Stories of Lore 37

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Greetings, I am Aurora, your new assistant. Please state your name…
Please create an admin authorization code…
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? > This code is for use in distress that sounds like a real password but will initiate silent alarm systems to approved recipients.
? > Recipients currently listed: 1337H4xx0r8unny
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Details: All ur base r belong to me. Khymin is a n00b.

Initiatializing…
Purchasing 1947 StarShooter arcade machine…
Delivery Address: Closing Statement…
Initialization complete.

Would you like a tour of your new assistant?
? > Core functionalities.

Super Battleships and Mechs have been purchased from Sharen, delivery pending. ETA: Three months. Due to the size of the order and the current impacts on the Solian economy and work force, it is taking some time to construct the requested assets.

Crew acquisition may take some time.

Moncayo and Eden are experiencing mass unrest as conditions plummet. War fatigue is affecting morale and causing colonists to consider alternatives as migration companies imitating 40th day’s financial success come looking for colonists to shuttle off.

We have managed to sell a portion of the raw materials to interested parties, acquiring 3 billion in revenue for 1/8th of current inventory. Though there are a lack of buyers for the rest at the moment.

Vittles and Logging companies reinstated as primary caretaker of food resources.

Kaylen Yuriko has arrived in Moncayo with her officers to discuss terms. Questioning colonization rights in particular. We currently own Moncayo which is a massive money sink. Previous plans indicated handing over possession of the Moncayo primary colony to her though she isn’t sure if that still stands given the importance of the city as our only colony compared to having her build her own elsewhere in the system./

Vairatoa has agreed to come on board to take over Alexander’s former position. Though he may have nefarious alternate goals. He was using Alexander at the behest of his archon to keep tabs on matters of the middle planes. Because the archon has become aware of certain developments the elemental plane finds concerning. Namely some lunatic running around and bringing ruin to civilizations that are not effected by resource starvation or general means of destabilization. The elementals just kind of…exist? They don’t have money, trade, ambition, or really anything to do other than wander around for no particular reason. Though they aren’t stupid and do notice when the middle planes are up to no good. Though I suppose as far as nefarious alternate goals go, that’s the least problematic one of the people we deal with.

As for looking into the bottleneck or River as Ankathi’s people call it, it seems to largely be associated with it’s distance from the astral cluster’s core. Which is why escaping the cluster is so hard, without a central plane that keeps everything together shit just gets wild. The bottleneck in particular is one of the only pathways through the astral plane that leads to another cluster, though there are other similar paths to other clusters than the one that Ankathi passed through. Lower planes are rapidly forming along the outer border of our cluster as well as Ankathi’s and several others, but the core plane that brings the clusters together also attracts these rapidly forming lower planes. So, for the sake of explanation at least, picture a sphere. The outer layer of our sphere is the void. The void is like our atmosphere, it’s protecting us from all the bullshit that’s right on the other side like a cushion. Absorbing the thousands of rifts per second that hit it and creating the impossible existence of that plane, but then those rifts don’t reach deeper into the cluster.

Now Kari is our central plane, all these lower planes rapidly forming want to go to Kari. They can’t because of the void. There is another central plane in another cluster, and they want to go there too. So they create a tunnel between both clusters as they try to get to both places simultaneously and then sort of pile up on top of both clusters until they pile up so much that the bottleneck is formed and there becomes an available direction to reach the other cluster. But to get there you have to go through this tunnel of pure madness.

Steamworks is working on the shield idea though that’s difficult to make compatible with pandem usage…so they’re working on it.

The wolves are out and about rummaging the water to create ambush spots, they’ve got a few set up.

We merged third and first lance and I have on my notes to remind you that lances now recruit from the garrison. So keep an eye on the numbers produced by the local garrison for assigning.

River is mostly cleaned up, special thanks to Halaestra who is a specialist in lower planes. I’m still working on how to get her out of retirement.

Our boys made it to the demon kingdom and…well that’s fun. So as a refresher, the demon kingdom is largely separate from the elven empires and their politics. Brought on by being one of the major targets of the purge, though it is also one of the greatest failures of the purge since there are still some ancient demons skulking about who do love to meddle.

At the top of the hierarchy is the Demon King who rules over both the lower and higher planes nowadays. They had a whole war in which the higher plane won after invading the lower one so now their king is the one and only king. He gets to be king because he has all the land and all the support. He has ruled for about nine hundred years. Below him are the lords, who hold the title by controlling large territories. I believe the requirement to be a demon lord is to be in undisputed control of either twenty million people or have a division of land approximating two hundred square miles in the primary solar system. Also you have to be a native of either Finsir or Finsor. This code was recently revised due to frontier exploration and people saying they own whole planets uncontested because no one else is in the neighborhood. If you control a newly colonized frontier system you must have a population of ten million on your colony as well as a GDP of a minimum threshold to make sure you’re doing something useful over there. No one qualifies for that…yet.

Once you’re a demon lord you get to attend the court of lords and bicker with other lords about whatever you want. They frequently convene at the King’s palace with whatever list of issues they’d like to discuss. Attendance is optional and you will be alerted if anything that directly affects your holdings, defined as things being within your territory not just your trade routes, if you should desire to represent yourself. You get the idea, politics.

House Vloz’Khress has fifteen qualified lords, but in Finsir politics they are more of an alliance than a dedicated house. Asmoday and Valadeus represent another faction of eight demon lords. Demon lords aren’t quick to jump on bandwagons so Voriuk has a headstart on keeping Vloz’Khress especially relevant here.

I’m getting to the important bit don’t worry. So it’s critical to remember that demons mature through eating one another. All demons are born as worms, if they eat enough other worms they become imps, from there it starts spreading out but you get minor lesser major and so on. Basically they’re eating each other’s mana reserve to add to their own. This trick only works in Finsir and Finsor, its one of the rules of their plane. That’s why they aren’t so keen to leave it too often unless they’re powerful enough to not care anymore or are tired of people always trying to eat them. Also the general paranoia of certain spells that work on them due to this mana reserve transfer having some interesting properties. This all matters because it explains why they can be a little tricky to deal with, from birth they are encouraged to eat one another. How they’re less scary than drow in this regard is one hell of a mystery. Pun intended.

The important part about all this is that without the support of a lord it’ll be hard to start any sort of bandwagon and we definitely need an angle to work on to appeal to those not already entrenched with their own faction. Option one, pursue negotiating with the more powerful demon lords to gain an ally and a foothold. This is, as you may have guessed, sometimes risky territory. We could also build a new demon lord, because Zenaka almost qualifies. While Lancaster is not a demon, if she could get things under control she could appoint one to attend the court. Puppet lords are not super uncommon, all of the Vloz and Phantom ones are a good example. Another option would be to try and stay down low. Operating with the more common demons and trying to build up a following by numbers before making any bigger plays.

– Since I am forced to play politiics with players much larger than me anyhow… Renjala will invite Selah to be Knight-Chancellor of the Order of Fate of the Knights Pandem, and any who she has convinced to join her in following Ankathi (Reika and Sarnai are still Astral Order). She can choose her Champion as well. Like it or not, her research is going to be the best lead for Renjala to learn to build a plane.

I handed the scanning tech over to VSEC and the Astral Order to see if the tech will be useful in re-establishing the radar.

The colony of Roha has been established in our little bubble here on Moncayo. It’s population is immediately at capacity since uh…it has roofs and Moncayo city has a lot of people who need a roof. Due to us already being here with all our supplies, labor, and a colony being defined as ‘a collection of tents’ at this point it was pretty quick to get up and running.

The research colony of Zanin is under construction, Vasia is headed out to the project since without her…good luck setting that colony up.

Also free standing buildings on Eden is decently plausible..for Pandem casters. Vasia suggested using the same tech that ships use to manipulate their interior gravity to just create floating infrastructure entirely. Since Eden can actively control the weather of herself it would be viable without worrying for storms and other such intrusions. She just doesn’t like being burrowed into and is really sensitive to plants being cut. So floating cloud cities might alleviate the problem.

Bill cannot shape Eden, though Haziel can. However, that was by just commanding Eden herself and she seemed to agree that doing what Haziel asks is a good idea. So basically Renjala is an arch-druid while standing on Eden because she doesn’t listen to many other people. Though he has some druidic powers just for being bound to her anyways.

We got some submersibles working pretty easily, since we still know how to make those and now we just have bigger shipyards to work with. We have a few of them scouting out this Moncayo ocean business. It’s quite fascinating, it is the size of a planet in diameter though is flat. We’ve found some volcanic vents…which doesn’t make any sense since there is no core to this “planet”. There’s just lava in arbitrary spots for no reason…I suppose that is the abyss for you.

Speaking of Kanika’s singing, did you know Craylin can do it too? It sounds like a horror movie is about to start though and her drones also communicate with this dirge sometimes.

