Stories of Lore 55
Zenaka is largely being run by VSEC federation officers at the moment while Ehan sends occasional messages in and out. Which has actually only made the rebellion get worse as members Ehan had convinced at the summit have now broken away. Upon taking the authorization to begin rooting out the rebels, the situation has declined to open warfare. While the bombs Zenaka launched at the federated territories didn’t hit, shields, it does show their intent has escalated. Valen points out that you should just conquer and enslave them at this point as “its the only language they understand”. That a series of small things along the way have not done well to ingratiate them to you. When reminded that we don’t really do that she expressed disapproval. She’s still not terribly fond of her own world and its culture clearly.
We have regarded the incoming fleet as hostile as ordered, most were destroyed upon approaching Twilight Station though a few fled back into space. Sifting through the wreckage finds a collection of odd aliens we don’t have records of mixed with some of Thenican origin, particularly demons.
Jydoq negotiations continue, the unification of their world poses some problems. First of which being that Kar’Soluth has made similar offers to sway groups of the population. Another growing faction has started to turn hostile to all foreign visitors, most of their efforts are focused on Kar’Soluth at the moment though they don’t like us that much either. Jydoq has always been independent and this faction believes that trading assistance now to retain that in the future to be worth it. While that’s nothing new, their growing hostility is notable and we have some reports that they may have started assassinating members of Kar’Soluth. Sort of sticking to the trend that figures in power on this planet have very short lifespans.
Kar’Soluth have pushed into another of the Alnae territories where we aren’t particularly located. The vittles outpost in that region is on the north western side and they attacked the southwestern one. Which has allowed us some insight into how they’re doing this since Sethis is keeping an eye on things in the area.
Things have been oddly quiet on the diadem front, particularly the waves of machines. They’re still present but its been weirdly uneventful over there.
Steamworks is definitely messing with those crystals, though so are some other tech companies. So far Khymin has the best prototypes to make use of the crystal in the form of a shuttle that is very fuel efficient. The simple explanation is that the crystals amplify movement when exposed to certain conditions. The one caveat is that no one has figured out how to make it spin something in a circle efficiently, so less effective at helping gears and more effective thus far in things like ships that use propulsion. Steamworks has strapped what are basically rockets to a panzercycle to make use of these properties though its a bit clunky still.
Also my point about Kharla being Ankathi’s medium wasn’t about her identity but about the fact that she can kill everyone else’s prophet all at once if she wanted to. That and being obnoxious. Also do we even need climate control in Diadem? Will the cafe be open to the public on non meeting days?
The Shadow points out they can summon Daiheb not quite at will but pretty close. If you want they can ask her to show up for you sometime between now and a year from the initial asking. However, if you don’t have an artifact on hand to trade there is no guarantee she bothers to show up. More accurately there is no guarantee she remembers to show up if her sticky note falls off the wall. She is not described as being well organized.
They also know that you’re right about the Demon King and that this pandem reality of how their magic works is historically the reason why he has been the counterpart to celestial gods. He had the same gimmick going on as they did but no one knew pandem science back then well enough to explain why the Demon King was so powerful. The mythology prefers to think of him as an entirely different kind of being from celestial gods but as a planar entity he checks all the boxes. Which is why his powers can be found interwoven into all demons. Though getting a meeting with him is once again one of those things that The Shadow is equipped to do. As the eavesdropper of pandem binds, they can just tell what the demon lords are usually up to as no one knows The Shadow can do this or that they should be wary of it listening in. Demon lords are very well known for having binds and all. Though they can get a message to and from the king, his exact whereabouts are considered one of those expensive information trades.
As for the crystals, you can open a rift to him and forge a strong planar intersection between your realm and the elemental one right on top of where he’s sitting if you wanted to add more fire to your domain. That being said the experiment resulted in the crystals instead producing a lot more heat when activated rather than becoming activated by heat.
Meeting with Jaerda has proven a bit bleaker than expected. She knows a lot more than everyone else about what is really happening in Alnae and also is apparently the queen of the cannibal elves. Go figure. Building a civilization is hard even in good times but in hard times it is clearly a task to tackle. I’m not convinced though that she’s right in that she should be abstaining from retaking her position as councilor. She has the teeth she mentions needing after all. Cheveyo is a scary bastard and if she can even just project him there isn’t an elven warlord on Thenica that wouldn’t shit themselves.
