For awhile the occupied territory of Zenaka has been able to start extending more diplomatic efforts to their other territories under the general leadership of Uxam. His sales pitch is largely ‘we have need gadgets’. Though not long after news of the treaty, an alliance of the other territorial leaders launched a campaign against the allied states. The leaders of this alliance state that they are dissatisfied with Zenaka being under the control of a bunch of aliens and are re-enacting the plot of about twenty movies about alien invasions. The occupied territories do have our guns and soldiers to defend it, though a few defenses were destroyed by somewhat smaller teams targeting them. The first few attacks were carried out simultaneously earlier this week. Notably Vasia came up at least three times in their speech about how we’re an evil colonial force. They did not address the matter of what they were doing in those facilities before she showed up.
This has nothing to do with you telling them to get their shit together this month actually, they just picked a really coincidental time to suddenly make a problem of all this.
In regards to the phantom infiltration of a military organization issue, you should be careful about listening to what Larazja says. She speaks in exaggeration and hyperbole a lot. Though on that regard, it should be assumed that because of Kanika’s ability to manipulate people’s loyalties that the Phantom’s ability to infiltrate anything is quite significant. The greater strategic concern is if she has people in critical areas of security. For example, Roha’s food supply chain.
The WTC-2 design has been ironed out and is now available.
We’ve lost all contact with Jiyan and the outsider, though this was expected and she called in a final report before entering the Warrens. She is going in deeper and isn’t sure where the next exit will be.
Virtual simulation of combat might be possible for the convention tournament. Though it would take awhile to program and present in any way that is interesting to onlookers. Though that would be Ilex’s realm of expertise. I’m just a maybe-sentient robot assistant.
Kaylen was last seen headed back to Thenica, apparently to talk to House Song and likely the Revenants.
A farming operation of the desired scale for Vittles can be managed with help from the druids. Mostly due to the fact of how many seeds that will require, though staff for it might take awhile to drum up if you want to do something of that scale. The immediate problem is security, while right now the invasive machines are currently focused towards the inner layers, putting a lot of civilians on the surface might draw their attention towards there. While Gem Station, our fleets, and the mechs won’t have any issues with that I do imagine it’ll slow down the number of people terribly excited to work there.
There has been a sharp spike of immigrants from Moncayo to Adelaide in the wake of Laura’s whole ‘marketing thing’ as people get settled down and figure out what sort of place it actually is.
General Preskian reports that right now the big issue facing his faction is that Kar’Soluth has suddenly started directing its attention towards many of them. The warlords are actually doing fairly well at uniting against a common enemy. They don’t particularly hate each other in the end, it’s just that no single government can account for all the needs of their respective people right now due to the resource shortages.
A large part of the ongoing problems for Alnae have been not just the food shortage, they were quick to start trying to regrow crops. Alnae had always been structurally dependent on the elves controlling all the wealth to keep the masses from trying their own thing. With the current state of things, many are willing to start their own gangs and try to create more independent nations with ‘the same but slightly different rules, also with me in charge’. His other idea is that instead of defending Alnae from Kar’Soluth, if you could convince Kar’Soluth to attack much harder it might forcibly reunite the former members of Alnae against a common threat. Not to mention the war would probably cut down on the number of mouths to feed and solve two problems at once. Alnae is so scattered that even Jaal’Darya can’t get them all, but if Shetou were to get involved in an attempt to win that centuries old war or perhaps stop Kar’Soluth from expanding then that would be more than they could possibly handle.
His other idea was to get Valencia to bankroll this whole thing so that someone would have the wealth needed to get the other’s attention and get them following someone again. Though she has refused to as she doesn’t see much potential for return on the investment.
As for the sneaky negotiations with Shetou, they don’t really care about Kiel’Nada. Convenient because Ankathi has her now alongside Kharla.
Laesaaria points out that whoever fights the Hassani will die and whoever fights second or even third is the one that has a chance. For now she foresees the most likely path forward to at least stabilizing things would be to get more alien allies. It is highly likely that the Phantoms will ally with the Demon Kingdom in the near future as those two have similar grudges against the Era of Rising and have worked together in the past. As for researching a protection from mummy rot, Cazvrath Vel’Sharen was definitely interested in that and suggested allowing Sharen’s experts to go to Roha where the dormant infections are still present for studying it. They don’t exactly want to bring samples into their territory for obvious reasons.
In the spirit of cooperation, House Sharen is a logistical super power due to the size of their navy. Though they’ve been careful about expanding because with Vloz’Khress gone they don’t have a Renjala so they don’t have the same easy access to a more convenient transport network than actually flying in and out of places. They have twenty eight colonies in various nearby systems though they want into the Reach. They’d be willing to pay the Astral Order for the job of establishing a few for them.
