Stories of Lore 25

 

 

I’m…filling in for a little bit since I’m still here. With Winter, Hylavi, and Aryn dead I guess I’m the most qualified besides Baltun. Though he’s a bit busy with the lowest decks having been blown up. Before her death, Hylavi had been setting up the safe zones you requested. Actually we think that’s what prompted Kyven to target her at all. While his own forces shouldn’t be able to match VSEC, he has been running down the chain of command to put VSEC into disarray with his personal skillset. Not to mention he’s a fierce commander when he gets into skirmishes with VSEC’s security forces.

New arrivals are being moved to camps outside of Koura while reconstruction efforts are underway for the Vittles factory. It’s taking longer than we might have hoped since it was originally designed by Winter herself. Khymin has taken over it and he’s doing well it’s just not the most ideal circumstances. He’s also starting to feel the strain of the ongoing affairs. He seemed to regard Winter as a sort of mother-figure and he’s not taking her death too lightly. That and the Vittles factory has been attacked two more times during rebuilding efforts, a lot of VSEC assets are having to be placed around the factory to try and keep efforts to rebuild on track. This weakens their influence over the rest of Koura and even Somnus, which as we’ve seen has allowed the elusive Kyven to make some bold moves.

Satsujin, Eleazor, and Bardhe are on their way, so hopefully they might be able to help suppress this even just a little. Though Aryn’s death has practically crippled the Void State as a whole. Routine communications now take days to do, this call I’m making to you right now was not so simple as it used to be.

At this point, I suppose I should give some advice. You could abandon Zenaka and bring Madhammer home to deal with restoring order. They have the firepower, manpower, and experience necessary to deal with this. At least in my opinion. Alternatively we could hope that our incoming arrivals can help contend with Kyven. There is also the option to plead with Faelyn for help. Right now she’s fending off Nelta at various frontier colonies with her fleet as well as dealing with the Moncayo issue. Though we know she cares a lot about our portal, and if we beg she might just send some dragons to deal with the problem. It will…probably bite you in the ass later when you owe her big time. Laura King is also an option, she has a certain level of experience in these matters and has offered to try and help if given a sufficiently enticing reason to do so. Though her current power is limited, giving her VSEC resources to use and keeping her alive would allow her to return to the streets and see what progress she can make. We could also contact the vigilantes roaming Koura who are already fighting with Kyven but less directly. They’re really protecting whatever areas they reign over as if they were just another gang entirely, however they are at least a resource that might be moved to help us. My personal favorite idea one of your security officers suggested was to teach Kyven some sahad so that Vasia will go after him. Too early for jokes? Sorry.

Of course there is also “throw everything at him” strategy and just reward everyone who survives afterwards depending on who is still alive. This would at least free you up from having to retreat from Zenaka but given the current economic state it might be hard to dig yourself into more debt to get everything together. Let alone the characters you might become stuck affiliating with afterwards.

As a general threat assessment though. Kyven has a number of extremely talented individuals working for him. Elgrim and Vanjin are still up and moving and able to deal with most of them, but he doesn’t expend them for anything less than a big score. The real problem is striking at him, we are pretty much forced to play defensively and he is somehow very aware of VSEC’s movements. I am hoping Eleazor can deal with that for us, he does have skillset for finding rats. Though the mass recruitment that came with the influx of refugees definitely created some openings. Hylavi was closing in on such problems but with her untimely demise, we’ve lost a lot of that progress since she was understandably secretive about what she was doing in these operations.

As for the total economic destruction Auwana is currently dealing with, we are fortunate on a few affairs. First off, there is bound to be some incoming profit from Renjala’s Rift once things settle down. It’s just too valuable not to be explored and people will be looking to escape the Sol territory range to avoid further invasions. It’s just a matter of outlasting the current instability. Vittles is still highly valuable even with the problems the gang wars are causing, not to mention it has holdings in Enohas which is a lot safer. With the loss of value for actual credits, people actually aren’t in a big hurry to collect on any debt you owe them. Actually most of the debt is bound to pay itself off as it comes from a lot of the policies put in place to help civilians which the refugees consume a large amount of. We could suspend these policies to fix the hole burning through your bank account but I honestly think the investment will be worth it once things stabilize and people remember that Somnus was there for them during tough times. The main problem is the gang wars destroying resources and consuming a lot of money to fix the problems they’re creating. So we just have to fix that problem before Moncayo stabilizes the economy enough for people to come collecting, and then those who are owed money will be willing to wait it out a bit as they see Auwana returning to a position of profit. If the government survives all this, the government is a reliable investment to have owing you money. Might have to offer them interest on some payments but as I said, the investments that are killing you now prop up Koura to flourish once things settle down. The actual main problem is if the economy stabilizes too quickly, you would basically have to sell shares of Somnus to Faelyn and thus the Phantoms. Who will then control the rift and….the galaxy is doomed. You being a human means that this won’t even be a good position for you to be in unless you discover immortality or something. Maybe become a vampire? Actually, on that note. My work with Koura Cures is going well. Maybe we can use parasites to make you immortal.

