Stories of Lore 32

The war with Nelta is winding down for the most part with only SR3 maintaining an active battlefield. Sharen has cleaned up most everything else at the cost of their fleet but now all that’s left is the battle against the Valdir that Nelta hates so much. This’ll be important in a moment.

Despite being split into pieces, Somnus is still quite functional if you stick to the lower decks and just put some expanding foam in the hallways that are open to space. The station is huge so it had a lot of backups and extra power stations all over the place. It’s just that the main deck is a bit too hard to seal back up. With most people evacuated to the colony beyond the rift we could trickle in staff to the lower decks at least.

Koura is planetside so it’s habitable just not comfortable after all the destruction. Didn’t help that Madhammer specializes in collateral damage so even the fights they won didn’t really protect any infrastructure. The Vittles tower was destroyed but operations on Orchard and Enohas keep it going well enough.

Orchard was actually quite untouched oddly enough. I think they were so focused on dealing with Somnus that they just left Orchard and Ilex’s Vivarium alone to deal with later as neither represented a significant military threat. I mean yeah that Zhuan guy is now pretty much running that place buuuut better than all the farms being toast right?

The Winter was able to take on refugees as well since it has civilian sectors and is now the seat of your power since the command deck and the Koura city hall are gone. It’s currently doing most of the work keeping everything interconnected since it does have trading ports. We’re all set to fly off on various misadventures!

So remember how the Nelta war is winding down right? Well all the rich people who were spending their time hiding in bunkers are now crawling out from under their rocks and trying to re-establish their wealth to the best of their ability as quickly as possible. As Ilex likes to point out, credits aren’t worth much right this moment but now that the people who specialized in credits are back up and running they want whatever is worth something and fast. They don’t want to find themselves forced to a pitiful existence of being *gasp* middle class! Granted middle class nowadays is ‘I have an abandoned building to live in’.

Now that Somnus and Koura are blown apart like everywhere else in the Sol territories, we’re less of a long term investment as far as they are concerned. It’s also hard to appease them with passive shares of a broken down station that will cost…uh…a lot to fix. They want a more active solution to their financial woes.

So it gets complicated because most of our money is owed to our own citizens who we wrote I.O.U.’s to in order to keep the infrastructure moving and building. Actually we owe Koura Logging more money then it cost to create that company…and we own that company. More specifically we owe its employees but I just found that amusing.

Also Aryn found something…peculiar. Someone has been buying those government bonds up in bulk so that now we owe…at least fifteen billion credits to just one person. Not even a corporation. Guess who it is?

I was just keeping people’s faith in the government by reimbursing them what I could to maintain stability on Koura. That is my job right?

So…tell me how it happens that we owe you -directly, not even your office- more money than you’ve ever had in your lifetime if you were just ‘reimbursing the people’?

I buy low and sell high. Learned it from Raiben actually.

Okay so I’m 90% sure she did some crime boss shit to get that but now we owe Laura, who is literally sitting in this office with me as I make this call, billions upon billions of credits and Aryn can’t find any proof that we should be arresting her instead. Even though we’re all positive we should be arresting her.

More prominently, we owe Moncayo a large portion of what remains. We also owe a big chunk to Koura citizens but they’re not the problem. I can snap Laura’s neck if she tries to collect on your kneecaps all of a sudden, but ‘come and take it’ means something entirely different when dealing with someone we know to be one of the Phantoms, friends with Valencia, and in a bit of a cranky mood.

I know you’re going to be mad at me for this, but I’m honestly not good at financial things. So…we kind of have to ask Laura for some options here. Whose advice should be taken carefully because it’s worth remembering she has a monetary incentive to make us overpay her.

Well as you said, you could kill me if I tried to collect too suddenly on you to make me just ‘go away’. Though when it comes to Moncayo’s debt they’re kind of cracking down on it now because of one very specific trick of financial paperwork. Somnus as it is right now is considered ‘scrap’ and sells for the price of ‘scrap’ instead of ‘giant mega station’. Same for Koura. If they were repaired any land value would go back up dramatically. The station is, well was, worth over a trillion credits, but in its current state they can definitely estimate it to be worth far less and claim one of the broken thirds of the station for example.

Koura itself is basically worthless because the planet isn’t even habitable without ingesting slug monsters and then surgically removing them. Without infrastructure the value of its land is not too great when we have a bunch of other blown up colonies to move in on.

However, the increased value of ships does make the Milenkosi, Outsider, and Winter worth about ten times their original value at this exact moment in time. Not that you’d want to sell those I’m sure but it is a quick way to knock out enough of the debt to make them stop hounding you for it.

When it comes to what is owed to everyone else who basically has bonds, so your own citizens, they don’t have the power to do anything about it directly buuuut it’s only a matter of time before your government has a lot less authority than whatever springs up in the meantime. For example, Hasao and Zhuan. For example if someone were to find out that Zhuan is a criminal with a lot of resources to trade for smuggling Vittles products to him that he were to turn around for a profit since Vittles employees are currently working on ‘eating the food they’re growing’. Which is a good way to keep people alive, but Zhuan offering luxuries in times of crisis is going to sway them. Cracking down on Vittles security also has the problem that you faced with me, I owned enough of your security people to get around some things. He undoubtedly will own vastly more than I did in a time like this.

As for what you owe me…

You mean jail time?

I traded quite legitimately thank you. I’ve gone clean since becoming a governor. I just happen to know in times of desperation I can get some good bargains with what assets I had left after the whole Kyven incident. As I was saying…

Anyways that’s the financial crisis in a nutshell. I can send a “come and get it” letter to Moncayo and punch Laura for you if you’d like though Koda did point out that we are in a rough position defensively. Could just sell the whole place and move to Zenaka and try to take over that though. That might be fun, we’ve got the Winter after all.

Khymin’s been drafting up plans to repair the station’s three major pieces while the rest of his team works on just sealing hallways so that we can live on those pieces while waiting around. Gonna need some very big thrusters though he says. And quick cuz one of those pieces is drifting towards Koura and is going to fall into the atmosphere. According to our calculations, thank you koda, it’ll land very far into the middle of nowhere from koura so at least that’s not going to wipe out the planet’s infrastructure buuuut it would be bad.

Zenaka does have food, which we’ve been trading for this whole time already though its engineers are a bit underqualified to work on this sort of thing. They’ve launched rockets into space with rudimentary scanners at best.

Speaking of Zenaka, the drow are getting uppity again and they assassinated the local lord of the land in our friendliest neighborhood. This does come on the tails of us securing more trade with a neighboring state so some good news there.

Valadeus has a new mission for us. It’s to kill Lancaster. Oh wait I just got a follow up email. So you know that PR stunt Ilex was doing to try and say ‘hey look we diplomacized them we’re awesome’? Basically our new mission is to keep the diplomacy turnout as quiet as possible. They don’t know Ilex is a cat, but they did tell us to deal with Cassir. There’s also a “p.s. see if you can recruit Whitetalon while you’re at it”. They like him apparently and are looking for a new arms dealer. Apparently Kanika has the leftover schematics of Selona’s weapons manufacturing and wants to give them to whitetalon to be the new arms producer. So…I read this as “bribe him with guns”.

Apparently they’re about to try and leverage her debt to remove her from power very soon and advise preparing for the opportunity once she has a lot less security available to her. They did not specify how, but I get the feeling the debt collectors are just a formality to pave the way to whatever they’re actually up to since there is no way she’s actually going to give up Somnus and her ships to pay it off.

Actually now that I think about it, it’s kind of funny that despite also taking in refugees our finances worked out just fine. We’re the only formal members of the Phantoms in the Void State. I’m sure this is just a coincidence.

Recruitment is down in Auwana at the moment due to everyone being in a bad state though I imagine it will pick up again once the shock of being in a bad state passes over. Then they’ll transition to “oh god get me out of here”. We did get a new batch from Valadeus though, which might be a potential problem if we don’t deal with Lancaster for him as a lot of our members now have a tie to the phantoms with a potential priority over their relationship with us.

Also Eden can now be a spooky ghost planet.

I can’t help but notice I very suddenly stopped getting email alerts from Moncayo’s radar station after those posters started going up. Also we stopped getting recruits for the pool entirely, the few we had still coming in mostly from Zenaka were all conveniently eliminated by “pirates”. Pirates who can take down guarded convoys without them being able to send a distress signal. I don’t think they’re pirates.

I don’t think we need to send Faelyn that letter now though. Maybe more of a declaration of some sort.

Word on the group chat is that successfully committing diplomacy and then announcing we did so has made us – specifically Lancaster and Cassir – a priority target. All we have right now to keep an eye on the Phantoms is Renjala though, Vasia’s missing at a very bad time…again.

