You were already at…okay back to Moncayo then. At least you have your skeleton crew and the carrier. Don’t get blown up out there alright?

At Zenaka Elion is doing well enough to hold the borders of the most sympathetic nations to the situation while Ilivayas seems to be content to just keeping us contained while she builds up her forces working through other sections of the planet that are more interested in the Vloz way, either by preference or survival instinct makes no difference for her.

The natives actually have had very little to no contact with pandem magic up until now, which makes the Vloz somewhat bizarre. They’re pulling from Finsir instead of Finsor in order to perform demonic army summoning, as is their style, and the zenakans are a little perturbed by this. Which sort of leads to the main split in their point of view. Some are fascinated by the Vloz ability and others are pretty sure its evil.

More and more are being swayed to pushing back against the Vloz now that they have revealed their actual strategy really is “burn everything that doesn’t obey us” which is helping our efforts to build up what we can. Though the aggressive expansion of the Vloz’Khress forces aren’t giving some people time to really think about it and weigh their options too carefully. Also those that have already submitted seem to be doing fine which is helping that angle of the propaganda. It’s definitely likely to produce some long term effects that the Vloz’Khress are not totally accounting for, likely because before the invasion of Sol they had the power to just take the whole planet but now a long term occupation might be risky for them.

We had the radar scan through and Ecsanul is one of the more dangerous binds present which we already know can be summoned by Ilivayas herself. There is another demon lord known as Yellari who is bound to one of the other commanders under Ilivayas’. These would be the two big ones, though given her specialty for summoning based tactics its no surprise we also detect a huge variety of major demons among them as well.

Overhead, Koda keeps the fleet managed and most of the attrition is just the Nomads showing up and messing with the Vloz’Khress fleet whenever they get a chance to, as Koda’s fleet just isn’t large enough to risk getting in range. Though due to the orbital cannons we’ve set up, their fleet isn’t too eager to chase down Koda’s while it rests in orbit above them. Though we’re locked down to that area and can’t do any bombardment since leaving the borders of the cannon coverage would result in very unfavorable losses to the Vloz’Khress battleships. Which are abnormally difficult for the pirates to take out due to them being staffed by summoners. Not that it stopped the Nomads from stealing one of their destroyers in the meantime.

Most of our fleets are in Zenaka so what remains isn’t well equipped to move into Sol to find the rest of the 314-C at the moment as the alien invasion is still underway. With the death of Yunalesca they’re currently working under Kaylen’s command.

The Koukou has been able to sneak around Sol though and see what it can find to pick up as long as it avoids a specific type of Nelta ship. One of their civilizations is an expert in scanning technology and can find our stealth cruisers but it requires some level of proximity.

Hylavi reports that Laura’s people have become hard to track. The defenses have had security increased across the board so no one approaches them but it is a notable concern that in the chaos of the revenant attack, we can’t tell who works for her very well unless they act very overtly for us to rebuild our intel on them. Which leaves her a lot of room to hide important people.

I’ve had the armor supplies for Hylavi placed aboard Somnus so they can be deployed to Koura in a reasonable amount of time, getting them from Koura up to here is a lot harder. Though they are kind of cramped here on Somnus.

Nelan isn’t even sure what Alnae needs right now since he can’t contact them with the Aethernet down. He’s fairly certain that what will matter once everything settles down is relief supplies given the scale of destruction that the invasion is causing.

So among the refugees of Moncayo we found a well educated druid to help with building up a druidic chapter of some sort. Regardless of wherever that goes, Bill’s pretty good. Alexander likes him at least. We’ve had him sent to Enohas to see how he gets along with the wolves, who obviously see Haziel as the general leader. And so begins the age of internal politics that comes after a large growth.

Moving on, Ki’Ralcht is doing pretty well on Zenaka all things considered. To the natives, the bizarre appearance of Ki’Ralcht is just chalked off to her being an alien and they haven’t really questioned just how different she is. Though she’s been getting involved with skirmishes with the Vloz that escalate quickly as she faces off against other summoners and reduce county areas to decaying wastelands.

Renard’s rifts are still feeling out the situation, they do not have the knowledge we do of how the war is most likely to go. So they aren’t quite ready to be assimilated into the order or anything yet as they aren’t aware how little they will have to go back to any time soon. So we’ll just keep an eye on them for now as they start to come to terms with the reality of the situation on Thenica.

