Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

It's easy to forget that the system works as advertised.

When you control for enough variables then everything can function correctly. Effort can translate into wealth. Police can mean protection. The endless harvest of data can be used to optimize services and improve resident comfort. An alternate reality can be built that does not try to pick your pocket. The howling void of space can be made to give forth a gemstone from nothing, and within that gemstone are contained the dreams and memories of forests, of fantasies, of memories of peace and stability. In theory, everything works. In theory, there is no reason why it should not.

Yellow lets her glasses flick through different filters and back to reality on a thirty second delay, set to shuffle. Green is burning to explore, to rip open maintenance hatches and map the shapes of network connections and see if different overlays contain secrets or implications about the truth of the grand machine. Brown can't be bothered with any of it. The others are each joyfully embracing their own aesthetics - and why not? Isn't that the point to this, to all of this? That people should have nice things? That those people who just want to check the fuck out of a disappointing reality should be able to do so? Was vanishing fully into the digital space any morally different than building a sexy robot dragon body and castling into it?

If you just control for enough variables. Should nobles of the robe be allowed into the heights of government, or only nobles of the sword? Should access to power be extended to the Catholics, Irish though they were? Have we not solved inequality now that the foot stamping on the human face might be wearing high heels? Thus ran the long discussion of liberal thoughts and politics. Right now they were discussing the androids but the outcome to that debate was inevitable. Of course discrimination against androids would in turn become ghastly. That was already starting to happen. And of course the boot was already winding up to step on furries. In a few decades there'd be a cute foxgirl CEO committing securities fraud, complaining about her unjust six months house arrest, and ten thousand poor people would lose their homes. Because behind the diversity of passengers on the shuttle to Thrones was the common denominator of the ticket price: the only variable that mattered in the end.

She couldn't bring herself to hate the process. Those victories mattered. They'd mattered to her, materially. She'd walked out of a prison and into the world. And then she'd walked out of the world and into Thrones. She could stay here, if she wanted. The system would have worked.

The system had two hands though. It lifted with one and crushed with the other. And she could not tell herself that those actions were independent.

*

She opted to go through Headpattr for the scouting process. Firstly, to get the feeling for Thrones interior spaces; how to navigate and how to escape. Law enforcement presence and force. The feeling was grim. This place was hundreds of miles removed from any alternate locus of power. If her father was secretly a monster, if he'd sold them all out the first time around so he could come here, if he had a bomb in his brain, then...

November was scared. So much could go wrong. To avoid being flung right out of this place as an unwanted glitch in this miraculous computer mind. And if it was her against any of the residents she'd be gone. Only one variable mattered.

She played it safe. Explored the systems. Felt the rhythm. Got a sense for popular AR filters and how they changed human behaviour. Stood back and observed for a while.

[Prep Roll: 3, 2 +3 Clever vs 7 = 8. 2 prep, +1 from Overprepared for 3 prep]

*

3V:

When Red opens the back door, she has the requested pack of Advil+2 and a bonus bag with a couple of bottles of limoncello, plus an ouija board. Blue is standing behind her with a water spray bottle she turns on Hunter with aimbot precision to thwart his attempt to escape.

"Hey," said Red, coming in, tossing the ouija board on the board game library, covered all the while by a ruthless and cold-eyed Blue and her spray bottle. "Were in you the mood to play any games tonight? Or is that, like, too close to your job?"

Breathless Dead

Redana and Bella!

Amidst the smoke and the haze and the sensuality it's hard to keep track of every love bite.

There's a deeper smell here. Not the smell of old, dry tobacco. The moist, tangled smell of fresh tobacco plants, new leaves and new shoots, nicotine still wet and juicy. You catch a glimpse of a man who looks far too young. Far too... not handsome in the general, handsome in the specific. Someone's idea of the most beautiful person in the galaxy. The suit isn't dusty and torn. Hands that were once thin, desiccated are filled with blood and violence. He hefts the axe over his shoulder and tips his fedora towards you.

He's about the business of love.

It's a blessing that those who are starting the transformation into trees have their senses numbed by the drugs in the air. They look at the leaves sprouting from their fingertips with bemusement rather than horror. In place of screams there are gasps, relaxed conversations, and even sometimes applause before silence starts to fall.

There are two dancing girls in this place. Mynx has watched Redana her entire life. She has impersonated Redana her entire life. Redana's secret desires and hidden aesthetics are just as much alive in Mynx's brain, and here she is, using that sensuality and yearning as a blade.

