Turn 30 (Patreon)

[X] Plan: The Final Frontier

-[X] Accept Assembler Deal

-[X] Fleet Actions

--[X] Survey Ruinate System

---[X] TKK Discovery

--[X] Exploring the Voidmarches

---[X] TKK Accomplishment

---[X] TKK Valiant

--[X] Exploring the Reach

---[X] TKK Delivery

--[X] Broken Edge Monitoring

---[X] TKK Emissary

-[X] Expansion Projects

--[X] Lunar Anti-Orbital Cannons (0/15 --> 6(15)/15) -1 Art

--[X] AutoAssembly Berths (0/30 --> 30/30) -1 Network

--[X] Expanded Fleet Cargo Bays (0/20 --> 20/20)

--[X] Endeavor Model 2 (0/25 --> 25/25)

---[X] TKK Endeavor M-2

--[X] Construct Endeavor Class Ship (0/15 --> 30/15)

---[X] TKK Spirit of Toxel

---[X] TKK Tranquil Sea

--[X] Ship Power Core (11/15 --> 15/15) -3 Nuclear

--[X] MegaHaulers (8/25 --> 25/25)

-[X] Culture Projects

--[X] Grav-Tethers (4/10 --> 10/10)

--[X] Orbital Pioneer Agri-Ships (5/15 --> 7/15)

--[X] Frontier Biolab (0/25 --> 25/25) -1 Nuclear

--[X] Ship Barracks (0/20 --> 20/20)

--[X] Iron Shores Trade Route (0/25 --> 25/25)

---[X] Tranquil Sea

-[X] Faith Projects

--[X] Dark Portals (0/25 --> 25/25)

--[X] OrphiaTek Ark Simulacrum (0/25 --> 25/25)

--[X] Hypercomm Forums (5/15 --> 15/15)

--[X] Rite of Telecommunication (0/25 --> 25/25)

--[X] Polar Tower of the Hermit (13/50 --> 27/50)

-[X] Academy Projects

--[X] Sandscorn Mineralophages (6/25 --> 25/25) -1 Biodata

--[X] Graviton Compression (0/25 --> 25/25) -1 Biodata

--[X] Q-Bit Particles (6/25 --> 25/25) +1 Network

--[X] Construct Courier Class (0/15 --> 30/15)

---[X] Sandscorn Trade Route

---[X] Trove Trade Route

-[X] Resource Management

--[X] Artifacts: 3 --> 2

--[X] Biodata: 11 --> 9

--[X] Intel: 0

--[X] Living Metal: 3

--[X] Network: 3

--[X] Nuclear Material: 14 --> 10

--[X] Warp: 0

Stardate 4299.1229

Time: 11:50, ten minutes before the turn of the century.

Clawdet stood in the room, breathing in. Her new cabin. It wasn’t large: it had enough room for four pieces of floor furniture: a desk, a bed, a hoverchair, and a dresser. In the past, these had been standard issue bunks for all ensigns, but with the recent upgrades and overhauls, it was becoming harder and harder to requisition them. Most ensigns got stuck with a pod in the lower decks for their first few years.

Walking to the bed, Clawdet sat her dufflebag down at its foot, before laying down, closing her eyes, and taking a deep breath. She had made it. An official posting on a ship. Not just any ship, either: she was on the TKK Endeavor B!

It wasn’t complete yet: one of the reasons she had gotten the cabin. They were still working on the finishing touches: they were expected to begin their first voyage in the next five years. Clawdet could wait: it would be worth it to serve on the most cutting edge ship in the fleet on its maiden voyage.

Opening her eyes, she watched as the holoclock on the wall ticked down. “ENSIGN TAIKE IS AT THE DOOR,” Came the voice of the ships computer systems: she’d have to customize her cabins settings later.

Sitting up at the edge of her bed, Clawdet straightened out her uniform. “Open,” She said, and a moment later, the door slid open. Right: time to wow her alien girlfriend with the cabin Clawdet had been able to snag.

((((()))))

By the turn of the century, the Directorate had begun a massive overhaul and expansion of its fleet, constructing several ships: a mix of Endeavors and the newly unveiled Courier class. Each was upgraded with a suite of features: expanded barracks for Frontier Society members and ensigns, larger cargo bays, upgraded biolabs, and even new model Power Cores.

The latter were used for transport, shipping, and communication, utilizing the new upgrades and Graviton Compression Cargo Crates (Or GCC Crates) to ship massive amounts of metal and water to the Khimer, who would invest the resources into upgrading their cities with fusion reactors- allowing them to build more internal spawning pools, provide their citizens increased energy credits for food and luxuries, and permitting more expansive and comfortable housing districts to be manufactured.

The former, however, would find themselves undergoing a complete renovation as the Directorate, in preparation for the centennial, began investing resources- material, manpower, network capacity- to designing a new model, next generation model of Endeavor, starting with the Endeavor-B…

Select one free Khimer special upgrade

Khimer BioTechnicians: The Khimer were willing to invest in the Directorate fleet: they were willing to provide each Endeavor access to a team of Grunt Caste and Engineer Caste biotechnicians as well as advanced BioTech medical facilities. Increases BioData cost of Endeavors by 1: Endeavors gain Khimer BioTechs.

Khimera Security Squad: The Khimer were willing to invest in the Directorate fleet by agreeing to station on each Endeavor a security squadron, giving them access to several supersoldiers to help deal with issues as they arose or deploy on ground ops. Increases Endeavor costs by 5 EXP: Endeavors automatically start with free Khimera Squad on each ship.

Stealth Warheads: The Khimer simply didn’t produce enough stealth metal to do more than coat the missiles found on Endeavors. However, even doing this would be a significant improvement to the efficacy of Endeavors in combat. Endeavors now cost an additional 5 ACD on top of their normal cost. Endeavors gain Stealth Metal Torpedos.

You may spend an AutoVessel influence to gain an additional upgrade from them.

AutoPrinter: An idea proposed by Ijin, this would allow your Endeavors to print what are known as ‘Dummy Autos’, non-sentient temporary worker droids using simple silicon chip-brains to be used for construction projects. Endeavors gain AutoPrinter upgrade. Costs Endeavor cost by 5 EXP.

AutoProbes: A suggested improvement by Koptu, the Autons could manufacture probes for the Endeavors, ones designed to be both wholly autonomous and linked to the ships central network. Endeavors gain AutoProbes, increasing Scan Level from System 1 to S2. Raises Network Cost by 1

Backup Core: The Directorate would need to help source the fuel, but the Autons were willing to contribute their manufacturing to ensure that whenever an Endeavor was made, it would have an additional power core installed, providing enough energy for the new model to come with its own fusion cannon. Endeavors gain Backup Core, increasing NK cost by 1.

Alright, now, you get one Utility upgrade:

Advanced Field Research Lab: It wasn’t a replacement for a trailblazer, but by providing each Endeavor with its own field research laboratory, they would be more equipped to study phenomena they encountered AS they encountered it. Gain additional rewards from scanning.

Grav Siphons: Gravity technology continued to advance, and now some believed it might be possible to upgrade Endeavors to allow them to refuel in the field by installing them Grav-Siphons they could use to scoop hydrogen from stars when needed. Endeavors gain additional assignment.

Second Contact Bureau: As the Fleet constructed more ships, its ability and need to meet diplomatic obligations increased: with that in mind, perhaps it was time to draft up a set of a protocols and training specifically geared to prepare Endeavors for the various non-military projects that they’re likely to be assigned. Endeavors assigned to non-military assignments generate double progress and grant doubled reputation.

And one combat upgrade:

Adaptive Targeting Matrixes: Endeavors, plainly put, were better suited for backline roles, providing torpedo support and E-War and comms. At most, they might serve as escorts of sorts for larger ships. The general accuracy and ability to avoid point defence could likely be improved by installing expanded targeting matrixes. Endeavors now have access to smart torpedoes.

Combat Scanner: By installing the Endeavor with some improvements to their scanners and communications technology, they could in theory use their scanners in combat by synching them to the targeting computers of allied ships. Endeavors grant small bonuses to allied ships accuracy.

Hardened Shields: Alternatively, focus could be spent on improving shields: while they would never fully match up to the bulkier and much more well armed Valiants, by making them tougher nuts to crack they could be used for bolder plays in combat. Endeavors gain Hardened Shields.

((((()))))

Captains Log, Stardate 4295.0919, STEEGZ BLABBAGAK, TKK Accomplishment

Our exploration of the Voidmarches has led to an unsettling discovery. We’re calling this stretch of the Iron Crown: eight worlds arranged across three systems: one planet, two planet, two planet, two plant, one planet.

Most are lifeless, barren rocks. Two have an atmosphere, but nothing breathable. One is breathable- barely- but otherwise completely non-suited for life. The only thing of note on these planets that we’ve discovered: temples. Ancient temples, etched with strange, uncanny symbols that according to our database correspond to several chaos sigils: at their heart, we’ve located altars that seemed to be consecrated to various daemonic servants of the ruinous powers.

In several of these temples, we’ve located mass graves. Carbon dating indicates that these structures are several thousand years old: according to what our mysteks could tell, while the worlds are most definitely tainted, the influence of whatever dark forces once resided here are long gone.

I don’t know what happened here. I don’t know what killed these people: I don’t even know who they were, other than the fact that they were an unidentified species: nothing in the data banks. I’m going to propose the Directorate create outposts here: for practical reasons, we would stand to benefit from learning more about Chaos, even from studying its remains. For more personal reasons, however, it just doesn’t sit well to me to let what may well be a genocide go undocumented.

Located Iron Crown westish of Yr Albain: a collection of eight ex-chaos worlds that have been reduced to barren worlds holding a variety of dark temples containing mass graves and tainted altars.

((((()))))

Captains Log, Stardate 4295.0919, Captain Zyfrym Corkane, TKK Valiant

Today is a momentous day. Twenty four hours ago, we exited warp space in the Silvered Crane system. We expected to find, according to data synthesized both from centuries of observation from Teklia and information relayed by our Exoditi allies, a lifebearing swamp-world and a few ruins that once belonged to some now defunct alien empire.

Imagine our surprise when we found a titanic alien craft! Orbiting around the third planet is where we found it: constructed out of what our scanners tell us is wraithbone, an entire planet sized vessels worth!

Of course, we immediately attempted to make contact: the planetvessel as its termed in their language is, apparently, Eldar in origin. The inhabitants initially thought we were hostile: thankfully, we managed to clear that up before they moved beyond warning shots.

They call themselves Vaul-tan. Once we explained we were allies of Yr Albain, we managed to de-escalate: once they confirmed our story, they invited us onto their home for introductions. This particular sect of Eldar are apparently a nomadic branch who utilize a very strict form of mental discipline to stave off the effects of their species wide curse, dedicating chunks of their life to narrowly defined paths.

I’m not sure I understand the concept entirely, but according to Farseer Soulkar, Planetvessel Vaul-Tan specializes in more cerebral paths, such as the Path of the Mind, or the Path of Logic: during his introduction, he showed me their planet vessels library, and I have genuinely seen smaller Citybloks. Apparently, it’s the duty of those who walk the Path of the Archivist, individuals who spend entire Tekket lifespans learning to navigate the shelves and memorizing every tome, to help visitors find the book they’re seeking.

Apparently, they’re in the system in order to ‘refuel’ as it were: their particular craft is solar powered, requiring them to every few decades to spend a year or so basking in solar rays. This system was selected because the mysteks of the planetvessel like venturing into the most isolated, hidden parts of the swamp-world to meditate and hone their abilities.

After some talk, we clarified that they hold no actual ownership of the system, and would have no issue with us establishing a colony there.

We’re going to have to make the return journey soon, I think: the Directorate needs to be notified. Soulkar says that our polities should be able to stay in touch via the Yr Albain: they’re apparently going to re-establish formal diplomatic contact with the formerly isolationist Exoditi world.

First contact established with Craftworld Vaul-Tan! Reputation: 15 - Polite Tolerance

Reputation with Yr Albain increased by 2 for helping them establish contact with Craftworld Vaul-Tan!

Vaulket System Discovered Scan Level: 0/5! Locations of Note:

Vaulmire: A swamp planet used by Eldar Farseers who wish to get away from society in order to scream at frogs.

Kubaito: A dead world covered in various ruins, the grave of empires.

Temple Comet: A large temple complex that seemed to be hurtling through the system: according to estimates, its current orbit would begin to decay in one hundred years, leading to it falling into the sun.

Kaldrath: A volcanic world located just after Kubaito, one that was subject to extreme geological activity.

