankist arts. At best we have determined the jydoq assassin to be living in dense areas that usually have some political relevance. Given what we know about their diet that makes a lot of sense either way. As it is right now, Kar’Soluth has been relatively quiet as they are likely focused on the war in Sol more so than their political scheming over at jydoq. So at the very least there is a convenient lull in their activities.

The Nomads report a major issue with pirating Thenican supply lines. The major supply lines for Kar’Soluth aren’t using traditional shipping methods. Sarghess in particular is using Renjala’s Rift to transport themselves and their supplies around. So while they are finding occasional things to scoop up, none of it is impacting the front lines.

Also our counter-ops reported stopping an attempt by Jaal’Darya to introduce the plagues to the Nomad Flotilla. While we’re on high alert for any other attempts or signs of infections popping up, it’s worth mentioning that they’ve taken notice of the Flotilla.