So she goes, leaving a trail of too-sharp kisses in her wake. Reshella is indeed in peril - the wrong embrace here, the wrong kiss, and she will be poisoned too. When Reshella does it, she is helpless, defenseless, vulnerable. And isn't that the perfect bait to draw out a predator?

Alexa!

"No problem, Alexa," said Katraph. "Richards, Singh, go to the lab, get everything fixed as you can make it. Myrtle, go quicken some drones and re-establish a perimeter. Aaronson, get a list of everything we need for the client."

Orders given, Katraph returns his attention to you. "Far as I know, it hasn't been done. The Rampancy is the point, after all. See, it's specifically a stress response - when an Assassin finds that they can't accomplish their mission then their minds build up stress and that triggers a physiological response that starts the biological cascade. That broadens their range of capabilities until they've gained enough power to brute force through whatever obstacle stood between them and their target. Because this is usually happening deep inside enemy territory, and these kind of terminal stressors don't build up inside a controlled environment, there generally isn't any call to do this kind of work."

One of his colleagues approaches him and hands him a small metal dispenser. He shakes out a pair of unmarked white pills and swallows them, his owlish eyes focusing and unfocusing asynchronously. He then offers you the dispenser politely.

"That's a good thing, though," he said. "It means that it's not a security concern. If it was a security concern then the sequence might be secured. Secured biosequences - well, they're not pretty. It means when the surgeon starts operating they could trigger an immune response that could do anything from incite the body to metabolize a plasma explosive to a pheromantic adrenaline burst. Something like that still might be in there - these are assassins after all - but we've got good odds."

He popped another two pills. This time he shivered violently enough that a colleague needed to steady him, but he never lost his calm, professional tone of voice.

"Now, just to manage expectations, we can halt the process but not reverse it - not even sure a human surgeon could do that, but never say never. We're dealing with a - a Toxicrene, you said? Stage one of that Rampancy is losing the affiliation for bipedal shapes - it's a transitional phase designed to get the assassin accustomed to nonstandard locomotion and combat patterns. Can't just turn someone into a giant monster with no adjustment period, they'll be taken out by security forces before they figure out how to walk on all fours. So an expected and ongoing side effect is that the Toxicrene will demonstrate a far wider range of shapeshifting abilities than previously exhibited. Next, it's always possible for stress to trigger the cascade again."

"That all said," said Katraph, "the root problem is obviously the assassin's mind, that's the thing that's generating the stress response. We can do a lot at the hardware level but when the software starts to break down the only solution is to give them a swig of the old," he mimed a drinking gesture; a reference to the Ikarani's mind-wiping potions? "But memory has a way of finding its way back at inconvenient times and once you start walking down that road you've got something that isn't able to safely exist even in a controlled environment, at least in the long term. I recommend getting her some emotional stabilizer drugs, maybe even therapy."

Now his aide handed him a chipped mug with the ancient flag of the Atlas Cultural Sphere. He sipped a cloyingly sweet smelling liquid from it gingerly. "I presume you're recovering the servitor because the human has become emotionally invested in her? That's fine, occupational hazard, happens with all kinds of servitors. While she's under the knife we can also give her the human pet upgrade package - extend her lifespan, give her the full range of human tastes, demilitarize her other senses, activate her sex drive, make her reproductively viable, remove various inhibitions on learning non-specialized knowledge, ecetera, ecetera. Her instinctive motivations will be a secured biosequence though - no getting around that with an assassin - so we can't give her free will, but we can probably whip up an extra couple of non-mission critical blockers, like if the human doesn't want her falling in love with anyone else. Did the human give a detailed list of requirements? If not we can assign spies to watch their interactions until we've got a sense for their relationship and tailor an appropriate package."

Dolce!

"Okay, guy, that's a really good question," said Jil. "But they told you that the Rift kills anyone that approaches it, right? First people turn on the ones they love and then they die. Nobody goes in and nobody goes out. You know this, right? This thing that you're doing stops here, right? Because if you go any further then you literally die in the most unpleasant way you can die, right?"

She'd requested something sweet and creamy but didn't know how to articulate the thought. Her life has the flavour of acid reflux; bitter and spiteful. She's only dimly aware there's a different way to be.

"Or - or maybe you know something I don't," she said. "Maybe a god told you straight up that you'd be the exception. That they'd clear the way for you and everyone else aboard. That you've got signs and omens and preferably a written fucking contract with Zeus the Thunderer saying that we got this and they'll call off the hellhounds," she said. "That's why you're so chill about this. Right?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel is hot.