((((())))

Captains Log, Stardate 4290.0111, Captain OPMS-PRM, TKK Delivery

I find myself greatly concerned.

We termed it Warp Route Z-19. Less than a week ago, we dropped out of it to encounter a system in the midst of what appears a vicious system wide cold war between two pre-warp space powers.

Initially, our ships found themselves under attack by both sides: we had apparently interrupted a violent skirmish around their outer rim. Both sides upon detecting us immediately ceased fighting each other to assault our own ship, each side sending back couriers to their home territory to warn them.

The battle was, to put it simply, vicious. We have sustained significant hull damage from their weapons, including several outright ruptures from one side deciding to sacrifice one of their ships by ramming it into the Delivery and detonating it.

It took us conducting boarding actions to finally convince them to stop, and even then, only after we promised to hand over our ‘hostages’. Apparently, they believed we were a group they call the Cruel Ones, and had responded as per treaty: immediate cessation of hostilities and coordination of forces in order to minimize casualties.

Once we had managed to convince them we weren’t there to kidnap or murder them, I finally managed to establish some degree of introduction. Both factions consist of the genetically altered descendants of the same species. They have, apparently, been in a state of on and off warfare for the past several centuries, interrupted only by the raids and assaults of the Cruel Ones.

Apparently, long ago the mysterious terrors had begun harassing the system: kidnapping and stealing away entire cities, butchering armies and hunting leaders like animals, unleashing twisted genetic horror after twisted genetic horror onto the population. Despite both factions dislike for the other, the sheer terror and fear they felt for the Cruel Ones outweighed it tendfold.

On one side, the Invaders, the H’kek. Taken as slaves by the Cruel Ones, who altered their physiology on a genomic level to turn them into the perfect warthralls, eventually escaping the gladiator pits of the dark city after centuries of genetic debasement.

On the other, the Abductors, the H’Kann. Those who had been used as mere toys, subject to all manner of body destroying bioterror, kept on the edge of life by the fleshbenders generation by generation until their frail forms were completely unrecognizable, eventually finding themselves dumped on a frigid iceball in their species original system once their masters had no use for them.

The peculiarity of them both winding up in the same system makes me question the veracity of these origins, but it is undeniable that both sub-species have been horrifically altered. Both are amphibious, noseless bipeds, but the similarities end there.

The H’kek are more physically developed: humanoid, they are on average slightly taller than the average human, standing at around six feet, with a somewhat thin, extremely well muscled build. Their skin tones come in a variety of greys, and their cranial structures are slightly enlarged compared to humans, with extremely large side facing eyes intended to give them a 360 range of vision, and sharp teeth that indicate a primarily carnivorous diet (even as the stomach and digestive tracks suggest that their intended diet consists mostly of nuts and grains).

Their neurology can only be described as ‘horrifically warped’: according to our autopsies and what little information their negotiator was willing to share, the Cruel Ones augmentations increased violent tendencies and (attempted) to strip them of their capacity for higher thought, namely by performing various neuron killing augmentations: parts of their frontal lobe appears to be outright shrivelled and dessicated. Though their efforts to reduce the H’kek to little more than feral animals had failed, it had left the H’kek both aggressive and with trouble focusing or performing tasks requiring advanced logical capabilities: apparently, an issue they’ve attempted to solve via pharmacology. Each H’kek has a daily ration of drugs that includes both sedatives to reduce their aggression to mere ‘belligerent’ instead of ‘hair trigger’ as well as neurostimms to help promote both focus, learning, and reasoning ability.

The H’kann are no less degraded, though the damage to them seems to be entirely physical. In terms of structurally, they are far smaller, with hollow, extremely brittle bones: most seem to be in the three to four feat range, with greatly swollen cranial structures (autopsies show that their brain, while well built, was not especially large compared to other observed sentient species) that consists of roughly half their mass, with forward facing eyes that proportionally take up more space on the H’kann skull than the eyes of the H’kek take on their own space. Despite that, their vision appears to be significantly worse than that of a Tekket. Most of their organs appear to be non-functional, highly damaged, or vestigial, and those that appear to be functional such as the digestive tract typically have a large number of growths I believe and our medical department suspects are tumors, and so far we have found no indication they have an immune system. Their skin tones tend towards various colors of green and, occasionally, seafoam.

In order to solve this issue, they use a variety of technological aides: BioSuits designed to replace the various vital functions of their body that no longer operate as preferred, such as the structural functions of their skeleton when on planets with gravity, H’pak Augments installed in civilians as alternatives to failing organs, or Pods, small orb shaped treaded vehicles containing extensive life support technology and external graspers for interacting with the rest of the world.

Apparently, both sides, H’kek and H’kann have been engaged in bitter strife for ownership of the system for generations: despite the naked antipathy both groups have for each other and the battle we stumbled upon, we apparently encountered them in what both groups consider an era of extreme peace, the result of decades of work between pro-peace factions in both nations.

Extreme peace in this case being what is essentially a cold war with occasional violent border skirmishes punctuated with raids by hostile alien powers.

Discovered the Flying Saucer system, which is contested between the H’k.

H’kek Reputation: -15: Mistrust and Fear

H’kann Reputation: -15: Mistrust and Fear

((((()))))

And in Broken Edge, a terrible discovery would be made. Green Giant was longer the verdant fungal world it had once been: the once pristine landscape was marred by crude factories, simple cities, and the beginnings of industry. And it was, at least partially, the Directorates fault.

The Observation Platform had suffered a catastrophic failure, causing part of it to crashland. The survivors had eventually been found and recovered, but to survive several of them had been forced to collaborate with the various tribes on the Planet, and unfortunately, not all had been willing to leave the planet.

For some it had been a matter of power: they had grown accustomed to the positions of authority they were able to obtain by providing the klan chiefs access to their knowledge, technology, and wisdom. For others, it had been out of ideology: they attempted to enforce the ideals of the Directorate onto the inhabitants and believed they could succeed if given more time. And for some, it had been out of a misguided attempt to help by improving their material conditions out of a disagreement for the Prime Directive and the underlying philosophy behind it.

By the time they had finally been extracted, the damage was permanent. The planet is currently embroiled in a war between five or so different factions: The Demokratik Republik of Green Giant, the United States of Gmorkia, the Holy Antiwaagh, Da Children of Tek, and Liverpool.

Some of these, such as the United States of Gmorkia, are oligarchies in which the head of state is largely a figurehead. Others such as the Demokratic Republic seem to be somewhat more democratic, with leaders selected via popular vote (though only boyz that have ‘earned’ citizenship after a mandatory five year conscription into civilian service seem to have the right to cast their ballots). Some are authoritarian dictatorships. One is a cult.

None of them are stable or healthy societies: on the least harmful end, you have Gmorkia or the DRGG, which have extreme class and religious divides, sharp curtailment of freedom of speech and civil rights afforded to grots, and in the former increasing exploitation of the working class by private interests in order to increase their wealth and standing.

In the middle, you have the Holy Antiwaagh, an attempt to promote a non-Gmorkist religion focused around rationality and nature worship that devolved into what can only be described as a reactionary violent religious cult that believes that Gmorkist orks must be violently converted or exterminated and that any believer of the Gmorkist religion is innately savage and cruel until conversion.

At the worst end you have Liverpool.

The latter is an isolationist pariah state hated by the entire planet. Those of the Directorate responsible for its creation would find themselves tried for Crimes against Sentience and sentenced to life in the brig, a verdict that is reviewed when contact finds itself re-established and subsequently approved and the prisoners transported to Tartustus.

An event that can only be described as absolutely disastrous: the only saving grace is that the polities were general (except for Liverpool) only able to develop early industrial technology such as the steam engine and assembly lines. Hopefully their society will stabilize now that potentially contaminating influences have been removed, though only time could tell.

((((()))))

Stardate 4299.1229, 10 Minutes to Teklian Midnight, 14:00 AM Sandscorn.

TNDI sat, gazing down at Sandscorn. She felt…old. It had been so long since Ryth had passed away, and even longer since those faraway events that led to the Khimer being met. Once, the planet had been a bare desert, an almost barren world devoid of life. Now, it was unrecognizable: around the poles, titanic glaciers could be seen, smears of green and dark brown wrapped around them, and the equator was dotted by the light of cities and infrastructure. There were even clouds: more and more, every year as the water reservoirs increased.

It was an important mission. The Khimer had agreed to let the Directorate perform a full survey of the system, including the BioShip. TNDI had been selected to lead the mission, owing to her late husbands history with the Khimer: apparently, Rytherfyrd was still highly regarded in Khimer society, meaning as his widow her name had cache, and as the mission was just as much diplomatic as it was scientific and the fact she was one of the few Directorate citizens who had explored the BioShip in person…Well.

“THERE IS A VISITOR: FACTOTUM PEACE-NEURON-BUDGET.”

“Let him in,” TNDI informed the computer, listening as the door to her apartment opened: out of the corner of her optical sensors she watched as the Khimer approached. “Ambassador,” She said warmly, banishing the thoughts and focusing on her job.

The Khimer also gazed at the planet, but likely they were experiencing very different emotions than the Art Spirit: they could see on the row of eyes that lined their external neural tissue crinkle in an expression of satisfaction, their facial tentactles drifting in a manner that TNDI had learned signified happiness: likely they were enjoying the rush of dopamine that came from the sight of their world healing. “TNDI-Captain,” the Grunt form gurgled, turning to face the Captain. “I come to collect data on BioShip. Khimer-Directorate Cooperative Functional?” Factotum said, popping their claw knuckles, something TNDI believed to be a form of stimming they did in response to excitement, whether positive (anticipation, energy) or negative (anxiety, frustration).

“Mmm,” TNDI murmured. “So far, everything is going as hoped: I’m joining the survey team tomorrow: they’ve found a few locations of interest and a few biological samples.” She paused. “Some of which were, ah, active: nothing larger than a few feet in size.” Mostly arthopod-like organisms that were likely devourer gut flora that had survived whatever had hit it and adapted to their surroundings in the meantime: most had been extremely hostile, forcing the survey team to explore slowly.

“Tiding-good. Gene-information can use, develop more weapons to fight great devourer,” Factotum grumbled. “Big-good thank you.”

“The Directorate strives to do what it can to help further our mutual interests. Now-”

“Uh, Captain TNDI, we’re detecting something on the long range scanners: something just dropped out of warp,” Came the voice from her science officer over comms.

“Excuse me ambassador, somethings just come up,” TNDI said, rising into a hover. “Is it the Courier?” She asked her comms officer.

“No, they shouldn’t due for another week or so. The vessels are as of yet unidentified- Ma’am, they aren’t responding to our hails-”

Oh that wasn’t good. “TNDI to Bridge, get us prepared for hard contact, we have unknown bogeys closing in,” She commanded, not letting her calm break. She turned to the Ambassador, who gave a concerned tilt of her head. “Ambassador, you might want to contact your people. Things might be about to get hairy.”

((((()))))

The hostile vessels looked as much like creatures as ships: vast tentacled cuttlefish, covered in hard metal plating bolted into place, underside lined biomechanical stalks crafted from a matte-black, metallic substance, barrels alight with a fel purple glow. At the creatures front, where an eye might be, a titanic, rainbow hued gem sat, right above a teeth lined maw that emitted its own molten glow, the creatures occasionally vomiting out magneto-accelerated blasts of superheated molten metal out.

On its back end were collections of shelled, armored, pulsating psychic organs, attached via long, barbed cable to some sort of thrusters formed out of crystal that seemed to be growing from the back.

While each were smaller than an Endeavor, the Discovery, to TNDI’s frustration, found itself outnumbered four to one, even after the Khimer had scrambled their own fleet of coffin-ships: it had forced the enemy fleet to divert forces, but TNDI’s ship still had to contend with way more enemies than it was fit to handle. “Bank left!” She commanded, grasping her armrest and activating her grav harness to keep herself seated as the force of the last blast caused the ship to lurch.

“Captain, shields are down to 12%! They cannae take no more!” Came the voice of her chief engineer. TNDI growled.

“CAPTAIN, I AM DETECTING SEVERAL SMALLER CRAFT: IT APPEARS THEY’RE-” Another lurch, one bad enough that the lights flickered for a moment, and distantly TNDI could hear ripping metal. “WE ARE BEING BOARDED. I AM HEARING REPORTS OF COMBAT IN CREW DECK 15.”

Crap. “Number one, handle things here,” She commanded. “That deck has civilians: Security Officer BMBL-B, Ensigns Gorzbuk and Pyvyl, with me. Time to meet our mysterious invaders face to face.”

