Stories of Lore 9

 

 

Exerlus count down negative one week. They’re still scanning things. Long as no one bothers them they seem to just keep scanning things. The issue Hylavi is having is that we don’t know where Arkaric is and now the exerlus are all over our system. So he has a lot of opportunity to start something if he wants to and we’re having a hard time keeping tabs on all of them while they keep splitting into more entities to scan more things. The odd part is their broad scans they did upon arriving revealed almost everything we could ever imagine wanting to know but they insist on scanning everything anyways. Despite Nelta’s recent attack, that hasn’t seemed to dissuade them from sticking around to scan things.

Speaking of which, they found the rift and have been scanning it relentlessly. I don’t think they know what it is or what the data means yet, though their curiosity towards it is quite limitless.

As for Harlus, apparently her current plans are to solidify her position in the office and assemble a staff of useful advisors. Her next plan is to read the fine print of our relations with Moncayo to see what might be of interest there. She was also present for meeting with Nelta when they arrived to reclaim their missing fellow from the Astral Order.

The trial of Sarden took about twenty minutes. We don’t have the longest legal code necessary for proper lawyering to take years. We have multiple witnesses that she killed two people, assaulted another, attempted to kill some others, and resisted arrest. Good enough, throw her in the brig. Not like she can move much anyways after Hylavi ran her over with a shuttle. Though I do warn that given the nature of her organization, this could escalate a whole lot really quickly. We could just ditch her on SR2 or some other profit prison so she’s not on our station when her friends come looking for her at the least. That or use her as bait.

Related to this, Hastam’s body has proven useful in Khymin’s work to further his golem making skills. Since Hastam was a highly advanced combat model, she had a lot of interesting parts I’m told. Khymin has since been seeing what can be integrated into his current projects about the matter. Though I’m not sure about the direction he’s taking it, his latest prototypes are quite large and might scare the citizens.

We have had the basement dwellers prepare for another trip to the rift with Aato, who is a dragon related to Faelyn as it turns out. Due to all the people passing through recently, we had to delay it for a little bit. Also related to Renjala’s Rift, we have informed Nelan of its presence. He didn’t seem to have much reaction to it, though I caution that its not his job to have a reaction to it. We’ll see how the rest of Alnae responds though. Though we know that currently, Kaylen is fighting one of the other warlords.

Also we managed to get another crew for one of the starships to send out searching for interesting things among the stars.

The second lance is still on the job working on expanding the current radar system to go through ‘all da planes’. It would have a unique feature of being able to track down binds if the bind is ever utilized while the radar is paying attention. Apparently Faelyn wants to know literally everything possible from her station about all of space around her, including if we get surprised by some race who has the ability to use pandem magic.

Irae is currently playing greeter to our recent Shetou prince that is visiting back home at Somnus. Though some are concerned about attracting their attention, at least its good diplomacy points…right? Also she said to ask you what to do with the alien since it turned out Nelta wasn’t here to pick him up after all. Though there was no attempt to assault him, also no attempt to contact him. We’re not really sure whats going on since Nelta has made no attempt at communication with any of Sol.

Meanwhile at Jamalia, Daesta has left the colony to return to her warren when we went to visit it. Mostly to take care of the others there. Despite Reika’s impressions on her, she still isn’t willing to give up the war with the arcurans just yet. Largely influenced by the fact that our contact with the arcurans has made it clear they won’t stop hunting the merkas either. That being said, they’re more interested in preparing to meet with Madhammer as we prepare for their arrival in the future. For now, they’re headed to Thenica to join the war with Alnae so we might not see them for a little bit.

This has sort of made it difficult to conduct tree based experiments since technically they aren’t cooperating with the deals we’ve offered.

To further expand upon the merkas situation, we’re currently looking for the rumored warren that contains the elder priest that Daesta mentioned before. I feel that contacting her might result in a more effective ability to persuade any additional warrens one way or another. Though we do have a small sample size at the moment. It’s a big planet and we’re just one colony. Though 40th Day is nearby probing at the boiling seas of that other planet, if we borrow some scanners we might be able to track down these warrens a bit more easily.

Renard’s Rifts has an approximate value of nine and a half billion credits, since they are the main source of pandem engineering for Thenica. Not the largest of companies given they only operate on the one planet, but still fairly sizeable. According to financial reports that we can’t access due to the aethernet having issues, meaning we just asked one of the representatives at Moncayo instead, they see a general income of about two billion credits per year before expenses. Mostly from ticket sales at the rifts.

 

So the mythical cult of lucidity has rebranded itself and returned to its isolation. I can’t tell if that solution was reasonable or not given Cassir still had to kill seven people to get them to finally give up the trademark to her. In the meantime we have Cassir and her new henchmen on their way back to Moncayo to oversee the construction of the new temple. By that I mean they intend to see whats going on around there in general since they missed the party. Also we need to pick up Vamon eventually.

The incubation project has yielded some new critters, though Vasia ditched them at the vivarium since they were taking up too much space and too similar to one another for her to keep messing with. Though she does have strong evidence right now to suggest their mutations will only deviate from standard course if their environment is too hostile to their normal patterns. That being said, those ones can now no longer survive on Koura as they’re too well adapted to their extreme laboratory conditions. We could try to incubate one around the acid cloud of a world and see what happens though.

