Furthest Stars

 

We’ve gotten the first initial reports from one of our cruisers sent to look into Haleh’s former conquests. The one of them nearest to us, that it turns out she herself hasn’t seen in seven years. They’ve been rebuilding themselves since her passing and aren’t terribly interested in any offer to join the Federation, though they also didn’t go with Haleh on her ongoing campaign so they weren’t technically her colony just a ruin she left behind. So that’s to be expected, but the cruiser’s captain felt it was worth stopping by just to get an idea of what it was like. That and it was a confirmed location where aliens did in fact live, always useful to the explorers. The captain noted the high rate of species diversity even for such a small location out on the fringes of the Reach. Corroborating with Eleazor’s stories of this area of galactic space. The captain was able to report back that this is likely to be a common occurrence. Conquerors, kidnappers, slavers, explorers, colonists, and exiled prisoners have frequently moved around this galactic neighborhood resulting in a very galactic culture even if it is not a unified civilization. Since most of these races can trace their ancestry to the Silnians they’re all extremely compatible with one another despite being separated by light years and millions of years of isolated development in some cases. Their silnian ancestry renders them already highly compatible with just about anything let alone one another. Meaning there are a lot of unique species out here on the Reach that have maybe six members for example due to rampant crossbreeding.

As our understanding of this area of the galaxy improves, we’re starting to get a better picture of the Western Reach. And that picture is a Packson Jollack. You could say it is one of the most explored areas of space and almost everyone has become galactically aware, but you could also say it is nearly unexplored because no one knows who or what is where. Even the Exerlus can only scan so much before it picks up and moves whether by its own will or not. There is a pirate that steals cities lurking around and just dropping their captives off who knows where sometimes. A lot of stories begin with “My grandpa got abducted” and end with “So that’s how I wound up nowhere near where that story started”

It is worth noting, the contacted colony that Haleh once visited was very well armed. One of the other captains has been redirected to take special focus on a world Haleh said was one of the most well developed, at least it was before she visited it. Also we lost contact with one of the fifteen ships.Given what happened last time we sent explorers out here, I’ll give you three guesses. According to Haleh, it’s a space is big and she herself found two uncontacted worlds in her adventures. It isn’t that the Western Reach is homogeneous in its nature but the dominant culture is widespread across the stars that have the highest traffic. It looks more like a spiderweb of a cultural map instead of a solidly mapped off volume. With every hole in that spiderweb being ‘nobody knows’.

The VSS Raptor has held position as requested with the Playatis. They’re quite friendly, to a fault even. Jiyan reports finding out how they haven’t been destroyed by pirates, they have a lot of guns and their species is uniquely durable. Also no one messes with the last gas station in and out of nowheresville. The Playatis have formally requested contact with the Astral Order of the Knights Pandem, due to their fascination with the one knight on the Raptor casually summoning a pandem rift. Which Renjala also seemed very pre-emptive about preparing to go through with.

As advisor I should point out, our familiarity with Pandem magic is one of our greatest resources as a civilization. It is also what has kept us from being overwhelmed by Nelta in the past and allowed us to deal with many other threats who do not know or understand it. There could be extremely significant ramifications to sharing it with any other civilization, for better or worse no matter which way you go with it. It is our best diplomatic bartering chip, but also our most powerful military asset.

To another end, Jiyan continued working with Zaikies to figure out more about the Blaiken history. Zaikies is aware of the ruins in the Dead Zone and can actually pin down that it was indeed the Blaiken that destroyed them. Though they attacked the Blaiken first. When the Blaiken had first moved in fourteen thousand years ago, those civilizations were a part of a smaller galactic alliance that basically demanded subjugation from the Blaiken. He hypothesizes it is likely due to the reputation of the Kalis species. Something broke down in ‘negotiations’ and the Blaiken retaliation was clearly very effective since now everything around their sector of space is dead. Other relevant tidbits include that Jiyan’s running theory about Blaiken secretly walking among us makes sense when we remember that they are somehow involved with Selona. Rahlken admitted Selona had the Blaiken repair his ship for him, and Selona is the one who has been refining an android race to blend in with others seamlessly. Perhaps he got the idea or the know-how from them. That and she just really wants to make sure you don’t try to send her at Blaiken space that Zaikies has promised is ‘certain and immediate death’.