((((())))

The hall was a shooting gallery, and unfortunately, it wasn’t the Directorate playing. All throughout the hall, TNDI saw dead, dying, and most concerningly PETRIFIED ensigns, frozen in poses of shock, fear, anger, or stoic resignation.

At one end was TNDI, exiting the toxel tubes alongside her team, the bulky Security-Machina behind her, both of them armed, the captain and the organic ensigns with an electrophaser rifles, BMBL-B with an arm mounted net-cannon. Holding the line a few kliks away was the decks security division, attempting suppressing fire on the rapidly approaching hostiles.

The boarding team consisted of three hostiles. Each of them towering, large enough to dwarf even Commander-Platforms.

Bipedial, with digitigrade legs. Covered in sleek, pitch black metal armor, the only color being red, both from the barrels of their weapons, from which TNDI saw them fire blasts of crimson energy that seemed to petrify whoever it hit, and the V shaped visors of their head concealing helmets.

Each shot landed: they seemed to posses perfect aim, their guns firing each second to take out another ensign even as electropulses and lasers had no effect on the aliens, dissipating against their armor, the only thing slowing them down being when an ensign would fire a micro-rocket, the missile flying through the air and the middle alien raising their left arm, claw opening, causing the creature to be surrounded by a strange ethereal aura, catching the projectile in some sort of psychic grasp, before closing their fist. A crunching and then popping noise would be heard, and in the handful of seconds it took for all of this to occur, TNDI watched as the alien detonated a perpetunite rocket only to then CRUSH the chain reaction, neutralizing it through pure mental force.

It only took a few moments of TNDI’s internal tricorder scanning to note that whatever that armor was made of, it was scan-hardened: the only thing she could get was that it was coated in some sort of metafluid that seemed to be conducting energy weapons and distributing the heat and electricity in order to dissipate it harmlessly.

Without a word, TNDI began her advance. Time began to slow for the Muse as they moved forward down the hall, dodging and weaving the shots as she activated the lunar circuits embedded throughout her synthetic-neural matrix.

The lead aliens head reared back as TNDI’s fist struck it with enough force to cause the metal of their visor to form hairline cracks around the impact point. The other two on either side of TNDI reacted quickly, faster than a Tekket or Hobbgrot to react, bringing their guns to bare and firing them point blank…

TNDI was not a Tekket or Hobbgrot. Dropping before they could pull the trigger on their weapons, she ducked, grabbing the barrels of both guns just as their triggers were pulled and yanking them with enough force to cause them to both point to their still reeling friend, unwittingly firing their guns at them. A course of events that had required only a few seconds to transpire from the moment TNDI arrived to the lead alien finally impacting the floor, TNDI’s fists and then the guns of their allies knocking them to the ground and sending them sprawling and tumbling, though their momentum kept them moving even as TNDI dodged the fist of one of their cohorts, grabbing the arm of the now very surprised alien and tossing them into their one remaining ally.

“Stand down,” TNDI said, neutrally as she watched the tangle of limbs begin to extricate themselves. “There are two ways this can go, and the version where you don’t is going to end with me breaking your ribs and you getting tased once I break your armor and you still ending in custody for attacking a Directorate starship.”

The aliens let out a gurgle as they began to rise, one of them raising their rifle again at TNDI. “Alright,” TNDI said.

The next moment the rifle was in two pieces, TNDI having responded by activating the plasma cutter in her arm and slicing through the weapon like butter, causing the front part to slide to the ground, useless. “Your tek is pretty good,” The captain commented as she avoided another fist, this one grazing her slightly, causing her faceplate to suffer some fractures of their own even as her internal diagnostics confirmed that the punch strength of these aliens were several times more psi than what would be required to break iron. “The metafluid is really impressive,” She noted, responding by grabbing the arm, and this time…

Snap snap snap. The alien fell to the ground screaming, their arm hanging limp, TNDI having brought her bare hand down on it three times fracturing it in each location. “If I wasn’t incredibly angry with you right now for killing my people, I’d probably be geeking out. Unfortunately, right now I am furious beyond what words can properly express,” She said serenely, catching the next fist that came her way.

Crunch.

The now screaming alien didn’t find the captain letting go of their now useless hand, pulling and lifting them before using them as a blunt instrument by slamming them into their leader just as he fired his weapon, the energy dissipating across the chestplate of their ally moments before the two impacted.

“Thankfully, the Dancer teaches us physical action can be a form of self expression as well.”

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. TNDI didn’t let up, going on the offensive, each blow forcing the leader alien further and further back and creating more and more dents and cracks in their armor even as the alien attempted to block the blows.

Finally, desperate, the alien alighted itself with a glow, capturing TNDI and its now very dazed comrad in a telekinetic grip, which TNDI responded to by opening up a panel in her chest and venting her reactor into the Aliens face, the heat and light searing it, causing it to scream and fling her away, the captain spinning through the air until her manuever-thrusters could help her bleed momentum enough to slide to a stop, glaring at the now hunched over leader, their head covered by their claws,attempting to rip away the superheated, glowing visor away from their face, finally wrenching it free, releasing a burst of steam to reveal the red raw, extremely burned face of a Khimer.

“What the-”

The alien grabbed something from its belt, tossing it at TNDI even as the other two, now arisen, began to retreat, moving back down the hall to their ship. The thing that had been launched detonated mid arc, releasing an incredibly potent burst of multi-spectrum radiation and optics blinding light, causing TNDI’s senses to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of white noise.

The effect only lasted ten seconds, but by the time it ended she saw the rogue Khimer at the other end of the hall, the squad retreating to the long, needle like craft that they had used to breach the hull, its shaft sticking through the hall vertically. Quickly, they fled into the hatch, and mere moments before it ripped its way back free, the bulkhead slammed shut.

TNDI remained silent for a moment, monitoring security channels: all other breaches on the ship were in full retreat. The enemy had plowed through the security bots and chewed through the ensigns, hitting a wall when the Hunteks and Commander-Platforms had begun responding. “TNDI to bridge, breach contained: how’s the ship battle going?”

“Well, the good news is that they’re retreating. The bad news is that we, uh, don’t appear to have been the primary target.”

((((()))))

The city was in ruins. Smoke gently floated into the air, and TNDI watched as more and more people were pulled from the rubble by rescue teams. “The ones they sent to the Discovery were a distraction, we think,” She said. Ambassador Factotem stared, silent, merely gazing: overhead, a fire-suppression engine passed, moving to a still smouldering building near the end of the street and covering it in foam.

“What…what was their purpose?” He asked.

“Smash and grab: while they were hitting the fleets with their basilisk-ships, they were landing teams in docks, hitting warehouses, hospitals, supply depots.” The losses were severe: several million tons of material were gone, to say nothing of stolek tek, destroyed infrastructure, dead civilians. “I understand this is likely a delicate matter,” TNDI said, neutrally. “But the Directorate needs to know who exactly attacked us.”

Factotum let out a wheezing gurgle, tentacles drooping. “I am not sure, TNDI-Captain. The history-choruses do not sing of these strange ones.”

…Well, that wasn’t good. Either whoever these people were were a big enough secret that they were above the ambassadors payroll, a disturbing thought, or the Khimers history had some gaps in it. “Could they be what’s left of the cultists who made the original devourerforme?” She asked, only for Factotums head to rear back in alarm and distress.

“No. Allegation-accusation disturbing but unlikely: dark-children would have already biospawned devourer-clone again, not perform attack-raid for resources.”

“Then we need to find out whoever these people are fast,” TNDI said, the wheels in her mind already turning even as she faced away from the ambassador: could they be different survivors of the attack? Remnants of a prior colonization project? “Ambassador, can you schedule an appointment with the War-Brain? We need to talk.”

“There is no need, Captain TNDI,” Came the voice of Factotum, and TNDI turned to see them, a strange yellowish glow in their eyes. “We have assumed direct control.”

“...Ah. War-Brain. I wasn’t aware you could…possess your people.”

“There is much you don’t know about the Khimer. That is intentional,” The psychic entity said striding forward, picking up some fallen pieces of scrap and turning them over in their hosts claws. “I will make this short. I believe I know who these foes are, and if I’m correct, then this is, unfortunately, an internal matter the Directorate has found itself caught up in.”

“Your ‘internal matter’ got a bunch of my crew killed,” TNDI said, causing the War-Brain to wince.

“Yes. Which is the only reason I tell you this.” They turned, facing TNDI. “Do you know my exact role in the war?”

“I assumed some sort of military leader, going by the name,” TNDI noted. “Your unique modifications- if they are modifications- make me think you were probably pretty high ranking. I assume you led your people during the war as a general.”

“You are not…incorrect. But the truth is more complex,” The War-Brain noted. “I was designed to lead our most basic of security forces: not our actual standing army, not our navy, but our planetary spawn-guard. The other…I suppose Generals would be the correct term.” They let out a soft gurgle. “They were the ones who fought the Dark Children in truth: I existed only to lead the rear guard. When the planet fell, much of us were killed: the Devourers could not eat us Generals, and for this they couldn’t let us live. When the Great Dying occurred, only a handful were left, myself and a few others. Everyone we answered to was dead. Everyone we had been meant to protect was dead. Our planet was dead. Most of our superiors were dead. And in those uncertain days, not all of us agreed upon the correct course of action. There was what you would term a civil war.”

He paused for a moment, eyes flickering as his connection with his host wavered. “We had different visions. The Spawn Guard and Coffin Fleet wished to focus on fortification and hiding, rebuilding in secret. Others…Some, like Special Services believed we should change ourselves even further, while the Exploratory Fleet believed that with the planet dead, we should have simply stripped it of what remained in order to find a different world. Eventually we proved the victors, forcing the others to flee.”

“...So if I understand correctly, we were attacked by the remnants of a different branch of your army. One that is most likely angry for being forced off their homeworld.”

“Yes,” The War Brain confirmed, letting the piece of rubble in their claw fall to ground. “And if my suspicions are correct, these particular renegades…are particularly dangerous. There was only one branch that has access to metafluid armor and red-shift petriweapons.”

“Who?” TNDI asked as the roar of fires blazed in the distance. The War Brain took in a breath.

“They were our first line of defense. An organization created when we first learned of the threat the cult presented as well as its extra-terrestrial nature. Our greatest scientists, engineers, tacticians and generals gathered under one umbrella, tasked with combating not just the infiltrators, but all alien enemies unknown.”

“Their name would translate, roughly, as the X-COM project.”

Discovered Faction: X-COM Project, a group of rogue Khimer with unknown intentions.

X-COM Reputation: ??? - Hostile. A more accurate assessment will require more Intel.

The Discovery has taken moderate Hull and Crew damage. Further, Sandscorn has found itself raided: -10 EXP for disaster relief. However, the BioShip and Coffin Fleet have been studied.

The latter consists of six Endeavor class ships crewed by what Directorate scientists are terming Pilotformes, which appear decentralized organisms capable of rapidly growing into massive networks of bio-cables and neural webbing capable of interfacing with compatible technology when provided sufficient nutrients: when not active, Pilotforme Khimer are kept in biohibernation gel in order to keep caloric requirements minimized.

The former has had large sections of its external structure completely petrified with “yellowshift”. While singular organisms appear to have survived such as small carnivorous grubs, larger cleaning beetles, and even some fleshlike bulbs that seem to serve as flora, the vast majority of the bioships inhabitants and structure are dead.

Areas located include a pouch near the undersection of the structure that seems to be where the creature stored the water it stole: several hundred million cubic kilometers of the stuff. This underwater biocavern is teeming with Devourer micro-organisms and highly mutagenic chemicals and pathogens, and thus utterly undrinkable: current Directorate technology has proven ineffective at filtration.

Near the upper-forward part of the structure, just under the frontal crest, is a highly dense arrangement of petrified and necrotic neural matter surrounded by shock absorbing adiposal tissue and several feet thick plates of osteal matter. In the center of this structure is a network of chambers filled with the dead or fossilized remains of extremely large, seemingly sedentary, multi-limbed bio-organisms positioned over vats of extremely biogenic goop: an accident involving an electric current shows that this material in the correct condition can create extremely hostile protean organisms. Most likely this chamber was used to experiment with or create devourerformes using the biogel as construction material.

This material was pumped to the vats from an area Directorate and Khimer research specialists are terming the gastro-jungle, which appears to be an organ located just behind the aqua-belly filled with caustic gasses that were likely used for digestion of material. It is overgrown with a variety of meat-like structures and fleshy flora, such as trees made of what appear to be osseous matter with long thin skinlike flaps. It is the second highest concentration of life in the facility, in part because the unique mixture of gasses causes the microbes in the air to emit a bioluminescent glow that allows the flora to photosynthesize, in turn allowing the fauna a source of food.

