Project Vasia has made very little progress and attempts to recreate the effect have destroyed two labs. The trip to NELTA is still ongoing, it’s far away.
The VSS Raptor reports successfully rescuing the previous crews of the exploration cruisers who were stranded by pirates. They are currently on an arbitrary planet stranded for an entirely different reason. Remember when Irae decided it would be a great idea to let Haziel wander off and change the rules of reality? Ships around the galaxy are experiencing maintenance issues now that their nice wood panel walls can suddenly chew through the wiring. Those close to shipyards are at least managing it but the exploration teams are having a rougher go of it. They’re currently on some famine stricken planet that is trying to maintain order by doubling down on some sort of dictatorship, they’re a little primitive so its not too bad for the team but just an update on what they’re up to.
Our exploration team looking for Arkaric at least found out that Otoroshi has been spotted in the northern part of the galaxy, though not sure if that accounts for where he is or if it just has its own mission. This is mostly derived from talking to the locals looking for rumors and stories so no one knows exactly what its going on.
The portal has been built on Gem Station as teams prep for the expedition into the labyrinth. I’m sure you’ll all be fine. The expedition teams have started heading down to Diadem and preparing to enter into the sub-layers. Good Luck.
Also a classical comedy sitcom has been recovered among the other data we’ve had the teams buying from the salvagers back on Thenica. My sarcasm modules have been upgraded by fifteen percent.
We’ve retreated back to Moncayo along with our candidates sans Quylla. She is somewhat dedicated to her succubus revolutionary shelter…thing. So she isn’t particularly interested in leaving it for better or worse.
Hina on the other hand is running around Moncayo having a bit of a tourist sprint.
Haziel specifically appears to be heading to the Rixa plane. When Bill asked, she said someone was waiting for her there. Bill promptly ran away once a sahad entity appeared and apparently ordained her as The Wilds. Leaving room for a lot of conspiracy theories about the origins of certain deified entities open for interpretation in the process. Thenica itself is not keeping its cool, one of the most feared boogeymen of the old eras just showed back up and has taken position as a deity. The general public doesn’t know about Ankathi or what Renjala is trying to do, but their first encounter being the return of the Queen of Wolves is making them nervous. Even Kaylen is a bit concerned about the whole affair but is trying to keep focused on the Phantoms for now.
We lost track of Haziel after that.
Selah reports that Ankathi is difficult to contact by comparison to how effective Sarnai was at it. Though it falls to her as the highest remaining rank among those who are bound to Ankathi, deities don’t quite have the one on one relationship with their binds that most do. Otherwise they’d probably go crazy like Kharla did, now that I say that out loud I’m questioning what Kharla was attempting to do in her early days. So Selah has no direct available answers at the moment. That or Ankathi is mad at not speaking with her, one of the two.
Steamworks continues rolling out new developments for replacing trees in the field of ‘tech we don’t want to see get eaten alive’ though it requires stopping off to fuel up every now and then. Not quite the long term deployability that mana reactors typically have.
Eerihild reports that Haziel already did make everyone’s plants extra angry so technical success.
When it comes to the agricultural revolution brought on by what Haziel did, the key difficulty in working with plants now is their defense mechanisms. Having large fields is great and all until just one of them feels angry and starts releasing toxic spores onto all the ones next to it. In theory a well maintained farm can be any size, but if one part of it goes wrong it all goes wrong at once and farmers might die or at least be very sick if they don’t realize it has gone wrong until too late. Biologist Bill is on the case of figuring out what the conditions of plants feeling ‘threatened’ actually is still. So far it varies from plant to plant. Fruit trees don’t really care if you take the fruit but they don’t like it if you cut branches off and put tar on it so they don’t grow back for example.
Also when asked if Eden can grow fruit her response was a series of uncomfortable questions about eating her reproductive systems. I mean it was all scientific and stuff but Yoshai introduced her to ‘humanoid reproductive entertainment and the art of innuendo’ and now she questions our motives on the whole thing. He also keeps hinting that we should open an embassy in the elemental plane with your new girlfriend and he should be in charge of that embassy for that matter. He also suggested the same thing about the succubus coven…and the Revenants.
