Posted on November 21, 2021

 

Stories of Lore 17

Ah yes the golem ship. It’s sitting in space where we told it to park, near the exit to where you’re at. The comm buoys are up, hence we’re having this discussion without the usual long chain of pandem comm lines that we had to do for awhile. At least they work.

Also the space station plan hit a bit of a snag that will cost some millions in repairs. Once we boarded it, nothing really happened. Once they walked to the other end of the station, then it pushed the station. Stations are not really designed to be shoved around like that and a chunk of it broke off, then we had to take some emergency measures to stop it from drifting back through the rift and into anything on Somnus. Which broke a few more pieces of it. Still manageable amounts of damage, but definitely some repairs needed.

We’ve sent our ship running around to get Setani to Enohas, within the next day or two she’ll be there. At least her decline isn’t too dramatic and the doctors are keeping her fairly alive for the time being.

So without Hylavi, the security force is having a bit more difficulty in regards to dealing with Laura. Atop of that, while we’ve managed to disrupt some criminal activities we can no longer differentiate hers from the other smaller gangs that recently arrived. With regards to the arena, she found another clause in it about medical coverage and other various quirks to the way its being run. The underground arena seems to have mostly closed up since the investments into our own have been high enough to choke it out at least. Though now we’re losing money on it and she’s running the behind the scenes section of it through her proxys, that we can’t tie to her directly. So in short, the arena is going pretty well. However she has moved on to other projects, ones we haven’t quite figured out yet. The large property she bought awhile back has been converted into a kind of mundane shopping area. We’re relatively convinced that there is something going on with it beyond its surface level operations but have yet to prove anything.

In other news, the Vittles operation to sell food to Alnae and let Shetou ‘steal’ the rest has hit a snag. Every shipment intended to be stolen by Shetou has been stolen by other pirates, notably sharing something in common with the host of gangs that came into the system through the exploitation of the 40th day system that I mentioned before. We’re not entirely sure, but we’re pretty sure that Laura has some hand in this. Also the absence of Hylavi and a large portion of the security force is not helping, soon as she left they became a little more bold.

In other news regarding the less than prestigious individuals, Ohalyn refused therapy with all the apathy she could muster.

As for Satsujin, competition is a little tense. Particularly, House Song sent an orc named Kekoa who has the house’s long history to stand on in making an appeal to her. I’m kind of still working my way in on the guise that she isn’t one hundred percent of my reason for being here and pitching the exploration angle a bit instead of something purely military. Alnae sent her own former commanding officer. She has definitely attracted a lot of attention.Though fortunately, its mostly quite cordial.

Hylavi has arrived in Sol and worked her way to finding Eleazor while he is on his manhunt to get his wife back. You could say he was a little surprised to find an alien cop there with such a vested interest in the subject. Currently the two of them are investigating to figure out where his wife is being held.

We began our attack on the Kar’Soluth station which resulted in some…losses. While the station wasn’t too heavily defended, it was still tucked deep into the asteroid and we could only fire on it once it was clear that we were there to fire on it. One of the destroyers and perhaps a hundred personnel died in the assault, though we have taken the station.

The small fleet has arrived at FO-234, now established to be known as Herastes. The aliens kind of look like flamboyant demons. Still some similar features as their planar cousins but much more colorful instead of just black, red, and on fire. Though they also display the radical variations in physical shape as demons tend to, we have reason to believe the plane itself lends something to this particular occurrence Technologically they’re well progressed given the average we come across on these adventures. They have cars and long range communication, they’ve even landed on their own moon a few times but haven’t really colonized it. . Now for the bad news, one of the corvette crews was killed by the Kar’Soluth strike force who clearly don’t want any competition. The other two retreated out of the space around FO-234 before being destroyed.

As for an academy, I suppose we could expand to a more militarized university. Might take some time to yield any results, as currently there aren’t too many younger individuals to go through such courses in the area. Speaking of which, here’s a picture from the hospital of the first baby to be born on Koura. Just a keepsake.

Oh and, Riley and Umarlen are obviously not doing well. Though at least we got them back.