The largest source of life on the ship is the Stasis Hatchery, which seems to utilize some sort of unknown bioartefact and specialized adipose tissue to effectively “store” devourer organisms, likely for rapid unloading during planetary invasions, housing them in fleshlike cocoons. The bioartefact, meanwhile, resembles a large bulb like organism roughly 30 feet in diameter, and seems to be emitting some unknown phenomena causing the fat of these cocoons to take a time locked quality. To the Khimers immense and immediate concern, this property seems to have helped preserve several intact devourerformes, some of which are as of yet unidentified.

Gain 1 BioData.

NEW ASSIGNMENTS

Invader Diplomatic Mission: In order to help cover for the Directorates gaffe and promote a positive relationship with one of the two owners of Flying Saucer, an envoy could be sent to the H’kek in order to help soothe fears they might have and clarify confusion, promises that the Directorate will not steal them away in the night to turn into sleeper agents through neural stitching, kidnap towns to convert into bio-batteries, or deploying bioweapons created from their genetic structure. Reward: gain +10 H’kek reputation, H’kek reassured you will not abduct them in their sleep. Can be taken the same assignment as Abductor Diplomatic Mission for free, however this will halve reputation rewards.

Abductor Diplomatic Mission: The H’kann would need some diplomatic effort to win over as well: reassurances that the Directorate will respect their sovereignty and not burn their cities to the ground under the boot of their vast clone armies, treaties preventing either side from deploying certain weapons such as biocide radiosterilization bombs, and so forth.  Reward: gain +10 H’kann reputation, H’kann reassured you will not invade their planets. Can be taken the same assignment as Invader Diplomatic Mission for free for lowered rewards.

Flying Saucer Antipiracy Ops: Neither faction trusted the Directorate further than they could throw it, but when it came to fighting the Cruel Ones they didn’t have the fleet power to be choosy about allies. +5 Reputation with all H’k States. WARNING: Will likely trigger battle.

Sandscorn Coffin Fleet Delivery: The Coffin Ships use, to extend their operational longevity, stored rationstock and stasis biogel. Neither are infinite: biogel has to be periodically replaced, forcing the pilotformes to emerge and consume some of their rationstock during the process. All the ships are operating on their emergency reserves at this point: eventually they are going to run out. The Khimer wanted assistance ferrying supplies back to the fleet so that the ships could enter regular operation once more. +3 Khimer Reputation, Coffin Fleet resumes regular operation.

ENEMY UNKNOWN: XCOM had attacked the Sandscorn- why? Just for resources? What was their goal, what were they after? How much should the Directorate worry about them? Perhaps a fleet needed to be assigned to searching through the expanse in order to find out more. Hunt for XCOM. Rewards unknown. WARNING: Chance to trigger battle.

Iron Crown Xenotheology Outpost: Iron Crown was a collection of abandoned alien temples dedicated to Chaos where a genocide occurred. Many among the Directorate wanted to create some outposts both to research the history of chaos in the sector and, also, document the genocide. Costs 0/5 FTH, creates Xenotheology Documentation Outpost, which generates and stores 1 FTH per turn for 5 turns. Increases max outpost level in region to 5.

((((()))))

The Lunar Array. A collection of fifty theoretically teeth class fusion weapons positioned throughout the moons surface, each having a range of several thousand miles, allowing them to in times of invasion to provide orbital protection to 87% of whichever Teklian hemisphere they were facing as well as several critical pieces of orbital infrastructure such as the Hyperforge. Created by the Fleet at the behest of the Frontier Society, who had threatened to go on strike at the advisement of their Director should the Directorate not invest in actual defensive fortification and technologies.

Each of the cannons was 900 meters tall, genuine skyscrapers, fed by a central perpetunite reactor and the Hyperforge, incorporating primeval imperial archaeotech and Demiurgic Gifts designed to help focus and amplify the intensity of each cannon, each of which was connected to massive, drum shaped heatsinks formed from Erichthean glaciers in order to maximize firing times.

The most impressive defensive fortification in the Directorate, it meant that any who attempted to take the system would, if they wished to assault Teklia, need to take Luna first, or else waste time and energy staying to the moonless side of the planet. As construction progressed, several Quartzbug nests would be disturbed, causing Directorate naturalists to document new mutations to both Quartzbugs and the Lunar Ecology.

The insectoid extremophiles have integrated biometal more thoroughly into their physiology: several have shown scythe like extremities formed entirely of the substance, used for cutting scrap and defence against the growing legions of scrap beasts: the nests located near Mount Wander have been observed using the liquid of the lake to ‘charge’ their blades, consuming the liquid to enable them to engulf the appendages in an ethereal blue glow, a process that seems to confer the scythes greatly increased cutting proficiency. Nests located near Antianima Shrines meanwhile would display new mutations, strange ones, growing strangely organic carapaces, spinning titanic webs made from a sticky black ferrosilk, nests filled with inky dark clouds of bio-ink. And many of these nests, regardless of their location, would have some of their number subject to a form of gigantism, the insects growing into massive quartzbeasts, which acted as guardians of sorts for the nests.

Obviously, the nests disturbed were furious, forcing several Lunar Druids to work alongside the Lunar Cabals to relocate them after their attack, though little permanent damage was caused.

Meanwhile, even as out of cargo shipping improved, so did in system cargo shipping with the megahaulers, titanic vessels designed to be used to ship material throughout the system, both on the rails and off. Using newly invented Grav-Tether technology and other advancements in shipping such as GCC crates and the universal cargo compartment, these machines increased the Directorates shipping capacity even further, to the point where briefly it would exceed production, many cargo haulers going empty and instead opting to perform tours throughout the Directorate or acting as ferries of sorts for those who wanted to explore the still growing void-towns.

Much like the megahaulers, the townships would also make use of the grav-tethers, using them to keep various ships and structures in their void-shanties anchored to each other, preventing them from drifting apart: across these tethers townships would build bridges, transit-tunnels, trams, trolleys, even small void choo-choos used to deliver dwellings and dining-ship food and other supplies.

Fiddly Stuff

New Projects

Greater Engines of the Assembly: The Spirit Engines of the Assembly had helped actualize many Vita of the Directorate. None could deny they were on the cutting edge of ShrineTek: however, the Assembly believe they can yet build even greater engines, ones so vast that they feed entire continents worth of Vita. 0/100, cost 5 NK, generates 1 Warp, 1 ART, 1 Net, and 1 BioData. Gain Greater Engines of the Assembly.

LAOC Secondary Array: The LAOC didn’t have many gaps, and staying in those gaps would require a ship fast and nimble enough that their odds of having orbital weaponry was low, but it would never be zero. A secondary array consisting of an additional fifty cannons would go a great deal towards both raising fire-power and coverage. 0/25, gain LAOC Secondary Cannon Array, cost 3 NK.

LAOC Cooling Coils: One of the current limitations to LAOC use was heat management: to help manage its temperature, each cannon used an entire glacier, one that slowly melted over the course of a few years for the bright side of the moon. By installing these installations with special cooling coils designed to help disperse heat from the tower over a far wider area and additional glaciers, their overall firetime could be increased. 0/25, gain LAOC Cooling Coils and Lunar Glaciers.

Lunar Forges: Several human adherents to the Mechanica faith have joined the Salvage Cabals in order to acquire opportunities to study ancient human archaeotech specimens: their expertise, while fragmentary, had been invaluable, and they had proposed creating a series of facilities on Luna to begin replicating archaeotech artisanally. 0/25, Salvage Cabals gain Lunar Forges, allowing them to recreate certain samples of human archaeotech, increasing ACD and ART.

Xiu-Nu Line: A proposed expansion of the Void rail to the regions BEYOND the solar system, specifically one that would allow the Directorate to travel both to the Xie-Nu extrasolar asteroid belt and any rogue exoplanets that existed in the dark space near the Directorate. 0/100, gain Xiu-Nu Line, increasing EXP.

Mongus Moon Mining: Mongus had nearly 100 moons. Most didn’t have anything of particular value, but more than a few had shown in surveys rich amounts of minerals that could be used to set up local extraction for the region. 0/25, gain Mongus Moon Mining, increasing EXP.

Tacchis Arctic Servers: Tacchis was largely undeveloped, and had a large amount of space near its poles where the Directorate could likely place arrays of Data-Hubs intended to service both the planet and the system both, using the abundant ice to keep cool, while the planet could use the waste heat to begin warming the planet. 0/25, gain Tacchis Arctic Servers, increasing ACD and NET.

Mangrove Hatcheries: Food was an ever present issue in the Directorate: while by and large the factory farms, food kelp, and other nutrient sources were still sufficient and likely would be for centuries, they didn’t produce a particularly large surplus. However, by establishing in several Mangroves special hatcheries, the Directorate could increase this surplus considerably. 0/25, gain Mangrove Hatcheries, increasing EXP.

Meeklak Q-Bit Factories: Calling them factories was likely a misnomer, but ‘quantum particle synthesis facility’ was a bit too unwieldy. While already fairly cheap to replace, it would be a great help to the Directorates budget to make it even cheaper by setting up manufacturing facilities on Meeklak that could utilize its unique elecro-chemical makeup to simplify the process. 0/25, create Meeklak Q-Bit Factories, increasing ACD and NT.

((((()))))

New CUL actions

Cloudsailing Resort: It would require surrounding the area in air purifiers and shields calibrated to keep the unbreathable part of Mongus’s atmosphere out, but it would allow the citizens of the Directorate to play with the very clouds themselves, participating in skyraces on gravity boards, go cloud swimming in the lower atmosphere, or else participate in the time honored activity of fishing, if on cloudboats. 0/25, gain Cloudsailing Resort, increasing Yr Albain reputation by 2 and raising CUL.

Skyfish: It would not be hard to engineer edible fish capable of living in the middle parts of the atmosphere of Mongus: these skyfish could be used to both feed the Directorate and would serve as a source of food for the Vita of Mongus. 0/25, Mongus and all future colonized (Mild) Gas Giants gain Skyfish, increasing EXP and FTH, costs 1 BioData.

Shell of the Storm Kraken!: The Storm-Krakens shell ill suited it: a patchwork thing of rust-metal. Perhaps the Directorate might give it a new shell, one forged from gleaming biometal, containing a small monastery complete with shrine and reactor to provide it the offerings it would require, capable of allowing the Meeklakian Weather Vita to wander the system…0/25, Storm Kraken gains new shell and will begin patrolling the system. Increased affinity with Directorate ships.

Courier Co-Prosperity Coalition: A social initiative proposed by the Frontier Society, this would involve staffing a Courier with staff specifically tasked with assisting allies of the Directorate in bureaucratic or analysis matters as well as any assistance with tasks that might be required for economic planning. 0/15, can upgrade a Courier with a Co-Prosperity Task Force, increasing Reputation by 3 and raising that trade routes EXP by 1.

Courier Civilian Task Lab: Another, somewhat more universal proposal for Couriers was expanding their labs significantly: allowing for them to be used to help progress the research initiatives of allies as well as the Directorate itself. 0/25, all Couriers upgraded with Task Lab, increasing the reputation granted by Couriers by 1 and raising the ACD produced by Couriers by 1.

Sandscorn Shroombogs: While the Khimer have, technically, allowed for immigration to their world, they only allow a few outsiders per year into Sandscorn: allegedly because the General wasn’t entirely sure how to go about integrating large number of sentients not naturally connected to their psychic gestalt. However, they were willing to change this policy for one simple reason: Hobbgrot Mushrooms, in their opinion, had too much potential for both agriculture and tekliaformation for them to ignore. They were willing to begin permitting more Hobbgrots onto Sandscorn, enough to form their own communities, if the Directorate would help them carefully begin the process of integrating the fungal ecosystem with their own. 0/25, Sandscorn gains the Shroombogs Hobbgrot Society, allowing them to slowly begin integrating Hobbgrot and orkoid genetics into their technology and ecology and increasing their labour pool, increasing Khimer reputation by 5.

Corpse Trade: It was, perhaps, unsavory, but it helped advance Marjaks research, which in turn benefitted the Directorate. In exchange, the Archive was willing to manufacture medical equipment for both the Khimer and the Directorate. 0/25, gain EXP and ACD, +1 BioData, increases AutoFacility Influence, raise Khimer reputation by 2.