In regards to the construction of exploration focused vessels of significant size, it will need weapons. Using my permissions as Advisor, I was able to outsource the query to the experts in ship penetration. Captain Andel had to leave and finish laughing while I discussed the matter further with his second in command, Lieutenant De’Numal. When dealing with professional pirates, there is no such thing as a hull they cannot get through. The enemy of a pirate boarding is time, the longer the crew has to rally a defense around their entry point the worse the job is. As well as reinforcements. However, on a galactic voyage a ship could be set adrift and it’s hull picked clean before reinforcements could ever arrive. Escape from a pirate ship is about speed, the bigger the ship the less likely that is to happen. There is about an hour of this discussion and the nuances of pirates. At this point we might as well just ask De’Numal, who is a former 314-C member, to give some sort of lecture at the pilot academy and shipyards. She has a lot of thoughts on the matter. I am starting to see how the Nomads are so successful. The Nomads are fairly confident they could strip an assault carrier if it was unarmed and staffed with explorers. To be fair they have done this a couple of times before, that’s how Sethis got his flotilla.

Laura points out that no one wants to join a security force with silly hats. She says gas masks and evil goggle eyes look cooler. Thus improving recruitment rates. That and Adelaide’s security has already been handled under a private security contractor.

Haleh’s new assistant reports that she is still just driving around abandoned areas of Diadem’s super city with a crew that appears to be street racers. Though upon someone being there to pay closer attention, this is actually military training since they rely heavily on vehicles. They have to learn to drive like that somewhere, and apparently Diadem offers a lot of unused areas for such practices. So despite her seeming disinterest in anything, she is formally training a new wave to go back out there. Apparently her plan is to focus on a more elite unit this time now that she’s not as interested in finding a Terlim turret across all of the Western Reach. Buying her time to do things that slow her down instead of constantly push forward. Though due to the Hasao Tei, it has become a complicated mess. Likely awaiting resolution when they meet her mother.

They also noted she still has dozens of slaves that were never liberated under federation laws. Though investigation into this revealed the discrepancy. What we legally consider a slave differs from what she thinks of one as. To her mind, they still cost the same but instead of having to manage the logistics of keeping them alive – paying them is just offloading the responsibility of managing them onto themselves. Thus increasing their workload and decreasing hers. If they show up every day at nine am and have no ability to make decisions for themselves on what they want to do she considers them slaves. Basically she thinks the term ‘wage slave’ is literal. Also her entire strategy across the Reach was to force people into desperate circumstances, provide a salary that included the only means they had of feeding themselves, and then make them do whatever she said. So this aligns with her previous strategies, the only difference is now the Federation provides other employment opportunities instead of being constantly traveling through the galaxy and creating a wasteland of anywhere that might have been a place to abandon ship at. I am also told she has been consulting with Laura King with odd regularity.

“> Defenders: 0
– :|” Just ignore the sheet linking to the wrong cell.

Quylla has a bigger fancier shelter for certain. She was always involved with a lot of political affairs and with the money we’ve given her she now has significantly increased her status within the Demon Kingdom to the point of drawing more attention than she can handle. With Renjala’s efforts to undermine the Vloz while simultaneously pulling out of the Kingdom, Quylla lost a lot of her support. Her connections to Aikane were a major source of her protection so she has been forced to turn to the classic devil’s deal and hire mercenaries to help her. This in particular includes “Honest Hina”. While Quylla isn’t exactly a saint and has had to become something of a crime boss to keep her shelter safe and operating, now that Vloz is pulling back due to Renjala she’s in a much more dangerous position while in possession of hundreds of succubi that other demon lords would not mind taking from her. Her resources have expanded but her problems expanded faster, both kind of our doing.

Also the Demon Kingdom is massive, you’ll need to be more specific on what kind of demons you are looking to working with otherwise I’ll just be sending you a spreadsheet with up to a few million entries. One benefit of funding Quylla, we are stabbing in the dark a bit less now when surveying the Kingdom for things of interest.