The squires have been transferred officially and are en route to Jamalia. Though we recruited another one on Somnus and also promoted one in the first lance too. So still no nice divisible numbers at the moment.

Reika recommends we send more to Jamalia if she’s going to be remaining here. So they can be trained by the champ. Also she seems concerned about the recent interaction with the merkas and may or may not be planning to build an army around herself.

Alexander is on his way back to Moncayo to take the job from Faelyn for the big rift tunnels. This should actually help our recruitment as well if it brings people from Sol to Moncayo where one of our chapter houses happens to be.

The rest of ongoing affairs should be evident for you since you’re…involved in an awful lot right now.

The Nomads have gone along with Adryn to Tykel, that turned into…an adventure in all of five minutes. As it turns out, the Nomads have enemies on Tykel. Small time and easily dispatched, but they still opened fire five feet out of the docking terminal. Apparently this kind of thing is normal there. Never go there. The other problem being that the so called Iron Gnoll is, as Andal puts it, “sparky”. We found him running around downtown stealing food and getting into fights with gangs he stole drugs from. Drugs he didn’t even use by the way, he just stole it for the amusement value and then later threw it into a nightclub before running off into the streets once again. This all happened within a two hour period where Adryn lost track of him and had to find him a second time. He caused all this mess so quickly that Adryn was constantly just trying to catch up. He found once again in the sewers chasing rats. The sewers are not large enough to stand up in, he was belly crawling through the pipes. Chasing rats. After being offered to come to Somnus he agreed to come check it out.

In between walking from the sewer exit to the docking port, he wandered off again while everyone was buying snacks from a food stand. Stole some other ship and just took off. Amusingly, he was headed for Somnus. Adryn is hot on his tail while the Nomads stayed behind to keep up their recruiting efforts. He’ll be here soon most likely…without an escort. I would advise Hylavi to be on alert but guess what? She’s not fucking here. Prepare for a potentially rough day. I’ve asked Madhammer to send someone because if he gets here without someone to greet or possibly detain him then Lancaster is going to throw a fit once he somehow disrupts half the economy on a caffeine fueled rampage through the plaza. The Nomads said they’d take him though if we do get him onto the payroll. Apparently Andal and Taelwynn love him.

Also you were going to Azilath, she can’t leave SR3 or she’d be out of range of the synapse. They don’t really  go anywhere remember? Existential dread and all. Shall I go get the forklift?

As for the therapist project we’re shipping a few in from Sol who definitely could use the employment.

Salied is still watching cartoons yes, mostly because she’s stuck in the containment cell with nothing better to do. Though she is having less episodes of existential out of body experiences. The researchers are trying to talk to her more and bring her back to reality, and she can now produce a starlight spell on demand. They think it might be time to try and have her go outside for a little while and see how she handles being around people again.

As for the Yelay genders, they are chosen during their version of puberty I guess? That’s the best way I can describe it, and also about as far as the researcher explained to me before I zoned out.

Cassir and Khymin arrived at Rixa-Thenica to seek out Qhalord. Turns out his lair really is some weird dungeon filled with deathtraps and undead minions. It also turns out the place is built with very modern technology and prototype traps, so it was a bit of a mess overall. Khymin is the reason they even made it to the end of the lair, but upon reaching the end of it he wasn’t even there. Though the state of the place implies he got into a fight with something big and nasty, his basement dungeon was reduced to ruins and there are massive claw marks as if some huge monster somehow got through the tiny doorway. There was no sign of the lich himself anywhere, we’re not sure if he was killed or abducted.

Peter reports that he has made it to Sol and with Aryn’s help found the last known sighting of Seiyomi. This is just an ongoing issue of trying to track the guy down.

We’ve sent a few of the cultists to Jamalia to establish themselves there though with Cassir and Peter busy we just have a few of the lesser members available to show up. Since both Peter and Cassir take ten people with them everywhere they go.

Vamon is still enjoying the good life.

40th Day’s trip to FO-234 hit a snag. For the same reasons as Lancaster’s ships, basically the Kar’Soluth have decided to just destroy everything that gets close to the place and the survey ships are not good at outrunning things. So…they’re dead.