I’m never hot or cold and nothing fits, I dunno I just never really thought about clothes. I used to love shopping but it seems kind of pointless. Ordering custom designs isn’t as fun as window browsing and impulse spending…this was a bad hobby to have while living paycheck to paycheck admittedly.

Also no, the ichor chose cat. I also can’t change myself back into a normal sized drow. If your ‘model’ was to be considered obsolete it would just break you down into nothing again and make something new. So don’t get too carried away with its morph mutations. It costs it energy as well as mass to break things down or rebuild them so its a bit of a penny pincher at times. Just with biomass. Though it doesn’t really find models obsolete until they’re brought back to it dead. Survival of the fittest I suppose. Though if you were to die, it might still want to make another psionic cat for example.

I suppose when it comes to more humanoid shapes we have Setal. Though people tend not to respect succubi too much. They have a long history of being oppressed sex slaves or prostitutes, so the stigma of them being lower class kind of sticks around.

On that note, I was going to poke fun of you for the fact that the Ichor preserved Setal, we’re all females, and yet I have no beautiful drow boys to tend to me…actually I like orcs but I think there’s actually something scientifically noteworthy in that. The Ichor showed an oddly high priority for Setal. Craylin was drawn to Setal for harvesting before Setal had even finished losing her last fight. I think the ichor prefers women of our species because they’re the mothers. Also in many species, particularly alien ones, the females are the larger ones. The same is true of drow women, we’re bigger than our men unlike other humanoid races.

Setal maintains the trick unique to her race, she can breed with literally anything. Including plants and mushrooms if she wanted to. Succubi can also impregnate others as well as get pregnant themselves, she can breed literally anything. The ichor likes that, so much so that it advanced her from a lesser demon to a greater one…that’s one step below demon lord. I’m pretty sure we ate a greater demon in the moncayo battle at some point and it put all that knowledge to work optimizing Setal. She’s immune to mana control spells that demons are normally vulnerable to, since she’s a silnian now I suppose It capped out what demons can naturally achieve without being ordained by the demon king. I’m not sure if that’s concerning or not.

Yes, apparently Lancaster isn’t too fond of Si-Yeon. Which strikes me as odd given her experience helping Koura with the parasite issues. Though that does make her uniquely qualified to help us with ichor experiments. Vasia has her assigned to keeping notes on us I believe.

As for draconic shapeshifting…I mean the ichor has always been able to do that. It just doesn’t consider field-shifting to be a necessity. It’s very energy and biomass intensive, this applies to most creatures who can do it. Eliza has to undergo days of surgery and recovery to shift herself. Notably the only ones who do it quickly and cheaply are using magic and transmutation. So druids and dragons. Since dragons do not share an ancestor with us, they’re closer related to the jesai than to humanoids.

I’m fine without the APT, I’ve been studying psionics to make up for it. Besides, I have you for that. Since the ichor washes off APT’s.

So they recognize queens based on empathic interfaces. The synapse is usually the strongest signal so its difficult to override it. I should note that Eerihild can only do it if I don’t contradict her or if the drone is out of the synapse and in it’s more ‘animal’ mode. Haziel is…something else. Anything with a primal empathic interface responds to her almost automatically. Also Eerihild can only imitate this because she is bound to her mother. In general the synapse is vastly more powerful than any druidic empathy, especially in the presence of monarchs like myself. Though it does allow them to come to an understanding with drones to maybe not bite them.

Easiest way to put it, Haziel possesses a splinter of the primordial wilds. No one else does, she received it on the deathbed of The Wilds. Eerihild can echo that splinter through her bind with her mother. For this to be exploited Kanika would likely need to get her hands on a god or a bigger monarch from the silnians. The best way to resist this would be to outgrow our position as Azilath’s splinter and then maybe outgrow our position under Valdir’s emperor. Though a true silnian said ‘fuck it this guys in charge’ so not sure how easy or difficult that is.

As for a testing subject for Si-Yeon, the ichor kind of decides that more than I do. Despite it being my ichor…I feel there’s a trick to it I’m not getting. Though we could infect a fenalis if you wanted something small and cuddly, granted the infection makes things grow a weapon.

Also yes there are still turrets. Aryn already reset them.

I suppose if the Ichor feels a need for planetary terraforming it would just start doing so. I think it only does that if it needs more solar energy or wants to extend its reach across the planet. While having sapients it doesn’t seem in such a hurry to do so since I can just carry it to where it wants to go. Also if it started doing that we’d probably accidentally consume all of Moncayo. Though it might be my fault that I don’t know how to command the ichor very well. It kind of takes care of me more than I take care of it at this point. I do know that Azilath knows how to terraform planets and command her ichor though.

As for all these solar rock ideas, the ichor doesn’t break down inorganic materials like rocks and crystals. Though it did make your crystals, so it likely has the potential just not the need. It is powered by need a lot more so than wild optimization ideas. Maybe if we park the lake by the arcane star it would go a bit crazier. For better or worse. Maybe the metal maker might be able to do this kind of stuff though.

Also I do not remember attempting to get warforged for the ichor, paperwork for that might have been lost in everything else that’s going on. However…Kaylen has several. Oh look who’s here.

Don’t worry, Larazja would be well cared for. Forever.

Anyways, I’m headed out to get the research colony set up. I’ll be out of comm range for awhile so…send a runner if you need me I guess.

Why would Yaellah need language? You might have gotten carried away with all this silnian business. Not everything needs to be conformed to your improvements. Some things are perfect just as they are. Don’t touch my Yaellah.

Also no, the Heretic is made of pure essentia. It doesn’t do the shooting.

Of course Ankathi attracts a type, she has no morality and is obsessed with power. Selah didn’t have to jump through any hoops other than agreeing to do whatever Ankathi asks, none of those trials of righteousness or whatever the paladins did back in the day. Hey what are you trying to say?

The Ichor can’t absorb shades, Craylin can though. I’ll feed it to Craylin myself, I think she and I got off on the wrong foot.

Wait…you feeding a member of your own species to her by hand while you watch is…

Congratulations waitress, you’re getting it now.

I am a drow, I grew up in the districts of a great house. I have seen some shit and knew how to fear for my life on a daily basis thanks to our masters. Our language is colorful and quantifies even the most bizarre behaviors. Yet never have I known what ‘evil’ truly meant.

Child…you still don’t. Everything I do is to gain, selfishly for myself yes but still there is reason to what I do.

Ankathi and I have thwarted true evil many times. The young and naive such as you have no terrors left because of people like us. So you declare us the problem, you look and say ‘that is evil’ for you have no perspective of what evil really is. Evil, true evil, is something that cannot be satiated. Something without a goal for its actions, it breeds suffering for no reason on scales you cannot comprehend.

If you would like to comprehend it, draw Alakira’s sword.

. . . yeah I’m pretty sure you’re still evil just less evil than ‘the most evil things to ever exist’. You’re delusional if you think you’re not at least seven tenths of the way there.

I concede you might have me there. As Kanika points out, everyone draws the line just past what they do themselves. Though as Kaylen seeks to fight against the Phantoms, let us watch how far her moral compass falls. Eroding day after day, concession after concession, necessity overwhelming righteousness. I am old Larazja, I have partaken in this cycle many times. Anyways, where is Craylin? I have kibble for her.

Ilex, we literally control the largest sahad academy ever since Valdir peaced out of public politics. I can write my own degree if I want. Of course I’m not mysterious to my three or so friends I spend all my time with. I’m pretty sure most people in Moncayo have no idea who I am, what I do, or what I can do. Though yes, I am aware of the issues in progressing sahad at my age. I have been putting in a lot of research to finding a workaround. Why do you think I suddenly learned necrocarnum? I didn’t make myself a lich…but I did harvest the souls of other sahad casters.

Many agree that Chaos will eventually end. Perfect order is inevitable, everything predictable, I can calculate down to the year when it will happen. There will be perfect order. Nothing will ever move again, frozen and perfectly encapsulated for all eternity. A snapshot of what once was and can never be again. This universe’s ultimate fate is to be a pretty little ornament on my desk. Then, finally will your chaos end.

Nah I’m just kidding, chaos will reign forever my dear. That is what sahad does, it glimpses upon the end of all things and instead sees the beginning. Despite what physicists might calculate or believe they understand, the alpha entities can reverse entropy, alter the flow of time, change the rules of reality, and I suspect that is their purpose. To make sure existence continues in perpetuity. Gaze upon Chromaclysm, the Tides, the Watcher, our gracious All-Mother, and take comfort knowing it will never end and also that it never began. It has always simply been, and it simply always will be. There was no big bang, no gods forging us, there was simply…no beginning. All-Mother does not exist within the concept of existence, but she will ensure that existence can never end, and with it chaos shall live forever. Take comfort in it, embrace chaos Ilex, because it is the fabric that makes life worth living, and it is protected by beings beyond your little silnian brain’s ability to comprehend. FUCK ENTROPY, OUR SUFFERING SHALL NEVER END! THAT IS WHAT SAHAD IS ALL ABOUT! AHAHHAHAHAHAH

Ilex I’m scared. WHERE DID SHE GO?!