We lost more people on the front lines of the machine war. Again. Atop of that, we’ve gotten word that Haleh’s mom is on the way and we should expect to see her next month and Sakhessa will be accompanying her. Likely for other reasons than the royal procession.

Eerihild was unable to heal the dark spooky thing, she can heal wounds but not age. She said we’d need some sort of time wizard for that, and even the Jesai time magic relies on checkpoints rather than just retroactively changing whatever they feel like. She’s on the way to jamalia now.

Friend’s condition is going to require some creativity. It is just a problem of old age but because they are incorporeal most methods of fixing that aren’t applicable. Age reversal isn’t exactly a spell anyone just has laying around. I’ve heard a few suggestions ranging from trying to teach it Kennae’s zankou trick – if such a thing could even be applicable to an incorporeal creature who might not have enough time to learn it. Giving it a phylactery, psionically re-implanting its psyche, and sticking it in the Celestial plane where things age slower. Notably most of these suggestions are exiting the realm of ‘healing’ and getting into the area of creating immortality. The only problem with those suggestions are that if someone could suggest it, odds are highly likely that this information broker has already looked into it. It came to us because Eden was not a resource anyone else had, neither was Eerihild. Apparently it has actually used some of these methods before in order to live as long as it has in the first place, though some elements of its nature are incompatible with the more common solutions. Well I say ‘common’ as if liches aren’t a one in a half billion occurrence. I suppose I forget that we don’t lead normal lives around here anymore. Which leads me to my hypothesis based on why they originally came to us. There is no way that Sol has a solution, this is a creature that specializes in collecting and redistributing information. If there was some medical procedure or spell that could do it, it wouldn’t have needed to try coming to us for Eden’s help. It also admitted to knowing the Phantoms and the Revenants, being the founder of the Black Library, etc. My point being, I think if there is a solution it won’t be found in the expanse of Sol. Like the cure for corruption, we’ll need aliens technology, magic, and ideas. However, it does not like to expose itself for every possible chance. Eden was a very specific opportunity that it could reasonably discern had a real shot of working.

It has at least ten years, but less than a hundred. We’re in a new section of the galaxy and we’ve encountered the incorporeal before. The Arcurans are just hanging out right over there. Might need to ask Lancaster’s explorers to keep an ear to the ground. The other option however, we know for certain that if there is any magical means of doing this that the Jesai should have it. Despite what Aryn did… they don’t actually seem too involved with Sol’s bad reputation. Elym is an exile, Decaelys is doing some whole other thing, and they’re at war with Nelta not us. We could also try to find and petition the Exerlus for a list of other incorporeal races. That or just have some explorers go to the lower and higher planes and look around space in there a bit harder. I’m just spitballing a compilation from all the suggestions of the collective think tank. In short, I don’t think the answer is in Sol or it would already have that answer. Unless you want to finish the Ankathi quest and then make some sort of god of darkness out of it. Does Ankathi count as ‘Sol’? She came from there but she’s definitely removed from it now.

Mokihi is currently located in an elemental domain ruled by ice elementals. So not quiiite a fire area. Fun fact, you know there are Fae called the Virago? They’re basically ice incarnate variants of fae. They’re also notoriously cruel and sadistic. Really makes me question why Waianoa suddenly wanted Lancaster for her experiments.

Operation Catcall has made some progress, just not where we thought we’d make it. A succubus showed up at our Moncayo Chapter house, as a representative of Aikane. Apparently she’s figured out where all this is going and has a problem. She would really rather not die, but has an issue. As the last bind of Kharla, she has no chance of resisting Kharla. Aikane is taking a gamble on Kharla’s madness not interrupting her from contacting us. She knows that when the next attack against Kharla happens she’ll be summoned and controlled by force, and she’s pretty sure she’ll die. She is not like Nacho and Rheleyera and if forced to appear somewhere she doesn’t want to be, her odds aren’t looking good. This came with the note that she cannot demonstrate enough free will against Kharla to not attack whoever she’s sent after in that kind of moment. She wants to be taken alive and once Kharla is killed, set free in exchange for assisting us. This is also why she had to send one of her officers, since Aikane herself is bound to Kharla and if she were to come discuss it with us that would probably be noticed.