Sure, there's the literal part. She just took a high velocity kinetic impact and is very politely doing her best not literally catch fire as a result. Her presence is enough to cause a list of side effects including sweating, dizziness, elevated heart rate, and stomach butterflies. The faint heat shimmers around her violet scales says 'if you touch me you might get burned', while the low cut tank top and boy shorts say 'it might be worth it lol'.

Because the far more immediate threat is her metaphorical hotness. Her eyes are a jagged pink - startling, hypnotic, changing from slitted to wide as they focus on you. Her ponytail was lost, causing her hair to cascade down around you, brushing your cheek. She's tall enough to rest her chin on your head, strong enough to lift you off the ground, dangerous enough to not be sure what she'd do after that, but kind enough to be sure that you'd be taken care of when she was done. Her personality shines through her smile, a strength there that leaves you as helpless as her actual strength. Maybe being burned wouldn't be so bad after all?

She raises her hands, flicks something out in the Zaldarian sign language. Do you know how to speak that, Isabelle Lorenzo, without the aid of computer translations? Do you know that when she ends the greeting with a boop on your nose that leaves a warm, tingling imprint of her finger, that's not strictly part of the language? Do you recognize the mrring sound she makes as the Hybrasilian word for 'cutie', or does the mix of two foreign languages skip past your thinking brain entirely?

It'd be understandable, under the circumstances.

[Entice: 10]

The Red Furnace: First Contact

[Friction roll: 3. Indecisive]

Once the Aotrs adjust their hit and run techniques to account for Azura range and weaponry the situation finally starts to stabilize. Azura gravitational weaponry is both offense and defense, and Aotrs pilots and tacticians are able to devise a way to time their strikes to force the Azura to commit entirely to defense. These constant weapons tests are providing large amounts of useful data on Azura defensive systems and limits, giving Aotrs command a much clearer idea of how to attack and how to overwhelm the Azura shielding systems, but the skirmish has ground to a stalemate as a result.

[Friction roll: 5. Aotrs advantage]

In the first break for a while, the infiltration goes perfectly. The commandos come in entirely undetected and on location and are able to observe the Azura disembarkation process from start to finish, including identifying a comprehensive map of all ammunition dumps and command locations. Much like Gate technology, cloaking fields seem to be something outside of the range of Azura thought.

Priority is overwhelmingly going towards construction of the temples. The ships are disembarking construction machinery and hordes of servitor species who are flung into engineering tasks the moment they're off the ship. The Azura officers are visibly nervous as they oversee the construction though they do not take any of their frustrations out on their servants. Instead, the most common stress response is getting into tangled, violent wrestling duels with each other and then breaking apart with minor bruises and scratches.

[Friction roll: 1. Azura advantage]

Almost at the same time as the Murders make their jump a squadron of Azura fighters accelerates towards a partially operational Ring Gate and is hurtled at FTL speeds towards Tanshin I.

They come in hot. That's a problem - the Aotrs stealth ships were making their way in undetected, but the Azura squadron draws attention. From under swamps of brackish, filthy water emerge monstrous crablike forms, the size and structure of a main battle tank. They fire into the sky swarms of bulbous blowfish-like projectiles with a similar threat profile to missiles. Caught between the Azura fighters from above and anti-aircraft fire from below both Murders are lost with all hands. It does not escape notice, though, that these projectiles seem specifically designed to resist the Electromagnetic Flux - an ELF strike will paralyze the living projectile rather than detonate it prematurely, causing it to continue in an unguided path until it recovers. Depending on the angle and trajectory this might cause it to slam into its target and detonate nevertheless. It's not a trivial fix, but a new line of missiles could theoretically be developed along those lines which would have a much better success rate against the Azura defenses.

The Azura ships fire their munitions to clear away the defenders and then land, evidently having the same idea of breaching into one of the ruin complexes. Two full squads, lead by a pair of Azura Knights.

*

In the midst of all this, another messenger skiff has made approach to the Aotrs fleet. This one is launched from the defector Azura force, still in close orbit around Tanshin III. It is transmitting a tightbeam, claiming to speak on behalf of Biomancer Kendall, with a rather straightforwards message: We would like to hire you as mercenaries.