Life4Gunz: OMEN wanted more lifeforce to experiment with: if the Directorate was willing to trade, they were willing to commit to producing electroguns, improved security autodogs and other arms for the Directorate, strengthening the fleet and any other martial organizations. 0/25, gain Auton Arms, raise Auton reputation by 5.

Virus Buster Corp: One part technicians, one part combat strategists, this proposed corp of dedicated Virus Busters would be used to locate and delete harmful and hazardous programs and helping keep cyberspace secure. 0/15, gain Virus Buster Corp, increasing Digital Defence. Costs 1 Network.

((((()))))

Two new advancements in the field of ShrineTek would shake the Directorate, bringing both feast and famine. The first was the Lesser Engines, created by benefit of a private citizen known as Kirbo the Pink. These large pillar-shaped structures would frequently be installed in chambers underneath the shrine, tall biometal columns filled with all manner of advanced spiritek circuitry, consecrating sigils to the Engine carved into the pillar along with etchings meant to convey the Shrines history in artform. Created by taking a small piece of the Engines essence and embedding it within the soul of a sufficiently powerful motive vita, these spirits would find themselves transferred to their new vessels and, like with Muses and Archetype Spirits, fed on soul force through careful rituals.

The end result is a spirit that, once installed in a Shrine, acts as a great singular powersource for all the Vita of the Shrine.

The next was a creation of Dr. OrphiaTek: even while he laboured to create a digitized version of the Ark of Night and Day, he also studied the art of crafting Warp-Tek portals, refining and developing means to synthesize it with ShrineTek, merging the two disparate technologies together to create the Dark Portals: swirling black vortexes located above TekShrines, these devices, each deployed only at quintuple certified sites, ones that required both Shrine Keepers and the main Guardian pass a licensing exam and attend a(n otherwise optional for other citizens) safety seminar about using WarpTek responsibly and the potential dangers of Chaos or poor Ward/Domain maintenance.

At first, the effects were largely beneficial. Spirits would grow rapidly in strength, fed both vast amounts of arcane power through the Dark Portals, harvesting the raw and infinite psychic power of the warp for sustenance even as the Lesser Engines served as substitute for natural lifeforce generation.

It wouldn’t take long for side effects to begin showing.

On Erichtheo, more and more varieties of strange vita would occur, such as the pelagic necroid, descended from the original species of body mutating parasite that had been discovered in the magmazone: once mundane creatures used as population management by the Diets in order to keep their sizes ecologically manageable, these fish would go from mutating living flesh to infecting and reanimating dead flesh, the microscopic parasites benefiting from developing their own connection to fundamental School by learning powerful necrokinesis their colonies would use to reshape the rotten meat into perfect host and hunt down additional flesh even as their grew awake and aware enough to separate from the Diets control, their population exploding even as several necroids grew massive.

In response, the Diets would begin culling their necroid populations, using psychic electricity to fry the corpses and their possessors to crisps when their numbers or size would grow too concerning, eventually allying with another dark vita of school, creatures born from sharks and other oceanic megapredators given psychic power: these psi-sharks, each individually mighty wyld-psykers, would take the necroids place as population cullers, starting with their predecessors.

Other families of Ocean Vita were not unaffected: in the underwater caverns deep below the crust, those few who ventured below Erichtheo would report meeting strange and eldritch life vita in those pitch dark tombs, ones resembling shadowy, tentacled creatures capable of creating uncanny, temporary and hollow facimiles of life to serve them, as well as beating, coral shaped hearts, veins stretching into the rocks, that seemed to be pumping blood, though none knew from where or what. In the abyssal zones, dreamers would report hearing discordant and unsettling leviathan-song, the appendages of the gigantic underwater beasts reaching through the lands of slumber via phantasmal wells and rivers: some claimed to drag unwary sleepers to a watery doom, never to be seen in the waking world again.

To bring order, the Wytch of the Sea would send out her daughters, Vita created from her essence using the power afforded by the Engines and Dark Portals, forth to crush those spirits who would refuse to obey the laws and ettiquete set forth for all their kind, the dark, wraith-like current wytches using their powers to summon forth terrible penalties for spirits who abused their powers and refused to adhere to the rules set forth by the Directorate: for those whose infractions were small, merely disciplining them with a curse of misfortune was enough, but serious enough crimes would result in more extreme penalties, up to the summoning of Judgements to enforce the will of the Functionary.

The Living College would of course help with their Fossegrimm, each of the fish spirits having full access to the Living Colleges library of techniques including the increasing number of extremely potent exodite developed powers. The efforts by their tutor had ensured that the Vita’s abilities were not only extensive, but grounded in complex enough exoditi psi-theory to ensure that, paired with their mental gestalt and their Shoalnet Terminal, ultimate stability of their castings: while Diets they paired with would only benefit somewhat from this, it still caused their psychic development to accelerate when paired with the other improvements provided by the Directorate, with some Diets even managing to create their own lesser Fossegrimm Agents.

On Teklia, in the Wyld, similar events would take place: at first, the spirits would grow and grow. In the scraplands, more and more mechanical life would emerge, descended from the various feral pieces of technology and more inorganic Vita blending with the spirits of nature. Some of the offspring produced this way, such as the cyberjackals and cobalt goblins, were largely harmless: the packs of the former, while carnivorous and highly intelligent, were individually weak, reliant on numbers and cunning to be a threat, while the latter mechasimians were, while mischievous and prone to theft, no more dangerous than the average small monkey and still very vulnerable to tasing. Others were far more concerning, such as Ferrolycans whose bite would on the full moon carry the dreadful curse of ferrolycanism, turning over the course of the night their victims into more ferrolycans. Others were extremely alarming, such as the Cathedral of Rust, a walking temple-vita descended from a piece of previously non-functional Pre-Directorate imperial archaeotech that seems to cause all complex technology to rapidly break down in its presence, and a few seemed actively beneficial, such as manikin barnacles which would find themselves becoming a metal-rich source of sustenance for the inhabitants of these iron lands.

In the arctic and tundra, the spirits of the North finally began to awaken proper and form Vita of Ice. Living blizzard-clouds would stalk prey for miles over that icebound hellscape, relentlessly freezing and consuming their prey: typically pengos and icebound pinnipeds. Snowmen that were old enough or given sufficient offerings to would animate, becoming frosty guardian ogres for the northern shrines, fashioning great clubs out of icicles to smash their foes with.

Frost Apes would become even harder to locate, with many among the Directorate discovering to their alarm even *existing* evidence of the creatures existence becoming more and more scant, scandata and genesamples disappearing over night, forcing the Directorate to start warding these items to prevent whatever was causing this anomaly, in the process learning that there existed only one article this effect would leave untouched. That being conventional chemical photography, a process that typically produced grainy, blurry, or indistinct pictures of the creatures, whom some conspiracy theorists would claim never actually existed: after all, the concept of a magical ape that was SOMEHOW able to avoid modern surveillance techniques, legions of dedicated Frost Ape hunters, and Hobbgrot Cryptozoologists, and even arcane divination was a patently ludicrous statement. Clearly the apes were a conspiracy the Directorate made up to distract from genuine social issues.

And in remote locations, when the Aurora Arctic was at its brightest in the otherwise darkest months of the year, sorcerers would report coming upon palaces formed entirely by carved frost, gates carved with runes of shadowy alien darkness containing entire galleries of stone sculptures that seemed to be designed to resemble daemons of chaos and infamous wicked spirits frozen in looks of shock and alarm: these locations were never consistent, and when the aurora broke and darkness returned to the frigid north they would disappear for years at a time, unable to be found, on occasion taking the poor fools within, leading to the Directorate to declare these anomalous locations banned for traversal without approval from multiple sources. The only such permanent structure of its kind would be found in Tacchis located on the southern pole: a gallery of the lost, the only location in real space where one could find the Ambassadors, those shadowy cloaked spirits wandering the otherwise silent halls and caring for the statues, lovingly cleaning and maintaining them and even reading and performing for the stonecast sculptures, and preventing explorers from going further than the first three floors with the only exception being certain envoys of the Yr Albaini, each of whom leave ashen-faced and silent like Setach the Slayer or taciturn and afraid such as Queen Baddica.

In the following days, the Yr Albaini inform the Directorate that travel to any of these locations for any reason have been declared extremely illegal for any of their citizens alongside a formal request to the Directorate to inform them should one of their visiting citizenry break such a rule.

Meanwhile, along the coasts protecting the shape of the shore, upon on great tangled islands of kelp and sediment freefloating in the middle of the ocean, and atop shallow coral reefs, the great mangroves bloomed, the place where ocean and land met. In their great flower filled boughs lived flocks of moon-herons, four winged nightbirds that used the glow of their wings to hunt the multitudineous fish that swam in the shallows among the roots, while from branch to branch dozen limbed tanglemonkeys swung, eating small insects and mangrove fruit, in turn finding themselves preyed upon by voidasaurs, floating ethereal phantasmal crocodiles that served as both apex predator and one of the means by which the mangroves (whose seeds easily resisted the digestive juices of both species) propagated. The other means by which the seeds spread involved sprouting while they hung in the branches and their weight causing them to drop. In either case, the seeds would then float along the currents until it successfully roots, typically guided by the spirits.

With their flowers in permanent bloom, these mangroves began to be subject to a strange effect: during their normal blooming season, instead these treeblossoms would release great wefts of vital energy-packed pollen, rapidly accelerating the growth and, eh hem, ‘propagation’ of all species in the ecology, as well as improving health, vitality, and spiritual strength. It appeared that the close connection Mangroves had to the ocean helped cultivate spirits of life.

This wasn’t the only such oceanic spiritual adaptation possessed, however, as the spirits of current would also coalesce, creating the ferrymasters, waterlogged, shadowy, and hulking boatmen formed from tangled plant detritus, rogue mangrove roots, and thick bushes, bodies concealed by their dark raincoats and face obscured by darkness and leafy beards except for the glowing lights of their eyes. While ominous figures while astride their rafts and holding their titanic paddles carved from mangrove limbs, most such spirits were broadly benign, helping lost travelers find their way back to civilization, hunting down rogue spirits harming the health of the ecosystem, or else gently help stir the currents beneath the tree roots to spread life-nourishing sediments or transport mangrove seeds to the best locations.

In the mountains, the Teklian Elementals grew as well: their hearts would begin re-igniting with geological activity, the result of the Engines creating a new breed of volatile flame vita: the Volcano Souls. Resembling molten flame-cloaked meteoroids, these vita would emerge from active caldera, shooting through the sky until an uninhabited peak is found, slamming into it and burrowing into the rock, creating a vent going from their nests to the core. Below, the metal spirits would begin to accumulate: while they had never been able to grow as easily as those of Naklis, they had adapted in other ways, instead opting for near impossible hardness, easily several times in excess of biometal, making them near impossible to mine without wrecking ones equipment: the only way to bypass this durability, tunnelers found, was to give the orichalcum vita great enough offerings for them to replace the lost metal, meaning unfortunately the substance was strategically useless as the Directorate had no use for extremely minute amounts of impossibly durable metamaterial, though many Yr Albaini smiths would seek out the material for experimentation. More broadly useful and easier to obtain were the gems frequently located around orichalchum veins: the crystals of Teklia would be pulled, frequently pre-cut, from the earth. Glasmite resonated, Lumium catalyzed, but the Gems of Teklia?

The gems of teklia blessed: the Great Conclave would find that the elementals of the homeworld resonated with the power of the gods, making fine vessels for holy power and components for sacred relics: the Great Conclave would create fine gemcut masterpieces, their Great Masters finding the crystals a potent item to incorporate, either as adornment or ground up into pigments, into their Great Works, and many a Pygmalitek would use these crystals in the heart of their art-works to help accelerate their evolution into musae.

The greatest of these gems was rarely left undefended: many a foolish treasure hunter would require rescue by the Druids upon finding a great hoard of these treasures hidden away in the caves of the mountains, thinking them unguarded and letting their greed get the best of them, only to learn that the gems belonged to great beasts, titanic winged reptiles born from marble eggs with scales of granite, claws of obsidian, and tombstone teeth, their body not made of flesh, but of mineral.

Quickly, the Directorate would learn to not anger the great stone dragons, lest they acquire the beasts wrath for stealing from them.

Of course, Teklia was not the only location that found its elementals transformed. On Naklis, thanks to the power of the Engine, fire fairies would find themselves living longer, the motive spirits proving an admirable alternative to the ancient proposal for specially engineered extremophile food-algaes. While still doomed to burn out, for many of the more successful fire-fairies this could be put off for potentially months, potentially up to two years near dark portals. Over time, these fairies would gradually dim and shrink, growing weaker and weaker until eventually they found themselves eaten by one of the various predators of the planet. Pyrofiends would similarly develop, many growing heavy and fat through the rich meals they were now afforded.

