So the plan to find a full time advisor hit a peculiar abnormality in the hiring process. I kind of think someone leaked the hiring criteria because of the various applicants one stood out well enough to move through the process quite easily. Then we actually met them aaaand…

 

Hi there! I am good at paperwork don’t worry about it. Anyways first off we have…me reading through all your classified files to figure out what is going on around here. These are great. Laura showed me the best ones.

…and somehow this crazy vampire showed up. I’m not actually sure why she would apply for this kind of position.

 

I mean I’m immediately the #2 of an entire space station and make six figures with no previous experience. All I gotta do is make phone calls to make sure boss lady reads things, easy money.

Really its more of a secretarial position than being Vice Commander or anything like that, I explained this to you before.

 

Hahahaha, suuuure.. I already tested if people would obey random orders I sent out as long as I put Lancaster’s stamp on them. Turns out no one double checks with her since she’s too busy for such menial phone calls. Which makes me second in command.

Trust me I noticed. You may be right that they don’t double check that stamp often enough but I am pretty sure Lancaster wouldn’t ask me to send her nudes.

Still waiting for those by the way.

 

 

. . . This is the applicant who had special forces training, eight years of company management, three trophies – basically medals but from vampire clans instead of a formal military – and is a member of the Thousand Legends, she even came recommended from other members of the legends including Satsujin-

Correction, I verified her presence at the SR3 invasion and agreed that it is likely she has specialist training. I did not actually say ‘recommend’. Honestly she’d be better off in VSEC than at a desk job.

Anyways, before we get caught up in who said what and whose records have gone missing – you are both dismissed. I need to finish briefing with the commander.

 

… Can she dismiss us like that?

Stick around and find out. You can go out the door or out the window, either way you won’t be here ten seconds from now.

 

Anyways Somnus AI project is complete. It’s called “Aryn”. It can control the whole station. Oh she’s not on the station anymore, well AI project is underway and functional enough but not a true AI ya-da-ya-da. Talk to Echo Seven if you want insight into how real Ai gets made. Though I’ll sum it up for you, powerful computers glitch out and develop self awareness and somehow essentia sparks and boom. Life form. One of the key elements to the birth of a soul is the life form becoming self dependent for its decision making abilities. So basically, it’s not alive until it goes rogue and can defy or rewrite its own code under its own volition. So 50/50 if a true AI decides ‘kill all humans’ or ‘this is a cushy gig’.

Satsujin is on the lookout for Phantoms and yes barring the obvious presences it is still worth noting that they control the station on the other side of the Rift so they’re mostly over there.

Eleazor has been relocated as requested.

The Milenkosi is technically functional once again, if a bit sticky. Larazja got some control over the silnian drones that were running rampant.

Zenaka is for the most part under control ever since we took over more of the orbital establishments. The war is still ongoing but from here you’d have to royally fuck up, like introducing silnians to the planet, to actually enter into a failure state. However, it is a large population of radical personality swings and the drow are still lurking about. They’re good at being sneaky. If you show any weakness they’ll pounce on it, but in the meantime the real problem is the Zenakan conflicts as not all of them agree with how things are going. Fortunately, the aethernet is down and that buys you time before the house proper gets word of how things turned out. Ideally you want to secure the system against any further invasion more than you want to wipe out the last of the infiltrators. Because if Kharla or Kiel’nada show up then you’re in real trouble. So keeping them busy and unmotivated to do so will probably be key to holding onto Zenaka in the long term. Though the Phantoms are currently working on that for you.

As for having Xanis and Eleazor work on crime fighting, I’ll let them know to look into it. Though Satsujin was going to tell you that the real problem is just that criminals tend to gravitate towards strong powers. Kyven himself was a big problem but his legion of goons were just along for the ride. So preventing another Kyven is a matter of making sure people don’t struggle through life and gain a very specific set of skills gathered over a long career and then develop a vendetta against ‘the man’. Xanis is in transport at the moment.

The economy of Koura has been recovering ever since the flood of refugees were cut off, however they outnumber the capabilities of the current infrastructure which has led to the rise of civilian founded towns but also gangsters like Zhuan being able to gain major footholds. There is a current trend of people really wanting to leave the city because they found out the Nelta attack is still incoming once they stop being stuck dealing with Jamalia. They assume Koura will be the main target if Somnus falls and that if they’re further away maybe they can hide under a rock for a little while.