As for the shuttle we sent to the Nelta fleet, it was captured by pirates three weeks after departing Somnus with our alien aboard. In analyzing things, I don’t think they knew what was on the shuttle until after they found it. Given that communications over long range are still hard, I doubt this was them knowing ahead of time what we were doing. Though the pirate presence in the frontier still wound up in him getting caught (again) before we could attempt diplomacy.

With Renjala’s help we’ve managed to bring in the necessary supplies to begin plans for the assault on the shield generator but it’s on the opposite side of the planet and we’re trying to sneakily move in a lot of hardware. So progress is being made, though as warned its not as quick and decisive. A part of the problem is that the Vloz’Khress control large sections of the native populace that keeps growing, and so we have to avoid them spotting our maneuvers as well to keep out of the attention of the fleet that could bombard us. Elion asks if he can ‘silence’ civilians that might rat the movements out or if that’s on your list of ‘things he’s not allowed to do’.

Riley has taken over a position along one of our main routes to the shield generator and turned it into a bit of a base we can use with help from the Zenakan natives.

 

Halaestra has shown up to help out upon being tempted by the promise of Eden fixing her up but she’s demanding that she be paid up front. Given her usual paranoia you can see how she’d be finnicky about this. Largely based on the fact that once she trains us she has nothing she can hold until the completion of the cleansing and that part involves her being non-functional for longer than she’s comfortable with. Also she may have mentioned its not her fault if it proves too difficult for us to master within the incredibly short time window we have.

As for the second ambush, this one didn’t go as well. They were obviously expecting it for round two and better prepared their defenses. Also Chief Rikoy’s ship was the hardest to sabotage since he was on it. Wasn’t a very large ship either so not much room to outmaneuver him. Several knights are dead. Even with Halaestra’s backseat coaching it’s not quite a flawless entry.

As for the mine launcher idea, that has cut off orbital territory above Jamalia for the time being though Somnus is not a planet so the launcher could only cover so much space. However, we did manage to trap them in said space so they can’t leave it’s sphere of influence until they finish clearing through and deactivating it. Buying us a bit more time before they actually try to land on Enohas and keeping them still for some of our boarding shenanigans which helped the overall results.

With a bit of coaching we’re hoping Sarnai can use the same healing spell again so that it might be more reliable but with the ongoing invasion it’s difficult for Reika to sit down with her and explore the matter. Especially since no one has cast that spell in about sixteen hundred years.

On the topic of those with an affinity for boarding plans, Akuhiko stands out. Mostly because his ethereal specialty lets him move around ships much easier than most, particularly in weird alien ships with layouts we don’t really understand.

The wolf cult have been spreading the word to the merkas to retreat to the various warrens around the planet to lay low for awhile as we prepare for Nelta’s invasion of Enohas to be possibly a little less targeted than we would like. Though we do expect them to primarily focus on Jamalia since that is where the orbital shield generator is at, sometimes they can be a little wily about their insertion plans. So keeping the merkas lying low for now seemed to be a good idea.

The arcurans instead are on a mass migration to Jamalia to fight the aliens. Because of course they are. There’s already several thousand of them here.

Sarnai and Eerihild were pulled back from the boarding attempts as we weren’t sure if the mine portal would work out spectacularly well. We’ve managed to take out some of their assets but Rikoy remains an active threat once he escapes the minefield.

In other news, the station beyond the rift back in Auwana is becoming a peculiar place. Due to the massive refugee influx at Auwana it’s hard to keep such a place secret though refugees haven’t been admitted to the station. So it’s still fairly empty but some particular potential clients are requesting to move aboard to escape the chaos of Auwana in a more controlled environment. Basically the (somewhat formerly) rich want an out of this nightmare so they can go back to ignoring the poor people.