We did not tell her we weren’t planning to kill Kharla or her. Though that second one is largely because we’re never going to find her if she doesn’t want to be found. She uh…didn’t need to know that right this moment. It is classified operation after all, for security reasons we totally let her keep believing she was going to die alongside Kharla. Can’t tell the person bound to Kharla about the plans for Kharla. I’m not a bad person I swear. The local head of the Chapter House appropriated your authority to agree to the deal that “If they come into direct conflict with Kharla they will not kill Aikane even if she is forcefully summoned and made to fight against us”. That chapter master is clearly better at lying than Selah because Selah would have been entirely too truthful in these matters. Can never trust a paladin to keep their gods damned mouths shut. You can trust a horny chapter master to say whatever it takes to make a succubus smile though. On the one hand I’m not sure if we played them or if they played us, seriously the Chapter Master does not have ‘how to resist succubi’ training. They also offered to keep the agent safe at the chapter house and all manner of things that started to get not quite inappropriate but definitely laid the groundwork for something inappropriate later. The succubus declined and pointed out they need to go back to Aikane but I’m just saying I’m not sure if we should praise him for thinking quickly or chastise him for getting seduced by ‘the postergirls of seduction’.

Either way, we got our list of ‘children of Kharla that can be a little suspicious in their loyalties’. Particularly a trio of them that once had a lot of secret dealings with Voriuk. Now I’m not saying stereotyping is morally right, but if a drow child of a matriarch was having secret meetings with a demon like Voriuk…I’m not saying anything but I’m just saying. Obviously all of them are half demon half drow with Kharla being used as a breeding mare for a few centuries, two of these three are descendants of Voriuk himself. The other is actually from Sabaalios. Obviously these are all matricidal demon drow, none of them are good people. So just saying, arms length and all that. We established contact and surveillance to see what we’re dealing with. None of them know our plan for Kharla, so notably they’ve made some assumptions that contextually are all over the place about our plans. Because, even a scheming demonic drow has no reason to think we’re in contact with a new goddess in another astral cluster who wants their insane mother for a reason as petty as ‘because it’d be prestigious’. I’m noticing a recurring theme that the motives for this whole operation are so outlandish and even a little dumb sometimes that we’re accidentally running circles around drow who think we’d want something far more rational.

Sethis looked into them after their names were put forth by Aikane.

Irae and the gang are on their way to Jydoq. Though we might need Irae in a hot minute since she’s our only pandem drow. When she’s not fighting Rozanis she returns to that frigid state of standing around the ship and creeping out of dark corners occasionally. I guess that’s an improvement from ripping Rozanis apart in a violent psychopathic rage?

We moved some knights around, also fifth lance is doing fine. The Hasao Tei are a civil government, they don’t go places and do things very often besides some buddy cop adventures around the city.

Back to demon kingdom investments,  ever since the Demon King declared war on us due to some of the uh…incidents we caused our establishments have been under a lot of scrutiny. While Quylla is still out there doing her own thing and trying to keep the shelter running, we don’t exactly have the foundations of a state. If we tried that, pretty sure any local lord would walk over and blow it up given the King’s proclamation. That funding is the reason Quylla’s not already dead at this point with how the situation has deteriorated there ever since our first invasion attempt. Though that’s really more Asmodan’s fault than the Vloz. However, he knows that we were making some plays and he has some opinions on the matter. He’s kept Quylla under constant harassment, actually given that we know he’s one of the biggest members of the Phantoms its surprising she isn’t dead already. Either Hina is an amazing mercenary or he’s baiting us to come try and salvage the situation. To which end, with all the stuff Catcall is undergoing we probably shouldn’t forget that Asmodan has been watching us in the Kingdom for awhile now. We’ll have to factor in how dangerous his attention can be.

We’ll have to see about inviting Zaikies over. We gotta send messages back and forth, galaxy is big, Aurora has some concerns about spreading pandem to the wider galaxy without clicking the “are you sure?” window. Then we have to actually transport him all the way to at least Cayetano which unless Jiyan gets routed to transport duty is going to take us a bit to get to him and then back to Cayetano.

