Welcome back Lancaster, I will remind you that I was based on you in order to assist you with secretarial work. I am not programmed for love.
Moving on, the latest edition of your prototype mech is still just sitting in the hangar, you’ve been away in another plane that we can’t access. So you haven’t had the chance to deploy it and see if it breaks too.
The exploration cruisers have gone into The Reach to pick up the previous exploration crews that had some bad luck passing through the place.
As a cautionary tale of scavenging servrers, this is how Jicho attacked us before. It would be a lot harder from an individual server as they trickle in compared to the mass data backup that Ilex attempted, but just worth noting. On the other hand, the Revenants seem busy with the Phantoms at the moment and Jicho is the only cyberwar expert that can compete with Aryn. Unless the phantoms have some sort of cyberdemon we don’t know about, though I get the feeling there were no such monsters back in the day. Though we have started looking for where these might be purchased. Most salvagers of the Thenican invasion tend to live in smaller camps. The Phantoms have made it difficult for them to amass in one place since that is just an easy target for Asmodan. Though we have found a large collection of cloned servers from someone who had a project to restore the knowledge base of Thenica. It’s an elf that lives in the territories of General Preskian working on a library project.
As for generals, lately the best commanders would be yourself or Koda. As the army has shifted its focus from infantry towards mechanized warfare it hasn’t invested as much in troop commanders as opposed to higher end tech.
Valencia hasn’t really ever spoken with us much directly but in discussions about the city of Necrosi she seemed very against it. As far as our ambassador reports, she doesn’t want to see more infrastructure capable of advanced production destroyed regardless of everyone else’s motives. Since she has managed to profit off of the existence of an economy, it works against her interests to cripple even more of the economy by eliminating one of the largest industrial centers in Necrosi. Though she may have slyly implied things that our ambassador can’t tell if was actually implied or not. Mostly in that the people can be replaced easier than the infrastructure if we wanted to damage Sakhessa without running afoul of the vampire clans. Again the ambassador isn’t sure but it sounds like maybe she wouldn’t mind if the population of the city were to experience difficulties in staffing the facilities in the short term. Though any attack of the factories themselves we have been assured will result in bad times for us on her part.
Scouting the city was easy enough at is publicly accessible. The place is toxic to most humanoids, though the undead can ignore the atmospheric problems. It established itself as a major industrial city by just throwing all ‘hey don’t poison the water’ laws out the window. I would describe it is a living pile of toxic sludge. Interestingly, there were non-undead present within the city opting to just wear masks. After the Nelta invasion, a lot of people were looking for new places to live and some found opportunity in the city of Heterna. Since it almost always has jobs for people to do, even if living there for too long gives you cancer. The ambassador noted that merkas were present here, and that they apparently did not need masks. They only saw a couple hanging out and opted not to make a big deal out of it while being given a bit of a tour, but it is likely that the Phantoms exported some of the merkas to this city as well.
Defense wise, it has thousands of anti orbital turrets and a standing fleet protecting it though it is of questionable strength. There are shipyards here so several ships here are uncrewed. Initial estimates are that it is at half the strength of our own fleet since we’re in an arms race with Faelyn, though it is quite likely that this is where some of her fleet was built. It doesn’t have much of a standing army though it has a large police force maintaining order in its somewhat dystopian streets.
It is suspected that the ruling vampire clans in this city have known about Sakhessa for awhile. It is likely that they rose to power by aligning with the spooky mummy and running the city for her as a more public face of the government rather than admitting she existed.
The first fleet deployed to attack the Monument as Irae requested. While Kharla’s navy isn’t that powerful, they had to enter into orbit of the demon kingdom and this turned into a brawl with the kingdom’s own forces. While they were able to destroy the Monument in the effort, losses were enormous. Yasrena showed up along with Asmodan, whose fleet it turned out wasn’t going to Jydoq but regrouping at his own territory to regroup and reinforce. The first fleet was forced to retreat, and only those who realized this early survived.
VSEC’s first fleet assaulted the Monument and managed to destroy it, though in the process of which it seems to have annoyed the entirety of the demon Kingdom. It was unable to provide further support after a rather large fleet battle in orbit.
