Stories of Lore 62
Greetings, this is Nakka’s News from the Reach Broadcast Network. Today, we examine current supply and demand trends to better plan our investments. Together, like one big happy family.
With the influx of immigrants from the northern galaxy, the famines have flared up once again. Food is very profitable, especially if your customers haven’t been here long enough to understand when to haggle lower or not. This has resulted in gang conflicts particularly in the northern part of the Reach where demand is highest. Vessian tribes in particular have grown increasingly violent over food supplies and will sometimes prey on our newcomers to reduce competition and find a free meal at the same time. If you are in the food business, you may wish to reconsider your security procedures. As well as who you meet with. Starvation has a way of making people desperate enough to do stupid things after all.
The weapons market has begun to bounce back from its recent decline. The increase in newcomers as well as recently ascended civilizations has helped to stabilize the demand. While the higher end and cutting edge weapon producers have weathered the downturn, salvage and weapons of lower quality are now finding their way into the hands of the resurging demand. If you still find yourself holding a great many of these, adjust your market value assessment as necessary. Especially if you are in the northern section of the Reach.
The market for materials, particularly those relating to the manufacture of apparel, continues to rise. With most farms interested in food production and most labor interested in ships and weapons, the shortage of textiles continues. Though the demand is still rising, it does so at a slower than previously predicted rate as station fashion of minimalism continues to gain popularity. With many refusing to even buy lower quality apparel that they feel will simply not last long enough to be worth while. Instead focusing on higher quality clothes for longer use even with lower coverage or practicality. This has in turn boosted the popularity of skin marking traditions, so the materials for the inks necessary is also seeing a strong stability in the markets.
Another industry similarly impacted by the food market is medicine. With most deliberate farming and harvesting turned towards food production, medicine and drug production are at an all time low. Unusual for the Reach, resulting in unwilling sobriety across the network. This has led to an all time high in suicide rates, if we count ill advised actions of desperation as suicide.
In other news, the Reach has seen a recent influx of new competition of unusual caliber. Our resources tell us these individuals are members of a place to the south known as The Demon Kingdom. Their anatomy is wildly unpredictable, as you can see from the pictures on screen they tend to have horned growths on their head of various styles and a sinister gleam to their eye. However, what cannot be easily determined is the sub species of demon. Their life cycle begins as a small creature, this is called an imp. As it grows in age and power it takes on new forms and this continues for a long while. Ending at what is known as a Demon Lord, one of which was seen at the recent Diadome thirtieth anniversary tournament. He crushed vessians, solians, and southern sweetheart Narl’Rey. If you cannot discern the difference between a regular demon and this sub class of demon lords, it is advised to act with extreme caution. They are physically more powerful than vessians, more conniving than krextal, and more meddlesome than solians. Though, it turns out they are from the same system of Sol just another plane of reality.
They are natural schemers, violent rule breakers, predatory tradesmen, and dangerously aggressive. So they’ll fit right in.
For this month’s Rahlken Report, King Rahlken is currently moving westward from the core sectors with a new haul, likely looking to sell his acquisitions. So stay safe out there. This has been your free report from the Reach Broadcast Network, and as usual we are watching. We know everything, and we could tell you what you wish to know for a price. Please contact our official offices if you wish to buy some specific information.
Walters made his offer to the Utewa, though they rejected the idea of joining the Federation. It would harm their main service to the Reach to provide impartial education. While they maintain amicable relations with us, they feel it is of key importance at this time that they remain notably independent. They also do not feel there is enough benefit to it. This is the summarized version after four hours of back and forth pleasantries with Walters.
More importantly, Winter was present to guide the conversation and try to hint about the key. From her empathic abilities she has gleaned that Habrah can either protect themselves from her abilities or doesn’t know they even have the diadem key. They collect a vast amount of historical relics and treasures. It is likely the person they acquired it from didn’t know what it was, and neither does Utewa. Perhaps it is just regarded as some interesting Ika memorabilia. Though telling them they have it and what it is risks opening another can of worms, given that they are kind of intentionally mysterious it is difficult to predict what interests them.
Koharrel made a rocky first contact with the forces of the Sugnam planet because independent forces had been causing trouble before VSEC even arrived. Given how sparse galactic communications can be, they appear to have assumed that they were forward agents of ours since they were solians. As it turns out, the local powers on Sugnam have been capturing and selling their own to the slavers. She reported it to the fleet Admiral who has sent messengers to relay the information to us. Koharrel intends to topple the entire government violently, as her mother once did to her homeworld under VSEC’s banner. The admiral noted that if he just eliminated the foreign mining operations it would at least break up the slavery trade hopefully without having to enter into a full invasion of the planet. Though the situation is still developing, there are two more notable variables. Independent solians have been meddling with things on the planet as they see fit. Likely a Revenant cell of some sort whether authentic or not. As this all developed, demons were spotted on the planet’s western hemisphere poking around though we’re still not sure what they’re up to.
The Nekhul team is currently en route.
The exploration fleet reports a surprising lack of being ambushed by pirates compared to past adventures. Because who is looking out beyond the galaxy for food shipments? Though they haven’t found anything quite yet from scanning and are on the way to push further out in the hopes of finding anything.