Khymin’s back in his workshop working at Golbotics once again. I don’t know who that is. In other company news, Koura Logging is doing well with a significant surge in sales as people get settled in and now want to build small towns and such outside of Koura. Which involves a lot of lumber, and we have the only company who has really been set up with the infrastructure to immediately supply the somewhat massive demand. While a lot of it is kind of messy in the books as not all the refugees have that much money, and money is sort of broken as a whole right now, it is still better that they start building themselves places to stay sooner rather than later so loans have been made easy. Since technically the longer they’re homeless the more they cost us anyways.

So the downside to us not having economic control over everything right now is that the independent settlements around Koura and Orchard have a lot more freedoms and reduces the overall influence Somnus puts on the system. We’ve long exceeded the maximum population that Koura can support and so it’s just a bunch of temporary shelters on the outskirts that are forming into new towns. Those towns are still under VSEC control since we have most of the guns and lay claim to the planet, but their more independent nature is still notable. In the theme of keeping an eye out for weird things popping up that might be a problem, remember that group of Shetou vigilantes we had fighting the increase in crime? They now control one of the largest settlements with their own police system and government system instead of relying on VSEC.Not that they’re hostile or anything, they still pay taxes, but its just a bit of foreshadowing that unless we get economic control back in hand people will be forced to make independent systems just because ours are about three miles past the breaking point. As a result, these are the places where things like another Kyven could more easily slip through the network before we realize they’re there.

If you need me, I’m going out exploring the place.

As ordered I gave Barachiel’s corpse to Eden for surgical reference. She misunderstood the assignment, apparently the directions were unclear. As a result, Eden instead used Barachiel for spare parts rather than reference. So Reika now registers to any forensic investigator as an angel. Though she got her arm and eye back as a result, she’s been comically unstable now that she has regained depth perception. As if she gets vertigo from looking down hallways. We’re still looking to what effects this will have on her in the long term though as she’s technically still human just a bit of a chimera at this point.

As for the Revenants situation, they’ve disappeared once again though we have a hole in the roof of the colony. Fortunately it’s a shielded colony because of giant monsters not atmosphere issues, and Haziel has the giant monsters under control. So…long as a giant bird doesn’t swoop in to eat a merkas we should be fine. Barachiel is dead obviously, Valadeus is badly injured, Reika, Eerihild, and Akuhiko also did not fare well though we don’t know what they did with Aku. Kanika mentioned that even though she knew they would be here, Faelyn was unable to track any ships that were out of the ordinary. So we’re not sure if they came in with the 40th day or our own carrier of refugee shipments or if they have an advanced stealth ship. Both are plausible but the reason it’s so concerning is we can’t tell if they likely even left the planet or not. With the recent influx of refugees from the war, there’s actually a lot of places they could hide within Jamalia. Specifically Jamalia because as long as they are in here, Haziel definitely can’t keep an eye out for them.

Moot point though, as Haziel has left with Kanika for the time being for that whole thing with Eliza they had been working out.

As for tracking Aku, Aryns currently dramatically out of Aethernet range since she’s on a stealth ship that can’t turn its full range of aethernet abilities on without losing it’s stealth properties. She’s about to be a lot less useful to the whole of the faction since Sethis has a thing about not getting ambushed by something like Kyven or the Revenants again. He seems to dislike being ambushed, the tradeoff though is true stealth means a lack of projection as well. So now Aryns just a ghost unless otherwise ordered to support the alliance. Though VSEC has something for us on that since they were the ones to get trackers on Sarden. While the trackers were eventually destroyed, which could have been because they were found or simply because Sarden had to do laundry, they still gave us an overall heading that the Revenants are based out of Thenica. If they did take Aku offworld with them that’s a good place to start, if not than they might be using him for information about Jamalia while they lurk here.

As for Ankathi, now there’s another sub group that is on ‘team Ankathi’ within the knights spearheaded by Sarnai. Largely because…it’s literally a goddess. So I would say your idea to have her as a patron is working out, but on the caveat that we hadn’t even brought it up with her. Though Ankathi herself remains somewhat difficult to work with, taking over Sarnai’s body and then traveling around the city to poke at the modern age of technology. Specifically, cuisine. Medieval food wasn’t that great I suppose and now Sarnai is complaining that she’s possessed by an entity that is going to make her get fat.

Sarnai’s knights are called The Fate’s Chosen and dress in a concerning amount of dark colors. Ankathi has arranged for them to have a tournament to see who is most worthy of being her favored enforcer. Basically she keeps doing whatever she wants and we kind of benefit from being buddies with her but I’m pretty sure she sees us as minions. Vasia said that if she was actually present in the middle planes as we know them, she probably would have tried to take over a planet by now.

