I do not think I could increase the abilities of the Aerial that significantly by placing a copy of my assistant functions into it. Though I could at least receive voice commands to help with other aspects.
Another envoy to Nelta is on the way across the galaxy. Hopefully we’ll hear from them again someday.
Another was sent to the Blaiken, same as above.
The Envoy to Preskian? Oh that was years ago, let me go find the archives. Food was nice, as for their own goals they say they are trying to reunite Alnae. Obviously if doing so as a warlord happens to put them into the top position that’s just peachy. Though there is a difference between their stated goal of “we should get back together but with me in charge” and the actions of “bombing the other warlords to steal their food”.
Kaylen commentates that initiating a galactic cold war would require several people building weapons of galactic destruction. Which might not be the most preferable conclusion. Since the Terlim were the last one that was an issue, it’d mean making more self replicating uncontrollable weapons that seek out and destroy everything they can for as long as they can. Though we do have a ringworld with a really big gun now if we could get that working. Though she’s also not that concerned about Arkaric’s plot at the moment, as disastrous as it has been she finds the Phantoms a more pressing issue since most of their members explicitly consume humanoids. Creatures like Sakhessa cannot continue to exist without preying on humanoids, she’s also somewhat concerned about this Lakaaj business over on the eastern side of the galaxy but that one’s on the backburner for her.
The Hasao Tei have expressed a preference to remain at Cayetano. They don’t like the idea of an infinite city but the underwater Cayetano suits their meditative aesthetic quite well. Atop of this they are formed of refugees from Thenica who need some stability rather than moving regularly. They also aren’t looking to expand, they just keep doing so by accident. Though if everyone else leaves Cayetano then they would be interested in setting up a colony on the surface plates.
In trying to discern Haleh’s plans for the future we have learned she’s not really a ‘planning’ type of person. She’s wealthy enough to not need to do anything and just does whatever she feels like at any given point in time. While she is planning to run a garage it is mostly for the benefit of the Ruffians rather than an actual business. For the time being she’s just sorting out her crew and seeing about expanding it back to its original numbers before the Diadem incident, as well as checking in on her previous conquests who haven’t seen or heard from her in two years. She suspects they’ll have taken the opportunity to try and return to what they were before her, and she needs to remind them who they work for. Especially now that she might not be going home for awhile. Though it is likely for the next few months she will be sitting around getting her shop set up and drinking excessively.
The problem with unifying Zenaka is their cultural structure is very remniscent of the drow before Quaintana really got the whole Shetou thing up and running. They also really like slaves as evidenced by Valen’s entire life story up until recently. They definitely aren’t interested in unifying as it would upset the relative balance they have as well as costing their regional lords a lot of their power, in a culture where power is determined by who can just take over by force it is hard to convince them to settle down and team up. A few have expressed some interest. Though it is clear that this is more as a matter of locking their power in to be enforced by the Federation so they could never lose their position to rivals. Though at least those ones are humoring the idea, but clearly their intent is to only sign if in the treaty it specifies that they can never lose their position. I asked Valen for her input. Her exact words were “nuke em all” and then she walked out of the room. At the very least I guess we don’t have to be concerned that her past issues with stable employment will be repeated with any zenakan interests.
The ongoing war with the machine controlled exerlus has done a lot for our weapons manufacturers since they have constantly available targets, though the machines lack of shielding technology is perhaps an inaccurate simulation. They have shifted from assaulting on the surface near us and refocused their forces through the utility and weapons tunnels at the ship’s mid level. A few of our vehicles have been destroyed trying to maintain a defense against the constant onslaught. While we an advantage in terms of strategy, fortification, and weaponry it is still a never ending battle. We are likely to continue losing assets as time goes on.
We have continues progressing the Ika rehabilitation. Though it has become apparent that the admin console was unaware of the one we had found. Sarrai was able to find another with some intelligent guessing and memory of those events that lead to their creation. They were renovated for this purpose as an emergency measure during Sarrai’s time and it was likely obvious enough where they were and what they were doing that no one found it terribly necessary to link them into the control center. This has led to a theory that the only Ika to survive were locked in places not known to the control center, and that somehow was related to how the entire population of the ring came to an end. We have woken up three thousand Ika total and commenced their rehabilitation at Adelaide.