The oldest and most voracious would metamorphosize, becoming Pyrobosses, more cunning and powerful detonation spirits who would collect around them swarms of lesser Pyrofiends who relied on their elder to both determine what was and wasn’t a threat that required detonating themselves, but also reigniting them after detonation, allowing them to explode multiple times so long as the Pyroboss was protected.

More and more lumium would hatch, creating more and more Rocs. More and more these birds would spread, creating nests comprised entirely of gems they had lain, gleaming incubators of gem. While none of the second generation or wyld eggs had yet hatched, their development would accelerate considerably, with Lumium Monks occasionally fetching fully developed gems from the nest to incorporate into their cursite vaults, a continually expanding network of crypts underneath the Supreme Gem, meant to store as much of the material safely for purification as possible, the rest being shipped to the sun in specially designated hazardtek disposal megahaulers for dumping, some being gifted to the Yr Albini.

The metal cables stretching across the planet would begin to evolve once more, developing what appeared to be a crude circulatory system, transporting a crude slurry of lumium dust, molten metal, and pressurized fuel to the metalomycelliums developing organs, many of which had unknown purpose: even consulting Yaldaboath led to no revelations as to what the strange, bulbous growths underneath the crust were actually for, or what the purpose of the signals being transmitted between the antennae caps and the increasingly large and increasingly electrically active but still silent Sphere 002. Some of the answers discovered only open more questions: many of the arthropodic statues occasionally discovered by stone muses when using their regoliths to explore the deepest parts of the earth have been modified, their chambers filled with strange biometal pods with cables and veins stretching down and plugging into one such statue. The statues found thus far have all had an additional modification, a pseudo-circulatory system formed from networks of living metal in a way that is significantly beyond the Directorates ability to create.

Meanwhile, another volatile of metal would form: from deep in the tangle bramble would emerge strange multipeds with ball shaped, headless bodies, each leg formed from a long, hyperflexible cables ending on a series of hand-like graspers. Electrobandits, who would become notorious for crashing shuttles by frying them with arc-lightning and robbing their victims blind like burglars, or else performing snatch and grabs on the possession of hikers. While the injuries caused by these larcenous thief-vita were rarely serious, they would rapidly become another headache for travellers among the ferrothorns, one made all the more confusing by the sheer purpose by which the electrobandits commit their thefts and the sheer randomness of the larcenies, such as when a pack of them sneak onto the shuttledocks of a mining site to steal a shipments of diet pills that had decided to make a rest stop, or the incident where they crash a fleet supply shuttle in order to draw Directorate attention away from a heist on a waste processing facility that sees the location stripped clean of its aluminum and ONLY its aluminum.

Cursite was beginning to become a problem: with the Dark Portals, the material began to rapidly spread around naklean antianima shrines, the epicenter of these spreads turning a dark, veiny purple, the crystals becoming almost ALIVE, bleeding when cut. These locations, these volatile lands, were always small and self-contained: cursite might spread beyond their bounds, but not at a particularly unusual rate. However, that much buildup of dark energy, accelerated by the Dark Portals atop and the Engines below, would cause the Volatiles in this region to rapidly grow and begin to evolve, consuming the cursite and its energies as sustenance.

Pyrofiends would go from oranges and yellows to crimson reds and ghostly blues, congregating in great swarms and growing larger, fiercer, and would begin displaying what could only be described as extremely volatile psychic powers, calling upon the warp to cast extremely advanced pyromancies, including conjuring lesser Pyrofiends, sending forth gouts of psi-flame to sear their targets, and even teleportation. These psychofiends, broadly more intelligent than their non-cursite cousins but still non-sentient, would frequently find themselves forced to serve under the more powerful and coercive equivalent to their Pyrobosses, who use mental manipulation to force their subordinate vita to serve their whims, fetching it food, attacking its rivals, protecting its territory. Psychobosses, they would be termed, frequently becoming a frustrating obstacle for occultists who maintain the antianima shrines, forcing them to begin warding the paths or else construct them underground.

Below, massive catacombs formed of networks of oath-stone chambers would form, the room in which the Engine was located naturally forming into one, the rune-scribed walls overgrown with veins of black, pulsating crystals.

There, strange gnomes waited in the many angled walls, ones who offered trades: oaths for power. Never again do this, and you might succeed in learning this magic. Do this every moon, and this rite will grow in strength tenfold for you. On every inch of these chambers accounts of these oaths would accumulate, eventually covering even the Engine, turning these pillars into vast accounts of the myriad oaths the Gnomes held: ones that according to the dreamers who ventured into the great halls of the Index and the muses of the mausoleum still held after death, marked on the spirit and recorded by the tongues and eyes of the Evaluator and strengthening the phantasms surrounding their crypts.

On Mongus, the Enigmas would grow more active, with more and more hands of the primordial grasper rising to attempt to seize at ships, meteors, once even reaching above and pulling down an entire moon, only returning it a year later, throwing it like a softball through the solar system, causing significant disruption of the local rail line and a moon expected to exit the system in two centuries. The Giant Eye would grow more bold, venturing higher and higher into the atmosphere, only retreating when the sun begins to sear its lidless unblinking eyeball. Undamoon would occasionally show its undamoon, Hobbgrot tall tales speaking of the moon-sized vita showing its marble carved backside to pilgrims seeking wisdom. Reports would surface of strange cities assembled from clouds in which archetypic spirits congregated. A Yr Albini who wandered into the mist would emerge alongside a strange doppleganger, one who was identical in every way, with none able to tell the two apart, the confusion only ending an hour later when the copy dissipates into vapor, leaving nothing behind.

The Fairy Shrine would have the portal installed within it turn a stark white, fairies using the vortex to come and go from Wonderpark to the Refuge of Day as they pleased. The Aperture of the Toymaker, it was termed: the power it provided allowed the Fairies to combine their power, hundreds at a time, to awaken toytek spirits, granting them permanent animation, the blessed kinderfairie’s physicality meaning that the older pixies would use them for more strenuous tasks like gardening, cleaning, and moving items around the shrine.

Directorate ships would install only Lesser Engines, declining to utilize such unpredictable and volatile shrinetek as Dark Portals on their vessels. Still, the improvement brought by the motive spirits was considerable indeed: each of the Parliments was given their own Engine, an officer of the court alongside the Parlimentary Guardians.

With this power, the Parliments of Acceleration would help ships reach their maximum speed quicker, allowing material to be more efficiently shipped along the rails and allowing a handful of additional shipments to Directorate trade partners. The Parliments of Protection would empower their wards, causing daemons and chaotic apparitions attempting to breach them mid-transit to burn and crisp themselves, effectively ending bloodball incursions. The Parliments of Anatomy would re-arrange their homes into medical theaters where they could collectively observe and assist in the treatment of patients, as well as lecture aspiring medical department ensigns on the complexities of xenobiology. The Parliment of Command, while possessed of no special duties other than assisting the Captain and thus possessed of no special abilities, would work as administrators for the various spiritual congregations, ensuring each Parliment was following the Captains orders as best as possible and allowing them to borrow Commands power when they seemed not up to the task.

In the cities, there would be reports of more Vita. Some were neutral, such as the Men in Black, almost-human appearing Vita dressed in pitch black three piece suits who seemed to follow in the wake of urban Frost Ape sightings, posing as official government officials in attempts to access and copy evidence. The only evidence of their irregularity: the fact they wear solar-filter glasses at night and the fact that they’re completely unable to initiate physical contact with herbaceous plants without collapsing, leaving behind only straw, stilts, and rodents within their suits.

Some were far more malevolent, such as the Aka Manto, the first Vita to be declared a serial killer: for over a year this Vita, a tall, red scarfed figure, would wind up stalking bathrooms and attacking those who use it. Their methodology is almost as unsettling as their actions: the Vita would steal toilet paper from bathroom stalls and sabotage bidets. When an unwitting victim went to relieve themselves, he would appear outside the stall, offering to give them their choice of colored paper, each choice leading to a different means of death.

And other Vita are broadly beneficial, such as Masked Rider Electro, a grav cycle riding bug-masked electrobandit who winds up aiding in the capture and arrest of Aka Manto, ambushing the serial killer and using their electrical powers to fight the Red Scarfed Vita, bringing them to justice, with the Manto transported to Tartustus after a jury of their peers declares them guilty for forty seven counts of murder, ten counts of assault, and over two hundred counts of petty theft of toilet paper.

On the Heart, the Portal wouldn’t be used to gain power, but to give it. A single chamber deep in the hearts core structure, guarded by a pair of black suited Judgements, would contain the swirling, multicolor gate. The purpose was unknown to all, but in the days after a great pagoda would rise in the Refuge of Day guarded by white masked devils, and when one passed near, the sounds of drumbeats could be heard.

Much like the ships, despite protestation by fringe radicals, Mt. Wander wasn’t upgraded with any Dark Portals, though several engines were placed to study their effect on the mountain. The effect seemed to mutate the geofauna, causing additional chambers to form within the mountain, several of them containing organs that seemed to be analogous to marrow, these semi-hollow structures even producing ‘blood cells’ in the form of (on average) fourteen inch sized single celled organisms that would mob creatures and animals that entered the mountain, scrapbeasts or quartzbugs, and attempt to engulf them, allowing only Mt. Wanders Shrine Keepers safe passage. Some of these Mountain Cells would go rogue, swimming into Lake Wander: while many would die, either of starvation or simple old age, a handful would commit mitosis, producing what could only be described as titanic arcane bacteria formed out of 98% mountain blood.

The mountain also began shaking, more and more: the cause, according to scans, was another layer of rock growing between wanders crust and its organs, compressing one and forcing the other out, causing the mountain to shake and groan as it slowly began to molt.

Barring Naklean volatile shrines, most Antianima Shrines weren’t installed with Dark Portals either: only those with sufficiently powerful and stable guardians found themselves approved: more white masked devils, Judgements, Akrem, Dopplegangers, the occasional Exelexi. However, even if 90% only had access to Engines, the effect was still considerable.

The House of Devils would find the resources used to form The Staff, a collection of white masked devils who had progressed past the need or desire for petty amusements and learned to see above their own ambition, the truely, genuinely loyal and ideological among devil-kind, such as the ork-masked Mr. Drafts, who would visit several bold souls among mortal kind in order to negotiate the potentiality of joining the ranks of the Bureacracy upon death, or the eldar-masked, betuxed Mr. Napkins, who served as the ultimate butler, their ability to be everywhere at once within the house allowing them to act as everyones personal concierge, waiter, maid, and assistant. Some even ventured beyond the House, such as the tekket masked Mrs. and Mr. Judgement, who saw to overseeing contracts established between the house and outside entities be properly observed and summoning Antianima when they weren’t, or the daemon-masked Ms. Knives, whose exact purpose was unknown other than it took them far from the house and deep into the warp for months at a time with the occasional respite spent largely lounging in the bar drinking or propositioning various Tekket of assorted genders or else in private quarters.

With the Staffs contributions, the House began to swell as more and more minor devils joined, many of them mentioning fear of or debt to Ms. Knives as their reason for applying, resulting in the Devil gaining a particularly menacing reputation among her peers. Still, with more devils and more budget, the house swelled: every night resembled a raucous party in which hundreds of devils and guests of the house congregated, competed, indulged and conducted business. Dicemaster would expand his games, recruiting the bird-masked Dealer to host card tournaments in which the winner gained great fortune, while those who lost would proportionately suffer misfortune, with the House of course taking a small fee of its own from the luck of each participant, create his own restaurant exclusively opened to those deemed great movers and shakers of the Directorate operated by the Restraunteur, a blank masked deviless who attempted to secure particularly prestigious (if not particularly lucrative) contracts for both herself and her master (and occasionally the Dealer, who they appeared smitten with, or at least allied to) by charming her guests and worming her way into their favor.

The tourneys hosted by Bellatrix would grow far larger, with the Lady arranging for more games, more tourneys: races, jousts, spars, pole vaulting, sword fighting, fencing, archery. With her power, both literal and metaphorical, increasing, the deviless would hand select those she deemed of high potential or values. Competitors she would use her influence with to convince to serve the house in a more martial capacity as Security, or would personally train in order to bring out their full potential in the tourney grounds in order to create a more fantastic spectacle, whereas spectators would be moulded into allies, carefully provided the tools, advice, and gifts Bellatrix thought would make them useful to her, either by buying their loyalty or investing in their capabilities.