On the ground side of things, Asmodan’s offices noticed very quickly what we were doing and deployed their own agents to harass Reika’s movements. Including sending Asmodan’s right hand man out, who has been running counter ops against us. Unlike Kharla, they’re much more clever and are specifically feeding Kharla information on where Reika is.
Madhammer has taken over one of the cities in Sabaalios’ territory, violently.
This culminated when Kharla caught up to Reika. The fight was back and forth for a little while up until that one hour window where Ankathi can be there ran out. Then it went downhill from there.
Ankathi killed Voriuk and Sabaalios, one of Asmodan’s cities is kindling, Reika is dead as far as we know, Sarnai is a bloodstain under Rozanis’ foot, and well you’re back here because Rozanis didn’t even notice you had lich abilities…since you aren’t really a lich you’re just bound to one. In hindsight that’s just cheating.
This sort of defaults Saleh to being the leader of the fate chapter.
The demon king has acknowledged this to be an act of war. Voriuk is petitioning the lords to unite to deal with the external threat to the kingdom and submitting our actions in Valadeus’ territory, as well as our part in killing Valadeus.
In other news. Haziel is back though she’s headed back to Thenica next for some reason. Debriefing wise, apparently she killed Erlkonig, though he’s a fae so he’s just wandering somewhere out in the fae wilds now. No one really knows where he is reborn exactly. She reclaimed the two souls of her sisters, or more so set them free and has become The Wilds. She is now the patron god of the Fae Wilds, and uh…that is having ramifications.
Like a lot of ramifications. She altered the fundamental rules of every plane connected to the fae wilds, which was a higher plane that most planes are connected to. Except Necrosi, the void, and such. Plants now have the ability to turn metal into food, they’re eating through everything. Most ships that use plants for living mana filtration are subject to random decay. It’s manageable with active trimming but several structures that were built to last unmaintained are definitely falling apart. Plants also are growing out of control, and growing more venomous barbs. Some are releasing toxic gases instead of oxygen, specifically if they are…mistreated. Haziel gave all plants the ability to defend themselves, at least just a little. Though if your house plant is pissed at you, it might just poison the air in your apartment. Ecosystems have started to gain a sort of consciousness. While individual animals might still be dumb, if you piss off the forest they live in suddenly they figure out how to make huge hunting packs for seemingly no reason.
While its happening slowly, plants aren’t exactly super speedy to grow new things, at least Haziel warned us what she did. We literally have Haziel staying overnight at our place sometimes, and Eden is immune to this since she is a living planet all on her own, so its not too bad for us. Careful maintenance and horticulture practices can mitigate a lot of this, but super civilizations might collapse as a repercussion of this.
Whether or not any of this is a ‘good idea’ we’re a bit too late on that. We assisted Haziel in becoming The Wilds and now everything within her domain is getting aggressive. Apparently she actually did it because of the galactic famine and the mass destruction Arkaric’s galactic war caused. So she’s speeding up the recovery process. Apparently Lancaster wasn’t totally happy with all this but she was kind of being held hostage by an entire adventuring party of druids and just wanted to get out of the fae wilds.
Though on another note, the Fae Wilds is now possible to enter. Haziel gained control of Erlkonig’s city, which has the only stable planar connection. It would take a portal that will cost two billion to build, but it would enable access to the Fae Wilds reliably. Just that one specific part of it, and as Lancaster will inform us, that place sucks. Lot of food there, but it spoils upon leaving the plane. A large population could theoretically exist there, but its only a theory based on available resources. Everything else living there might be inclined to eat them.
Steamworks has made a bunch of steam engines and are working on speeding up non magical means of power generation technology. They opened a branch office in Brightland for further research since it was closer to the arcane star of Moncayo.
Caution and calculation are the signs of a strong and strategic leader, but it results in few opportunities for heroes to arise when everything is carefully calculated. Maybe. I’m just quoting a video game. Though Si Yeon is apparently evidence of this, ever since joining New Age she has apparently been terrifying and we just uh…didn’t force her to reveal what Vasia had done to her. We also forgot she is a former mercenary with more battlefield experience than anyone else under your command.
