Stories of Lore 24

 

I believe Elion already covered the situation you find yourself in at Zenaka before you go charging off. So in other news, attempts to hail the Nelta fleet have been met with no response at all. Though Akuhiko from the Astral Order has some theory about why that is.

 

The draft for the refugees to work in food production hasn’t been too bad. General reception is understanding that food is an issue. Especially since many of them come from Sol where the food crisis is at its worse. Though there are some who disagree and other elements that seek to capitalize on the situation. You know what  you don’t need to worry about this while you’re fighting at Zenaka. We’ll just…wait until you get back. …hrm? you sure? I mean…you can’t do anything from all the way over there. Hylavi asked me not to tell you yet until she can clean it up…

Fine you’re the boss. So a riot broke out and now the main vittles’ factory is destroyed. Spurred on by Shetou refugees who still act like…well drow to be honest. Pirates have moved into the system preying on the remains of the food distribution because most of the fleet is missing. They got aboard Somnus through the 40th day programs and some tech savvy fellow among them figured out how to circumvent some of our automated security checks so now the station won’t even target them unless we go through manual overrides just to make it stop asking ‘are you sure you want to shoot this innocent civilian ship?’. Then a slight mishap occurred in which it actually was a civilian ship. Hylavi thinks VSEC was infiltrated in some manner to make this happen to destabilize the area even more dramatically.

So remember that plan to retake South Koura? The blow to Laura’s position as the queen of crime around here led to some opportunists seeing a weak spot. Her house was destroyed by some new pirate gang in an attempt to assassinate her, which was only thwarted thanks to Michael Haggard. The area is now under VSEC control once again but VSEC resources are past the point of breaking. Hylavi literally passed out on the sidewalk from…well not sleeping for three straight days and it turns out jydoq physiology just has a point where it decides it refuses to cooperate anymore.

Laura is currently off the grid being held by Nah just to keep her alive as the city descends into chaos. With the destruction of Vittles our food storage will last a little while longer but after that production is nowhere near what we’re going to need. We’re also about to be attacked by Nelta…actually this might be their doing in some bizarre way.

Governor Harlus was killed by the new crime factions who are now patrolling North Koura. Governor Joe is all that remains of that pair, and VSEC had to take him aboard Somnus and lock him into the upper decks so he doesn’t get killed too.

Ohalyn informed some of the Nah agent contacts that there is a new crime boss in town who was responsible for attacking Laura. She is staying out of it and just running her plaza as best she can but she does know who they are and that they’re living out of South Koura. This is a crime lord from SV3 who…let’s say has a strong admiration for the accomplishments of others in his field. Meaning he wants to pull off what Ark did. They acquired some of Laura’s bombs in all this chaos after we cleared out South Koura, and that’s how the vittles factory got destroyed.

This crime lord has been building an actual army, without Madhammer here and with all her attention on getting Laura out of power they managed to start a mass recruitment wave and establish a haven for pirates. They found out about the incoming Nelta invasion and are using that to stir refugees to ‘defend what they have left’. Basically they’re doing what we were doing to at least get people to help with food production.

They tried to take the Madhammer base while Madhammer is away at Zenaka. This didn’t work as their remaining security was enough to push them back but six civilians died. Really they were criminals trying to take over a military armory by force, but that is definitely not how the ne’er do wells framed it. With the aethernet being only slowly rebuilt and requiring civilians to access it with a new protocol that they’re slow to pick up on, information on who is official and who is just some ranting lunatic is hard to control and this is also being heavily exploited.

We also prevented another factory from being destroyed, stopped a highway bombing, caught six pirates, caught about sixty of Laura’s gangsters, and removed a few pirates who figured out the lowest deck docking terminal exists and were poking where they shouldn’t be. Two other would-be crime lord’s were caught by Hylavi and so all this news is just the stuff that slipped through. There have also been six shootings aboard the Somnus main deck since all this began. So it’s not like we’re doing nothing but…it’s getting out of control.