As for the Ultra carrier, they’re still largely just waiting for things to stabilize since they themselves are self sufficient hiding aboard that ship on cruise control around the star. Rebellions and insurgents aren’t an issue so much as a general reclusive nature for fear of Alnae requesting their supplies that they can produce. They’re sort of a time capsule of Alnae before the fall. They’d agree to return to the authority of the council if the council were to properly reform and prove itself by solving the food crisis that led to their isolation in the first place.
The Lucid “Institute” can only say that lately they’ve been on the path to rebuilding and cutting out the yoga classes. Finding that historically the order took root in a time of secrecy by posing as a thing for soccer moms to do while cult leaders used the collective meditation for power. Then later when the desperate needed a place to stay and would agree to join the circles to empower the warriors. Now that the cult is somewhat exposed in their practices and also no longer in a dire situation since they’re cozy in Roha and Diadem, the whole method of getting recruits is both impractical and unnecessary. The new leader has been focusing on implementing Averill’s system within the circles to instead allow ritual casting novices to be safe yet experience the events of the warrior’s adventures through these psionic rituals. Which all makes sense but knowing what we know about the director’s doppelganger, I’m just more confused as to what they’re up to.
Another specific thing they’re doing is committing several people to deep study and practice of psionics. With Ilex gone none of them are strong enough to cast the infinite range sending spell he had even with ritual help and with several people knowing the ritual. They don’t have another psion on the scale of Ilex or Aberhoff in their ranks and very few exist. Psionics in the modern age is a lot of tech know-how and nerdy programmers. Very few people bothered to achieve the mastery of those like Ilex necessary to cast that spell. Despite your total lack of knowledge, you’re actually the only one who might be able to do it because surviving the astral wilds certainly bolsters one’s psyche. So basically they opened more intense training programs. Notably, they approached Vasia voluntarily for help in designing these programs. In their mission to create a new super psion they may have gotten a little too ahead of themselves there to submit to her experimental methods of achieving such results. Problem is, they shouldn’t know she exists or how to contact her. Second problem, she didn’t question that they did manage to contact her and did indeed start laying out some ‘exercises’ they could get started with. Two deaths already.
Vasia asks how she’s supposed to prep in Moncayo if she’s been exiled to an asteroid in your plane. The conversation did not go on long enough to clarify any details before she disappeared to said asteroid.
Troop deployments in Alnae have been largely ignored by Kar’Soluth and they’ve just kept doing what they’re doing and going around our forces. Short of using force to make them stop they can easily avoid using force on us to get around and keep damaging Alnae.
Dem cannibal elves apparently have some sorta boss that now one of the big uns are talking to. Apparently they have antlers. We gotta march up north and get tah shootin.
We’ve made some progress in the prototype designs. It’s basically an assault carrier, but miniature, and with guns on it. Not much headroom though so not great if we have any guests. Very well armored though.
In other news. Chevalier has a dog now. They just…gave it to him. I didn’t know the slave trade was so easy to get into.
In keeping an eye on developing matters between Kar’Soluth and Alnae, our positioning to observe recent affairs have shed some light on why Kar’Soluth has suddenly made such dramatic advances into Alnae territory. They have acquired all the security information of these military bases they keep taking over and are attacking at night. We don’t have any fine details of exactly what happens since one of the first things they do is disable communications and security features. It is likely that after taking over the base they are carefully destroying any recordings of the events. Though this operations are consistent to say there is somehow an active leak within Alnae that spans between the warlords as to feed information to the Kar’Soluth. One in a position to acquire an astounding amount of intel somehow. On the topic was our agents desire to find out how they’re getting so much information on us. Our agents on Thenica report that the information on ourselves are somehow traceable to the same place the breaches in Alnae security are coming from, House Beldobaan. They’re distributing information to the other houses that they are acting on but we don’t know exactly how they’re getting it.
The teams visiting Utewa have reported back that there are dozens of methods but most importantly to the interest of wards is that there is a sahad method in particular we have never encountered before. The only civilization to make practical use of are the three elders though. All other attempts to recreate the method have been extremely difficult and expensive. Likely not a factor since it is just as vulnerable to typical wards and antimagic implements as any other method. We’ll just have the techs add a few extra runes for it. The other methods are just different implementations of similar concepts that we’re familiar with.
Payments have been made regarding the Tungsten Teeth, though there are once again flight times to consider to get from The Reach all the way to Thenica. We’ll have to see how that turns out.