Posted on November 14, 2021

Stories of Lore 16

 

Voice command features have been experimented with before in regards to pandem casters in all sorts of ways. Still doesn’t work.Otherwise that would be fairly standard by now instead of the Astral Order needing slaves over drones that can open doors.

 

As for Khymin’s projects, lately he’s still automating household tasks to maximize his ability to not do anything resembling chores or taking care of himself. They sell pretty well actually. The larger drones to automate ship crews that were made for that effort are being made to experiment with assistants though due to their lack of intelligence there are some notable design flaws he’s trying to work out. This also being the problem with using them for arena purposes, they just do the one thing they’re supposed to do at the moment. So processing combat options is a bit dull as they will just keep punching each other one at a time. He’s good at building these but not so much the programming side of things, which the recent expansion to the company has hired more people on board for.

As for the arena, well it’s still an ongoing issue. If you absolutely must know the details…basically by adding more rules and limitations onto it so she can’t flood it’s logistics we now have her arena back to being able to draw in all of the competitors who need some extra capital. She…expanded the premise to ‘live training exercises’. Many of the competitors who have no chance will be locked into a cage as a group with someone else and told they can leave if they win or after a certain amount of time passes. The more nefarious element of this challenge is that professional fighters are paying for the service of getting in some ‘full contact sparring’ that leave people in the hospital. Now the death toll has started, with one competitor dying to a slightly crazy zankist. Laura has banned them from the facility and implied full measure of penalties onto them for murdering someone so the arena isn’t completely insane yet at least, though it does have opportunities for this to keep happening.

Meanwhile the more legitimate arena is still dominated by a team of fighters she sponsors, while not technically exploiting anything it’s probably not good that the winnings keep getting funneled to her ‘team’. I’ve also discovered that Paylenus is hanging around keeping an eye on the arena, drow find this kind of thing normal I suppose.

With the increased funding, Hylavi has taken to buying more assault shuttles and security monitoring systems to keep an eye on whats happening around the streets. Also she’s on her way to Sol at the moment to try and see what is going on with Eleazor.

To a similar note I’ve been keeping an eye on Satsujin. She’s definitely been offered extensive packages to join any organization she wants except the more criminal types. Though she still seems to be just wandering about contemplating her life choices and her newly extended lifespan. I’m also looking into what’s going on with the jydoq while I’m here.

We’ve sent the explorers out to FO-234 to see what exactly is going on there, I expect we’ll be meeting up with the Kar’soluth there as well, for better or worse.

 

Well I suppose her metaphor makes sense, invasive species and all that. With Haziel coming to Enohas, let’s see what happens. I have to say though, I’m a bit curious what would happen if she encountered the living planet thing we found across the galaxy. Does the super druid control the trees or does the organism its attached to win that one?

 

Moving along, steamworks’ prototype is coming along nicely. To the point I would say its operable but they seem to say there’s always room for improvements.

Alexander said to point out its Reika’s fault that Nila got away after three weeks of tracking her through the forest and several major injuries resulting from the hunt. I’m not really sure what Reika’s up to on that one other than she does have a bit of a weakness for helping people out. Unlike most Nah employees…

As for the offer for the merkas, we’ve been sort of busy tracking down Nila and the merkas left to return home. Since we were stuck to large groups due to the threat Nila represents, we haven’t been able to delegate tasks too well. Though now that the Nila problem is technically resolved, we can head on over to their city in a bit. Particularly Reika, they seem to like Reika.

We’ve also opened Jamalia up for immigration to see if anyone wants to come on by and begin the process of enlarging the colony. This has gone pretty well given its a golden world with a vittles farm already on it. It’s not exactly a huge surge, given the current state of the galaxy and all, but its definitely more than most colonies get during such registrations.

We contacted Que to see how they’re doing, they are definitely interested in the conduit between you and Irae. I’ve also learned they are under the representation of an illithid who is both a little reclusive and also kind of a mad scientist. Though I suppose that was obvious just by the fact that they’re trying to replicate the synapse using psionic technology. Not as crazy as Vasia at least.

 

 

You don’t need to be concerned about me sir. My mental health is kept soundly intact just by being in your presence. Its a comforting reminder that I don’t live in a fishtank. Sort of…puts things into perspective. Want another fish toy? Might keep you company if you intend to visit Azilath yourself. I’ll go get the forklift and load you into the freighters.

As for therapists, I suppose we could find a few back in Sol. They’re definitely not going to be one of the highly employed professions in the current state of things, despite the obvious need for their presence.