Jamalia has been prepping its defenses for the inevitable second wave when the Invasion bounces back outwards to the frontier. Though Nelta clearly doesn’t know which locations have what kinds of assets. The larger bulk of the force is heading towards Somnus and Enohas will likely endure far less since most of our warriors are elites, thus throwing their headcount’s predictions askew. They should be here next month if you have any other preparations to make.

Eden has agreed to the temporary binds to assist in the effort, though has little context to what war actually is like. So this ought to be an interesting experience for them.

Helym stands unused at the moment, they use it as a staging ground for some hunting sports but the convenience of Jamalia after its renovations by Steamworks™ makes it a bit more appealing overall.

 

So the ritual with Cassir seems to get her up an extra notch at least. Neat. Also who eats lasagna from a bowl ever?

Anyways catman, I can make a new fishtank we can use to pose as if you’re still in such a thing so no one knows about the cat thing. Don’t worry I’ll kill them once I put them in so they don’t have to spend a lifetime in sensory deprivation, I’m not a monster. Only need a corpse to hang out in a prop fishtank after all. What? Have someone else take over? Oh…yeah I suppose that is also a reasonable solution. Not like anyone would be surprised if you died out here at Que. Though I suppose the natural option is Cassir. That would explain why you’re close to her all the time as her cat for ritual shenanigans and she has a tendency to be respectable but likeable. That and her existence isn’t a secret like mine.

Faelyn has made arrangements for the rest of Que to remain at Moncayo for the time being after updating them on the situation. I have a feeling she’ll absorb their fleet in due time.

So…remember that whole Aethernet going down thing? As was pointed out to Renjala during the summit conference thing, it’s currently very hard to track people down. Specifically, Kanika herself is just missing. I doubt anyone short of Arkaric could find her again right now and no one wants to ask him. Well Aryn might be willing to but…long range communication is down. So its hard to find where the Raven II is parked in space while it waits out the initial hit of the invasion.

Though on the topic of arcane engineers, apparently Winter made you an ethi cat collar with a shield on it to protect you from stray bullets at the least. Though she’s over on Somnus so we’ll get that whenever we get back there. I think people keep forgetting Winter has a skillset.

Also I already ran scans, you don’t age like a cat. Actually you’re biologically immortal, as are all silnian creations. Easy version to explain, their DNA is printed and stamped and then it just stays that way until re-programmed by the ichor. Since things are grown at full size within the ichor instead of aging and growing up normally it has no need to be malleable. This is why you’re not a kitten or anything. I still think a lobster would have been more fitting, that way we could throw you back into your old tank.

Alexander has the Ichor at moncayo at the moment but their spaceport is kind of full due to all the refugees going on there. Just a logistical clusterfuck.

As for the possibility of the Ichor being emotional, I guess technically anything is possible. Especially in my line of research. Though I’d say the odds are low given what the purpose of the ichors actually are as well as our previous examination’s results. Though until confronted with new evidence towards the contrary there isn’t anything to suggest otherwise.

Larazja is still coping with the reality of being a giant fluffy snake monster. She’s adapted to controlling the body but I suppose there is something to be said to the more existential nature of it. The cold creeping realization that your body is just another thing for the powers that be to toy with. In a galaxy of biomancers like the silnians, cybernetic rebuilders like Kenin and Daiheb, and soul writers like Kanika – there is nothing for the weak to take solace in truly being their own. Larazja is just now realizing the depth of futility in her meaningless existence as a commoner in a galaxy of those who can harvest every last piece of her as just another resource to their ends. I am informed by Cassir I was not supposed to answer all of her questions so honestly, but only after the fact.

The important thing here is it means her progress on controlling the drones is going slower than we might hope. I have reason to suspect her mental state is a part of the problem, you were a bit more enthusiastic so perhaps for you it was easier. Along with being an already powerful psion. She is making progress, but slow enough that I handed her off to one of my other researchers so I can get back to research with a higher yield potential.

Speaking of which, Balhast has survived ingesting the ichor though is now a bit worried about any food I offer him. He has also remained in control of himself. This somewhat showcases that the silnian ichor definitely has its limits. While it was incredibly stacked in Balhast’s favor, it still proves the mutating powers of the ichor are not infallible.

One of my field agents went to meet with Seiyomi to sort of tease him a little. In the process of which, Seiyomi has not really agreed to start working for us until he’s met…I think you? Maybe Lancaster. He wasn’t really clear about it, though I suppose that’s because we weren’t really clear about. Either way he has an interest in meeting with whoever is ‘actually in charge’. Which is a confusing thing for us to answer ourselves at this point really.