We’ve sent the troops down to Evershar’s project planet to help out with the bugs. There are a lot of them it turns out. The mining colony is a sealed facility as if it were still in space that has to burrow through caves right underneath it to keep things from getting in too easily.
Waianoa says she can get you some mining elementals, actually its the same team that helped excavate the collapsed continent on the Diadem plate. They are, as before, prone to partying on their lunch breaks but they can’t be infected by egg laying parasites and are exceptionally good at clearing through the earth. Evershar appreciates the help. This actually fits into Waianoa’s plans to increase the prevalence and relevance of elementals in the middle planes so she’s happy with it.
I read the recap of your discussion with her regarding Lailah. What. The. Fuck. Is this normal? How is this not in the news that someone…oh….I see the classified marker now. I’m uh…going to need to take time to process this. Oh my gods wait that’s why Lailah…ohhhh that’s who was…oh no. Do advisors get bodyguards?
Hisashi reports that he has begun his work into looking for Zero as requested.
So with the primitive pandem plans, I can set up a missionary program if you like. We don’t really have anything for spreading the good word beyond the university and some minor advertising through Diadome showcases. Going to primitive worlds is something that can probably be done with small teams not requiring much direct intervention unless something goes wrong.
Saved the station location, not like it’s going anywhere after all this time. Also sent Irae and Inya to help with the Evershar project. As advisor it is my responsibility to remind you that Evershar are drow nobility who were heavily involved in the Solian conflicts and Inya is an elf. So, hopefully that goes okay.
Wait what do you mean I should go to the desert world? I don’t even know how to open rifts to create water. I’m still taking the 101 class. I’m just going to send that random knight standing around over there, he looks bored and like he knows how to do that. Also I can’t leave comms range or I wouldn’t be able to sort through the emails.
Aryn and the team are headed to Sol in the meantime. We’ve begun the process of turning Rampart into more of a profitable business rather than an undercover outpost. While we retool Rampart, Allison is still there running Rampart for lack of any other orders. Also Allison is just kind of used to living there at this point. I think…I think she just lives on Kuhas now. Haven’t told her we have a mansion back here now days though.
Well we know Euron was here to meet with Faithrae to some extent. Whether or not that was the full purpose of his visit is questionable. According to Faithrae, he was mostly interested in her information on the gang networks in the northern parts of the reach. Though there’s a quirk to this, related to your other question a little.
Currently we suspect Hyeon was trying to get to Euron via the tournament because, the instant he passes through the doors to return from the Arena he is surrounded by four major demons as well as armed with his actual weapons. For the arena matches he was practically unarmed the entire time and also not surrounded by demons that would significantly worsen everybody’s day. Each of those demons could have taken on almost everyone we know if they meant business. It was at least as far as we can tell, the most vulnerable position he has been in for the last few centuries. Though calling him “vulnerable” seems a bit comedic to say.
This leads to further complications. We believe he entered Diadem with six companions not four. However, the other two were not demons. They likely entered through the side passages into no-man’s land and then either went into the depths of the exerlus controlled plates or looped around through the Squats to enter somewhere else in Federation controlled plates. Euron might have been meeting with Faithrae in a way that as very noticeable on purpose to disguise his true objectives.
As for the location of the suspected former Revenant Hyeon, they are a very difficult person to find. Especially with all of our best agents away on other operations. Your sister said she would take care of looking into it since everyone else is clearly stretched thin and she’s assembled a new team she wants to try out.
Hrmm…smaller frames…standardized designs…remote operation…I’MA SUPERGLUE THEM INTO- ow.
I mean at a certain point we’re just going back to the original models and then developing mechs they can pilot aren’t we? We already know transitioning them between chassis can have detrimental effects, as well as a calibration period to figure out how to operate the new limbs efficiently. While Vanessa has coped well with her redesigns they’re all just slight modifications and additions to her existing operating method. Not to mention that Vanessa is one of the best of the best we have. She’s one of the few who voluntarily train themselves. If we really need the cores to be mobile between frames especially for juveniles though I can go back to putting them in the standard frames and we’ll have to do a long term study on the effects of moving from the gen 1 style of frame into more specialized designs afterwards. Though Auvray definitely isn’t coming out of that ship. I can move him into something bigger but not much room to go smaller. Same problem for the Cradle itself. Cradle’s core is the size of a starship already. Remote control drones might be doable for them though. The amount of systems those two are in control of to make entire ships crewed by an individual turn out to require an awful lot of parallel processing power.
I’ll put the next gen into the old style of frame for the upcoming batches and we’ll see how they go from there. Particularly in monitoring their transitions to upgraded frames and compatibility with it.
Deniau is working on booooring medicine like health and tissue repair. I still think he should have gotten into the meth business since he can’t get addicted to his own product and we could definitely build a brand around robotic quality control.
I’ve sent the fleet that is just hanging around with us to begin surveying the northern border where the stations that guarded against the hive worlds are. Sent Adrienne too since she’s just been sitting around taking up half my workshop. Apparently her pet project was modular limb systems for Gen 1 frames to replicate the effects of organic cybernetics with enhanced customization so that you wouldn’t need to move cores between models but rather just replace limbs one at a time. Pfft, so I sent her to go get some actual work done.