Laesaaria also pointed out that as nice as the thought is, she isn’t really the best representative for the ‘age of drow’ given Shetou is dominated by the other races. Of her three remaining great houses, only Sharen is drow. It just so happens that the year Sharen and Song’s heirs married and united to form the Shetou as a proper Empire, she was on the throne at the time and it was easiest to settle “who gets to be in charge” by just letting her keep the position. Not that it matters terribly to your point, she just thought she’d let you know how the culture has evolved since the secession of Kar’Soluth. A few other smaller houses are still around but with the old system being gone, there isn’t as much relevance to them to achieve the Great House status.
Talks were less effective with Valencia. I think we only got as far as her secretaries secretary. Who requested a more concrete outline of the plan before she would be able to present it to her higher ups who might then be able to take it up with Valencia herself.
Azilath is easier to talk with given our previous relations with her. Though she was mostly curious what Ilex and Larazja are up to these days. Though she doesn’t really need help finding worlds she would want to expand onto. Valdir contains the collective knowledge of its mothership that has gone across the galaxy and back. They’re actually aware of more places of interest than the rest of Sol combined. Right now the Valdir sub cells have already taken consumed a few worlds. Though the thing they’re most curious about is money. Indal left almost everyone with their full personality intact, and many of them like shiny things. Though their civilization is still based on the fact that it can behave as a gestalt consciousness as needed. No one gets paid around here, they just get everything on demand. The problem is that doesn’t work great for online shopping and grandma selling handknitted sweaters she has all this free time for making doesn’t translate well when the only trading partners available are light years away. Galactic commerce is often done in bulk for that reason, and Azilath greatly lacks the ability to do that.
On to other matters. Vittles set up a storefront at Kuhas Station inside of Allison’s new territory so that should help out with paying off gangs for security. Also the plan to buy a percent of the station led to a very confused talk with a representative of the station as to what you even mean by that. After some discussion they’ve offered to let you build another extension onto the patchwork station if you want.
After a talk with Quinae we figured out who some of the big powers in the Reach are. It’s a bit of a confusing matter though. Technically we’re among the top one percent of factions in the Reach, though we represent a percent of a percent of how many there are. That and if anyone gets too big, people tend to flip around and gang up on that group.They are also shockingly easy to rally once contracts for war spoils are settled. Quinae advises treading lightly.
To summarize if you want to send some messengers to say hi:
Utewa: Private education, big shipyards, and a disappearing planet
Tungsten Teeth: Mercenaries born to mercenaries who were killed by mercenaries in order to become mercenaries that were recognized by other mercenaries. Also super slavers.
Vessians: Tribal race with a big punch in a small package. Alien dragons kind of, or demons…or vampires… we kind of have a lot of people with super strength it now ocurrs to me. Starving nomadic hunters who are probably experiencing the collapse of their people due to Arkaric’s meddling in their paradise homeworld.
Mysterious Factory Flotilla: Gotta find them first.
Elasyn: Where all the great powers like to meet and hangout, which explains why Selona opened up shop there.
To be noted, Eerihild cannot heal anything and everything for everyone. The tournament idea has a problem with the fact that first off, she is liable to be competing, and second the damage that could be inflicted in a ‘no holds barred’ match includes death. She can’t heal death. Even the Ika medical bays, that they are afraid to ever go near again, can’t quite fix bullet holes to the head. I think the only people we know of that could possibly allow for that would be Elym and Decaelys.
We could try to virtualize the whole thing with help from Ilex. Just sort of store people in psicrystals and connect them to the game albeit not sure how comfortable they’d be departing from their bodies for that long. Also could maybe drum up a couple of temporary phylactery set ups though that costs people their bodies permanently so actually forget I said that one. We could also finish building your plane and you could just grant everyone immortality while on the plane. Might slow things down to getting everything set up and started but on the other hand you could get some clerics of your own to go open rifts all over the place so people don’t have to travel terribly far. Might ruin some of the cultural fair though if its not actually held in diadem. Maybe you make a spell for this and just leave a rift over the arena.
We started up SenshiCon so they can work on handling all of this.
We’ve seen a large boost to Jamalia’s population in the form of the fae migrants who just want out of that hellhole that is the Fae Wilds. Recovering from all the recent disasters the place has had, I’m sure nothing will go horribly wrong this time. Apparently they’re led by a kitsune named Yaezuki.
Speaking of putting a perimeter around there, Fae are kind of just popping in and out. We’ve learned that as long as the rift portal is open they can kind of slip through and no amount of security seems to catch them all at customs. Some have just walked back in through the front door of Jamalia after realizing they would need a ship to get anywhere else. Which explains how General Vaquinal got into contact with them without us knowing about it. It was less to do with him being sneaky but with Fae being sneaky. They already stole a shuttle once or twice. I’d say its a problem mostly caused by the initial surge of ‘get us the hell out of here’ and will likely calm down with time but for the immediate future it is notable how difficult they are to contain. Also we keep finding piles of fae clothes in random hallways.
