Stories of Lore 33
So what we can gather from Echo Seven is they have no idea what happened nor how to really process what is happening. Apparently a fallible memory is a very disturbing concept for her to live through. Though Cassir is pretty sure Daiheb turned her into a humanoid but we can’t fathom why. Even if Daiheb’s magic can’t kill people outright, Arkaric and his whole family of McShootytons were right there. Despite the public knowledge of Arkaric’s death, we’re all preeeetty sure he’s up to something. Actually the fact that he disappeared right before we had Ilex send out the Phantoms 101 brochures is kind of peculiar.
We’ve discerned that he has working knowledge of exerlus technology that he acquired through Daiheb quite awhile ago. Interroga- interviews with Echo Seven reveal that not all the consensus use the same strategy. Echo Consensus uses the nano-machine method because they’re adaptable war units, but many others find purpose built frames to be more effective for their needs. An entire consensus lives entirely in virtual space and has no body to speak of. As such Arkaric’s model is likely to be just as on point as theirs, and it likely has to do with what he’s been using for an energy source this whole time. Short version, more robust less flexible.
We care about any of this because there is a pile of conspiracy theories from everyone with clearance to know about this as to what he’s after. Cassir has her money on that he’s going after Zero-North in some fashion but needs them to think he’s dead for some reason. Maybe hijacking onto their consensus so they take him back to the station. I think he’s just disappearing because he’s always been all about that whole ‘no one pay attention to me’ thing. Eleazor suggests that Arkaric is doing some new angle to mess with that weird shop that Daiheb seems so interested in. I think it was Doctor Taz..no? Wait who was it…oh Khymin. Khymin suggests he found some way to no longer escape his material body and combined with Eleazor’s theory adds up to why he abandoned it. Larazja’s hunch is that he’s done wrecking Sol and is tying up loose ends before he travels to new galactic territories to cause havoc all over again. You know, those places that he hasn’t already reached. Lot of stars out there, lot of chaos to sow. Koda said that Echo-Seven was witness to information that Arkaric wanted one exerlus to know, but not the rest of them. So by making her human he trapped her outside of the network, unable to send potentially valuable intel to them. So I had the idea to ask Aryn since she used to keep in touch with him. She just gave me a dull stare and said ‘ending civilization’. So…all of the above?
For now we have Echo-Seven under Doctor Taz’s care since she can barely move her own body due to its unfamiliarity and talking to her is difficult.
Station repairs are still ongoing, also a few chunks are still floating around that need to be retrieved. Can’t just slap it together and weld it back together quite that easily. Khymin pointed out that the power systems are having issues with the loss of the main deck mana filtration units…also known as trees. He’s been sealing off more areas so he can keep working on it but at this point he’s just parking his starship near wherever he works and running an extension cord.
So with the release of the phantoms info by way of Ilex, we know from Renjala that Kharla is on her way to Zenaka to retrieve Ilivayas. Which I would have just offered to give her just to get the bitch off of the planet but we still can’t find Ilivayas or most of her drow who are causing problems for us here and there. So…hopefully you have a clever solution to that before she wrecks the place.
In terms of the diplomatic board things are a bit peculiar due to everyone’s shit being blown up. That being said, we don’t really have many eyes in Sol to keep an eye on things so I just have Ilex’s phone call sessions to go off of.
House Song, despite their temporary working relationship, seems to have it out for the Vloz once again. Also particularly Yasrena and they plan to visit Eliza soon. They’re in absolute pieces, their fleet is completely gone except for some starships and they had sent almost all of their people to defend Thenica so New Kaifen isn’t even sure that House Song still exists.
House Sharen is on top of the pack at the moment having a sizeable portion of their fleet still standing and getting credit for defeating Nelta. So much credit that I don’t think anyone would have even noticed our diplomatic relations with the aliens were it not for a certain cat. Because now we have the Phantoms after us and people still see Sharen as the actual saviors of the day, helps that they didn’t have to fight Rikoy and his merry band probably. All things considered they control Shetou’s capital city and the largest fleet left in Sol.