As for Alnae’s colonies, ruins. They were part of the frontier sweep before Nelta got to Auwana, though back in Sol they do still have Kaylen and the capital city. Granted its also in ruins but she does have an army there still. That’s all I got though without actually going to check on them with this whole lack of aethernet thing. Maybe we should send more cultists as ambassadors.

Speaking of your salvage material and plans for it, Peter points out that there is a bit of a problem with all of your financial ideas. We owe it to mostly our own workers. Who we’re telling to build the ship for bread and a priority slot on the list to get the thing they’re building. Odds are that everything up until the part where we keep the things we have built goes great, and then they take the stuff. He notes this is particularly because the crime rings are getting back up and running. He has some options though. First we could increase security, he actually recommends using me for that since I don’t really need money and I come with an army for the price of…biomatter. That and my drones aren’t liable to steal a ship if bribed by the local crime lord. The sandwich you put a sticky note on in the fridge though…no promises.

Other option is just use the material to build things to give the people immediately so instead of it being a sneaky crime thing it’s just the arrangement outright, also thus increasing the value of the sale I suppose. Might help us stabilize Alaniade.

Third option is contract Nah for security, since Sethis does us favors and he also is not having a debt crisis so his people aren’t so easily bribed right now. That way you don’t have to expose my existence to people. I’m a state secret you know, hehehe.

Though the housing plan on Somnus is a good start the problem is Somnus is also in danger of being repossessed before its fixed so its hard to sell people who we owe homes even more I.O.U’s. I mean we can but 50/50 success rate.

Actually when it comes to incarnum soul editing I might know more about it than you think, or at least the basic concepts of it. I grew up in Shetou, House Song is one of the pillars of our empire. They tend to spread a lot of information on ‘why necrocarnum is bad and we will kill you for trying it’. They have a program where people come to your school and talk about the dangers of using necrocarnum and pandem.

Pool update, yes it does make psionic skeletal structures for some of its creatures. Mostly the heavy lifters though. You’re the only one with a weaponized version, that being said it is currently in a time of resource collection. When you were made it was still in defense and independent operations mode. Now it uses the good materials for good haulers so we can try to get more biomass to make more things.

Having a system named after me is definitely…an unforeseen turn of events. Kind of cool though. Also system survey data is in before we finalize any moving decisions.

Cassir and the gang are off to Tykel to loot some ruins, travel tiiiime.

The research team has been looking into the Nelta transport method and it actually seems very similar to a dimension door method that we use. It’s more popular with military boarding craft though can be a little finnicky. They use a sahad method though, which uses a coordinate system different from dimension door. Dimension door is based on local coordinates while the sahad variant is based on absolute coordinates. By absolute I mean really, really, really absolute. I actually can barely fathom what their numbers are tied to, its not inside of the Astral plane. It is something truly…cosmic. Unknowable…I have seen the un- ow why’d you swat me?

Anyways it’s massively more computer intensive to use due to this coordinate system. The entire cost of using the spell is frontloaded to getting accurate coordinates. After that it behaves in a way described as a “phenomena” making successive uses of it cheaper. So good for bulk transport, not as great as dimension door for just sending some guys over. However it actually has worse range than dimension door. The spell itself seems to have unlimited potential, theoretically I could type in 0 into all eighteen of the coordinates and find what its anchored to. Though the mana cost expands exponentially by distance unlike dimension door which just has a max range. So getting to 0 everything would cost….all the energy in our universe and then some. Getting five feet away could be done with a regular mana reactor, albeit a big one attached to a big computer for that first calculation. It’s in the range of “kinda maybe practical to figure out” and also “why the fuck would we bother with this when we have Renjala?”.

As for Salied, they’ve mentioned her progress is actually regressing ever since Vasia left. She’s forgetting the spells she learned and going into her catatonic state more often now. I think something about fixing her requires Vasia. Not as in her expertise, as in literally Vasia. Potentially only Vasia unless we figure out what Vasia has that makes Salied react favorably to her. That or it’s actually Balhast who is always right next to Vasia. Either way, the other researchers are noticing a backwards slide in progress and can’t figure out why without trying some ideas that Vasia forbid them from doing. Not so much forbid them from doing to Salied but no one is allowed in the containment cell holding the entity besides Vasia herself. Her report states that its a world shaping super magic creature that existed outside of known reality for millenia, “so don’t open the fucking door unless you want to be unmade”. She did not tell anyone how she avoided this fate, and I think she omitted that information entirely on purpose.

Speaking of Balhast, if he’s not with Vasia we have a problem. No one knows where he is. This is a mutated alien killing machine with advanced stealth capability. She taught it how to cast every self enhancing spell she could think of. Including bull’s strength, Owl’s wisdom, haste, invisibility, dimension door, fireball, magic missile, arcane missile, and it knows how to shoot sahad lasers apparently. Problem number two, it is loyal only to Vasia. So if you didn’t see it…and we don’t know where it is…and she never keeps it in a containment unit anymore…someone might want to tell Lancaster to sweep Koura and/or Somnus as that is where Vasia was last at.

The recovery teams are shipping those experiencing the phenomena of witnessing sahad to Ash, perhaps never to be seen again. The problem is that’s a lot of people and some other people who knew those people are asking questions. That’s actually a standing order from Vasia before she left more so than what you said to do. Ohalyn may or may not be involved again.

Also yes if you split the pool and ship it out of the synapse it’ll start behaving independently. That’s basically how Que even exists in the first place, not to mention your own little concoction. In the absence of a synapse it tries to expand its own synapse, usually until it can reconnect with other pools. Traditionally silnians use them kind of like deployable military bases. Drop it somewhere, come back later, tah dah it made an army. So it stands to reason it would try to create a monarch as we’re what actually expands and controls the synapse, the ichor just sits in our synapse. So also theoretically if I left for long enough it’d go rogue again.

The Yelay have been moved to the ruins of Somnus and are somewhat confused as to what’s going on. They’re trying to understand if this is an upgrade or not, they went from being sealed in a smaller exhibit area to being let loose onto a derelict that is at least slightly larger.

To be fair, your premonitions are unreliable at best. So I figured it would take longer to notice. Also I am quite subtle, if I wasn’t the Revenants would have found my lab by now. You underestimate the world you and I operate in. If you weren’t so forgetful maybe you’d remember that everyone I talk to is already deep into the world of secret societies. Larazja is a secret kept in a lab, Ohalyn is a crime lord, Eliza is a Phantom, and Lancaster knows who the hell I and Nah division are.

Salied has a quirk about her awakening. What she witnessed wasn’t a normal spell, it was something performed by someone very untrained in the art. It likely failed to cast when she saw it and so her experience is kind of jammed as she never made the proper connection to Sahad itself. What we’ve learned from this is that the first exposure really matters because subsequent exposures did not fix the problem. She does however learn new spells at an exceptionally fast rate, the art has been around for a few years now and Salied learned more spells than even Cerys knows within the last year I’ve been working with her. That being said, putting her in the ichor could kill her if the Ichor finds her too broken to be useful, which has already happened to a few of your volunteers. So my standing instructions while I’m away is just focus on spellcrafting with her, it’s the one thing she’s good at. That or exposing her to entities, keep her away from ethi tech as much as possible. I think I found a use for her and was very close to making a breakthrough but then my whole plan was interrupted by Nelta retreating and I had to go do that.

Also there is no extraction, doing so while I’m within range of Elym could have disastrous consequences. Elym can learn any spell they witness, of any type. They’re a rogue jesai who gave up on the theocracy of worshipping the chromaclysm but they retain the ability to manipulate magic on such a fundamental level that if they see it once they now know it. We have a tiered casting system for classifications back in Sol. Elym can cast anything we show them at what I would call the 14th tier. So far the list of shit they stole from us includes: Pandem, the spell you’re using to communicate with me right now (from when you contacted Rikoy), Kharla’s void plate, all the zankist shit that Kaylen showed off, Song Yi’s necrocarnum – fortunately no rewriting but they did see the lifesteal trick and how to become a lich thanks to seeing Renjala once at Enohas when they extracted Rikoy, oh and Haziel’s werewolf shit. There is only one exception, they could not figure out how to replicate Reika’s sword or Gunhild’s gun. So they can’t figure out artifacts for some reason.

Imagine if we had actually fought Nelta, that would have been some big encounter with a jesai but not as high stakes as fighting the actual jesai as a whole. Then we would have formally met a member of each of the elder races…real dramatic stuff that would serve as a great introduction to the galactic scene. But then we talked them into going away instead.