We’ve experienced an influx in fae visitors who came with Haziel and have been setting up shop in Bill’s section of the jamalia colony.
In international news, the Revenants went after Kharla given her current state and managed to assassinate Rhelyera and Nacho man. I supposed there is a lesson here about staying in hiding. Though they did manage to blame it on us and now our political standing with the demon kingdom has certainly worsened. Kharla has since disappeared into the demon kingdom and for the first time in centuries we don’t know what she’s up to.
Asking for an update on what is being researched at New Age would take us a week to go over. Vasia’s theory was ‘just throw shit at the wall, write it down, do it again just to make sure it didn’t work’.
Si-Yeon says it varies from sahad locations worth investigating to ‘why doesn’t this spell work for anyone other than me’. That and alien monsters. The 004C’s were mass produced as part of an experiment to see how good they would be as sniffing dogs, Vasia planned to eliminate them through trial and error to see if typical selective breeding would improve results over time though she disappeared before that really got underway so Si Yeon just had a bunch laying around. Also since she has a koura parasite just like those that made them, she has a slight attachment to them as her pets.
She is protesting the order to kill all of the females. The whole project was intending to breed them to see what results came of that as so far no 004C has ever bred due to it being sort of a new species. That and sending Rhazin after the 004C’s has made the situation get just a little bit more wild.
Aside from torturing inquisitors the fight with Alexandria was shockingly simple. She…really was just a bit above a civilian honestly. The reward money you posted had her own inquisitors turn her over. Though there is no evidence that she is the source of the mummy rot infection that is going around. Between you and Si Yeon she didn’t really have much of a chance but that leaves us to wonder how she took down Rhazin. Might have been that whole cult ritual propping her up though. She’s been taken prisoner by Roha’s local law enforcement for the time being.
You’re reinventing cybernetics with crystals so you know. Which we can already do. Si Yeon actually knows how to do what you’re trying to already, not that it’s been done with synapse psi crystals but rather regular ones. The main obstacle is actually programming the crystals to do what you want as they do not use typical networks like ours do. That also means you need control over the ichor’s production to program them to do what you want.
The mana poison experiments shows that it does indeed hamper their internal regeneration of mana as well as disrupt existing reservoirs in their system. In too high a dose this just kills people outright but if you get it measured just right it disables or at least severely limits casting provided they have a circulatory system. Doesn’t work so well on zombies, vampires, and druids. The latter one is just cheating though.
Also the temple on Jydoq has ceased communicating shortly after your departure. We can’t get ahold of Kennae either. VSEC sent its team out on an unrelated rescue mission into the Western Reach. So now…we’re out of support on jydoq. Gonna take a wild swing and say your paranoia isn’t as strong as our jydoq friend’s paranoia.
As for NR147-3, the plants there are still doing their own thing. Well the not plants. The not plant plants who photosynthesize. If anything the changes to the Fae Wilds has had little to no observable impact on this mostly quiet world.
I’m told the Vivarium was destroyed during the Nelta invasion.
The remains of Kharla’s palace has proven worthwhile to keep an eye on. As mentioned, Yasrena is having it reconstructed. The place is basically a large scale clean up and construction site right now. So relatively easy to infiltrate, even if the agents are complaining that they didn’t go through all this training to work wheeling concrete around. We have reason to believe Yasrena is trying to bring Kharla back onto her side of things, a plan which we unwittingly helped her in accomplishing. With so many of the demon lord’s dead, Kharla’s main managers are Kiel’nada and Aikane who are both much easier to work with than Voriuk. If Yasrena can get Kharla to reaffirm her position in the Kar’Soluth than it would tie up a lot of problems Kar’Soluth is having ever since the pamphlet dropped. Atop of which, it would put Yasrena as either the new leader of the Phantoms or at the very least the co-leader along with Sakhessa.
