Stories of Lore 64

 

Yes Admiral Yorikane was also surprised at how quickly and frequently they had to take over things because Lancaster got herself into trouble. Welcome to the command chair Walters, expect to be here more than you would think.

Aryn put together another few candidates to replace Sarrai.

We got in contact with Scholar Zaikies over at Playatis to get a quick summary of the Ika’s 6 disasters people know of. Though these all occurred over sixteen thousand years ago so many don’t know or care about it anymore, scholars like Zaikies find it to be an interesting tidbit of galactic history. Though these are considered to be the six big ‘oopsies’ they made that resulted in their own downfall and presumed extinction.

The first and most well known is the Terlim. Chronologically they were not the first one they made but they are the most famous. Automated lifeless machines designed to be military robots. Really it all started with an automated turret that had the ability to build more of itself and somehow it spiraled out of control from there. Giving rise to a  machine that almost destroyed the galaxy in Zonaricht. They were self replicating and managed to spread through several systems before the Exerlus got involved. By then it was too late.

The second is technically missing. Zaikies knows there are six and all of his sources indicate the others are third and so on but perhaps due to the sixth one there is no real record of the second. At least not that Zaikies has found, there is just a strangely missing entry which is referred to without context as to what it was.

The third was something the Ika thought to label as ‘The Great Freight’ and it was intended to be a colonizing project that would make it easier to move large quantities of things to new worlds in need of supplies and reconstructed structures. Everyone else called it the ‘Star Eater’. Similar to a lot of their technology, it didn’t need a pilot. Instead using the machine spirits similar to the Diadem guardians, though it was such a vast project that they needed thousands of those spirits to operate the thing. It went insane and started eating solar systems. Including their own. It would then try to ‘colonize’ places by dumping those stars into other spots around the galaxy. Which would destroy another solar system or three in the process. It turns out smashing two stars and several planets into each other is not ‘twice as nice’ and instead just destroys everything. It was finally stopped by the Ika building a super weapon of such power that they could have fired it into neighboring stars and destroyed them. They only stopped it after, in Zaikies words, ‘perhaps nine dozen populated systems’ were destroyed.

Which leads to the fourth big whoopsie. This one is a little more close to home. That one layer inside of Diadem that we assessed somehow used Diadem’s star as a gun, that’s exactly what it does. The first one was the one they built to stop their third problem. The Diadem weapon was built to be a bigger more powerful version of that weapon. Theoretically if it fires, it destroys the star immediately and Diadem was supposed to be able to then go pick up a new one. This is part of why the plates shift, there is another sub system of Diadem that was made to accommodate taking over other stars as it needed to. The plates are one piece of that overall design. More importantly, the weapon drew the attention of the Jesai. Diadem was once fully populated. If you do the math you start to realize just how many people disappeared in order to leave the ring empty. The weapon itself wasn’t the disaster, the loss of trillions was however. With the loss of the alliance’s capital, the economic productivity of the ringworld, and several other factors that is difficult to even imagine – they started to fall apart while still being actively hunted down by the Terlim.

Number five was they opened a rift to Rixa that they kept open for a few centuries in order to explore other planes, but also to get Silnian assistance with fighting the Terlim. You will notice their homeworld is in what are now the hive worlds and are overrun with silnian descended organisms. While it was a necessity at the time to combat the Terlim, the long term effects destroyed hundreds of smaller civilizations in that section of the galaxy as they were overtaken. The problems are again very difficult to summarize into a simple explanation as it took different effects on thousands of worlds. It was an unimaginable level of chaos in what was their home region. Some planets were overrun by aggressive flora that destroyed infrastructure until nothing remained, others had problems that I can only describe as ‘zombie ghoul apocalypses’ and some worlds just had their inhabitants eaten alive by ravenous tiny insects. Some worlds survived and continued to evolve alongside these events, such as the Exny. The hive worlds were always a consistent place of notably extreme bio-diversity. Though seventeen thousand years ago, the Ika made the problem so much worse and their home systems were consumed by it.

Number Six we don’t talk about.

