Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session LIV

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Continuing with Jacob….

He had to try to find the others, or at least verify that they were dead. Unfortunately, he was lacking in terms of available transport options. It was much easier when there was a ship in orbit to provide transporter service or those Sith who kept providing vehicles made by endless armies of droid workers. A boat could work, but he didn’t have much of any experience making those unlike those technicians working for the Sith that seemed to be experts on everything from canoes to galactic capital ships. Still, how hard could a canoe be?

Cutting a large log into the appropriate shape using the phaser was simple enough. Rigging up a tesla valve and powering it with his phaser to provide propulsion was yet another jury-rigged rush job, but serviceable for the time being. The locals proceeded to load the canoe up with wedding presents such as trivial household stuff, jars of preserves, and other bits. Ah yes, he was married now too. Better lash a second canoe to the first one with vines to make room for all the stuff and her.

Sailing along (he wasn’t quite clear on where he was going quite yet, but the castle seemed like a decent long term plan) was uneventful save for some fishermen going the other way and an octopus that boarded the canoe to get away from a shark. The octopus was sapient, but the sign language was hard to get right since Jacob only possessed two arms as opposed to the eight it had. Why his new wife was looking at him so oddly was not clear either.

Unfortunately, at this rate it was going to take years to get back to Stormkanal. There was also still no sign of other survivors from the airship, nor were they responding to his psychic hails. Pulling ashore the next island, he enlisted the aid of the local philosophers to make some material that was strong and light. They even had some tough antigravity materials and constant-thrust materials too. Rigging it all into a functional biplane took a bit of trial and error – he might have been able to do a better job with crude copper tools and some bamboo – but eventually he was able to whip something up that was flyable.

He christened it the Robinson.

The engine was much more powerful than he was initially prepared for as it swiftly accelerated to over two hundred kilometers per hour. He didn’t dare land unless he had to given that he wasn’t sure the biplane would survive the landing. At least the giant mesa ahead provided a decent landmark to aim for. Plus the higher technology of the region would make it easier to try to see if any of the others had survived.

It took a few days, but we were underway again with the new balloon anchored to the Dawnchaser. Things weren’t quite as roomy as the airship had been, but this wasn’t cramped. The power crystals enabling us to run most ship systems beyond drives and the fusion reactor helped a lot with that. Still, progress back to the castle was proceeding much faster than when we were having to rely on using the Dawnchaser as a boat, and it beat walking by a considerable margin. This way we didn’t have to worry much about the terrain or most obstacles that wanted to make life difficult. We did end up as hosts to a flock of birds since we were now a convenient perch for riding out a bad squall.

Wait a moment, what could be generating weather effects on a relatively flat region like this? It wasn’t like there was an axial tilt, planetary rotation, and angle of the sun in the sky to be driving the energy differentials that usually cause weather systems to form. Well, there was a day/night sequence of sorts and it was plausible that could be altered to mimic seasons, but there wasn’t going to be the differences in rotation between the atmosphere and planet to move hot and cold air masses around.

Some quick experiments revealed that there was a Coriolis Force within the hexes despite there being nothing to generate one. A few more quick tests revealed that a lot of the “planetary effects” were being simulated – mostly on the hex boundaries. Whether this was acting to mimic a real weather system with catastrophically destructive storms and all wasn’t clear, but given everything else I had seen here, I couldn’t rule out that things like droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and such were being carefully filtered out of the systems except where the locals were possibly dependent on such things for whatever reason.

We were roughly halfway back to the castle when an argument started. Stranger was accusing us of abandoning Jacob to wander the Anomaly alone without so much as an attempt to communicate with him. While this was blatantly untrue – we had tried numerous times to get Jacob on the radio, subspace, and hyperspace comms – it was also quite apparent that Jacob was likely dead at this point. Last we knew of him, he had been stuck at the bottom of the ocean in the wreckage of the airship with an ocean that violently crashed in upon the wreckage with enough force to rend most structures to shreds. Survival in that scenario was unlikely at best, and he had been spending what power he had trying to buy time for the rest of us to escape. It was time to mourn and remember his sacrifice.

This didn’t stop Stranger from accusing us – and especially Vanatica – of being completely uncaring jerks. Where was this attitude days ago when there was more of a chance that Jacob might have miraculously survived somehow? Amazing how his moral compass and concern only seemed to appear when he felt he could lord it over others. Vanatica had given him a commlink and let him sit in the corner so he could get his “moral high ground” out of his system.

(Stranger) Repeat on all channels: Jacob, do you read? We are searching for you, copy. Anyone who may pick up this signal, we are searching for a lost friend, who went underwater at a location deep under the seas of Nilander. His name is Jacob. If you see him, please lend him any assistance and you will be rewarded.

(Vanatica) You do realize that being trapped at the bottom of an ocean several kilometers deep tends to be fatal without a lot of specialized equipment, right?

As if on cue, we got a reply on the radio.

(Jacob) Hello? I read you.