Nis’rok would be joined by another cook in the buffet, Chef Gumm Boeh, a portly, piggish greenmasked devil who, unlike his peer, always produced the same dishes each night, a collection of hearty stews, delicious deep fried meats and fish, and savory blood sausages, all filled with apocalyptic amounts of spices using ingredients sourced from the Mangroves of Teklia. The only thing that changed each night were minor adjustments to the ingredients, preparation, or presentation: this meant that while individually the dishes might have been the same as the ones from the day before, they gradually found themselves becoming more and more refined, more and more flavorful, more and more spicy, more and more delicious. After all, according to Chef Boeh, people didn’t just want novelty, they wanted GOOD FOOD: what was the point of changing the menu if you didn’t give dem some of d’ good boudin t’ go with it?

When asked if he could make less spicy meals, the offending Occultek found themselves banned for life from the House of Devils. There was little either chef devil agreed on ideologically, meaning they would frequently bicker in the kitchen, but the first was that You Did Not Ask For Less Spice.

The other was their combined hatred of the Dicemaster, a rival both politically and, through the Resteraunter, culinarily: as a result, to infringe on the Dicemasters games, they would recruit a third, Sous Chef Trivia, who would besides handling the pastries and catering to the rest of the house would organize various games of their own, each with a modest buy in such as a small favor or bit of lifeforce, with the proceeds being used to pay the winner. Chess, trivia, war games, poker. The prize was rarely as great as what Dicemaster could provide, but so were the stakes.

And a new floor would find itself opening: the Inferno Club, populated, strangely, by devil-masked humans and other races. The Damned: mortal members of the House who had made a deal to permanently occupy it as inhabitants in exchange for taking up a mask of their own and swearing to a series of geas.

In the land of the dead they would never die, lounging eternally in the House which they were forbidden from leaving, a punishment they agreed to as penance for past deeds, alongside their memories, faces, and names. In return for this and their souls being used to keep the House powered, they were kept protected and anonymous, away from the many, many who wished them harm and availed of all the Houses amenities.

Serving as host was the Devil Princess Nurah Poxbane, a great green skinned red-masked drake who acted as the prison officer of the damned, managing the Inferno Club and its agents and ensuring the Damned were kept happy as well as compliant, as well as managing their correspondence: apparently many still had loved ones or family in the mortal realm, and though they couldn’t visit, they were allowed to send messages and even small items and gifts they had acquired in the House via Akremi messengers.

Speaking thereof, many antianima would be affected as well. More and more Booug would be sighted in both warp and real-space, with more and more of them managing to evolve into Booug’Urs, many of the latter assembling great hosts of lesser Booug and venturing into the warp to find more things to wreck.

Dopplegangers would grow more numerous, many of them wandering to the Day side of the Ark to become the rare dark spirit that inhabited that slice of the dreamlands: there, they continued tormenting those they deemed abusive parents, stalking them through the woods and using their shapeshifting abilities, which had grown sophisticated enough for them to mimic mortals, albeit with several obvious flaws that made them uncanny, to terrify their victims, feeding on their fear.

The Akremi would open their own market, in which the anti-anima traded and bartered items they found interesting or notable. Many of them would begin to amass great hoardes of junk, leading to many among the Ark to term the location the Scrap-Market. There, a handful of Akremi possessed of above average ability to discern junk from things which were truely valuable would begin modifying themselves: biometal offerings, bits of cast off booug, the still functional scraps of dead machine spirits. With these they would repair and restore themselves, going from rust covered scrap-vultures to gleaming chrome avians: the upgrade to becoming Tak’Akrem would improve their disposition by lowering their general anhedonia (though they still possessed no capacity for aesthetic or beauty), make them far stronger (allowing them to more easily accomplish physically demanding tasks), and most crucially permitted them to tell the difference between what was useful salvage and what was useless (or, to most, what was decorative), which made them far more discerning when it came to what they kept and what they didn’t: their nests were uniformly neat, filled with food and other useful supplies, a handful of entertainment articles, and absolutely zero clutter.

The Exelexi situation would grow worse as more and more found themselves summoned by failed lifeforce rituals, with several of them being transmogrified by the experience into far more powerful and far darker Heart Breaker Exelexi, having had their chest ripped open, their ribcages empty, who show the ability to inflict their victims with curses of misfortune and black luck and, atop their monomaniacal obsession with reducing their victim to tears, develop a targetted lasting sadism atop it as a result of the transformation that results in them continuing far past the point where a normal Exelexi would have stopped, forcing Occulteks to exorcize the antianima to end the spirits hostility towards their summoner, the mutated Exelexi only regaining their senses upon being returned to the Ark.

More forms of antianima would appear: near the edges of the Ark and in the darkest parts of the wyld, people would report being stalked by large, black furred pantherin thornbeasts, their victims only realizing they were being followed upon seeing teeth lunge at them: those stuck in dream would wake up, but those unlucky enough to encounter the vicious Stalking Beasts in real-space would find their injuries very, very real: though they rarely killed their prey, the antianima would still viciously maim their targets unless either fought away or appeased.

And, born of the nightmares of the Lanternkeepers, the Flameless, the only AntiAnima to be labeled as wholly malevolent by the various regulatory bodies: on the surface colorful and silly to help draw in victims, those who approach the flameless uncautiously would find their soul ripped out and infected with the Flamelesses own darkness, converting the spirit into another Flameless and animating the leftover cadaver as a vicious living corpse. The only way to destroy a flameless is by destroying their old husk, something the Huntsmasters and Emberlight Priests collaborate to accomplish across the Directorate until only a scant handful of Flameless remain, their bodies well hidden in real-space and their spirits well hidden within the Ark.

And of course, the Functionary benefitted from these upgrades, with them taking a small tax from both Portal and Engine: as a result, their more stringent followers would be permitted more miracles, being able to fix database errors at a snap of a claw and the ability to conjure lesser, axeless Judgements, their Archetypic Regulators gaining the ability to conjure winds to propel themselves across the sky, and their talismans gaining improved ability to abjure dark spirits.

However, the most notable thing was the deployment of the black suited judgements known as Executives, granted access to secrets of reality affirmation, granting them the ability to weaken supernal abilities, regardless of source, regardless of nature, as well as every single true name known to the Functionary. While extremely rare, their appearance would be met with extreme terror by all other spirits of Night, Devils and Ambassadors especially.

For a handful of years, the effects, while complicated, were broadly useful. However, little did anyone know that year by year by year the stream of dark energies into the Directorates spiritual ecosystem would begin to accumulate, in the deepest and darkest places, locations that had never fully recovered from the wither, that still had a primal emptiness to them. Slowly, it would build and build, the spirits of Wither feasting and feasting until one day, unbeknownst to the public, the Wither went critical.

A pulse of arcane, corruptive energies would spread from these locations, twisting everything they touched: buildings would be re-arranged, filled with strange and aggressive specters and hideous wraiths, their very architecture becoming hostile as they shifted and morphed to become more dangerous, more hazardous. Forests would become twisted, trees mutating, growing dark and thorny and the animals and vita becoming larger and more vicious. Mausoleums caught in the effect would have to be evacuated, the corpses returning to life and tearing their way from their crypts to attack the living both physically and verbally. Autofactories would begin creating legions of angered, riotous automata to cause massive property damage. Clowns are transformed into mimes. In the ancient sites of battle from the Destroyer War, titanic and vicious vita resembling giant, blood red skeletons are spotted congregating, attacking any who venture too close.

To call the event a disaster cannot be understated: thousands across the Directorate die or find themselves injured in the coming weeks, with the Fleet and Conclave forced to scramble its corp of Occulteks to staunch the bleeding, by establishing new wards, performing exorcisms, dealing with dark spirits, and clearing out corrupted forests.

Making things worse is that even while the physical realm dealt with disaster, so did the digital…

Fiddle Diddle. Just as a note to myself and planmakers, this eats about 5 points from every category on top of the ongoing old one curse.

New Actions

Exorcising the Wither: The Wither had unfortunately exploded, and now needed to be cleansed of the accumulated dark energies: while anything on the level of the Withernacht was unlikely, until they were cleansed they would likely be minor problems. 0/25, increase FTH, Wither will no longer be saturated by Dark Portals.

Sanctum Sanctorum: A proposed organizing body for areligious or agnostic occulteks and mysteks, the Sanctum Sanctorum would tasked with researching the arcane as well training future mystics and dealing with supernatural problems that might arise within the Directorate. 0/25, form Sanctum Sanctorum, a Mystek society, increasing FTH and proving +1 to FTH HazardTek rolls.

OrphiaTek Digital Death Index: With the Ark Simulacrum in operation, it might be possible to establish a permanent data-bridge to the Index of the Dead by creating a digital conduit to the Evaluator meant to use Emulator software to allow mortals with sufficient permissions to access the records contained therein. 0/25, NekroTeks can utilize the Index of the Dead, increasing FTH by 3. Cost 1 Network.

TeleRite Bandwidth: The Rite of Telecommunication grew far more intensive to cast as information increased. To fix this, the Calculators wanted to conduct research designed to optimize the spells ability to process large amounts of information, increasing bandwidth. 0/25, gain Improved Rite of Telecommunication, increasing NT by 1.

Netroplex Servers: A proposed means of augmenting cyberspace would be expanding the Hypercomm Forums with specialized Simulacrum Emulators based on the technology created by Dr. OrphiaTek: this would eat into the Directorates bandwidth, but the Emulators would allow more complex environments and expanded cyber netropolises. 0/25, Hypercomm Forums gain Netroplex Servers, increasing CUL considerably. Cost 1 NT.

Hypercomm Quantum Consecratek: It was undeniable that certain physical locations were more attuned to the gods than others, such as the Central Bureacracy or the Great Gallery: it was at these locations where the gods had the strongest ability to influence the material realm. Could the principles of entanglement be applied? Would it be possible to allow the gods to use the foothold provided by these temples alongside a Q-Bit particle and Hypercomm technology to utilize quantum manipulation in order to allow the gods to treat multiple locations as being part of their temple? 0/25, Temples upgraded with Hypercomm Consecratek, allowing all gods to transmit their blessings and miracles between their major temples and holy sites and minor temples.

Rite of Restoration: Mirror Black. It was apparently an artifact from ancient Auton history: a weapon capable of unleashing absolute destruction, it was damaged in a long ago battle, and has in the time since withered and tarnished. OMEN wanted to restore it with a Rite, and for this he was willing to trade the Directorate something it wanted, a treasure it had missed, chosen at absolute random using a quantum number generator in a warded space. 0/25, gain Rite of Restoration, capable of repairing and reactivating ancient artefacts, and repairing Mirror Black for OMEN. Gain FTH, ART, and 10 Auton Reputation. Cost 1 Warp.

The Autonomicon Ex Mortis (Simplified): The Book of the Broken Machine. The Autonomicon was penned by an ancient Watchmaker sorcerer, one who had apparently managed to contact a dark god of the forge, who taught him sacred and profane arts of dark technology. Much of the rituals within were potent, but would likely need to be modified to be safe. 0/25, gain 3 random technologies, increases Auton reputation by 5. Repeatable: fifth completion increases all special resources by 5. WARNING: each completion of this project triggers a number of HazardTek rolls equal to the number of times this project has been completed. Can only be completed five times.

DigiPORTs: More and more Cyberspace was becoming more defined, more real. Perhaps with time, some enterprising Occultek might find a means to adapt portaltek to instead connect with cyberspace? From there, it likely wouldn’t be long before they learned of an interesting trick they could perform with a reactor… 0/25, DataShrines gain DigiPORT technology, increasing ACD, FTH, and NT. Cost 1 NK.

The Ferrymans Brigade: Dark fifolet were crawlin’ out de bayou: makin de Ferryman’s job harda, cuz dey can’t leave their mangroves. Some of de druids had an idea t’ use some of their gris gris to help em out by given dem water-spirits special boats made of special wood in exchange for de ferrymen to help patrol de rivers an’ oceans an’ swamps an’ lakes and help keep em free o’ de bad stuff. 0/25, Ferrymen leave Mangroves, begin patrolling and tending to all Directorate waterways. Increases CUL.

Volcano Cores: Volcano Hearts could prove incredibly useful for the art of terraforming: by giving them more advanced vessels with Perpetunite Reactors, these Vita could help contribute to reactivating planetary cores, opening magma vents, raising planetary temperatures. 0/25, Teklia produces Volcano Cores, Core Spirits of Flame that aid in geomancy, raising EXP.

((((()))))

Feast and famine, famine and feast.

