Stories of Lore 59

Greetings Koda, in the absence of Lancaster once again you have command until we can re-establish contact with her. I do not envy you.

The war effort has seen further development with Kar’Soluth’s reinforcements finally arriving. I will try to summarize quickly.

The Vloz’Khress and their demon allies have arrived at Thenica and are moving towards Beldobaan. I would suggest reserving the movement of Tyne’s sister until after things settle down. Asmodan and his fleet have arrived at Thenica as well, among their number is the notable ship that Haleh reported as attacking her en route to Aureum when she first left Diadem. We do not know if it belongs to Nila Whately or the exerlus she was with at the time. It boasts a significant technological advantage over every other ship involved.

House Kenduis is also sending some of their forces to Beldobaan but the majority of their forces are currently taking or retaking areas inside of Alnae, judging by the positioning they’re being particularly cautious of Azilath and the Valdir.

Yasrena used the Renjala’s Rift spell to send Sarghess to Jaal’Darya in response to us sending forces there as well. Reika is with them once again. Jaal’Darya’s headquarters is built into the side of a cliff and we’re fighting in tunnels all over again. The initial strike did not go as well as hoped and the fight is still ongoing with the Sarghess forces who are entrenching deeper into their position by the day while we’re still trying to find a way to get inside. Also Eliza Pierce is here and pulled a Si-Yeon on us and released an army of chimeras onto our forces to support Sarghess.

We have majority control of Beldobaan territory right now but it isn’t a smooth occupation. Pockets of skirmishes keep breaking out within the city with vampires hiding in sewers, vents, and other strange places that would not be typical. Posing some challenges in containing the guerilla attacks on our forces.

Apparently attacking Faelyn in orbit above Kar’Soluth territory has drawn the attention of several members of the Hassani. Azarov and Agallias have appeared on Thenica to assist Faelyn in the fight against Shetou alongside the expected Asmodan. The largest problem of which being Agallias who is able to attack ships in orbit on his own as well as obliterate ground forces that get anywhere near the Sarghess base he is nearby.

Decaelys, Kanika, and now Deinuu are planetside without any significant army behind them but their hunt for Song Auni continues. Who we have not been able to find either and we’re not sure if Laesaaria was able to get word to her about our offer.

Valen reports evidence of Jaal’Darya style infections on Zenaka, they have far less technological assistance to aid in quarantine and she is actively still fighting the rebellion, who may have aided the Jaal’Darya.

The Hasao Tei have resigned from the Federation, taking a deal with the Jaal’Darya to escape the incoming war. They left Moncayo and went into the frontier on their own. In their place, they let the Jaal’Darya through the entire portal network in exchange for cures for their own people. Considering their civil security force was a part of maintaining the quarantines in Moncayo like last time, this has caused a catastrophic breach.

The Revenants launched the largest assault we’ve seen them attempt into Eden city. Apparently they retrieved Alakira and the other surviving original members and expanded their roster once again.

Haziel is currently on Enohas helping the somewhat stranded elves not all turn to cannibalism…again.

A small team of Tungsten Teeth members, unassociated with the ones we hired previously, appeared at Moncayo. They killed thirty eight people and wounded a hundred and sixteen before kidnapping Larazja from Roha and extracting her through the Moncayo portal network. Though we later found out this was actually Vasia’s doing to “secure her most important asset while she was away”. Larazja has been forcefully relocated to the asteroid base of New Age. Leaving Roha, in the middle of its ongoing pandemic, without it’s technical leader.

The Vessians are still hanging around Beldobaan with our other forces. Despite everything that’s going on, we have learned a lot about the combat capabilities of their species from all this. It’s a lot.

Azilath has also arrived on Thenica in the heart of former Alnae territory, to the confusion of many . While she didn’t bring her full army with her, given how silnians operate we’re a little concerned that she’ll just make a new one on the spot. Though given that all the fighting, and where she is now, is not on the Rixa plane we’re not entirely sure how dangerous she actually is. We have no idea why she’s here, but she is one of the queens of the ‘war cult’ so its ominous none the less.

We’ve also detected three other large forces approaching Sol from outside of the system, all from different directions. Laesaaria confirms that two of them are allies of hers from their own galactic misadventures. She has no idea who the other one is but would assume the Hassani have friends as well who might be nearby enough to come visit.

 

In summary: Sol War III is officially on schedule. Sakhessa is the only person of note who is particularly absent and is somewhere on Aureum complaining that this is why she can’t have nice things.

Oh right and the Caelkians do have a prevailing if not somewhat unified government. They do have independent nations on their homeworld but almost all of them are signed to an alliance to represent them as a planet. The people who didn’t sign are rapidly becoming economically irrelevant compared to those who banded together and went to space.

 

We’ve heard from Mahuea that the elementals have offered premonitions, dozens of them from several Archon’s purviews, that things are about to get really bad really quickly. Also that they’re pretty sure it’s either Lancaster or Yasrena’s fault.