General Vaquinal himself is a bit of an odd fellow. I suppose you have to be to reach out to the Fae for help instead of the druids though Eerihild figured out the reason behind that. While the theory that elves are somehow descended from the fae is up for debate, another large part of why he wants the fae’s help is because he is the one closest to Kar’Soluth and in particular has been dealing with Beldobaan. Perhaps it was a bit of an assumption to say he’s an odd fellow, he might just be turning into a paranoid maniac due to what he’s going through. His ‘we’re related’ pitch is mostly because he has nothing else to get the fae’s attention but he specifically was after the fae for help with drow infiltrators since they are equally as tricky. Apparently he is also trying to prove its even Beldobaan that is messing with him, also he has no evidence of anything. If it were anyone other than Beldobaan I would definitely say he’s just crazy. He might actually just be crazy for all I know but it’s about 50/50. Given what Sethis learned about that house, and that somehow no one knew that she was basically the queen of the dajer vampire and could rehabilitate ferals, I am willing to believe its really hard to track what they do.
Speaking of druidic spy candidates, starting to think we have a lot of fae with no ties to anyone else, come from the origin of druidic power, and who need jobs. Though they aren’t exactly trained for even operating in the middle planes at all, let alone grew up here enough to know how to work a door. Might be a terrible idea, might be a great idea, not sure yet.
The chapter with the Hasao Tei you could say have a low rate of interest in zankou, mostly because they were interested in pandem and dedicated their lives to that to the extent of joining the order. A few have been experimenting with it but only lightly.
What fortuitous timing for the second lance to get to Zenaka, they’re invading each other again.
Meanwhile on Jydoq, the twelve leaders are mostly regional based on how far they can actually keep track of things. The whole situation evolved out of their best efforts to stabilize a situation that is being constantly disrupted by the death of their leaders. They tried to form a council of these originally eight powers since that was their old government in the first place. Then all eight of them died and the next six in line. Then it became twelve of them. So sharing power isn’t the issue, its maintaining a chain of command for longer than two months.
We know two of them are tied to the Jaal’Darya and are reliant on them for help. Notably those two are coincidentally the most stabilized. Three are buddies with Shetou, one is technically allied with us through previous efforts we put in and Kennae. The most powerful single faction among them is outright controlled by the Desoir family who took over managing affairs since they owe Desoir a lot of money right now. The rest are just rogues right now. Worth mentioning the two with Jaal’Darya, one with desoir, and one with us, are all at their homeworld. Though they had multiple systems settled and the rest are based out of their various colonies that were hit a little less compared to the homeworld by Selona’s Shenanigans.
We’ve established Panemperia as a more official brand. I just hired people from Renard’s Rifts for professors. They have a bunch of people who know what they’re doing and wouldn’t mind sitting around and taking it easy on Diadem. Couple knights too. Though Renard himself said and I quote “I ain’t that old yet.”
Halaestra demanded an unreasonably high salary to consider doing it, though I suppose to be fair she does have a lot of money so it takes a lot to make her actually show up to a job on time.
Meanwhile back on Jydoq, as was covered from intel reports by Nah, the leaders are all over the place. For our purposes, the cult has just been shoving food in people’s mouths. At this point everyone is motivated by food and Lancaster has invested a lot into setting up farms everywhere we go. We’ve sent someone to offer moral support to the faction that just had its eighth governor killed by this assassin. So we got some more immigrants who just want food around Zion.
You declassified yourself months ago, everyone knows you are a cat. You didn’t say ‘declassify myself except for that one part’ so it’s actually been the best advertisement the cult has had in awhile to point out the leader can do something like the overmind technique effectively enough to transpose himself into the body of a cat. Technically it’s that you can jump your way out of the cat body as that is your original one but people seem to forget that detail. Also been using it to point out that the giant puddle of ichor in Roha has you in it, which is also good for our PR.
Agallias has been withdrawn as promised and most of his loyal population went with him to conquer a new world. That leaves us with still a little bit more to do though as it wasn’t quite as simple as showing up with a flag. Particularly dealing with the natives who are now leaderless just in time for us to show up.
As a bit more detail, Viowei is home to already large life forms. It was probably what got Agallias interested in it. They aren’t exactly huge but they are definitely an effort to cram into a solian building. With Agallias gone their government is in a state of disarray but he didn’t exactly say “bye now that new guy is in charge” on the way out. I imagine there will still be some resistance which leads to us needing to make it clear that we’re taking over. So we do still need to invade them just a little bit. Though its likely any resistance effort can be dealt with under the parameters of ‘not killing civilians’ a lot easier if we’re not dealing with an organized force. The swarm commanders can handle that much.
Also the Metal Maker was lost with the Vivarium so we can’t exactly feed it to the ship.