Started building the Diadem planar station layers as requested. You sure through? Rixa is a vibrant plane thriving with life and this discrimination is not respecting their culture…of eating everything that moves.

Vairatoa is taking time off to remain at Diadem for a little while. He wants to meet the Phoenix. Apparently, this mythical fire bird is an elemental. Though he describes her as being more of a celebrity. He is apparently curious about these developments. The Phoenix is the most important elemental to Thenican culture but to elementals she is just sort of a well known and well liked sage. The Phoenix is their equivalent of a famous actor or musician, but Mahuea is the reigning king. That being said he still wouldn’t mind meeting her, and figuring out why us material planers like her so much.

To clarify, Silnian space is in the northwest part of the galaxy, north of Diadem. Agallias is east of Thenica on another plane than the Blaiken and Playatis, he is not on the same planet as the Playatis and they are the actual closest to the Blaiken both on plane and distance. Agallias is just ‘one of the closest’ places. Might have not been clear about that but Agallias has nothing to do with the Playatis other than proximity if you ignore planes. Except the Playatis and the Blaiken, which is because the Blaiken likely created the ‘dead zone’ where no civilization is found for a few thousand light years in any direction, and the Playatis are running the galactic “last stop” gas station right before or after that dead zone depending which direction you are traveling. It really just seems the Playatis lucked out on being just beyond the range the Blaiken were willing to travel to isolate themselves by force.

While we’re on the topic, our explorers combing through the ruins of the dead zone have pieced together something Zaikies didn’t have already. No one really goes exploring out there for fear of the Blaiken. Over the millenia a few desperate or brave salvage teams nicked what they could and bailed but the archeological finds are pretty much just laying there. By looking through what information Zaikies does have on these collapsed cvilizations, they were organic but had crystalline internal structures. Sort of like us with our psicrystal skeletons, but not as fancy. We’ve been able to find these skeletal structures and piece together that these ruins were definitely created during a ground invasion. There is a lot of melee damage to these things and accurate damage caused usually by small arms. Despite the Blaiken super weapons they have in space, they were here on the ground when these civilizations fell. Recovery of records here and there, in varying states of survival, paint a picture about the invasion. These people were taken en masse. An entire planetary civilization either murdered on the spot or taken alive elsewhere. There are no signs of a post apocalyptic scavenger phase in the archeological evidence. The invasion was thorough, either every living thing was killed or taken somewhere. Some corpses are very well hidden and there is a single hole leading from the surface down through multiple layers of construction materials and even rock that align perfectly with where their head likely was when they fell. Combined with what we know about their orbital defense strategy, I’d say its very likely that these Blaiken have abnormally effective methods of detecting whatever they are looking for. Combined with the knowledge that they are natural empaths, and thus likely natural psions, I can presume that they can operate like a sivataur. Inescapable detection abilities. So don’t try stealth on them kitty cat.

As for a hypothesis on the weapon that they’re using to control space, it’s a civilization that reignited a star. It’s probably just a really fancy gun. Zaikies’ data on the matter lines up with that since its some sort of projectile. Though it moves so fast no one has ever recovered one to study. Off the top of my head, self propelled projectile and payload, but also fired from some sort of really big cannon to get all that extra speed. Maybe they’re just firing corvettes at lightspeeds and then it accelerates to even more lightspeeds on its own.

In other news, technically one batch did give birth but it was from a batch prior to our purchasing it and they didn’t exactly track fifty variables carefully. They just tracked “arcane star flare y/n?”. So nothing spectacular.

Have fun at Jydoq, I’m sure nothing will go terribly wrong just showing up casually despite an assassin waiting around for you to show up. You want to put more of a plan into security before you arrive there buddy? If not I’ll see you in about a month I foresee.

Also since when are you so close to Setal? I thought she used to drive you crazy. She’s a borderline house wife these days, even stopped wearing lingerie for street clothes.

Operation to Agallias, prep is ready and Rhazin is on the way. I guess I’ll just hang out here…alone. No drones. No friends. Just me. All alone. Revenants don’t hate me too right? I’m just a floof ball that basks in the sun all day.