Apparently one of the thunder archons has been preparing a super weapon for just such an occassion. It’s himself. Apparently the elementals have decided that if this gets out of hand they’re going to release the Archon of Thunder into the middle planes and effectively destroy all technology. It’s never even been tested before so it could have a range of a hundred miles or it could EMP the entire galaxy. Probably the former since there’s more than one archon of lightning and they have found reason to believe there are others across the galaxy.

I’m not sure it’ll come to that, but I suppose its just interesting to know that while they don’t really want to be involved in a war of this size, they’re concerned we’ll bomb ourselves into extinction and they have their own final measure to prevent that from happening. Aww, and here I thought they didn’t care about us. It’s more thoughtful than sending Mahuea at least.

Oh and the Revenants attacked Eden City in fucking force. Seriously there were four dozen of them, I didn’t even know there were that many. Granted, no one of ours is dead. Two revenants are, which our knights managed to take down, Tenebrys was captured – no idea who the fuck they are and interrogation has gone very poorly. A whole lot of knights were taken down but the Revenants didn’t use lethal measures so actually they’re fine. They did however bomb the Order of Shadow’s temple and disappeared through a Pandem rift into the Shadow Plane. Also Sarden and Morylan were spotted at Jydoq when they kidnapped Yoshai. Eden also mentioned that three unknown people, likely Revenants, went onto the surface of the planet while all of that was happening. They went to the cave your Phylactery was once stored, it isn’t there anymore obviously but the fact that they went to check is somewhat concerning. The waterfall squid monster ate one of them but was grievously injured in the fighting.

Alakira is back and that has some interesting ramifications. It means the mummy rot of Sakhessa can in fact be cured, albeit it apparently requires a silnian to do it. Also Alakira is now technically a member of the Valdir. Though given how Indal operates, I don’t think that’s too bad of a deal for her given the alternative was a very long and painful death.

As far as we can tell, via however they keep getting information on us they learned about The Shadow and quite possibly that it is the owner of the Black Library. Which they depend on heavily. I can’t tell if they have some sort of hit on the Shadow because they did some warcrimes we don’t know about, or perhaps its a mutiny, or they just want to keep us far away from them as not to compromise their own intelligence network or something. That or some other weird ass conspiracy, the Revenants are kind of always doing their own nonsense. We have also not heard from The Shadow since, probably because their temple wing got blown up and their high prophet is now missing.

Back at Enohas, the loss of Jamalia isn’t too severe. I mean yes, those poor elves, but statistically most of them were outside of the colony trying to establish new colonies to begin new lives. Haziel has been tending to them but has now enforced that they cannot leave their appointed territories due to the quarantine. The Jaal’Darya infection has taken root in a few of their satellite colonies and Eerihild is rather concerned as to whether or not it could affect Haziel herself. While it is unlikely given that she’s immune to practically everything, it would be catastrophic if it could. Haziel sure seems to think it won’t affect her and has just been handling the sick without any reservations.

Jaerda, who isn’t even on Enohas, is having a bit of a mental breakdown over all of this. She’s been begging for some help in going after Rahlken, apparently among those taken were several politically important individuals since Jamalia was being used as the temporary capital of Alnae-on-Enohas. Also her family, who she had gotten the cushy suites at Jamalia instead of being assigned to hut-building like the rest of the peasants. These requests involve trying to contact the Nomads ever since she learned they were part of the Federation even if a bit aloof stealing ships from everyone else for their flotilla.

I haven’t seen her since you got back with apparently most everyone just not the structure of the colony itself. Which honestly is a pretty easy rebuild, that thing was our first colony attempt and probably due for some upgrades. We hadn’t even really done much with it ever since discovering Eden could fix the corruption.

Speaking of which, even though you’re a planar entity made of skeleton, do you need an ice pack after that? We may need to re-assess our threat assessment of Rahlken. Technically he hasn’t prevented us from our objectives very often, but it is quite clear that actually beating him in combat is extremely difficult. He’s been getting stronger with every encounter we have since he keeps stealing more and more traits. Given your recollection of him taking powers from you and Haziel, I gather that the next time we see him will be even worse.

Oh and the radar station pointed out that after you rescued the elves he redirected his course and is now en route to Zenaka.

Also the knights and VSEC soldiers that went to the station in the northern galaxy report back that they ran into resistance very early. Though they did get a chance to look around, and the place was quite techy with a lot of robots doing automated menial tasks. They did however encounter a trio of extremely hostile inhabitants. All five knights and fifteen of the VSEC soldiers died before they could retreat through the portal. It was described as fighting one of those psionic engineers who had turret drones, but the drones were starship level weapons and the engineer was teleporting all over the place while shooting them through walls. Despite the scanner descriptions of their technological advantage over us, this is the first time we’ve seen what that looks like in a combat situation. ‘Halfway between us and the exerlus’ seems a fitting description.

