So revenue wise it would go up dramatically if we ended a lot of Joe’s programs to sort of aid the people and just told em to sink or swim. Though this would result in the second Kyven almost gauranteed. Then again we can just shoot that problem and call it a day. The sudden refugee surge taking advantage of these systems is what caused an overall dive in the economy. That and they’re all broke since anyone who didn’t use a solvang bank is currently fuuuucked. So they’re having to rebuild their finances from scratch in a lot of cases, however this still works out well in the future. Every month they’re less of a drain on our resources and more productive as new businesses get started up thanks to us constantly pouring resources onto them at first. Though we’re kind of unable to do that anymore so the turnaround has slowed down a bit. Though it is still taking place, bit by bit we’re stabilizing.
So for increasing revenue…we can make a whip and collar factory?
The Hasao clan’s leader is a matriarch by the name of Hasao Kia. She’s as grouchy as you’d expect an elf from Shetou to be. Though diplomatic relations are a little frozen, as I mentioned before I think they’re waiting out to see how things fall into place after the Nelta assault. They keep being ‘busy’ since they ‘have a whole city to run’.
However, they recently found out about the Vivarium’s luxury crop cloning and they’re not happy about it which has frozen diplomatic relations even further. Something to the tune of ‘why are you making coffee while people are starving to death in the streets’ sort of vibe. Though VSEC doesn’t control the Vivarium so not too much diplomatic damage as a result, it’s just a thing I thought I would mention.
Riley is on her way into Nelta territory, the problem is we don’t know exactly where the border planet near Haweh was. Aryn woke up there randomly and died still in that area, though at this point any Nelta area will do fine.
Winter has absorbed some of the excess population of Koura. So it’s getting fairly busy aboard there. It happens to also function as a mobile trade port so that’s going well for it with the Zenakan trade opening up.
Tortuga renovations fall under ‘things we can’t afford to do right now because finances’.
Sol expedition is in transit.
We have more final numbers on the Nelta fleet that is coming for us now that they’ve finished gathering up and are going to prepare to move soon. I made a handy sheet for you in our warzones pages. We also know that Rikoy and Elym will be present.
Third lance is back here as the convoy trip from Zenaka got sorted out. Just in time for the Revenants to show up again. We found out that the Revenants never left Jamalia at least, they took out an entire squad of knights and squires who we think got really close to finding out something important about how they’re hiding in the city. Though with all the refugees dropped off recently it’s hard to tell who doesn’t belong here given we only know the identity of one of them, and they are likely keeping much more hidden than the rest.
The knights went to deal with all this but they were already gone. Though we did find some clues of where they were hiding and what they were doing in Jamalia still before they escaped. Likely aboard a ship this time judging by the fact that a few more dead knights were found at the spaceport. So the good news is they’re kind of stuck because only I know the information they’re looking for and they haven’t gotten to me yet. The bad news is, I think they’re looking for your phylactery and or planning to send Naexi to deal with you if you show back up. They’re definitely a “cut off the head of the serpent” type of group and it is likely this is why they took Akuhiko, in search of your weak point. That being said, Aku doesn’t even know where it is so…not like he can help them with that even if he wanted to. Seriously who would look halfway across the galaxy?
We found Daesta, she’s in the far northwest and nowhere near Jamalia. I actually am impressed she got all the way out there without a shuttle. She also now has a lot of modern weapons, likely a gift from the Revenants but it is notable they aren’t closely involved with her. At least they aren’t hanging out at her base, we’d send some knights to deal with her but we had the chaos of the Revenants in Jamalia to deal with. Though we could work on that now since it…seeeems like they left this time. I suspect they found out that the Sol expedition is going on and they might be headed back to protect whatever their headquarters is.
On another note, Ki’Ralcht is now really spooky. Just her appearance alone was kinda scary but now she has a horde of demonic alien warriors under her command and she summons abyssal creatures as her go to strategy. So we might be careful where we send her after Zenaka, if she ever leaves, just because she’s likely going to have PR issues wherever she goes. Don’t ask me why she thought it was a good idea to incorporate ominous hoods into the uniforms of her lance.