The security forces have been cut down by twenty five percent. A fifth of them are dead, and the rest bailed once they realized what we’re dealing with now that Laura is basically on her last legs as the crime lord of Koura.

On the upside, we’ve ended the reign of Laura…yaaay? The power vacuum is exacerbated by the sheer number of refugees, the invasion, the particularly vicious people who snuck in during the refugee drives, and the fact that people are about to start starving to death. An even larger catalyst is the invasion itself though. With every empire falling apart, trust me Alnae is having a worse time than we are right now, people are making mad grabs for power and wealth in the chaos of the situation. Apparently Moncayo has a similar problem. A few people who happen to be desperate and dangerous are looking for any way they can to establish themselves anew. The rich who don’t want to be poor, the poor who have always wanted to be rich, and others just trying to figure out what team they should be on right now. Auwana being as heavily developed as it is just makes people even more vicious in what they’re willing to do to either take over the system from you or start their own companies.

On the less negative side of things, we’ve also seen a huge spike in recruits for VSEC from those who have the same basic motives and situations of uncertainty but figure they’re better off being on the side of controlling government. There is an upsurge in small businesses of people trying to establish themselves as best they can while keeping their head low. The draft to vittles production is largely positive with people accepting the deal easilyThere is also a counter-gang…gang that showed up. They were refugees from the eastern empire of Shetou, found some members from other more aggressive but lawful refugees and they just really don’t like how people are behaving lately. They just run around killing gangsters in the street which isn’t…quite what I would like them to do but at least they’re on the side of law and order…by way of vigilantism. They saved Hylavi’s life at least.

Hylavi says she’s working on it, don’t worry about it. It’s fine, everything’s fine.

I may disagree with her.

Also we set up the banking thing as a temporary measure at the moment to try and stabilize the currency issue as best we can. So of course people are now already finding out ways to forge and steal it. Though at this point that’s barely even on my priority list.

The KouKou is roaming around picking up what it can. It’s not really a freighter for salvaging raw materials and most of the valuable recruits are in the middle of a war. Though it has found a few people worth bringing back who have agreed to anything as long as it gets them the hell out of there.

So…looks like Lancaster is having a rough day. So the boarding plan at Enohas worked out and the approaching fleet diverted course to avoid a direct assault as it recovers from our boarding actions. Buying us a bit more time perhaps. Though we’ve heard word from Faelyn that more ships are on the way after having taken out a few other frontier colonies to offer reinforcements. Apparently they have re-evaluated the threat level of Enohas. The downside to this being, more are coming soon. Judging by the data Faelyn provided, they’re sending an assault carrier to provide more manpower in closer engagements. Since evidently, orbital bombardment isn’t going to work on us. Can I request a vacation? I was thinking of going to a nice beach. Somewhere that is anywhere but here. Why? Oh so you know how Nelta is sending reinforcements to engage us again with a better prepared team? Well you know how Faelyn keeps track of all this stuff for us right? A cruiser is coming straight towards Enohas from Sol. We’re not totally sure, but according to reports it’s Chief Rikoy’s ship.

We didn’t manage to conduct the boarding phase as cleanly as we would have liked. It didn’t fail outright but we couldn’t finish because first off a lot of knights were dying and second we are…not as good at this as we might have hoped. Inter-planar boarding action turns out to be extremely fucking complicated.

Akuhiko also has a theory that the reason we can never engage in diplomacy with Nelta is that they are actively blocking our primary means of communication. The idea being that the Phantoms slipped information to them that something about picking up those hailing requests causes us to have an ‘in’ to do things to them or whatever. Though Reika points out that if we bother to confirm this will be in a very bad position.

Oh so should we talk about the Sarnai thing? So she might just be the only living cleric in all of Sol’s expanse. Because she can cast heal. Not even Reika can do that. This would also explain all of the problems she’s been having up to this point with her bind. Such as the day it possessed her and she nearly died, because no one else is bound to something that powerful. Especially while so inexperienced. The reason we can’t track her bind is likely that it escaped the purge through very deliberate methods. The fact that she can’t contact it is likely a byproduct of it intentionally hiding itself.