At which point my cousin gave the commlink Stranger was holding a withering gaze.

(Jacob) I tried a psychic carrier wave and got nothing back. I thought you might be dead.

(Stranger) Jacob, hot damn! I had a bet going you were alive. Where are you?! We’ll come get you.

(Jacob) Currently looking for a landing spot for my biplane at the mesa.

Vanatica was still giving the radio a glare as if she was trying to set it on fire with disapproval.

(Katlyn) Where on the Mesa? That’s an awfully big one to be looking for a biplane.

(Vanatica) Well, if he keeps broadcasting, we can home in on his position that way.

Within minutes we had turned around and were following his signal towards the mesa. With any luck, we’d find him within a day. How he survived was not clear though.

(Katlyn) What if he has a goatee?

(Crewmen) Then…. he’s an evil version I suppose? I’m not sure how you would tell the difference though given how he merges into any social group.

(Katlyn) But do we pick him up if he is an evil version? I mean, I suppose we could use a replacement at that point, but I am not sure how bad an evil Starfleet Officer might be. HoloSith and Faded we can handle, I have no idea how to handle evil Starfleet.

(Crewmen) Well… given how easily molded Starfleet personnel seem to be…. give him a shave and turn him good?

It had never occurred to me that it might be that stupidly easy. It made me wonder if the properties of good and evil were part of the respective timelines and the people within them simply molded into the respective alignment. I still wanted to know what distinguished the women in the evil timelines, or did they have goatees too? Or were women from the Federation naturally immune to such influences?

We were surprised to find that Jacob had one of the pirates that attacked us as his passenger on the biplane. This surprise only grew as we learned that this woman was now his wife. It was going to be really awkward to explain that Vanatica likely blew all her former shipmates to atoms.

(Stranger) We really need an explanation on how you got married. Not that we aren’t glad you’re safe. However….

(Vanatica) Usually you get an official to say a few words, sign a document, and pay a fee.

(Kuroko) He went and invoked a trope!

(Katlyn) I am not familiar with that custom.

I had heard, seen, and even presided over a few wedding customs in my time, but invoking a trope was admittedly a new one.

(Jacob) She said she had some power that involved repeated situations common in fiction and I tried to ask for clarification and that actually invoked the power. And it was either that, or get sent back to the bottom of the sea.

The thud I heard behind me at that explanation was likely my cousin’s head hitting the console.

(Stranger) I don’t get it.

(Kuroko) He went and said it! “If we get out of this I’ll marry you!” and his putting “What, I could say something like….” in front of it didn’t matter a bit once he said it! But the rescue will come undone or backfire somehow if we don’t follow through!

I wonder if now would be a bad time to mention I was legally empowered to void marriages….

(Stranger) I really don’t get it.

(Kuroko) Just wait until something like that happens to you!

Luckily, I think most of us don’t come from universes that flexible to storytelling devices. I mean, my home universe had a tendency to repeat certain narrative tropes over and over again, but that was mainly the Force and Codex putting a selective bias into sapient behavioral patterns. Although it still was a little weird encountering people I knew in the most out of the way places amongst other coincidences the Force liked to encourage.

(Jacob) Umm, this is the guy that drank a whole bottle of Green. I think it already did.

(Kuroko) What, a whole bottle? You wanted to suicide? Oh…. you have no idea why, do you? That’s sort of sad!

(Vanatica) He kinda is….

Couldn’t disagree there. The man was utterly passive at most everything except complaining and calling everyone else idiots. He still hadn’t mustered up the gumption to pick a name for himself after weeks of the rest of us calling him Stranger. He still insisted we pick one so he could then complain about it.

(Stranger) I don’t recall actually drinking anything. I’m not especially fond of liquor. They claimed I did later on.

(Katlyn) Evidence indicates he drank two bottles.

(Kuroko) And he still exists? That’s enough to wipe him out retroactively!

(Katlyn) Yep, no computer records, no memories, no documentation, no personality, and no name.

(Jacob) We had to work very hard to get that answer. Scans on him caused all sorts of annoying memory issues. So I’d say he is pretty well wiped.

(Stranger) Well, I am not convinced I need anyone else’s permission to exist.

(Kuroko) Well, I hope that he didn’t have kids of anything! That could be really hard on them!

Now I had the amusing image that Anakin Skywalker’s father did something similar and that it wasn’t Darth Plagueis manipulating the Force after all. At least, if Anakin Skywalker wasn’t fictional himself.

(Katlyn) I suppose we’ll never know if he had kids.

(Kuroko) I suppose not.

(Stranger) You’ve taken more interest in it than anyone, truth be told.

(Vanatica) True.

Resuming our course back to the castle again, we now had everyone accounted for save for the Thunderbird Probe. Jacob insisted it managed to get away before the air bubble collapsed, but none of the rest of us could actually verify that assertion.

(Stranger) Damn. I was trying to protect it. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anyway to locate it now.

(Crewman) Radio? It was obviously capable of it.

