Stories of Lore 8

 

Exerlus countdown clock says they’ll be here within three weeks. So…get ready.

In response to the alliance, and mentioning exactly what Renjala’s Rift is, she sent a battleship to our station with quite a bit of haste. Her general, Aato Jousen, is poking around currently to get a feel for the place. Evidently she considered the rift to be quite significant for such a quick response to be made. Her ideas on the sahad entity on the other side however is to send a dragon to meet with it. She said as far as wild shots at it go, dragons are a superior race to most humanoids so maybe it’ll like one of those more, or throw so many humanoids at it that maybe we can achieve a sort of ant colony effect.

This definitely hasn’t helped us that much with Nelan and Alnae though, not that they said anything in particular over the matter but us entering into a formal alliance with Faelyn while they’re just an embassy here, who doesn’t know what the giant rift tunnel we’re building is actually for, does little to make it look as if we particularly care for them by comparison. In discussing the matter with Nelan it has become apparent that despite Faelyn’s mentions of helping all of Sol with her early detection systems she has definitely put Alnae and Shetou on a backseat compared to the frontier colonists. As neither empire were invited to the party I am currently still at. By the way, the seafood here is pretty good.

We’ve started a company up to really focus on the research of the parasites, though progress is a little sketchy at the moment due to the dramatic side effects that occur as a result of mis-timing the removal of the parasite. Also we still kind of lack an expert on the matter.

Speaking of new companies, Ohalyn has agreed to see about expanding her holdings as we didn’t really specify any downside as far as she’s concerned. She’s starting off with a mix between a casino and a more expanded hotel. Actually she’s been in contact with Raiben to invent a new type of gambling game, one that specifically has better odds than most casino games. She stated that if people win even just a little bit they’re likely to blow their money on everything else the place has to offer and become repeat customers instead of getting mad about losing all their money on games.

Oh also the election results are in, with our change in support to help Laura help Harlus, Harlus won with Joe sitting in her cabinet. So Laura is happy with that, which means Nah is happy with that I…think? I can’t tell what their relationship with her is at this point.

The hydroponics facilities are doing well and has definitely expanded the limits of our population here in Auwana, alongside the Orchard farms. We’ve seen an increase in immigration ever since Vittles got its harvests up and running.

On another note, Moncayo sent us a report of three incoming groups. One of which is a small fleet of destroyer sized vessels. We already knew the exerlus one was coming and it appears the Astral Order have invited Nelta to come pick up their alien friend. Though the third one is a battleship from Shetou and we’re not entirely sure why they just so happen to be on their way all of a sudden. Also we’ve managed to get a full crew together for another of the exploration starships and sent them on their way.

This might be a busy month coming up.

So far things at Jamalia are going well and the first lance keeps wandering around the planet exploring with the down time. Actually three of the knights built a log cabin up the river they call ‘the club house’ where they go fishing. Daesta spends most of her time arguing with Reika about arcurans, and I have to keep reminding her that Reika doesn’t have a translator herself and relies on the squires or slaves for that. Though Reika also does not have a personal squire or slave and has a habit of standing around in open fields while staring into the distance, so not guaranteed to always have someone nearby to translate. She’s still grumbling and trying to find  her overall stance on this whole ‘stop fighting arcurans’ thing.

To that angle, she doesn’t actually know where all the other merkas warrens are. She actually hasn’t even taken us back to her own yet, even if we know where it is anyways. A detail I think she forgot amidst everything else going on. I gather she’s trying her best to feel things out but she has mentioned something they refer to as being an old queen that is rumored to be somewhere ‘nearby’ in another warren who is leading the main push against the arcurans. Apparently Daesta comes from a smaller one that is definitely struggling at the bottom end of the spectrum, but the largest and most aggressive tribe might be a bit more difficult to work with. Though given the ongoing war between the two species, it is likely that a lot of relations between the races are dependent on the city of Helym and this particularly large Warren.