As for Reika’s binding she’s currently just being wild and free since she hasn’t been free in so long. Even if Ankathi is being pushy, and making a good offer as the best divine bind she could ever hope for, you may recall that it is hard to be pushy with Reika. She’s extremely talented at telling people to fuck off and leave her alone, so I don’t think you have to worry about it. Also Reika has been Reika this entire time without a particularly helpful bind and can carry herself on pure skill so she doesn’t need a bind to do what she does best.
That being said, with her arm back she’s getting stronger than ever before. Because she can use that hand to cast while her other hand keeps doing sword stuff. She used to have to open rifts extremely quickly to make up for this problem, now she just drops smite on people at the same time as she does everything else she likes to do.
Oh hey that’s right, Alianade is a thing. Byeeee finances.
Also the pool is composed of two ichors. Also I do not eat people! I’m not a, oh fuck I already ate people didn’t I…well at least I throw them in the pool first so I don’t just bite their faces off. Though that bit of muscle attached to the thumb kind of reminds me of chicken wings. Wait what?
So basically biomass conversion is done mostly through the ichor lakes, you and I can digest it as is but pool #2’s drones don’t have very advanced digestive systems. More room was made for task based systems and the ichor breaks things down into something edible for them. Less points of failure in their design and more room for muscle and useful things. Though the Que based designs notably have the ability to digest their own food, part of the whole independence thing we were designed to have I suppose.
The infection method is an option if you just wanna scratch people with your kitty claws but that doesn’t exactly create more ichor to sustain us as much as it does a quick hack to make more drones for the swarm and cause more problems for anything fighting against us. Ideally we only use the infection method during war, and then toss all the ghouls into the pool afterwards to make proper drones.
The conversion within the ichor pools is basically a molecular breakdown and redistribution. I suppose a large part of what happens in them is just extremely advanced and automated organic alchemy. To silnians this is a developed technology more so than a random boon as a species, which might be why its so difficult to really control or work with sometimes. Instead of evolving to the bare minimum for survival of the fittest or anything, it was developed with the budget of a military nation who just kept advancing it. It is interesting though how you and I exist at all though, as we are basically the technology gone rogue. Though I don’t think the silnians ever really considered it a problem, more of a feature. As Azilath once described, if Indal comes by we are automatically added back to his synapse under his command. I would really like to research silnian history on such things but it’s really hard to find anything about them without venturing into the silnian territory. Which is described as many to be ‘suicide’.
I mean if you wanna sit on my tail I guess you can, though Cassir keeps warning me to be careful with it. Something about it having a lot of muscle mass. She made me crush rocks with it for a few experiments. I don’t know why you wouldn’t like being pet all the time though, it’s better than the alternative of being shot because people think you’re a stray.
The pool synapse connection does depend on proximity, when both are near me I can just link them back together after all. So you should be able to as well, though we’re still a part of Que’s design which favors independent operation. Though the sense of connection doesn’t really change much upon feeding them, I mean you can tell they’re healthier but it doesn’t radically alter their behavior. Especially not Que.
Also sapient entities are kind of up to the pool. Think of it as needing a soul to create a sapient agent, just like it needs different kinds of biomass for different kinds of features. Hence the whole needing calcium thing. Put living souls in, and then it has some options to work with. So feeding it corpses of the dead does not bode well for creating more higher level creatures like us. Obviously the Que scientists just injected me with the stuff while I was still alive and eventually just threw me in, and you jumped in yourself. Though otherwise most of the biomass you brought back are just corpses, trees, and the like. The issue with finding willing volunteers is the fine print on how we have no idea what it’s going to do or if it is even going to like them enough to turn them into a real agent of the synapse while at the same time Koura Cures is advertising the parasitic recovery method that is much more controlled and refined to be beneficial. Maybe we could go capture some pirates? There are a few more advanced drones from the second pool due to eating people aboard the Milenkosi but definitely not quite on our level. I’m not entirely sure what the criteria for a champion of the synapse is actually.
In regards to Vasia’s recent behavior, yeah she’s gone a little crazy but she’s started making progress faster. That being said she hasn’t visited me in awhile so maybe I just haven’t noticed how good or bad it is, I think I’m lower on the list of her projects at the moment.
As for psionics…I mean I get the basics you’re going over but why do I gotta study! I already spend all my time doing the advisor thing and managing the synapse for you.