-_-

So my point being, if you let Renjala extract me and a single jesai or Elym witnesses it, they will now have the secret to galactic transportation on a whim. That is a strategic asset that will likely end the galaxy or at least subjugate it to the jesai immediately. Once that happens, Arkaric goes from being our greatest threat to our only salvation. Wait he’s dead? What? When did that happen? Oh we don’t think he’s dead? Make up your fucking mind.

On a related note, Seiyomi says he would bet his next year’s salary that Arkaric isn’t actually dead. Though if he were actually dead, he would have been cut off from the computer that made him what he was. The exerlus only attacked Tykel, it is unlikely that they know where Daiheb’s ship is. Turns out its a ship, Seiyomi let that one slip. So even if he were dead, Daiheb could bestow someone new with the same powers of prediction that Arkaric had. We could only wait and hope that their motives might be less dangerous for galactic existence. I’m sure they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice and pick someone even more directly bloodthirsty right? …I don’t like how quiet you’re being.

Also mission report, Seiyomi is keeping the Revenants busy at the moment. Which is probably why they haven’t attacked us again just yet. Apparently they’re chasing him, or more so his ‘clues’ around the galaxy and getting severely frustrated. At least a small team of them. Alakira herself is fighting phantoms on Thenica. Seiyomi advises that he could bring the Revenants to Auwana if we’re about to get blown to pieces by Kanika for that whole diplomacy stunt. They might be helpful here, but he also points out that they still don’t like most of us. At best they’ll help Lancaster, then turn around to stab you and Renjala.

I appreciate all these bodies, and now we shall feast like it is a festival. To the pools with them!

The makers are fine, one of them just got to Enohas. The psychiatrists though are still in that other dimension beyond Renjala’s rift after the whole evacuation thing that Lancaster put in place before the battle with Nelta.

Data pending on the Sivataurs, we have no eyes in Sol at the moment.

Aryn in forms me that Bardhe took his ships and fucked off, we’ll need to track him down to try and hire him again. I suppose you could do the phone thing if you wanted though. Not sure what he’s up to at the moment.

Setani is en route to Que to assist Ilex with his experimentations. We sent a few agents with her as extra insurance though to be honest…it’s Setani. If anything they’re worth more as projectiles to her rather than bodyguards.

The Nomads took the Nelta salvage in order to…repair it and add to their growing flotilla fleet. They seem to be having fun with this, they don’t have enough staff for any of this idea of theirs but they keep stealing so many ships that they’re kind of making it work. They took off while we weren’t looking to go recruit citizens by way of ‘we have a ship, you have a ruin, want a ride?’ along the somewhat destroyed frontier and probably heading to Sol as well to fill  out their population. So…once we get everyone loaded back onto the Closing Statement we’ll go regroup with them wherever they’re recruiting at. They did conveniently get some farming going on some of the ships though. Coincidentally they’re all Vittles brand hydroponics and there was nothing left at the ruins of Vittles’ tower after the invasion.

We’ve sent Allison down to Koura to try and start establishing herself, this does put her primarily in contact with Zhuan as the major rival. Though as I’m sure you’re aware, crime isn’t particularly good crime if it doesn’t piss Lancaster off. So she’s probably mad at Allison now who straight up stole a bunch of VSEC resources to get started.

Stories of Lore 31

Well…this is awkward. I guess that works out well enough for us all things considered. Even if Somnus is in pieces after getting blasted and Koura now looks like everywhere else in the Sol territories.

So time for updates around the galaxy now that we have a breather to actually read all those intel reports.

Tykel is sort of gone, Echo Consensus have destroyed most of it including Orochi and Arkaric. It turned out that Arkaric’s androids along with himself were based on exerlus technology, which Daiheb had acquired by being the first solian to reach the wider galaxy some several centuries ago. Most alien races are actually completely unaware they’ve already seen one of ours all the way out to the furthest reaches of the galaxy for years now since they’re just so gosh darn mysterious. Though as a result, Echo Seven understood the backup protocols that Daiheb models use and could cancel the signals. Basically the phylactery vs necrocarnates rule all over again, but now for cyborgs.

What remains of the city is just a collection of ruins on a dead world, Echo Consensus took out the atmosphere containment devices and anything they hadn’t personally shot was instead suffocated to death by space itself.

The Silnian war is a whole other thing still going on. Apparently if we were to use Sol metrics, trillions have died, stood back up, and died again. It is bloody on a scale the galaxy has not really had to deal with since the silnians fought the jesai millenia ago. Our jydoq merchant guy who is hanging out on the Winter now by the way, is my  go to source for galactic history since Echo Seven is still in Sol recovering from the war with Selona. He left the consensus in ruins as he knew how to target their cores so they couldn’t just rebuild with all the metal laying around. Echo Seven themselves is gone, having basically kamikaze’d to kill Arkaric.

Riley’s back, she describes Nelta as…on fire. Peace talks didn’t go so well. The jesai are one of the ancient super races and they can fuck everrrrybody up. Exerlus and the echo consensus would normally keep them in check but they’re conveniently nowhere nearby. They are helping us with a big problem though at least.

The war in Sol is winding down, with a huge and heavy hitting portion of Nelta’s fleet peacing out back to Nelta Faelyn has been able to talk to Sharen to get their fleet moving. Now victory is well within our grasp, though we’ll see how politics settle down in the wake of this new Sol.

Irae is a lot stronger than before we joined the so called Void State. Though its hard to tell in what ways.

I ain’t updating cards for a lil bit with everything going on as it is.

Alexander has taken The Outsider into the warrens to begin mapping. So…you know that thing Alexander does where he’s just a total nerd? Yeah he keeps losing focus on his objective and becoming supremely fascinated by the smallest things. By the way there’s another entity in there if you go basically straight down then follow that tunnel and take a left at the next intersection then another left…and another left. He keeps going left at every intersection. Some sort of strategy Aryn told him about.

Also what kind of soulmeld do you want to make for Eden? She doesn’t really fight much so not sure if more weapon savvy ones are a good idea, and she can already float around. Maybe something defensive as a ‘just in case’ but nothing can kill her without getting to her planet so not really sure on that one.

As another update, things within the Phantoms are a bit sketchy right now. With Arkaric gone not all of them realized how much he was contributing but those who did know are suddenly a bit more nervous and the Revenants just got a lot of progress done very quickly at about the same time. Coincidence?

Also Ilex wanted us to figure out what’s going on with Faelyn and her meddling with the Que experiments. Apparently she’s just throwing stuff at him to see what happens and if she thinks its a worthwhile pursuit. If it turns out to be, the current state Valdir is in has left them vulnerable enough that Kanika could probably just kidnap Azilath if she wanted to. Apparently they’re testing if Kanika can affect the silnians, if she can then that means she can start messing with the Sol-Valdir. Though is wary since an untestable thing is what happens once Indal comes back. Too much investment in silnian offshoots could backfire if he shows up and goes ‘Oh thanks for this giant army I now know everything. By the way remember that I’m the last adventurer in Sol? Time to go slay a dracolich.” He already fought her once before, if he tracks her down again who knows what could happen.

Okay so it’s not that hard to locate Azilath I don’t think. If either of us just land on the same continent as her, at her rank I’m pretty sure we’ll find her synapse. Locating aside, Nelta. So maybe we need to do another stealth op to find her and what she’s up to. Even if the war in Sol is winding down, they still really hate Valdir.

Also with Vasia MIA on some grand galactic adventure, New Age isn’t as productive as it used to be. It’s mostly just maintaining ongoing experiments. That and…uh…now I have no idea what the fuck I’m supposed to be summarizing these reports as.

In regards to your strategy for ‘if the revenants come’ I have good news. They’re busy on Thenica now. Seiyomi is keeping an eye on them. Bad news for Renjala, they are in frighteningly close proximity to Song clan. A clan known for hunting down liches. Round two, Auni Kuu. Might be a good idea for him to start hiding on Eden and using Irae more until we at least figure out if I’m right or not. Though apparently they’re fighting some phantoms who tried to establish their own colonies in the wake of the apocalypse.

Also someone brought me a shield awhile back, I forget who.

Judging by Renjala’s email…they have their own variables they’re using us to test. It’s one of those things where its really hard to say no given that they could just kidnap us on a whim. If they figure out Vasia isn’t here anymore we’re in fucking trouble so shhh. They did give us data on the ones they sent to us and its obvious that ‘willing’ isn’t necessarily the only criteria if a criteria at all for the more powerful champions of the synapse. I mean…my willingness was questionable and down to ignorance and now I’m the queen after all.

We’ll start moving to the moon once we get some ships in here to help move. It’d be easier if we just used a carrier but I have a feeling Lancaster isn’t going to loan us one anymore. Also we should name the moon, and the system. My advice is to use words with more than one syllable. Que sucks, its as if whoever named it started a name and forgot to finish it then didn’t double check before publishing the survey data.