Meanwhile at Zenaka, things are still creeping along. Lancaster just got there though its a complicated situation with a war spanning the whole planet. Though Ki’ralcht is still fitting in find and Yoshai may have discovered the first alien std…we think.

Steamworks is doing a bit better, with all the chaos going on we’re still seeing a lot of new people coming in to Koura so that’s just a bigger customer base for us. Especially since our products are rooted in physical hardware you can play with. Right now people love physical hardware. A little too much though. Six engineers were kidnapped by that new Kyven guy who is running the show on Koura ever since Lancaster put the last nail in Laura’s coffin so to speak. We don’t know why. We’re very concerned with the why. I would have understood if he just blew up the factory, maybe hijacked a shipment, stole some shit from the store front, I don’t know. Though for some reason, he wanted the engineers.

 

Cassir shrugged when I told her she’s the new face of…well all your stuff. So I take that as her approval, at least enough to move along with it.

Also technically we had Lancaster bringing a carrier from Moncayo to Zenaka, also Alexander leaving to Enohas. So…we just had some guys throw the barrel on Lancaster’s carrier. Close enough.

Cassir has taken up post at Que and is helping Larazja and Adryn clear out some of the mass of monsters that are still infecting the place. Throwing them into the ichor to at least make use of the biomass and see if it makes anything more useful than the drones.

Also Cassir is doing fine. You were a cybernetic because your body was frail and weak and could not survive outside your tank. Cassir is a cybernetic war machine crafted with the most advanced cybernetics in the system. You were not the same. Her actual closest empathizer is probably Gunhild.

So we relayed to Seiyomi your location, and then he disappeared. Just in time for Koura to turn into a gang ridden wasteland too. I’d care more about the problem if I hadn’t moved to Ash. No one wants to come here, so I’ll let Hylavi deal with the riots. I suppose if I need to go look into the time manipulator, I’ll head to Sol next after I check in on things around here. It feels like it’s been awhile since i was back at the lab.

As for Larazja’s progress, she’s doing better. Still not quite the most natural at it. Though drones are getting thrown in the pool either way. Also we found out what that large thing it was making is. It was a big drone collector…so it was preparing to initiate biomass retrieval itself evidently. Interestingly, Larazja can control the collector much easier than the drones.

The project of collecting names to see who is where has hit a slight problem. Everywhere is pure chaos right now so it gets hard to get people to line up and give their names and identify themselves basically. It’s making great progress all things considered though its definitely a clunky affair with people conducting organized raids on one another just across the street.

We’ve rebuilt Arc’s battle cruisers and are working on the starships for mobility and for 40th day to keep ferrying things around. As for anti-piracy techniques: make your ship look well defended but worthless. Which is contradictory. Though having a lot of firepower on display helps dissuade them from trying either way, most crews are not like the Raiders of Abbathor or The Nomads who purposefully target the biggest fish they can get. They’re just looking for easy pickings and risk free profit.

Also actually a lot of your ships survived the portal ambush, we only lost five battlecruisers and two starships. The ambush went heavily in our favor, it just happens that one of the battlecruisers was the one Vamon was on. We were able to retreat through the labyrinth of the abyss once it became evident that Nelta had mounted a proper counter attack.

Also the scavenging profits have been accounted for, keeping in mind how much of it was reserved by various other members of the alliance and we were in charge of distributing it afterwards. So we still got our share from it at least.

While 40th day is looking into it, we do have some records of an actual planet that has gold on it. Very inhospitable, barren wasteland, not necessarily an extreme amount of gold, though as far as mining operations go it wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

The makers are proving difficult to work with, as usual. So far the only records we have of them deliberately co-operating comes from their interaction with Cassir. They seem to like her and everyone else is just constantly struggling to push them in directions they kinda want the project to go. So getting them to make another is proving difficult.

Also yes, Fenalis are edible. I can feel Rhea’s ghost scowling at you though.