The Exerlus propose, perhaps as a joke it is hard to tell with Echo Prime what is a joke and what isn’t, that the seventh disaster was the creation of Mother and what would become the modern Blaiken. Normally that would just be a ‘oh thats a thing’ but we recently discovered thanks to Jiyan that the hyper-isolated empire of the Blaiken is actually concealing its true size and scale within the Warrens. They are also technologically one of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy, halfway between everyone else like Nelta and the Exerlus. There is a chance that a war with them could be as bad as a war with the Terlim.

Kaylen has been sent to the the prison at Cayetano and is pretty much just being kept in stasis for the moment via extremely liberal use of tranquilizers due to a general fear that both zankists and elves are somewhat resistant to sedatives. Might kill her, might not, we’ll see.

Eleazor reported back that the Exerlus aren’t terribly familiar with mana ruptures or dealing with them. Since they are machines this isn’t really a problem that they ever experience. They have the data on the subject but procedures intended for use on solians are lacking. Most of what they have is that the jesai have a ritual for this but they’re not sure how well it works on solians. The ritual has been forwarded and it took all of thirty minutes for an arcane engineer to notice it would cause organic solians to explode. The ritual would be more suitable for something like arcurans or dragons who are more mana based. It is a step towards our own research into the matter though.

Scout cruisers went back to Nekhul to begin investigating the possibility of construction, escorted by Si-Yeon’s personal lab cruiser. Apparently she preferred six soldiers that had been her most direct assistants during the previous incident since they had already been exposed and didn’t have as much to lose. One thing they found was that jamming communications gave it a medium to jump through and it got onto the cruiser with the jamming equipment. Si-Yeon has made a note that it doesn’t actually need it to be in the spirit of communication, it transfers as psionic phenomena. Which is what the jammers use to block comms, which resulted in Disaster Six being able to transfer itself through it. Overwhelming it with signal garbage just lets it leap through that too.

So she made a note that the observation stations shouldn’t bother trying that one. Though due to the range limitations of the phenomenon, the only way it gets into orbit is if it finds something to travel through. Communications obviously being its preferred method. However, it also can go through scanning data. Attempts to scan the planet allowed it to ride the returning signal of the scanners, resulting in another problem on the test cruisers. This has led Si Yeon to the theory that the barely operable planetary shield around Nekhul might have been maintained by something a long time ago to stop it from getting out rather than to stop orbital bombardment from getting in.

Though it does not transfer itself through typical light. Si Yeon is still building a fiber optic test to stress that theory, but so far she has been able to observe Nekhul with an old fashioned telescope without incident. She was only doing it for an experiment and surveying the planet with such a method would take forever, so all she reported was ‘there are a lot of trees’.

She has also commissioned Steamworks to build the station as if it were being run by pandem corrupted executives. Though they have never done that before so they’re seeing how much they can do to with the request. There has been no sign of Souris in the meantime. At least not that anyone wrote down. Construction is underway with Si-Yeon’s guidelines that are being developed with cruiser experiments as they go.

In regards to the Utewa, Walters let them know he’ll be back.

Haleh took on the expedition to Plate 5 rather than deal with the media. Though is somewhat irritated that she was asked to do one thing out in the reach and suddenly is being asked to do something else now. Vynnoth still isn’t sure if you wanted her to do anything in particular for PR or just start an ad campaign.

The ruffians asked if Diadem is still in lockdown or not before they bother making the return trip. Technically it is and we could lift it if we’re confident that nothing is going to get here from Eden.

Koharrel is working with establishing the Sugnam Republic as requested, though it is definitely taking time to get off the ground. Bureaucracy moves slowly when everyone uses crab claws. The Tungsten Teeth were an easier matter though, they’ll take the paycheck. As per the Sugnam Republic’s orders they assaulted one of the major cities of the old kingdoms recently.