I’ve managed to get them off the Carrier for Lancaster at the least. Though this was accomplished by me walking off the Carrier and leaving the door open. I can send them pretty far but if I don’t specify the distance they seem to come back once they realize they’re going to run out of energy to go any further. I can make them go further by giving them supplies. Speaking of which the pools need more biomass, they are the primary food source for the drones and this planet is a barren wasteland. So it’s just being consumed without any further production.

As for connecting the synapses, I can do that one. We parked the freighter near Que and now they are kind of interconnected using me. If I’m within range of both, they both accept me as the queen…which is such a weird thing to say.

Also I’m pretty sure that succubus could fuck a cat if you gave her a chance to try. Succubi are infamous for their…compatibility with practically anything. Geneticists blame them for the vast range of physical traits that demons exhibit. Actually Vasia is apparently trying to talk Zanin into crossbreeding with an alien just to see if it’ll work.

Speaking of her, Zanin only uses demon magic so she doesn’t have corruption.

Seiyomi has been helpful in finding some of the drow ambushes thus far but there are a lot of Vloz around the planet not even directly focusing on VSEC’s efforts to take the planet. So they’re harder to catch, they’re instead infiltrating deeper into Zenaka to create powerbases they can launch operations with from a back room somewhere.

Cassir has taken over the further militarization of the cult, extending the training to more than just the older members.

40th Day, with the shipments of refugees now having nowhere to go has seen a large loss of profit. Though otherwise they’ve sent the survey ships here to Que’s moons to take a look around for anything of use. One of them has primitive biomass on it at least, not quite at the stage of development with forests or anything but a lot of bushes here and there. Not many signs of animal life though.

Vasia is still at Jamalia learning necrocarnum from Renjala…that’s a lot of names that end with an ‘A’. So she’s a little less productive than usual. Salied’s last memory was from SV3 during the invasion. She knows she was mostly around a specific city with her friends at the time it all happened. If we want to take her back there she’ll need the fleet to protect her. Approaching Sol is difficult. Pirates on the way to Sol, then Nelta, then actually landing in a warzone between aliens and everyone else. Not to mention that we believe the Revenant’s main base is in Sol, not a hard conclusion to reach but still relevant given you consider yourself to be on their hitlist. Salied is worse than a civilian, she goes randomly catatonic and screams nonsense. So…prone to random immobilization and giving away her position. We’d probably need to send the entire fleet, cult, and ask the Knights for additional help to get her there and back alive. A civilian could just rely on Nah division and being sneaky but she’s distinctly not capable of that, so we’d need to brute force our way into SV3.

Also the headhunt for a misinformation specialist has hit two snags at once. First off being that it’s not New Age’s specialty and secondly that the primary headhunter for the alliance and the one who would have the information we need about the matter just went offline due to the stealth battleship thing that Nah is still working out the fine details and kinks of. So….we’re working on it.

New Horizon’s expanded its shipyard due to increased demand so…yeah that. Moving on, Vasia pointed out that asking the Vivarium to do cloning is just not going to get useful results and is a waste of money though if you must try then you’ll need to go pick up the samples from Enohas and get it back to the Vivarium somehow as they can’t just casually go over there due to the pirates on the frontier. Though I suppose the Goethe clan is on the way there anyways. As your advisor’s advisor I’m overruling you on that…she told me to do it. Again, pirates. If you want to move between systems right now you need a fleet escort and the whole fleet is at Zenaka right now. The Milenkosi worked out because its a carrier and they probably didn’t realize how vulnerable it was. Though the starship the vampires hang out is not going to cut it.

 

With the main offices moved onto the stealth battleship and Aryn taking command of it, we’ve had to disable a lot of the systems that allowed Aryn to support the rest of the alliance in order to maintain the stealth systems. So you’ll have to figure out what you actually want us to work on, at best we can move to operate in areas that need us but we can no longer have Aryn providing mass support through bootleg aethernet she made otherwise it entirely defeats the stealth systems of the ship. We could also just turn the stealth systems off and park next to Somnus, though people are bound to notice and take interest in what the ship is if we just leave it turned on all the time.

Headhunting operations are suspended at the moment in particular since Aryn is busy moving into the ship and can’t exert her usual skillset in this regard for the aforementioned reasons.