House Vloz’Khress is coming to Zenaka to pick up Ilivayas and I swear to you I am trying my hardest to find that bitch so we can just chuck her at Kharla and hope the bitch fucks off before she burns the whole planet. They are also doing decently well in the wake of the invasion. Largely because they control the underdark where people had to flee to in order to escape bombardment. So even if people aren’t exactly comfortable being demon breeding stock…it was that or be murdered by aliens. That being said, Kharla is fucking insane so was never really a diplomatic option in the first place.
Also the Revenants still hate us.
Kaylen has fallen the furthest as the infighting with the other warlords took a toll on all of Alnae’s resources. She’s down to just a handful of battleships and mechs and without the aethernet she’s not even sure how much of the citizens side with her or even know she’s still alive.
We don’t know what anyone else is doing with the information though. Mostly because with the aethernet down we just have to rely on someone checking in on them now and then.
Things haven’t quite reset so much as everyone is in survival mode at the moment. Except those who have never prioritized survival. Song and the Revenants for example. It’s still a good time to be reaching out but with the phantoms nonsense no one is really sure who to trust with what.
We’ve sent what remains of the fleet except for the Winter towards Zenaka.
Good news, we managed to figure out where Kanika’s ship has been hiding for the major duration of the war. Bad news, it’s at Riftgard. Apparently she decided to lay low within the Warrens while the war with Nelta was ongoing and was conveniently located to intervene if necessary. She was actually a bit deeper into the warrens, she has her own pandem brainwashed people aboard that ship who can navigate it. Though after Ilex decided to put up posters and then broadcast the Phantoms 101 pamphlet she figured out that we’d want that station back.
As a general situation assessment, everyone who was on that station that didn’t work directly for Kanika is probably dead or brainwashed by now. She was also using it as a place to keep some of the other Phantoms as you may recall so…here there be dragons. On the one hand, Kanika probably wasn’t expecting this to turn into a standoff right there on riftgard so she doesn’t have access to much in the way of reinforcements. It’s just her super carrier and the station itself. That and there’s only one convenient way into it so we’ll know if any reinforcements show up for her from the outside. We also have the advantage of The Outsider being able to flank the station if it’s just constantly watching the rift itself, since Alexander was still in the process of scouting for a path to get from Auwana to Enohas.
On the other hand, this is Kanika. For all of Ilex’s jokes about her relationship with Arkaric, this is still the biggest and meanest of the Phantoms. First and second lances have held off on approaching the station for fear of being blown up in space by the station itself but also getting aboard it is very risky. Kanika’s Raven facilities produced the likes of Kaisa and thousands more violent lunatics with a penchant for havoc. Basically she has an army in that station composed of a lot of heroic figures she’s collected over the years.
They are unlikely to have much in the way of teamwork training but in our time visiting her ship we definitely noticed it has a lot of unusual safeguards and strange magic that has been compiled by all of her test subjects. Assaulting a station we built to Valadeus’ specifications didn’t seem like such a daunting task until we realize it wasn’t he who would be lurking within it.
We have a limited time window before she finds a way to entrench herself or find a way to bring others to her for backup, but assaulting Kanika directly is like metaphorically entering into a lower plane. Something something The Raven. I thought I’d at least hold off sending first and second lances until you had time to confirm the risk. Not like Kanika is going anywhere for a little bit. Maybe she retreats deeper into the warrens and pops out somewhere else in space but that could land her very far away.
In regards to the loyal knights problem, not as big of an issue as we thought or a much bigger issue than we thought. Valadeus, and the phantoms in general, don’t operate up front very much. Which is probably why he used us to build Riftgard and also get some other things done. So most of the squires he sent our way have no clue who the phantoms even are, let alone Valadeus himself. So either there’s not as much of a problem in there as we assumed, or we’re just terrrrible at rooting it out. I think the only issue is Ki’Ralcht, as she is an actual Phantoms member. Though she’s in Kharla’s warpath so…that miiight sort itself out for us.