In regards to recruiting jydoq…that might be difficult because they know what silnians are and definitely have their own perceptions on it. They’re also a society and species not as prone to individual thinking, often putting too much faith in whatever system governs them so they are less likely to have a few radicals come take a dip. I suspect that’s why Hylavi was such a good security chief for Lancaster, jydoq just as a species aren’t wired to question their superiors. The only time they ever did was while staring down the barrel of Arkaric’s metaphorical gun.

Zenaka has the reverse problem, they’re a little too crazy if you say “it might make you stronger” they just go wild. So…we need to arrange some transportation on that one. One ambassador suggested we just dump the pool onto Zenaka and see what happens. I think finsir just breeds lunatics as a planar function.

Before you get any idea for silnian werewolves I will point out its a curse and a disease magically speaking. Our mutations will remove it automatically, same reason you can’t poison us very easily. That and we already have teeth, claws, and muscle. Not much to gain there. I mean…look at me. I’ve got fur, I’ve got teeth, I’ve got claws. I’ve also got enough weight to crush a werewolf just by laying on them. Speaking of which, do you think I’m getting fatter? I can’t tell anymore how much is a healthy weight for me because I weigh almost half a ton.

Also I didn’t even know about your whole thesis and she mostly interacted with Renjala. So ask him why he didn’t bring it up. In fact, I think only Vasia knows about your past work and she didn’t really care to spend much time with Haziel. One time they were in a room together she was focused on Eliza.

Scans of ZFO…two…three…four…four? no three. Scans of ZFO234-3 tell us that there is a bunch of weird unfamiliar materials in there. Just like last time. Send someone down there with some tweezers if you want more information, we’re talking about things that are not on the periodic table. Though mostly due to planar things, not sure what happens if they’re removed from Finsor. Reminder, when air is removed from Finsor it likes to turn into hellfire. That stuff that can burn without oxygen or fuel…so use a very long stick to push it through any rifts.

So I feel a lot of people assumed Echo Consensus would lose, but there’s no Tykel left to really go extract anything from. The exerlus inflicted a 100% fatality rate via exploding everything and then…space. Space kills things.

Salied is back at Ash but now Vasia isn’t there so she’s just back in her room watching cartoons.

That and New Horizons made us some good salvage, salvage values are up by the way after all these wars. We made almost two billion off of that.

Actually they didn’t really mess with the Vivarium other than figuring out how to open and close the doors. Researchers who were hostages at the time reveal they had fully planned to use the vivarium. To put us in for research. Things happened to those researchers that they don’t want to talk about. The New Age researcher who was on staff to keep an eye on the vivarium laughed at their trauma. He used to work at the lab on Somnus. With Vasia.

Also the metal maker needs a convoy transport to Enohas and Arc is fuuuuuuuuuuucked up.

So…we’re fine. The Nomads didn’t get here in time for the first wave and by the time we got here we were operating as a stealth support center. The Nomads stole some alien wreckage from New Horizon salvage teams but there was so much salvage no one bothered to fight them for it. Though honestly even if there was only one ship to salvage I doubt anyone would have fought them for it.

So revenue wise it would go up dramatically if we ended a lot of Joe’s programs to sort of aid the people and just told em to sink or swim. Though this would result in the second Kyven almost gauranteed. Then again we can just shoot that problem and call it a day. The sudden refugee surge taking advantage of these systems is what caused an overall dive in the economy. That and they’re all broke since anyone who didn’t use a solvang bank is currently fuuuucked. So they’re having to rebuild their finances from scratch in a lot of cases, however this still works out well in the future. Every month they’re less of a drain on our resources and more productive as new businesses get started up thanks to us constantly pouring resources onto them at first. Though we’re kind of unable to do that anymore so the turnaround has slowed down a bit. Though it is still taking place, bit by bit we’re stabilizing.

So for increasing revenue…we can make a whip and collar factory?

The Hasao clan’s leader is a matriarch by the name of Hasao Kia. She’s as grouchy as you’d expect an elf from Shetou to be. Though diplomatic relations are a little frozen, as I mentioned before I think they’re waiting out to see how things fall into place after the Nelta assault. They keep being ‘busy’ since they ‘have a whole city to run’.

However, they recently found out about the Vivarium’s luxury crop cloning and they’re not happy about it which has frozen diplomatic relations even further. Something to the tune of ‘why are you making coffee while people are starving to death in the streets’ sort of vibe. Though VSEC doesn’t control the Vivarium so not too much diplomatic damage as a result, it’s just a thing I thought I would mention.

Riley is on her way into Nelta territory, the problem is we don’t know exactly where the border planet near Haweh was. Aryn woke up there randomly and died still in that area, though at this point any Nelta area will do fine.

Winter has absorbed some of the excess population of Koura. So it’s getting fairly busy aboard there. It happens to also function as a mobile trade port so that’s going well for it with the Zenakan trade opening up.

Tortuga renovations fall under ‘things we can’t afford to do right now because finances’.

Sol expedition is in transit.

We have more final numbers on the Nelta fleet that is coming for us now that they’ve finished gathering up and are going to prepare to move soon. I made a handy sheet for you in our warzones pages. We also know that Rikoy and Elym will be present.

Third lance is back here as the convoy trip from Zenaka got sorted out. Just in time for the Revenants to show up again. We  found out that the Revenants never left Jamalia at least, they took out an entire squad of knights and squires who we think got really close to finding out something important about how they’re hiding in the city. Though with all the refugees dropped off recently it’s hard to tell who doesn’t belong here given we only  know the identity of one of them, and they are likely keeping much more hidden than the rest.

The knights went to deal with all this but they were already gone. Though we did find some clues of where they were hiding and what they were doing in Jamalia still before they escaped. Likely aboard a ship this time judging by the fact that a few more dead knights were found at the spaceport. So the good news is they’re kind of stuck because only I know the information they’re looking for and they haven’t gotten to me yet. The bad news is, I think they’re looking for your phylactery and or planning to send Naexi to deal with you if you show back up. They’re definitely a “cut off the head of the serpent” type of group and it is likely this is why they took Akuhiko, in search of your weak point. That being said, Aku doesn’t even know where it is so…not like he can help them with that even if he wanted to. Seriously who would look halfway across the galaxy?

We found Daesta, she’s in the far northwest and nowhere near Jamalia. I actually am impressed she got all the way out there without a shuttle. She also now has a lot of modern weapons, likely a gift from the Revenants but it is notable they aren’t closely involved with her. At least they aren’t hanging out at her base, we’d send some knights to deal with her but we had the chaos of the Revenants in Jamalia to deal with. Though we could work on that now since it…seeeems like they left this time. I suspect they found out that the Sol expedition is going on and they might be headed back to protect whatever their headquarters is.

On another note, Ki’Ralcht is now really spooky. Just her appearance alone was kinda scary but now she has a horde of demonic alien warriors under her command and she summons abyssal creatures as her go to strategy. So we might be careful where we send her after Zenaka, if she ever leaves, just because she’s likely going to have PR issues wherever she goes. Don’t ask me why she thought it was a good idea to incorporate ominous hoods into the uniforms of her lance.

As for Reika’s binding she’s currently just being wild and free since she hasn’t been free in so long. Even if Ankathi is being pushy, and making a good offer as the best divine bind she could ever hope for, you may recall that it is hard to be pushy with Reika. She’s extremely talented at telling people to fuck off and leave her alone, so I don’t think you have to worry about it. Also Reika has been Reika this entire time without a particularly helpful bind and can carry herself on pure skill so she doesn’t need a bind to do what she does best.

That being said, with her arm back she’s getting stronger than ever before. Because she can use that hand to cast while her other hand keeps doing sword stuff. She used to have to open rifts extremely quickly to make up for this problem, now she just drops smite on people at the same time as she does everything else she likes to do.

Oh hey that’s right, Alianade is a thing. Byeeee finances.

Also the pool is composed of two ichors. Also I do not eat people! I’m not a, oh fuck I already ate people didn’t I…well at least I throw them in the pool first so I don’t just bite their faces off. Though that bit of muscle attached to the thumb kind of reminds me of chicken wings. Wait what?

So basically biomass conversion is done mostly through the ichor lakes, you and I can digest it as is but pool #2’s drones don’t have very advanced digestive systems. More room was made for task based systems and the ichor breaks things down into something edible for them. Less points of failure in their design and more room for muscle and useful things. Though the Que based designs notably have the ability to digest their own food, part of the whole independence thing we were designed to have I suppose.

