We’ve initiated the pandem scanner and found the Areti is making its way what we would call galactic east, towards nothing in particular that we know of. Though initial attempts to track its trajectory reveal a few stars it could be moving towards. Notably, there is another system with an arcane moon in its path. Given they were planning to take Enohas’ moon when it was controlled by Valadeus, odds are they are just looking for an arcane moon more than a fight right now. As we know, Sakhessa is more interested in building her new city than anything else.
As to your question about Nelan, he is but for the most part he’s been assigned to handling a new project since we’re now on speed dial terms with Kaylen.
The diplomatic adventures found that House Sharen is rebuilding its fleet, even if it already has the biggest remaining fleet in Sol. With the collapse of Alnae, and Kaylen just leaving entirely, they’re in a position to take control of Thenica if it weren’t for Yasrena. Shetou in general has both House Song and House Sharen still standing. Kar’Soluth is up to something though we’re not sure what. Though despite the pamphlet revealing Yasrena as a Phantom it might have had the opposite intended effect. Now that they know Yasrena is actually a yochlol, their loyalty to her has been strengthened. The traditionalist houses have a thing for…well tradition. And traditionally a yochlol is a higher rank than a Val’Hari for them. The only thing putting a pause in Kar’Soluth outright declaring loyalty to the Phantoms as a result of this revelation is Kharla. Who is currently in the demon kingdom under heavy guard by all of the Vloz demon lords. Perhaps ironically for us, Kharla is the only opposition of the phantoms within Kar’Soluth but is also one of the most influential matriarchs among drow. If she dies, Kar’Soluth will likely become openly aligned with the Phantoms. So, something to consider there at least.
House Song is in the process of re-arming with the help of Sharen building them yet another flagship. This one is bigger than the last ones, it appears Sharen found out about the Areti and they’re trying to build a titan of their own. The plan is for House Song to move its whole population out of New Kaifen and onto the titan for some good old fashioned crusading, so that Song Yi doesn’t have to sit around at home managing civil affairs when she could be going around murdering everything that slightly offends her.
We’re still in the process of finding all the Alnae warlords, more of them seem to pop up all the time. Though given that they are all in opposition to each other, it is perhaps somewhat strange that they don’t collapse more often. For the most part they actually all agree that Alnae needs to pull itself back together, but they are still separated by the critical need for food in this famine.
Admiral Qhu’stha has been assassinated and Kaylen almost was as well by Selona’s cyborgs.
I have advised Lancaster of this before, but the Hasao Tei are very…interesting for diplomatic relations. They criticized the idea of the embassy as political tripe since we are within driving distance of one another already and certainly within aethernet range. It is worth remembering they are descended from the only elven house in Shetou, so you can see how they might be used to certain harsh behaviors.
We’ve deployed the new ships as requested, though we’ll have to wait and see what becomes of it.
The battle of Diadem continues, the exploration fleet managed to find Laenadra but Eleazor and Gunhild are still missing within the depths of the ring world. They’ve also successfully established a landing area and started to reinforce it. Though the colony and the portal isn’t ready due to the constant attacks. According to Laenadra, the interior of the ring is also always shifting. The control mechanisms are the result of an old security system’s attempt to prevent the inhabitants of the ring from reproducing out of control by constantly displacing them and moving them away from resources. Though after all these years, life found a way. Eleazor apparently is still down there in the labyrinth trying to find where the keys need to be placed to take over the ever shifting location.
The VSS Deimos has lost contact, though we were already sending two more ships out to check on them. Also they’re just very far away so ‘losing contact’ is kind of expected.
Operation Grassy Gnoll has…concluded. Jvangard was successfully killed but not by us. According to Bardhe’s report, there was an additional agent in play that set up the opportunity our demon tried to take in order to create a better opportunity for themselves. The oddity is that it is a zenakan, and a documented one at that. The zenakan is a mercenary who fought against us for the Vloz and then for us against the Vloz then for us against the natives then against us…for nobody in particular that we can tell. Apparently they’ve been behaving strangely ever since the Vloz came to Zenaka and are up to something particular. According to our offices on Zenaka who acquired up some local intel on the matter, this Valen woman is one of the zenakan elite by birth. Meaning she was conceived during a mana flare and is extra fancy. She’s been around for ages helping to settle disputes between zenakan governors by helping them murder each other. Ever since the arrival of the Vloz she has become very difficult to contact or hire…for zenakans. Elion’s office didn’t seem to have any trouble hiring her during those times and neither did the Vloz. We’re still not sure how she got off world, all the way to the demon kingdom, and then subsequently worked her way into a position to assassinate a demon lord.