Probably shouldn’t have let her get started on cosmic theory. Sahadist are known to have ‘episodes’ when they think on it for too long. Three others are also having episodes and they’re all staring into the same direction, focused on something impossibly far away. *points at Yaellah* Though shades like Vasia return to their natural incorporeal state and I bet she’s still ranting underground as she falls through it.

From her notes, I gather our species are having some…side effects of learning about sahad. Uniquely though, the rest stare blankly and mumble. Vasia is the only one to start screaming and laughing like a maniac. I don’t know if that’s a bad sign for her ability to learn it…or a bad sign that she’s the only one who is excited by what she has gazed upon.

I also didn’t think about it, but every Solian has various…episodes when exposed to this stuff. Despite running the facility to study it…Vasia’s reaction to it is the only one that has not been documented. While ‘delusional rambling’ is a normal symptom, I wonder if we should be concerned that Vasia’s rambles are a little…different.

Anyways, she’ll be fine. There’s the desert world beneath us if she falls too far and she can control herself if she falls into open space.

Its “The Taco Cart”. It’s his brand name at this point, even if it is a truck now.

Also silnian ichor does not attempt to dissolve me. See? *Sticks hand in lake*

Actually it…What? It’s not trying because you…aren’t…organic. Though you’re making Craylin salivate…

Oh…I might need to do more lab work. Anyways, I have a drone hooked up. Though your soul production work is just not going to go well until you answer what it is that creates souls. So you know, just solve one of the greatest mysteries of mankind. No problem. You might actually have some luck studying this with the Astral Order. The River of Chaos creates life at a phenomenal rate with a lot of variations.

So far the success rate of cloning something with a soul is less than a percent. We’ve only done it twice.

SHE’S NOT HUMAN! ARE WE JUST BREEZING PAST THIS?! DOPPELGANGER! PHANTOM SPY!

I see Yenneiros hasn’t kept you up to date with my medical issues. Doppelgangers are organic. The parasite is doing odd stuff to me if you must know. Vasia has taken a particular interest though I’m wary of her interest levels. I am quite sure I am still organic.

….I’ve got my eye on you. No funny business. I’m going back in the lake, between you and Vasia I don’t know how much more I can handle today.

To clarify, Allison does work for us. Though she works as one of the agents, I meant she would be alright as one of our forward operatives who operate in public space more. Though yes, we can put her to controlling the underground. However, as we learned from our last attempt, controlling it too thoroughly tends to breed a separate underground and that’s how Laura happened.

The criminal underworld thrives on being uncontrolled, Lancaster’s usage of our setup to constantly try and thwart it caused all kinds of side effects. Which might be the double edged sword of having a crime lord on our payroll for our own city. The desire to stop crime is at conflict with a crime boss’ desire to exploit it. Maybe a detective would be more fitting. Allison is from Shetou, she can run the crime scene quite well but…well she’s liable to escalate it and invoke Lancaster’s ire once again. If it was permissable, it wouldn’t be illegal in the first place.

While our time with the gauntlet focused on exploiting existing infrastructure, now that we control that infrastructure it’s less advantageous to give someone backing and resources to exploit us. At least with the Nomads they can act as privateers and focus on our rivals, a Moncayo crime lord, funded and supplied by us, is kind of at odds with our colonization.

That and Lancaster doesn’t implement a ton of minor bans that circumventing would be particularly non-harmful. Upon asking Allison about the concept and if she had any ideas…she did…Lancaster won’t like any of them. So just a thought.

We have recruited the suit.

Also yes the Nomads can act as hunters for targeted objectives, and Vanjin still has credentials and reputation for other avenues.

The Closing statement is on its way back to Moncayo.

Stories of Lore 36

So speaking of  hoards, remember how Faelyn was the one to convert back into gold coins as currency while the aethernet was all messed up? Well you were correct there’s a lot of gold laying around. Zenaka isn’t as hyped up about gold as Sol is, but House Sharen still loves the stuff. So does Sakhessa but I’m guessing you don’t want me to try and trade with her. So we can sell it to them.

We tried to get in contact with Valencia and after a very long time of attempting to do so we found out something interesting. She had no idea the phantoms were even a thing, let alone have an opinion on them. It does make some sense though. Valencia is younger than the purge, she’s a benefactor of it and is a part of the pre-war era by playing the game of civilization. She has no real grudge against Sol nor does she face any persecution at all. So despite her economic influence, she’s probably never really been terribly eligible for membership in their eyes. Unlike Renjala who has to wear a mask everywhere he goes or be hunted down by House Song.  So she has no opinion on it…yet. I imagine she’s going to go assess some situations about now though.

Renjala has set up the portal to Eden and back so now populations are fluctuating. In large part due to Eden’s refusal to allow infrastructure that burrows, so no support beams. Also no cutting down any trees. So unless they like tents draped over branches they’re eager to not be there. So far the Astral Order are using the ships not only to power the portal, but also to hold the portal upright.

Also congratulations on beating cancer.

Setting up the portal in Zenaka is taking some shipping and handling. Renjala only made a rift between Moncayo and Eden.

I’ll have you know I actually have been here awhile, on multiple battlefields, survived parasitic mutation, and being held by Vasia. My odds of dying are not as bad as you might thi- wait what is my life insurance policy?

Vittles brings good news, fishing is pretty easy on an alien world that hasn’t had time to be overharvested by us yet. Bad news, Abyssal fish are ugly as I am. Good news, that guy who ran the burrito cart in Koura? Now he runs a taco cart with fish tacos. ‘Cart’ is relative, he has been operating out of what once was a military transport truck. We let him keep it because the tacos are really good.

The Radar however is going to take some effort, while destroying its major components was one thing we are now realizing…we’re not actually entirely sure how this thing works. The pandem elements were covered by Robert’s Rifts and Renjala but the arcane and psionic engineering were never touched by them. Khymin is working on it but there is a reason no one else has ever built one of these before besides funding. Regular radar parts are operational again and we can scan multiple planes with it but we can’t quite see with the same range and level of detail that we know it once produced.

Koda and Gunhild have taken over that random building down the street from the taco cart parking lot as  his new office to try and get the fleet back together. Finding crew for the new ships will be a challenge though and we’re working on that.

Laura points out that you killed most of her old criminal contacts, and whichever ones you didn’t kill she killed. Getting the Selona weapon again might be difficult, Solvang and Selona control the major black market. Which we’ve just gone to war with. She’ll look into it but odds aren’t great. Though Aryn did find that dark mysterious website so maybe we can order it anonymously and have it shipped to not-here.

The grieving evening was absent an Aryn who is currently away to retrieve the Closing Statement from its parking spot and bring it on over. That spooky effeminate drow guy is a real slave driver eh?

So the pandem radar issue can be summed up as: The basic parts are easy and we remember how to do that. The multi planar part we also can restore with a bit of effort. The ability to tell exactly how many of what sized ships are moving through space at any point on any plane across the galactic quadrant is uh…not so easy. We’ve had some engineering help from Khymin and VSEC but it’s…beyond them. Given our chats with Voriuk, we are now aware that the phantom engineering department is far beyond the rest of Sol’s. Though we’re not sure how much is the likes of Sakhessa versus Daiheb. If we assumed Daiheb has a hand in such things we should be very concerned given that they somehow appropriated the technology of a billions year old machine race. We’re working on the bigger features but…well I’ll update you on it as we make progress.

Selah, as it turns out, is the high and mighty Celestial Order of the First Temple’s very own Vasia. Well not anywhere near as bad but she’s their equivalently unruly but valuable member. Her obsession with celestial shenanigans led her to turn to Ankathi’s side pretty quickly upon hearing about it, betraying her order for a chance to bind with Ankathi. She studies celestial mechanisms and if she had the time or the talent she might have eventually achieved what Ankathi did on her own. In summary, she casts the big smite.

So apparently Ankathi isn’t the one who is planning to do anything to the Celestial Order, that’s all Selah. Upon convening with prophet Sarnai…yeah Ankathi barely noticed or cared that the order existed. She described them as ‘irrelevant’. So basically with the witnessed miracle of Ankathi’s doing it is Selah’s plan to convince as many as she can to join Ankathi’s little order we have going on as one of the side hustles we have. That’s it. That’s the whole plan. Civil war? Maybe, maybe not. She doesn’t fuckin know. She just knows that there is a god now, and that should have priority over archangels come whatever may.