Averill has made his way back to Jydoq, though Quinae has been left at Diadem since that’s where their whole guide job is best executed from.
Vasia has once again returned to experimenting on pregnant women on Zenaka. Though with things warming up over there due to the independence movement using her as ‘one of the reasons these aliens are assholes’ she was last seen petitioning Lancaster to let her have some prisoners too.
First off, we have a problem. We left a starship at Kuhas when we passed by to follow us later and make sure no one was tailing us. Rampart assisted in hiding them among usual space traffic departing Kuhas and they found that we’re being chased down by a fleet our sensors cannot detect. It’s Rahlken again. Our starship scout crew was able to get visual confirmation since their sensors couldn’t detect the ship even while within scrying range.
An interception fleet is heading towards us though they aren’t as fast as Solian ships. It has been counted, again visually so accuracy may be compromised, of at least eight battleships, two assault carriers, a regular carrier, and about twenty two cruisers. Handful of destroyers too but our scouts were unable to confirm the presence of anything smaller. While we should be able to handle that, if it slows us down and Rahlken catches up we don’t need a rematch to know how that will go. However, unless they slow us down we’re faster than Rahlken’s own ship.
At this point we are in the hive territories, there aren’t as many stations out here and we’ve already seen what that ship can do to Gem Station. I estimate at current speeds it will take them a week to catch us if we continue our current course, the actual fight could go either way. If we deviate to the most ‘away’ direction, we can get up to three weeks. However, another of our starships has detected a nearby fleet coming from the opposite direction though they lack the stealth technology of the other and it was found via sensors. So while we can’t say for sure its allegiances, the scouts report it doesn’t look like his stuff but it looks a lot meaner. According to intel from Rampart, that might be a fleet of Tungsten Teeth mercenaries.
So to summarize, Rahlken is on our tail but too slow to catch us. There is one confirmed fleet sent to intercept us and slow us down and another that may or may not even be hostile but is catching us with the ol’ pincer attack if it is hostile. If Rahlken catches up, we’re screwed.
We have at least a week on our current course and three if we divert. If we do so, we might be able to get somewhere safe for a crash landing at least?
Meanwhile, on to catchin these hands. You are sort of right that the cores who are best at making hands come from the same source, but its the Siwa Factory we came from and the generation that shares you and me within it. It is likely there was a specific engineer who was committed to this, and the others of our generation and model were their failed attempts at the same thing we’re trying to do. The three of us being the success cases. Though our own construction, sans Adrienne the mystery, had a whole team working on it. The head of the team being a now-dead elf who may or may not have even been a significant contributor or just taking credit for what the team did. Humanoids do that a lot I’m told. The Cradle is the very same factory so we have all their work here but I’ve looked around for any further information on what exactly made it work and there’s nothing about exactly what went into it.
As for placing the core into other fancy things, I made a larger mech shell that can support the modern swappable cores. Notably all of my models can use it though older models without removable cores cannot. That includes you, myself, Adrienne, Chevalier, and Sylvaine. I built Vanessa and Sacha though so they can use it. So can a lot of the young’uns around here but we only just recently started large scale production of those. Also Sylvaine is already pretty much a mech.
We’ve managed to get some more details on the jydoq cannibal assassin thing.Though oddly, it came from Allison at Kuhas station. They know of something similar to this story specifically but its down to rumors and ‘some guy said some stuff awhile back and I kind of remember it’. However, there are stories of people who fit this creature’s description. It is quite likely that whoever this assassin is, the important details of their story are in the Reach not on Jydoq itself. Apparently in the southern parts of the Reach there are similar stories and it might be worth poking around there. Specifically it was mentioned that the Utewa might know something.
Mike’s back. He was confused as to how much has changed in what he felt was a relatively short time away. Also he keeps taking a lot of showers, apparently he had to do things with beholders and whatnot he is not proud of.
We built the station over at Cayetano and started setting up a city at Diadem. Not sure how I went from managing an intelligence agency to a government in here though but I suppose that all got started around the time of the Nomad Flotilla. Makes you think though doesn’t it?
Allison has been getting more established in Kuhas. Lot of gang violence around there.
Also speaking of relevance for the computer parts manufacturing, we’ve learned that is basically currency within the Reach. They can’t use credits or any sort of easy currency everyone can agree on due to people stealing it all the time, so they use ‘anything that had to be manufactured with any degree of expertise’. Already have large orders from Lancaster to convert credits into ‘stuff that the Reach will trade with’.
The Nomads have taken to probing around in the Reach and discovered some valuable information while they look into various stations to hang out around. A lot of pirates in the Reach does the kind of stuff they do. In Sol it was somewhat of a ridiculous notion for a pirate gang to be stealing much larger ships, but in the Reach that is a way of life. So be wary of putting literally any ship into space out in this region.