Refugee movements to Jamalia has slowed down due to it being under active invasion, so 40th Day is just ferrying more to Auwana for now instead of it’s usual drop offs over here.

Ah-hem. “Ask Winter if she wants Rhea’s Fenalis. I want to make sure they are taken care of. And she hates traveling lately.”
“Have Peter perform the ritual through the Sahadist Mage. He may want to practice mentally connecting with it a few times, to make sure it actually works.”
“At some point in the future, we should teach Hylavi or some of her police the ritual so they can help her go longer. ”
I…don’t think that’s going to work out.

As for my cages at Phoenix Labs™, I built a lot. Though they’re more accurately described as modifiable vaults to hold dangerous subjects as needed. I have a world manipulating sahad entity in one of them, they need to be very adaptable to the needs of my holding facilities. I also have a zombie horde in another- the mindless kind- there’s a few aliens here and there, and a bunch of other shades I keep locked up for experiments. The usual.

Salied is at least up and mobile and I’m trying to teach her some of the other sahad stuff I’ve been picking up, as well as trying to figure out how to gain anything from the entity other than scanning data. The two go hand in hand lately. She seems to be much more functional here on Ash where the aethernet signals that Somnus had been rebuilding don’t affect her. I still don’t know why she’s affected by the aethernet, working on that. She has taken rather quickly to learning under these conditions though. Though that goes back to my files on the 001D phenomena about a subjects predispositions enhancing their receptiveness to material. She broke quick but she picks up new things just as fast interestingly enough.

As for the ichor pool, congrats you have a bigger barrel of goop aboard Lancaster’s carrier. Instead of a containment unit. While you’re busy in a war. I’m sure this is in no way a bad idea. I’m not sure if you’re its king or not, can try giving it commands and seeing if it works. I’ve never been in the synapse and I can’t contact Larazja from here so the mechanics of it are a mystery since you’re doing all this without my supervision.

The fleet is on its way to Zenaka. As you can see, shortly after they left Auwana exploded. I’m fine don’t worry. So is the Vivarium…so far at least.

40th Day is trying to ferry people around though facilities in general are at full capacity. Though at this point it’s just becoming a transport service, though a large chunk of its assets have recently been absconded with by pirates along the frontier beyond Somnus’ reach.

Gellix? Isn’t he that guy who had an aethernet channel of himself eating bugs? Really man? Finding him is kind of hard as Sol is a continually burning mess. We could send Adryn or Peter looking for them.

As for essentia development at the Vivarium…welcome to the field that has long since mystified researchers. The science of the soul. Due to the several treaties and bans on necrocarnum practice the manipulation of essentia is often a hard topic to get into. We might need Setani or Elgrim to help out with that stuff.

As for the Maker, it’s creations ate the butterfly. Also the fenalis we put in with it. It is a territorial creature as you may recall. Most researchers have to be exceptionally careful when entering its enclosure as it is basically a giant trap. The cult has actually been helping with this, the more day to day members have found a few day jobs helping manage the maker.

Ihaslu, with the help of the suits, is basically freely roaming and only needs to return to the vivarium for the sake of getting out of the suit. That goes for the Yelay in general. I’ve managed to question them about everything they know in regards to Sahad, which has translated well to Salied though they were never true sahad mages. More so they just lived in a world where it was commonplace for technology in particular.

Bardhe is on the way to Auwana.

 

Sahadist mage doesn’t necessarily know the details of the time spell that Elym used but they do know who they are. Elym the Entity is one of the greater sahad practitioners among Nelta. Their origins are a system in what would be the galactic north east. Where a cosmic entity known as Chromaclypse is worshipped as some sort of god. Though they’re generally withdrawn and somewhat mysterious but still maintain a Nelta membership for assurance that they won’t be bothered. At least that was what they told us before we shipped them off and the pirates happened.

Vaeri has been rummaging around to try and collect samples of the dead among Sol, this proves to be harder than expected. Nelta is taking the bodies to one of their ships in orbit, likely a research facility to try and figure out what exactly Solians are. That and bloodstains are not ideal samples nor can they be verified to be anyone specific.

Then everything went to hell when Kyven got into the base and we’re currently trying to restabilize. For now operations have been moved to our offices on Koura that are doing fine for now though who knows if they’ll be compromised next.