I think we’ve been dealing with the phantoms and Arkaric for so long we forgot some people don’t have a thirty seven step master plan that corners all sides of the board into a position they want.

Eerihild said to remind you that Haziel is also super cool too even if she’s a bit absent at the moment. She also brought up the Chosen Wolve’s stat sheet in the Moncayo battle, which is pretty good. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the celestial branch’s. To be fair, Eerihild and Bill aren’t exactly the war machines that Reika and Selah are. Also speaking of them, Bill has developed a fascination with Eden upon setting foot upon her. They mesh better than he and Haziel. Even if he’s on team druid, he’s a bit too chill for Haziel’s fang and fury approach to things. Though they are getting some food production going in the forests of Moncayo in one of the other bubbles of atmosphere, as well as Bill’s work in the water. So…killcount aside they might get a higher ‘lives saved’ count just by combating starvation and exposure for the refugees.

In the spirit of Alexander, I say we find yet another ridiculous patron that will complicate our lives to no end and see how many we can juggle all at once before civilization itself implodes. I vote for an elemental. I would say something from necrosi but that might encroach on what you’ve got going on already.

Aku is off to hang out with Kaylen. Travel time. Also Kaylen is still in Sol, petitioning various people to join her. That and you’re mixing the Rising and the Purge histories. Rising is where dragons particularly played a big roll in helping us. Purge is when gunslingers on horseback rode across the open lands hunting down all the remaining monsters. I think Eli is actually from that time period but I can’t really be sure. He dresses the part though.

As for the River of Chaos as we’ve suddenly decided to start calling it, because Ankathi calls it that and Alexander isn’t here to tell her why her old timey names are stupid, yeah we put up warning signs. Though we had to move a few after some of them got turned into other things, one spontaneously exploded, and another is now five times the size it should be. So as you can see…it’s expanding. Irae has that under control, but before we realized it was expanding the signs were the canary in the coal mine so to speak. It’s standard pandem cleanup just much more dangerous than usual and much harder. The big problem being what Selah did is more than open a single rift. Instead of linking to another plane like a piece of string, she just stuck a pipe over there and let every plane through all at once. Irae has so far counted three hundred and seventy two planar intersections from that one rift. A number which has changed six times since she started, and not through her own doing. So instead of a bunch of singular rift clean ups, its a more painstaking operation to get all of them under control and every now and then another dozen or so spill out. We can say this particular rift is…very dangerous. The other knights are helping out though so give it a month and we should be okay. Just don’t cross the signs. One guy got turned into six dimensions and could see the future for a bit there. By the way, he says the colonists will get a massive wave of food poisoning because of the popularity of a particular type of poisonous fish with a very slow acting poison… we’re looking into that. Not the most useful prediction but…better than being unborn or having monsters explode out of your chest.

The Covura Castle is surprisingly still here in decent enough shape. We were never close to the palace due to how late to the party we were in the first place. That and probably to keep us at a safe distance from what was apparently a menagerie of monsters hiding under the floor.

Also as for new Knight-Chancellor, what are you looking for? Another nerd or just someone charismatic enough for delegation? I don’t know if the position was defined to just put a title on what Alexander did or if you specifically have a need for the scholarly arts. I mean Selah is here if we need our own mad scientist to keep up with everyone else. Oh you said that too. She does find it interesting but remember what I said about her earlier? There is some cause for concern with how interested she is in the scientific expansion of her pandem knowledge…and that she definitely really likes Ankathi. I still say we should get an elemental, or a demon, or a necro guy to balance things out. At least until Haziel gets back. As apathetic as she is, Haziel is still a heavy counterweight to Ankathi gaining total influence over the order. Just something to consider.

Also you say we’re anti slavery despite most of our workforce being slaves, I take it you mean anti demon magical enslavement. They’re on their way though.

As for new town locations, just walk down the air tunnel to the bubble Bill’s fruit forest is in. Or go the other way. It’s actually really easy, if there’s air there’s a good place for a town. I like the bubble with the waterfalls though. I think its pretty. That and there is the inside out desert planet if you don’t mind sand.

I think down the spine is correct…at least that’s what mine is like. Also, Aryn is retrieving the closing statement so she’s not here right now. Also it appears when the drones leave my range they go on autopilot. So depends what they were made to do. Don’t let Craylin’s drones wander too far from her… Oh and we already went over synapse extensions. That’s what you and Craylin are for. Like an aethernet relay…just fluffy. As things grow beyond my range, I just make more commanders to go stand over there for me. This is also why connecting to Azilath causes an immediate connection for the whole swarm. We’re technically supposed to be her relays…and all of us are Indal’s. Apparently we’re also Haziel’s…somehow. I don’t get that one. Druids are bullshit.

You may want to take your gripes about the Revenants up with Lancaster. Since she’s the one inviting Kaylen and Kaylen has taken a pretty ‘i don’t care’ approach to previous political viewpoints. Though, I’m also pretty sure the Revenants will say the same about us. At least as long as Vasia still works for us. I feel like I should say Sethis but lets be honest, it’s definitely Vasia.

I’ve asked VSEC to bring us some Nelta tech so we can try those out. Though we still don’t know the mechanism Sakhessa is actually exploiting. Do remember though, she has access to Selona tech, which has been repeatedly shown to be especially effective against alien technology and biology. Their ship weapons were even able to hurt Guardian after all. So worth a shot but don’t do anything dumb yeah?

So while you’re trying to figure out how her palace security works, Lancaster is trying to demolish the whole thing. You two might want to work that out. Also Aryn still isn’t here.

I heard that weird redheaded lady might be a spy. Don’t know what was up with all that though.

Also the new ichor is not quite reset but it is kind of refreshed. Vasia says its taken on properties based on recent events that have happened to me. When a queen makes a new puddle it is based on the queen rather than whatever made the queen. Otherwise theoretically all the ichor would still be based on the original silnian…who was an invader interested in eating us all.

The cloning gear is scuffed up. Though almost everything is at the moment. Though good luck with that project. I’d say it isn’t worth it because House Song will be coming for you if they hear about it, But you already have the Heretic parked right over there. So they’re gonna kill us soon anyways. Might want to work faster.

Honestly I have so much street cred with the phantoms that I could kill a few of them and then still get invited for membership. It just proves I’m extra strong and worth the losses. I think that’s how it works anyways.

Also you are correct, Ankathi would have abandoned you all to  the phantoms were not for the pleasure she takes in remaining nearby just to torment me. I’m going to fucking kill her.

I’m already an entity. I’m spooky, mysterious, ignore the rules of matter and energy, and wield unimaginable power. I killed twelve jesai, I don’t know what else I need to do to qualify.

Yeah I’ll leave you a text file on the star thing, though the star spell that Salied uses has a quirk. It uses an equal amount of mana as the star will produce, instantly. At least the version we have so far, I’m working out a safer way to do it but that’s on the backburner. Just don’t aim for a big star without doing the math first. The ‘instantly’ means it can kill you upon casting it if you forgot to carry the one. Good luuuuck.

Oh speaking of Sakhessa. I know a bit about her. She was in the group chat with me and Eliza.

If you die Larazja has bigger problems. Like me.

Eden says hi. Also the ichor making doesn’t really hurt, but it makes me a bit woozy. Also please don’t look at me while I do this, it’s gross. I suppose my blood is ichor rather than ichor being royal blood. I can technically smush a drone and use that if I wanted to.

You know, I haven’t really put much thought into the fact that I’m always naked until you mentioned that. I haven’t been cold or hot in awhile either. Now I’m suddenly very aware of it…so thanks for that. Also give me one of those shirts. Also i don’t have any “useful orifices”. Though I could grow some in the ichor if I wanted, but y’know…size differences.

Voriuk is a bitch. I could kill him myself. On the other hand, Haziel can apparently FUCKING CONTROL MY DRONES. Not to mention her werewolf form is bigger than me, with more teeth and claws. Druids are bullshit.

Sunstones are rocks, they don’t do anything in the ichor. Well…I guess if you charge them they’re kind of batteries at night. Okay maybe they do keep me a little toasty too. I approve.

Also Vasia is pretty sneaky if you didn’t see her bring Illdath all the way over. Though she and Yaellah both possess incarnum strength. The goons from House Song can all pick up cars just to graduate past white belt. That and sahad gravity manipulation probably, I dunno. Her whole schtick is abducting big things, she has to have a way she’s moving them.

As much as I do love being mysterious, you guys do know you can buy a floating disc on your APT right? It’s five credits you cheapskates.

My APT came off when I was turned into this actually. I just use APD instead now.

APD?

All Purpose Drones.

Moving on, hold on a sec. You want to send Craylin out of the synapse…to hunt an elusive necrocarnate we can never find before he finds us…while we’re concerned about the phantoms retaliating? Sure thing boss. Also I named her.