Speaking of which, it turns out that Alexandria poked the bear on that one. Due to Si Yeon violating containment procedures I was able to get documents I’m apparently not allowed access to as an emergency situation. Because of course Vasia has a level for “even my boss doesn’t get to know about it”. So apparently Vasia turned Si Yeon into a tentacle monster by injecting her with Salied’s essentia and…biomass. Okay I say biomass all the time but it just seems even more wrong in this context.
Roha has deteriorated massively due to the ongoing mummy rot spread, combined with the war between Alexandria and everyone else. Si Yeon isn’t helping by releasing a bunch of things out for “field tests”. Craylin has been following Si Yeon around which isn’t making things any better. People are relatively convinced they’re in a horror movie now and the Hasao Tei still isn’t allowing people to leave all that easily. Civilian death tolls have reached about a million from just the rot. Though now that you’re there at least we can finally figure out what’s going on with Si Yeon.
Though your plan to duel Alexandria might be hitting a snag. Mostly because the entire cult is hiding from Si Yeon…who they pissed off. That whole ‘former madhammer’ thing might be more dangerous than we thought. Yenneiros was always too happy to deploy his latest toy at the slightest provocation or opportunity. She was his #2. I have also discovered she encouraged the Hasao Tei to keep people from leaving to maintain a quarantine on the rot. Sensible given that she is a medical professional dealing with an outbreak situation. Though I can’t help but consider that means she just trapped all the witnesses with her.
I miss Vasia.
She reports that the 004C’s were actually used at various facilities to check for leaking effects from testing sahad phenomena. They are trained to hunt sahad, though they can detect psionics. Still heavily under research but that’s the idea and why New Age happened to have them. Vasia’s was the most mature and effective at the task, though the younger ones they were making found work in the labs as sniffers. Also the lab’s favorite necrocarnate is Craylin but they have others. Vasia had been spreading the practice throughout the staff in secret ever since she learned it. Because of course she had.
I feel the joke about the Wild Rift being opened might be lost on Lancaster since she has no memory of it or anything preceding it. Worth a shot though I suppose. Meanwhile we’ve had the ship that you sent this way shot down by VSEC. All evidence as to what might have happened has been lost as a result.
If it makes you feel any better it turns out Asmodan’s fleet wasn’t coming here. It was a bait for him to return to the demon kingdom. Why are fleet movements turning into poker games around here? I miss the good old days when a giant ship full of horrors would collide with another giant ship filled with guns at a predetermined and acceptable location out in open space.
In terms of fleet performance, you’re down to one carrier because you sent a fleet to a situation in which it was badly outgunned. Lancaster also lost a large portion of her fleet, it’s down to- annnd its gone.
Also the four anti FTL missiles requested were sent out to the carrier. Though we weren’t able to build more carriers, we don’t have enough people to crew them. The war with the Phantoms is starting to take a toll on the number of bodies we have available to do things with.
In regards to the Harlow colony, people aren’t terribly excited to move there. It’s growing but…very slowly. No one needs gold that badly right now and people are tried of uprooting their whole lives every few months.
Also we might want to review our plans for Setal and the demon lords. The fleet invasion on Monument, while successful, did not sit well with the demon kingdom. Now Asmodan doesn’t even have to try and schmooze with demons to block Setal from getting lordship and we took a bit long on doing anything with that so the process hadn’t even gotten started.
We found the species on 143-3 Alpha. They are very primitive but they are sapient. Also they don’t like our submarines poking around their territory. They’re basically fish people. Their civilization lives in the ruins of stone structures created by the previous civilization that lived here and then flooded itself to death. Apparently they’re not related to the previous one, but after awhile a particular fish species that found it advantageous to operate technology left behind by the fallen civilization figured out thumbs. They are a young species but are thriving quite well. They have no concept of space though, they’re not really star gazers. We found a few of them who were out hunting while our probes were scouting the area before they could slip away under the rocks. Apparently they are terrified of large aquatic creatures about the size of our vessels because there are predators about that size around here. We’ve encountered a few though they can’t chew through metal so it wasn’t a particularly problematic encounter, though for a civilization still working out the whole “tying sharp things to sticks” thing I could see how they would be problematic.