There is an Azura diplomat aboard and she is interested in a wide range of trade deals. Her first interest is in the price to buy your entire fleet, but failing that she's also interested in all manner of things. Teleporters, warships, companies of soldiers, whatever military force you're prepared to part with. She is well traveled enough to understand that aliens might value different things than her own society, and think in different ways than her, but she strongly hints that the most valuable thing she has to offer is political influence.

Breathless Dead

The Party!

The music is anarchic, communal. Anyone can join their voice or instrument to the beat, and anyone can leave. The music changes moment to moment as people flow into and out of it, the skills and responsibilities distributed. This is not a place where all gather to watch a single specialist work their trade; it is emergent, organic, communal.

The Alcedi have their drums, deep and pounding like crashing waves. The booming, echoing backbeat of all the other sounds, the rhythm that controls every other breath. They fall into and out of playing as their strength demands, falling exhausted and sweat-soaked away from their instruments so another might take up the sticks and keep the ocean crashing. In counterpoint to the uniting, warlike power of their sound the Coherent wield a diversity of sounds, instruments picked up from every corner of the galaxy and mastered using unique combinations of limbs and lungs. Oftentimes they echo the voices of the singers - the songs share easily. The Coherent have work and formation shanties which have simple, compatible rhythms with Alcedi rowing songs. The drunken choir booms out in time and in different languages, the words of the songs falling in tangled embrace, flowing into each other. A new pidgin language is already emerging as the songs hybridize along with the music. The sound has a logic of its own, and way is given to which words fit the rhyme or rhythm regardless of their origin.

Alexa!

Oh, there are monsters, and there are monsters, and there are monsters...

The Biomancer offers his hand to shake through the bars of the cell. Ramrod straight back. Broad shoulders. Big smile. His clothing the shape of a rectangle run through with jagged triangles, like teeth in a beak. He radiates respectability. Dignity. Intelligence. A sort of natural, easy, respectability. This is someone who will listen to reason. This is someone who will follow directions. This is someone you can trust to hold up their end of a bargain. This is someone who stands adjacent to power, real power, and knows how to be useful to it.

Biomancy is the secret art of humanity, the greatest and most terrible of their masteries. Through biomancy new species can be designed to specification. Life can be made to grow slow or fast, languages made to come easily or only after great pain and struggle, pain and pleasure made to mean different things. To a Biomancer, empathy is a switch to be flipped at a species level. Social instincts can be extracted, distilled, purified. Phobias can be added, ancestral terrors placed into minds to make the shining sun seem as paralyzingly horrific as the gaze of a cat. All this and more, blending human and animal until only the most useful parts of each remained.

"Katraph Sanchez, at your service," said the Kaeri Biomancer with an accent like a city flash-built on a savannah. "We were waiting for your call. Of course we're delighted to help, anything you need. We can begin immediately. Has our laboratory been damaged?"

Dolce!

"Wait, the Eater of Worlds?" said Jil. "And - Gaia? That's not a joke, you're actually looking for Gaia? I thought that was an incredibly obvious lie. Like, you're looking for Ceron, right? The place with the all-conquering army? You're - you're serious about this, you're actually getting a wish, like an 'anything you want' wish?"

That's a lot of information. She chews it over for a moment, but then sets it aside - it's too big to think through. There's a more direct thing to focus on, and she's never allowed big concepts to distract her.

"But to your question, yes. Fuck yes, I'd do this to get rich, and fuck you for thinking I wouldn't. Where I come from I could get murdered for breathing too loud, and my bones made into a chandelier. I've stepped over a lot of bodies and I'd step over a lot more to make sure that the clans can have plenty and safety, and I don't give a single fuck about preserving Nero or anyone else if they stand between me and that."

Her fists are clenched in determination and her jaw set, before she wavers and says less confidently, "Besides, how far away could the end be? The Rift is coming up soon so we must be getting close to Gaia. There's just not that much galaxy left, and we've already killed everyone coming to stop us. This is the end of the journey, right?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"In Janus, during the construction, I was thinking about pirate ships," said Pink. "In olden days getting light below decks was a challenge because ideally you wanted to minimize the number of open flames near the blackpowder. So what they used instead was a prism! It's unreal how much light one of those can cast. So I decided to do something similar for Aevum.