Meanwhile back at Zenaka, the convoy has moved out to Somnus to start its trips back and forth for station construction on Whitetalon’s dime. 40th Day has sent out the scanner ships and a lot of Zenaka itself is at the very least warm and toasty. The unbound star covers the nearby planets in near constant sunlight, they don’t have much for a ‘night’ cycle. Though it’s not as warm as a regular star, so a lot of life forms developed their own self heating mechanisms. You won’t find many reptiles there basically.
Zenaka has prosthetic equivalents that are fairly basic, definitely not approaching the realm of cybernetics though. Also as mentioned selling people on the ichor is difficult because Koura Cures has a much easier sell. We’ve had a few crazier volunteers so we’ll see how that goes. Obviously from Zenaka, back on Koura the ichor doesn’t sell well at all since Koura Cures’ office is riiiight there.
Cult recruitment on Zenaka isn’t going too bad, though its a slow process since we’re strange aliens talking about using them as basically willing and long range mana batteries.
Seiyomi is incredibly talented at obscuring information as that is sort of his whole schtick. Though he does mention it is problematic if the Revenants already know everything about our main targets. At least the bits that they deem important for their style of assault. We may need to get people involved that they weren’t interested in picking on or newcomers altogether such as himself to maintain the misinformation. Since they definitely already understand most of the cult and Madhammer in particular. Also he’s agreed to learn the lucid rituals which ought to be hilarious. Obviously he is one of the warrior class by default, but given his specific skillset I’m trying to imagine what he can do with all that extra casting power. Also he’s not terribly specialized as a psionic or as an arcanist. He kind of just took bits and pieces from all fields just to add to his list of useful spells. So he’s not really going to be a specialist or innovator in any field, just use a really long random patchwork of a spell list. This is part of what makes it really hard to figure out what he can actually do.
Cassir reports in that militarized training is never ready, it is a lifestyle. Her example was the fact that Reika still trains daily. Though progress is being made in enabling a larger number of the cult to have basic functionality in not getting themselves killed in warzones. It has hurt recruitment efforts a bit though, hopefully that’ll swing back around.
ARC did that thing you asked them to do where they deal with wayward Nelta fleets. So we’ve lost some ships and so have they, but notably this isn’t like scaring off pirates. Nelta go into combat mode on contact and they’re an actual navy even if operating all over the place right now. We lost three battlecruisers and took down two of theirs, a handful of destroyers and starships, and then a battleship showed up to reinforce the stray Nelta patrol and rocked their shit until ARC retreated. Notably the lack of fleet diversity hurts a little when it comes to fighting the Nelta fleet.
Also we’ve sold a few of the colonies and got the rights to one of the existing colonies on the frontier, though its a crater at the moment but the planet isn’t half bad. Normal people won’t survive long on it due to the atmosphere but with proper space suits you could go mining and it does have water which is nice. Also some mildly developed life. Obviously you and I can survive in its atmosphere without any issues.
Also Vasia’s response to your message was…ruder than I am translating. But basically she is upset that she thought Ankathi was dead for centuries and it made her relax, only to realize Ankathi was still growing in whole new ways ever since her disappearance and has now achieved the status of a deity. Vasia’s is now trying to become a sahad entity in response. Which is a scary thought…cosmic Vasia. We will remember the entity she captured from beyond the rift was just terraforming it’s planets and forging new lifeforms as a hobby project. This has been proven to be achievable as multiple races, especially the Jesai, have gone from being a more limited race to a sahad entity with enough mastery of the art.
The fleet has finished arriving at Somnus and prepping and are now departed for Sol, good luck to them. It’s going to be rough.
Also the Vivarium has coffee and some other luxury crops growing successfully. Also the Makers are making things again and its making the researchers nervous to enter the enclosure.
The Nomads have returned to Somnus after a successful mission but they appear to be keeping several of the ships they hijacked. They…appear to have decided to expand their operations as we requested by creating a nomadic flotilla fleet. They’re stocking up at Somnus with the essentials for long term deployments and reconfiguring some of the ships for more civil matters. We talked with them about it and apparently afterwards their idea is to go into open space outside of the main travel ways to be extra stealthy and having a mobile base to deploy stuff from. It’s got a ways to go before they could be completely self sustaining with this flotilla of theirs but its an interesting start.