We’ve begun construction of Solace station to continue observation of the starless planet floating around. At this point just to poke it and see what else we can find. The initial exploration teams suspect there might be more subterranean or aquatic things of interest, since receiving energy from a star isn’t as beneficial for surface dwelling as other planets.
Siora and Ebert are back and report significant losses, the depth of the expedition aside the second sector has made even more adaptations to picking fights with us, and recognizing the attempts at deeper operations within the sector. According to Siora the defenses are a lot more resistant to her penetration attempts than the last visit. If anything she says the improvements are a suspicious leap in improvement. Either it knew when and where the strike force would initiate their attempt, it’s a lot better at guessing, or its surveillance over the vast ringworld sector has been bolstered. The expedition team was cut off from their extraction almost immediately and were forced to spend a lot of time and energy on avoiding being totally surrounded. The new and improved line seems specifically talented at fighting against Madhammer. The factories she did manage to reach were producing older models and not like the ones she was fighting against, it is currently suspected that they have a new production location that is contained specifically to be difficult for us to find or reach. Siora says normally their models update to provide new challenges with each visit, often performing hyper specialized functions. From there she expects random swarms to pop out and execute their function. This time they were organized as if they were a single military unit, and they were making a distinct effort to capture both our fallen mechs and the bodies of soldiers that were taken down. She’s used to seeing new updated models that counter whatever she did to them last time, she’s never seen their entire combat doctrine change like that before.
The sugnam republic continues experimenting with its forming government. As requested they’ve opted to try and figure out something of a multi-leader system. Though this has caused some issues, particularly because they’ve started to grasp how valuable the fuel resources scattered across their planet actually is. Koharrel reports seeing disputes over who is in charge of what getting particularly heated when it comes to ‘who owns the thing that is worth all the money’. The other hemisphere that already signed off mining rights to the demons are militarizing with the funds and assistance of the demons. They already have started building a fleet out of scrap ships they purchase from Reach ‘traders’. Because they are a bit primitive they don’t have much value in production of local goods beyond the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources and so that has become a subject of dispute. As whoever controls all of that will likely be the economic power house of the planet. This gets into another element about Sugnam anatomy, they’re not actually very good at small or delicate processes by comparison to humanoids. So the production of trade goods might be difficult for them for a few centuries until they come into their own style of technological achievement.
We’ve talked to the Vessians about the Elasyn outpost idea, they’ve pointed out you could hire Vessian mercenaries to act as security but because of the rather lax regulations on Elasyn there isn’t much stopping you from just setting up wherever no one else is currently using. Though they’re not keen on having us set up an enclave within their enclave at Liberty using their utility and security networks. This is mostly because it would be rather strange to have the Federation’s office inside of the Vessian territory unless the Federation were to be under Vessian authority on a galactic scale. Since these areas are generally maintained by each of the larger powers independently, just in case relationship statuses should change in the future. Which is a thing that happens in the Reach a lot.
Wonaya isn’t quite sure where to start looking for the elusive Revenants but she said she’ll take a shot at it and has commandeered one of the cruisers we had laying around to act as her potentially long term base of operations while she heads out into the Reach looking for any clues.
Kaylen’s burial was completed last week.
Haziel reports that she’ll keep an eye on it but figuring out when, let alone where, Lancaster will be reborn in the Fae Wilds will be difficult. So updates on that in….who knows how long. Could be hours, well probably not as it’s already been hours, but could be years just as easily. Also might get eaten by a giant spider before we find her again, which would reset the whole process.
Diadome facilities have been expanded…again. At least the main stadium has, some people lost their prime vendor locations just outside of the arena and had to move elsewhere within the city in preparation for the next festival. The area is really taking on a life of its own for people who just are too lazy to move in and out every year.
Eerihild’s continued observation of the subjugation of Hephal has yielded some new information, well really more so Aryn figured it out based on what Eerihild sent us previously. The technology the Vessians are using to colonize the place is Solian, specifically demonic. Even more specifically, the heavy machinery was manufactured by Euron’s territory. Whether or not this is due to any form of relationship between the two or just regular Reacher trade is still undetermined. The Hephal natives are sort of in an apocalyptic state at this point. By this point most of their military assets have been destroyed by the Vessians. The natives have evacuated, gone into hiding, or been captured as both food and slaves by the Vessians. No one else in the Reach seems particularly perturbed by any of this, it’s quite the talking point but is otherwise business as usual.
We figured out who is approaching the ruined world Irae has been doing missionary work at. The Evershar made contact with the approaching fleet and determined it to be a mercenary force, a company called Rakshahara. Which interestingly enough doesn’t translate when I say it out loud despite Jaerda’s impact on universal communication. I suppose proper nouns keep their original sounds. Probably why my name isn’t ‘Rainfall’ or something. Anyways, Rakshahara is alien for ‘Sunshine infused blood’ if you want to be hyper literal. Starbloods otherwise. Either way they’re a fairly heavy duty mercenary company and unlike the Teeth they always operate as a singular unit rather than franchisees. Relevant because they didn’t just bring an ‘adequate amount’, they brought the whole force with them.
