Kuhas refuses the idea of officially joining the Federation. It is a part of their duty to maintain the hive border and not get too involved in power struggles. Especially between the Reach’s large scale political bodies who might have motive to destroy a border station just to ruin someone else’s day down the road. The Federation is still a relatively new foreign guest to the Reach, but Kuhas has spent thousands of years preventing the hive worlds from spreading their influence into the rest of the Reach and enjoys a bit of peace for that. Not to mention that less than scrupulous people tend to avoid border guards and the Federation hasn’t proven itself truly at home within the Reach’s culture. The last thing Kuhas wants is smugglers intentionally going around it, the lawless associated nature of the station promotes visits from everyone that needs their ship scrubbed down. Otherwise the spores of the hive worlds might spread further south.

From the early scout reports, the station south of Kuhas and north of Elasyn at the crossroads of the interstate is a station called Belomday. It exists above a planet that reached mutual destruction between all parties involved and left the surface of the world as an uninhabitable wasteland. The planet is still questionable to visit due to the intensely toxic atmosphere but some go down there to scavenge as it is otherwise just used as a trash disposal site. Belomday is a collection of space stations that strapped themselves together after the war thousands of years ago. The survivors of the war who lived in orbit would develop a self sustaining civilization that only used the surface of their former homeworld for resource collection. Eventually the stations of many nations were bound together and further added onto while the civilization rebuilt itself. They are considered one of if not the actual founding civilization that created the Reach as we know it today. Over time Belomday grew massive and exists as one of the largest space stations in the Reach simply by need to support its own native population. It is approximately three million square kilometers, not counting for the fact that it has multiple vertical layers.

The original natives were a warrior society, which sort of explains the problem they got themselves into with destroying their own planet in a war of mutual destruction. Though this is also why they are considered to potentially be the original Reachers. As soon as they figured out interstellar travel, they quickly made a mess of things to acquire even more resources for to sustain their station locked civilization. Though these natives eventually became more machine than their original organic forms, relying heavily on cybernetics to augment themselves just to survive. Then out of a transhumanist style of growth as the technology advanced and became more desirable overall.

It is a popular place to sell salvage since the natives need raw material to continue the expansion and maintenance of this colossal station. Rahlken often sells his captured cities here as one of his major places of interest. Now days it is one of the Reach’s most important locations and probably would have been the official unofficial capital of the network were not for the specific desire to use a place with no surviving ties to any civilization. Elasyn is a fallen world, serving as a glorified tombstone to its former inhabitants and it became the capital because no one could claim it as their own. The populace of Belomday are intensely Reachers. It is a location filled with hundreds if not thousands of individual species from all over the galaxy, its natives are not even the majority of the inhabitants anymore. Though it is also one of the few places were goods are produced reliably, since the station has the practical job of maintaining a nation of people it has many features not often found on Reach stations. Like working factories and farms.

Explorers report they outright oppose the idea of the Federation expanding at all let alone joining. Belomday is thoroughly embedded into the Reach and doesn’t like the idea of interstellar super powers enforcing their laws onto a traditionally lawless land.

As for large scale colonization efforts, the space between the major highways between us and Utewa are largely home to civilizations with less protections for interstellar piracy. Generally more focused on just being their own civilization and not getting themselves into trouble. Some are heavily fortified though as to dissuade Reachers from visiting. Though there is also a lot of wandering trouble in space to contend with. Reports indicate that the area is home to some sort of space based life form that likes to eat ships and no one is really sure what it is or if it actually exists. We could focus our efforts on diplomacy but many of the governments along the way tend to try to keep to themselves. If we colonize less inhabited areas it will be relatively easy going but we’ll have to build everything from scratch and see to populating it. There is a fallen world that is a pile of apocalyptic rubble that probably wouldn’t mind help but Haleh is the one that destroyed them. So they might still be upset about that.

The station immediately north from Utewa, other than the one that Utewa owns as a forward colony called Kawako Six. Another major crossroads station and is a popular road into Utewa’s territory. Not quite as large or important as Belomday but it serves as a gateway into Utewa’s neighborhood. The system it belongs to is colonized by a multi-stellar civilization who were using that system for expansion, though it became popular with travelers due to its consistency and the owners of the station being particularly hungry for business opportunities. The natives are not quite what Sol defines as shapeshifters but they are capable of altering their anatomy to different environments and can change some details of their physical appearance such as their coloration. Apparently it was once a part of their mating rituals as well as a rudimentary camouflage adaptation. Throughout the Reach races they are particularly talented explorers because of these abilities which is likely tied to their interstellar civilization’s expansion, since they are not very picky about their environmental needs and can colonize any planet with an atmosphere that isn’t super-hostile.

Kawako Six is a fairly good representation of how the Reach tends to evolve. The multi-stellar civilization that runs the area have their own society and are distinctly separate from the Reachers in the way they operate, but they just so happened to build a space station which was consumed by the Reachers as a point of interest. Their planets are still relatively disconnected from the Reach network and continues to manage its own affairs with its own distinct culture. Though they own and control Kawako Six, the benefits of interstellar trade and travelers led to it slowly becoming home to the Reachers. Over time the natives learned it was better to just play along rather than resist the sudden influx of scoundrels and ruffians. As centuries passed, the station became less of an outpost for its own space program and more of a Reach station.

The natives, known as the Tagal, were approached by the explorers to ‘feel them out’ about their opinion of the federation. They’re not particularly against trade negotiations but as one of the larger powers of the Reach they don’t see much benefit to joining a newer one. Larger in the relative sense to the thousands of civilizations and stations throughout the Reach, even if they aren’t quite at the Utewa or Tungsten Teeth’s level of influence. They are actually more helpful in explaining the Reach’s situation than Belomday were, who just said ‘don’t do that’. The Tagal’s actual civilization is two stars away, where things run a bit more what we would consider normal. They once tolerated Kawako Six’s guests and their traditions when they were a newer space faring civilization and weren’t really sure what was going on or how to contextualize thousands of different species of aliens passing through. Over time Kawako Six developed its own mind and culture and though it contributes economically to the Tagalian capital, they lost control of the situation and that was how the station became more a part of the Reach than Tagalian space. Despite the fact that they have a thriving world right underneath the station.

The Reach is anarchic by choice, ever since the fall of the Ika this region of space has been left to its own thing and it has allowed its inhabitants a sanctuary from oppressive powers like Nelta or the Zhulkites who might want things done a certain way. The Reach has an ‘every man for themselves’ type of mentality just on a larger scale. This is tied to their distrust of organizations to look out for everyone else once the ‘everyone else’ becomes managed by a system rather than personal connections. There is actually a very specific thing Reachers do not react well towards. Registration and identification. If you open a galactic DMV and demand to see passports, you aren’t really a Reach station anymore. If the Tagal were to humor the Federation that would involve a large interconnected system and notably the Federation does have registration and taxation. The two things that annoy Reachers the most. While their own civilization does use both of these systems on the planets and other stations, Kawako Six does not. Yet somehow Kawako Six has enough power that the rest of Tagal space can’t really afford to go to war with their own station.

While they can see the federation expanding by adopting newer civilizations who don’t know or want to be a part of the Reach culture, it isn’t endearing the Federation to any of the existing powers. Which they know we have a habit of doing. The Tagal are also aware that we’ve made enemies of the Hassani who have taken on the role of ‘the feared solians’ as far as galactic civilizations are concerned. The weird quiet little star that suddenly erupted into the galaxy and won major wars over and over again until it cemented itself as one of those ‘don’t piss them off’ civilizations. The tagal representative is pretty sure that Utewa will never formally align with the Federation because of this ongoing issue. Renjala revealed that Solians are some of the galaxy’s greatest pandem experts, which is what Utewa relies on for its own safety. Getting into an oppositional stance with the Hassani means becoming enemies with someone who is better than them at their own trick and they would be practically defenseless. For similar reasons the Utewa doesn’t want to piss the Federation off because we could do the very same thing to them. Both sides make Utewa feel very vulnerable for the first time in centuries and they’re constantly trying to make sure they don’t get on either’s bad side.

The exploration team reports this is a recurring theme with all the various major stations and civilizations along the Reach interstellar highway. They do not want to get involved in a larger organization than they already are for fear of attracting the attention of much bigger problems. They don’t mind trading and maintaining amicable relations in most cases, but the idea of joining the Federation is very off-putting to them for fear of everything that could go wrong for them from such a political stance. Younger civilizations tend to see the Federation as a bastion of civilization in an endless soup of anarchy and scoundrels. Such as Sugnam and the Caelkians, who haven’t been around long enough to get used to how the Reachers see the world. Established powers of the Reach on the other hand have a distinct opposition to the idea of forming large scale alliances. Though the Tagal ambassador did explain that if we wanted to make people more amicable to the idea, we’d have to take down Rahlken. His presence is the constant threat that all Reachers have to keep in mind when it comes to dealing with things like the Federation. Rahlken is the one the Zhulkites are scared of, and is perceived to be the reason that the Hassani haven’t expanded into the Reach either. He is also the primary force that keeps destabilizing any attempt at a larger system, Utewa is one of the largest powers in the Reach because they can escape him. The rest just play nice for fear of being his next target. To most he is a disembodied legend, the Reach is a massive stretch of galactic space and most have never even seen or heard of him outside of Nakka News reports and rumors. So for all they know he’s a cosmic entity. However, most of the major stations do know someone else who could have been the major station instead of them but instead became his victim. As a result, they tend not to be interested in making the same mistake.

The portals between Diadem and Twilight station have been constructed as requested.

Construction on the new city constructions near the plate borders is also underway, though slowly as it is a somewhat dangerous placement.

Vynnoth says she might know of a blue dragon that could be convinced to look for interesting opportunities out here in Diadem. Though as she warned, they can all be rather finicky and you are trying to outbid the Hassani for their attention. Right now the most promising blue dragon she can find is on the younger side so has less of a fortune in Sol to leave behind than others and would definitely be interested in some opportunities to expand it. Their name is Kasom, currently they own a more suburban county area on SV3. As an initial offering to get them interested she expects you’d have to give them command of a surface plate colony of at least twenty thousand inhabitants to match their county area on SV3 they’d be leaving behind. Blue dragons like to fly as it were. Even if the interior sections of Diadem are so massive that they could do so, trying to convince a bird that it wouldn’t prefer an open sky is pretty hard. Though the immediate complication is that Haleh also lives on a surface plate. While they could easily co-exist on opposite sides of even the same plate let alone opposite plates, these things are huge after all, it is still notable that dragon politics might flare up.

In terms of metallics, there is a bronze she might know of that is particularly keen towards getting into wars. They fought against Nelta during the invasions but lost their home, lair, hoard, and basically everything in the process. They are of a disposition towards helping in military actions but often as a mercenary. Dragons don’t like to be under someone else’s command as it were. They are currently wandering around jydoq and might be tempted towards the federation if we could offer them some sort of assurance that we aren’t going to be dead in the next two hundred  years. Also they cost eight times as much to hire as regular mercenaries but if offered a cozy mansion as well as their fees they might be willing to move their base over to Federation space. They run their own little military company, similar to Whitetalon’s whole history actually.

Vynnoth also pointed out that if you’re feeling daring, she knows of an older dragon that might be of a disposition to move across the galaxy and hang out with the Federation. They would be a significant asset on par with someone like Haleh. No one knows what color they are and they are often referred to by the title of the “imaginary dragon”. They are one of Sol’s foremost illusionists, experts in broadcast communication and visual media. The drawback is that they can be a little difficult. They are a mischievous prankster by nature and usually harmless, but every now and then people go missing around them. Part of the reason Vynnoth suggested looking into the matter is because they haven’t been in Sol since the Nelta invasion. Vynnoth has heard rumors that the imaginary dragon hopped aboard a Nelta ship and went back to their side of the galaxy to check things out. It is likely that Nelta has no idea what they ‘caught’ and are in over their heads.

The sugnam new republic has had its elections though mostly through the first fleet admiral (Walters replacement now that Walters has the big chair) sort of implying it was mandatory. They elected a fairly violent candidate which might be tied to the use of the Tungsten Teeth to topple other Sugnam governments. They’re still working their way through as it wasn’t exactly a massive quantity of mercenaries, they are just dramatically more equipped and capable so the quantity of Sugnam resistance has not been terribly effective against the quality of the mercenaries.

We already offered the new Sugnam Republic federation membership and they already agreed to a trial run of it though not a long term permanent agreement awhile ago. They’re curious about the stations though as they are not a space faring civilization themselves yet, they just managed to sneak into space aboard Reacher ships. So they’re also curious about at least shuttles and starships.

Ronnair and Wonaya are on the way to the Blaiken Prison.

The fifth plate expedition is underway though we’ve lost contact with them. This is normal and Siora goes missing all the time on these ever since the exerlus machine adaptations included more jamming technology after our attempt at warding them away with a signal, and that other time we tried to jam them.

Also the exploration crew that went to deep space looking for signs of the missing Ika fleet found something else out there in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There is a random planet with no star, existing in almost complete darkness. However it has very high levels of biological activity, a stable atmosphere, and a whole lot of really mean aliens on it. The exploration team that found it currently has no idea how or why it exists. It shows no signs of being where the missing fleet might have gone though. It’s likely an unrelated but potentially interesting discovery.

We’re still awaiting contact from Winter as to the ongoing status of her mission to the Demon Kingdom.

In the process of his research, Hisashi got his little radar to work and was able to detect the ever forming and disintegrating life forms of the Astral Wilds and confirm that is what he is detecting to  at least four percent accuracy. One of the problems is that things being ‘alive’ in the astral wilds is hard to define and sometimes the little radar is just detecting mana formations that appear similar to living things but are instead just miniature batteries. Energy sources that radiate that energy until they fizzle out. This also leads to his ongoing research as to ‘what are those things even’.

However, upon initial success he started looking to a more powerful version of the machine. He has stabilized it to look for specific patterns and is trying to figure out what he’s really even looking for. Specifically what collection of signals and information the sensor could pick up and what those would even mean to equate to ‘a thing we’re looking for’. One of the problems is defining what he is seeing without much reference, the Astral Wilds are so chaotic that a string of numbered data might be a little too ‘human’ in its comprehension to gather useful information.

He said he needs you to go in there and figure out what the numbers on the sensor readout even mean. Despite this being his field of study, he can barely protect himself from the effects of the Astral Wilds even when he is the one to summon it. It took twenty years of dedicated training for Jaerda to survive long enough with the help of two other planar entities. So it’s up to you, Jaerda, or Haziel to go and figure out what his data represents.

The team has been sent to help Evershar’s mining operations with glorified bug zappers as requested.

Inya’s team made it to the peculiar planet with psionic life forms. The knight that lowered her wards in order to attempt communication with them didn’t exactly go insane, but they keep having thoughts they know aren’t their own. It’s one thing to hear voices in your head, it’s another to hear your own voice saying things you pretty sure aren’t your normal intrusive thoughts. They are a primitive species and so don’t have very elaborate plans for galactic domination or anything, but they do not seem to enjoy the brain chemistry of their host. The more complex the psyche of the host, the more it…feeds? them. That or entertains them, not sure what they’re getting out of this exactly. Either way the knight in question has developed about three phobias, six fetishes, four disorders, and terrible impulse control. The alien life form in question isn’t exactly intentionally malicious more so that it is trying to harvest ‘experiences’ from the host. It is also a primitive world so they don’t have a refined society with an understanding of cooperation or even what we are. As far as it can tell, it just found a really intelligent creature wandering around some swamp and it’s going to ride this one out.

Over time and a period of observation, the creature started to demonstrate abnormal growth in its own intelligence while basically feeding off of the knight’s. It’s starting to think in ways it had not demonstrated itself being capable of before. It’s becoming rapidly more sapient while it inhabits the knight. One of the most notable and easily understood changes in the knight’s behavior is that now they become bored very easily. Always looking for things to do one way or another. They struggle more with each passing day to identify which thoughts might not really be theirs, as well as attempting to bargain with the strange alien to get it to move on to another host even if for a short while so they can recover.

Inya reports that their New Age researcher says it makes sense that a psionic life form could evolve its own intelligence rapidly if it has a particularly intelligent host. Though unlike 6ix, this one doesn’t go anywhere when its host goes to sleep. We have no idea how to get it back out of them. It isn’t yet smart enough to bargain or reason with, it is also really hard to tell when they’re talking to the knight versus their new parasite.

While observation is ongoing, we can sufficiently say that they are fairly primitive but it is shaping up that they will eventually evolve into something else at this rate.

Eerihild is currently in the Fae Wilds with her family until we call her again.

Also since it seems we’re not seeing the Outsider again anytime soon, we might need to commision a new flagship.

To put it lightly, Winter is dissatisfied with the idea that it’s not worth the effort to restore Lancaster. Also your replacement desk is shipping. According to this tracker it will be here in three days. I suppose it isn’t too surprising that the meat people are very touchy about familial values. No one ever gets mad and says they’d burn a world for me, and I’m almost everyone’s dad around here.

Though I think Walters and Lancaster are more concerned with how valuable the artifact wishes can be to be used on early onset alzheimers. Granted Winter is young and lived through the era of relative peace. She’s not used to seeing people dying while choking on their own blood, losing their minds as parasitic life forms eat their brains, or getting turned into Vasia experiments that leave people as a puddle of sapient flesh stuck to a wall. She’s not still behind me is she?

Anyways, one problem with your request for the LIDAR scans of the surface is the originally planned operations area is…uh…we have no idea. All records were destroyed on the ship and no one wrote it down on paper. However, we can surmise from mild observation that the first team had likely been at least interested in these city areas since we’re looking for a glorified memory stick. That aside though we have been getting some mapping done to get us an idea of what’s down there but a lot of these scans can be summed up as “that’s a lot of trees”. We have discovered some of those trees are REALLY  tall though. They’re concealing valleys and they grew tall enough to match the canopy of areas surrounding them. If you were to casually stomp through there in a mech you might suddenly find quite a deep pit to get stuck in.

We’ve also been scanning what we think were once cities. Also with some optical surveying we can determine an odd pattern. We’ve been conferring with Wonaya on the matter of how typical hive worlds look. As it turns out, ruins are not terribly uncommon but they are often a little sunken into the ground. Diadem lasted sixteen thousand years as an active warzone for endless armies of robots, suffice to say what was formerly Ika space is quite durable to decay. Something about their self maintaining machine spirits. Though what is important is what makes Nekhul stand out as abnormal compared to typical ruins in the Hive Worlds. There are only two types of things as far as we can tell, completely gone areas where structures must have once been, or still operating facilities. There is no in between. No half fallen over buildings overgrown with vines, no bombed out wrecks. It is either still intact, or completely and totally gone. Usually you would expect a bit of a gradient between the two extremes on any such fallen world.

We haven’t seen any sign of ongoing active civilization, though we know there are most likely military threats down there but it doesn’t appear to be in a collective like some sort of fortified outpost. It is quite likely the canopy of the overgrown hive forest is concealing a lot from us. Which at the very least implies that whatever is down there doesn’t build particularly vertical. At least not upwards, which rules out a city of skyscrapers. Underground tunnels or arboreal civilizations are still on the table though. However, we know the Ika are some of the greatest builders in galactic history and they do have a penchant for building obnoxiously massive things that would take the resources of multiple worlds to reasonably create. So the lack of such obvious signs is notable. However, the station construction is still finishing so we’ll see if we can get any more detailed information once observation is in place.