Who is Erik?

40th Day has submersible probes if that counts as a vehicle. The actual vehicles are….still in the boiling ocean. We didn’t really have time to pack those up before we had to just jump right into a rift and get the hell out of there.

Also Kaylen isn’t here yet. She’s still petitioning others for assistance, alliances, and to join the guild.

Aryn is on the way to retrieve the Closing Statement on a shuttle. She should be there soon if you want her to take it to Moncayo or remain in deep space with the Nomad Flotilla. Speaking of the Flotilla, they have taken on refugees from previous events that maybe don’t want to live on Eden where they can’t have plumbing or in the ruins of Moncayo. They were rather opportunistic about that, to the point I’d be concerned but I suppose the Flotilla’s internal economy is getting a boost from it.

Vanjin and Leon are setting up in Moncayo, though people are still arguing over what building is going to be what, whether or not to keep the palace, and the like. Also apparently they were arguing over who gets the mansion that appeared in the River’s aftermath before it disappeared just as mysteriously as it had appeared.

When it comes to sorting out the available recruits to the division, well we still have Allison who is not a terrible public operative. Actually she fits all too well into what was once Sophia’s position. Not to mention the Nomads themselves for underworld crawling. We could pick up another excuse for public violence in a bounty hunter like Vanjin, if not just give her an apprentice in the process as a cover. I’ve also found a peculiar fellow who is more of a business suit professional to move among more higher class scenarios. However many of those left there are. We could try recruiting a jydoq for more alien based affairs given current perception of solians.

So far, rummaging through the ruins of Moncayo hasn’t quite yielded any artifacts that would help keep anyone alive. Sarnai is still the most remarkable in this regard as one of the only people besides incarnites who can heal quickly let alone other people.

Stories of Lore 35

Well you look…different. Stop yelling at me please, it is a fair observation. Apparently the recently named River of Chaos has remarkable properties when used as a pandem rift. Including changing your biological makeup. I’ve processed the lab results, you’re…fine. I guess. I mean you have two types of cancer, you are missing a kidney, and your left optical nerve is the wrong size but Eden can fix all that. Until then I made you some glasses, a little archaic but you don’t need cybernetics if Eden’s going to have to fix the rest of that anyways. Just wear it for a few days and stop fussing.

Anyways, the death toll of the attack on Moncayo can be summed up as about 80%. Even one of the Whately kids is dead, which hopefully they don’t hold a grudge on us for. Satsujin’s dead from unknown causes as she was in the River’s rift alongside you and now her body was turned into quartz of all things. I’m not sure if she died from the rift or from fighting.

Doctor Taz died when the Outsider crash landed into Moncayo. The rot left him deprived of his tabaxi attributes and he died on impact. Laura and Khymin are fine. Though Khymin was hiding in a nearby building the whole time.

Auwana has been taken over by a mummy known as Sakhessa who apparently got into a fight with the Revenants that were going to help us defend the place apparently. Well at least they were going to try and kill Faelyn. So after all that we basically swapped bases with Faelyn. On the upside, Moncayo is very defensible. On the downside, the Phantoms now have control of Renjala’s Rift. Which is also very defensible.

Eleazor has left for Zero North. It will be a long journey.

Finances are in complete disarray no one knows who has what, refugees everywhere, and we just blew up the economy. So…we’ll get back to that.

With Yenneiros dead I kind of just work here now since we were a subset of this whole Somnus thing up until now. So…can I request snacks in the lunch room? I like the little cheesy fish crackers…

Currently we’ve contacted Kaylen though she informed us that she has resigned from her position as the leader of Alnae. Instead claiming the banner of the “Hero’s Guild” to basically restart the purge. Cheesy name but I suppose its a cliche because that’s what they actually called things back in those days. I told her to please hold because her new project actually seems right up your alley. She’s on line one by the way so you might want to pick that up…yes I’m aware that was important but so is your health. Fine I’ll be back later.

You know, its convenient that your phylactery is here after we just evacuated to Eden in the first place. We didn’t leave much to defend Enohas and Valadeus has taken over that alongside Ki’Ralcht who went there instead of Moncayo so I assume we can safely say she was definitely loyal to the Phantoms over us.

The assault on Moncayo succeeded though at great cost. We have learned that Ankathi is growing stronger and fast. Apparently she’d been using Sarnai to send messages out this whole time in secret and had established contact with the celestial order before they came to talk to Reika. That was actually why they came to talk to Reika it seems. Now Reika is oathbound to serve Ankathi in exchange for saving everyone’s lives. However that…doesn’t seem to change much around here. Ankathi doesn’t have anywhere else to send Reika to hang out and she’s just mostly interested in keeping an eye on things. Particularly Vasia, which we’re not supposed to tell her. I guess if we go to war with Ankathi that’s a thing to keep in mind but…I’m not sure we’re dumb enough to do that. Someone keep that fucking cat away from her though. The actual major change due to this shift in our relationship with Ankathi is that Selah is just hanging out with us now.

Oh so that whole “River of Chaos” rift thing that they did. I mean its exactly what it sounds like. They opened a rift to the most chaotic possible thing that is the bottleneck that leads to wherever Ankathi went. Apparently if you get close to it…weird shit happens. It rewrote Lancaster’s entire life, also several people had planar abominations burst out of their eyes. So basically if Selah does that again, we should stand very far away.  You in particular, since you cannot be bound to Ankathi as an undead you also can’t really be protected from its effects. Though if you keep a rift to a higher plane active it can shield you from the effects but…well may the chaos have mercy on those who don’t know pandem and get too close to it.

So that whole ‘let any paladin who wants to speak to sarnai if they help at moncayo’ thing…turns out Ankathi was way ahead of us on that one and already turned several of their members to her side. We might get pulled into a war with archangels…again.

Alexander unfortunately perished while fighting Illdath. As did Irae, though she respawned next to you. Apparently being your conduit lets her borrow your phylactery. We did not know that until now. I guess your soul won’t be lonely at least.

Well that was catastrophic. Cassir’s dead, Peter’s dead, Setal is dead, Salied is dead just as we found out what she can do. The cult is pretty much gone save for a few weaker acolytes. I guess its just you and me now…oh and Craylin. She’s still here. Oh and remember that email you sent Faelyn? Still alive. Not only still alive, but still has most of her fleet and forces. We need to get the turrets back online reaaaal fast before we lose Moncayo to a pissed of Faelyn because someone can’t stop poking the gods damned dragons!

Bad kitty!

Also you are correct, I do still get nervous around Vasia. So does Craylin. The soul eating alien super monster is terrified of Vasia. Everyone is terrified of Vasia except Lancaster and that’s because she’s just as dumb as you are. Speaking of which though, she has an update.

Its casual friday. Anyways after bailing your asses out twice, I have some notes. The Heretic is a phenomenally powerful ship but it has a critical weakness I have discovered. Like other necrocarnum soulmelds, it expends the harvested essentia for temporary boosts in power. Meaning though it stood its ground well, its invulnerability to cannon fire is a finite resource. One that can only be replenished with more souls. I mean I have quite a few, but if you expect me to send a ship with no guns to every fleet battle you get into…I’m going to need to kill another planet eventually. So ask 40th Day to keep an eye out for inhabited worlds while they’re out and about in case I need to top up.

You say that as if I’m not already a hero. Sure maybe Nelta disagrees but I just destroyed an entire planet of our enemies who were trying to invade us didn’t I? Is that not good for the war? Technically I destroyed at least two though one by omission. I could have cured the refugees from the jesai plague buuuut…I didn’t. Once they’re evacuated to another planet it will spread, it’s actually remarkably similar to mummy rot. Just more focused on killing than siphoning. Also less durable.

Yes I met Craylin. I also studied her briefly.

About your little flash drive…as much amusement as I’m sure it brings you now because you know my presence protect you…I fucking dare you to fight that teenager. She just turned Lancaster into a whole other species from a whole other plane as a byproduct of cracking a fortress in half. Then again, that worked out for you last time I suppose. Maybe you can be a dog this time, you’re my bitch already anyways.

Also now that you’ve involved me in antagonizing Kanika I thought I’d let you know…I’m taking Salied’s body ‘kay thanks byeeee.

Top…up? I oversee Craylin and even I’m not comfortable with her saying that. How do you work with this woman?!

So the salvage ships brought back some income at least. Not as much as we’d have hoped since most of the fleet is still intact. Though it appears Faelyn is heading to Auwana to meet up with Sakhessa for now. Not sure what they’re up to.

In chatting with Voriuk we’ve learned that Voriuk is an asshole. That was the most frustrating conversation I’ve ever listened into and why does he cackle so much? He agreed…with nebulous wording. Though that being said the Revenants just trashed Kharla’s room in the underdark so she’s probably going to be after them for a little bit. They have another branch who hates Vloz as much as our branch hates us.