The infection method is an option if you just wanna scratch people with your kitty claws but that doesn’t exactly create more ichor to sustain us as much as it does a quick hack to make more drones for the swarm and cause more problems for anything fighting against us. Ideally we only use the infection method during war, and then toss all the ghouls into the pool afterwards to make proper drones.

The conversion within the ichor pools is basically a molecular breakdown and redistribution. I suppose a large part of what happens in them is just extremely advanced and automated organic alchemy. To silnians this is a developed technology more so than a random boon as a species, which might be why its so difficult to really control or work with sometimes. Instead of evolving to the bare minimum for survival of the fittest or anything, it was developed with the budget of a military nation who just kept advancing it. It is interesting though how you and I exist at all though, as we are basically the technology gone rogue. Though I don’t think the silnians ever really considered it a problem, more of a feature. As Azilath once described, if Indal comes by we are automatically added back to his synapse under his command. I would really like to research silnian history on such things but it’s really  hard to find anything about them without venturing into the silnian territory. Which is described as many to be ‘suicide’.

I mean if you wanna sit on my tail I guess you can, though Cassir keeps warning me to be careful with it. Something about it having a lot of muscle mass. She made me crush rocks with it for a few experiments. I don’t know why you wouldn’t like being pet all the time though, it’s better than the alternative of being shot because people think  you’re a stray.

The pool synapse connection does depend on proximity, when both are near me I can just link them back together after all. So you should be able to as well, though we’re still a part of Que’s design which favors independent operation. Though the sense of connection doesn’t really change much upon feeding them, I mean you can tell they’re healthier but it doesn’t radically alter their behavior. Especially not Que.

Also sapient entities are kind of up to the pool. Think of it as needing a soul to create a sapient agent, just like it needs different kinds of biomass for different kinds of features. Hence the whole needing calcium thing. Put living souls in, and then it has some options to work with. So feeding it corpses of the dead does not bode well for creating more higher level creatures like us. Obviously the Que scientists just injected me with the stuff while I was still alive and eventually just threw me in, and you jumped in yourself. Though otherwise most of the biomass you brought back are just corpses, trees, and the like. The issue with finding willing volunteers is the fine print on how we have no idea what it’s going to do or if it is even going to like them enough to turn them into a real agent of the synapse while at the same time Koura Cures is advertising the parasitic recovery method that is much more controlled and refined to be beneficial. Maybe we could go capture some pirates? There are a few more advanced drones from the second pool due to eating people aboard the Milenkosi but definitely not quite on our level. I’m not entirely sure what the criteria for a champion of the synapse is actually.

In regards to Vasia’s recent behavior, yeah she’s gone a little crazy but she’s started making progress faster. That being said she hasn’t visited me in awhile so maybe I just haven’t noticed how good or bad it is, I think I’m lower on the list of her projects at the moment.

As for psionics…I mean I get the basics you’re going over but why do I gotta study! I already spend all my time doing the advisor thing and managing the synapse for you.

Meanwhile back at Zenaka, the convoy has moved out to Somnus to start its trips back and forth for station construction on Whitetalon’s dime. 40th Day has sent out the scanner ships and a lot of Zenaka itself is at the very least warm and toasty. The unbound star covers the nearby planets in near constant sunlight, they don’t have much for a ‘night’ cycle. Though it’s not as warm as a regular star, so a lot of life forms developed their own self heating mechanisms. You won’t find many reptiles there basically.

Zenaka has prosthetic equivalents that are fairly basic, definitely not approaching the realm of cybernetics though. Also as mentioned selling people on the ichor is difficult because Koura Cures has a much easier sell. We’ve had a few crazier volunteers so we’ll see how that goes. Obviously from Zenaka, back on Koura the ichor doesn’t sell well at all since Koura Cures’ office is riiiight there.

Cult recruitment on Zenaka isn’t going too bad, though its a slow process since we’re strange aliens talking about using them as basically willing and long range mana batteries.

Seiyomi is incredibly talented at obscuring information as that is sort of his whole schtick. Though he does mention it is problematic if the Revenants already know everything about our main targets. At least the bits that they deem important for their style of assault. We may need to get people involved that they weren’t interested in picking on or newcomers altogether such as himself to maintain the misinformation. Since they definitely already understand most of the cult and Madhammer in particular. Also he’s agreed to learn the lucid rituals which ought to be hilarious. Obviously he is one of the warrior class by default, but given his specific skillset I’m trying to imagine what he can do with all that extra casting power. Also he’s not terribly specialized as a psionic or as an arcanist. He kind of just took bits and pieces from all fields just to add to his list of useful spells. So he’s not really going to be a specialist or innovator in any field, just use a really long random patchwork of a spell list. This is part of what makes it really hard to figure out what he can actually do.

Cassir reports in that militarized training is never ready, it is a lifestyle. Her example was the fact that Reika still trains daily. Though progress is being made in enabling a larger number of the cult to have basic functionality in not getting themselves killed in warzones. It has hurt recruitment efforts a bit though, hopefully that’ll swing back around.

ARC did that thing you asked them to do where they deal with wayward Nelta fleets. So we’ve lost some ships and so have they, but notably this isn’t like scaring off pirates. Nelta go into combat mode on contact and they’re an actual navy even if operating all over the place right now. We lost three battlecruisers and took down two of theirs, a handful of destroyers and starships, and then a battleship showed up to reinforce the stray Nelta patrol and rocked their shit until ARC retreated. Notably the lack of fleet diversity hurts a little when it comes to fighting the Nelta fleet.

Also we’ve sold a few of the colonies and got the rights to one of the existing colonies on the frontier, though its a crater at the moment but the planet isn’t half bad. Normal people won’t survive long on it due to the atmosphere but with proper space suits you could go mining and it does have water which is nice. Also some mildly developed life. Obviously you and I can survive in its atmosphere without any issues.

Also Vasia’s response to your message was…ruder than I am translating. But basically she is upset that she thought Ankathi was dead for centuries and it made her relax, only to realize Ankathi was still growing in whole new ways ever since her disappearance and has now achieved the status of a deity. Vasia’s is now trying to become a sahad entity in response. Which is a scary thought…cosmic Vasia. We will remember the entity she captured from beyond the rift was just terraforming it’s planets and forging new lifeforms as a hobby project. This has been proven to be achievable as multiple races, especially the Jesai, have gone from being a more limited race to a sahad entity with enough mastery of the art.

The fleet has finished arriving at Somnus and prepping and are now departed for Sol, good luck to them. It’s going to be rough.

Also the Vivarium has coffee and some other luxury crops growing successfully. Also the Makers are making things again and its making the researchers nervous to enter the enclosure.

The Nomads have returned to Somnus after a successful mission but they appear to be keeping several of the ships they hijacked. They…appear to have decided to expand their operations as we requested by creating a nomadic flotilla fleet. They’re stocking up at Somnus with the essentials for long term deployments and reconfiguring some of the ships for more civil matters. We talked with them about it and apparently afterwards their idea is to go into open space outside of the main travel ways to be extra stealthy and having a mobile base to deploy stuff from. It’s got a ways to go before they could be completely self sustaining with this flotilla of theirs but its an interesting start.

Sure, the Nelta fleet is currently moving through the frontier fighting mostly with Faelyn’s fleet. Due in part to not being able to find Moncayo, even before Guardian broke down that place was a bit difficult to locate. However, they do have the upper hand on her fleet and many of the frontier colonies have been scattered across the planets they were set up on to flee the obvious targets that were the colonies.

The bulk of their forces are still in Sol, while they currently have majority control of open space they’re having trouble fighting above SV2. The fact that its a planet filled with canyons caves and cliffs makes it a bit difficult to assault with a primarily naval based force. House Sharen’s fleet is best able to survive because of the docks at New Kaifen being underground.

Thenica is still under constant assault and though orbital control remains with Nelta, planetside remains under Sol’s control but most of the orbital cannons are defunct. Nelta has established a fortress on Thenica to try and get control of the planet but it’s currently under assault by the remnants of the planet.

The ships on the frontier are pulling back a bit to regroup with the fleet that was parked to assault Auwana and are likely going to either fuck off to deal with the other problems that keep coming up or begin the assault in abooout…I dunno maybe three months? Just guessing on that, hard to tell what their deployment strategy is.

Meanwhile back on Zenaka, the main city you landed in had a recent case of bombings taking out several turret emplacements and civilian infrastructure. Not too bad in the grand scheme of thing but I expect we can see a lot more little problems like this keep popping up with the whole drow tactic. The forces are currently spread across the planet trying to get things in order but that whole world war that this all started is still going and the Vloz are still somewhere among it all. As for the captured assets there aren’t that many, and you can blame this heavily on Madhammer’s style of operation. If it’s not in bits in pieces, they seem to believe it needs to be double tapped with tank shells. Something something, mass destruction not so good for spoils of war. Good at winning though.