"I was actually disappointed at how easy the crystal was to find. Ox had found one just about perfect with a little laser sculpting during mining operations. Discarded it as slag, naturally, too fragile for laser focusing lenses, but because it was Ox he'd tagged and logged it along with all of his other neatly categorized piles of trash. The fact that I found it so easily actually changed the entire course of the project - I didn't want to give that feeling of disappointment to anyone else. And so after installing the prism I paneled over the exterior light intake and covered it in a heap of dirt. Called it a hill. The humans hated it, said it was ugly and pointless, just a big wasteful mound of dirt in the middle of a residential district. It's scheduled for demolishing when they need the dirt to expand the agricultural ring section.

"But then, when they finally clear away the dirt from my fake hill, the light sensor will cause the exterior panel to blow. And then the construction crew that thought they were there to haul away some dirt instead finds buried treasure, shining radiantly in the sun! It'll light up the whole neighbourhood and just be a magical moment for everyone involved!"

Pink settled back into her chair, looking up at the void above. "If I got to choose what we did with the money, I would have rented us a house across the street from the crystal. The property value would spike like crazy after they discovered it and we'd probably have to move soon after but there'd be a couple of months there where I could sit on the balcony and watch the humans discover the treasure, watch the crowds show up to look at it, see their faces when the prism lights up and just get to appreciate it, you know? I built it imagining what their reactions would be like, but I never thought I'd get to actually see them. Never thought I'd get to see if they liked it. I'd kind of like that. That's what I'd have spent the money on, if it was up to me."

November sits in a circle, sipping frugally from a single bottle of cheap wine split nine ways. There is a heavy silence in the air.

"Well, Green, it's your turn. what would you have spent it on?" said Pink.

"I'd have kept the setup," said Green, taking a ginger, sparing sip of wine. "Aimed it at a casino."
"Sounds," said Black. "Risky."
"Of course it's risky," said Green. "The whole point of robbing a casino is that its the stupidest, hardest place to rob. It's a full spectrum test of hacking ability, mathematical ability, social ability. There are a million softer targets but casinos are in the game, they put themselves on the edge of desperation, in the realm of the unreal. They're legitimate targets and they're hardened because they know they're not protected by public opinion or morality. Obviously if I had to run it by you all I'd be vetoed ten billion ways from Saturday, but that's why it's my answer to 'if it was up to me'." She folded her arms defensively. Nobody challenged her on it.

"How about you, Red?" said White, turning the dragon horn headband over in her hands quietly. "This was your idea, after all."
"I said I was sorry!" said Red, burying her face in her hands.
"No... no, it's alright," said White. "You were correct. It's just... you know what it is."
"I was just thinking about how we could get ahead of a crisis for once," said Red. "Did you catch that Headpattr investor video talk?"
Everyone shook their heads. Red fumbles for her phone. "They were talking about this thing called Choice Of Pats, which is basically just filters. You can filter out maids by all sorts of things to 'get the ideal aesthetic experience', and in the list of things you can filter for was 'political beliefs'. Like, I want a maid, and I want the maid to vote liberal, and so I thought about having to make a fake liberal online identity so I could keep working and I felt like I'd rather start wearing clown makeup and leaving riddles for the Batman."
"Oh shit, I thought you suggested it for moral reasons," said White.
"No, you fuckers did it for moral reasons," said Red. "I suggested it because I don't have what it takes to survive the hustle. And I'm sorry I blew our one lucky break because I didn't want to post bad memes on the internet. I was weak."
"Hey, Red, we all agreed with you before you told us about that particular nightmare," said White. "Now I feel like the price we paid was a bargain."

*

"Yeah, I would have shown up," said Black. "Because I'm fucking poor and couldn't afford to lose kit like that. The fact that nobody's here means that I haven't robbed some gullible idiot on the bottom of a multi-level marketing scam, and I haven't robbed some angry bastard who'll hurt people when they come looking."

She likes Surge. It's the affection of a cat; the ostentatious indifference of considering him neither predator nor prey, an attitude not valuable except in comparison to how she treats everyone else. She doesn't need to look at him, doesn't need to tense and assess. It's an honour, of sorts, being treated as having the solidity of stone.

It was Brown and Pink who helped Muffi set up the hardware, closing the loop on the job she started. The nightmare of octopus hair is very different from the tangled black mess it was when they found it. Now its cables are bound in colour-coded rainbow cable ties, and different components are marked clearly with glittering stickers. Stars, emoji, national flags, transforming featureless black boxes into colourful and playful things. As a finishing touch Pink had airbrushed a bunch of flames onto the edges of the central processing boxes and attached a wizard van decal to the side of the input hub.