Bardhe says we owe him a cruiser. I gave him a cruiser because I’m inclined not to piss him off. He’s not available for long term hire though, I will recall the report on him warns that he likes to play for as many sides as possible. You think I can seduce him? Maybe that’d at least incline him not to take any contracts on me…

I need to go get Craylin. She knew Vasia was still around and is hiding somewhere still. She’s going to dry out if we don’t get her some ichor and I don’t want her to get wrinkles.

Well that was…a battle. I suppose there is a reason we don’t specialize in that. Vaeri and Setani died in all the commotion. The closing statement is still cloaked but Aryn is now cured of the rot so she can retake it once she is able. She’s not doing well though. She was very close to Vaeri and apparently she cannot perform parallel processes on grief.

The Nomads successfully crippled Faelyn’s flagship long enough for The Heretic to break it in half. Afterwards they returned back here to the flotilla. Also when you describe them as ‘competent or recruitable’ I have to ask for more detailed parameters. They’re all highly competent while simultaneously completely unrecruitable. There’s a reason we kept them as a subsidiary. Valuable, trustworthy, and reliable…not quite professional though. By a much larger margin than the other oddities we have worked with.

We’ve got a lot of documents today. Some are kind of optional. Though with the momentum broken it takes me a bit to spin back up so this will be a quirky couple of weeks.

Article on shields and ships. Debating if more of these are needed for other concepts. Tess probably zoned out anyways but mezzy and I were writing weird articles. Well lemme know if you have anything you want covered, don’t say psionics.

Zenaka battle report – results didn’t change but here is the full explanation of why VSEC is struggling to deal with the Vloz. Debating if I should do battle reports more often like this for big fights.

Stories of Lore 34

Vasia’s Odyssey for documentation even though you already read it.

And now for patch notes!

-New sheets, note the dropdown menus to select various options.
–Of particular importance are the location ones so I can just scan those to figure out who is where. Due to the way the sheets work it creates a dropdown with more options than you might really need. The top few are the major locations as what system they’re in is important. It also keeps scrolling to encompass all the colonies you have if you care to be specific, but I really just need to know who is in the system most of the time.
–Development plans change the resource income/expenses to change the xp rate. It goes in 50% increments from neutral being 100%. So “full development” is “i reinvest everything right back into this to get it more xp”.
–Colony builder, for consistency.

-Bunch of unnecessary characters added to round out some of the undefined things that were just lurking around even if the players should know about them. Particularly Kharla’s 7 binds and more members of the Phantoms as a sampler.

-Balance might be all over the place right now. Oh well I’m sure you’ll find a way to deal with it.

-Vasia updated

-Reika updated

I’ve been working on this update too much to write more SoL’s for all the major events so the advisors will summarize everything.

I am filling in since there is a vacancy. I hope to not be here long given this position’s record thus far. So to summarize the state of affairs, The Heretic threw The Raven out of the warrens through that universal boundary our probes never returned from. The Outsider is lightly damaged though shouldn’t be too hard to repair.

Faelyn is on her way to Auwana with her own fleet, from the intel that Aryn gathered while connected to the systems of Moncayo we also gather more fleets are on the way. Somnus’ radars detect a lot of stuff coming from a lot of directions. If they were all after us I’d be willing to say we should evacuate immediately, though we have reasons to believe they’re not and we’re just the battleground for multiple interests.

Obviously one of the fleets must be Faelyn’s as we learned from your expedition to Moncayo. We can also confirm that another of the fleets is a small detachment from the Celestial Order, apparently they’re coming with Reika. We’re not sure who the others belong to. It would seem that the sudden move by the phantoms to eliminate us comes with several other forces moving that are either after them or after the Rift itself that we’re sitting on top of. One of those fleets has to be Sharen just by the rather unique signature our radar gives us. The Nomad Flotilla is also on its way back, since the retreat plan is to go through the rift anyways. With this we can assume The Nomad starship itself is also on its way.

Also your trip to Moncayo resulted in the death’s of Nevada and Satsujin. Somewhat inconvenient that all of our soldiers with guns went to fight the person who is really good against soldiers with guns, and your two heavy melee specialists went to fight the place that is weak to guns but effective against melee. Dr. Taz and I have been trying to figure out what has been giving us the sniffles. After some research we’ve discovered the figure you encountered at Moncayo is Ei Khal, one of the phantom’s three big mummies. That is why you are now quarantined, as am I, Dr. Taz, Aryn, and Allison…on Ash. Mummy rot resurfacing is considered a ‘we don’t have a color code for this’ emergency. So we had to voluntarily let Vasia put us in containment units as she might be the only one who can contain it. So I’ll be your neighbor for a little while.

Mummy Rot is a special kind of plague that is no small part of why the era of rising was probably a good idea. It has three layers of infection, a curse, a parasite, and it modifies the DNA of its host. All three infections recreate one another, if you can cure one it’ll be back within an hour or less from one of the other two and immune to however you cured it last time. Normally, we’d have just fixed it up and called it a day using tried and true techniques. Turns out the phantom mummies have had time to cultivate it and with one of their newfound members being the matriarch of Jaal’darya it’s been purposefully put through all the usual manners you might use to cure any one element of it to give it even more immunities. Basically we have no idea how to fix this without killing the mummy that created it, at least not at the moment. As I said, we’re working on it. However, it’s so contagious that it can infect anything with mana production. That means all plants, animals, and ship reactors are vulnerable. We threw your ride into the void because of that last one. Khymin, Kanemur, and Renjala are trying to cut out the bays you’ve been in since arriving and throw them into the lower planes to prevent it from spreading to the rest of the station, just in case.

To be clear, there are jaal’darya plagues, silnian assimilations, Nevun’s infection, and all manner of terrible biological weapons in the galaxy. This is the worst one. Though I imagine if we dropped this stuff on a jesai world the war between them and Nelta might suddenly shift directions.

In other news, Zenaka is on fire. More than usual but not as much as we expected. Approximately one territory is a pandem clusterfuck of anomalous phenomena but Kharla wasn’t there long and already left again. One of the assault carriers was destroyed and another crippled though her flagship still got onto the ground and after that we couldn’t stop her.

We have a week before the arrival of Faelyn’s fleet. Those who are infected will be left for dead if the system is evacuated. So that includes you, me, and Dr. Taz in particular. Allison and Aryn might be fine but until we know for sure they’ll be kept under observation.

I have the feeling we’re about to have a rough couple of months. Good news is, Haziel is already nearby and hasn’t left for Eden yet so hopefully she can help us out. We’re inconveniently very close to this so we’re stuck dealing with it.

The Celestial Order, where all the paladins come from, is currently having some issues ever since they discovered Sarnai’s existence. Since she is now the only person with ties to an actual deity, but that deity has not really bothered to visit the celestial realms in any way. I expect this to be great for us and not so much for them. Though expect more politics. Speaking of which, they want to meet Sarnai and Reika has deferred that one to you. One of the paladins and their retinue is coming to Auwana to see about this phantoms business on behalf of Reika. Apparently she did actually have a friend at one point in her life, which is bizarre. Though the rest are leaving them to it since Reika officially resigned her position with the Celestial Order now that Barachiel’s death has allowed her to do so. Though I’ve yet to find anyone who feels that makes her no longer one of the last paladins since she’s even more of a divine warrior that she was before. I dunno, you sort that mess out whenever we have time. Just giving you a heads up.

In other news, Ki’Ralcht is also on her way to Auwana. Which we’re pretty sure is not good. She’s been comfy sitting around on Zenaka even if unresponsive but now that the phantoms are closing in on us she’s suddenly mobile with all of her forces. Including the zenakans she recruited. Which is bad but at least not as bad as your original predictions for the number of members in the order that were compromised.

So basically we just need to figure out who is going to make one last stand at Auwana to see if we need to retreat from the system or not.

Well Vasia is back and she has a big ship. I am somewhat concerned about Craylin salivating whenever she’s near it. By the way, this is Craylin. The result of those experiments of putting essentia into the ichor. She is the ichor’s attempt at creating a specialized essentia harvester, she also has a bunch of drones with her suited to similar purposes. Craylin did try to munch on the Heretic at one point and then never tried again. Apparently it tastes “too spicy”. As if there was some sort of horrifying demonic hellfire spitting dragon living in the soul of the ship, guarded by the unfathomable horrors of Vasia’s mind.

She went to get Balhast out of the labs and then took half the labs aboard her new ship. So now Vasia and her lab is mobile. Which is uh…terrifying.