Cassir points out she doesn’t find the cat thing all that humorous as others. Given that she has similarly lost her body and had to have it reconstructed to a heavy extent. Also I’m fairly certain Cassir doesn’t smile or laugh. I don’t think I’ve seen her do either since we met. I on the other hand find it hilarious.

Also she’s not effective as a synapse relay, though that might be more to do with not knowing the method of how to do so. We know Que was researching how to do just this, though it might take awhile of going through their notes to create a psionic method of imitating the effect they had been working on for so long.

Well before you do the mass ritual method of connecting the ‘who is where’ database, and while we’re still building that database – I feel I should point out there is a perhaps easier way to do this. If Lancaster is going to be away at Zenaka the whole time and not using the Rena, we could just send someone with a clipboard from place to place to pick up and ferry about the lists. I mean it’s not an instant method of updating all three locations, but it’s less taxing on the cult. If you prefer the faster way, we can do that in a month or two when we finish compiling the databases.

The cult has been recruiting a bit with the general emotional scanning as you mentioned, though they’re not as good at it as Cassir is and Moncayo is a clusterfuck at the moment.

So you still didn’t say “build x number of ships” so I just started replacing battlecruisers in the meantime with a wild guess at numbers for you. Also got the defenses placed on the other colonies and a lot of our resources sent to Orchard to stabilize that area before it becomes a mess.

Okay so we have a lot of species from Thenica and making a viable population of them all might be a bit heavy on the space requirements for the Vivarium. We’ve made little eco system chambers to work on it for now though and see how many we can do. Though a few of the larger more secure containment units should be available as soon as I’ve moved my labs into Phoenix. Then we won’t need facilities for holding things like the Makers on standby at the Vivarium since my new lab will have…plenty…of containment units for any new samples we should acquire.

Anyways I’m hitching a ride back to Somnus while you’re off on some adventure with Lancaster. I found a patrol of Solvang pirates cruising through the area looking for any  ships to pick on and figured pirates wouldn’t pirate other pirates. So I just paid them to take me back to Auwana to save some effort. My freighters are still stuck here but I need to get back to my actual labs and check on Salied. Have fun.

As for Ilex’s idea to get bio samples of fallen heroes, we would need to figure out who to send on that kind of job. I suppose Vaeri is the best bet since she’s the sneakiest of those on our employ and that is an active warzone being constantly scanned by the aliens to just shoot any humanoid down wherever they might be found.

 

We’ve got the alien problem thrown into a holding cell for now until we figure out why it is contacting Nelta again given what happened last time.

 

Greetings board of directors, I’ll be taking over keeping track of the war since this is sort of our thing in general.

First off being the primary threat to our assets, the Nelta raiding groups that intend to attack the frontier to weaken our ability to bounce back from all this. We have about another month or so until they get here however it seems they are only sending a fleet that is far too small to actually attack Auwana. Specifically because of Somnus. However, this fleet started to hold a position out of our reach and seem to be just keeping an eye on things at the moment. I suspect their plan is to attack the other locations before converging on Auwana with a larger force. They seem to have figured out that Somnus has a lot of firepower even if its attending fleet is currently not there.

This means the assault on the other colonies will be a bit more important than expected as those are an opportunity to whittle their forces away before the large “deathball” can converge to move on Somnus. Hopefully by then Lancaster gets back with all her ships too. These frontier cleanup groups are not as dangerous as the invasion fleet as they are having their own problems that prevent Guardian from attacking us.

To a similar note, Moncayo remains safe. It is likely they do not even know how to find Moncayo within the Abyss. Either by scanning or by actually reaching it as many aliens are not comfortable with navigating the inconsistent physics of the abyss or the weird dimensional fold that Moncayo is hiding in. Which allows Faelyn to deploy her fleets more aggressively to protect and evacuate all other colonies as needed. So while they intend to converge on Somnus eventually, they don’t seem to have any plans that indicate an awareness of Moncayo’s presence at all.

Back in Sol, things are unfolding bit by bit. Satsujin and her elite strike force has dealt a major blow to Guardian with the help of Selona’s weapon technologies she noticed being demonstrated by Lyli’s battleships and securing the assistance of the Alnae ultra carrier. She managed to board the Guardian by going out in a space suit and drilling through it while fighting waves of exerlus soldiers…in space on an ever reshaping hull while the ultra carrier dumped hundreds of thousands of strike craft into space and just as many soldiers onto Guardian. It was the stuff of legends worthy of three books and a movie. Turns out Eleazor was really useful here because his abilities work to disrupt even exerlus mechanisms. They managed to destroy Guardian’s main core with what I would describe as a nuclear disintegration spell. The main core was responsible for providing the energy output needed to use its titanic form of interlocking exerlus energy cores. It could still assume that shape as is with consensus based cooperation but without that core it doesn’t have weapons and shields as powerful as it would need to justify being that big of a target to our system’s battleships.

