As it turns out Sethis has a half dozen sisters he never talks about. And just as many who are a little too willing to participate in the plan.

Consultation with the Nomads about Faelyn’s mega ship has them pointing out that if they were doing it they’d board it the way they board everything else, by drilling through the hull. Which is still a bit of a unique approach that they’re known for. The issue being that once their aboard the crew of that ship is far more numerous and likely powerful than the average ship they steal. With infinite resources they’d just throw wave after wave of disposable soldiers into it until progress was made. They also say to figure out how much it costs to get Haleh to go since they don’t have a dragon to tackle any of Faelyn’s aboard it.

Koda points out this might be out-scaling their expertise of capturing and taking over ships by forcing a surrender of the crew. It is unlikely that Faelyn wouldn’t put some dragons on there just for dealing with boarders and this thing is basically a space station with engines strapped onto it. Initial observations point out that its slower than Iron cradle. While it likely exists as a response to the mobile station of the Cradle it isn’t controlled by one massive living voidforge and probably has several optimization issues. The Iron Cradle does as well but mostly born from the fact that its a bunch of space stations tied together, Faelyn and Sharen’s big ships were purpose designed as responses to it and the Alnae Ultra Carrier at the same time and they still aren’t as well put together as the Cradle itself. He’d consider that it and the Areti are both a bit on the slow clunky side and just attempts at putting raw firepower into a fleet of otherwise very modern and effective battleships. So even though he wasn’t actually asked he says just keep strapping things onto the cradle to make Faelyn keep wasting money on it so they don’t build more battleships which are their actual best threat.

Meanwhile back on Zenaka, Valen is still running around doing murder politics but has requested we send her Gunhild at the very least to help deal with a few remaining issues that so far have been able to best typical VSEC forces.

As an update on the WTC-3 project, it kiiind of works but its definitely not a traditional mech. If you want to call it a day, they do have a big machine with a big very accurate cannon but its more of a tank than a mech. They couldn’t get it to stay upright when firing it’s primary weapon reliably so they put treads on it. They’re still working on that bit.

Our exploration crews along with the Voidforged found the VSS Raptor in the northern part of the galaxy dry docked at a station for some peculiar reason. Though it is over a planet with a suspiciously familiar level of hostility.

In other news, Haleh is back at Diadem from her latest trip into the Reach and is for some reason commissioning a rather large pair of carriers from the shipyards and when asked why she just said so that she could get back to recruiting.

The evacuations of Alnae should “done enough” by next month and complete in two.

The next Council of Lords for meeting with the demon King will be in four months. So just don’t do anything that might piss him off until then I suppose.

With the pantheon meetings concluded, Ankathi fucked off back to the celestial realm and now I’m wondering if we should be concerned about whatever she might be up to over there.

Haziel has also returned to the galaxy to do whatever this weird galactic keeper business is. Apparently she’s currently dealing with two civilizations engaged in some sort of war that assures mutual destruction and getting a bit too close to pushing some sort of world ending button. Apparently, despite being one of the oldest and most powerful figures of Sol she has to do intern work to learn the ropes over at the fortress of vague but menacing star druids.

The shadow is off to try and hunt down Halaestra, from having had to organize such things on your behalf before…yeah good luck with that hot mess.

Jaerda is still in training with Selah to handle the Astral Wilds for longer than the split second it would take for her to be torn apart from seven dimensions.

Also we’ve tried scanning Yasrena before, though results weren’t good then and aren’t good now. Her bind specifically is fantastically elusive and if I were to interpret the machine’s output literally the implication would be that they are in one hundred places and multiple planes at once. That or they are somehow actually some sort of hive species now though Yochlol aren’t exactly known for that.

In other news, the Ultra Carrier is at least willing to ferry people around as long as the order comes from Jaerda specifically. Also as long as no one asks for any of their food. They’re still pretty picky about their food reserves.

The rest of the refugees are still settling into Enohas as construction is ongoing. Though the Arcurans don’t care too much, the Chosen Wolves are a bit cranky about building stuff around there. They’d probably be crankier if not for the fact that I have to keep reminding them THERE IS A PORTAL TO THE FAE WILDS RIGHT GODS DAMNED THERE. Just go through it more often! Also they spend half their time on Eden anyways. Also this is a lot of portals.