You know, Lancaster’s gone, Renjala’s gone, Ilex is gone, I can still sometimes hear his voice. Kanika is also missing, Kharla just peaced out to the demon kingdom, I’m starting to get the feeling no one wants to hang out with us anymore.
The new carrier has been sent to jydoq to help with things around there. Though its somewhat chaotic, delving into things there reveals…uh…man Alnae’s warlords are almost hospitable by comparison. The jydoq colonies who can’t decide who the government is but that there definitely should be one tried to hold a vote awhile before we got here. All the candidates are dead now.
We have some ships looking for Sakhessa’s city in Necrosi, which is a whole thing. Theoretically it shouldn’t be hard to find a city we know has to be in Sol but necrosi is a strange place. Due to a lack of need for the basics to survive that the middle planes has, necrosi tends to be a lot more individualistic and rural. What Voriuk described as a city might only be accurate by necrosi standards, as there are only a handful of cities in the plane that could be described as such by the way we know of it. Also, a lot of weirdo vampires with massive harems here. Back in the 1500’s a bunch of vampires moved to necrosi for obvious reasons and really set up shop.
The Fae Wilds are going…great! Definitely great. Lancaster is having a great time.
We’ve also initiated the construction of the arcuran colony plan, that’ll take a bit of time to get everything in place. Though it’s mostly frame work because the arcurans aren’t terribly picky and they like their arcane fragment walls. Those are terrible walls but they like them.
As for our plot with the demon lords, I will say that the more knights bind to a demon the worse it can sometimes be for that demon. More minions means more drain on their existing capabilities. That keeps them reasonably shackled to us though, but might leave them unable to defend themselves effectively back in the Demon Kingdom. I point this out because once we initialize the plan, our co-conspiring demons will be putting a target on themselves. Also they aren’t very powerful right now. They’re about as strong as Setani was at best, and that’s just the biggest one we got working with us.
My good friend hippie demon is probably the weakest but he has a guitar! The two succubi are also quite vulnerable. Aryn found what she described as “a real demon” who is admittedly the strongest candidate for our plot but also the most difficult to work with. They already have significant territorial holdings, even if not enough to qualify for demon lord, and that comes with it the kind of personality that is harder to command. Particularly relevant given how sneaky demons tend to be.
However, our movements through the demon kingdom to find potential candidates have drawn some attention. Talking to the older more powerful succubi around without the more obvious motivation may have been suspicious. Particularly to what we now know to be a secretive succubus lord.
You know it’s kind of hard to tell if any memories are missing since I don’t remember them. I don’t remember my father very much though, is that concerning?
I do remember my mother having them beheaded though so that might be why.
I did warn you about contacting Kaisa. Also if I have the option of my involvement, I’m good here. Either we’re fighting another weak swarm to establish dominance as you suspect, killing our own allies since Kaisa was from the Raven facility, or we’re just killing puppies. Kaisa, ironically, has no chill. When Lancaster asks why you murdered a bunch of puppies, I’m going to point out I’ve been sitting here minding my own business this whole time.
Technically you bought a bunch of star systems from rich people fleeing the rift, their colonies are basically derelicts now. I suppose we could move into one of them but I’m not sure how much advantage there is to doing so. We have a burst of population acquired during the evacuations, but spreading them out makes it harder to defend them. Especially given our enemies love the tactic of making communication difficult.
We started setting up the Harlow colony as requested.
Also attempting to offer Linsun shelter at Roha didn’t work too well. Given that Shetou is the major powerhouse of Sol at the moment, rivaled only by Kar’Soluth, Linsun is doing pretty well in terms of aid.
As for declassifying sahad information that sort of depends on what you think is okay to do so with. Vasia was controlling weaponized sahad spells and advancing the field of ftl. Decaelys can obviously manipulate both time and space in weird extra dimensional ways, and so on. The most basic stuff is ‘survive in space’ I suppose.
Speaking of the cult, they’re up to shenanigans again. Some of them just jumped into the ichor lake because there’s no fence around it, just to see what happened. They’re drone biomass now, I’d make a villainous statement about how I don’t need mindless cultists that do whatever they’re told…but I did turn them into drones which really aren’t that different actually. Well the ichor did but you get the idea. Anyways your cult lady body has a challenge for control of the cult, and back here in Roha you have a growing faction that respect the ‘way of Cassir’ which was ‘do what the scariest person says’. So you’ve got the ones who like the ritual circles and the idea of doing big magic effects now and then as well as those that are the actual warrior followers. I dunno, you sort that one out I just deal with the swarm.