The ultra carrier was destroyed in the battle but so was Guardian’s main core which means all that remains of Guardian is the consensus of soldiers, a much more manageable threat instead of the titan killing behemoth that it once was. Though it is still a major threat as the ruins of our planets provide it with a lot of material to work with. However, the Valdir are contesting them at several key points. The ruins of war provides just as much biomass as scrap metal and we are witness to a smaller version of a conflict billions of years old. Exerlus and silnians at it again. This is the main reason that Thenica is now considered a ‘place where people don’t go’ anymore. This ongoing conflict is ceaseless and brutal on a level we haven’t seen since the Thousand Legends between two armies that can continually resupply based on the wreckage of the battle itself. Nothing less than a total victory will allow the fighting to stop as each point of interest is taken and retaken for more assimilation material to rebuild lost forces.

The war with Nelta on other planets is also not going well but at least its a bit quicker in figuring out which way it is going to go. As the Phantoms promised, the old races have risen up once again to assert their supremacy and build followings who in such desperate times are willing to just ‘go with it’ regardless of who their savior is. Though it is not as smooth as one might hope, as others still remember why the purge was conducted and blah blah complicated. But it’s still a start and given that we will soon see Moncayo – who has most of the refugees – adopt the return of the monsters for their ‘heroic’ actions it is likely to say that soon their plot will come to light.

On the other end of things, their plan to weaken Vloz’Khress and House Song is not going according to plan as Kharla and Song Yi seem to be finding some common ground in such a dire situation. Admittedly both are in a weakened state as their empires fall apart, it’s still definitely not preferable to the Phantoms that two entities they fear are allying with each other after being such reliable enemies for so long.

Eliza has taken over House Jaal’Darya formally now and leads them to war against the alien invaders. Their idea of war being to sneak out, salvage the corpses, and make plagues. This happens to be extremely effective except against the exerlus, so it is at least making good progress.

Moncayo is overrun with refugees that are being shipped out on carriers by us really to other colonies that might be able to contain them but it is taxing the limits of what any given place can support. The economy of Auwana is not only unstable but plummeting from the number of refugees it has suddenly become host to. We’ve hit the point where vittles can no longer sustain Auwana, people are starting to go hungry for the first time since we took over the system. Jamalia is starting to feel the strain as well though the local Merkas are able to help.

Jydoq space is under similar assault from the Nelta forces for having allied with Sol enough to integrate between the cultures, they didn’t have the same military presence that centuries of imperial conflict created on Sol and did not have much assistance from us as we were concerned with protecting Sol. They aren’t doing so well.

In a rare appearance on the middle planes, Satsujin managed to recruit the Demon King to come out and help defend Sol. He chose to lend his aid to Thenica, specifically the area where Kharla happens to be. While he does so on behalf of Satsujin rather than Kharla, it is likely the demon lords convinced him to at least hang out in that area. This marks the first setback for Nelta’s infamous Chief Rikoy, who could not overcome the ancient demon.

The abyssal lord Valnacht has also made an appearance in Vermasih. Sending the aliens back quite a bit, despite their overwhelming firepower advantage strikes like these are hurting them since they cannot resupply so far from their home systems. They are encountering our most dangerous creatures regularly now between the interplanar monarchs and the return of the Phantoms. Nelta is lost and confused as to just how many strange creatures our system has access to, as no other civilization they have encountered barring the silnians have had this much bullshit to throw at them wave after wave.

Tykel has also halted the Nelta invasion entirely, forcing Guardian consensus to send as many forces as it could to deal with a city armed to the teeth with anti-alien weaponry that just so happened to work really well. This is when Guardian learned of Arkaric’s android race, this is also the first time most of Sol is learning they exist. Beginning a struggle that has finally wounded Tykel with the sheer expanse of the combat reaching throughout the city unlike the last invasion, but the exerlus are confused and out of sync as they come up against the androids. Not to mention Orochi has one very specific ability we didn’t know about but just learned from these reports. Arkaric designed it for this fight, and Orochi can consume exerlus to enhance itself. It’s getting bigger with each passing battle, and people are getting nervous.

So basically, everything is over the top, destructive, and Nelta’s advantage is being whittled away by the appearance of forces they didn’t know exist and the brave heroics of a lucky and successful few.