Vasia reports in that catching the bugs is pretty easy, you just grabbed one out of the middle of space. Also that they’ll be at Diadem next month. Just get a big net on a stick maybe, though if you prefer a more elaborate plan she could probably build a really big net on a really big stick. So far she suspects they’ll either fly past Diadem and we’ll need to use some freight ships to catch them out of space, or they’ll land at Diadem and start nibbling on things at which point you could probably just send some people out with trucks and net guns. Also that protecting the crops was probably a good call before you got invaded by space locusts.

Exploration report around Zero North as we look for various things alongside VSEC Exploration teams: The northern chunk of the galaxy is home to an alliance similar to ours or Nelta that has been crumbling ever since the influence of the Phantoms messed with everything. Formerly there were two major national alliances with hundreds of star systems and now there are 34 smaller alliances between dozens of star systems.

Initial poking around, which half the time meant poking the Exerlus with dumb questions, reveals to us that this place is in an ongoing state of apocalyptic fall and has been for the last decade. Once again, food shortages are all over the place and the Exerlus have been skirmishing with the exiled consensus who is also invading other worlds for materials. This is one of the most well developed areas of the galaxy in terms of materials and technology though now its breaking down into a bit of a salvage war.

More importantly, we found a peculiar world that is extremely hostile to reportedly everything. The world itself is almost barren and has no atmosphere but we can tell there is some sort of development there that is the size of a single city with an orbiting station above. While this isn’t unusual given how suspicious people tend to be in the ongoing salvage wars, we were able to detect several ships of varying origins aboard the station. One of them matches the profile of the VSS Raptor. We’re not sure how it got there but I’m fairly certain that it isn’t a good sign.

In terms of core resets we also have to consider how to refurbish it, as by then its likely to start experiencing wear and tear. I suppose now we’re just joining our solian creators on the quest to cure mortality, we’re just at a disadvantage of not having yet seen how our end-of-life experiences will be.

We’ve been running counter ops on Thenica and operations are concerned with where we found some of it. We managed to intercept a couple of refugees partaking in the mass evacuation of Alnae who were actually from Kar’Soluth. Beldobaan specifically. Which implies that if we missed any, there might be a problem later.

Also while running such operations to try and track any down that slipped through the net we accidentally found out that Sarden is on Diadem. She was the only revenant we could identify but we know they don’t tend to travel alone, she’s just the one we have caught before and thus can more easily identify. Though we lost track of her soon afterwards, what we do know is she was snooping around Renjala’s new pandem university. Even had a student ID and record, which we haven’t done anything with but its anyone’s guess why she’s there posing as a student. We have no evidence that she’s ever been to any of the classes despite a falsified attendance record, so I doubt she’s actually there to learn pandem.

We also found out that there has been a massive influx of Sivataur vampires from SR2. Obviously they would be landing in Beldobaan territories though they’ve been moving erratically from there. It would appear that Yasrena was able to make that deal to have some of them show up though I have conflicting reports on whether or not they are intending to join Kar’Soluth as a formal house or if they’re just here as mercenaries because they tend to just like picking fights.

We also found out that Vloz’Khress has been up to their old antics again and re establishing their presence in the Demon Kingdom. To the point that I can’t really tell which nation they’re more a part of at this point. As one of Kar’Soluth’s great houses you would assume that but their headquarters and main investments seem to be in the demon kingdom for whatever reason. Though that might be the fault of their patron demon lord being more interested in demon politics than Thenican ones now that they’re down to their last one, granted that one has grown a lot more powerful now that they have monopolized the Great House under the control of themselves and their own daughter. Though we also snooped around and found out that several prominent demon figures are in Kar’Soluth’s territory along with their specified retinue. It isn’t enough to make an army that would deal with Lancaster’s, but if she hits one of them it could suddenly cause an issue. I think it might be a trap.

We’ve had some troubles though, as the Beldobaan agents have captured some of ours as well and we’re going back and forth in this game of espionage. It is hard to determine what information they’ve gotten from us that we’d care about them knowing just as much as they might not know which parts we know about them. It is safe to assume though they have found out where we’re looking for them at the very least. I also have suspicions that they might have located Aryn and yourself even if they haven’t acted on that information yet.

Also by popular request, we’ve kept tabs on Reika for Renjala’s benefit. She’s mostly just following the Sarghess matriarch around and exhibits consistent behavior to what we know about her. It is unlikely that Kanika actually did anything to her essentia. She maintains a ridiculous K/D ratio against the Tungsten Teeth because none of them fully understand that she’s immune to bullets, artillery, missiles, and bombs or that the trick she’s using is based on an impossible reaction time. Anyone that might have figured the trick out generally doesn’t manage to report back to anyone about it.