Also yes we could scan for extreme mental anguish around Diadem provided some time. The place is huge. Though the cult is busy doing Jydoq stuff and Averill is currently wandering the most chaotic place in the galaxy we know of looking for one of a million salvagers and then get them to confess it was them who stole from the pirate king to a stranger. So he’s going to be away a little while.

As for the other New Age lab experiments, I think you’ve been spending too much time with me. Most women of humanoid species do not give birth within two months. That’s just an ichor thing. So yeah, no real data yet other than ‘what we already knew from a Zenakan biology textbook’.

As for the preserves, we’ve moved into one of the subsurface plates. We already need to control the lighting levels and atmosphere for a project like this so no real point in leaving it exposed on the surface levels. Also less people want the dark subsurface plates while things are still kind of jammed up due to the broken plate we’re still salvaging off its axle.

The terraforming, mining, and all of that needed to work the fallen mountain on the city plate is getting underway. Right now that mostly means packing the dirt down so it isn’t so loose. Honestly, this might be easier if Renjala’s wife would help since we’re trying to turn rock and dirt into ‘less loose rock and dirt’. At quantities this large though, easier said than done. Maaaybe if we had earth elementals it’d go quicker. That or some sort of terraformer but I don’t know how many have ever been built or designed to compact dirt into ‘stop falling on us’. I could probably help actually, I have a few thousand drones and I am really into the idea of a dark cave.

The fish in the freshwater…is it a lake or an ocean? Whatever, the fish are actually quite revealing. There was once a theory put forth by  New Age back when we found the Koura rift that is straight up proven in this lake. They’ve had time to evolve to the state they’re in now but they are definitely from the neighboring hive worlds. They just sort of drifted through the galaxy until they hit something and those that hit the lake where the machines weren’t maintaining eventually evolved into a full aquatic ecosystem. Upon further analysis 40th day has found solid proof of how this happens. Silnians…just shoot shit all over the place into the galaxy. They’re practically radiating spores throughout space, including the hive worlds. It’s not specifically spores, but you know…a flake of chitin from one of them could one day decide to grow up and get a real job. This is likely why the hive worlds are so notoriously full of life, over billions of years they’ve been able to radiate their rapidly re-evolving biomass to other worlds. Though I think this isn’t pure cosmic coincidence. The Silnian goddesses have likely always built this into the silnian design, and why it looks like natural chaotic evolution of life and the galaxy – all their shit looks that way at first. They’re not like me, so they don’t hyper multiply from ichor and biomass. They just evolve rapidly, what takes a solian fifty thousand years of evolution to accomplish they do in one thousand for example. The precise mechanism by which silnians and their descendants do this kind of stuff hasn’t been narrowed down, but we stuck a net out and caught some random single celled organisms that are from the hive worlds. Some guy from New Age has been doing this as a pet project for the last five years ever since the Koura parasite incident, it was with Diadem that he finally found results. It was just casually traveling through space, and in a few thousand years it might hit a planet’s surface and a few thousand after that…bam life found a way. So that’s why we have fish. Probably would have land species too by now were not for the machines ‘cleaning’ that kind of thing up as it crawled out. Maybe in a century or ten there will be more. Lancaster might want to keep an eye on the water.

 

We’ve sent Dunchek to follow Haleh around, he remarked how few questions she had about the arrangement. Operational security is not exactly her strong suit. He fetches her coffee now.

Michael has at least found out that the Inaji is in the possession of Asmodan. He saw it being handed over not too long ago. The White Fang is still most likely in Sakhessa’s. He is also pretty sure they have more artifacts but they’re mostly in the possession of henchmen. It is also likely they just keep a stash around in case they need anything from Daiheb.

Due to Aikane’s sudden slightly misguided assistance and borderline surrender, we didn’t really need to investigate all that hard into finding him viable candidates for his plan. Instead however we ran background checks on the three candidates that Aikane gave us.

The first one is the most interesting to me just because they’re male. They actually specifically have figured out that if they replace Kiel’nada, their status as a male won’t matter. Because Kharla loves all of her children and won’t notice, and the rest of Kar’Soluth won’t be able to do much about Kharla’s son just sitting around and talking to her at home all day. You can sort of see how this scheme works. They’re one of the Voriuk spawn, and their offer is that they will get Kharla to just ‘forget’ all about her war with us in exchange for helping them take care of Kiel’nada. Again, completely wrong assumptions about what we’re after here.