Negotiations broke down quickly, and I think it is in large part due to the Starblood company not really having any frame of reference for what the Evershar specialize in. In the terms of my sword coach, they got their shit rocked. Evershar continues their ancestral tradition of naval superiority. While the fleet battle was long and bloody, it was mostly merc blood. This is actually valuable information for the Federation as well. Evershar’s fleets have not been tested yet and the House tends to be rather secretive about what they’re up to. It is mostly comprised of rather new and modern ships designed after the loss at Thenica so it retains that Sharen shiny feel. With weapons designed to perhaps one day go up against the Golden Fleet of Sakhessa, or Faelyn’s fleet, they are particularly maneuverable for their ship classes. Lot of alien tech on them though. It’s clear that after an encounter with Sakhessa’s fleet, and us telling them some spooky secrets via more pamphlets, they’re trying to find new ship technology and concepts that don’t derive from Sakhessa’s inventions centuries ago. Since as we’ve seen, Sakhessa’s weaponry basically destroys solian defensive technology without much trouble.
Hisashi’s lab has been moved again, which is proving adorable since he’s now super small and cute but still walks around with a lab coat. Though research on the concept of permanence is looking like one of those things thats going to take a little while.
So far, judging by the piles of ceramics, the Nekhul inhabitants seem to ignore non-metallic and non-organic materials. That non-organic bit is so far confusing, they ignore some of the things we sent in glass containers but not others. With no real consistency. They left a house plant alone, scavenged some cereals I sent down, left a mouse alone but went after a dog’s carcass. So they will break those materials to get to what is inside but will ignore ceramics, glass, plastic, and so forth if they don’t contain anything they want. They’re also drawn to energy, so sending mana in a ceramic vase results in them smashing the vase to get to the mana. I’m trying to find a ceramic or glass alien species with essentia and no mana to test if they go after souls but that’s been a hard one to find.
On the topic of hive world bio-technology. We know they have entire ships made of organic material, which includes some bizarre and really exotic ships. Like diamond windshields. Though procuring any of these ships for testing requires you to sign off on a requisition form to spend a bunch of your money on weird stuff. Also the expedition to a hive world that might come back with a bunch of parasites. As the main species to have these ships like to lay eggs in people.
As for the Eerihild snail mail into the containment unit, that was covered by Masika last meeting but to reiterate: Vasia says ‘no’. The condition of ‘safely’ automatically rules it out since opening that thing is pretty dangerous at all. At best she offered to include it in the next food delivery and just shove it through. Six personnel have been ‘quarantined’ after attempting to send food inside. I’m led to believe that involves flamethrowers. So not ‘safely’ but not with any additional risk to what they already send into there. Granted we’ll never know what becomes of it until they can retrieve information from inside in some way.
I’ll send some teams to Elasyn to see about setting up an enclave, along with some colony ships to get things like power running. Probably have to ask the locals about how to run wiring in those ancient buildings though. As for location, I suppose we’re just throwing a pin at the map unless you have any preferences other than ‘away from Liberty’.
In the meantime I’ve taken Deniau, Malgier, and Vanessa off the Elasyn scout team to send them to help dump Lancaster out in the Fae Wilds as requested.
Sunliao and Allison report from Sugnam that the base is coming along on the planet’s surface, they’re very excited about the rec room they managed to stick in it. The ongoing affairs of Sugnam are still developing as the interest groups keep trying to convince the current king which way to go on certain matters while VSEC tries to influence the structure of the government. Other Reachers have arrived that are not particularly large or influential compared to the major powers here, but it is worth noting that a few ships are showing up to see what profit they might make of the overall situation. Some are offering to trade goods, or even deliver larger machinery from major stations like Kawako Six for them. Others looking for merc work, and some more are scouting around looking for areas of the planet that are not under heavy surveillance. Individually none of them are especially relevant, but as a whole it is interesting to see Reachers starting to show up looking for opportunities so soon.
The heist for the grimoire went about as well as we could hope for, though Julia kind of just sat in the car for most of it since fighting isn’t her strong suit. Thraelyl did kind of murder a few important officers who wouldn’t go elsewhere while she was trying to get to the grimoire so they’re a bit unhappy about all of that. Not that they know who hit them or where we came from. Either way, we took minimal casualties and have acquired this book you wanted. It’s been locked up and listed as classified so no one tries to read it though. It might be useful to let Natasha look at it as she is our resident incarnum user, but she isn’t exactly a necrocarnate and no one is really sure if this book might make someone evil or something. Until ordered otherwise, we’ve opted for caution regarding a book full of dark spooky magic written by Kanika to manipulate others with.
Aryn reports she managed to draw the attention of pirates towards the world Renjala is operating on as requested. They’re unrelated to the ongoing mercenary issues and they are likely to be here at some indeterminable time.
In other news, our outpost set up in the Demon Kingdom has new information regarding what happened with Kharla. They are half experimenting on her and half promoting her. Binding her with more demon lords to restore her abilities to what they once were but under the watch of someone who can deal with it if she goes crazy again. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the Demon King do anything, but if anyone can deal with a Kharla rampage that would probably be the guy. Though despite using her in a way I would expect from Vasia, they have hyped her up as a rather prominent member. This is causing some confusion since the Vloz Khress house is still in the demon kingdom for their main operating base. Half of them want Kharla back since she’s their true matriarch, the other half have gone with ‘no please keep her’ since they are also terrified of their own former matriarch. This all seems to be a little intentional, it is likely that by now the Demon Kingdom has spoken with the Hassani about the situation and come to some sort of understanding but what that understanding is or why they’re doing this is a meeting we were not able to eavesdrop on unfortunately.
Faithrae is back from her excursion to the Reach with Xalyth and the strike team in tow. She thought to tell you that Hyeon has been released now that they got the artifact from her. Probably worth remembering that Faithrae now has that thing and despite her size can slip through anything. Also that she now has access to a weapon that causes explosions without the use of mana and thus is undetectable to all of Diadem security or forensics. I’m sure that won’t be important at any point.