As for their religion, it would be inaccurate to call it worship. It is more so that they interact in unique ways with all manner of crafted objects, but they still believe that those objects role is to serve them. We still don’t know the mechanics of how it works, but they have been able to prove repeatedly that they can indeed interface with things in ways no one else can. They say that machines have a ‘memory’ left on them by their users and creators. If a machine can be convinced that they are a friend then they can do things such as command a vehicle to drive on its own. However, they cannot do this to a vehicle that does not see them as a friend. For example one owned by someone else that they have never previously interacted with. It is a unique ability but not as offensive as hacking for example. However, they have proven they can use our own technology in these ways very easily as long as they are the owner of that thing or at least have been around the owner enough to convince the machine that they are a friend. They do not describe this process as talking to any sort of sapient life with a significant psyche. So they don’t care if the average machine is shredded, unlike their closest counterpart the druids. Druids are often mad when you cut down any tree at all, the Ika do not share that kind of reverence towards what they commune with.
Removal of the broken Diadem plate has begun. With the labor available to Diadem and its many necessary projects, it is estimated to take a significant amount of time unless more can be recruited.
Laura has continued her fast movements to get herself into a cozy position on Diadem. While we have seen a sharp increase in population as the people we expected to show up did indeed show up with her. However, Sethis reports that some more unexpected people accidentally revealed their relationship to Laura in the process of moving. She has many corporate friends and it seems the actual bulk of her powerbase comes from these business professionals. Adelaide has already seen an influx of rich and powerful people from Cayetano looking to establish new operations and many of them are friends of Laura. Likely promised certain zoning regulations that will benefit them if they come with her. She wasn’t kidding about selling out. Ever since we disrupted her initial operations instead of gangsters and buying from Selona’s warehouses she has shifted towards manipulating spreadsheets to build vast quantities of wealth we didn’t know she even had.
Sethis also discovered she has been funding the entire political party that opposes her through these connections and has convinced them to petition for policies that will not gain them as many supporters as they think. The money convinces them ‘someone agrees with us’ and then they paint themselves into a corner and Laura wins by just disagreeing with them on topics she gave them to bring to a debate against her.
In summary, Laura be Laura’ing. She also somehow became obscenely wealthy since she started working for us. We’re still not sure how but given who her new friends are I have some wild unsubstantiated guesses.
We’ve started selling land plots to people cheap except for the lakeside ones on the surface. Those are pricier. Also mostly occupied by VSEC soldiers already. How large does a body of water need to be in order to be considered a fresh water ocean? There’s an entire aquatic plate that is just thousands of square kilometers of fresh water. Speaking of which, there are things living in there for some reason. Everywhere else is maintained by the machines for the most part but under the aquatic plate is just a bunch of alien fish and plant life that is doing its own thing. I guess its been a few thousand years since anyone cleaned the pool.
With regards to ‘The Thing in the Dark’, Eden was not able to help them. They are seemingly some sort shade perhaps, at the very least definitely incorporeal. Eden’s surgical abilities are more physical than magical. Unfortunately Eden does not know of a way to help them. That isn’t even addressing the problem of it being the last of its kind. Since she needs references of ‘correct’ as well. Though they’ve taken it fairly well, apparently they were just taking wild swings to see if anyone can help but have now retreated into the shadows once again.
Yoshai seems to be having fun with his new bind by way of asking it a lot of dumb questions. I find its best to let binders and bindees sort things out for themselves, except in cases like Reika. She was a bit of a special case.
Bardhe requsted his ten million in the form of goods. Panzer cycles, ships, arms, mana crystals, I’m not sure what he does with all this stuff but he clearly doesn’t trust currency itself. I’d question where he keeps all of it but we paid him in cruisers last time so that probably answers that.
The team is getting together to prepare for the assault on Rozanis’ fortress. Though given that they are coming from all over the federation they are taking some time to assemble in one place for the portal attempt and preparing appropriate resources.
In the meantime, having fun with your son? They’re always so…unmotivated to do anything you want them to do but then they sure do have a lot of energy when it comes to doing things you don’t want them to do. At the very least it seems Holua is good at chess, but he plays at the pace of…well a rock.
Have fun fighting a giant demonic skeleton that can harvest your soul. In the meantime I’ll post conspiracies about how you’re a pervert that makes the synapse just put out furry girls all the time.
Averill will be gone for awhile by the way, turns out tracking down scavengers across the Reach, specific scavengers at least, is a bit of a messy affair. Lot of travel, lot of ‘these are not the scavengers you were looking for’.
Also the wording on this is confusing. Did you want to buy zenakan breeding facilities or batches of the kids? I assume the factories since it looks like you’re trying to replicate the elites of their race but you said ‘set of babies’ this time.