Cassir has rerouted her course back towards Sol to meet up with Khymin and look for Qhalord. Will take a bit to get there. Though that means everyone who was on the way to Jamalia with her are now also going to Sol.

Peter is out looking for Seiyomi, though as might be implied its hard to figure out where to start. He’s headed to Sol on the same ship as Khymin as that is likely a decent place to start.

Vamon is sitting comfortably with no complaints about how long it takes the extinction event to arrive and destroy his homeland. Also he’s taken over Alexander’s duties as an ambassador while at Moncayo so he also took over Alexander’s accommodations in the form of getting to eat all the fancy food at the fancy dinner parties.

Meanwhile the shipyard has been freed up to resume normal production for the most part with just one dock now reserved for research projects since we’ve managed to disassemble the wreckage and see which bits of them we actually need to have laying around fully assembled for study. So profit margins are back.

40th Day ships are headed to FO-234 alongside Lancaster’s explorer ships.

As for merkas tree samples, we did manage to find a few. Well more so the Astral Order dug up a few already for similar research purposes so we just had to get to Jamalia to look things over a bit. We’ll have the staff join the Order to visit the merkas city soon so we can do all that negotiating at once.

Other vivarium work: Yelay do not have biological genders they have ‘but on the inside i feel’ genders. Though they have twenty seven genders and its more like…high school cliques than relating to sexuality, just not quite a phase. Unfortunately, all the astronauts are the same gender, hence they were all astronauts. That and the potato reference is because they can cut off their reproductive organs and use that to grow a new yelay. These organs aren’t quite ‘junk’ like ours though. Imagine testicles, but they grow in a bunch like grapes and are technically attached to the inner thigh area rather than the crotch. Once cut off, they can grow in soil conditions that are likely highly prevalent on their homeworld until you get a baby yelay.

Meanwhile, the Fenalis project has promising results of no major pathogens being transmissible at least not of our current test batch. Also I’m not sick or itchy and I have three of them. Due to Lancaster being both a scientist and a stickler for procedure they’re still clearing through more tests.

Adryn and his team have been loaded onto their ship and sent off to Tykel, though as your advisor I’m just going to tell you now that you should really send someone shady with them. Sivataur are not good with social cues and Tykel is literally governed by gangsters. I’m sure they’ll be fine buuut…I am concerned they piss off the wrong people and get shot. This is the city where you can find Arkaric’s main headquarters at after all.

Uneloj and the Yelay are getting along well, both displaced aliens in a foreign land. Though Uneloj is still withholding his sahad knowledge until he finds a trip out of here since he knows its the closest thing to currency he has right now. He seems to be leaning towards taking a job with the Nomads to help fill out its new battlecruiser, at least for the short term until he can save up enough to go home.

The Alnae ultra carrier’s food supply is contained on two separate decks. One on its topside and one on the lower end, it spins to distribute sunlight to them on a day night cycle. While these sections are particularly vulnerable to attack given their proximity to the outer hull, it’s still a very thick hull. Options for disruption include setting it on fire, bombarding the hull in naval combat, or letting loose some sort of disease within the crops. Two of those require getting someone on board though, the other requires fighting an ultra carrier. I’d say we prefer the former.

The disease idea is tricky as we don’t know specifically what crops they have nor will we have long to study them. Though add that to something that could actually infect the populace and you’ve got a recipe for a ship that needs to solve some problems. However the catch to that is the only people who are truly skilled in disease-craft would be the Jaal’darya. Who Somnus is not on the best terms with right now. Though we could send someone with much more discreet connections to meet with them, like Haggard. There is also Doctor Pierce but she’s nowhere near in position to do anything right now.

Just setting things on fire is risky because whoever starts that likely will have a very difficult time extracting since their attention will be drawn to the infiltrator the instant all the fire starts. Though it is a nice quick and direct plan of action. Once we cut off their internal food supply they may not need to dock just yet, but they will need to start importing food until they can start a new crop. It might cause them to just leave the system altogether and go settle down on a star in the frontier…which would suit our needs just fine actually. If it goes far enough away, then at least the politics surrounding it would be able to acknowledge that its not in striking range of any planet it wants back in Sol.

We’ve had Michael meet with Laura, though that just keeps us in touch with her shenanigans for the moment as she doesn’t have any major things going on right now except hijacking almost every good deed Lancaster and Ilex try to do for a profit. Which…well Lancaster is still dealing with that. In keeping tabs with the gangs she brought in on the backs of those programs, they definitely seem aware they aren’t the top dog because they know Laura is. I’m also just remembering that literally all of this could have been avoided had we recruited Laura a bit more aggressively given her disposition towards not liking secrecy.