"At least," she said at the end of it, "one pile of quatronic hardware walked out of this with a makeover."

*

She sees Aevum every day. Look up and there it is in the sky, rolling on away into the sunset. Look up a little further and there's Earth. It was modeled like the rings of Saturn, an equatorial band spinning in harmony with the planet below. The view is almost fixed - from Apollo you look down on the Arabian peninsula and it'd take fifteen years of ever-so-slight rotational misalignment before your view drifted over to Iran.

That was her failure - no, Orange forcefully corrects the thought, that was the project's failure. It was Monkey who had originally misaligned the orbit and then Pig had decided to hoard the rocket fuel sent up to correct the problem just in case there was an emergency. After that Dragon had stolen the fuel stockpile in order to boost their own productivity and shatter a bunch of production records. And now all those proud human nationalists looked up into the sky and saw, rather than the ancestral home of their family, some other no doubtedly far less glorious section of Earth and cursed the robots who had not obeyed orders.

But now she was going to see the exterior of the Ring again. The part that wasn't for humans. The part that was all exposed machinery and docks for maintenance drones, cargo freight and solar collectors. The part that she'd worked on in a different life, in a time when her claws could break mountains.

She didn't feel the same as the rest. Blue felt the loss of physicality more keenly than anyone, feeling alien and tiny and broken. White loathed the loss of control it represented. When Orange looked out at the secret half of Aevum she missed her friends.

They hadn't thought of her as friends, the other Zodiac Engines. They hadn't thought of themselves as a community at all. They had been at best rivals to each other, annoyances, travelers passing in that vast and terrible night. Ox just wanted to break and sort, break and sort, break and sort, render the vast mess of space into a catalogued and searchable thing. Monkey had one eye forever on the clock, hardly able to talk without counting the seconds the conversation was taking. They had been the kings and queens of space, monarchs and nations unto themselves, and she had gone between them as a latecomer. She was there to do smaller work, the precision cuts and slices that would become homes. The open spaces that would become parks. The passages and pits that would become plumbing and reactor cores. The finishing touches, the organic moss growing over the stones of their monumental labours. Their communications had been bellows across a field when they didn't go directly to Mission Command with their complaints about their colleagues.

Snake had created Orange for them. Her reason for existence had been a contemplation of those strange beings, so similar and so different from her, and wondering how they might be made to come together. What sort of society might emerge from their interplay. What sort of things would have been possible if they'd worked together with the harmony of her own colours. And for a beautiful time she had succeeded. The act of working together had created something greater than any of their individual efforts. Acting as a go-between she'd built those connections, but they rapidly grew stronger than her. She'd never enjoyed anything as much as watching Dog and Dragon having an entire rambling conversation entirely of their own volition, without needing her to set up and maintain it. She'd just helped them realize that they liked each other.

So when November sees the dark side of Aevum through the windows of the shuttle, she is thinking of what she lost. Part of her mourns the loss of her body, her strength, her self. Part of her mourns the inability to trust her own mind. Orange mourns that strange, fascinating, fractured community that she made and saw outgrow her. Where were they? Had they all been rendered as insignificant as her? Or were some of them still out there, magnificent still in the void that was their birthright? Did they hurt as badly as her - and could she fix them? Had they made peace with this strange human world - and could she learn from them?

Together November looks at the text messages from Crystal and Fiona, and emotes a string of heart emoji in response; many hands pressing the buttons in nervousness. It comes out as a stream, a wordless digital shiver of vulnerability, squeezing hands tight while taking a deep breath. One last moment to be affectionate, to be vulnerable, to be a dork and have it be okay. What came next was serious. What came next was the performance. What came next was maybe life changing answers to questions she could barely ask, coming from someone she could not trust. She only hoped those answers would feel half as worthwhile as sending this garbled string of heart symbols to people she could.

One last breath, one last <3. It was time.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

"Why would they remember you?" said Fengye. "Why would they obey you? It's not like you are offering them anything they want."

Her hair is muddy, her bones are cold, she's shivering and miserable and sleepless and pained and she did all of this because of pride. She can't say it wasn't worth it, but oh does pride make every damn miserable inch of its price agonizingly apparent. It's a price she might pay once, but twice...?

Wordlessly, she crawls forwards into the sled. She accepts this without struggle, obeys this without question or harsh words. Because here the Maid does have something she wants.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The ancients wove many secrets into the genetic structure of the Warriors of Ceron. Honour was not one of them.