The attempts to build a fancy assault carrier have been…quirky. I suppose technically it works and doesn’t rely on botany to stay functioning though it suffers from inertia issues. Basically it’s heavier than anything else of its size would normally be and doesn’t really maneuver the way assault carrier’s typically do. Not a big deal just do not get anywhere near Faelyn’s battleship fleet with it. Rhazin is still on his way back though, lot of drones and ichor to ferry about.
40th Day got you that tar you wanted and sent some archeologists out to the ruined civilizations nearby the Blaiken
Also stealth capable ships are, for the record, still very difficult to acquire and exceedingly rare. Nah division has only one and Lancaster also only has one. These aren’t really produced at any shipyard due to the fact that defensive tech such as sensors outpace stealth technology very quickly every time someone comes up with a design for it. Both of the cruisers in the federation are already outdated by Sharen and Aureum sensors. We’d have to “acquire” one. The only lead I have on that is that Rahlken clearly had some method of doing this when he attacked Diadem and the method is alien, so we didn’t have a countermeasure to it yet. Might try stealing one from him. I can just tell Averill to keep an eye out since he’s already looking for those salvagers who stole a bunch of Rahlken’s stuff.
The Gem Station laborers are definitely happy with a free colony set up in their little forest village. Albeit confused as to who you are where you came from and whether or not the conspiracy rumors are to be believed.
Laura’s exact words were “yeaaaah no.” to the offer of immortality. I get the feeling she distrusts anyone who shows up out of nowhere with that kind of an offer, especially given the business she is in.
Also what we’ve learned from calling Haleh’s mother is that her mom is more important than we thought. I guess we all sort of heard “half dragon half phoenix” and assumed it was one of those two and I never really thought about it all that carefully. So historically we only know of one phoenix and with modern context we assumed it was just rare to see one. “They” come from the elemental plane, and I guess we just assumed that of course the Phantoms were up to some shenanigans. As it turns out, her mom is “The Phoenix”. The only one we knew of is in fact the only one at all. So her mom is the phoenix worshiped by the eastern houses before Shetou became a thing, and not to mention is still on half of their decorations. She became very hard to find right around the time of the purge and we just sort of assumed she died. I don’t really get how Kanika got involved with her to the point of producing Haleh but it seemed a bad time to ask. Hasao Tei just conscripted their own civilian populace into a mandatory labor force with the sole purpose of building Haleh a palatial temple upon word getting out that Haleh isn’t just “half phoenix” she’s the only daughter to the most important figure in their culture. Haleh is confused as to why all these people just suddenly won’t leave her alone and treat her as a princess. We also got Kaylen’s attention and now Kennae is coming to Diadem as well to see about all this…what? Okay I may have gossiped a little what does that matter?
The important takeaway here is you just invited the missing symbol of eastern royalty to visit us (well really her daughter) and we do not have enough decorations for this. We need pillars! Pillars made of gold! Sculptures made of jade! Braziers the size of a house!
Waianoa says that there are indeed similarly potent ‘drugs’ (she calls them potions still). We’re starting to understand that Mokihi’s domain isn’t just a party bus, Waianoa is an elemental equivalent to Eliza Pierce or the Jaal’Darya. She’s an extremely accomplished alchemist, you just wouldn’t notice it because she is much less focused on ‘things that can destroy all life’ and more on ‘if effects persist after 4 hours, use it more’. Also she specializes in the elemental plane so different laws of physics and biologies to work with.
Kaylen pointed out she’s still constantly at war with the Phantoms, in particular she’s usually working on Thenica to find their outposts and colonies with what few people she has. Taking over jydoq just isn’t what her people signed up for, her recruitment speech is definitely more about ‘we must band together and stab the big bad evil guy’ rather than ‘we should build some houses’.
It feels wrong to request to buy our own seeds and animals back from someone who kind of stole them at gunpoint. Though they agreed to trade for gold at least so you can have some starter packs.
It should be noted that the Nomads have looong since abandoned mining. The flotilla hasn’t, but the Nomads themselves didn’t sign up for manual labor. Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they stole from their own fleet just to say they did some pirate stuff instead of industrial mining. It doesn’t really matter though, they’re just figureheads so that we can keep control of the flotilla. However, thought I should update you on the fact that the actual original crew are wandering about causing mischief as is the norm for them.
Several of our agents are away getting together with Renjala and his team, in the meantime things have been shockingly quiet around here without Leon and Vanjin. What a coincidence.
As requested I assigned additional resources to helping Allison with her project.
Have fun back home sir.
Hex: