Stories of Lore 7

It appears Sarden and Hastam’s attack on Eliza agitated her enough to exploit her new benefactor’s particular knack for violence. Hastam was destroyed in the middle of the street and Sarden was arrested by Hylavi. She’s currently in intensive care and we’ll see how long she stays alive. Upon debriefing Hylavi, apparently Shanhai and Dazzle were here to get revenge on Hastam and went through Hylavi for help with finding them. Thanks to the information from Nah division, Hylavi was able to exploit their presence to help with bringing them down. I’m just…trying to ignore the fact that Hylavi technically just aided the Selona Syndicate.

Currently efforts of convincing the Merkas to come along have been an issue of communication as they don’t fully understand the scope of what we’re asking them to even come to. That and Renjala still has them all at Jamalia. Atop of which they are insistent on that they, and specifically the individuals in question, need to keep fighting the arcurans to save their people. I don’t know if that trait is built into all of the merkas or just this band of what we’ve discovered are basically children. We’ve also yet to actually scan their tree to see about planting one elsewhere.

As for Riley’s efforts beyond the rift, there has actually been some success there. It didn’t seem to notice her and she managed to go near the planet in close alignment to Auwana and scan some things. They don’t tell us very much useful other than that there are a lot of strange life forms down there, but it was progress.

The local jydoq trader doesn’t seem to understand the concept of why Laura King is considered dangerous instead of a basic enterprising individual. They see her as having a strong sense of supply and demand in a starved market. Notably…they have been talking to her so that might be affecting their understanding of what a criminal is. As for sahad friendly aliens…what a coincidence…they were blown to extinction by Selona during the invasions. The others they suggested might yield some results but they’re deep into the galaxy, it would be a long voyage just to make contact with them and we have no idea what has become of them amidst all of this galactic collapse.

Construction of the Renjala’s Rift stabilizer has begun.

Well two of the new starships were easy enough to find crew for, three are still pending some interviews.We’ve sent them along their way to pursue the leads that Hylavi knows of.

The Koura elections Should be concluded within two weeks by the way.

The parasite research has found an oddity. Everyone who was infected but then had the infection removed by Doctor Si Yeon after a certain slightly extended period of time was notably cured of several other standing issues. Also, all of these previously infected patients became immune to Koura’s atmosphere. They no longer exhibit any symptoms from being exposed to the low toxicity and seem to do much better digesting local flora. Basically one of its first mutations is to adapt its host to survival on this planet, and apparently cure bacterial infections almost instantly. This is fitting with its previously observed tendencies on Koura wildlife to optimize them. While it doesn’t fully understand humanoid anatomy, if its mutations only get through its first phase then its quite beneficial. Take too long though and it starts doing weird things. Si Yeon is now dealing with an influx of people trying to replicate these effects on purpose, some with better timing than others. We have a patient with a tentacle sticking out of their nose now for example.

Oh also Vittles finished their first hydroponics harvest. So that helps with the food thing around here in Auwana and help with holding an expanding population. Also their own marketing team resulted in an influx of immigration all of a sudden.

The chapter house in Jamalia has finished construction. By construction I mean we put up a sign in front of the door to one of the prefab facilities. There are some reluctant merkas in there acting as “shaya” at the moment. Basically a word in their language for what we have as the order’s slaves. We’ve stuck to using that word since it has less connotations then slave and we don’t want to have to deal with explaining that political mess to a people who are still trying to comprehend why we need them to push the button that opens doors for the knights…or what a button is.

The reinforcements from the fourth lance have made it to Jamalia and joined the first lance, which had a few promoted squires while we have time to process paperwork and ceremony. They survived that battle with Ecsanul after all.

Daesta definitely doesn’t seem interested in peace with the arcurans, something about generations of war, grudges, so on and so forth. Though she does seem to be interested in just how powerful Reika obviously is so is sticking around the colony for now.

Oh and the Merkas call this world Enohas. Which means ‘first planet’ in their language basically.

So far the arcane moon doesn’t seem to affect pandem abilities all that much, though definitely is a link to the abyssal plane. Though its too far away for it to have much impact on our spells down here.

We’ll be meeting with the arcurans soon, lots to do after just getting here and setting up shop.

The second lance is getting started on their work at Moncayo which might take awhile. The abyss is a finnicky plane sometimes. Though one thing we weren’t told about, is that we were not the only ones invited to do this. Apparently Vloz’Khress was also hired to do the same work, and it was explained as a way to make sure all angles were covered including any ‘backdoor’ tricks either side might come up with. The Moncayo supervisor appointed by Faelyn made a note of the fact that an alliance between frontier colonies is bound to have some representatives who don’t entirely like one another, not to mention aliens. Also Faelyn’s Moncayo also operates for the Sol system at large to keep them appraised of any alien approach so she is liable to at times consort with the empires as necessary. At the very least we’ve maintained things to be somewhat professional, since Alexander and Sarnai were not actually at the battle and the Moncayo forces are terrifyingly well armed. Something something fortress. While this was the most interesting, it was not the only alternate group of pandem experts to show up. There were five parties in total with a presence, two of which are from the frontier – ourselves included. Suffice to say, Moncayo will definitely become truly unassailable by the time Faelyn is done with whatever her plans are.

Inquiries into establishing a chapter house as an embassy in Moncayo seem to be going well. The city pointed out that it would take some level of investment into construction to build the chapter house as it doesn’t have too many empty buildings laying around that would be suitable. Though that probably works fine for us since we could build it to not use ethi doors and the like. There are a few building codes to observe but nothing too bizarre or difficult. Mostly having to do with the space from other buildings for its oddly wide roads and a maximum building height…again not really going to affect us. If we wanted to construct the place it would only cost about five million credits to do so, since its not a full blown colony just a nice house. Okay  it could be done for just five hundred thousand but then its not really an Astral chapter house is it? So five million for proper levels of ‘bling’ as the kids say.

We’ve started steamworks up and began some research into the matter. Not much done as of yet though as we just finished setting up the building in the Somnus lower decks.

Joe is still against the alien immigration angle, the main problem with it is he and many of his buddies have a natural distrust of aliens after you know…the invasion. Most people don’t know or would even believe what the phantoms did, so to their perspective aliens decided ‘fuck these guys in particular’ as their first contact protocol. Atop of that was also the Valdir first contact. Oh and the parasite problem. So far the track record isn’t so good, and he lives on Koura so is barely even aware of the fact that Hylavi is chief of security on Somnus. While he states something to the effect of at least allowing for it if they prove themselves trustworthy, there is a notable xenophobia to him and his supporters veiled by logic.

Also everyone is always interested in free healthcare, we don’t have any insurance companies here in Auwana yet. Well a few are trying to get started, but its pretty hard to get ordinary people to oppose the idea.

As for exposing the Harlus loophole in voting, the experts think it’ll definitely hurt Harlus’ campaign especially against those who are a bit closer to being on the fence rather than firmly in one camp or another for other reasons. The worst case scenario is Harlus can spin it to somehow be about improving migration to Auwana. They see no reason not to make a huge story of it and would love to run with that dirt. However, Nah division has another perspective. From a security angle, calling out Laura King’s operations on behalf of Harlus directly could attract her attention in ways he hasn’t thus far. So its a gamble if we think nothing terrible will happen as a result.

Sarden was arrested recently and I think this conclusively proves that I am not Sarden’s alter ego. That’s right I hear you when you talk to the other directors. So with Sarden’s arrest by Hylavi and Hastam’s destruction by…we’ll call that one Hylavi too, Cassir has finally deployed out to hunt down the other cultists. Though she’s still traveling. There is a bit of a collective unease among some of the cult though, this is the first truly aggressive act by Cassir and her followers. Prior to this they could argue it as a necessity for survival, but now she’s hunting for other reasons entirely. Though really this is just part of the transitional period from the old version of the cult to the new one I suppose. Had we gone with the mystics we’d have the aware members leaving, if we’d gone with the financial ones we’d have the more yoga inclined people bailing. Its just a time of turmoil over all no matter how you look at it for them. Though the upcoming slaughter will be the first major act of the cult’s new era. I brought popcorn, I’ll put some in your feeding tubes.

On to new Age. Slightly different issue, Setani isn’t willing to just hand out essentia for another batch of experiments similar to 004C for nothing given that she has to collect more to keep it going. Though Vasia took her blank check and ran with it, buying another fifty slaves from Ohalyn to feed to Setani’s soul collecting. Maybe we don’t tell Lancaster about that one. Moving on, they’ve at least started the next batch with replicated environments in the containment cells. Progress ongoing.

As for finding our own necrocarnate, that might be more challenging than you think given how rare and taboo the art is. Its frankly amazing we know of so many let alone have regular contact with two of them. However, if you really wanted to find one, I’m pretty sure Laura King can go looking as all necrocarnates tend to operate in the underworld due to the rampant persecution they would otherwise face with the sole exception of Song Yi. Though we’re not getting her help I’m sure.

I’ve been able to contact Faelyn, though I think we fall under the blanket of Somnus as it is right now and are thus represented by Winter currently. So I used that as an excuse for why I’m not there myself personally. Though there is definitely an interest in the growing alliance for the services of 40th Day and New Horizons. If nothing else we’re on her network as a shipyard that can dock and do necessary maintenance for any ships passing along through the frontier.

As for the sivataur team, I asked Nah to ask Laura for us. There are actually a lot of them with pretty solid reputations despite the general stereotypes if you know where to look apparently. Some of them are particularly obsessed with honor and ‘the hunt’ and so on. She recommended we send representatives to SR2 to perhaps interview a few potential hires. However, SR2 is a dangerous world so don’t send just anyone. The planet is shrouded in a permanent eclipse and is basically the sivataur capital. It was an abandoned wasteland of a world that they started terraforming…by hand. They just picked up trees in the abyss, transported over, and planted. Over time it has become their playground and if you don’t know…most undesirable and violent criminals are sent to this world. For a small fee, Sivataur operates the largest super max prison in the system. A very very small fee. Because whoever is sent there is just thrown onto the planet and told ‘good luck’. The only security systems are the docking ports and ships are not allowed across the rest of the planet to make sure no criminals escape. Whether or not said convicts get eaten by sivataurs is anyone’s guess and kind of the whole point. There are also roaming abyssal monsters they transported to the planet that can survive without the sun. This is SR2, the sivataur playground and where you go if you want to hire some sivataurs. As I said, choose carefully who you send. This world was built to be dangerous on purpose, so its pretty fuckin dangerous.

Actually, if we caught some of those giant monsters on PZ142-2 that are roaming around…we have a kaiju freighter. Could probably sell those on this planet for a nice profit. Sivataurs sure do love giant monsters. To the point of being an unhealthy obsession. Just a thought.

As for Salied, Vasia has been putting her on the backburner while working on the 004C experiments. So far psionic probing causes the device that probes to suddenly experience some faults. Vasia has pointed out that due to the nature of the affliction, any psion who gets too deep into her head will suddenly suffer the same condition. She also lost a researcher to proving this in the first place.

Speaking of Vasia, she hasn’t really looked into shades but thinks she could get several to outright volunteer. Her people are naturally curious and all.

The Dreamwalker still has no interest in working with Cassir and sees her as a general abomination to everything the cult stands for. Keeping in mind he has no idea what the cult actually stood for and his faction has sort of brainwashed itself into believing its own hype. He also considers you to be an abomination talking about enlightened and so on and so forth. They sincerely have no idea about the origins of the cult and being told they’re wrong causes them to just dig themselves deeper into their position. They also believe themselves to be the true new prophet for the whole cult and you to be someone exploiting Cassir’s violence to silence your competition and mutiny against the other financial section of the cult.

Defense turrets have been put at Phoenix Colony, which is nearing the end of its construction. Also sent the mana batteries to Jamalia to help with experimentation on the trees and natives as necessary. Vasia says we should send her some arcurans for sahad viability testing by the way.

Tests with the Koura crystals ability to feed plants proves to be quite viable. The sunlight they release slowly over time does emit all stored radiation patterns of the light they absorb from. We also found this works with fiber optics by the way, someone just decided to try that real quick while playing around in the lab. Due to its inability to retain it for long periods of time this isn’t quite useful in any practical manner but it has promise.

We’ve also had time to figure out how to store more sunlight with the crystals, as it is affected by the crystal purity. Which can actually be refined. The method for doing so hasn’t been settled on yet but doing little tricks like removing impurities or filling air pockets with various types of transparent resin does seem to improve performance overall. Not much yieldable result yet but its an exciting time to be a geologist! Which I am not, I’m going to go get a drink now.

Aside from her actual meeting with Laura, Vaeri has confirmed to some extent that Laura’s contacts are quite vast. Though this is due to a few factors. The first of which being that they change regularly, she has the current status of being the top crime lord in Auwana, which means by default new criminal elements just treat her as being the go-to. Which means they join her network for as little as a day due to the assumed cooperation between them. This is part of criminal culture apparently, its generally assumed that the biggest crime boss in the area doesn’t have as much to gain from backstabbing you over a shipment as someone smaller whose profits are less stable. Also Laura has a reputation of being ‘that kind’ of criminal who take their word a little too seriously. Which is comical to some criminals, but at least seen as reliable.

Another factor is that Laura possesses a Solvang membership, I mean so do we but this does expand the number of options she has available when trying to secure deals and other things of that nature. It also turns out that with Arkaric visiting our system due to an interest in Eliza, she was able to meet with him due to her being the biggest criminal in the area. I suppose that defaults her to being the one who has the right to approach him. Hence the sudden influx of selona brand toys on the black market right now, speaking of which tell Hylavi to be a little more careful of any ongoing criminal activity. They might have new guns and Selona weapons are famously effective against aliens specifically.

While this meeting wasn’t likely anything alarming, we did have his sister working with us for awhile after all, it does indicate that Laura’s influence is spreading. With her being able to contact such major criminals she’s able to network a little more. Essentially, she’s growing rapidly and moving without us being able to fully keep tabs of what she and her family are up to. Importantly, we found out she’s in contact with someone from Moncayo and two other frontier colonies. She’s on track to expand into being a multi-system element if we don’t do anything about it.

If we wanted to replace her, we’d have to make sure Joe wins the election to decrease her power and then take the opportunity to raise a replacement and cut her off. Ohalyn might be an okay replacement, she’s a respected member of the underworld unlike Raiben and she has the demeanor it takes to not be as problematic for us. That being said, she’s far less talented. I suppose you have to consider if trying to work with a difficult mastermind is better or worse than an untalented puppet when thinking about how to move forward with the Laura situation.

As for the Raven II that the engineer was hauled off to, its a bit hard to find much information on it. As might be expected of Kanika, she’s good at keeping secrets. Apparently, it was constructed by a labor force that cannot remember ever working on it. At least they won’t admit to knowing about it. That’s at least a few hundred mechanics and engineers with a blank spot in their memory or a very adamant desire not to reveal that they do know anything. Which is highly unusual, but its worth remembering this ship is the successor to a facility that brainwashed serial killers into loyal bodyguards. So its not out of the realm of what this place can do. However, we were able to learn that its not as well protected as you might expect for a super carrier. Because it was refitted as basically a space station that can go places, most of its firepower has been stripped off in favor of its facilities. It relies primarily on stealth and coasting out in space where no one would go looking for it unless they were invited as prospective clients.

At this point we could try to send Vaeri posing as a client….not like we haven’t done this one before. We could also just send the stealth cruiser with the full team to try and infiltrate it through brute force. Also we could just tell House Song where it is again and let them cause a ruckus given what happened last time and try slip our way in amidst the chaos.

As for the drug market on the newer colonies, we still can’t even corner some drug markets here on Koura. We don’t really have a drug lord on staff given our ongoing back and forth with Laura. So we don’t have anywhere that we’re growing them at the moment in order to take elsewhere to sell. We could look into that but I’m not sure how Lancaster would feel about using the land on Orchard or the hydroponics labs to grow drugs for selling in other colonies given the current value of food.

As for exploiting tax fraud, doesn’t that make us still a financial burden just with more steps? Taxes go to Lancaster, so we’d be pocketing money that would have already gone to her and then just saving her some money on keeping us afloat.

The men are back at base on Koura now after a lengthy trip, taking a brief break to recover from the campaign. More accurately, getting drunk at local bars.

Also winter sort of covered it, but basically my parasite research indicates they can actually be kind of miracle cures if you do it juuust right. If you do it wrong you grow a new tail.

When it comes to looking for our next job, I have noticed there is a posting on the Solvang boards, that Nah has let me see, to assist a warlord in repelling Kaylen’s upcoming invasion of his territory on Thenica. I also checked with Nelan, we could make 750 million for siding with Alnae proper, which is a bit less but I think our host like her more than the warlords.

Some notes about these jobs. They’re much shorter campaigns since its just two specific forces fighting, we won’t have to spend months hunting down every mole rat burrowed in the dirt while trying to secure a whole planet. So its actually a pretty decent payout for a little bit of work. Also this is not going to be hunting a bunch of bitey bugs or warding off underequipped and underinformed aliens. This will be real, full arsenal, Sol on Sol warfare. Alnae versus Alnae is a playground of tanks and bombs. Losses would be heavy. Also if we took this job we’d have to load up and ship out soon, so we’ll probably not be here for contact with the Exerlus. Not sure if we’ll be needed for that or not but its something to consider as there is no way in hell we’re walking into a Thenica warzone with anything less than every gun we’ve got.

This could work towards strengthening our relationship with or against Alnae, whether or not the directors are still interested in that stuff. Though not sure how it’ll look to Faelyn and any other new alliances we’re working on. Not to mention it will take us awhile to recover from the losses and we won’t be deploying for awhile after a conflict like this one.

Alternatively, we could ask Winter to mention us to Faelyn to see if there are any more small time colony jobs we could take on the frontier to clean up some more bugs here and there. Safer easier work, pays less and takes longer but at least half the men don’t turned into red paste overnight for it.

Also since you didn’t, I went ahead and named your new arms manufacturing company for you. I call it Pretty Pink Unicorns.

Nah I’m just kidding, I named it Whitetalon Armaments while filling out the paperwork. Factory is just down the road from our current base for easy shipping…also land is still cheapest out here in the outskirts.

Stories of Lore 6

This is Exme Faythe, reporting from the field deep into the frontier at a new colony whose construction was recently concluded and announced. Welcome to Cayetano, or CA-250. A colony in the Abyss of all places! As you can see behind me…its a fascinating place. I’m currently in an air pocket located underneath a vast body of fresh water with its own ecosystem unique to the air pocket. Here you will find Moncayo City, founded by Lady Faelyn Lekou, a blue dragon from SV3!

Lady Faelyn, I can see many obvious advantages to the position of your new colony but I’m curious, how did you even find this place? Exploring the Abyss is known to be incredibly difficult on a galactic scale due to its inconsistencies.

In truth, I knew what I wanted to accomplish with this colonization effort and I came out to this location on the middle planes before sending survey ships into the Abyss and poking around. I also looked through several other planes as I was only interested in the galactic position and was just trying to find the best possible use of this area. When I found this place I knew I had to take advantage of the opportunity.

What makes this position so important that you would go through such efforts?

Well it is the deep edge of the frontier. Sol is close to the galactic outer rim. My scientists were able to discover that most of the alien invaders we faced had to come from a very similar direction. From here I am able to establish a fortified position. Given their difficulties in traversing between planes, it is highly unlikely they could even find Moncayo City in the Abyss at all. Let alone actually reaching it. However, I am able to deploy advanced scanning stations in this area on multiple planes in order to detect any incoming force towards Sol while they cannot reach me.

With an establishment this large, isn’t it possible that they will simply learn of its presence over time?

Yes, though what can they do about it? FTL travel is not possible on the abyssal plane due to its inconsistent concept of physics. They would need to access this location on another plane and then enter into the Abyss. My city is thoroughly warded against rift tunnels I do not want to appear within its borders. So any assaulting force would need to be able to get through space, than through the planes, and then through the water surrounding me, and then finally they could take a shot at my city’s shielding. I do intend to invest even further in the armaments of this system as well.

So do you intend to defend all of Sol from all of the galaxy that might wish to invade us?

Well, I intend to at least help. I can’t field a fleet large enough to stop all invaders, but I can at least give Sol warning that they’re coming. I am also seeking to alleviate the current issues of Sol by seeking out resources that it desperately needs right now and establish an alliance of the frontier nations. I don’t know where all our frontier colonists are though, as finding a single colony on a single landmass on a single planet in a single system among all this is difficult. Something many frontier pirates are quick to exploit. Part of this interview is me putting out an open call to any other frontier colonists who might be interested in joining my growing alliance and network. I am not associated with any standing empire or faction, I am just interested in strengthening our position in response to potential future invasions and building a network of contact so that we can find and communicate with one another more easily. It’s a complicated topic, but any are free to visit Moncayo City and discuss the matter at length with me or my representatives. Depending how busy I am that day.

For any interested parties watching, you can visit the Sol Media site from your APT to find contact information. As Faelyn pointed out, it is impossible to enter her city through a pandem rift without her invitation. So put in a message now to get your invitation!

We’re up to one month and three weeks remaining. Fortunately the cruiser is with you, otherwise you’d be a month away from the station as of now.

Moving on, I’ve sorted out the company paperwork regarding the name trademarks. Fortunately we own the trademark office here in Auwana so I just changed two text fields and now no one has to know. Two ships have been sent out to search for alien life in ‘nearby’ systems. However, it is worth noting, Hylavi actually knows exactly where to find several civilizations. They’re just a lot more likely to be problems than those of uncontacted worlds.

In the meantime, Golbotics labs is getting started up, taking up residence in the lower decks of the station where Khymin can set up a proper workspace instead of that… warehouse of his own that he made. Currently he’s trying to improve the designs of his own personal golems he uses around his abode for handling various issues. We’ve told him that ‘compactness’ is an important feature. His own home is more golem than walking space as it is.

The ongoing elections on Koura are becoming somewhat peculiar. Investigation into Harlus reveals they aren’t necessarily doing anything illegal but they’ve been exploiting an existing loophole in our legal system, or lack thereof, that registers any resident as a voting citizen. There are over a thousand, that we found so far, nomadic individuals registered to an apartment building as ‘roommates’ with other people even if they never really show up. Given Harlus’ background, I don’t think they came up with that. Laura King seems to be behind this one and is turning the seedier folk who pass through the system into voting citizens. Though its not technically illegal just…bad sportsmanship? Though she is the crime lord of the system I suppose. Though this also helped us find the actual motive for the King family’s interest in helping Harlus. Beyond money, Harlus may have agreed to make sure that certain aspects of trade on Koura don’t change. As it is right now, short of hit contracts, Koura’s economy is a bit of an ‘anything goes’ scenario. If the taxes get paid, the taxmen don’t require anyone to fill in a field as to what the transaction was specifically for or who was involved beyond whoever paid the tax itself. They don’t even check that information either. Working Joe, which is his new campaign name suggested by Renjala, doesn’t really have any plans in this regard but his focus on labor conditions opens up one tiny little problem. It would force certain businesses to have their work places investigated, primarily  for safety reasons. Which is something shadier organizations might prefer to be left alone on. Not due to workplace hazards, but due to whats going on in that workplace at all.

However, as the election takes shape, Harlus is still the most popular candidate. Not just because of some shady voting registrations, but because they have a much more ‘hands off’ approach. Which outright appeals to frontier colonists who came to escape the empires in the first place. It’s a hard platform to beat especially when the wealthier members of Koura also support this mindset. Harlus is also more focused on trade with outside bodies, specifically advocating for the investment and establishment of more ports and routes that would help trade with other frontier colonies as well as a steep investment into education programs. Prophesizing a new alliance to rival Sol especially given Sol’s current economic state compared to the frontier worlds. Citing that an early push into an educated and wealthy populace will help establish Koura as the city of gold among the frontier alliance in the years to come. Again, frontier people like that. Also, so do pirates.

Joe in the meantime is still focused on more local and internal affairs. Workplace safety, fair wages, and ever since Renjala joined on, the fair treatment of labor slaves. The latter of which helps him stand out to our more reputable citizens if nothing else based on empathy and Joe being less of a capitalist and more of a regular person. He is also a little more independent of a candidate in terms of future vision. With a greater interest in manufacturing and construction, particularly like companies such as New Horizons, Golbotics, and Vittles. He dreams of a more hardworking economy based on production rather than trade and education, arguing the importance of self sufficiency especially in times like these over potential future positioning in whatever future might await us.

I have noticed by watching the news coverage that their positions on a lot of these issues were once not even mentioned but have started to take a more adamant stance the longer the campaigns go on. I suspect this is due to their backers adding new issues they care about to the campaign as well as just a desire to be contradictory to their opponent. When Hylavi asked about alien migration, a topic neither of which had ever considered, they both got stuck for a solid five seconds while trying to figure out what that might even entail…since they were both staring at an alien while trying to answer. This is where we saw Joe kind of fall apart juuust a little bit. He was slower on it, more of muscle worker than a number cruncher. Harlus was quick to support it. Within minutes of rambling to stall for time, they managed to form a plan of seeking out new civilizations to establish even more trade and ‘cultural exchange’ with. Joe fell back and said he would need to confer with some experts on the matter before making grandiose promises and wild ideas. Renjala was notably whispering to him at that time.

In the meantime, Hylavi managed to convince a few jydoq to come to Somnus. While a small number its a start, and impressive for the outstandingly uncharismatic security chief. Two of them are just refugees seeking food and a place not falling apart. One is relevant though, a trader with a bit more wealth who is poking around for opportunities to ‘invest’ in. Here’s the oddity, Jydoq have not done that in their entire history as a species. They don’t really use money the same way we do, nor do they manipulate it so heavily. I have a feeling this particular trader is just now getting their metaphorical feet into the pool of Sol capitalism and seeing if they can make it work for themselves in a place with a fresh start full of opportunity. So of course, the first person that they just happened to bump into on the streets was Laura King. Not sure what’s going on there and it doesn’t seem terribly nefarious. It’s just a bit interesting to see their one of their species trying to immigrate into our culture and economics. I still can barely get Hylavi to understand what a retirement savings or interest rate is, let alone entrepreneurship.

As for the Vittles, the hydroponics are coming along faster due to more aggressive growing practices. Though they have been careful of implementing such treatments on orchard until they’re positive about the stability of growing things there. They expect first harvest of the hydroponics labs in two weeks time.

In other news…well there’s that whole thing going on in the news. I suppose we qualify as a frontier colony that Faelyn would be interested in establishing contact with. It might be worth sending someone just to figure out whats going on over there.

Have fun at Jamalia. I hear its a fun place, Lancaster is just stomping all over aliens who have yet to invent the concept of barriers. Time to subjugate some savages eh? I’ve sent the fourth lance to join you though they’ll take a bit to get there without the cruiser.

Anyways, Jamalia was dropped near a river so at least water is easy to find. One of the knights has been appointed local governor. Technically Alexander would be the most qualified but he’s here on Somnus and we probably want him to stay in the library rather than leading a provincial government several light years away. Also the recruitment posters are found to have low impact due to the fact that everyone on Somnus and Koura are already frontiersmen. We could try to recruit at Sol though we’d have to send some people there to establish a bit of a presence to draw their interest I imagine.

The colony is at least established with its major guns and walls now set up, it’s basically invulnerable to the wildlife and probably even the natives given their current level of technology. However, it is a bit sparse on staff now that the construction team has left so if anything gets inside where the turrets can’t hit then there might be a problem. With you and Reika there it shouldn’t be an issue for the time being. Just something to keep in mind though given its slow recruiting efforts.

Speaking of which, Sarnai’s time as a squire is going well. She’s still rough around the edges but I suppose that’s what you get when you adopt street rats.

The third lance is done with the Madhammer operation. Doctor Si-Yeon has the information on that. Yoshai and Irae are on the ride back to Auwana after having been through some fun times. The memorial for all the fallen knights as been erected in the manor we call home.

Also we’ve received a specific commission from the newly announced Moncayo City. They’re asking for us to come and help with the pandem protections around the place. It would appear the news article is not fully forthcoming in how strong those defenses are just yet. It pays two hundred and fifty million though and might be a good chance for us to scout the place out and see whats going on while doing some penetration testing. Apparently they found out about us after we made an appearance at the battle with Kar’Soluth and took an interest.

Well the dreamwalker essentially believes that through group meditation they will achieve ‘lucidity’ and transcend to higher state of psionic understanding as a group working together. Something in there about selflessness as well. Also they denounced Cassir almost immediately upon her coming to power over the last year. They absolutely hate her since she is the embodiment of a selfish use of the cult…and you know…a mass murderer. The mystics also hate the economically interested sect as well, though Cassir and the money people have less of a rivalry. Though obviously their interest in joining the dangerous world of warfare through Cassir for little to no profit is not something they’re so keen to do.

You could argue there are a dozen subsects though they don’t have as much traction as the main three. They also don’t have notable direction as there is a chaotic mix of those who are aware of the cult’s true intent and those who don’t. They don’t even know if the secret needs to be kept or not. I would say they lack solid leadership ever since squidface disappeared.

Meanwhile back to New Age. 004C has been developing its vocabulary of commands it understands. Though we have noticed it doesn’t necessarily listen to them all unless Vasia is the one who says it. We’re still not sure why it is so fond of her. Salied doesn’t react to 004C any differently than towards anything else, she also reacts occasionally to the researchers but not during her little episodes…that span more than half of her time.

As for reproducing the hydroponic towers, fairly easily. Its just a hydroponic farm that we put in a building. If we set up all the lamps and keep temperatures controlled it’ll work pretty much anywhere except maybe Jamalia due to the arcane moon’s radiation though I doubt that would impact it too negatively.

Research into the disintegration ward has made some progress…kind of. The way to save mana seems to be to hurl something at the atmosphere so that it goes faster through the cloud and has to spend less time on the upkeep. Though then it loses just as much mana protecting itself from entering the atmosphere while trying not to burn up on the way down. So the savings are minimal and dangerous since you can’t see or scan through the cloud on the way through. A specialist experimental shuttle with a glass exterior has been developed though we’re having issues sealing it completely but this does cost less mana to just protect the gaps instead of the whole shuttle.

We’re not totally sure where the mana to maintain the atmospheric effect is coming from, we can’t scan anything nor get through that easily. I imagine it’ll take some concerted probing efforts. Though current theories indicate it to be a rift or some other type of natural phenomenon that perpetuates itself somehow without costing the amount of mana it would to maintain a spell like that on purpose. More of a ‘it had a lot of mana to get started during the planet’s formation then just stabilized’ type of situation. If it was producing the mana of casting a planetary disintegration cloud and maintaining it as a channeled spell, I don’t think even the cloud could hide that from the scanners.

As for charging weapons with disintegrate and disintegrate clouds, yes. Madhammer has those. It’s a fairly popular wand to load into shotguns actually.

Flavor factory would be a little tricky. Need sugar. Which needs to be grown. Could have the hydroponics work on it but then they’re not growing food.

So we’ve had a few people, including Khymin look over the mysterious corvette design. No one has any idea what it’s for and that seems to be the purpose of its design. Khymin describes it as being ready for an easy retrofit. The missing parts are structural, which if taken out create a large modifiable empty space within the corvette. As if someone has one final piece to add to it after its construction, perhaps to prevent a paper trail from figuring out what its purpose is. Though that means its basically a corvette with a modification slot on it, actually this might be a marketable design concept. Though in this case its clearly intending to hide its purpose as a future refit.

The Kaiju freighter is fully equipped now with a modifiable cage. We made something neat out of it actually. The large square room has been sectioned into a grid by moving wards and slot-in metal sheets that are normally used on its rather thick interior hull. Basically, pull some squares off the hull and lay them down where desired to cut the hold up into compartments in case you need a lot of medium sized cages or one really big one.

For the Sivataur team, I suppose technically they only need two each. Three is preferrable due to their aggressive appetites. However, you might want to establish contact with them before acquiring the slaves. Vampires are known to view feeding as a sort of vice with all of its own fetishes. So they might have a preference as to exactly what kind of slaves they would find the most enticing. If they say elves its going to be hard given the going rate for those at the moment. Also this is another of those things we should really be sure not to tell Alnae’s embassy about. Feeder slaves are on their ‘no fun allowed’ list.

We sent the Kaiju freighter to Vamon, it’ll be a bit to get there.

It would appear Lura gets most of her information on Sarden from Sarden. She was the point of contact Sarden used to set up her false identity. It actually turns out Laura King had hired Raiben Hayl to create the fake papers in the first place. I don’t think Sarden knows we have since approached Laura.

Speaking of Raiben, we set him up in the office and had him forge his own paperwork to create a ‘lack of evidence’ situation regarding his release from Somnus security so that he could re-establish some of his contacts with bragging rights. Though it doesn’t make Hylavi look particularly good at her job. Though I suppose she’s never been much of a PR person.

In looking for a vulnerable market, I would say ‘exploiting Somnus’ is the answer for Raiben at least. Given that he was made rich off of it. Somnus is an independent colony still in its infancy run mostly by scientists. It’s not the most solid on the paperwork front, though that is part of the station’s success in attracting the attention of certain figures. Without a solid civilian database to tie itself to, such as Alnae or Shetou’s established networks, there’s a lot of ways people slip through the cracks which is something Raiben has proven good at.

As for Vaeri, she’s still in transit on her way back to Somnus from her little adventure in the warzones with the Astral Order. She can start working on probing Laura even further once she gets back.

Vanjin has been probing around Solvang to look into the matter of pirate activity in Auwana. As suspected, Somnus and Koura are being used as a staging ground for traders of just about anything. Solvang notably knows of more colonization efforts near us that the traders are using to go between locations. It’s a lot less exciting or nefarious then expected, its just unscrupulous characters looking to make a living and taking advantage of our lax contraband laws. Apparently, Laura King is part of the reason Solvang traders know about this and she owns the warehouses they use to ferry goods around the frontier.

Not too interesting, but I suppose privateers just want to make a living and trading is easier than violent piracy as an everyday affair. Vanjin has found no information on the Revenants operating within Solvang, at least not that she can easily discern given how heavily such information is protected by Solvang’s quality guarantees.

The stealth cruiser is out on deployment, it’ll take awhile to reach the Kar’Soluth colony. Though I should point out our cruiser does not specialize in scanning like 40th day ships do. It is mostly an operations center, great aethernet connection in the middle of deep space though.

Well the war is over and the paycheck has been collected after one final sweep and two more builders captured for science. There was a distinct lack of climatic final battle since we are basically picking on monsters in a post-purge era. Had to dust off some old toys for that one. There are still some stragglers burrowed here and there but I’d say its been knocked out sufficiently enough that its as safe as its going to get without bombarding the whole planet, which they seem to have decided against.

So now the current issue is replacing the lost armor support, given that out here we lack a market to acquire them from. Civilians can’t quite just buy tanks and mechs and in moving to Koura we find ourselves currently without a supplier for such hardware. This is in large part due to the currently available manufacturers having more than enough customers back in Sol. So we’d be in the back of the queue to receive any assets, which could take years. Basically we don’t have enough friends in such places anymore during this shortage to jump to the front of the line.

Currently we are transporting the forces back to Koura for some tune ups with what is left, we may need to also look into recruiting more people to replace the ones who got eaten by underground flesh golems.

Stories of Lore 5

Well the running timer places the Exerlus arrival at an estimated two months and two weeks remaining. Also we’ve sent the royal battleship back towards House Sharen.

As for getting started on golem production, we already have Khymin eager to help. Depending on what type of golems you have in mind, we could just start a company dedicated towards their construction. We could start with simple things such as street cleaners at the least. War golems are definitely a little difficult to even get started on due to the hardware required. Also Khymin is a hobbyist not a professional, so little steps for now.

We’ve put Somnus Golbotics to work to start cultivating what they can on Orchard though it’s going slowly to be careful not to destroy the planet’s atmosphere. Oddly, this involved running more exhaust than we really need to just to balance out the total effect. Speaking of which the initial colony has completed construction so they have a cozy place to work.

As for the Koura elections, they’re still campaigning. Though we have noticed that the current lead candidate sourced “assistance” from Laura King. The illithid named “Harlus” has seen a surge in popularity. Oddly enough, Laura utilized charity to do so. Not quite as nefarious as Hylavi was expecting but Laura is extremely well connected and feared across Koura. So she knows where to pressure the campaign budget for the maximum effect. Hylavi thinks she also hired a few small time criminals to vandalize competing campaign signs and started several rumors that do not put them in the best light. Rival candidates don’t have as much backing as Harlus since the few companies in the system at the moment are relatively small and have a lot less to do with public opinions towards anything one way or another.

The problem with sending ships into the rift is that the entity is still there and won’t let the starships pass particularly far. Notably it accomplishes this by just sitting in front of them so they can’t go forward annnnd well the pilots don’t want to just crash into it. Apparently the entity can expand its size to the point that its not clear if the ship will win that collision. Though they cannot reason with it since it still won’t talk to anyone who doesn’t know sahad. Vasia has been occupied with her mutating parasite experiments so we haven’t managed to send her to keep trying to establish anything with the entity. She says to consider just shooting it and moving on, it is the creator of the parasites so we can ‘claim reasonable offense’.

Speaking of the parasites, Doctor Si Yeon has been managing to keep it under far more control and remove the parasites more effectively. She came up with an injection that kills the parasite but leaves the host unharmed other than some nausea for a day. Though they keep appearing in people out of nowhere due to the rift. Though cases are declining as the rift moves further away from the planet, we expect that soon it will be in open space and hopefully that will see to a decline of the cases.

And….*sigh* as a matter of interest. Doctor Eliza Pierce is here on Koura now. Vasia wants her for New Age, Alnae wants her for imprisonment, Nah would probably want her for the shapeshifting, Yi Seon wouldn’t mind having another medical expert like her, and I said I’d see if you had any thoughts on the matter. Normally I’d take it to Riley while you’re away but we agreed this was a ‘call the boss’ moment to at least check in.

We’ve delivered the Sharen battleship back to them, along with the information about Kar’soluth’s little secret asteroid base. It was a brief exchange they did seem interested by the gesture. Perhaps being in the middle of a warzone has rendered the discussion a bit less than we might hope for, but we did forward the existence of Somnus to them if they should care to visit.

So far chats with our alien are proving fruitful if nothing else for information about his species. Apparently they’re one of the stronger groups in terms of military within the NELTA alliance, though this has made them kind of talkative and they don’t really understand how intelligence gathering works. Basically they’ve never had to fight a drow. This might explain how they wound up as one of the races that attacked those luminous beings at the bidding of Selona, not the sharpest in the drawer y’know.

Messing with the rift in the system has been more of a mixed result, if nothing else we keep chucking probes in. The entity within it is still being a pain in the ass to deal with or communicate with. As it stands Vasia is preoccupied with her other experiments Ilex has her focusing on and Cerys is lightyears away fighting underground monsters so we’re low on people to actually try communicating with it. Though it still maintains a stance of not wanting us poking around in there. Not our department though, we’re still just messing with the rift. It is almost in open space now though if we wanted to try and anchor it into orbit so it doesn’t pass through Koura every seventy years.

Sarnai’s training is going alright. I wouldn’t say she is a natural but at least she’s not inept, kind of a brawler though. She’s learning the stances and the techniques as well as standard melee operations in combat, but if pressured she still just starts to swing wildly. She seems a bit prone to being overwhelmed if things aren’t going as she planned and has some issues with tunnel vision. I throw plastic cups at her while she spars with Alexander just to keep her on her toes. It’s fun.

So far Jamalia recruitment will be a bit slow since its so far away from here that only the most adventurous will go…especially considering that Koura is already a frontier colony in the first place. We may have to try and recruit the natives over there.

 Also I do advise you retreat from the warzone you’re currently inside of, the first lance is almost entirely broken.

It does turn out that the cultists have found ways to extend their use of food through the use of psionics, allowing them to survive on less for longer by controlling their metabolisms. They do get sluggish though, and notably its a survival mechanic rather than something you’d want someone like Cassir to do.

On to New Age matters. Vasia’s pet project is now her…pet dog I guess? I’m told it has potential to be more but it is basically a child right now and they’re working on seeing if it can talk, though psionic scans are proving strong potential. Though the idea to perform experiments on the process in new environments will have to wait until Setani returns from her adventures with the Astral Order.

The patients they are experimenting on with the whole awakening concept are still showing a lot of difficulty. Even the minor signs of recovery are proving questionable though Salied specifically is doing the best. We’ve gotten to the point where she at least knows to feed herself though she still just keeps staring off into space all day and mumbling to herself.

The construction of a holding Freighter has been completed by the shipyard. It’s basically a big empty box with a two meter thick hull lined with all the wards imaginable. Only transports one thing at a time unless you stack some cages in it, though this should help for bringing in large samples.

We haven’t found any real signs of sabotage on the ships New Horizons has been producing. It seems that Sarden just uses the company for her cover identity rather then doing anything useful, though in double checking the books we have noticed we are constructing a corvette that is reserved for a sale that doesn’t exist. That one’s a little bit suspicious. We could just sell it once its done being built as usual, though it has a custom design that leaves it a few tons lighter than it should normally be. Not entirely sure if that one is Sarden’s doing and if so, whatever that could even be for.

It would seen the colony owners don’t want orbital bombardments to take place, since the creatures live underground anyways though we’ve mentioned just targeting larger collections of biomass. Its currently going through officials who are debating the merits versus the repercussions that might come down the line.

We’ve started building the holding station in orbit around Koura in the opposite hemisphere to keep the station safe but accessible.

As for hiring a Sivataur team, actually pretty easy. If we pay for travel expenses and stock food sources for them, namely luxury slaves, we can go get a team of them quite easily. They do sort of enjoy this line of work and there are a lot of them not really officially employed at the moment. The only issue is keeping them from acting erratically, they do tend to scoff in the face of authority quite a lot so be wary of that just a little bit. Next thing you know they find some intelligent species to be a more interesting hunt and first contact goes bad.

As for Vasia’s concerns on alien tech, she just shrugged and went back to her usual affairs. Without any contact or objects to study she says its impossible to really ponder too much. To a similar note, contacting Giza results in little that could help Salied unless she were to be sent to the Valdir directly and their method of fixing her might not have that much to do with Sahad. They have noted that similar cases to what Vasia is studying have been found by those in proximity to the apprentices of sahad. Which is extending the theory that witnessing novice uses of it has some more traumatic effects than that of experts such as the Valdir Mothership’s use of it.

Sarden seems largely to use Laura as a point of contact and then her information network becomes at her disposal. I suspect this is a frequent method of operation for the Revenants, since following us around from planet to planet can make it difficult to establish a new information network every time. It would not surprise me if they just exploit local resources, that or they have a much larger following than we’ve initially suspected. However, in keeping tabs on her, we suspect she’s not actually here to assassinate Cassir. She hasn’t made any further moves in that regard despite how long its been since her first attempt. She seems to be visiting a lot of strange places and people. Specifically, refugees from the destruction of the more populated systems. Also specifically, the refugees with combat experience. I think she’s actually here recruiting and just saw an opportunity to take a shot at.

As for her hotel, we haven’t found much nefarious there but I did notice it extends into the lower decks as a basement level where staff related facilities are located. Which might be part of how Sarden is moving around so mysteriously.

Vanjin has managed to track down the engineer we’ve been looking for. However there is a slight complication. She was not sold on Solvang’s official channels but with some bar scouting she was able to figure out that the pirates involved in this are one of Solvang’s personal teams that report to Asmoday directly. It is likely that this was a mission rather than a random act of piracy and that this engineer has been taken very deliberately. Whether or not they made it look like random piracy on purpose is up for debate. Upon pressuring around, Vanjin has uncovered that the engineer was likely taken to the middle of nowhere. There exists a repurposed super carrier that flies around in deep space, it is not fitted to deploy ships like a typical carrier but is really just a space station with thrusters at this point. Apparently, after the events of the invasion in which Song Yi and Indal invaded the Raven, another more mobile version was built. If Vanjin is to retrieve the engineer, she will need to assault The Raven II. Backup and a better plan might be required for that one.

I’ve taken some time to look the report over though, it is strange for Asmoday to specifically target this engineer and immediately ship her off to the Raven facility which specializes in high powered maniacs. I suspect whatever this engineer works on is of specific interest to the phantoms. Which does bring into question what that factory is producing that could attract their attention. Though it’s up to you if we want to get tangled up with those people all over again.

As for Laura’s prominent underlings, I suppose that would be these dastardly folk. To be noted, they’re not all actually related. Laura just forces members of her inner circle to take her surname to promote the family mafia image. Usually by the time you reach that rank, a name change isn’t too bad of an idea I suppose.

We’re awaiting transport freighters from Auwana to help ship the bug queen thing to Sol for research, its a bit too big and unruly to be effectively and safely transported aboard military freighters. The war in general is going in our favor though now that we’ve come to the understanding of how the species operates and are now hunting down the queens specifically. We’ve lost some more forces but we’re making good progress on the eradication of those creatures that build more of everything else.

Stories of Lore 4

I’ll make a note not to tell anyone about the rift in any detail. Though this definitely doesn’t seem like what we signed up for with the establishment of a frontier station…I blame the drow in the basement.

The entity still doesn’t talk to anyone other than Vasia evidently, or any other sahad users at the very least though she’s the only one we have that can form a complete sentence at the moment.

The Royal Battleship belongs to Sharen apparently, and also of course they’d want it back. They’re also looking to find whoever stole it… Maybe we keep under wraps that they’re here right now.

As for Raiben Hayl, Alnae doesn’t actually know who he is. The problem with proving who he is would be how we found out, and the basement dwellers don’t typically like revealing their presence. Though given the current state of the aethernet with some effort we could probably work around that one.

So according to Khymin one of the problems with retrofitting the cruiser is that the only way to make it more stable is to take out some of the engines that give it the speed it has, or make it bigger at which point its getting into being a bit large. Which will hurt its overall speed, more so the acceleration and deceleration times. So far his suggestion is to just add more stabilizers to the seats themselves. Though it has to be a bit bigger to accommodate that as well or the crew section has to get even tighter. Alternatively he could take out one of the engines to make room for other things but then it slows down. It’s definitely an overspecialized ship.

To another note when talking with Khymin, I generally filter out his bright ideas for station improvement from my report but as you can guess he is a strong proponent of golems.

As for inviting Sol Media here, they don’t seem interested in making the trip. Apparently their original plan was to just call the Order instead of making the month long voyage through space to get to us.

We do know the rocks of Koura have the property of holding and gradually dispersing sunlight. Some basic experiments showed it works with any kind of light actually, and they don’t disperse it that quickly from the deepest parts of the underground network they form. The science team thinks they can actually track the planet’s evolutionary history by examining certain elements of these rocks and the light they release, such as looking into the past for any mass extinctions or other wide spanning events. Basically the geologists are having fun though its not that useful for us. Though they do store mana quite well, they just have an issue of constantly releasing it over time. There’s at least some promise in them as a mana storage material that is being looked into.

Somnus Golbotics has been founded to manage the hydroponic towers as well as the intended farming of AZ68-4. It’s currently still setting itself up and waiting for any actual yield as well as having taken over the research efforts on the potential of Koura’s native biology for use as food.

Also you are aware that if you allow Koura to form its own elected government, and you don’t win, that you will no longer have control over it right?

I suppose I’ll see you in a few months after your expedition to the new planet. Have fun with that, I’ll keep in touch over the APT.

As per your orders elections are being held on Koura to staff the civilian government. Campaigns are getting underway.

I’ll just leave a message since you’re apparently busy on that drow world at the moment. A conflict I hear is going…messily. We’ll see what happens when you get there.

As for looking into the stabilization of the rift, Alexander says the easiest way is to build a machine around it with the help of Somnus that we can operate to lock into a more consistent orbit. Sort of like the pandem gates that they use to get around back in Sol. Similar to maintaining a tunnel albeit a little easier since only one side of the tunnel has to be repositioned constantly. That or maybe with some effort attach it to the station, though people might notice it in that case. If we were to reveal the nature of the rift, we could use the same setup to open it upon payment if we were to try charging a toll for it.

In either case this would be an operation around 725 million to accomplish since it would have to be set up in space and probably large enough to send ships through. Not to mention the amount of parts and probably engineers we’d need from Sol to get all the way out here to build it. There is a reason that rift tunnels are not a commonplace thing even for the super rich. At least its half off since we only need to deal with one side of it.

The ‘boxed’ colony set is en route to PZ142-2, along with Lancaster herself. Though they’re going to take a bit to get there. Same for the construction teams to build the station on the moon.

Oh and also while you’re away I’ve had some of the knights keeping tabs on our alien captive that we’re still trying to talk with about the matter. So far we’ve gotten it to stop spewing death threats and now just grumble a lot. Progress! Though it turns out its species is an obligate carnivore so we’ve had to change its feeding routine, now that it finally communicated that to us at least.

The answer to stabilizing the rift with psionics is “not even a little bit”. Partially because its dangerous to attempt, manipulating planar activity causes corruption. Basically you could cut off all the cult psionics from their psionic abilities by having them even attempt to do that.

Cassir has been overseeing the construction at the temple while we deal with the revenants, simply because if we let her go off on her own right now there’s a high chance Setani won’t show up out of nowhere to save her ass. The importing of the cult’s other members are a bit of a mixed situation. More than half leave immediately once we put them on Koura since they ‘didn’t sign up for this shit’ as they like to say. So the cult’s numbers are diminishing quickly though that is to be expected with the shift in vision it is undergoing.

Related to this, Cassir isn’t planning to leave Koura until we have some progress shown on the revenants, given that had Setani not shown up she would have definitely been murdered by Sarden. So we’re leaving that one to Nah division.

As for the labs in the bottom deck, Subject 004-C is still in its shell. Though Vasia is keen to experiment with things even further she is awaiting the results of the first metamorphosis before we start altering environmental factors around it.

The hydroponic tower experiments do prove a good testing ground for the rocks. We’ve managed to show some progress using local flora that you can find growing near the rocks in the wild though it appears the light they emanate is not sufficient for Sol crops to be grown inside of a building. So they use regular lamps for that one right now.

We’ve begun construction of the colony on AZ68-3, when it comes to wards we’ve found some targeted methods of countering the atmosphere’s effects now that we know its based on and arcane occurrence. Though it drains mana very fast if it goes into the actual clouds of the upper atmosphere. On the ground, should keep any rain out hopefully.

When it comes to synthesizing Koura crystals, check out this thing I have. You flip this switch and tah-dah! Light. I call it a lamp. I’ll have the alchemists look into it for you though.

We don’t have any formal chefs in 40th Day. We have survivalist cooks, not quite razzle dazzle high dining chefs. Though the restaurant business down on Koura are already hard at work with finding ways to make the local wildlife a bit more edible and worth harvesting.

Salied is still in holding by Vasia, so far she has demonstrated some level of recovery. In that she will swallow things put in her mouth, which is close to eating. Vasia has been feeding her smoothies.

Vaeri is away with the astral order for now so we’ve lost our contact to Laura from here on out unless we want to reveal the existence of others to her. To that note, she is getting closer to finding out who we are though we can largely blame that on the Revenants, as inconvenient as that is. Though she did at least give us Sarden’s civilian identity here on Somnus.

Aryn has looked into the matter and found that the ID belonging to “Urricea” lives out of a hotel near the docks, though somehow has an employee ID with New Horizons shipyard. Upon some scoping out the hotel we’ve noticed she never enters or exits her room through the front door. Observation drones have found that she gets in and out through the hotel lobby though. We have a suspicion that the front door and the window are trapped, and we’re not sure if the other assassin is living out of the same location or not. According to Laura they don’t appear anywhere unless as a physical threat in full armor.

Keeping tabs on Urricea is hard, she disappears into crowds and alleys everywhere she goes out of pure habit. So we’re pretty sure she’s Sarden though we’re not entirely sure what she does during all of her off time when she’s not jumping on us. Though we have caught her wandering awfully close to the temple that Lucidity is having built a few times. She appears to have a few associates around the system she uses to acquire things, though whats peculiar is that she hasn’t taken any overt action like she did when Cassir first appeared. Perhaps because Cassir is under constant guard right now, but we’re sure she’s up to something specific. Though we can’t determine what she’s doing since she keeps disappearing. We’re good at this but she’s as much of a professional as we are.

Back to Laura King, it seems she gets her information from practically everywhere. Even if she isn’t actually the biggest crime lord, she’s established a reputation around Auwana as being ‘the big one’. Through contact with a lot of different people utilizing her conversational tactics she keeps getting scraps of information here and there that amasses into her being able to keep track of whats going on around here. She’s also a specific type of criminal that other criminals feel safe around since she isn’t prone to wildly lashing out or doing overtly aggressive action. Given her reputation for having  code of family honor among her gang, people just feel like they can trust her with the more illicit side of the market. We’re not sure about her drug chains though, we do know a specific drug she acquires that is an illegal sedative is coming from Thenica’s Shetou controlled continent. The other chains she doesn’t seem to be restocking as of late. I suppose we can tell which one is selling well, apparently she supplies Ohalyn with these most frequently.

We’ve looked into a few low-mana areas on the grid in search of the mana batteries to very little luck. An example of which is just finding a place where the resident works himself half to death for twelve hours a day so isn’t home to use too much power. We have a scanner we borrowed from 40th Day to look for any  weirdly high mana concentrations but we didn’t find anything on that either. I believe that either these batteries are being used in close proximity to something else that generates a large amount of mana to hide from scans or they’re spread out as singular batteries all over the place for some other purpose perhaps. That or are just shielded from scans. Though I find it unlikely that the Revenants would be behind this, they definitely think of themselves as some sort of hero. It is unlikely they would be willing to use slave batteries.

As for Ohalyn, we know she likes money so buying her out might work though that would cost enough money to ensure that it remains more profitable for her to avoid the practice than to continue it. Its kind of hard to get a read on her since she’s a workaholic that is always in her brothel slash bar, which makes it difficult to understand what kind of person she is outside of her business. If she hasn’t moved into a nicer place with the money she’s making we’re not sure what she’s doing with it all and its unlikely that she is trying to get on top of the criminal food chain. We know she has a business relationship with Laura and has shown no signs of wanting King’s position in the hierarchy. After some effort, Aryn managed to find out that she uses the Solvang banks to store all her money which is the end of the trail we can track.

Meanwhile, back in Sol, Vanjin finally arrived at the Solvang station to look for details on that missing ship. It was headed to a frontier colony on R4-1….you may notice its suspicious that its on the planet closest to the star in a system with no planets. Also its an unnamed system. It turns out this colony is built inside of a large asteroid, and is likely doing something covert there. The colony is funded by a minor house from Kar’Soluth. It is a very short distance away from Da Xian, the first system to see Shetou colonization efforts around the unbound star. One would even call it ‘within striking proximity’. We know the ship went missing in transit on the way there but not exactly when given the fact it was probably not sending logs for a particular reason or another. Vanjin has been questioning around the station and believes the ship was captured by pirates not too far into its journey. Said pirates then sold the ship and its crew off back through Solvang channels but it gets lost in the sheer volume of transactions with very little identifying details. So its likely that the engineer in question is back in Sol somewhere. Vanjin went through the bounty contacts to get a description of the engineer and is fairly sure they would have been sold into the luxury slave trade. So now she’s looking around for details into that.

As you can see she’s a bit too busy to look into pirate matters back here around Auwana.

As for smaller scale recreational drug producers, there are a few groups around Koura who are doing so but they’re not illegal so they don’t have as much need to skulk around the underworld with us. Looking into matters back in Alnae prisons would require us to send someone back to Sol, or to redeploy Vanjin from her current objective.

One more thing, the Astral Order wants to fund us hiring the Nomads once again. Aryn did a good job of convincing them to come back despite how things ended with Halaestra. So…they’re back but we had to forward the payment they missed when Halaestra took off.

Well that’s interesting, Gunhild captured what appears to be the subterranean alien queen. Though that term was placed on it by us due to similarities to Sol life forms. It would be more accurate to say it is the builder of the other organisms rather than the mother. It apparently puts them together like golems and then leaves them to incubate until they start moving on their own.

Reviewing the footage we have of the central hive chamber we found this creature in, the creatures appear to be assembled and wrapped in what becomes their skin. They look like just bags of flesh filled with stuff at first but the footage shows some mid-way through incubation. Its as if they start to take shape and come to life during the process and fill out their flesh bags properly over time. The creature doesn’t really use language, so even the tongues spell app doesn’t help us figure out how to communicate with it. Though we have reason to believe its not the only one on that planet. Vamon has been scanning and found other areas around the planet that show similar scales of biomatter concentration underground.

Despite this creature’s capture, the fighting still continues with the aliens as it did not display any hive control mechanisms. It just seemed to make things and send them to various locations where they could lie dormant. That’s about as much as we could figure out with our available resources on the planet. We might consider shipping the alien samples back to Somnus for analysis, though I don’t know who handles that. It would be faster to send it back to Sol though if we wanted results quicker to figure out how to end this war with the aliens earlier as people are dying the longer this takes us to do. We’ve also lost one of the mechs.

Stories Of Lore 3

This is Exme Faythe reporting live from the studio here on Thenica. The Kar’Soluth have announced that one of the most wanted criminals in the system was discovered to be operating at a frontier outpost named Somnus, a space station located in the Z-68 system, also known as Auwana.

This is Reika Kazamisha, a slave from the Vloz’Khress mines who incited a riot leading to her own escape. She is known to have killed Ilia Vel’Vloz’Khress, the former Val and matriarch of the Vloz’Khress clan. She has also been confirmed to have killed sixteen members of the Vloz’Khress family and over three hundred and sixty two Vloz’Khress personnel. The Vloz’Khress have assured us that the standing bounty of twenty billion credits for her head still stands to this day.

According to our resources, she is operating openly as a member of a group known as the Astral Order, living on Somnus station. Sol Media would like to remind viewers that it does not encourage the pursuit of bounties. Reika is extremely dangerous and should be approached with caution – if at all.

We also learned that Somnus station has recently reached out to Alnae in order to have an embassy with the empire opened on its station. We reached out to Grand Marshal Kaylen Yuriko though she declined to comment. All members of the high council could not be reached either.

Song Clan has moved to intercept Sarghess’ incursion on SV2 beta. The fighting has begun and the war-torn colony is now plunged into war once more as forces from House Song and House Sarghess clash in its streets. More on situation as it unfolds.

The Valdir Empire has been reported to be colonizing three additional planets already, notably forming a line as you can see here, moving deeper into the galaxy.

Not sure if you keep up with the news..but Hylavi’s job is about to get a lot harder.

They left some details out when it comes to the prototype cruiser. You’ll get there fast but you won’t be in good shape when you do…unless you’re First Officer Riley apparently.

Anyways, Hylavi has gone digging into Raiben Hayl a little more. He’s currently in Hylavi’s holding cells and his assets are being broken up as best as possible though it would seem some of his conspirators were quick to run off with the money while throwing him under the bus. I find it mildly surprising that such men think themselves harmless criminals compared to violent pirates, yet have vastly less loyalties than those of the dirtier sort. Maybe there is something to be said about bonds forged through combat.

As for the university idea, Renjala doesn’t seem interested in creating such a thing for fear of angering the other powers that be in Sol. Which is a fair point, the first alien to learn pandem from us is bound to become a target. As well as whoever taught it to them.

There may be some interest from the jydoq in the sanctuary of Somnus, if nothing else Hylavi probably makes them feel like it could be a good idea. Though we’d have to help transport them here, keeping in mind very few people who are in a bad position also have the ability to just pick up and move elsewhere. That being said, until the hydroponic towers reach production levels we might want to slow down on just inviting everyone in before we start running out of sustenance for everyone like the rest of the galaxy. Especially with ARK transporting refugees here in their freighter.

I went to Estelcar on Thenica to speak with Kaylen. She’s at least easy to talk to, and seems willing to send someone as an ambassador to keep in touch or help out with things between us and them. Since we have a bunch of empty buildings that wasn’t too hard to sell since someone just has to show up. One of the nicer places have been renovated to provide a facility for this embassy. Currently they sent a small staff including Ambassador Nelan Elwys.

As for domesticating the local fauna, we have a few researchers working on that. Though that could take some patience I am told as they try to domesticate and breed a new form of life into something we’d be able to eat in any particular quantity.

Construction work on AZ68-4 has begun, though it might need a proper name once it has a formal colony and no one wants to refer to it by its serial number anymore.

The offices on Koura have been made into a proper government office. Though I’m not sure it counts as provisional since we definitely own that place.

As for the matter of the Cult Warlord, Hylavi is currently searching for the assassin’s who tried to kill her. Though they have been particularly hard to find. With the exception of their attack they disappeared without a trace. We know one is elven and female though the other could be a golem for all we know. Hylavi suspects they have civilian identities instead of hiding in a dark corner, though that just makes it harder if they’re actually good at hiding their identities like that. We are already doing a lot to track what is going on around Somnus and Koura and Hylavi thinks the only way to really track those two down would be to create even more paperwork and security checkpoints to keep track of people’s movements to try and find any suspicious activity. Though the colonists at large would probably not appreciate that, as many do come to the frontier to escape larger more controlling governments.

We’ve been keeping Cassir under intense watch to make sure no one is sneaking up on her. Though she has left the station already so there’s only so much we can do at that point. It is unknown if her assassin’s followed or are still here on the station. Apparently these are old enemies of Tyne and Whitetalon, though they never could really figure out who they were either.

Okay but quick question, were we ever conservative with who we accepted as squires and students? I’m pretty sure its an open-enrollment program.

We’ve won the survey report, apparently by a factor of 24,999,998. Someone bid with an extra 2 credits it looks like. Cheeky, yet calculated in case someone else did the exact same thing. Here’s the initial survey report.

So far our alien slave friend is just being a matter of trying to communicate with them. With Hylavi’s help we’ve been able to deduce it is a grouchy thing that keeps threatening to kill us soon as it gets out. So hope you’re having fun with that. It appears to be a soldier from an alien race that is actually on the Sol’s list as ‘actually dangerous’. Many alien civilizations are not as powerful as we are militarily or their anatomy just doesn’t suit warfare as well as ours does. This thing looks like it’ll fuck up a dragonborn. We’re not actually sure how it got captured in the first place. It definitely seems very aware of what happened to its ambassadors last year though.

The third lance continues its campaign with Madhammer across the planet, and they have found some level of intelligence though definitely towards the minor side of the scale. It’s more comparable to an octopus. The underground dwellers have a multi species civilization like  hours, though those at the top are really just a little clever not quite writing with language or anything. Do with that what you will, in the meantime Madhammer bombed thousands of them out of existence already.

Reika took the first lance to confront the Jaal’darya. It turns out to be a politically complicated situation. The Jaal’Darya decided to just leave when confronted by Reika instead of requiring much direct bloodshed. Though it is inevitable that Kar’Soluth will be taking an interest in our order and Somnus station soon given her notoriety among the Vloz’Khress.

In other news, I got an email asking if we would be willing to do an interview with Sol Media. I will remind you, you are a lich.

Company reports, 40th Day has been extracting samples of the atmosphere from AZ68-3. It appears to be a gaseous form of the arcane disintegration effect, which is why it is so spectacularly destructive. The magical effect can already be replicated with a spell, though the sheer mass of it that is in the atmosphere is definitely bizarre. Other gases in the atmosphere are responsible for the signal blocking however which has created the current mixture. Armed with this knowledge, a survey team was able to send a probe to the ground that was automated to return despite the lack of signal. It was discovered that the disintegration cloud only exists in the upper atmosphere. While that is a very thick layer, the ground itself does not have this effect. The cloud is magical in nature so does not effect the rain. It was suggested that the cloud is basically impassable without very serious scientific effort, though we could get onto the much safer surface by use of a pandem rift from another plane. Just…wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone while there. The atmosphere below the cloud is not quite right for habitation but at least it doesn’t melt your skin off in seconds. The oxygen content is too high, so just adding some other stuff and filtering out some other contaminants makes it habitable enough.

Az68-4 efforts have begun with the construction of a basic colony with which to use as a base for attempted seedings later. There are definitely a lot of possibilities with this planet overall. The only real issue is the reason it’s so cold is that it’s quite far from the system’s star so we’ve been experimenting with things that don’t need quite as much sunlight.

The New Age laboratories are continuing their experiments on the strange creatures we captured samples of. With Vasia’s pet projects doing well. Currently the laboratories are making room for Vasia’s new test subjects that are being…imported with some help from their new friend Ohalyn. Also there is that whole report she gave a presentation of at the recent meeting. I’m not going to pretend to fully understand it.

ARK has been beginning to look for the rogue cults and bring them to Auwana. Cassir has been spooking a few of them, as many signed up for yoga instead of being a part of a crazy war cult. Though the enlightened seem to like her.

Speaking of which, Cassir has taken one of the starships alongside her closer crew to go and deal with some rogue elements out there. She is currently in transit.

Currently Linsun doesn’t seem all that eager to help sponsor a university on some colony deep into the frontier. They’ve historically used their universities as a position of power to exert over the other houses of Shetou which establishing one on Somnus wouldn’t quite do. Not to mention with the state of things, not sure how many people are all that concerned with their higher education. If anything trade schools are doing well, particularly the trade ‘hunting edible monsters on alien worlds’.

As for space to begin the university, that might be easier on Koura, simply  since space is at a premium aboard a space station. Technically there are some areas it could be done, just more expensive. Depends what everyone really wants to get done.

Related to this, getting a skyscraper on Koura is plausible…but I’m not sure the cult can use all of it. Then again who knows what kind of paramilitary force it might become if Cassir has her way.

We’re looking for the Revenants once again, though they are still elusive. Our closest thing to a lead is that the crime boss Laura King seems to know something about them. She also seems to know something about the parasitic infection and is making us choose between the pieces of knowledge for now. If we cannot extract the information Laura knows, we at least know that the Revenants are in some way tied to the criminal underworld to move around and get what they need. There is a high chance they rely on Laura directly and if we keep an eye on things around there they might reveal a list of candidates to us. How many elves can Laura really be meeting with?

On that topic, contact with Laura has been interesting. Though its worth remembering she has taken down rivals before by joining them. She is a clever person but those are often the most dangerous. Though as it stands right now, she does not know who we are and is likely to try and figure that out as time goes on even if she is being cooperative. When we recruited Sophia we only had to pull her out of prison, she had very few options from there and just went with whatever we told her. She was a natural #2. Laura is a matured crime boss on the other hand, and may be a little more difficult to control. We could watch her attempts to deduce who we are as a sort of test of her abilities, or just keep her in the dark as to maintain distance from someone who specializes in being an information broker. Alternatively, she does have a record of appreciating loyalty and some code of honor among thieves so bringing her into the fold more fully might make her a little more endeared to us. Up to you.

Raiben is currently in jail for an indefinite period of time. Somnus’ justice system isn’t too specific and Hylavi is just holding onto him while doing the math over the matter as slowly as possible. Contact with him has been far more predictable. He would of course take any offer we make him that gets him out of holding and back to making money. He is pure greed and selfishness, and lacks the physical danger crime lords like Laura have at their disposal. easy to predict or control as desired if you really want him around here playing with faking taxes and the economy of the system. Though we would have to get Lancaster to let him out.

Ohalyn has been approached by Vasia for actual business purposes so we just kept track of her report on the adventure to see what we can learn about Ohalyn. It’s quite evident that Ohalyn is of the ‘dead inside’ type of criminal and that has made her merciless. Her slave trade has reached into all aspects of the profession. While this isn’t anything new, this may affect Alnae’s ability to look the other way. The Astral Order’s version of slavery might be okay, and taking in prisoners or voluntary slaves might be easy enough for Alnae to accept. Though Ohalyn is definitely stocking people that have been outright abducted, and also prepping some to become mana batteries. That last one is something Alnae has a very strong stance against. However that leads to another problem…if there are mana batteries we don’t know about in the Auwana system, what are they powering? There are no battleships besides ARK’s parked in the area or mysterious colonies we don’t have any insight to. Using slaves as mana batteries is also a way to keep off the power grid so no one can see how much you are using.

Vanjin is currently en route to the Solvang station in the Sol system. She still has our membership credentials so should be fine. She will report back once she gets over there. However, Aryn points out she unfortunately cannot confirm what the Siwa factory was making as that specific facility is on a closed network. Though she was able to pull up past assets that have been moved into less discreet hands to get an idea. She’s actually pretty sure this particular factory is a layered front. It appears to be an arms manufacturer, but underneath it is producing and selling slightly more illegal weapons. Particularly viruses both physical and cybernetic in nature. However, that is also likely just to explain why its being kept a secret. Aryn found a few records still flying around Sol that indicate it has received shipments from third parties for resources that are not used in the production of…really any of that. Said shipments are not inherently that strange, but if you compare it to the things we know the factory has produced it doesn’t quite match up. That being said we just might not be catching everything they make, though judging by the shipment quantities, there is something strange going on in there and no criminal elements seem to have any idea what it is. At least not the ones we can get in touch with. It’s as if the factory is producing a lot of something that it isn’t selling to anyone.

As for the drugs on 105th, most come from independent manufacturers on Thenica. Some of which is actually from our old friend Aberhoff’s factories. Some of the more recreational ones are grown here since we have less restrictions on those kinds of things as other settlements and its easier to do so that way. The coffee comes from a plantation in Shetou space. The drug store’s records aren’t as shady as most other things we’re dealing with and a quick check in their inventory records seems legit. Notably, there are certain drugs they don’t have, but Laura King does. The really really illegal kind, used not for recreation but assault. We’re not sure where she’s getting those from as obviously she doesn’t even keep inventory records.

The war with the underground bug monsters is going…well. We’ve lost about a sixty five men so far, though have killed thousands of them for it. Granted they are just bug monsters for lack of a better word. As the battle goes on, we’re seeing more advanced tactics being deployed by the enemy. They’ve also become less of a passive seismic seeking threat and started to launch ambushes on our forces in the middle of the night.

Our continued adventures also include finding some much larger versions of these creatures. Samples have been handed over to the colony that originally hired us to see if they have any researchers who might discern something about their anatomy. Apparently they can exist in a form of hibernation, which might be why they’re just buried all over the place waiting to pop out.

Their counter attacks have been growing steadily more and more thought out though, and the types of monsters that appear seem to be different as if adapting to what we’re doing to eliminating them.

Stories of Lore 2

This is Exme Faythe, reporting from Thenica today. After the recent death of so…so very many people of Alnae high command, a council vote was enacted to grant the title of Grand Marshall to Kaylen Yuriko. Many are supportive of the prodigal general’s promotion, though some criticize her inexperience. At ninety four years old, she is the youngest Grand Marshall in Alnae history. Prior to the invasion of Sol, she was only a colonel and commanded only one brigade. Though she has seem some success in the field, previous Grand Marshall’s had lost more battles than she has ever seen. However, the Alnae high command has been repeatedly targeted and now there are few candidates left to take on the position. In a risky gamble, the High Council have decided to elect a grand marshall with enough individual prowess to prevent her own assassination instead of based purely on command experience.

Kar’soluth has made bold invasions onto Shetou territory on SV2-Beta, attempting to take control of a major city belonging to House Sharen. House Sarghess has successfully taken control of the city in a surprise attack. With most of the citizens still bearing loyalties to House Sharen, it is unlikely it will be attacked from orbit and Jaal’Darya have moved troops overtly into House Song’s territory. Threatening a great danger to the territory if House Song moves to assist Sharen. The situation is still developing.

Valdir has continued to ignore everyone and keep flying elsewhere in the galaxy and they will not respond to any of my emails as to where they are actually going.

Attempts to rebuild lost areas are going slowly, the famine brought about by the invasion has gotten worse as factions burn each other’s farmlands simply to win the battle even if that results in no one having food in the end. Newly formed organizations amid this chaotic environment are being referred to by the formal empires as “gangs”. In truth, many of them operate as normal small governments trying to find self sufficiency in a time of crisis. Though just as many find that sufficiency preying on the others.

More and more civilians are seeking to flee to the colonies on the frontier for hope of a better living situation, though few can afford transportation to reach these places or hope to begin a new life there.

That’s all for this week, now to cosmology and then sports!

Well this has all been eventful. Khymin is currently overseeing the construction down in Koura in the wake of all this mess. We’ve already seen some interesting numbers among the infected. It seems that most of them were definitely present in that little uprising they had, but about one percent of the population have immature parasites. Which we are…dealing with. Related to this research, the wildlife show high infection rates and do bring up the question of how many species are actually alien wildlife and how many are mutated variants of the same wildlife. We have found that the mutations in the wildlife are less dramatic, or at least to our senses. I believe the parasites have a certain compatibility with the local creatures and have not yet figured out human anatomy and how to make it do what they want. Though we’re not sure what they want. So current medical advice to the citizens is not to meander outdoors with open wounds, and only drink the colony water.

Apparently the parasites’ hosts are compelled to help deliberately spread them, though not with any particularly master plan. They just run up and vomit parasites into open wounds…as lovely a thought that is. Though they only do this once the infected host has eggs to give. This does not seem to be the primary way people have been getting infected though, otherwise that would have been kind of an obvious report. The parasite is designed for the local wildlife not people, so something else is likely to be the cause of it getting into regular people.

Also we’ve managed to tunnel out the area beneath the colony to allow shuttles to be deployed through the rift. It isn’t a pretty operation but the rift will likely move soon anyways. At least we can get to it right now.

With some conferring with Hylavi, she points out that right now the problem with the intelligent alien races is that they see us as a very direct threat. However, the jydoq people are the second closest galactic neighbor and in shambles right now. It could be worth finding more of them to bring aboard our station to further our image as being friendly towards the galactic community. However, the jydoq are notoriously reclusive compared to other races and have been assimilating into Sol for reasons unknown. So maybe not the best first choice.

As for attracting them to us, it definitely doesn’t help that we have enough firepower here to pose a serious threat to any of their fleets that might want to come poking around. I actually feel like they won’t no matter how appealing we make ourselves unless we make contact with them enough to plant the seed of potential. Hylavi mentioned that it also depends which aliens you want to attract. Trade obviously attracts those interested in money, though if we just started teaching every alien that came through about pandem magic we could attract the powers of the galaxy. If nothing else their militaries would be very interested. Though that might also attract the Ire of some of the greater powers of Sol. If we manage to anger Alnae and Shetou at the same time by just giving away our system’s greatest weapon against alien threats, our station won’t be around for very long though. So no visitors.

On that end, Caitlyn has assembled her crew and taken off into the stars to see what she might be able to find.

As for contacting a cruiser-capable shipyard, there are three manners of doing this all of which having some complications. Independent shipyards in it for the profit are producing at full capacity with orders to last for ages, though many of these contracts are owned by the larger governments. The problem with this is that we just have to wait until they have some room to spare, that or outbid current contracts for a higher place in the queue, apparently a common practice by now. If you want to get into a silent bidding war with them, you are free to just pick a number and throw it at them to see where you get.

The second is by appealing through larger agencies who typically produce for themselves but at such capacity that our requests might just be a side venture for them. There are a few options though House Sharen is the most obvious candidate as they specialize in building ships. In combining our earlier discussion, you could try to appeal towards Alnae instead since you’re already planning to adopt some of their customs. A good step here would be to send someone to establish relations with them, maybe help them with a few things so that they’re more interested in the strange colony far out in the middle of nowhere.

The third, and cheapest option, is to buy them from Solvang. There is actually a battleship for sale on the black market right now too. Posting bounties on specific classes of ship would entice them to go and get one to sell to us, likely at a cost lower than actually producing the ship. It would be used of course, and such activities would illicit some attention from less savory sorts that we may wish to avoid.

Final option would just be to invest in the shipyards here at Somnus until they are large enough to meet our requests.

So we bought turrets.

When it comes to Koura city, it actually has more then it can use. Its original investors put too much into it with the hopes that it would grow quicker so now it has entire skyscrapers that stand empty. So we moved into one of those and had some furniture made for it. As it currently stands Koura needs people more than anything else. Which we lost quite a few of in the recent parasite swarming. Not that the story of such events is going to be good for attracting more colonists. There is actually a very easy option here. Half the slaves on the market, if not more than half, are regular people abducted from the ruins of the invasion. If we just bought them and set them free in Koura they wouldn’t really have anywhere else to go. Also we could ‘rescue’ people from those same worlds with the offer that they can just come live here if they stay here.

Though before we get carried away with that idea, it could use more food sources. Right now, as it is an alien planet, most things we might try to grow just die in the semi-toxic atmosphere. We currently use warehouses to grow food for the people but that does have a limit giving how much warehouse space that would take. Not to mention the power bill. We have found a few things to be edible to humanoids across the planet but they are not domesticated properly so produce poor yield and frankly taste terrible. The…less fortunate colonists eat the rations made of those.

So I suppose the real problem is food sources. After that the rest will sort of fall into place with easier solutions. It could also use a police force as what they have currently are equivalent to mall guards. Somnus has better security but its also a smaller and more controlled area.

Also we put out an ad campaign back in Sol as you asked.

We’ve handed out the Selona weapons as instructed and thrown the other in the armory. Also winter says that a mechanical eyelid would be basically a piece of leather and a string, you could just run the string down your coat to your arm so you can pull it discreetly as desired.

On the upside of buying all those slaves, building places for them to live on Koura is already done. The city has entire empty apartment buildings, so we just bought out one of those instead of building one from the ground up. The bulk of slaves we acquired went with citizenship, I suppose that’s to be expected with how many of them get abducted from the ruins of their old life and already have certain expectations.

The scribe work has actually been able to just find out who most of these people are, though reuniting them with lost families might be a significant undertaking simply because we don’t know where most people in Sol are at the moment. However, it does occur to me that we could leverage this a little more if Lancaster’s desire to open relations with Alnae remains firm. Since slavery is specifically illegal in Alnae but not Shetou, buying up all the elven slaves we can and then reuniting them with lost ones would be a good way to improve our standing with Alnae. We could also just go kidnap every elf we find on the ruined worlds since odds are very high that they’re from Alnae every time, saves money and we can just take down slaver gangs wile we’re at it. This would do well for the order’s reputation.

Alright this is a lot of money going into a temporary research station for a rift that y’know…moves. Though on the upside you got to stick your head into it, so that’s always fun.

Rhea can cover the scanning of the planets since they’re the ones we had do the extra surveying. Not the most exciting places, though I suppose we do live on the only one that was really significant already.

As for the Alnae war with itself, things have taken a bit of a swing though we aren’t sure if its for better or worse yet. Not sure if you saw the news but they appointed a new grand marshal, and not the most popular appointment since she’s so young. Though she is a zankist grandmaster apparently, one of three in the whole system. At least zankists tend to be fairly level headed. There is opportunity there, she was appointed largely because she’s all that is left standing. Might’ve been about four options for Alnae and she won out just because she’s the least likely to die any time soon. Young zankist master has a higher survival rate than old crotchety officers I suppose. So she doesn’t have that many merits or friends to her name yet, even if we are a small station by comparison to the Alnae Empire now is a good time to make friends with someone who has very few.

Also I already play guitar thank you very much, its a side hobby.

We do have some civilian members among the order who have a measure of talent with screwdrivers. They could look into this whole steam power thing of yours, though I’m not sure how useful that will be. It’s a start though.

House Sarghess is currently invading House Sharen, also covered in the news. We know they’re with Kar’Soluth and are currently trying to reduce Sharen’s fleet superiority that forced Kar’Soluth into inaction in the first place. As you may recall, the Kar Soluth traditionalist expected the oldest house of Sharen to join them in splitting away from Shetou. They did not actually check before they made any declarations, likely in an effort to make sure Sharen would not be the ruling house in Kar’Soluth by default if they were fully involved as the Vloz’Khress. In perhaps a bit of a twist for the drow, it turned out the Sharen were just a little more liberal than they expected. As such Sarghess is tasked with crippling the Sharen as much as possible to level the playing field into what they expected during the split. If we wanted goodwill with them, we could just attack something valuable in Shetou.

As for Alexander’s fire elemental, isn’t it technically a member already? It’s hanging out in its home plane but it shows up whenever Alexander calls it, which is everytime we need it for getting anything done.

So far our lances that have joined with Madhammer have found no signs of intelligence in the creatures that are harassing the colony but there are suspicions that deeper underground lurks something that has put a lot more thought into this then the monsters it sends to the surface.

Speaking of joint operations, Si Yeon asked if we could look into the idea of pandem rifts implanting parasites in people due to her most recent findings being a little clunky.

Upon looking into details on this ship we’ve found some more details that paint a better picture. The ship in question was a freighter going from SZ4 to System V1, also known as Bellar. It hasn’t been made quite apparent to which planet in the system it was aiming for, but Bellar does have a lot of independent colony efforts going at the same time. It disappeared somewhere along its path of transit with its last known location being only a few systems out of Sol. Pirates are suspected to be involved due to the proximity to Sol when the incident seems to have occurred. It was noted that the engineer who is the target of the bounty is actually the child of someone rather wealthy. Which also explains the distinct lack of interest in the posting about the ship or any crew members. It is a good payout though.

That being said, as you mentioned with the secrecy, there is likely something else afoot there that isn’t included in the scope of the posting. SZ4 is host to a single factory owned by Siwa industries and no one really knows what is going on in there. It is questionable why a ship with impressively little documentation was traveling from it towards independent colonies.

Aryn suspects that the ship’s departure location might have drawn pirates to it in hopes of some sort of payday. Which may or may not bode well for the crew we’re actually interested in. Though she notes that finding out what happened to the engineer specifically might best be pursued through our still-standing Solvang membership. If anyone cares to visit their station at least.

Among the various crime gangs on the station its hard to decide who is actually a criminal or not due to the nebulous state of laws that the station currently has. The drug trade is able to operate openly, they have a corner store down on 105th actually. The store is just specialized to ‘chemical alterations to your state of mind’. Its best seller is actually just coffee. Though you can get some pretty hard recreational drugs there too. Same can be said of the arms market.

Most of the criminal organizations haven’t done that much yet, there’s plenty of space here and on Koura so gang violence hasn’t quite broken out even if there’s a bunch of mean looking guys who hang out on some street corner or another. In our investigations we found three notable people who act as a more central network for questionable activities so I suppose that makes them local crime lords in a way. You can find them over in the files.

So far Leon and Vaeri haven’t had much issue dealing with the criminals since we haven’t decided any formal course of action and they’re all pretty small in scope with how new the station and city are. Fortunately for Somnus, its current freedoms mean even the really dangerous criminals are taking it easy for now. Such as pirates who are just passing through to lay low for awhile.

Not quite the same as criminals but as it turns out those Revenant fellows are back, it appears they’re chasing after Cassir. The new figurehead of the cult of lucidity. Last time we saw them they had assassinated Zex successfully. It appears that despite the gauntlet dissolving, our old friends are still holding a few grudges. Apparently bringing her onto the station brought with it some old rivals. I’m sure Lancaster is going to love this.

The surveys have found evidence of a lot of lifeless rocks, though that is to be expected in space. Most stars have nothing particularly habitable. I’m a little disappointed we don’t have any gas giants though, those are always fun to throw probes into.

Anyways, there is a slight complication.  AZ68-3 scans reveal there to be life along the planet and some drones with scrying beacons on them were sent to get a closer look. They were able to discover large scale animals and trees and rare metals were also found to be surprisingly abundant. However, the corrosive atmosphere is so hostile that it chews straight through arcane barriers with ease and rendered standard probes into scrap. So we started throwing random things in there to see what might resist the corrosion. So far the answer is glass. Also apparently it doesn’t corrode gold or quartz, not that we can really make a ship out of that. We also threw some meat down there, it fared worse than the drones. Afterwards a glass encased scanner was sent down and we discovered a new interesting property. The atmosphere blocks long range signals. Including the ones needed to tell the probe to come back up. I think we should throw Vasia out the airlock at it and see what she finds, since spirits won’t be affected by the atmosphere.

AZ68-4’s previous scan data from the original colonizers of this system left out a very important detail. It is a golden world, correct atmosphere, correct gravity, everything humanoids need to just put up a tent and start surviving. Except food. It doesn’t have food. Its an empty wasteland that settled at just the right levels to be habitable to us with no effort. I guess its a blank canvas if we really wanted to try to do something on a planet that cold?

When it comes to a xenobiology expert, I think we might be best off looking for an actual xeno. Hylavi knows more about aliens than anyone in Sol, even if not specifically their biology. There’s bound to be an alien doctor or something out there.

Salied has been moved down to the new containment chamber along with Vasia in order for some quick experiments to be done while the rift is still in that general location. The labs have been experimenting on the new samples we’ve acquired. Turns out they don’t like fire, what a surprise.

After Renjala poked his head through the pandem rift what we’ve learned is that some sort of sahad based life form is there and not immediately hostile. Vasia has done her best to translate what she’s learned and describes the creature as something of a very patronizing resident of the nearby star on its own end. Though perhaps creator of the star would be more accurate. It sees us as something with no business being in there and has no real intention of letting us poke around though at least it doesn’t convey that by immediately throwing Renjala into said star. Though we’re not sure how powerful it actually is by our standards and if passage could be…’negotiated’. Though its clear that it will only talk to those with sahad knowledge, in our case that limits us to Vasia and Cerys. Though Cerys is hanging out on some other planet killing underground bugs or something I heard. So we have Vasia. Also whoever the Astral order sends to actually open the rift as none of us can do that.

Related to New Age, Vasia says you need to buy her some slaves for experimentation purposes still. That or just send scouts across the galaxy looking to be in the right place at the right time to capture anyone who gets exposed to sahad in an uncontrolled environment and hope for the best of luck on that one. As for the many creatures we’ve suddenly come to acquire, we haven’t learned too much new that is of use. Just that the parasites and the weird monsters that came through the pandem rift have similar traits that further imply they’re both from beyond the rift and possibly related to this entity on the other side.

As for the xenobiologist idea, we have literally nothing. We were also cautioned by our neighbors down here on the lowest deck to not hire anyone with any manner of experience in the field whatsoever. Something about conspiracies and terrifying people. Our actual most qualified individual we even know about is Hylavi, because she’s at least seen some aliens. There is some merit perhaps to searching for alien civilizations who might be able to help since no one in Sol really does the whole ‘galactic community’ thing thus far.

Vamon is off with Madhammer once again surveying underground things while shooting weird monsters. He lives an exciting life I feel. As for if he has any “acquaintances” he has several. None that Lancaster would approve of coming onto the station regularly.

Also, Cassir is here on Somnus now. The “warlord” as they call her. She’s already creeping people out…she has kind of an intensity to her you could say. As of late, she and her cultists have just been sitting around eating all the food they can find in every restaurant they can find.

We’ve sent the first and second company to engage in the extermination of the subterranean threat over on another colony. It’s going smoothly so far though we’ve only just recently landed and are starting to grasp the full measure of the situation. The current theory of Gheir is that whatever lurks down below is a bit more clever than its given credit for and what we’re mostly dealing with right now are weaponized…scout things.

I don’t get it either. Another theory running around is that they mature over time into something bigger and scarier. We’ve managed to scan for a deeper layer in the planet where we found a network of tunnels but they’re all burrowed through and into the dirt so it isn’t a rock cave we can just send troops through. Right now we’ve just been hitting various areas with artillery to see what pops up, then hitting it with more artillery and some gunfire. All in all, going pretty well. I can’t really comment much since I’m still here at Koura City dealing with the parasite problem. However, we have a problem on that front. The infection rates are climbing and people I previously cleared are coming back having now been infected.

These creatures are still spreading somehow annnd I’m not really sure how. At all. We’ve checked the water, the food, the sewers, the tendency of people to cough on each other, everything. However the eggs are still being transmitted somehow and I can’t really find anything these people have in common other than the fact that they live in the same area of the city.

Whiiich leads to my next problem. So…I apparently got infected too and I’m not really sure how. I wear hazard gear and everything. Fortunately I was able to remove it…and then I got infected AGAIN. At this point I’m willing to humor the idea of pandem rift parasites just manifesting inside people’s bodies for no reason and I’m gonna throw Renjala over at it.

Stories of Lore 1

Well this has all been frighteningly eventful. *Sigh* I suppose we might as well start with the alien infestation. At the very least, its not a major threat yet. The assault on Koura City and Somnus Station did shockingly little damage for how widespread the attack was. Though perhaps the invasion of Sol gave us a different sense of scale for how bad an attack can be, I must be getting jaded in my years.

We’ve discovered that there are three components to the assault though we don’t fully grasp the meaning of it. One section are comprised of parasite-ridden civilians, another are just mutated civilians for no particular reason as they do not have parasites. The final problem are the wild alien monsters that came from another plane with little to no warning and formed an immediate relationship with those already present.

Current findings indicate that the parasites do not possess an advanced intellect, so we’re not sure how they spread through so much of the population without being noticed. The highest concentration of infections seem to be based on various epicenters that have very little in common. The pattern would indicate intentional spreading of the infection but as I said, the parasites have demonstrated no sign of advanced enough sentience to put together a plan like that. The monsters from this other plane also show little sign of coherent thought beyond a pack-like behavior with the parasites, of which they share little to nothing in common with.

Amidst all this, we discovered a natural pandem rift beneath the city to a plane that the Astral Knights declared ‘new to us’. Within it we found a planet just slightly out of synchronized orbit with Koura. I am told that it will align again in about seventy six years. So maybe we just don’t have to bother with it and just build a big room around the rift to contain it once that time comes. Unfortunately, the parasites share similar genetic structure to the aliens from beyond the plane even if they aren’t closely related. However, these creatures have been on this world for at least a thousand years. Likely more, but that’s as far as the survey teams could date anything back to so far. To their credit, this is an alien world they’re trying to perform paleontology on within a year of arriving. So at least we know the parasitic worm creatures have been here for quite some while.

In terms of options, I would say this requires a longer term plan. The parasites infest the entire planet and ridding it of all of them is not feasible without terraforming it enough to kill them. Which is an option, there is a colonizing company based here on Somnus we could ask to do it. However, that could also damage the other forms of organic life on the planet and then we’re left with a rock in space we have a city and a station over for no apparent reason other than maybe mining.

I would say our least destructive course of option is to instead focus scientific and medical research towards protecting ourselves from being infected by any more of these things. I do not know how that would work or how many resources it would take but devoting about three million to setting up a specialized research lab to focus on the matter might yield some results we could then analyze. Just enough to get a dedicated team hired and provide them with some equipment for now until we have more information about the matter. Though New Age has already taken an interest in researching these creatures even if their motives might not quite align with ours, might be able to get them to divert some effort into preventative measures for cheaper than establishing a new laboratory.

Of course there is also the most aggressive option, we invade the rift and see if blowing up everything on the other side ends the threat.  We do have a mercenary company on Koura who might be able to do so, and a small naval fleet presides nearby. Judging by the strength of the invasion that we faced, I have very little, and by that I mean just one, reason to believe we couldn’t accomplish this.

Speaking of which, when the Astral Order went through the portal they discovered that there is some sort of sahad aligned entity on the aforementioned planet in the mysterious plane. A very powerful and fast acting one, though given our limited understanding of sahad it is anyone’s guess how powerful ‘very powerful’ is and we only have Vasia’s recount of the events to fall back on to try and gauge the situation. Peaceful contact may be possible, we don’t know its general disposition as we avoided the encounter quickly. We could also attempt to infiltrate the plane a little more subtly than we experienced recently to try and gather more information. Then of course, just shoot it and see what happens if you wanted to to take a more simplistic approach.

On to the next matter, this is a note from Hylavi. During the conflict she discovered just how many ‘civilians’ are armed or capable of some sort of magic that can do an awful lot of damage. While we didn’t exactly ban personal weapons, it was alarming how many there were and how so many of them were clustered in very specific areas. Most notably the docks and a couple of particular city blocks. Hylavi tracked down an unassuming bar to be the epicenter of one such collection of these incidents. She has reason to believe that Somnus has drawn the interest of more than just colonists looking to explore new alien worlds on the frontier. Because of the station’s youthful age and lack of association to any standing governing body, we haven’t really set down a lot of laws about certain things and some individuals who may not be welcome in Alnae or Shetou seem to have taken an interest in the station for its ‘personal liberties’.

Okay in less political wording, Hylavi thinks there are a couple gangs here exploiting the lack of local laws on things that other governments have already taken a stance on. She doesn’t know much about such laws nor care enough to do anything about the matter unless ordered to, but she did still do the groundwork to figure out what was going on. One amusing example is the aforementioned bar, it sells almost every recreational drug imaginable. It does pay its taxes though. While it might be staffed by ‘ex’ gangsters from Sol, they’re mostly just acting as bouncers for the time being.

That being said another gang that lives on the starboard side of the city are a little more extreme. They’ve been using warehouse space in the lower decks to act as a massive vault for things I’m pretty sure they stole from Sol. Including people. Given that it is no easy feat to reach the station from Sol, these gangs who can make it here can be pretty far away from anyone who might want to pay attention from them.

We could ‘borrow’ some legal precedents from Alnae if we wanted to clean the station up a bit. Particularly like banning certain items or extending a treaty of extradition with other major governments in Sol and inviting some of their agencies to set up an embassy here to keep an eye on such things. Shetou, Kar’soluth, and Alnae number two through six being relevant options as well. This would definitely hurt us economically, though it would give us a chance to start a good relationship with any other empires we chose to consort with. Not to mention clean up the station from such activities, which would improve stability.

Alternatively we could extend the very same olive branch to these ‘startup companies’ and make sure they keep paying taxes as good law abiding citizens of Somnus. We just happen to never pass a law banning their business practices. This would be very economically beneficial for us, as groups like these tend to make a lot of profit if they can find a spot to settle in. As the galactic stage begins to expand we’re in a good position to become a major commerce sector if we just so happen to be one of ‘those’ places where you can go to find anything you want. It would probably leave us a little bit outcast from the standing empires though if we’re harboring people they’d like to see arrested and things might get a little more chaotic around the station. Though historically, that chaos brings with it an odd sense of security as no one wants to pick a fight with a station where everyone in it is armed all the time. Basically, we’d be like Tykel or Solvang Station. Places where people go to escape government oversight and get business done.

Ey boss, I’ve compiled the reports about that rift business. I’m sure you got most of it since you were there but just let me recap, I’m going somewhere with this.

So the rift goes to an unknown plane with a synchronized star but the orbits of its planets are not so walking through casually can be a bad idea. While the matter of some big Sahad spook roaming around isn’t really our business, the existence of the plane itself probably is. What’s a lil weird is that we can only enter the other plane from the rift down on Koura. No other attempts to access it from here on the station have worked. The immediate issue this creates is that accessing the plane would require a space worthy craft of some kind, and the rift is underground. So it would take a bit of effort to get a ship there. We might be able to move the rift’s apex position here in Zonaricth since its stable though that would require quite a bit of effort and research. If we’re just moving it up a short distance into space, that is at least reasonable feasible. Not like we need to tow it across the galaxy.

An easier passive solution, that rift’s position in space is not tied to the planet of Koura. It just so happens that soon after we got here a one in a million math equation happened and it popped into a place where it could release things. Last month it was just buried in the rock, and in another month it’ll be about sixty meters in the air. A month after that and it’ll be wildly floating through space. So we could just wait it out. Alexander wanted me to pitch the other idea though, I think he just wants to try moving it around to see if he can.

As for the things coming out of the rift, that was a one in a billion math equation…that will happen again in seventy eight years, one hundred and four days. Assuming my math is correct. At that exact moment the planets had a synchronized position and the rift wasn’t in the rock of either one, allowing things to slip through. Preventing this disaster scenario from happening again at that time is likely to just be a matter of making sure some people with guns figure out where it will be during the next apex intersection like that. Assuming the same kinds of things come through at least.

Data collected on this mysterious other plane has been sent to us and I’ve gone through the effort of having it printed onto paper for ease of access. Alexander believes that it shows signs most consistent with higher planes, particularly the astral one, though it rides the thinnest of lines between that classification and being more aligned with the middle planes. According to him, it was a difference of a single decimal place.  The greater concern about this rift business is how so many of those creatures got onto the station, since the rift was way down there inside the planet. It implies that something on the other side has some control over this phenomena and deliberately sent things onto the station rather than creatures just trickling in on accident.

Whether or not this is related to this whole sahad entity thing isn’t really my place to say. It could be them, it could be something else. This is a very unexplored territory. We’re not even sure how many things are on that planet in the first place, we only know that there is one notable creature on it who we have not even gotten the chance to see let alone interact with.

As for more local matters. The knights have all been pestering the new champion for sparring sessions. Reika isn’t particularly interested in sparring everything that moves, she’s not much of a glory seeker. She simply is glory incarnate and doesn’t have to try anymore. Either way this resulted in the men forming an tournament where the grand champion’s prize is to get their ass kicked by Reika for five seconds. If I didn’t know you people I would have sworn that was a fetish porn synopsis.

We moved in what? Three weeks ago? Already dealing with inter-dimensional parasite zombie monster hordes. On the other hand, hey we’ve only been here three weeks and already we have a case of inter-dimensional parasite zombie monsters to look into. New Age is having fun with that one at least.

40th day is currently docked as we were helping the station resolve this whole ‘underground horde’ thing with some of our scanning equipment. ARK is also on standby in the area.

New Age has suddenly acquired a lot of samples and many of them showing signs of sahad manipulation. Which is not a thing we really knew was possible but sahad magic has some method of manipulating life forms. Vasia says it makes sense, we’re all just made of space dust anyways. So space magic might have a few radical abilities in the creation department instead of just shooting lasers. Updates on that as more research is done. They have also acquired a young drow named Salied who is a witness of sahad usage. Though she shows extreme symptoms, far worse than what Cerys ever went through and we’re not entiiirely sure why. Working on that one too.

So that whole cult thing, they’ve been going through some rocky times what with the halving of civilization. After the assassination of Zex the cult had a severe lack of leadership at a time when it definitely needed it. In the wake of this chaos it created a power vacuum among the enlightened members of the cult who are aware of its true purpose, they in particular had a desire to continue the cult practices if nothing else for their own advantages. Without any guidance they’ve split into factions among different leaders. You may have noticed I am intentionally vague with my word choice there, because all of them have radically different titles. Zex held the title of Spokesperson, but now things are shifting just a little under the ministrations of the new leaders vying for power. If we don’t step in and deal with it they will likely split into new sects entirely and die out once they become thought of as the latest con. Without their unity they do seem a little scammy, especially if three different groups are all trying to get people to do the same thing for radically different reasons and approaches.

Anyways, the first of the new sects has given themselves the title of warlord. They’re a violent fanatic who have used the cult’s power to create super soldiers empowered by the meditation circles. This stemmed largely from the fear of the falling civilization around people. In exchange for protection and safe shelter, old members and new recruits flocked to these psionic warriors. This sect sprung up within the ruins of Luna. After the towering cities fell, where the poor tended to live in service of the rich, there were a lot of people with nowhere to go and nothing to their name. However, the affluent neighborhoods of Luna formed small militarized camps on their estates. The Cult of Lucidity would then provide a means for the poor to attack these estates by focusing the psionic energies of those who couldn’t find into those who could. These super psionics would raid the estates and bring back the spoils. Essentially creating a deal where the weak could simply practice meditation in the circle to receive free food, shelter, and protection. The unique twist to this sect is that its followers know exactly what the trick to these circles are, it just happens to be an even better offer than the yoga class for people this desperate.

The second of the new sects rose in SV1, a former world of the Vloz’Khress that suffered catastrophic damage when the aliens invaded. Dropping their own ‘moon’ onto the planet, flooding it with the massive ball of ice that was their excuse for a moon. In the wake of this destruction the ecosystem and environment were so massively disrupted that it has been said that SV1 is like year one of a new planet. The sect that gathered here are something of a group of mystics. Granting their new leader the title of Dreamwalker. They were actually formed from someone who didn’t fully understand what the cult was about, pursuing the continual path of mysticism within the cult to achieve enlightenment. They’re fairly nice people just minding their own business on SV1 but they believe themselves to be the true path of the cult, which leads to them trying to shepherd the other sects towards themselves. You can see how this might agitate the truly ‘enlightened’ members of the cult who are losing recruits to this path that has nothing to do with the cult’s original true purpose. Its a bunch of hippies on a rock, but their faith does drive their message quite far and they continue to grow in these harsh times by preaching of a fresh start on SV1, the reborn planet in a time when everything is crumbling around them.

The final major splinter stem from Thenica. They happen to be the one in the more functional areas of civilization. After the death of Zex, one of the apostles figured out that the cult was a particularly effective at making money with just a few tweaks in marketing. Offering a manifestation of ‘thoughts and prayers’ so the rich wouldn’t feel guilty about not doing anything for the rest of the crumbling system, and just so happening to ask for a few donations here and there.  What the psionic energies were actually devoted towards just happen to be whatever the leader of that circle feels like doing that day.

As a situational analysis, I can tell you that we will have to remove two of the leaders from the picture so the remaining one can assume the mantle uncontested and no deviant messages spread throughout what converts the cult currently has. In order to…handle the issue. The sects don’t have spectacular access to starships right now so they aren’t really able to conflict directly with each other the way we can. The third splinter is the most equipped to travel but has the least desire to do so given that they want to operate in the more civilized areas.

The warlord is obviously the most aggressive of the groups. Supporting them would gain us access to a very effective projection of force should we need to do so in the future. The mystics are the most popular at the moment and getting things under control with them could help us spread our influence further. The final group would allow the cult to finally start producing a profit instead of being a constant sink of our resources. Essentially, it would depend if you’re more interested in warriors, influence, or money.

Welcome back sir. You’ve been away for a little while so let me brief you on what you’ve missed. When the gauntlet dissolved we slimmed down the team. It was a good opportunity to re-assess some of our employees and their priorities. Nila, Auni, and Reika were let go as they were expensive for our new budget status and their loyalties were somewhat questionable. We try to maintain good relations, and Reika is really not too far away. Vaeri, Aryn, Vanjin, Leon, and Setani were noted for having no other priorities outside of the agency that could conflict with our parameters so they were considered valuable enough to keep on staff. Even with the pay cuts they haven’t really gone anywhere.

We’ve relocated the primary base aboard the Somnus Station, enough equipment is on the stealth ship for mobile deployment if necessary though the primary office will do for processing logistics and jobs that don’t require hands on-site. That and Aryn’s computer is too big to fit in the ship without renovating the whole thing. There is typically little need for her to be away though.

With you away we’ve been getting by letting Vanjin take some ludicrous jobs for a single bounty hunter to undertake but discreetly aiding in her in completing the task, that was how we managed to keep afloat at least. Her notoriety has grown as a result, as well as her overall standing among the higher echelons of society. As we’ve seen, other top level agents like Auni or Nila are downright chaotic and difficult to call reliable. Vanjin has developed a reputation for being a professional who has managed to achieve the competency and feats similar to those of the aforementioned lunatics. She’s not associated with us as far as the galaxy knows, though she has proven very valuable in allowing us to negotiate jobs people don’t know she has an entire support staff to help handle. Sometimes she accepts work and we just send Setani instead.

We’ve made a few connections, a woman named Nicole Lancaster owns Somnus station and is aware of our presence. Another named Doctor Vasia Nikolaides, who is our neighbor on the station, does tend to like hiring us to handle matters discreetly for her facility. We’ve also been able to fall back to relying on our old friends at Madhammer, though in the process one of their colonels became aware of our existence. Though he has managed to maintain discretion thus far, so it has not proved an issue.

With us moving away from Sol we’ve been able to operate a bit more liberally as scrutiny is not so intense. Not to mention everyone has their own problems so we haven’t been investigated too deeply any further.

On to matters at hand, recently Somnus station has seen a little bit of a bug problem. They are also apparently dealing with people of criminal backgrounds setting up shop here and in the city below, attempting to take root and establish their businesses. We’re not in the middle of anything at the moment but we could get involved in such ongoing matters if you have any ideas. I know that if Ms. Lancaster wanted, we could look into these gangs for her or…remove them without making a big fuss.

Alternatively an option would be to take control of this side of the market. Sophia is currently on Thenica tending to her own personal affairs. With the collapse of the system she went on a bit of a hiatus since there wasn’t much for her to do and she wanted to take care of personal matters. We would probably need to invest into re-establishing our former black market presence, I estimate it would be at least a ten million credit investment. Can’t re-establish Sophia without collecting some things to sell. We could also see who the existing presences are and maybe find someone a bit fresher.

We have a stealth cruiser and some of the best agents in the galaxy, and a surprising lack of problems that would fall to our responsibility to deal with. So its up to you what our next step from here is.

Welcome to Koura sir, a planet filled with just…stuff. Its not quite a golden world due to the complications of the atmosphere but its not too bad given what most colonization projects are working on. In the wake of the recent crisis I’ve been busy cleaning out the infestations but there is still a lot to do.

The new bunker is still under construction though it is operational. We still have to get our own landing pads built and the warehouse space is being expanded along the outside of the mountain. The main bunker for the more sensitive equipment has been built into the hollowed out mountain, space is at a premium in there so only the really valuable things are there. Such as the barracks, ops center, main armory, and some of the more expensive toys we don’t want anyone sabotaging. Orbital cannons and anti air batteries are online and it seems the task of orbital shielding falls to us due to the colony’s lack of them otherwise. We’re still working on that one. Most of the men are living in the city down the highway since its really cheap right now and, well who doesn’t want their own quarters?

I have our field officers living in the bunker though so that they don’t wander off too far if we need them in a hurry. This is a frontier world after all, I’m sure something is going to go horribly wrong eventually. I guess technically it already did but you know…again.

Budget wise we’re still floating on what we got from selling our assets on Thenica to the generals but we definitely operate at a net negative if we don’t go shoot something. Fortunately we’re subsidized a little bit by Somnus since…we did just prevent the monster invasion from wiping out the colony. So that takes care of taxes for now, which helps.

I do advise going over the logistics sheet to know what assets we have ready to deploy. Though you should know the fifth company is currently helping colonists in construction as security. There are big monsters with teeth on this planet that sometimes need to be discouraged from approaching developing areas.

Perhaps I’ve just been working here too long, but all these investigators seem to be looking for hard evidence of something that I can see quite clearly. The mutated monster invasion had to be deliberate on some level. At the minimum two different types of entities had made a combined attack on the Auwana system, targeting us. Whether it be this foreign sahad entity in the other plane they mention or some sort of saboteur among our colonies, I have a hunch that while they’re looking for the what, how, and why we should really concern ourselves more with the obvious ‘who’ side of all this. Then shoot them.

The war continues on. Our main envoys up north have moved southward to meet with Ragniva. The Hedin have made it south to the Vargr village with Losvir as their prisoner, the Asvald are led by Haleh and continue to raid around the north hunting down the scattered remains of the alliance. Hallvard is moving eastward to regroup with the rest of his army, Hakenu’e is with him.

One of the Thorin alliance clans reached the Ivor, though they’re a little worse for wear at the moment. We’ve touched back in with the Ivor and they seem a bit more…numerous than when we last checked on them. It seems they have been summoning the more wayward members of the clan to their ice village and concentrating their numbers there.

Alihana went to meet with Ragniva which turned largely into a bunch of sizing each other up. Alihana is, as usual, content to declare herself superior but everyone other than Sawiri is a bit less sure about it, though that might be blamed by meeting in the middle of Ragniva’s army.

Lukia has managed to merge with the northern group, which is most of our currently deployed people.

The party is currently moving towards the northern edges of the Vargr territory to meet back up with Hallvard and his forces that he is also trying to reach.

As for trying to recruit the battle shaman I assume you mean the Hedin chief? In which case they’d need to go to the Vargr village to look into that.

The Travelers met up with Citlanal to see about the howling horror business, though they managed to beat it up a little they haven’t managed to actually kill it yet.

Lokola’i has joined up with the northern group.

As for assassinating the other chiefs I would recommend poisoning Xoco’s honey, collapsing Chants’ scrying tent, burning the Huanacan forest, and then just regular ‘send Sakazai at them’ for the rest. Though Hakenu’e might be a more complex situation.

Silas is doing alright, though he keeps wandering off around the island and staring pensively into the distance.

The savage folk are not actually that bad at group combat, about on par with most others we’ve met.

To which end, Hallvard apparently can’t go any faster than he does. Its part of how his ability works, not that he fully understands it.

Also yes the other clans still haven’t responded to half the things you said.

To be fair if 60% of your update is to the other players, its probably a discord thing as I’m not sure if they read your section of the sheet and then respond to it.

Well in theory you could vent magic from yourself if you knew a particularly powerful spell, though that would likely require a ritual circle of some sort. The issue is finding a spell that specifically does this. Mana is a little bit…sticky. Whatever it finds its way into it is reluctant to leave unless given a purpose. Though I’ve never actually tried to use enough that the cracks on my face would go away, even if temporarily. I just…never really worry about running out these days as my magic is not too draining for how much I actually have. Alihana probably has the most direct way of doing this as she can conjure fire, which consumes a lot and in theory if she just made a lot of fire really quickly…

Unfortunately, despite her many apprentices, no one has figured out how to perform this other than herself.

About that whole “relieving Caowei” thing. We’re still kind of stuck up here thanks to the siege of Ragniva we haven’t dealt with yet. No one can get up or down from the Auwana unless they can fly or fight…whatever happens if you add another number after three numbers of zombies. Sooo I’m still here.

Caowei still started on her trip to the east to see whats out there before we inevitably wind up there against our own judgement. That will be a bit of a walk though.

To another end, three quarters of the tribe’s warriors are now geared for some cold excursions though it would still be rough, it is now possible to deploy larger numbers provided we could get them onto the ground. Aforementioned siege still being a problem.

Okay you can exercise that authority but you need to also decide what to exercise it on. I’ll go get your honey calm down.

Also with the whole current thing going on with the war with Haleh angle, its worth noting that Citlanal is still pretty much required for dealing with the Howling Horror, although we don’t know what part two of that requirement is. In case you wanted her to do anything with that…or you know…not do anything with that for a little while longer.

Kaya is apparently now some sort of party leader in the Asvald and has her own squid. Squad? What kind of a word is that? Whatever, she has her own squid.

So the problem with alerting the Thorin to the threat of the approaching Asvald is that they cannot outmaneuver the Asvald. Something something warbeasts. The Thorin wound up caught in the open on their path towards the northeast though they were too far away for the Hedin to help in the invasion so the odds were evened out a little further. It was a certain defeat for the Thorin but not as catastrophic as it might have been otherwise, with the Thorin alliance being split apart by the nature of the Asvald strategy.

The Volsung clan were pushed eastward in their escape while one of the other allied clans went west. Losvir himself was…technically captured. They have apparently had him tied down and just had everyone attempt to execute him one after another and after six days they gave up, having not scratched him at all. He might actually be immortal. Our report from Kaya says they’re taking him to the Vargr village to bury him in the ground where he’ll never get out even if he can’t die in there. Losvir claims this will be the third attempt to imprison him forever and doesn’t seem bothered by the idea.

Also Wehilani can’t fly an extended distance like that while carrying another person, a particularly feisty kobold perhaps but she is pretty sure she’ll die of exhaustion, cold, and hunger attempting to carry Alihana the entire way south to Ragniva.

Lukia is on the way north though its a long voyage to avoid the path of the Asvald while doing so.

Tehanau made a note that the Hedin clan has started moving south towards the Vargr village instead of returning home.

I suppose sometimes we forget that Cosz is not only one of the oldest monsters we have but as we saw on the plains, can be prone to…violent overreactions when angered.

Koamalu doesn’t really seem all that adversely affected by his encounter with Cosz actually. He just laughed and said that she has his vote for becoming the next chief protector should Hakenu’e ever lose the title.

It does appear if there was anything left of the wyvern that the elements have claimed it. That or Haleh did something specific with them.

Neither Esin nor Wehilani can really fly Hakenu’e the distance required to get anywhere meaningful and if they were to try and team up on the effort their wings are liable to hit each other and just bring them all to the ground.

Lokala’i has traveled to the Hedin village to duel all the people once more. Notably, it is mostly devoid of people. It seems they all left to go to war with the Thorin.

As for the Coszacatl matter, any actual judgement is the responsibility of the Nezatl. Though you are free to argue.

The problem with killing someone like the King is that no one has ever succeeded as far as I’m aware of. So… no idea how hard it is or if its even possible. Though if Alihana can hurt the Keeper it stands to reason that its possible, just that a significant effort will need to be undertaken. I suspect Icno, Haleh, and Ragniva would know more about it as they have dedicated their lives to doing such a thing, the same could be said of Xiomac. Unfortunately, no one has come close to successful and I don’t know what all the siblings are capable of or how they work. My interactions with the King were mostly related to my mark and my mission. I never really thought to ask him about his family life.

Also stop napping outside of my tent.

As far as I’m aware, the drain is an ability innate to some members of the Rahana…and I suppose our descendants. The primary issue with it is that the wielder has a maximum limit they can store before they kill themselves. This isn’t as great of an issue when healing more physical ailments as you can tell when you’re fine and good to go. Draining magic is the problem. If you were to try and drain me and could not expend the magic fast enough, you’d probably die.

As for moving the army onto the island, we do have a way. That is all you need to know. I’m sure you’ll find out someday one way or the other.

Each sacrificial ritual is unique to the person it is attuned to. All six rituals were created by the Oldest Man, as he is their expert on this sort of thing. The individuals of that blood line can use it to grant power as well as take power from the sacrifice. Notably, they can all do it differently as they so desire. According to Icno, most of the deities will allow the caster of the ritual to take one tenth of the sacrifices worth. This is what makes the Crow Folk special, the King is very generous and lets them take seven tenths. This is why even the newest members of the crows tend to be very powerful. This also makes the King one of the weakest of the six siblings… in certain terms at least. Each one of these creatures has a different specialty and a different gift. The King is the aspect of a warrior, so while he has less power than the others he is the most dangerous to fight one on one. He is also the only one who learned to fight for himself.

As for how they’re performed, as I have heard the Nahua have massive temples the likes of which have not been seen anywhere else in the world that shine bright under the sun. Their priests sacrifice the offerings there every day.

As for what you will find to the east…I suppose its no harm to tell you that in detail. This is more of Icno’s specialty than mine though. However, there is the Golden Dead who is the ruler of the empire, the White Howl who is kind of the one who just wants to reunite the family, and All That Crawls who is obsessed with the construction of a large civilization. The empire is his creation and so are all of the tribes.

We still haven’t actually told Hallvard of Zhuan and Caowei’s real associations, so they’re just following him around still along with the rest of the tribe’s vanguard.

Also I’m still here…you’re kind of quiet this week.

Stories of Lore 20

Nickolce managed to find a beast born of fire and frost by means of following Hakenu’e’s party into the north in search of the kind of creature they encountered recently. He did manage to acquire some pieces of it though now the issue is getting them back to Auwana since the siege of Ragniva continues.

Meanwhile the drilling strategy as we try to build a new team is a little awkward. We’re doing our best with it but it may help if Kaya returned since she is the one who knows how the Asvald actually train, however other chieftains are becoming interested in the project.

The bees are still surviving the winter with the new little bee lodges we built around their hives for them. It would help if we could harvest more of those northern flowers or even their own bees but again…siege.

We’ve worked with the Xiaoshen to produce more cloaks and such for the warriors of the tribe and should be able to deploy them soon provided the trip is short. An extended campaign won’t do well for them as we’re kind of hurrying to put this together not to mention keeping them supplied in this cold will be hard. Though at the very least, if the tribe wants to make a single significant strike we will be able to do so. Albeit with some difficulty.

Greetings my chief, I am back. The Rahana send their greetings, and told the story of Ragniva’s exil- oh right scrying pool. On to more modern affairs then.

In regards to the formation of a second vanguard, Tehanau is currently away. Also having a bit of a berserker rage.

Haki is still following Hakenu’e around the north, so recruitment efforts are going well though he is currently still focused on defeating the Vargr and his quest for vengeance. So we’ll see how that goes in the long run.

Alihana is awake once again, and crankier than usual. I take it her nap was not refreshing. She’s currently with the vanguard and Hallvard coming up with schemes to get back to Auwana. I don’t think she likes being sick and stranded in the middle of the snow.

Unfortunately, even though Hallvard’s forces were holding in the northern border, the Asvald move faster and went straight for him. Tehanau was…interacting with the Ivor so we didn’t have anyone to play the role of scout for him. Wehilani and Kuari can’t act as flying scouts around the area or it would risk Haleh finding out where they, along with Hakenu’e and Alihana actually are. He survived if only barely.

Its clear to Haki that it would be in the best interests of Hallvard and the Thorin to ally with each other though the problem right now is distance. The Thorin are deeper into the vargr border than Hallvard, who has been sitting around waiting based on Zhuan’s advice for awhile instead of moving south. Now that the Asvald are there, that’s a whole mess. We can have the vanguard’s flyers regroup with Hallvard’s other two armies and reconvene towards Thorin in hopes of arriving before the Asvald destroy the village but the Hedin are also moving into position to assist with that one. Though I suppose if we were ready to make a bigger announcement of our arrival, Alihana is also there. She does have a talent for swaying large scale battles to her favor.

Eerihild says she would love to duel Hamund, though after some pressuring from Wehilani confessed that she intended to kill him in the process. Either way a conflict with him might be inevitable soon if Hallvard and the vanguard head to the Thorin village.

As for Hoskuld, we only know that he is under Haleh’s control and lives in the Vargr village under heavy guard. Often watched by Icno, who has returned to the village while they try to get Citlanal to help them some more with the Howling Horror. Getting to him will be the issue as Kaya is with the Asvald in the middle of their war so can’t slip away so easily. He is surrounded by Haleh’s loyalists. Turning him is another matter altogether, we don’t actually know how he feels about his current situation.

Harakino has returned to pride village after her trip to take the gryphons to the the Akoa.

Contact with the Ivor had been seen through thanks to kawil, though they are still wary of us. We did kill someone rather important to them after all, and they definitely are of a mind to hide within what is apparently a very impressive village hidden within ice.

Coszacatl has…issues and has become very suddenly very outspoken about them. Even assaulting Koamalu to the point of almost killing him. She is back to idly lingering about the fire though the clan is concerned about such matters.

The travelers continue to hunt for the Wyvern’s remains though haven’t had much luck. We are looking for a seasons old corpse in the middle of a foreign land after all.

Also yes the travelers have received their clothes.

Sakazai didn’t even have to go looking. She knows what Haleh does with the corpses of her enemies apparently, she feeds them to the warbeasts. Most of which are carnivorous monsters in the first place. Though the ritual circle that Lukia found is another matter entirely, though as Alihana has pointed out: they’re sacrificing people to the Spirit Keeper around the north.

Lokala’i has continued traveling around dueling everything he can, though finds no one he takes interest in for a full time partner. Though I haven’t been able to discuss his criteria at length with him due to the nature of him being so far away and the scrying pool only working in one direction.

The northern bone collectors met up with Nikolce from the Nezatl for their hunt. They actually were able to find something useful and bring it back to Sawiri who created the requested bones of ‘it isn’t chilly for me’ as he calls it. Though getting it back here is a whole other problem.

Speaking of which, while Harakino returning from such a distance is likely not as notable if we keep sending the harpies around after Haleh told us not to let anyone leave or enter the island…she is bound to notice since there is an army of undead standing right under the island watching us.

Silas seems more affected than Xacalli over the news of the Ashen Plains. He’s been quiet and just keeps wandering off to who knows where. Xacalli is still in her healing house. It is hard to tell if it has done much to her given that she is always grouchy and anti social.

As for this sword thing, it seems quite similar to the macuahuitl still. Perhaps just a little slimmer if we figure out how to make the blue stones sturdy enough. Hallvard and his people clearly have found a way, or more so found someone else who found a way. So there is potential, though we’ve yet to discover the purpose of the sacred water.

Esin says that she has no one with interest in a second vanguard. Her village is largely composed of traders, messengers, and herself as chief. She is the only true warrior among their number if you will recall and we can’t even convince her to fight anything most of the time. She does still have a way with words over her axe…which still is very bizarre to me.

The Akarona said they might be able to though most of their people are currently with the Nezatl and experimenting with their other project which is still in a state of ‘being figured out’.

As for the xiaoshen…

I would be the best candidate. Zhuan has too many other responsibilities and Caowei isn’t half the fighter I and the other elites are. Though unfortunately, I have other duties at hand serving Liling, especially with Zhuan away.