As for her shades, they kind of just stay in place. Apparently shades and spirits in general are anchored to whatever material object they were last focused on or passing through. This is part of how anti-spirit wards work for keeping them out of places you don’t want them just walking casually through a wall into.

In the general field of the spooky laboratory, Salied has started to show further improvement though is still not quite ready to leave her room. Though she watches cartoons now, so that’s a step up from staring at a wall for…it’s been months now actually. As for taking her out into space, Vasia said ‘sure’ in that kind of tone that made me double check why she said it that way. The sahad ability to survive in the vacuum of space is a specific spell, a first level one but it is still something that is actively learned and practiced. Given Salied’s current state, she miiight not be ready to try and cast it. Though Vasia has decided to start trying to teach her this beginner spell to see if learning to wield sahad helps her condition any. It just goes kind of slow given her and the other subject’s current state.

40th Day has started collecting contracts on colonizers to sell to other places, we’ll see how that goes once training is complete. We’ve begun building some prefabs to keep ready here at Somnus, or more so just floating outside Somnus so they don’t take up too much space. Close enough.

The Exerlus do seem to like the asteroids at least, and Arkaric didn’t bomb them all as we were concerned about. Nelta did instead. Though the asteroids have been put to use helping them rebuild their lost chunk that was hit by the bomb.

Also speaking of which, those asteroids led to us finding more asteroids basically. We could have 40th Day start mining operations on them in the meantime if nothing else to collect raw resources. I know Joe likes to try and build upon that kind of physical industry too so it keeps the vice governor happy.

As for the ad campaign in Moncayo, technically we could open it up to outside investors to get it moving a bit better. Which wouldn’t be hard to draw in now that Renjala’s Rift is a known entity. So its easy to justify that this could become a major shipyard if nothing else for servicing those passing through and attract their attention. There are some rich and powerful people at Moncayo and Vamon could probably get enough money to overhaul it for battleship level construction by the end of the month. Though shares wise that’d be selling off about 87.5% of its ownership to said investors, which will definitely effect the profits we would see but at least it would be built and we could focus capital on other things.

Phoenix Colony has finished its construction and is now operational. Though there are very few people there so far. Vasia says it would be a better place than Somnus station for her lab though, since no one is getting in or out of that planet anytime soon. Though to enable that we would need to invest in a rift tunnel to get conveniently in and out and those are expensive to build and maintain so that might be more of a daydream to maximize her unnecessary spookiness since the tunnels can cost about a billion credits to build let alone the maintenance. As evidenced by just building one gate at Somnus.

While the Vivarium is still under construction I have had the monster queen thing we found shipped to it. Enough of its construction is done to at least hold that thing.

As to our other project, the whole ‘lets jump into a boiling ocean planet’ operation has finally commenced. The scans weren’t wrong, video we’ve received back indicates a very colorful world underneath the water. Samples of various growths among the rocks show a good potential for high powered mana filters. Since it requires practically boiling water, there is something to be said for incorporating it into designs somewhere near…well boiling water probably heated by the engine its powering or something.

Our observations on PZ142-3 Alpha have been of interest to the scientific community at least though have little impact on our day to day affairs. So we’re just still probing at small bacteria really.

We have the battlecruiser with Ilex’s shipyards at the moment for the refurbishing process. Speaking of which, the Nomads are back in town. Which I’m sure Lancaster is just ecstatic to hear.

As for reaching out to Sophia, she’s currently not as interested in leaving. Something about being done working with spooky people, evidently after we left Thenica she considered her debt paid for getting her out of jail. That and something about looking after her family back there instead of running off across the galaxy.

As for the cracks in Laura’s organization, there are definitely always those who can be properly motivated with enough incentive. However, she has been careful in selecting her highest ranking individuals. So while we might find something to exploit among the gangsters, the family members appear to be solid. At least as far as we can tell without making it obvious to her that we are planning such a thing.

Speaking of Laura, she brings an update following the Nelta attack. Arkaric has left the system, apparently having taken off soon after having his minions execute Hastam. All things considered he didn’t cause too much trouble around here, though given our past relationship with his sister we’re probably not on his list of people he doesn’t like. Not yet at least.

Also after the results of the election, Laura has been able to solidify her position on Koura as the undisputed top crime lord of the system. She still keeps a healthy distance from us at the moment, but is at least still cooperating in her own little way. Including a unique tip on the black market of a hidden auction going on for a recently captured alien that has been able to demonstrate some level of sahad ability.

The stealth cruiser is on its way back, we would estimate the Kar’Soluth asteroid base to have a “military value” of 250. It’s not exceptionally well defended though stealth seems to be its primary asset.

Also, Vaeri visited the Raven II and they just handed her the engineer we were looking for. Though to be noted, apparently something is going on in that Siwa factory that managed to attract the attention of clients who know about the Raven. Which means it has to be something odd.

The troops are loaded back up onto the freighters and being shipped out to Alnae to help Kaylen. Though currently they’re traveling along still.