Quylla pointed out she doesn’t have anything to do with Lord Hrath and isn’t sure why she’s being contacted about this. Most of her work is within the Demon Kingdom and she lives in Vloz’Khress territory. The demons aren’t really interested in getting involved in a liberation war, stating they’d rather just remain neutral and work things out for themselves with the Sugnam. Though they promised that if the pirate mining operations were to spread to the hemisphere they’re setting up in that they’ll deal with them accordingly. Koharrel is pretty sure they’re concealing the fact that the demons are probably going to get even better land usage rights than you would have given them that might be outright exploitative. So they would rather not be involved with either us or the pirates since they’d be able to make more for themselves by minding their own business. She reached this conclusion because the demons have been keeping an eye on any communications going on within there sphere of influence and those over at the new republic side of things

As for the Grimoire, Lord Hrath pointed out that he can’t do much for us on that front. While he knows of various assets like that, he has no way to verify which ones were made by Kanika specifically as she probably has a tendency to not put her name on them. However, if Rozanis was in fact in possession of one as we assume then he knows that all of Rozanis’ assets are now under the control of House Vloz’Khress and that specific territory is now under the domain of Lord Ecsanul who was recently propped up as a new demon lord to help manage Vloz’Khress control of the territories they once had. Though before all of that occurred, lesser demons looted the place after the Federation assault left Rozanis’ fortress in ruins. A grimoire would be pretty obviously valuable, though Hrath has never seen it he would assume that Kanika isn’t one to make hers look like a personal diary. If it was bound in leather, had fancy runes on it, and all the trimmings then someone definitely would have wanted to loot it. He’d recommend looking into starting to track it down within the neighboring territories that were unaffected by the war. Specifically the lower society where looters would have tried to fence the thing. That or find some demonic lich in a back alley, that would be a pretty obvious giveaway too.

 

Through a series of manually handed off reports that got to my office here at New Jamalia, we’ve been informed of what Euron was up to out here. Apparently he was plotting to assault the First Temple that Ankathi currently has control over. He was scouting us, apparently this was all a rather convoluted plot to get Kharla back from Ankathi. I have here Wolum’s notes that they did seem particularly invested in that woman for some reason.

The comms and pandem lockdown proved a perfect opportunity for them and they improvised to go immediately. So I also have a note here that says Ankathi is being bitchier than usual lately but I told the messenger we have a comms lockdown due to 6ix and so I can’t take her calls directly. That’s a problem for future us.

Haziel provided a ‘forbidden fae herb’ to New Age to create a tranquilizer for Eden. It took a fleet of freighters with thousands of tons of the stuff. Steamworks managed to break every crystal in Eden City and use good old engineering to keep the critical systems afloat long enough to sedate everyone for a few hours to knock it out. We’re still cleaning through everything to make sure its safe to lift quarantine, but things are looking good. Now we’re also just doing bulk shipments from the Tyne computer company to put all the systems back together. At least this thing is relatively easy to remove as long as someone is actively trying to do so. It also isn’t very dangerous unless it reaches Diadem. Though New Age did warn that this was all the immature offspring of the real one. It replicates itself and its smaller ones grow over time. They have no reason to be sure of it but there is a chance the true original ‘body’ on Nekhul is much stronger and more dangerous.

This is kind of all just wild speculation but in matters of this thing, paranoid levels of caution seem to be the route Si Yeon is taking. Her notes from the incident indicate that it was indeed growing stronger over time, if not as it got its psionic calories from eating the memories it was most interested in. Which implies the one in the containment unit is already much more difficult to deal with since it is attached to something it constantly feeds on. There is also a theory of Si-Yeon’s that the original ‘big one’ didn’t leave Nekhul aboard anyone for what has to be a reason. Leading to the hypothesis that it is either attached to something more valuable to it, or that because it was designed as a weapon there is a method of controlling it on Nekhul.

Hisashi’s work is still being kind of stalled since he was working out of Eden City and the lockdowns have impacted his ability to research, get parts, and open pandem communications to the Astral Wilds which while under infection might be a teeeeerrrible idea.

 

I have commissioned our finest voidforged artist in section three of the cradle to come up with posters for you. Our best market researchers have found that while solians respond most to implied fleshy nudity, voidforged actually respond more to overly intricate compositions of machinery. A natural curiosity for ‘what the hell is that pipe there even for’. So I had a blacksmith design an overly complicated lacey lingerie set for you made entirely out of copper wire coiling that we could use for the posters. Thus attracting the attention of both potential audiences! Then we just stick a weapon in your hand to snag the arcurans too. Research data indicates that no one actually cares whether or not the outfit is practical or comfortable, also neither are concerns for us. I am a marketing genius. Also it’s not fascism, its… uhh what do the democrats call it… campaigning!