Speaking of which, our visit to Helym went…as expected. Yonam is definitely not disposed to ending the conflict with the merkas. Actually he’s not even disposed to avoiding conflict with us. Though in noting how he refers to certain monsters and the merkas I’m beginning to think its not as personal of a grudge as the merkas have against the arcurans. The arcurans just really like fighting things and have built a warrior culture around it. This might be related to why Lancaster pointed out their civilization hasn’t evolved nearly as much as their biology, too much focus on fighting for the sake of fighting. Really if we strapped some armor on them and gave them modern weapons we could probably just throw them at problems. They don’t even have a concept of money, so easy employees for Madhammer, though I don’t think they’d make good knights. Given that they are composed of arcane energy, the pandem corruption might just outright kill them. The diplomatic relations issue is really more of the merkas problem who have a deeper and more personal grudge. Point the arcurans at a new thing to fight and that’ll be their new priority, something something honor and glory.

Oh also the station around the moon Enohas is up and running, a bit understaffed but up and running. We’re sending the educators there first for getting them settled and ready to deal with trying to come to Jamalia.

Meanwhile in Moncayo, the second lance has been picking out a spot for the planned chapter house while meeting and greeting the other people. Most notably among them, besides the obvious presence of the Vloz, is another company known as the Renard’s Rifts. They’re sort of a standard service company who usually is present in Shetou space that help maintain rift tunnels and create new ones. They’re not as combat focused but its interesting to see them expanding their operations out here on the frontier given they usually are only found on Thenica where the major pandem terminals are.

Secondly an Alnae company who provides very similar services though are technically a branch of the government to maintain travel ways is present.

Finally, thanks to Nah division, we know the third entity is actually a former pirate captain who apparently went missing over the last year. Apparently she has been hiding in the Void this whole time. A feat even the order would consider impossible.

Third lance has been distracted by attempting to test a steam powered shuttle, which is not going spectacularly well but it came about as a result of needing to hop between planes to see what is in the neighborhood. Mostly quiet though as the stars on the other planes, or even this one, tend to be a bit barren. As most stars in the galaxy tend to be I suppose.

The alien in a cage has had arrangements made to pick him up and take him back home. Within the month a Nelta ship is coming to get him. Things are about to get a little busy, the exerlus will be here around the same time.

 

As a side note, since the official alliance was signed with Faelyn, Vamon was able to request a list of other members and their locations. Export time! 40th Day has been wandering around doing some surveying for them and though it hasn’t impacted the shipyards much we’ve turned a lot of our production contracts to these new colonies if nothing else for diplomatic points. However, we have seen a few new visitors coming through now which is good for the shipyards. I’m trying to sell them the rocks still.

Moving on, Cassir has arrived at Thenica. She killed their profitable prophet and has now left Thenica, headed towards SR1 to finish this little tour up. There can only be one after all. Note, she will beat Vasia and Salied there since she’s already in the Sol system. Not sure if you want me to have her put a hold on the murder spree or not…

Also Faelyn has approved the cult temple in Moncayo though has a list of building restrictions that the Astral Order has gone over already.

So the 004C incubations have made some progress, they don’t actually show much adaptation to artificial environments except in extreme cases where their normal Koura based adaptations won’t be able to survive. Though they haven’t actually finished metamorphosis, there is a distinct lack of diversity in their cocoons compared to the ones in said extreme simulations. Though we are still waiting to see the end result.

001D experiments have come to a bit of a hiatus until Vasia can find more sahad sources to continue exposure testing. Though she did render a shade catatonic and since they are incorporeal they just sort of float there and there isn’t that much we can do about it. Upon learning that Exerlus and Nelta would be visiting soon she prepped a lot of equipment to see if any opportunities might be found from some alien visitors.

40th Day’s recruitment efforts are helping to alleviate the crisis in Sol while also separating people out over the frontier colonies. With Somnus Vittles food production starting to get going a little more we can sustain more population than before so we have awhile before hitting the limits of the Auwana system.

With a quick refit they were able to ready a craft that can dive into the boiling ocean of PZ142-1, though that is being shipped out to the Paizarus system so…transit time on that. We’ve sent the probes alongside them to keep an eye on PZ142-3 Alpha as well.