Also you might want to prepare yourself, next month is your meeting with the Demon King and the Council of Lords. Which might disrupt your ability to run around opening portals all over the galaxy for a bit.

Intel report: We’ve been keeping an eye on Beldobaan and by extension that has now turned into “vampire affairs investigations” because its getting out of control around here. Sangui De’Rex has mobilized their fleets, our agents discovered that Sabrae was extracted from Beldobaan by Yasrena and is now currently being guarded by the De’Rex family. The big bad sivataur super duper chief -and colleagues- is meeting with the Desoirs.

Our counter ops against Beldobaan have at least made it statistically clear that they have been relocating away from the capital to continue their more covert operations away from the main siege efforts of Lancaster and instead are having the more militant houses deal with that. Yasrena likely has a strong interest in retaking the area since it is an ancient house’s ancient home and the Kar’Soluth are nothing if not fans of ancient drow bullshit. They’re just not having Beldobaan themselves focus on messing with us.

Also you should really stop fighting down there yourself its making everyone nervous.

Also since at this point it seems like practically everyone is involved we went ahead and checked in on the Abyssals. They’re confused as to what and why any of this is happening. Which I suppose is actually a good thing. Though Necrosi’s civilization has started the process of mass arming its people and raising their army through conscription. So far it looks like its more of a “just in case this gets any bigger” situation but its another piece on the board to keep tabs on. As if we didn’t have enough of those going on at the moment.

The teams we sent planetside at that ruined planet have managed to approach for observation of the facility. Though command told them to hold off after we got word of what happened aboard the station to the knights and VSEC. The problem with the facility is that it is highly secure, there is only a single door to the entire place and its located right by the landing pads for ships. There are no windows and the perimeter is full of automated defenses. This is either a secret military research facility or a prison. One way or the other, things aren’t supposed to be getting in or out of here. Given that the VSS Raptor is docked at the station above, I am leaning towards prison personally. Further scans reveal the facility is much larger than it looks as it has an underground layer to it that goes quite deep. Very few people ever enter or exit the place. We kept on observation to wait to see if they get resupplied but saw nothing that looked like a supply shipment.

I’m leaning towards prison still. Infiltration would likely require a lot more information than we can get from observation. We’d need to know whats inside and what security measures they utilize, also what the people inside even look like. We’ve seen some people entering and exiting and they look shockingly humanoid. Like Vessians with pure white hair, but from a safe observational distance we can’t tell what makes them distinct from one another. They all look so identical that infiltration via disguise runs the risk of completely misunderstanding how they identify one another.

If we want to try and infiltrate the place, we need to find other places where this civilization would be in order to observe and collect more data on them. This facility is too secure for us to base our plans just on seeing small glimpses of them. If we wanted to try and assault the place, we’re going to need a lot more resources judging by the report from those that went aboard the station. That and some sort of missile counter system. They have a lot of missile launchers as part of their automated defenses.

 

Science rarely goes as planned, engineering is more art than science. One must place the brush where it wants to go. I made more crab bots by the way.

Currently with a massive war going on back in Sol, I feel like things are awfully quiet around here in the galactic north despite the falling empires.

Adrienne reports that in summary the meeting with the Zhulkites wasn’t too bad. Their border patrol stations are quite friendly if you try to dock with them instead of flying past them. Though it is likely the Engurians will attack us immediately since they can detect we are machines.

They did mention that in order to deal with that, it would help to come up with a plan to either signal to them that we are not exerlus, or get them in a position where they wind up talking with us on accident…or force! We could practice the traditional arts of piracy maybe and just kidnap a few then tell them we just want a passport. I’m sure that’d go well. Actually that’s not a terrible idea.

With the Exerlus wars reaching a scale we can only comprehend with math and ‘well that looks bad’ it is unlikely we can rely on the Iron Cradle’s brute force to get us through those areas. Thankfully with the help of Echo Prime we at least can get up to date information on where those battles are being fought and avoid them. Notably, this is something the Zhulkites do not have access to since their own communications have been disrupted by these wars destroying deep comm towers. Even if we had Adrienne hand over all of the data to the outpost she’s at, they can only tell a few nearby locations that information let alone their entire alliance or even the larger mass that was their former alliance.

I’ve done some further analysis on what Adrienne sent, they’re still at the outpost as a guest of the zhulkites. Apparently as a species they actually are one of the most technologically progressed hive world civilizations. That is to say, they are silnian descendants. Not terribly relevant but interesting none the less for anyone keeping count of galactic origins, which has become a thing some of the federation’s scholars have been very interested. Something something, mysteries of the universe.

They rely on sahad magic to get around and don’t use typical ships as we know them. Often just creating mobile asteroid bases they cut in half to make a nice flat spot to build on top of since as a people they’re basically all capable of surviving in space due to sahad magic.