So far the fenalis projects reveal nothing likely to cause any major issues with my pet shop plan. The yelay would need much deeper and richer soil to embark upon reproduction efforts though they’re wary of trying for the time being given their current rather bleak situation as zoo critters. Also the Vivarium acquired a few fish species, so we’re working on an aquarium.

Meanwhile the maker exhibit spat out something new. Another maker it seems. Though one that is smaller and more humanoid in structure but uhh..not quite. The most peculiar part of it, is that there is metal used as part of this creature. We think part of the design is modeled after its encounter with Cassir. That being said it looks kind of horrifying.

Also Renjala said he can’t even get Haziel to be interested in doing anything let alone the Vivarium. That’s an ongoing project of his.

 

It appears Zhuan has no real connections to the Gauntlet, at least not that we can find. Again, aethernet breaking down makes it hard to run background checks on people. Though Raiben apparently knows something about this family, they used to make their primary living off money lending, laundering, and just regular investment scams. They had a lot of small businesses popping up here and there and definitely had a respectable territory across the city.

We sent Leon to establish contact with him, they chatted for awhile. That’s about it, we hit that issue again where we can’t really tell him who we are or what we do since he’s from the outside. Though he only caught Zhuan while he was leaving, apparently Zhuan is coming to Koura at the invitation of Laura King.

Vanjin is mostly recovered, though has a bit of a limp still so we don’t have her running around too much. The doctors said she wouldn’t do so well with walking for a little while since this is the second time they’ve had to fix the same femur. So they replaced it with a metal one but its taking her body some time to adjust to such dramatic surgery.

The Nomads went to recruit on Tykel since Ilex requested they help him keep his agent out of trouble for the time being since he was looking for the Iron Gnoll there. Also that’s a good a place as any to find a crew for them. They said they’ll try to find some hotshots there who can help act as officers on the battlecruiser’s crew before rummaging around for more desperate folk to fill the numbers over in a slightly more ruined area. They also kind of casually stole a freighter on their way that just so happened to be a little too close to their path of transit.

Vaeri, after months of work, has managed to worm her way into figuring out what Siwa’s secret project is. As it turns out, they’ve made something they call warforged using a captured android of Arkaric’s they came across. They think the androids come from alien scouting parties. Though you might foresee that this could get complicated with how the Echo Consensus exists just because of the memory of their war with a rogue military AI and it might just piss off Arkaric outright who is drawing the exerlus in for…some insane reason. This also explains why that engineer we were hunting around for was so important, she might have been close to knowing about these things.

The Jaal’Darya were easy to negotiate with once we got through the hoops of proving we’re not here for anything other than nefarious purchases. They said they’ll make it for us for just four hundred million credits, though caution that if the infection escapes the carrier we can expect the food shortage to get about twenty times worse. While we were there… some other interesting things came about from some casual observation and conversation with them. They seemed just a little too fond of Val’Hari Yasrena. Knowing what we know about her, it stands to reason their position in the empire is higher than we initially thought. Despite the Vloz’Khress getting the most attention as the spearhead of the new empire, its quite possible that the Jaal’Darya are the actual asset of importance. Because if they’re close to Yasrena that means they’re likely the actual favored house for the Phantoms to work with. We also noticed they were close with Beldoban, as in physically their city is in weirdly close in proximity for drow out to establish a new more traditional empire. This would make sense though, they are both great houses that have been around for centuries. Reliable, functional, and not led by a deranged delusional monster who thinks atrocities are meant to be one-upped. Might be worth keeping tabs on them. Especially now that Eliza, who we know is secretly a Jaal’Darya, is now a member of the Phantoms. We don’t know if she keeps in touch with her old family or not, but if their relationship is anything but sour then we can imagine she would give them a boost within the Phantom politics.

So far the arcurans are still struggling with the concept of ranged firepower. They keep trying to charge at everything for ‘glorious melee combat’. We’ve just started training them as heavy melee for the most part, focusing on getting them to at least understand the threat of ranged firepower even if convincing them to use it is particularly difficult.