Setal’s still chilling out back in Zenaka, and survived two assassination attempts.
Yaellah seems to know where Vasia went. Judging by Yaellah’s emotional state, Vasia is already giving her orders again. That’s as much as we can really interpret about Yaellah through their communication methods. It’d be great if we had some sort of empath around. Also why did we contact Yaellah instead of Vasia?
Kennae doesn’t seem to approve of setting you up as the jydoq power, since you aren’t a jydoq. Also you have other interests and things to manage, he argues the jydoq need their own government restored that is expressly looking out for their interests. I’m gathering Kennae is painfully lawful good. While the assassin needs to be found and stopped, that doesn’t mean the collection of planets in the intersystem government of the jydoq should be led by an outsider. Something something, old lizard wisdom, something something, power hungry cat. Also if he finds out what your cult does and how you got that body I request you specifically mention that I had no part in this. I don’t need to get my ass kicked by a kobold, that’s just embarrassing.
Also no, your psyche starts falling apart even if you hop bodies. Sleep is a necessity for mental well being after all.
As for your mana experiments, ask Kaylen. Zankists are great at tapping into their own mana or manipulating that of others. Though yes if we were to redo all of our classification of magic there might be more careful boundaries drawn.
In a similar vein, the FTL trap is pretty simple in concept as long as you also understand the FTL enchantments well enough to counter them. Casting it at a scale to cover a planet and its orbiting space station is probably the hard part.
There are fourty two other known colonies on the frontier. We ran out of money before we could finish building all the destroyers. Got some shiny new destroyers though.
Set up a trade route too.
Si Yeon got her data back and has confirmed she has the only parasite that has the ability to hide from silnians. Not even Balhast has that effect. Also no one is sure how hers developed that, but the fact that she was presumably cured before and now has a parasite so thoroughly woven into her that she can’t remove it without killing herself indicates hers is particularly sneaky.
That and the mana sucking poison is a thing you could make. Though that’s getting close to mummy rot territory and if you go too much further you might accidentally kill your whole population like Sakhessa did when she researched such similar ideas.
So it turns out the scanning thing we used to find the Yelay before has a particular limitation, at least I am informed of such by New Age. Without Vasia or Salied they have no idea how to do that again.
Also I have too many things going on at once right now so sit your ass down before making more quest hooks.
We managed to bring Andel back around with the promise of a shiny new super carrier. They brought back a freighter or two from…who knows what poor colony they passed along the way.
We’ve been poking around jydoq to figure out what we can about these recent assassinations. So far we’ve confirmed that they definitely go after mostly political targets though we cannot be certain about leadership figures they have not gone after. It could be a case of these leaders being in good favor with the Phantoms or it could just be by location, they’re all on a different jydoq planet than the assassinations have been occurring on. It could be coincidence, or that territory could have already been thoroughly infiltrated enough that the assassin’s only job is to keep things destabilized everywhere else in the meantime. Unfortunately there isn’t much of a crime scene left over by now for us to really look at for details. It may be beneficial to bait them into killing Ilex, if they are successful it will at least give us a fresh scene to analyze for their methods. Just a thought.
We sent Vanjin and the Nomads out looking for pirates, but it was Allison who had a meaningful update on the topic since she has an active Solvang membership. Asmodan is building counter fleets, now that the pretense of piracy being a coincidental benefit for undermining established order – cat pamphlet – he’s just recruiting pirates to his own fleet. While we have some time before it is ready to deploy, we may want to be more careful of trade lanes soon if he starts deploying warships. Apparently he is of the opinion that if secrecy is out, it’s time for a little more brute force.
Hello world!
That’s just a little robot humor. Anyways, they approved our admission to the federation as our own nation. See I told you that my team could get the job done. As a status update, the Iron Cradle is currently parked beneath Moncayo’s disc and the flotilla is with it as well.
Along with approval for admission came a wave of classified intel being released to you and by proxy me. No I didn’t steal it, I swear it says that advisors get clearance. You can just look it up in the handbook! Oh they sent a handbook too. Well VSEC did, the Astral Knights sent a gift basket instead. Though our timing is awkward, since Lancaster and Renjala are both missing. Also Ilex is here, despite popular belief, however he’s…a cat.
Hrmm..I’ve got a new idea. I’ll be back in my lab.