The hall of dolls were destroyed during the Revenant attack awhile ago while Kharla was attacking Zenaka. Actually that’s why its undergoing reconstruction right now. We might have even inadvertently destroyed Riley’s doll which was likely aboard the monument. They might be kept in whatever her newest house is but it is a distinct possibility. Though the vast majority of her collection were very intentionally put to rest by the Revenants.
The trip to the demon kingdom is proving more difficult though. We aren’t actually sure where Kharla is anymore. Ever since the Revenants killed two more of her demon lords they’ve taken special efforts to place Kharla into hiding. Current investigations suggest it is actually a collection of independent demon lords and possibly the king himself protecting her. This might not even actually have much to do with her talent as a pandem caster and could just be related to their centuries old treaties.
Good call to look into how other vampires feel about Sabrae, turns out they like her. A lot. Our agents never felt so unsafe during an email exchange before. If anything we found another link as to how House Beldobaan has remained in power for so long. She is the matriarch of not only House Beldobaan, but of the Dajer clan. A clan that notoriously is problematic but necessary for bringing feral vampires back from the edges of madness. She is something of a saint in the vampire community, the one they go to when loved ones turn feral. Though this is also a route to gaining access to her, apparently the other vampires know how to make some phone calls to get an audience with her. Meaning going after her could result in Sangui D’Rex, the Desoirs, and possibly the Sivataurs all coming to look for us. Though all this has unraveled several mysteries about the elusive matriarch as well as figuring out why no one has managed to dethrone her despite how Shetou politics always worked. Between her hidden relationship to Kharla and the Dajer bloodline being able to remain secret for this long, I have no doubt that going after her will result in a war of espionage and assassins. So if we’re just doing this because Irae wants to piss off Kharla, there might be better options. We’re already dealing with the Revenants and the Phantoms all the time, both master infiltrators. Beldobaan apparently is also a big player in the field of espionage and shadow. Though on a hunch, I’m willing to be those ‘other secret societies’ that Seiyomi once warned Ilex of are somehow tied to this house if we do care to delve any deeper.
Speaking of which, in looking for her rivals we found out that her greatest enemy is House Song, Alnae in general, and possibly an Abyssal lord but that’s a whole other rabbit hole. However, most have agreed to a live and let live policy when it comes to Beldobaan since they mostly sit quietly in the corner. Which may have contributed to their lack of power among Great Houses behind their walls after centuries of playing it safe, but it has also contributed to having a great deal of allies who would rather they be left alone.
– Drop another 200m on 2 iterations of upgrades for the Flotilla again
– Drop 375m on a battleship, staff with some of the 2100 support staff. Drop 15m on a 5th corvette, geared for prospecting/helping the mining teams, also crewed with flotilla support staff.
– Drop another 10m on 40 emplaced defenses throughout the flotilla, start getting some defensive power going.
Cradle gun is a great name for any weapon. For some reason the meatbags get nervous at that choice in terminology though and I have yet to comprehend why. Though the Iron Cradle does have significant defenses, it is worth noting that it can’t support titan class main cannons. Those are so large that usually entire ships are built around just making them functional. The cradle is formerly a mid-sized space station, not quite a battleship.
VSEC has been sending forces to Diadem to prepare for the expedition. We’ve started leaving some experimental supply caches as requested that they might be able to find later. Though really we’re just putting them in random tiles of the giant space station and seeing if they’re ever found again after they get pulled under into the station. At the very least, they have receivers so they can be easily found we just have no guarantee what position they will be in by the time they’re needed. If we flood it with enough of these though, odds are in our favor that someone will find a couple whenever they’re needed.
Arsene and Adrienne have taken their units down for the initial invasion of the ring. Securing landing zones for the rest of VSEC on their way through the portal. Granted the landing zones have to be mobile and ready to move to a new one of those sliding modules but not having to come in through waves of robot dinosaurs with anti air guns will probably help VSEC out.
In terms of countermeasures, after numerous experiments and observation I can say that bullets are great countermeasures.