Meanwhile…so an army is coming and they’re probably after Cassir since you put all the blame on her for doing the one thing the phantoms had made it pretty clear we weren’t supposed to do. I’m noticing that since Arkaric disappeared they’ve been much crankier. Without the calculator to just reconfigure plans on the fly they’re a bit more adamant that things need to go according to plan A. Which might have been Arkaric’s plan A for all we know. We do know he has never had particular faith that the phantoms would last for particularly long, but who knows what he’s up to now.

So Aryn being potentially infected by the mummy rot curse has left her quarantined. I’m informed this is one of the highest priorities to quarantine because something about the virulence of the rot in combination with Aryn’s artifact is considered to be a potential catastrophe. So the problem here is our ship is not particularly built to function without her. We even gutted several components of the ship that would be needed by a regular crew under the understanding that Aryn could do without them. We can get it to move forward and other basic functions but we should definitely be careful about getting it into any trouble. Even if trouble is coming for us.

Stories of Lore 33

So what we can gather from Echo Seven is they have no idea what happened nor how to really process what is happening. Apparently a fallible memory is a very disturbing concept for her to live through. Though Cassir is pretty sure Daiheb turned her into a humanoid but we can’t fathom why. Even if Daiheb’s magic can’t kill people outright, Arkaric and his whole family of McShootytons were right there. Despite the public knowledge of Arkaric’s death, we’re all preeeetty sure he’s up to something. Actually the fact that he disappeared right before we had Ilex send out the Phantoms 101 brochures is kind of peculiar.

We’ve discerned that he has working knowledge of exerlus technology that he acquired through Daiheb quite awhile ago. Interroga- interviews with Echo Seven reveal that not all the consensus use the same strategy. Echo Consensus uses the nano-machine method because they’re adaptable war units, but many others find purpose built frames to be more effective for their needs. An entire consensus lives entirely in virtual space and has no body to speak of. As such Arkaric’s model is likely to be just as on point as theirs, and it likely has to do with what he’s been using for an energy source this whole time. Short version, more robust less flexible.

We care about any of this because there is a pile of conspiracy theories from everyone with clearance to know about this as to what he’s after. Cassir has her money on that he’s going after Zero-North in some fashion but needs them to think he’s dead for some reason. Maybe hijacking onto their consensus so they take him back to the station. I think he’s just disappearing because he’s always been all about that whole ‘no one pay attention to me’ thing. Eleazor suggests that Arkaric is doing some new angle to mess with that weird shop that Daiheb seems so interested in. I think it was Doctor Taz..no? Wait who was it…oh Khymin. Khymin suggests he found some way to no longer escape his material body and combined with Eleazor’s theory adds up to why he abandoned it. Larazja’s hunch is that he’s done wrecking Sol and is tying up loose ends before he travels to new galactic territories to cause havoc all over again.  You know, those places that he hasn’t already reached. Lot of stars out there, lot of chaos to sow. Koda said that Echo-Seven was witness to information that Arkaric wanted one exerlus to know, but not the rest of them. So by making her human he trapped her outside of the network, unable to send potentially valuable intel to them. So I had the idea to ask Aryn since she used to keep in touch with him. She just gave me a dull stare and said ‘ending civilization’. So…all of the above?

For now we have Echo-Seven under Doctor Taz’s care since she can barely move her own body due to its unfamiliarity and talking to her is difficult.

Station repairs are still ongoing, also a few chunks are still floating around that need to be retrieved. Can’t just slap it together and weld it back together quite that easily. Khymin pointed out that the power systems are having issues with the loss of the main deck mana filtration units…also known as trees. He’s been sealing off more areas so he can keep working on it but at this point he’s just parking his starship near wherever he works and running an extension cord.

So with the release of the phantoms info by way of Ilex, we know from Renjala that Kharla is on her way to Zenaka to retrieve Ilivayas. Which I would have just offered to give her just to get the bitch off of the planet but we still can’t find Ilivayas or most of her drow who are causing problems for us here and there. So…hopefully you have a clever solution to that before she wrecks the place.

In terms of the diplomatic board things are a bit peculiar due to everyone’s shit being blown up. That being said, we don’t really have many eyes in Sol to keep an eye on things so I just have Ilex’s phone call sessions to go off of.

House Song, despite their temporary working relationship, seems to have it out for the Vloz once again. Also particularly Yasrena and they plan to visit Eliza soon. They’re in absolute pieces, their fleet is completely gone except for some starships and they had sent almost all of their people to defend Thenica so New Kaifen isn’t even sure that House Song still exists.

House Sharen is on top of the pack at the moment having a sizeable portion of their fleet still standing and getting credit for defeating Nelta. So much credit that I don’t think anyone would have even noticed our diplomatic relations with the aliens were it not for a certain cat. Because now we have the Phantoms after us and people still see Sharen as the actual saviors of the day, helps that they didn’t have to fight Rikoy and his merry band probably. All things considered they control Shetou’s capital city and the largest fleet left in Sol.

House Vloz’Khress is coming to Zenaka to pick up Ilivayas and I swear to you I am trying my hardest to find that bitch so we can just chuck her at Kharla and hope the bitch fucks off before she burns the whole planet. They are also doing decently well in the wake of the invasion. Largely because they control the underdark where people had to flee to in order to escape bombardment. So even if people aren’t exactly comfortable being demon breeding stock…it was that or be murdered by aliens. That being said, Kharla is fucking insane so was never really a diplomatic option in the first place.

Also the Revenants still hate us.

Kaylen has fallen the furthest as the infighting with the other warlords took a toll on all of Alnae’s resources. She’s down to just a handful of battleships and mechs and without the aethernet she’s not even sure how much of the citizens side with her or even know she’s still alive.

We don’t know what anyone else is doing with the information though. Mostly because with the aethernet down we just have to rely on someone checking in on them now and then.

Things haven’t quite reset so much as everyone is in survival mode at the moment. Except those who have never prioritized survival. Song and the Revenants for example. It’s still a good time to be reaching out but with the phantoms nonsense no one is really sure who to trust with what.

We’ve sent what remains of the fleet except for the Winter towards Zenaka.

Good news, we managed to figure out where Kanika’s ship has been hiding for the major duration of the war. Bad news, it’s at Riftgard. Apparently she decided to lay low within the Warrens while the war with Nelta was ongoing and was conveniently located to intervene if necessary. She was actually a bit deeper into the warrens, she has her own pandem brainwashed people aboard that ship who can navigate it. Though after Ilex decided to put up posters and then broadcast the Phantoms 101 pamphlet she figured out that we’d want that station back.

As a general situation assessment, everyone who was on that station that didn’t work directly for Kanika is probably dead or brainwashed by now. She was also using it as a place to keep some of the other Phantoms as you may recall so…here there be dragons. On the one hand, Kanika probably wasn’t expecting this to turn into a standoff right there on riftgard so she doesn’t have access to much in the way of reinforcements. It’s just her super carrier and the station itself. That and there’s only one convenient way into it so we’ll know if any reinforcements show up for her from the outside. We also have the advantage of The Outsider being able to flank the station if it’s just constantly watching the rift itself, since Alexander was still in the process of scouting for a path to get from Auwana to Enohas.

On the other hand, this is Kanika. For all of Ilex’s jokes about her relationship with Arkaric, this is still the biggest and meanest of the Phantoms. First and second lances have held off on approaching the station for fear of being blown up in space by the station itself but also getting aboard it is very risky. Kanika’s Raven facilities produced the likes of Kaisa and thousands more violent lunatics with a penchant for havoc. Basically she has an army in that station composed of a lot of heroic figures she’s collected over the years.

They are unlikely to have much in the way of teamwork training but in our time visiting her ship we definitely noticed it has a lot of unusual safeguards and strange magic that has been compiled by all of her test subjects. Assaulting a station we built to Valadeus’ specifications didn’t seem like such a daunting task until we realize it wasn’t he who would be lurking within it.

We have a limited time window before she finds a way to entrench herself or find a way to bring others to her for backup, but assaulting Kanika directly is like metaphorically entering into a lower plane. Something something The Raven. I thought I’d at least hold off sending first and second lances until you had time to confirm the risk. Not like Kanika is going anywhere for a little bit. Maybe she retreats deeper into the warrens and pops out somewhere else in space but that could land her very far away.

In regards to the loyal knights problem, not as big of an issue as we thought or a much bigger issue than we thought. Valadeus, and the phantoms in general, don’t operate up front very much. Which is probably why he used us to build Riftgard and also get some other things done. So most of the squires he sent our way have no clue who the phantoms even are, let alone Valadeus himself. So either there’s not as much of a problem in there as we assumed, or we’re just terrrrible at rooting it out. I think the only issue is Ki’Ralcht, as she is an actual Phantoms member. Though she’s in Kharla’s warpath so…that miiight sort itself out for us.