When it comes to the trade idea, well the most useful thing they have is food we’d consider at least edible. As they haven’t been hit all that hard by the starvation the rest of the galaxy is having issues with. We also have a lot of tech they’d be interested in if we can set up convoys with the fleet to protect from pirates.

So in order to start building a station over Zenaka we need to get supplies together and we could probably bundle that part of the project in with the convoy idea. As well as getting Riley home. Though still the whole financial problem too. Which I’ll get to more in a moment.

Speaking of which, the Nomads took off with some more of the Vloz ships to who knows where. Actually I think they’re on the way back to Somnus nevermind.

Back home, Koura is economically starting to stabilize little by little. As more of the refugees find places to set up or at least abandon hope of going home. Quite a few holdouts are seeking to return once the war is over and don’t think they’ll be out here permanently and they’re a little less productive than everyone else. Not a particularly big problem but something the new security chief has been keeping an eye out on.

The Hasao clan, as their ethnic name might suggest, are from shetou. Specifically they’re a minor house that was underneath the Great House ruled by elves, separated during the initial invasion and winding up here as refugees out of necessity as the second invasion took place. They helped with fighting Kyven as well as many other gangs on the streets and have built up a level of repertoire with the citizens of Koura. With so many moving out to smaller towns and settlements due to overcrowding, the Hasao clan were well positioned to have the resources and word of mouth from the people to make their settlement a rather popular destination. Most people have been building small towns close to the outskirts of Koura but Hasao Tei is more of a second city. Granted it isn’t as nicely constructed with quite as much infrastructure as Koura itself and is more of a collection of small shacks spanning over the hills to the south.

Being from Shetou they’re sort of independent in their way of thinking and self governing, as indicated by their vigilante behavior. This is one of those things that gets quirky since we’re based primarily on Alnae’s values and they’re from the group that decided they’d rather live in a society where they would be constantly at odds with every other major power simply based on race instead of just sticking where things were comfortable. The financial problems around here have definitely led to an opening for them to establish themselves the way they like to do things and I have been talking with their representative for weeks now to try and iron things out.

It’s kind of hard to tell where they really fall on things. They have a strong culture about honor and justice so they’re not necessarily disagreeable but they’re a little bit used to playing the part of isolationists. I have a hunch they’re waiting for the Nelta invasion to wrap up before making any official deals or anything so they can see the potential future of the system.

The other small startup towns in the south also gravitate towards the Hasao clan since they’re the ones with people to spare for managing the area. Though they all tend to be of a mind to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble so it’s been less of a tightrope to diplomatize with them.

Also Koura Cures expanded two months ago but it is still mostly trying to refine the method behind using the parasites beneficially. However, our surveys into the Rift provide a lot more test samples since those things are all over the place in there. Profitability wise it isn’t improving that much for them since they’re mostly using the parasites to help the refugees and new colonists. This is a part of where the black hole in your finances are coming from, along with several other things that help get people settled in and such. Though it’s why Koura Cures is having slow progress as there is just a lot of work to be done with not as much time for regular research.

Contacting Echo Seven might be difficult as they’re still in Sol. At that to our list of things we’d have to do while we’re out there.

Reika is still adapting, though it’s making some waves among the knights. They’re not really used to seeing Reika with a whole extra arm, nor two eyes. That and the once missing eye is now gold colored and a little extra bright so its hard not to stare. I wonder how that is for her, she never has to remind anyone to look her in the eyes when speaking to her now but now she can’t get them to stop staring at her eyes.

Ki’Ralcht has managed to recruit some alien demons to her lance as you suggested, turns out she just hadn’t thought to do that. Some are enticed by the possibilities of joining the order even if some of them are a little bit odd. Basically the people who are liable to join aliens at the cost of their own people are the ones we, including Lancaster, manage to keep recruiting. Though I get it, before we really got space travel down there were a lot of people ready to do whatever it took to get off of Thenica just out of pure curiosity.

We’re seeing about how to get the third lance back home, with the increase in hostilities in all shapes and sizes on the frontier, unguarded ships prove to be a dangerous idea. Though with everything going on with Zenaka they could probably hitch a ride once the convoy idea gets going.

So hunting Daesta is tricky because we believe she has found some way to prevent herself from being found by Haziel. We don’t know which method she found though as there are quite a few options we know of. One of which exists on the planet already in the shape of the arcuran villages, as enchanted materials lose their connection to druid abilities. Assuming she found a way to construct things that hide her from Haziel she still has to roam carefully as stepping outside of such locations could reveal her. We’re not sure how likely it is that they know exactly how to counter Haziel but if we open up to the possibility that the Revenants are helping them it would explain a lot. I have no doubt their lot could figure out some methods since their whole thing is gathering information on their targets after all.

That all being said, the teams are out hunting around using more traditional methods. The arcane moon sort of obscures scanning tech from finding arcuran style constructions so we’re just flying around the land and having Eerihild sniff at things a lot. We’re also questioning the other merkas cities to see if they have any luck finding out how Daesta is operating and recruiting. We’re at least pretty sure that Daesta is within a specific territory due to which cities have been impacted by her recruiting. Though its a large territory as we don’t know if she would have remained close to Jamalia or moved further away from it to build up.

In other news, Bill has been taking down a lot of the street lights and replacing them with bio-luminescent plants that he came up with as his latest project. Though he’s asking if we can get any of those Koura sun stones shipped in to further his project. Apparently he’s taken it upon himself to decorate the place with more plants. Eerihild’s wolf team are working as the primary hunters to seek out Daesta or any Revenants. Sarnai and the holy knights of Ankathi are mostly tending to Reika, and Ankathi is definitely pushing Reika to bind with her now that she has a vacancy and is already one of the most experienced divine pandem wielders.

Haziel is back from her trip to the Raven II with her memory issues apparently fixed, and there has been a notable change in her demeanor. Eerihild has noted that her mother is a little more aggressive than before, apathy replaced with that somewhat feral side of her she was once famous for. This has improved the Chosen Wolves at least as now she just handed out lycanthropy to them like candy. Making Eerihild something of an alpha werewolf.

Ankathi’s following is also growing, if she does manage to recruit Reika there could be a significant shift of internal politics within the Astral Order.

I’m not sure who Rhea is and if you’re not then I’m not sure anyone is. According to the database she didn’t have any listed family, so after her death her property was just kind of left sitting around. I suppose someone should go claim that and clean it up.

Also Zanin is discontent with being left behind on Zenaka while you pull everything else out.Though she is collecting the biomass as ordered in preparation to ship them to Que.

As for food, I used to really like a certain type of mushroom from the underdark. Though lately I just have a strange craving for meat.

Also Seiyomi said he’d tag along with you for now after our finances team showed him the pay offer. Even roaming conspiracy theorists need to make a living to afford all those tinfoil hats I suppose. Though I will point out that your search for a misinformation expert might not need to look so far, Seiyomi is a trickster after all.

I’m new around here, why are the sneaky people just hiding out in the basement? We have a lead to pursue the Revenants even if just a little and the entire division is just camping out on a ship.

As for Cassir’s cybernetics, the cult enabled her. She relies on the Lucid Ritual to gain enough mana to cast in any meaningful quantity despite her cybernetics. She also has an emergency option, her cybernetics have a battery slot she can put mana batteries into if necessary though that’s a short burst option. We do know that she has the Selona brand of cybernetics which are designed as weapon platforms and he specifically has basically a city power plant in his own chassis…in the form of an alien writhing in constant agony. So she has options but they might not be the most optimal for a caster of her caliber. But the ritual circumvents the issue and lets her go crazy while still keeping the physical benefits of being a walking hunk of metal.

Vasia also reports that she taught Salied a couple new spells and has been spending time poking at her. Though Salied is now traumatized, Vasia is reported as “far worse than before”. We think reuniting with Ankathi replaced her apathy with a vicious thirst for power. She’s been torturing Salied to force her to make progress. According to the report, when Salied zoned out in the lessons as she often does, Vasia slammed her head into the floor and forced her to pay attention at the threat of continued violence until death if she didn’t stay focused. That is one of twenty six incidents that were recorded. Salied is now much quieter but getting stronger with Sahad very quickly compared to her previous progress so…results I guess?

Basically the labs report that they have lost all control of Vasia, she’s been spending a lot of time with the entity  from beyond the rift as well though no one else is allowed to enter that lab so they don’t know what she’s doing with it. It’s assumed that diplomatic relations with it will no longer be possible though.