In regards to prefab colony construction, technically  we can do that now. The reason its not always ideal is that it takes just as long but is a bit worse. Basically a bunch of hollow boxes intended to be rapidly deployed and can sometimes have long term issues on new worlds that aren’t perfectly flat and convenient to work with. Though if you want we can try to build some to have rapid deployment ready in case we’ve a need for it.

According to Sarden, after awhile of her being as uncooperative as possible, her best guess is that Selona wasn’t after her head for technological reasons. She thinks it is more likely that it is because Hastam was the one who injured Eliza, who they came to get. It is suspected that the phantoms want Eliza for something in particular and gave her some revenge as a signing bonus.

I found some people who will work for the vivarium, botanist was easiest of the bunch. The rest are either just animal people and a guy with a biology major though we’ll see what becomes of that at the Vivarium. Technically we have a couple of geologists in 40th day though I found another for the vivarium.

In questioning Laura about necrocarnates she pointed out that they have a tendency to either be well hidden or uncontrollable. The taboo nature of the art aside, those who practice it are of a specific personality. There are extremely few who could be qualified as ‘not a psychopath’ as a lack of empathy is kind of the prerequisite to becoming one. So if you’re going to go looking for one, you could try posting it at the Solvang boards to see if anyone responds looking for work though that might be more overt than desired. Another option would be to try and lure one to the station though its unlikely that Lancaster wants to touch that mess. Another option is to peruse the outer frontier, as they tend to live where they are difficult to find. Away from large populations. You could also just buy one from the Raven facility, which we haven’t pissed off quite yet.  Though the raven slaves cost about fifty million credits.

Baltun informed me that Setani is on the way to SR2 to visit the vampires and see if any would be interested in working around here.

Setani is off helping Ilex out with a headhunt. In the meantime, Raiben has been settling in on resuming his business targeting the major empire’s space. So that should help finances a little once he really gets rolling. Aryn protects him a bit so he doesn’t make the same mistakes he did that let her find him.

Vaeri is on her way to the Raven II as herself to speak with Kanika about the matter. Out here on the frontier, it takes forever to get back to Sol so she’ll be a bit as she makes the journey.

Laura’s most consistent contacts include the members we tracked down last time you asked about her network. The most notable of which still include Shani and

As for locating Sophia, she’s still back on Thenica at the moment working out of our old headquarters. Apparently since she knew where it was and knew it was vacant she just moved right on in after the division downsized. Now days she is mostly running a salvage operation via gunpoint, doing quite well at it too. She doesn’t live near the capital areas that have escaped the worst of it, so she’s waist deep in the more chaotic side of the planet that are fighting over food still.

As for probing Sarden, she definitely had a major cybernetic arm that was made for combat. Her other arm was a prosthetic placeholder after she got shot by Arkaric and now she’s a bit of a mangled mess. Though nothing that actually holds data on the revenants themselves.

Our stealth cruiser arrived at the asteroid outpost of Kar’Soluth, it’s definitely a little fuzzy given the pandem magic also affects arcane based scanning and they revel in it to the point that it actually does create interference. Though the asteroid is quite large and orbits the star from a distance that provides very little benefit from the star. So its freezing cold and has no atmosphere though that is likely part of the point, being somewhere that nowhere would look for them. There are a few warships there but not enough to launch a terribly large assault. Then again Shetou are spread a bit thin at the moment anyways so they might not need a particularly large one, though it is anyone’s guess as to why they haven’t attacked yet if that was their plan.

Also, the Nomads are back after an excursion to Sol space with a Kar’Soluth battlecruiser. Did you want to sell it or start collecting them?

 

Well things are quiet around here this month. So do you want to take the work back on Thenica or look for frontier contracts or…

Oh also the arms factory has been able to start looking into some exports due to the Moncayo alliance so that’s been good for the startup business. We’re still mapping out who we can sell what to but its definitely helping make the company more profitable.