Speaking of which, Kharla has been prodded into going to Zenaka to bring her daughter back by Yasrena. Either she finds Ilivayas and leaves and we all go back to business as usual, likely the better for it, or she destroys Zenaka to find Ilivayas and Lancaster is going to be pissed. The fact that the Zenaka orbital shield is currently broken thanks to the drow operatives still picking a fight with Lancaster is not a good sign but it honestly wouldn’t have made much difference anyways. Kharla is not going to fight a fleet battle if she can avoid it and the shield doesn’t stop her from just taking a shuttle down to the planet. Though that being said, Kharla is known to have set ships on fire in space and can use void plate techniques manually. It’s one of the rare moments where the person on the ship is more dangerous in a fleet battle than the ship itself. Word of warning to Lancaster, this is the second strongest pandem caster anyone knows of. Every technique is available to them. They were number one but then we figured out Ankathi is a thing. Though operating through Sarnai’s body limits her a little in this regard. So ship to ship boarding is probably on the table, and if Kharla suddenly appears on a ship that ship is not going to fare so well. There is a range limit though, so don’t get close to any ship containing Kharla….or the whole family tree that’s coming with her.

Eden says Haziel is just doing Haziel things and they had already discussed the matter before Haziel had started planning to visit. Haziel is actually on the way to the silnian empire and using Eden as a launch point. Why didn’t she tell us about this plan? Because it’s Haziel. She, and Ankathi for that matter, tend to just do their own thing a lot of the time. We reached out to Haziel and she got frustrated with our “civilized political bullshit” and wandered off to go visit Eden. Technical success?

Reaching out to Ankathi went…as well as one could expect when trying to get anything from her. She reminded us that she doesn’t really care about most of this shit and is mostly just interested in Sarnai. So as long as Sarnai doesn’t go anywhere- which she isn’t due to her adopted dad, favorite teacher, and best friend all being here – Ankathi doesn’t really care that much. Though did also point out if we get Sarnai killed she’s going to side with the phantoms out of spite. I didn’t bring up the point that she’d have no access to our half of the universe without Sarnai so that threat isn’t carrying as much weight as she implied, seemed like a bad time to piss her off.

So basically our other two patrons haven’t sided with the phantoms but they’re not spectacularly interested in helping us directly with the matter. Granted we have their respective prophets on deck in Sarnai and Eerihild so that’s probably them helping a bit either way. We seem to have a habit of getting involved with fairly aloof individuals.

Third lance is chilling, as I mentioned Haziel just seems to be up to druid things so she hasn’t caused the planet to suddenly try and eat us or anything. Valadeus might be on his way though, but without Faelyn’s radar support we have no idea for sure where he is or when he might get there. Though as with all things in this universe, travel tiiiime.

All in all the order hasn’t really collapsed in on itself or anything. It’s just Ki’Ralcht and Valadeus that are a threat from within the ranks. So not a bad week for having a cat fuck up everrrrrrything.

I’ve been getting a lot of messages from your friends asking me to kick you. I don’t have feet though so you should be fine. Meanwhile, VSEC found Balhast. It was on Koura just wandering around. Apparently Vasia had planned to use him to tackle Elym but then all that happened and she just left it there. It was actually in the former Koura Cures labs eating other parasites. Can’t imagine why. Eight members of New Age are in the hospital after trying to apprehend the creature. It’s back at the labs on Ash now, but its kind of cranky.

As for all the phone calls…I’ll summarize the results for you since you passed out afterwards.

Song Yi is now looking for Yasrena in particular, though to be fair she knew about Kanika this whole time and had already fought her once. House Song is…valiant but not the best trackers evidently. That and Yasrena seems to be keenly aware that now would be a bad time to be making public appearances. From personal experience I can tell you that the Song Matriarch probably going to have a hard time. It’s a bit of a saying for drow, “Don’t get cornered by a Song.” So it’s already a habit to keep out of their way.

Kaylen is having a ‘oh that’s what they meant’ moment ever since she met some of the Revenants and is now looking to contact the Revenants in particular. Though at present she’s not in a state to go chasing after ghosts. Hardly anyone even believes her that there could be a conspiracy so grand as the Phantoms…especially just after the war with Nelta. Their spirits are tired and broken and though they can see the Beholder setting up shop in the next county over, they’d rather just live and let live at this point.

House Sharen just questioned you for all the information you had and then…uh…that was it. We have no idea what they’re doing with the information. I will say this is normal for drow. You offered information for free, so they took it but had no interest in giving you any information. House Sharen is the pinnacle of the empire for a reason, they know how to play the game and giving away information is usually not in the playbook. Fifty fifty if they start hunting for Phantoms or start trying to befriend them.

Nelta has a “great what do you want me to do about it?” attitude as they’re currently facing complete extinction at the hands of the Jesai. Echo Consensus is on the way there to help out but as we’ve learned…it is a long journey. Though notably even if the admiral is now aware of the Phantoms he can’t do much from halfway across the galaxy either way.

Sarden declined the call. So we just included that in Seiyomi’s things to chat with them about. This turned out to be the wrong person to send, because they know who he is already. He’s considered a member of “Daiheb’s team” and was actually already on their target list, him being in the cult just gave them more motive to hunt us. It turned out despite how elusive he is, escaping Gistratus is very difficult.

Back around here, I’ve assimilated the other ichor into ours to make some more drones to help with moving and I am now hiding from Setani who is very agitated about being brought out here for nothing. She also doesn’t know you’re a cat so she’s blaming me. Also uh…I don’t fit in this station’s lower decks very well. So I’m kind of just stuck in the warehouse. You couldn’t have negotiated for Koura? Seriously?

Also in regards to keeping an eye on Haziel’s ship, it’s actually an Astral Order starship heavily modified by Steamworks. Without Faelyn’s radar that shit is really hard to keep track of. Though since we’re here on the station now might as well just let Lancaster deal with it.

For Somnus repair I suppose the drones can haul stuff around though they tend to make people nervous. When it comes to the idea of ichor pipes…I mean yeah I guess they would but most of them are either drones and won’t be renting apartments or are the humanoids that can just eat regular food and process it themselves. Though the ichor is best when just left sitting there, it’s also a bit thick so pipes are hard.

Cassir is here on Somnus looking over Echo Seven as her therapist upon having her species downgraded out of nowhere. So at the very least we’re all in one place for the assassins to come and get us.

The sahad field is a bit sketchy, not many people witnessed Elym in the first place. At least not many that survived the encounter. We’ve been having Cerys act as a substitute teacher for Salied and she’s able to maintain some of her spells better. It’s odd, she learns them very quickly but forgets them within a week and is forced to learn them again.

As for bringing a 004C…why do we call them that? To Salied…I mean there are some that are helpless mutated monsters who can’t even move but I feel like showing those to Salied would give her an entirely different kind of trauma. Vasia did some things down there…

We’ve got the team back together again aboard the Closing Statement and we’re off into the void where we’ll be difficult to find. Still catching up to the Nomads who move really really fast somehow even with a fleet of salvaged ships.

Koura’s underground is bordering being just the natural state of the city at this point. Though its population is still largely in the colony beyond the rift- we’ll get to that one in a second. Allison has quickly established herself on Koura though Zhuan still runs Orchard.

The problem with the whole ‘keep the phantoms from finding out our involvement with the Void State’ is that they only extended any help to VSEC because of our involvement. As they knew us from back in the Gauntlet days so they decided to feel things out. Evidently that didn’t go as well as they would have liked and now they’re coming to just start murdering everyone. Though we weren’t involved in the poster campaign at least.

In reaching out to them though, they stated we could be allowed to slide due to our previous professional conduct if we make any progress on killing and silencing the problem they’re currently having. They don’t know Ilex is a cat so they mentioned Cassir and Lancaster specifically again. Also since Renjala started rejecting orders all of a sudden they want him too. Bonus, we can claim Reika’s bounty if we get her while we’re at it since the Vloz are still offering. Yes I’m aware Aryn will stab me in the back for even joking about doing that.

Though we can’t browse Kanika’s wares right now since she activated all of them to hold Riftgard. Which leads into the problem. Just before the Nelta invasion, Lancaster set up a mass evacuation to a colony beyond the rift to protect the civilians from the incoming war. This did quite well to keep them alive even if Nelta’s first strategy is ‘wreck the whole city’ every time they show up. Now though, we can’t get them out. Riftgard can effectively hold them hostage and the only way into the rift is right in front of its guns, which the Phantoms had been building a lot of. Only The Outsider can get in behind it as we never found another way into the Warrens for other ships to utilize.

So….the entire population of Koura is now kind of being held hostage by the big bad phantom herself, and she absolutely will just harvest them all for essentia. I wouldn’t be surprised if she started doing so already but we don’t have much of a way to check in on all that from here.