ARC is flying around doing a ton of escort missions, also regrouping at Somnus to prepare for the trip to Sol. So give them a bit to sort that out since that’s going to be a bit of a large scale mission.

40th Day’s survey review has a particular question attached via sticky note which is asking if terraforming counts. Because none of them could really support just letting Thenica or Ash biologies loose onto the planet. I mean…I’d be fine but you know deer and stuff aren’t going to do as well.

New Horizons built the ships you asked for and the Vivarium is working on making some luxury plants.

Sure is quiet ever since we moved onto this cozy ship.

I’m back with another state of the galaxy report, that might be especially relevant since you’re planning to send a fleet to Sol.

The empires are pretty much a fractured mess. The ‘True Alnae’ led by Kaylen is now a sort of permanent military dictatorship under Kaylen as Grand Marshall but that is somewhat due to necessity. Several Alnae splinters led by former Councilors can be found across the system. The persistent threat of Nelta keeps them from reuniting and they have all become somewhat improvised governments to deal with whatever issues are closest to them that they can effect. If the war goes on too long it might become a bit more permanent as well.

Shetou was always a loose collection of houses with a very independence heavy political structure. While the shift in politics have led to the Great Houses losing a lot of their power due to a loss of contact and influence over minor and major houses beneath them, it’s kind of not that big of a surprise. They’re handling it well at least. Though this has resulted in new politics and alliances based almost solely on proximity to one another since everyone’s range of influence has been cut down dramatically.

Vloz’Khress and Song, the most unlikely of duos, are still working together though they’re primarily focused on repelling the alien threat as they are in the thick of it. Their alliance is out of pure necessity as they are both facing extinction to an alien threat as primary targets, but the fact that they’ve held together without killing each other for longer than a week is a definite shift in politics.

Sharen is mostly trying to regroup and hold what they can at SV2, which is where the bulk of their fleet was docked and has generally always been Shetou’s favorite planet to hang out on. They probably aren’t happy that House Song is on Thenica right now as usually Song is at SV2 as well and their alliance is in a state of flux due to Adin and Yasice’s deaths. Though House Song is, as always, charging into war wherever it may be.

On Thenica in particular there are thousands of smaller factions assembled from whatever groups of survivors could find each other and many are led by Phantoms or remnants of the old governments. Some are just formed out of nowhere from nothing based on, once again, proximity and necessity.

While the entirety of Sol is having it rough right now, Thenica and SR3 are pretty much constantly on fire as the main targets of the Nelta forces. However, both are guarded by some of the most formidable ground forces of Sol. One being the Valdir’s home planet and the other being our homeworld which has both Vloz and Song on it. As devastating as orbital bombardment has been, it turns out both the Shetou remnants and the Valdir are obnoxiously good at burrowing and living underground.

Tykel is fine because Nelta apparently didn’t think to target a science facility on some barren world that wasn’t doing anything. We can guess who gave them that intel that it wasn’t worth the time for now.

The Frontier is getting more chaotic as the Nelta fleets move from one planet to the next but now in a more erratic order due to the resistance they faced at Enohas and some of the skirmishes with Faelyn’s fleet that keeps popping in out of nowhere. Though her fleet has had a toll taken on it from all of this fighting.

In all I’d say Sharen now has the most naval dominance, even counting Nelta. Though they’re sort of pinned down and without the aethernet or even an improvised version of the net like we have on the frontier they can’t operate far from SV2. Leading to them having to actually scout out their own neighboring planets and moons practically from scratch. It is likely they’re holding SV2 as best they can unaware of their naval superiority and just waiting out the storm until they can safely venture out to see how everyone else is doing.

Despite the weakened fleet, Faelyn is the most powerful standing Empress since her worlds aren’t on fire right now and she technically owns us as well via the Phantom conspiracies. Speaking of which, she’s setting about to fixing up the economy now that she is aware that the Phantoms control most of the Sol territories and can resettle right back on top. Though it’ll always be a sort of loose organization that not everyone knows is such an expansive empire. The results of this given our current finances give us a few options to negotiate with everyone we owe a bunch of stuff but we’ll go over that once we get to it. With our finances slowly stabilizing its hopeful we’ll be in a better position by the time we have to do something then we are now at least.

The jydoq are doing okay since Nelta didn’t pick on them too much while they were on the way to get us though after the bombings that Arkaric organized they’re still not doing great anyways.

Nelta itself is hard to keep track of beyond the Sol territories and the ongoing war. We really only know much about their side of things due to Aryn’s little adventure, though we also know that both Daiheb and Selona have some method of accessing their side of the galaxy to keep in touch with things over there.

If everything goes roughly as we’re seeing it, specifically through knowing the machinations of the Phantoms, Nelta is going to be repelled over the next few years bit by bit. On paper to anyone who doesn’t know what Kanika is doing it looks like we’re on the verge of extinction, but we happen to know that organized communication between the Phantoms is still possible and only available to them.

Stories of Lore 27

Aryn’s Odyssey

Dear Johnson: Odyssey’s are one long continuous thing don’t go surfing around for different characters.

So this is what a Somnus office is like, kind of cramped. Oh well, back to dealing with this whole mess we find ourselves in.

I gather you’d like me to start with Kyven. So good news is we found him after…extensive effort, and I do mean extensive. He’s dead now so good news on that. Making the hiring of a computer expert and putting Renjala as the new master access a bit redundant but I guess the extra security never hurts. Everyone who survived is in the hospital now, so if you need something done around here you’ve just got Eleazor really.

We predict the stabilization of Auwana’s economy though the toll the war with Kyven took was expensive. That and other criminal gangs are still looking to fill yet another power vacuum. Zhuan might be ahead of the pack though since he has some of the old assets I left behind and he wasn’t really touched by this war on crime you’ve been up to this whole time. Hopefully you can stabilize things before another monster like Kyven shows up at least.

As for the conflict on this alien Zenaka place, it’s going in your favor I’m told. Though according to Elion and Xanis you might be in for a long haul. Taking over a fairly developed world with its own complex political structure, billions of inhabitants, and people with wildly varying opinions on even the simplest matter could be a longer process than just moving in and setting up shop. Even if this Ilivayas woman is dealt with, Xanis predicts that we can expect a long and bloody civil war across the planet if Kar’Soluth continues to offer any support at all. Given what we’ve told him about the drow, he has no doubt they’ll find a way to continue meddling. Though points out his contract still states he gets to go to Somnus soon, as that was one of the terms of him helping you…I mean us.

The skirmishes between you and the Kar’Soluth are still ongoing since they fight by spreading out and picking things off. Elion is still forced to amass the troops instead of allowing them to spread out and look for these smaller pockets and just deal with the guerilla tactics of the drow as best he can.

The Milenkosi has been sent to the middle planes to contain the infection for a little while longer. Though the ship is completely overrun by those weird valdir things..silnian? I’m still not used to whatever is going on with all these mutating people. Mutants, it’s still overrun by mutants of some various kind.

So as much fun as I’m having going through all these classified documents on the so-called Phantoms, it’s worth noting that they’re still messing with the system wide economy. Apparently their plan is to turn the economy back on and start solidifying their empire now that they crawled out of the basement all across the system. Mostly because this group your files label as ‘The Revenants’ have been hitting them hard ever since they started revealing their locations and they want the economy back on so they can build a large military force to protect them. Apparently one of their founding members was recently killed and they’re getting nervous.

Speaking of which, since you’ve been so kind as to get me security access to all these fancy classified documents I suppose it’s only fair that I let you know what I know about the Revenants. I put it in a file for you, just be thankful they’re not after you specifically. Ilex might start sweating though. Their little gang has never been that focused on you guys over their previous enemies of the Gauntlet and the Phantoms and just come around to clean up the scraps. Though with your alliance growing in power and now directly aligned with the Phantoms they’re bound to start paying more attention.

The Zenaka fleet is getting hit harder now that Ki’Ralcht is helping the Nomads. Specifically because they can get aboard anything, and Ki’Ralcht’s summoned platoon can make that a very scary prospect. Though the Vloz’Khress have summoners as well, it’s still a threatening boarding action.

On to matters at hand here at Jamalia, Haziel reports that Rikoy straight up disappeared off the planet somehow. We have heard no word from Faelyn about any ships coming to pick him up, though Haziel mentioned that someone else was here to take him and the remaining forces away. Currently our best experts on the matter think that short little Elym thing from Thenica just FTL’d in and back out without a ship. Which is an…interesting prospect but its the best explanation that Haziel can agree to.