The infected tech tended to destroy itself too quickly to be terribly useful. An infected phone works for all of a few minutes before it just cripples itself and can no longer interact with other technology. Pretty much if Aryn herself isn’t the one to use it, it’s too volatile to bother touching. It also helps that Aryn is the only computer expert that can keep it propagating properly before it destroys itself and the system its on.
The Nomads are redirecting their efforts to pirating Auwana supplies. Their flotilla has had the mining equipment upgrading as well since they’re cruising between asteroids all the time as well. Though the recent revelation that Haziel is tinkering with the laws of nature might be worth keeping an eye on. The Flotilla relies on keeping flora aboard for mana filtration, generation, and life support assistance. Those plants can now grow through and corrode metal. Which…might be an issue.
Allison knows where many Phantom colonies are located, as they tend to be bigger than ones run by anyone else. Imagine that. Though attacking them she warns can be difficult since they tend to be larger, have more defenses, and are guarded by some of Kanika’s super monsters she kept upgrading over the last two thousand years. She has been harassing areas of Yasrena’s holdings that aren’t suspicious for a bandit queen to be raiding.
We’ve sent agents to start setting up bases wherever we can to keep an eye on things. However, the agents targeting House Beldobaan were arrested and taken in. From there we have no idea what became of them. Despite your previous luck with the situation, it’s still worth noting that Beldobaan is very secretive and defended. Placing a base in their main city will be extremely difficult let alone to maintain it. Similar problem with Aureum, Michael is still out there keeping an eye on things but for the same reasons we can’t get him out we also can’t get anyone new in. The place is constantly locked down via the rift to the warrens, so it has been difficult to find any way to sneak in.
Duncheck reports that the Beldobaan Matriarch might be particularly difficult to kill directly. Beldobaan might not be the strongest house but they’re notorious for their well defended territory, since they live in the underdark behind fortress walls. Atop of that, a more precise method of attack will be difficult given that if what you report about her being a secret vampire is true, than that means she can tell when anyone unfamiliar gets close to her. If they have blood at least. Current ideas involve getting a lich to do it, or a zombie. That or creating a large enough distraction. Though this will be particularly challenging as matriarchs live in a society where a lot of people would want to assassinate them, and are well protected against it.
The biomes of the great robot ecology program are relatively easy to map. Due to the inhabitants of Diadem being primarily robotic and built in a controlled environment, the main biomes of interest would be the surface panels, the semi surface panels, and the “never see the light of day” underlayers. It appears most production of new units would occur in the deep underlayers.
We can tell the plates are shifting based on the exerlus needs, we can also somewhat predict that they will move in response to external threats. Specifically it’s being used to keep the outer plates of each territory heavily reinforced while the exerlus keep trying to go to war with one another. It’s convenient we didn’t land there initially.
The weakest territory is probably our first landing point, as we’ve disrupted it heavily and the neighbors are taking advantage of the opportunity to press in. So it is having to defend itself on three fronts simultaneously. Though “relative” is definitely the key word there. Each section of this ring world is colossal.
Eleazor and the expedition have done a lot of cataloging to figure out what is actually down there. Even if its defenses are primitive robot monsters with lasers on their head, the ringworld is vast and its ever-moving nature means that we can’t just dig down to the one spot we want to go to. This has allowed our analysts to get a better idea of how big an expedition needs to be in order to fight…the world really.
We’re gonna need everyone. Reaching the exerlus a second time, now that it is hostile to us, will take enough firepower to conquer a planet. So something on the order of a million guys with guns. At least if we want to gain complete control of a section of the ring world. Our camps seem to be doing okay since the exerlus can only direct their robots so much. I suppose it would help to take a moment and assess our goals here. With Gem Station being built we could continue to just harvest resources from Diadem and hang out in orbit until the exerlus figure out how to build an anti orbital robot dinosaur and deploy it. It takes less investment but then we are just sort of…here for no real reason.
To take a ringworld section, which would have enough space for a super civilization on its own let alone the rest of the sections, yeah we’re going to need the whole federation. Conquering one twelfth of a ringworld is not a small task. Though once we control the plate movements we could live in the lowest layers practically safe from anything. Not even Rahlken could hijack a city armored by such a ring.
Arsene is on dating apps now and Vanessa is confused as to why any of this is happening. It is amusing though.