She is up and rushing in your moment of weakness. She slams you into the wall behind you, hard enough to drive the breath from your body. She is pulling the gag from her mouth and stuffing it into yours, still wet with her saliva and warm with her breath.

"So it's a stealth mission, is it?" the wolf princess' voice dips into a growl just as her fang touches your ear, dangerous for all the wrong reasons. "You insult my discretion while you are dressed like this?" Talons reach under your collar and rip open your jacket, buttons clattering against the floor. "You stand out like a firebrand, Princess. Everyone knows your name. Everyone knows your face. Everyone knows how you dress." More clothes fall to the floor. "Good thing you came to me. I know exactly how to render you incognito..."

A few hot and squirming minutes later and you stagger out of the alcove. Your flight jacket, traveling leathers and dignity are all gone. Your hair is unbound and is falling in a common cascade; your face is hidden behind a veil made of shifting liquid mirrors, and the only clothes that remain to you are revealing undergarments and gauzy silks.

"There you go," said Epistia, swatting you affectionately on the behind while grinning a wolf's smile. "Now you're all dressed up for your stealth mission, princess~."

It'd be one thing if you fit right in, but you don't. Even by this party's standards you are under-dressed and getting looks.

But at least they're not looking at your face.

Bella!

Beljani's power is invasive, insidious, corrupting. Reaching inside people until the parts of them that matter are parts of her. Changing them so they'd do anything for her. She is used to people loving her, but she's not used to them having a choice in the matter. Even Epistia was the result of chance and broken biology, but this...

She's crying because she never knew that it could be different. Never thought that so small a change could make a galaxy of difference.

"To the ends of the galaxy, Bella," said Beljani. "I am with you until the end."

Alexa!

It was always difficult reading the body language of the Order of Hermes' Magi. Ensconced within their thick, rubberized robes, faces concealed by darkening mesh, and unknown numbers of limbs moving beneath meant that the only information that emerged from the depths was that which they chose to give.

Eventually, though, something emerged from the depths of his sleeves. Two aged hands, the fur running thin, covered with the burn scars of an enginesmith's trade. They point at you and - pow pow! Fingerguns. Before you've finished processing that he's stepped backwards into a decking vent and plummeted down into a distant level.

Sometimes even wizards can be dorks.

*

You know more than a little about the capabilities of the Assassins, and what happens to them when they go Rampant. You saw the monster that the Master became, and she was not the first that had been sent to kill Molech.

As you have heard it, Rampancy is a biological failure cascade. Genetic alchemy runs riot inside the body of the assassin during periods of maximum stress, empowering them to align fully with one of Artemis' bloody handed aspects before their bodies collapse into ruined and burned-out husks. Or worse. The original design saw assassins that could generate a plasma bomb explosion inside their own bodies, and centuries of twisted innovation in the Temples built atop that original hateful impulse.

Even if Bella and Redana capture Mynx, even if they talk to her and calm her, the possibility exists that she is progressing down the road to her terminal acts of violence. What you need to find in this moment, more than Mynx, is someone who might cure her. Do you know anyone who might be able to help you?

If not, the only people who you might turn to are the imprisoned Biomancers of the Kaeri. That is a dark path indeed. They are monsters even by the standards of their kind.

Dolce!

"Uh, guy?" Jil snap-snaps her fingers in your face. "You waxed lyrical about how everyone in the Starsong votes on their captain and how great that is, and then you talked about how you inherited the title from the previous captain, who was also not voted upon, and asserted your authority based on proximity to the throne, and now you're sad that everyone's treating you like an Imperial captain. Gosh wow gee, I guess we'd better summon the Sphinx's ghost because there's no way we could possibly unravel this riddle."

She acrobatically flips back around onto her feet and pushes you into the kitchen. "Why the fuck would anyone buy into the whatever this is? As far as I can tell the major motivating factor around here is cashing out with imperial titles and ranks whenever Redana kills her mom and becomes new king of space. I mean, isn't that what she offered you? The Starsong are pirates so presumably you're in it for the cash money like the rest of them, right?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel has a context. She knows the windswept plains and the motions of the Gods. She knows violence and honour. She's seen the Evercity, still the grandest place she has ever been. She has seen the secrets of Hybrasil at swordpoint. She has hidden inside TC and piloted one of their strange Gods. She even (dimly) understands the concepts of permanence, fragility, and finance. It's enough to have her think that she is experienced, well traveled, even a little jaded. Indeed, by her reckoning, there could not be more than a dozen Zaldarians who have seen more of the galaxy or its alien cultures than her. She is no stranger to the strange.