Ankathi stole your conduit bind trick in order to use Sarnai as a puppet…like you do to Irae all the time. This has resulted in us being able to talk with her in greater detail about things. Evidently she knows more about the planes than anyone else, though doesn’t know how to explain it all in the most modern terms. That and she keeps spending her hour or two that she can inhabit Sarnai to roam around Jamalia and ask questions about every piece of modern technology we have, and we’re not even that modern you’ll recall. That and she likes to eat a lot, apparently medieval food sucks compared to what we have these days.

It turns out Ankathi might be some sort of genocidal witch known as a great calamity, but that’s just according to Vasia who notably has a very…personal relationship with the woman it turns out. Haziel’s recap of events just says Ankathi was “a thing that happened” that likely did destroy a few nations but Haziel didn’t like nations in the first place so she didn’t have much thoughts on the matter. Ankathi however seems to recognize Haziel very well, to the point of her being the only person Ankathi shows any sign of acknowledgement towards. She seems to respect that Haziel is an ancient of great power, even if she considers herself a step higher in her newfound divinity she seems most willing to share the secrets of her achievement with Haziel. Partially because Haziel is the only one that seems to get what Ankathi is trying to say with all her vague medeival terminology. So some people are concerned that Ankathi might try to create a new pantheon if she can recruit Haziel to becoming the next true Wilds.

Of course all this that we failed to keep quiet because of the huge explosion of celestial light accompanied by a bright flash that consumed Faelyn’s radar at the mere presence of Ankathi…the Phantoms are on their way to assess the situation. Valadeus of course but he said he’s bringing some others who are curious as to why we have both the ancient Haziel and the divine Ankathi in our one mid-sized colony on some backwater planet in the middle of nowhere.

Halaestra is currently undergoing the Eden treatment and…uh…we’ll see how that goes.

Also about that corruption coupon, no one other than you at Jamalia has that much money, and so it’d be going public to explain Eden and what she can do which could cause a cascade of problems. So…confirm? Also speaking of Eden, throwing dead aliens at her causes her to throw it onto her planet and just let them decompose. She has a very large and external digestive system I would call it.

As for the economy, even if we do go public to make some short term cash the problem is going to keep getting worse as long as we keep taking on new refugees. Which 40th day is all to happy to keep dropping off. However, it is stabilizing but you just can’t see it too easily. As people get settled in and start finding things to actually do they start producing a general positive effect but the new ones are coming in so fast that you can barely tell. I imagine at this rate since we can’t develop anything ourselves any further we’re going to start seeing secondary colonies sprouting up on various planets by colonists who can afford to do so themselves or can gather the manpower to do so. If we don’t fund the colony initially they sort of get dibs on the rights to do whatever they want with it even if we kind of own the planet. Still a general gain for us in the long run.

In the short term, Valencia might come around to repossess certain things or find other economic solutions once the economy is back up and running again. I’m not too concerned about it because in our very specific case, if our economic downturn produces enough growth of our influence in the Sol territories the Phantoms are liable to bail us out. Don’t forget, between Kanika and Faelyn the phantoms have money. Though since Lancaster, Ilex, and so on are not members of the phantoms they don’t have a daddy Valadeus to come in and decide ‘yeah this is fine for me’. With us building them that station within the Astral Warrens I imagine they’re at least inclined to view us more favorably than some of the other recently recruited liches.

As another option to fix our revenue, enslave all the refugees and get them to work. That’ll fix it really quick.

While I can layout the groundwork for arcuran sports, the economic issues prevent us from developing Helym into much.

Vasia said I should try delivering her report to you this month since she had something she needed to go do. Also she said something about the position being cursed? Given that I can’t really work anywhere else in Sol looking like this I guess being her assistant is kind of all I can do.

Contacting the bard has been difficult…again. He took his ships and disappeared into space so we don’t know about his ‘former employee insurance protection package’. Hrm? Oh Bardhe, that’s a confusing name.

As for the ichor experiments, well yeah it’s kind of lonely out here with nothing but roaming monsters to keep me company. At least they fetch breakfast for me though everything tastes kind of the same. I think they fed me a person too and I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not really sure I should go to Zenaka, if you haven’t noticed I’m not exactly experienced in active war zones. Though Vasia helped me pin down that the black pool over here is producing something very similar to the Koura parasites. It was actually one of these concoctions that got loose through the lab, they are aggressive and will burrow through hazmat gear if given the opportunity. They also seem weirdly good at knowing when they can and can’t escape from containment to make an attempt at doing so.

I don’t really know much about this other ichor you’re talking about at the warzone but Vasia’s report recommends building a new specialized facility for researching the ichor. Stating her own lab is insufficient as it has already proven to be a bit slippery. She has a draft for it though we can’t really afford to build it at the moment. Though finances being what they are right now we can’t really construct new developments. 40th Day’s prefab colonies had to halt production due to the current financial situation as well. She said plan B was let it do what it’s meant to do and just turn the monsters…I guess me…loose to see what it does once nothing is trying to control it.

Hey I’m not that dirty! They don’t need to wash their hands just for being near me! I mean yes I crawl around the ground all day because of the tail but…*sigh*

Uh this note she left just says “Adryn’s dead, peter in hospital a second time.”

Another one saaaays… “I’m not responsible for that idiot’s attempt to play scientist without me in the back of the freighter when I have three giant labs in Auwana – but say it more sarcastically and meaner” Oh wait I think I wasn’t supposed to read that out loud.

Cassir is back at Somnus looking over the Koura temple now that Lancaster has been secured and Kyven has been dealt with. Also it should be noted she does manage the cult and keep it running. Though she’s not going to go start some crusade out of nowhere…again.

We can’t produce any new ships until the finances have been sorted out.

One of the problems with your abilities and the war on Zenaka is you can’t always be there.  Your strike team with Elion is effective but as mentioned the drow spread out wide across the planet to operate in smaller groups and prefer to use guerilla tactics.

Seiyomi was mysteriously vague on all questions about his abilities and those tha the has seen before.

40th Day continues to ship refugees around and cause the continued economic obliteration of all the director’s assets except Sethis and Whitetalon who are in a different industry entirely. Vasia wrote it that way I don’t know why she said obliteration. It’s not – oh holy shit I found the finance book. Nevermind I get it now.

It didn’t take long after Kyven’s death for Aryn to be returned to us under somewhat mysterious circumstances. According to her she woke up on a shuttle already docked at Somnus and just had to walk the rest of the way over.

To that end, Aryn had a growth spurt and brought home a stray. She’s been asking around to see if anyone particularly wants her and has asked the other directors.

We’re still hunting down the remains of Kyven’s forces simply because we don’t want them latching onto another crime lord just like they did in the first place after the loss of Laura. Though Laura does point out it’s only a matter of time before the next one pops up given the state of the refugees. Part of the economic problems VSEC is facing has a lot to do with minimizing the chances that it will happen again.

Flagship maker!

Economy overhauled, see shop page…or your new upkeep costs.

Ships overhauled, see shop page

Ground assets overhauled, see shop page

New templates page added to player portal

Zenaka space map made

Roster updates:

Azilath – +2/+2 and synapse fixed to reflect the more modern balance of the ability as its introduction has been felt out a little. After the invasion she had to get tougher or die, she lived so she leveled up.

Daesta – +2 defense +2 slayer for quest completion

Eliza Pierce – +1/+1 and offense upgraded to green due to xp gain on her quest.

Kanika Hassani – Added Omnicarnum to better represent what her ability really does. Stats rebalanced to 4/10 with mass destruction 6 because the addition of Elgrim introduced a new power she can use to go beyond what she could originally do. She completed her 2000 year long quest chain and is now max level, ironically getting stats nerfed for it because of the new Lifesteal template’s existence.

Kaylen Yuriko – +2 offense, color upgraded to purple. +2 defense. Kensei template added to reflect her specific zankist trick (lets her use zankou with a weapon). No Man Behind – 3 added. Generally because of her gaining a lot of xp and a legendary artifact.

Kyven – Offense buffed to blue 7 because he got Lancaster’s Selona weapon

Lancaster – offense nerfed to white 4 since she lost her selona weapon. +1/+1 for cyborg superiority, both upgraded to green.

Peter Harlow – Gained +1 defense for xp

Orochi – Is now a legendary ship and has stats reflecting that.

Song Yi – Basically the same update as Kanika, introduction of Elgrim gave her an ability too broken for her stat line. So her numbers are lower but her actual power level is about the same.

Reika – Offense buffed to purple 7 due to ryner sword

Renjala – Offense nerfed to green 5 due to Ryner Sword

Sarnai – Obvious change is obvious

Vasia – +1/+1 for xp

Yonam – Has been uplifted and given the technology to compete with modern weaponry such as a basic shield. Also completed his quest to become the champion of Enohas. +3 defense +1 destroyer.