Speaking of which, Kharla has been prodded into going to Zenaka to bring her daughter back by Yasrena. Either she finds Ilivayas and leaves and we all go back to business as usual, likely the better for it, or she destroys Zenaka to find Ilivayas and Lancaster is going to be pissed. The fact that the Zenaka orbital shield is currently broken thanks to the drow operatives still picking a fight with Lancaster is not a good sign but it honestly wouldn’t have made much difference anyways. Kharla is not going to fight a fleet battle if she can avoid it and the shield doesn’t stop her from just taking a shuttle down to the planet. Though that being said, Kharla is known to have set ships on fire in space and can use void plate techniques manually. It’s one of the rare moments where the person on the ship is more dangerous in a fleet battle than the ship itself. Word of warning to Lancaster, this is the second strongest pandem caster anyone knows of. Every technique is available to them. They were number one but then we figured out Ankathi is a thing. Though operating through Sarnai’s body limits her a little in this regard. So ship to ship boarding is probably on the table, and if Kharla suddenly appears on a ship that ship is not going to fare so well. There is a range limit though, so don’t get close to any ship containing Kharla….or the whole family tree that’s coming with her.
Eden says Haziel is just doing Haziel things and they had already discussed the matter before Haziel had started planning to visit. Haziel is actually on the way to the silnian empire and using Eden as a launch point. Why didn’t she tell us about this plan? Because it’s Haziel. She, and Ankathi for that matter, tend to just do their own thing a lot of the time. We reached out to Haziel and she got frustrated with our “civilized political bullshit” and wandered off to go visit Eden. Technical success?
Reaching out to Ankathi went…as well as one could expect when trying to get anything from her. She reminded us that she doesn’t really care about most of this shit and is mostly just interested in Sarnai. So as long as Sarnai doesn’t go anywhere- which she isn’t due to her adopted dad, favorite teacher, and best friend all being here – Ankathi doesn’t really care that much. Though did also point out if we get Sarnai killed she’s going to side with the phantoms out of spite. I didn’t bring up the point that she’d have no access to our half of the universe without Sarnai so that threat isn’t carrying as much weight as she implied, seemed like a bad time to piss her off.
So basically our other two patrons haven’t sided with the phantoms but they’re not spectacularly interested in helping us directly with the matter. Granted we have their respective prophets on deck in Sarnai and Eerihild so that’s probably them helping a bit either way. We seem to have a habit of getting involved with fairly aloof individuals.
Third lance is chilling, as I mentioned Haziel just seems to be up to druid things so she hasn’t caused the planet to suddenly try and eat us or anything. Valadeus might be on his way though, but without Faelyn’s radar support we have no idea for sure where he is or when he might get there. Though as with all things in this universe, travel tiiiime.
All in all the order hasn’t really collapsed in on itself or anything. It’s just Ki’Ralcht and Valadeus that are a threat from within the ranks. So not a bad week for having a cat fuck up everrrrrrything.
I’ve been getting a lot of messages from your friends asking me to kick you. I don’t have feet though so you should be fine. Meanwhile, VSEC found Balhast. It was on Koura just wandering around. Apparently Vasia had planned to use him to tackle Elym but then all that happened and she just left it there. It was actually in the former Koura Cures labs eating other parasites. Can’t imagine why. Eight members of New Age are in the hospital after trying to apprehend the creature. It’s back at the labs on Ash now, but its kind of cranky.
As for all the phone calls…I’ll summarize the results for you since you passed out afterwards.
Song Yi is now looking for Yasrena in particular, though to be fair she knew about Kanika this whole time and had already fought her once. House Song is…valiant but not the best trackers evidently. That and Yasrena seems to be keenly aware that now would be a bad time to be making public appearances. From personal experience I can tell you that the Song Matriarch probably going to have a hard time. It’s a bit of a saying for drow, “Don’t get cornered by a Song.” So it’s already a habit to keep out of their way.
Kaylen is having a ‘oh that’s what they meant’ moment ever since she met some of the Revenants and is now looking to contact the Revenants in particular. Though at present she’s not in a state to go chasing after ghosts. Hardly anyone even believes her that there could be a conspiracy so grand as the Phantoms…especially just after the war with Nelta. Their spirits are tired and broken and though they can see the Beholder setting up shop in the next county over, they’d rather just live and let live at this point.
House Sharen just questioned you for all the information you had and then…uh…that was it. We have no idea what they’re doing with the information. I will say this is normal for drow. You offered information for free, so they took it but had no interest in giving you any information. House Sharen is the pinnacle of the empire for a reason, they know how to play the game and giving away information is usually not in the playbook. Fifty fifty if they start hunting for Phantoms or start trying to befriend them.