We’ve sent Vanessa to go hang around Diadem as requested.

The ambassadorial tour is hitting largely the same issues the Federation explorers are. Along the highway are mostly highly developed Reach stations. Normally the Federation likes to find younger, less developed, and more vulnerable civilizations to ‘recruit’ before they get assimilated into the Reach. The main route to Kuhas is dominated by very Reachy people. This close to Diadem they’re a bit more used to us and our fancy pants credits system, though to everyone else we’re the new kids around here. The idea of joining our new gang of upstarts is not particularly appealing to already established and wealthy powers. This is why the Federation ‘liberates’ primitive civilizations who are just discovering the galaxy but doesn’t get involved with the big players that overshadow us. As far as the rest of the Reach is concerned, we’re just the latest big station. We have nowhere near the prestige of Utewa or the Tungsten Teeth. We’re really just known for Vittles and sticking our nose in other people’s business for better or worse. Worth noting the Revenants are also known for that latter one.

This does sort of fit what Yasrena mentioned about us having a habit of helping out the little guy at the expense of making allies with bigger players. These stations are more aligned with the bigger powers of the Reach and its culture than Caelkia or Sugnam. They’re at least still amicable to us if nothing else for economic trade but definitely not likely to join a faction younger than them. While the Federation is a lot more powerful than any of the individual stations, that’s not endearing us to them any since they don’t perceive us as being more powerful than Rahlken or the collective power of Elasyn and its nearest stations. No one particularly likes change all that often and people are comfortable with the way things are, which is the immediate challenge facing the federation’s expansion goals.

Right now the Reach is our local neighborhood and we kind of need to decide which way we’re going on that one. If we want to try and conquer it, well ready up for war with a lot of crazy lunatics. If we want to immerse ourselves within it, we should send a representative to Elasyn and figure out how to be better neighbors. The highway and friendship projects aren’t exactly off the table in either case, it’s just a matter of what approach we want to take. Though ignoring the repeated advice everyone in the Reach has given us and just doing it anyways is liable to cause a conflict eventually.

Though one station along the route was a little more interested in the idea than the general trends. They were particularly interested in a few points. One, vittles. People like food as it were. The second being our manufacturing and securing reliable trade deals that might help them provide a stable market. Apparently the station has dreams of being a bigger trading hub than just fuel and safe docking. The third one was Haleh and Faithrae’s involvement in these agreements. Which was a bit of an ‘uhhh’ point for our forward teams. Haleh is infamous throughout the Reach and Faithrae is a local power that the Reachers get along well with. There might be something to leverage there.

Also as requested last month, we set up some hydroponics to grow food stuff. If nothing else it is tradeable. Not the most energy efficient to do that on a ship like the cradle but ehhh we don’t have a fuel shortage I suppose. Not yet at least.

We’re at the point where Kennae’s last known destination is beyond the reach of our network to safely operate within. Past the Blaiken Dead Zone is further than our explorers have ever gone and successfully returned from. Except that one crew who made it all the way to Nelta albeit in the middle of a war. This is above the paygrade of the average explorers for VSEC let alone our agents at this point.

Also we acquired some VSEC contracts to enhance our manufacturing productivity and profits. Though we’re having to scale it up because VSEC goes through mechs faster than a kobold with a cheese wheel.

As for Kharla’s doll mechanism. It is highly suspected that it was being done by her bind to Rozanis and Rozanis was actually the one who knew the spells to do so. Coincidentally, we think he learned it from one of Kanika’s grimoires and Winter is currently on her way to the demon kingdom looking for that.

Also what do you mean expanding miners offices into Enphidia? There isn’t really anything here to mine and logistically they’re already managed by the actual Flotilla.