Anyways, strict comms blackout is still being maintained for Diadem and the Cradle to prevent any chances of infection. With people having to fly halfway here, space walk to a station, sleep there, then space walk to another ship, then fly the rest of the way here. I have in the meantime found out how to put a voidforged to sleep at least and was able to get Malgier out of containment. It involves a lot of electricity.

No need to worry about scouting that elf engineer, I have already had Nah Division compile me a detailed profile on them. I have their name, address, banking information, and I put a bug on their outgoing comms to keep an eye on what designs they keep posting to the aethernet. If they want to challenge me to a build off, I’ll be ready. Apparently they’re a former Engineer for Siwa Industries. They might have been a part of our earliest prototypes from back in the day. Their designs are pointless, featuring form over function. This loser keeps trying to make Voidforged designs that are socially appealing, it looks like bad fanart of a mecha elf. They don’t put nearly enough swords or laser guns on anything. Though apparently they have attracted the attention of some wayward voidforged on Diadem with their paint and body shop. I am obligated to invite them to a demo that me and Adrienne intend to conduct for market research. So I can publicly crush them.

Speaking of Adrienne, she’s probably at the zhulkite outpost by now but due to quarantine and the fact that she is very far away, no idea what she’s actually doing out there. Probably something dumb, like working with the zhulkites to make easily modifiable outposts.

As for the Nekhul incident’s survivors, well we already had them all in therapy so psyche evaluations were already ready to go upon request. Most of them have no knowledge that they survived something apparently horrible and seem irritable at the constant probing and quarantine measures since they have no understanding what they are for. They also don’t remember having their APT’s removed and this has made them more irritable since they are used to having the convenience and communication that it provides. It doesn’t help that New Age is a particularly vague but menacing agency, so answering questions to their subjects is not their strongest area. It is unique for how dangerous the situation was that no one appears to be affected by it. That is probably how it got so out of control all those years ago, if no one cares then no one tries to stop it.

Deniau is working on the concept of drugs that help you retain memories though that’s never really been done before. So we’re on the trial and error phase, the problem is that the only way to get new subjects to test the idea on would be people who have been infected by the Sixth Disaster.

Chevalier agreed to go and help with rehabilitating Lancaster. Though you were correct, she can’t remember a lot of the details of raising Winter. Actually it’s worse then that, she couldn’t remember Winter’s name. She just remembered she had a daughter of some sort and recognized a picture of Winter. However she has no recollection of their name or more importantly, who the ‘father’ was. Which lead to another investigation by Si-Yeon. Lancaster doesn’t remember the Blaiken prison or meeting Mother either. We hadn’t thought to check on that one. It appears the Sixth Disaster removes memories of the Blaiken as well.

We know both the Ika and the Kanis were in the same alliance together and both lived on Diadem. The Kanis being the species and Blaiken being the nation that eventually took political power. With their offshoot being Mother who is now out with the Blaiken 2.0. So it isn’t unreasonable that the weaponized amnesia also was meant to protect the Kanis. There might be other members of the old alliance that no one can remember for similar reasons. The entire Reach and Hive Worlds were a part of a super massive alliance of worlds back then so there were bound to be more than just the two species running things back then. This was after all a military weapon gone wrong, it is also very likely that it removes memories of the Terlim. Which likely contributed to the Terlim war getting so out of hand.

As for the Ika ability to control voidforged, they can’t actually even control their own machines. They just have the ability to ‘ask for a favor’ via intrinsic communication and it doesn’t work with voidforged at all. Apparently the qualification is that it has to be a machine without essentia in order for them to speak to the spirit of the machine. Otherwise the machine’s spirit can just speak for itself verbally and there is no need for any of this. They can control a voidforged by asking politely though, which they say is about the same thing.

Also new candidates to replace Souris are available.

Right now we have Kaylen kept in a coma over at Moncayo, though there is a concern that if she’s missing for too long that the Hydra will know how to summon her even while she’s unconscious. That or they’ll figure out we have her eventually.

Allison has departed from Kuhas to make her way to Moncayo, though with the portal network under quarantine she can’t take the shortcut through Diadem and is instead forced to travel the entire length of the Reach to get there. Which will take her some time, though she doesn’t mind too much since at this point she’s pretty good at navigating the Reach. After the last thirty years of living on Kuhas she’s more Reacher than Federation.