The op to go capture Elgrim went…south fast. Vanjin and Setani were both on death’s door. Though we can blame this mostly on Jhaeros reappearing and getting involved. Also it turns out Elgrim is very dangerous…and sadistic. Fortunately, Selona was also there looking for him. It turns out they had actually been following Vanjin due to being too lazy to do the footwork on their own. We also got to meet Arkaric’s newest…creation. Elgrim was supposed to be exported to the Raven before his escape, so they’re after him as well due to the potential he represents for their business. Which…is basically what we were planning on doing with him anyways. So its convenient that we were there instead of anyone else, since the Phantoms see us as kind of colleagues. Fighting that new…thing…of Arkaric’s to capture Elgrim would not have been desirable. Though since it turns out our plans align well with the phantoms on this one, we can probably still carry out the mission and put in a reservation to buy him from the Raven. We just might need to send someone else in the meantime to help capture him, Vanjin and Setani are both in the hospital. Setani has the worst of it, Vanjin’s regneration is helping her recovery but Setani might not make it. The doctors are trying to fix her up with cybernetics, but Elgrim’s method of attack damaged her soul directly and things aren’t going as they should. It doesn’t help that he just toyed with her, draining her all he liked until Shanhai showed up.

Contacting Zhuan has been rough since we don’t really blend in with criminals as well as we used to. The best we have for that would be the Nomads but they’re still on their way to Sol. Zhuan’s little empire is mostly just a few suburban blocks where he maintains his farm. He’s not really as crazy as some of the other kinds of people we encounter out here. For him, the criminal life was just a matter of maintaining the family business and he’s content to do business fairly as long as no one picks a fight with him. Though while I’m noticing a recurring theme of our recruiting attempts running into some other recruiters, I’m not sure how to feel about this one. The other people talking to him are representatives of Laura King’s family. Offering him a new family to work for since his old one is pretty much dead thanks to the invasion and a method of transporting his whole gang to Koura should he want to try his hand on a newly developing world on the frontier. They’re obviously quite good at hitting the right notes to talk to him about compared to our agents who are less ‘in’ with criminals ever since Sophia retired.

As for Bardhe, we had an easy in to start talking with him since Ilex wanted us to extend some job deals for him in the meantime. Which he took. So I can say that he is currently wandering around Kar’Soluth space looking for vals to assassinate. I guess…that works?

Back here at Koura, Ohalyn doesn’t really seem to mind being a slaver. It seems like whats really eaten away at her is everything that happened leading up to her becoming one. The invasion took everything from her, including her husband and two children. She was a stowaway on a transport that brought her to the frontier, looking for a way to escape the memories of what she lost. Then forced into prostitution which later turned into her current trade. Elves tend to be more attached to their children than even humans and gnolls due to the investments that have to be made by their race to have any. She’s lost so much that she stopped caring about what she takes from anyone else. Which might explain her skill at running the slave trade around Koura and Somnus. Even though Lancaster gave her a much more vibrant and lively business to run, I guess it doesn’t replace what she lost and so she keeps doing the slaving business since its what she understands and is good at. Running the casino is more of a job for people who can still smile. We ran some observation on her and now two agents are depressed upon realizing they’ve been spying on a woman who cries herself to sleep every night and is still trying to cope with the aftermath of the first invasion. Maybe Ilex was right about hiring more therapists around here.

We’ve set the Nomads out to Sol to look for some ‘recruits’. They’re going to work on that for a bit. We’ve handed the battlecruiser off to them and had it refitted to their specifications. Which were extensive…apparently letting pirates design a dream ship comes with them doing mildly crazy ideas. Also a lot of mutiny protections. Though it does seem that Andal and his core team will remain on their little corvette. I suppose they’re attached to it at this point. As for a potential base, they seem fine with working out of the private docks attached to the lowest decks of Somnus. Since it gives them direct access to the station. Though we’ve definitely had to improve their security clearance as a result of all this and now Andal is roaming the offices asking people questions. Not particularly sensitive questions, more so about their holiday plans or hobbies. He took three of our handlers out fishing on Koura too. I caught a shark looking thing that we think wasn’t as edible as we thought. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom again.

With the Nila situation sorted out, we’re shipping back to Koura with our new recruits for training. They’ll be alright I’m sure. Also the men could use some time to rest for a bit I suppose, since a major invasion is on its way. Speaking of which, we might be able to get Lancaster to fund our next expedition if she wants us to go protect anything in particular. If not I imagine sooomeone will pay us to help fight in the invasion, so easy job to pickup soon wherever we wind up going. Time to get ready for that deployment though.