Nelta has a “great what do you want me to do about it?” attitude as they’re currently facing complete extinction at the hands of the Jesai. Echo Consensus is on the way there to help out but as we’ve learned…it is a long journey. Though notably even if the admiral is now aware of the Phantoms he can’t do much from halfway across the galaxy either way.
Sarden declined the call. So we just included that in Seiyomi’s things to chat with them about. This turned out to be the wrong person to send, because they know who he is already. He’s considered a member of “Daiheb’s team” and was actually already on their target list, him being in the cult just gave them more motive to hunt us. It turned out despite how elusive he is, escaping Gistratus is very difficult.
Back around here, I’ve assimilated the other ichor into ours to make some more drones to help with moving and I am now hiding from Setani who is very agitated about being brought out here for nothing. She also doesn’t know you’re a cat so she’s blaming me. Also uh…I don’t fit in this station’s lower decks very well. So I’m kind of just stuck in the warehouse. You couldn’t have negotiated for Koura? Seriously?
Also in regards to keeping an eye on Haziel’s ship, it’s actually an Astral Order starship heavily modified by Steamworks. Without Faelyn’s radar that shit is really hard to keep track of. Though since we’re here on the station now might as well just let Lancaster deal with it.
For Somnus repair I suppose the drones can haul stuff around though they tend to make people nervous. When it comes to the idea of ichor pipes…I mean yeah I guess they would but most of them are either drones and won’t be renting apartments or are the humanoids that can just eat regular food and process it themselves. Though the ichor is best when just left sitting there, it’s also a bit thick so pipes are hard.
Cassir is here on Somnus looking over Echo Seven as her therapist upon having her species downgraded out of nowhere. So at the very least we’re all in one place for the assassins to come and get us.
The sahad field is a bit sketchy, not many people witnessed Elym in the first place. At least not many that survived the encounter. We’ve been having Cerys act as a substitute teacher for Salied and she’s able to maintain some of her spells better. It’s odd, she learns them very quickly but forgets them within a week and is forced to learn them again.
As for bringing a 004C…why do we call them that? To Salied…I mean there are some that are helpless mutated monsters who can’t even move but I feel like showing those to Salied would give her an entirely different kind of trauma. Vasia did some things down there…
We’ve got the team back together again aboard the Closing Statement and we’re off into the void where we’ll be difficult to find. Still catching up to the Nomads who move really really fast somehow even with a fleet of salvaged ships.
Koura’s underground is bordering being just the natural state of the city at this point. Though its population is still largely in the colony beyond the rift- we’ll get to that one in a second. Allison has quickly established herself on Koura though Zhuan still runs Orchard.
The problem with the whole ‘keep the phantoms from finding out our involvement with the Void State’ is that they only extended any help to VSEC because of our involvement. As they knew us from back in the Gauntlet days so they decided to feel things out. Evidently that didn’t go as well as they would have liked and now they’re coming to just start murdering everyone. Though we weren’t involved in the poster campaign at least.
In reaching out to them though, they stated we could be allowed to slide due to our previous professional conduct if we make any progress on killing and silencing the problem they’re currently having. They don’t know Ilex is a cat so they mentioned Cassir and Lancaster specifically again. Also since Renjala started rejecting orders all of a sudden they want him too. Bonus, we can claim Reika’s bounty if we get her while we’re at it since the Vloz are still offering. Yes I’m aware Aryn will stab me in the back for even joking about doing that.
Though we can’t browse Kanika’s wares right now since she activated all of them to hold Riftgard. Which leads into the problem. Just before the Nelta invasion, Lancaster set up a mass evacuation to a colony beyond the rift to protect the civilians from the incoming war. This did quite well to keep them alive even if Nelta’s first strategy is ‘wreck the whole city’ every time they show up. Now though, we can’t get them out. Riftgard can effectively hold them hostage and the only way into the rift is right in front of its guns, which the Phantoms had been building a lot of. Only The Outsider can get in behind it as we never found another way into the Warrens for other ships to utilize.
So….the entire population of Koura is now kind of being held hostage by the big bad phantom herself, and she absolutely will just harvest them all for essentia. I wouldn’t be surprised if she started doing so already but we don’t have much of a way to check in on all that from here.