As for humanoid development, we can actually make a full humanoid from scratch if we really have to. Especially if we get either Eden or the Makers to help. The problem is that whole essentia thing at this stage though.

Also profits are up for 40th day and New Horizons is having a bit of a dry spot.

As far as we can tell the Alien is just a former Nelta soldier that was captured by Sol and sold on the black market, as you may recall. They still have no idea why  they were unable to contact them previously on their last visit.

Setani is heading to Enohas. Vanjin and Elgrim are off to Sol to look for the Revenants. Leon is headed to help out with Zenaka.

Michael and Raiben’s job got complicated. Laura was dethroned ever since her grip on South Koura was broken by VSEC and a new far more violent criminal entered the scene to take advantage of it. While Laura still should have remained at the top of the criminal food chain in the system, the assassination attempt on her coming so soon after South Koura was retaken has put her in a bad position. Harlus being dead also isn’t helping her any. After so long of Lancaster trying to cut Laura off before she could really grow her power, she didn’t have the power needed to stop the sudden explosion of criminal war for territory and influence. The most notable problem being the one who went after her directly, Kyven Hyeon.

Now their job has switched to keeping Laura alive at least for now. She’s being held by us instead of VSEC, as she won’t be safe there. Kyven is very dangerous and already almost successfully assassinated Hylavi. He destroyed the main vittles factory and has been recruiting hundreds to his somewhat vague cause.

The problem with Kyven is that he killed two of our agents who tried to approach him to resume relations with him like we once had with Laura. Remember how Lancaster kept talking about the enemy she knew and all that metaphorical jazz? Welp, she was right. This is so much worse. We can’t even track him down, he has the training to avoid us and kill anyone that comes looking for him.

Auwana as a whole is spread too thin right now with the war in Zenaka and Enohas. In the absence of so much of our influence, others came in to fill the gap.

So…that’s a lot going on. Meanwhile back in Sol…

Quick summary. Song and Vloz are still hanging out together, orochi ate so many exerlus he became a dragon the size of a battleship and is cruising the stars looking to eat more exerlus, Nelta is still claiming more ground by the day but pockets of resistance led by the phantoms are expanding.

All the empires are in ruins and Valdir’s homeworld of SR3 is now a wasteland. Azilath is alive but the exerlus destroyed the ichor lakes around the planet as best it could, and it did a good job. Valdir has fallen within Sol, but it cost the Exerlus dearly and now Orochi is on a rampage.

Alnae is now just Kaylen and basically thirty million people. Everyone else is dead or joined splinter factions. Only four members of the high council remain alive, they’ve retreated to SZ4 where the Siwa factory was. The warforged have come to light and are a large portion of Kaylen’s forces now. Apparently she and Siwa came to an agreement and they gave her the whole army.

Shetou is either doing the best or the worst depending how you look at it. Multiple great houses are now operating independently but this was always a feature of their empire. In times like these, this means they’ve shattered the empire entirely or it means that it’ll just come back together once communication is re-established. House Song and Sharen are the major remaining houses that keep fighting and also are in charge of protecting the Val’Hari.

Kar’Soluth still has the Vloz, Beldobaan, and Jaal’darya so they’re actually ahead by a whole great house. Though the Vloz’ allegiences have become questionable. People speculate a third coaltion of houses is forming, but now between House Song and Vloz. This speculation comes from me, who knows the Phantoms exist. It would be very inconvenient for them if those two houses teamed up instead of kept fighting each other. Sharen doesn’t seem to care about this development and is just trying to stop all their stuff from getting blown up by the alien invasion.

There are now thousands of independent groups purely because no one can contact each other. They don’t even know what state the rest of the empires are in and are just forming temporary governments to keep things together as best they can. The only reason we know all this is because this was all the Phantom’s plan and Faelyn is the last bastion of communication between all of the many worlds of the Sol expanse.

Headhunt is ongoing, we’re currently busy in Zenaka and the headhunter is in Auwana which is practically on fire. Aryn’s got a lot on her plate right now as it were.