Rampart isn’t quite in range to figure out the exact details of what Euron’s goons are transporting. They mostly work out of Kuhas at the furthest north point of the Reach and Euron’s transportation is going south rather quickly. It is most likely to be someone related to the Reach though rather than some sort of virus. That is more of a Jaal’Darya thing anyways.

No sign of Kennae at Cayetano, it is likely that if he was there we would have known if he passed through previously. They’re headed to visit the Playatis next.

As for the Enphidia underworld, Faithrae could be considered to ‘own’ all of it even if independent gangs will appear now and then. Gangs form when a group feels a need to rely on eachother more than the society they inhabit, so there is only so much you can do to stop them from forming in various neighborhoods out of what they feel is a necessity. Though these smaller gangs aren’t quite the same as Faithrae or Selona style enterprises which deliberately specialize in illegal activity. Usually these gangs will be small time thieves and fencers that work together for example. Due to how few things are actually illegal in the Federation, there isn’t much for smaller gangs to do in the meantime. The slave trade is not really something small time street gangsters can get into, and they usually aren’t interested in probing the security of VSEC to become smugglers.

The most common things small time gangs are doing are trying to take over structures in Diadem that remain abandoned in the endless city rings. Often using such structures in the pursuit of profit or as a place to run some aspect of an otherwise legitimate business to avoid things like inspections or taxes. Some are even trying to start their own towns for various economic reasons that led them to thinking that would be a better idea than trying to get a regular job. Though the whole reason that’s illegal is less to do with Lancaster wanting to own all the things and more to do with the killer robots that might kill people if they wander too far from the safe areas. Growing your own food to make it cheaper isn’t illegal but is apparently a gangster activity these days due to the margins on it. Half of all gang wars in Enphidia that have nothing to do with Faithrae are people fighting over grow houses that just grow tomatoes in the Squats. Corporate criminals in Adelaide are much more focused on taxes and ordnances that help them make a profit rather than doing anything legitimately dangerous. So Faithrae doesn’t necessarily own all of it, but she owns all of the more hardcore elements of it. Assassination, the slave trade, extreme gang violence, and the smuggling networks are all in her domain. Most people who would be considered criminals in Adelaide or Enphidia don’t touch the kinds of businesses that Faithrae will, and a lot of her work is actually based in the larger Reach network using Enphidia as a base of operations.

All the small time or white collar criminals generally fear Faithrae because she operates the businesses that get into the realm of Selona or Solvang style activity. Where it is profitable to have a large number of really dangerous people on staff at all times. She also keeps our pirate sub-company with the Nomad flotilla busy. Usually preying on other organizations in the Reach outside of the Federation.

As for the kidnapping news back on Thenica, people have indeed noticed that Kaylen went missing. In her place another of the councilors has taken over but most regular people aren’t sure if Kaylen died, was taken by someone else, or if she pissed off her own boss in the Hassani and they made her disappear. For all they know she’s on a vacation retreat with a beholder as a harem slave just to entertain monsters. Due to her status as the most humiliated mortal in the Hassani Empire, its kind of hard to tell if she was taken, killed, disposed, or is being subjected to even more of the usual.

Also I suppose its a bit late, but now that we can work backwards from major events we figured out what Euron was doing here at Diadem. Apparently this was all a plan to scout the pantheon of the Astral Order because they were planning to go get Kharla back from Ankathi. Lilli did mention to Renjala many years ago that the Demon King himself has an interest in Kharla as it were. It is likely that Euron knew it would be good for his career to deliver Kharla back to the Demon King. Also that the plan they were concocting had to go much quicker than they expected since our lockdowns inadvertently stranded the First Temple from any assistance for long enough for the Demon Lords to invade it. While they might not have been able to take on Ankathi directly, they knew that Ankathi had bitten off more than she could chew with Kharla. Who has managed to dominate seven demon lords with her pandem abilities before, the only reason no one noticed she could do it was because they drove her insane so she wouldn’t use that power to exert her authority over them. Even Ankathi couldn’t keep control over Kharla if Kharla were to actively resist. Making it seem as if Ankathi had stabbed one of Kharla’s children was a way to wake up the crazy bitch enough to resist Ankathi’s control.