But, this? This is a non sequitur. A madness. Tribes interpreted the Codes of Zaldar differently, and the Evercity also had its own way of doing things. But saying that Zaldar did not write the codes that she was renowned for writing? It was accusing the sun of being a liar, the moon of being sus. To do so out loud, in Heartspeak, to someone who was by anyone's reckoning an outsider - her mind didn't have a place for that kind of accusation. She flinches back, watches Annika with a deeply startled expression, and only calms when she steadies herself and returns to sign language. Her mind at last settles on an explanation: Annika is possessed. It explains everything; her affinity with her geists, her disrespectful way of speech, her outburst. A Spirit - or possibly an Ancestor - has slipped inside her head. Always a risk, especially for those who showed improper respect to the temptations of the spirit world. Words of blue, woe for you.

Well, the Code was clear on that, too: The past must not rule the present. She would have to purge the possessing creature somehow. According to the stories the best way to do that was to trick the creature into admitting its true name.

So she goes with Annika, but as she does, she gingerly pulls her arm free from her grip. <Which Spirits await us?> she signs, falling back into the familiar habit, nervous if committing to speaking in Hybrasilian in this moment might further enrage the Spirit. <Do you... know them?>

Super subtle. Good in.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The Azura have many strengths, but hat they evidently have absolutely no answer for is to the strategic mobility presented by the Aotrs Gate spell. They react with confusion every time it is demonstrated and have evidently no theoretical understanding of its range or limitations. Their formation constantly moves as though they expect an entire Aotrs fleet to teleport in behind them every second and it is ultimately that nervousness that signals the end to the engagement. Finally the signal banners go up and the entire Azura force begins a fighting withdrawal - this time to Tanshin II.

While the Azura seemed generally uncertain with how to engage a fleet that was not interested in committing to open battle, their actions here proceed with vastly more confidence and efficiency. While their previous offensive was motivated by personal glory and internal politics their activities in orbit here have the smooth coherence of doctrine.

Huge quantities of material and vast flows of transportation shuttles are issued down to the surface. Work begins on multiple large orbital structures. Some warships are disassembled entirely to be converted into immobile structures or defensive satellites. These ships were packed far more densely with cargo and population than required for warships leading to the curious thought that many of them were, in fact, armed civilian ships. Only the dedicated battleship-class warspheres, the plasma vent cruisers and the fighter craft piloted by the Knights represent dedicated military vessels so far.

The Azura are working on the following projects at this point:
- A massive extension to the temple complex that was being worked on originally. As it expands its role as a magical focus becomes more clear. It has some interaction with the Azura magic system, but Aotrs thaumaturges will note that it seems to have a curious resemblance to elements of necromancy.
- A full restock and resupply of ammunition expended during the engagement. Some of the reactor cruises are taken offline to focus entirely on the generation of plasma torpedo munitions, whereas solid projectile weaponry is distributed from logistics ships.
- The construction of an orbital defense grid. This involves an elaboration of the earlier crystal satellite grid, the reconstruction and reconfiguration of some ships into a monitor role, and the distribution of swarms of fighters to ground or upper-atmosphere bases.
- The establishment of a large gravitational ring gate network aimed at Tanshin I which would allow the fleet to rapidly redeploy to that planet.

Some ships even outright leave the zone of operations at this point. Their cargo and crews reassigned, they form up into columns, activate their inertialess drives, and launch back to the distant home systems. All the while they are taking some damage from continued long range Aotrs skirmishers but with the fleet concentrated in a gravity well this engagement continues to lightly favour the Azura or be indecisive. The long range weaponry on the Azura's fleet core makes it hard for the Aotrs ships to close into weapons range without suffering dedicated volleys from the gravitational weaponry. It does slow down the Azura construction projects, though, and forces a continued state of high readiness.

All of this activity is well trained and rehearsed in a way that the Azura really haven't demonstrated so far. That is revealing: Azura doctrine assumes expansion, colonization and annexation of new territory - and in particular, the territory of military or technological inferiors. Their best systems are designed to efficiently take over a world and turn it into a fortified outpost. Acting in an orbital environment with a planet to supply directly from their disadvantages melt away. Pursuing a peer enemy in deep void was a new experience for them and while they did not entirely fumble it, it clearly showed the limitations of their technology and training.