Second one is Sabaalios’ progeny. She wants to replace Kharla outright, by any means necessary. Though her plan was originally to go through the demon lords to weaken Kharla. We did half her plan for her and she actually wants to find Aikane specifically to finish it off and then use her support base to deal with Kiel’nada and then finally take down Kharla herself. I would describe the second child as ‘physically gifted’. She is not as talented in pandem or other forms of magic like most of them, she just plans to hack through everything with a club. She’s probably the one least likely to alter the deal, but she wants us to help her find Aikane. It’s worth noting she is very powerful, and likely could have killed several of the demon lords herself if we hadn’t beat her to the punch. Apparently step one of her plan had actually been to find Reika, but that didn’t work out. She has a lot of plans that she keeps missing a key window of opportunity for, and mostly due to us.

Third one is Voriuk’s daughter, and she also wants Kharla’s position. The big deal with this one though is that she takes after her father. She has schemes on schemes on schemes and is the only one who did not address our agents by saying anything comically out of scope of what we’re after. On the one hand she could be playing things reserved, but a lot of her planning seems to revolve more around Yasrena than Kharla. We can’t confirm, and she definitely isn’t letting any information slip, but I think she has known about the Phantoms for a long time now. Which implies she is a ‘next level’ kind of schemer. She can likely orchestrate events to benefit our plans with much greater reliability than the scheming son, but she is a little too smart for her own good. She made a point of specifically requesting help with a plan that involved exploiting Vloz’Khress’ ineptitude with technology. Selah got the hint, the third one knows who we are. More importantly, they know who Aryn is and even more more importantly they know what an artifact is. They really should not know that information. She made her stance clear, she’d be a powerful ally in this scheme but a dangerous enemy otherwise since she seems to know way too much. She’d make a great future matriach honestly. New problem, she knows that someone somewhere is up to something involving Kharla and Kiel’nada in some way and that’s enough for her to potentially thwart any plans we don’t include her in if she were to feel we were not working in her best interests. Meaning if Renjala doesn’t work with her she’s probably going to be an issue.

Again, matricidal demon drow – you know how Ilex is currently playing 5D chess with an assassin? These are scary people who know how to play the game. Do not take any of them lightly just because they’re three levels down from the bullshit we put up with.

As for artifacts similar to Ryner and Inaji, Linsun does know of a few but mostly by reputation rather than possessing any of them or having good track of where they are. The wielders of such things tend to be hard to keep tabs on with the exception of Kaylen. They don’t actually know Kaylen has one, they also don’t know the revenants had any. Most of their records date back centuries to heroes of other ages who were also cooperative enough to reveal that they had these mysterious objects to anyone. Which leads to an interesting observation, despite how important these artifacts should be they have a tendency to keep disappearing. Their previous owners also have a long tradition of dying of unnatural causes. Usually bullets. No one with these seem to just retire to the countryside.

Allison has been continuing the anti gang work particularly on Thenica, she’s also been getting into scuffles with elven cannibals. Which is a problem I am impressed still persists, you think they’d run out of desperate elves by now. Apparently they’re forming organized somewhat tribal clans lately that hunt other wasteland survivors for food.

As Lancaster starts expanding operations from Diadem into the Western Reach, Aryn said she got a text. This area of the galaxy is where the Selona Syndicate barely touched anything since it is already their ideal environment. It is also where Selona currently lives. She doesn’t know exactly where, but she does know Arkaric’s main headquarters is somewhere out here and it is likely that in the mass of aliens passing through every day that some of them are his androids. I keep forgetting that Aryn is casually texting with the ‘machine god of galactic chaos’. The contents of that text were mostly an invitation to a particular planet named Elasyn somewhere out there that he apparently keeps his more traditional enterprises running out of. In case we wanted to buy guns or something, since that is still his specialty business. On a hunch, this planet will be similar to Sol’s Tykel. A lawless and violent den of hedonism.