Communication had long been the ire of the Directorate, which had invested centuries into various expansions and improvements to their telecommunications network in order to negate the need for expensive and strategically invaluable Endeavors.

This had resulted in the development by the Academy of Q-Band Technology. This had resulted in the development of the Couriers by the Fleet. This had resulted in even the creation of a digital god.

All of it prelude for the digital revolution. Five independent developments that came together with the Shrine upgrades to completely overend Directorate telecommunications.

The Comm Buoy network was the first: over twenty thousand satellite installations stretching across the entirety of the home system, both on and off the rail, paid for by the Tacchis Gaming Society. Each containing the absolute latest in publicly available Q-Bit technology, developed by the Academy as an easy to mass manufacture quantum particle to allow for extremely cheap in-system lagless communication, one that would find itself adopted not just by the Gaming Society, but the Calculators, the Fleet, the Frontier Society, the Academy, and all other corners of society.

At the same time, on every world in the home system and more than a few moons, the Calculators would create Hypercomm Forums, specialized techno-temples dedicated to NV2, containing specialized pathtek servers and GodTek derived telecommunications technology intended to create a permanent data-bridge to their god.

The Great Conclave would spend their time developing a new rite: one intended to augment the ability of Data Spirits to create net-bridges in order to send messages without the use of such limiting things as Q-Bits or NV2, even sponsoring the upgrades of several Data Shrines throughout the Directorate with the latest Engine and Portal technology.

At the same time, in the digital realm, the Occulteks of the Directorate would begin, under the direction of the Sorcerer Supreme Dr. OrphiaTek, High AutoPriest OMEN, and Chief Arcanotechnician Koptu, working on creating a digital simulacrum of the Ark of Day and Night, using advanced hypercode and DreamTek derived from the contributions of hundreds of visitors to the Ark alongside theoretical calculator principles: the goal being to use the Simulacrum as a form of bridge to help influence the Ark through the cyberverse.

Together, these advancements blended and merged, synthesizing themselves into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Thanks to the server architecture installed on each and every comm buoy, additional islands would appear throughout the digital void, the Q-Bits allowing them them to be used to navigate to new networks without using bridge spirits or use of rites, and providing more space for data spirits to grow and expand, with many of these cyber-islands developing their own ecology of programs, subfunctions, stray semi-sentient programs, and feral code-spirits.

Outside these islands, the planetary networks also connected to each other via the Hypercomms, represented in the virtual realm as temples comprised of blue holographic light floating in the void at the base of the DataTect Towers, each of them containing a bridge, one made out of that very same light to Teklia, at the //PATH: in the infinite white void, //PATH existed in darkness, one filled with millions of small lights dancing at the edges. Resembling a circle of steel and circuitry, the //PATH was surrounded by two stone rings, vertical and horizontal, each containing rows upon rows of statues of myriad, infinite shapes and sizes, each of them with blazing eyes. The horizontal statues consist of great messengers and couriers and computers and their programmers, gods and mortals and venerated spirits of telecommunication, each of them formed from light: some foreign and unknown, some well known indeed, such as the Roadguide or MOTHER. The vertical statues are of inventors, craftsmen, engineers, artists: among them the Dancer, her effigy carved from the same sculpted biometal as all other on this ring, as well as the Toymaker and even YALDABOATH.

Leading from the central platform: an infinity of paths, constantly shifting and re-arranging themselves, leading to every other Hypercomm Temple and every part of the Teklian Network as well as, even, Trove, the only way to reach that distant planet, the result of daily performances of the Rite of Telecommunication and the co-operation of the most powerful servants of the Calculators: their polytheist priests sworn into the service of a hundred and more gods, the data spirits born of their technology that had sworn themselves to their patron Archon, the Archetypic Spirits of Network, Machine Thoughts, created to resemble small, five inch sized mechano-arthopods that serve as mobile micro-servers embedded with HoloTek designed to project their digital realm avatars above them.

While only a pittance of data could be sent- only a few hundred zetabytes- and the distances involved ensured it wasn’t quite lagless, the simplified communication would be a great boon to Trove’s development, with more and more citizens moving to the planet as its access to media, education, and even simple E-Mail meant that its distance wasn’t so daunting.

And in the depths of cyberspace lie the Simulacrum, an exact mirror of the Ark: using it, some Data Spirits would find themselves able to pass over, though only for a limited time: the physics of the warp, while less hostile to them than reality, was still unkind to their digital physiology, meaning they could only stay in that ephemeral world for twenty four hours. Curiously, the reverse wasn’t true, as in the days after many a Booug would be sighted in Cyberspace, confused as to where they were but happy to be here. For some reason, only the Booug seemed able to breach the other way on their own: other spirits required an escort to transfer themselves to the Cyberverse, something that required grotesque amounts of power to accomplish but still ensured that in the coming days users would encounter the occasional pixie, the odd zombot, the odd Watchmaker Wanderer.

Not all was well, however. With more advanced technology came side-effects, some caused by the Dark Portals, some caused by minute programming errors, and some caused by no discernable source at all.

At first, it began with more gremlins: the mischievous spirits would be more and more common a sight in the more seedy, isolated, or disreputable parts of the internet, lurking, waiting for an unfortunate machine spirit to open themselves up to possession so they can cause trouble in the physical world, forcing more and more citizens to employ Virus Buster programs.

However, when the Wither went critical, the backlash would spread to the net, corrupting several islands, causing new viruses to spawn, crawling their way out of the darkening and increasingly turbulent digital ocean. Antianima born not from the nightmares of the old gods, but the terrors of a new age, born from the dark data created by the fears of the new gods.

Archon.

Avatar.

Vita.

Machine God.

Thus spawned the Nova Viroanima.

From the corruption of the Path came the Lost, digital specters capable of hollowing their way into the walls between dimensions like termites, creating false-domains and phantom URLs that lead to what can only be described as a sort of paradox space between worlds. There, they lure in unsuspecting programs, closing the door and letting the space and its physics decay and break down, only stopping once the program is dead to feast on the remains of its code: rarely do these spirits appear in realspace, the rules of reality being as lethal to them as it is the denizens of code, though from time to time they would trouble the Ark, though their powers were far less in the warp, and their typical hunting strategy would almost always end with them flattened by an annoyed Zombot.

From the corruption of the Great Ocean Vita’s dreams would come the Abyssiod, a singular Anti-Anima resembling a digital, single eyed and mawed planetoid, one crawling with viruses and hostile programs and its own complex, if entirely inhospitable and lethal, digital ecology, one that wanders through the digital void to occasionally vomit forth its contents onto a virtual island, corrupting it and swarming it with viruses, forcing the Directorate to send in official virus busters to clean up.

The Machine Gods, despite their strange relation with dream, would curiously (though the gods themselves seemed deeply alarmed and confused by this turn of events) also birth these creatures: their own, collectively, would be the strange and squid-like creatures dubbed Heretics by their followers, fashioned in the likeness of the creature that inspired them: each of them powerful digipsykers, being able to call upon the tides of the warp to manipulate the dimension of data, these strange creatures would be found only in the lowest, darkest places of the dimension, rarely conversing with any but their own, but thankfully not hostile.

The most terrible and wicked, however, are the Maledict, Nova Viroanima of the Heart. The Maledicts, formed from the congealed bile of thousands posts, videos, blogs, essays, prayers, and junk data from hundreds of reactionaries, grifters, users, and manipulators, resemble nothing less than viruses, isocohedrons with helixical bodies connected to long, sticklike manipulator claws. Each of them seek to propagate the same darkness that formed them, taking the guise of a normal user or data spirit and worming their way into peoples confidence, encouraging their worst tendencies, behavioral, political, emotional: in their wake each Maledict leaves a trail of radicalized bigots, socially maladapted extremists, and anti-intellectualist denialists.

Much like Flameless, destroying these manifestations of darkness becomes a major priority of the Directorate.

Fiddly stuff. For book-keeping, this particular whoopsy daisy is -10 ACD and -1 Network.

New Stuff

Sandscorn Mangrove Swamp Desalination: The environment on sandscorn had an apocalyptic amount of salt, forcing them to desalinate their oases to make them liveable: the small oceans while fresh melt water, were slowly salinating, as were the bogs. To solve this issue, the Khimer wanted to collaborate in engineering hybridized mangrove species to stock their bogs with, ones capable of absorbing large amounts of salt in order to help create freshwater bogs, ones suitable for use as spawning grounds for the generally more delicate and sodiophobic Engineer eggs. 0/25, Sandscorn gains Mangrove Spawning Pools, allowing them to deploy more Engineers and desalinate the environment.

Sandscorn Pilot Gene-Recombination: The original genetic template for the Pilotformes were gone, as was the source they were engineered from: a now extinct polyp species the Generals creators had spliced with numerous other sealife. However, the template could potentially be re-engineered, thus allowing the Khimer to clone their Pilotformes again, which would be a first step in expanding their navy and vehicle corp. 0/25, Khimer regain ability to produce Pilotformes again, increasing their reputation by 2 and increasing Coffin Fleet influence by 1.

Miniaturized Deblocker: Blockages in the body were largely a solved problem so long as you were in range of a clinic with a medical graviton compressor. However, if you couldn’t get to one in time, conditions such as strokes or heart attacks could still be lethal. To alleviate this, it might be possible to develop a smaller version of the device. 0/15, Doctors gain Field Graviton Deblockers, FGD’s, increasing EXP.

Devil Garden: Another request from the House of Devils. Within 15 years they wanted the Directorate to produce for them a full work-up of the Chaos Ecology located in the Forbidden Archive and methods by which the Devils could splice the adaptations into plants of their own cultivation in order to furnish the House with amenities for the more botanical minded Devils for use in infernal rituals and brews. 0/25, House of Devils gains Garden of Hell. Cost 3 BioData. Grants 1 ART.

Q-Bit Archive: Right now, Q-Bits were largely used for communication, but what if they could also be used for storage? By developing novel means of quantum encoding, Q-Bits could simultaneously exist in multiple states. The ones that weren’t entangled with another particle could be used to house data, acting as a microscopic server. 0/50, Q-Bit Particles double as data storage, increasing ACD and Network.

Digital Pyrowall: Data Architecture was a novel field: some scientists wanted to explore the possibility of using it to create a modern take on the classical concept of a firewall: by upgrading the netcode of the Comm-Buoys with this software, it might be possible to make the digital environments more resistant to incursion by the Viroanima. 0/50, gain Digital Pyrowall, increasing digital defense.

Navigator Executable: The Internet was, fundamentally, getting too complex for most users to benefit from its full potential: combined with the increasing prevalence of dangerous and disruptive Viroanima, the Calculators wanted to create a new type of digital assistant slash security program: the Navigator Executables. 0/25, create Navigator Executables, semi-sentient personal assistants, increasing ACD.

Courier Grav-Tows: So long as it was protected by wards and particle barriers, there was no reason one couldn’t tow things in the warp: it would take some modification, but if it paid off, it would effectively increase the capacity of the Couriers once again. 0/25, Couriers upgraded with Grav-Tows, increasing their capacity, raising all reputation with trade partners by 1.

Courier Econo-Cores: The Power Cores on Couriers were rather, frankly, vestigial: the ships had more than enough power to make do to the point where most days they ran a significant surplus. A suggested proposal: modifying these ships such that they can provide surplus power to stations while docked, turning them into backup generators for the Directorate and her allies when between deliveries. 0/50, Couriers now provide extra power to all trade partners, raising their reputation by 3. Cost 1 NK.

Sandscorn Devourer Eco-Hybridization: A proposed way of innoculating the environment would be hybridizing part of it with the Devourer in order to immunize them to the various pathogens and mutators the all-consumers utilize as well as make them more dangerous to potential invaders. For obvious reasons, the Khimer would prefer this be done in a secure space station far away from any planet. 0/25, develop tyrannic derived Eco-Adaptations, helping to proof it against future Devourer assaults. Cost 2 BioData. NOTE: This is not HazardTek.

The Symbiotic Arcology: The Directorate had all the BioData it needed to, in theory, completely redesign the arcologies by engineering symbiotic organisms that could replace the need for artificial machinery: air purifying algaes and trees, sewage treatment bioswamps designed to purify water using purely ecological means, bioluminescent fungi for lighting, solargenic grasses for power, large leafy heat dispersal organisms to help manage temperature… 0/50, all Arcologies upgraded with Urban Symbionts, increasing EXP, ACD, and CUL. Cost 10 BioData.

((()))

Welcome to the midgame. There are a few projects I haven't added yet, like the new tomb delver stuff: they'll be added tonight sometime.