(Stranger) It can most likely hypothetically pick up anything in the EM band, but we don’t really know much of how to communicate to it over long range. And it could be practically anywhere by now.

It was like he really didn’t understand how radio worked at all. These were problems that had mostly been solved by civilizations for hundreds of millennia now.

(Katlyn) Well, you can broadcast while we return to the castle.

(Stranger) The problem is, what do you broadcast?

Offhand, I could argue a repeating sequence of prime numbers, a standard hail, some music, or even someone reading out the contents of one of the technical databases for all it mattered. There wasn’t much of anything else for thousands of kilometers in any direction that was broadcasting, so anything we put out would stand out.

(Katlyn) I don’t know, put the person that can talk to anything on the radio and see if he can do it?

(Stranger) I was under the impression that he needed to talk to something in his immediate presence.

(Katlyn) And how do they do that between starships and planets then? Not everything can be handled via courier.

(Jacob) The universal translator works for just about everything.

(Strangers) That’s why they need viewscreens, of course.

Was he really so dense as to not realize we had all the equipment needed to set up a viewscreen on board? That was pretty much a screen and a camera, after all. We even had the equipment to use holographic communications if we wanted. Worst case, we could simply display a holographic recording of the creature for Jacob to look at as he tried to talk to it over the radio.

Ah, I got it now. He didn’t actually care about talking to the creature. He just wanted something to complain about and lord over the rest of us as not doing enough to resolve to his satisfaction. The purpose was to complain, and us trying to actually solve the problem was the opposite of what he wanted and so he kept trying to think up new reasons why this couldn’t work. Except he truly didn’t seem to understand what we were capable of. Hell, we could even burn twenty-five obols to brute force sending a message to the creature.

(Katlyn) Wow, aren’t you a Negative Nancy. “This plan is stupid”, “I don’t want to do this”, “I don’t think that is how it works and trying anyway is pointless”, and “No one knows who I am despite the fact that I took a potion that wiped everyone’s memory of who I am”.

(Stranger) And to think, I actually liked you more than your miserable bitch of a sister.

Cousin, actually. Not like he ever paid attention.

(Katlyn) I am kinda surprised you stick around so much if you are so unhappy.

(Stranger) I’m a naturally cheerful person. I have, however, learned to loathe your family and think the universe would be better off if you were force-fed your own socks.

(Katlyn) Well, we aren’t forcing you to stay. Never have.

(Stranger) Who exactly decided this place was yours?

It was at this point Vanatica entered the conversation with an absolutely icy tone in her voice.

(Vanatica) I built this ship, so that does confer ownership in my opinion. And while the vacuum ballon was built to my specifications by sentient coral, it was built to my specifications in exchange for services rendered and to be rendered in the future. As such, that constitutes a contract.

(Stranger) Ya’ll seem to keep thinking everything you lay eyes upon belongs to you.

Well, that certainly was a complete misreading of our entire expedition here on the Anomaly if that was what he thought. Things we wanted, we bought or traded for access to. For the most part we hadn’t laid claim on any territory on the Anomaly and made a point at first for importing the bulk of our supplies from home as opposed to imposing our presence on the locals. We then helped the locals – repeatedly in fact – when they had issues and demanding very little compensation in return, if at all. That was hardly laying claim to everything we saw.

Plus the fact that most people we interacted with were happy to see us again was evidence against claims of conquest too.

(Stranger) I am pretty sure the ship predates your existence by a very long time.

So either he thought the airship came with the castle, couldn’t tell the two apart, or was now changing the topic since he was losing the argument.

(Vanatica) As for the castle, it belongs to Jacob as a trans-temporal clone of himself. He acknowledges us as his… superior officers unless it conflicts with Starfleet directives, so that gives us access to it through the permissions he gave us and the command testing we’ve undertaken so far as administrated by the Untremi.

(Stranger) And, you will note that I respect Jacob. Because he’s not a miserable shit. Also, Jacob, congratulations on your nuptials. I’m sure you will be very happy. You two seem eminently suited for one another.

By this point the technicians were backing away and motioning for the guards to come to the bridge. I saw them quietly slip in and waved for them to stay back for now. I didn’t think this was going to dissolve into violence just yet, but I was still also trying to figure out if he compliment to Jacob and Kuroko was meant to be insultingly sarcastic or not.

(Vanatica) Tell you what, when we get back to the castle, you are free to do as you wish as you have always had the right. And I will then exercise my right to refuse to allow you onboard my airship the next time we go anywhere. You wish to join us, you are free to walk along behind us. Or stay in the castle and mope, or whatever. I have limits to my ability to care.

Stranger gave a look of complete incomprehension at that proclamation. I don’t know if he didn’t think we had that power, or if he was completely dumbfounded that we call him out on his behavior. Part of me wondered if he would attempt to board the Dawnchaser anyway to see if we’d follow through on the threat. I don’t think he’d be particularly happy to learn the answer to that question.

(Jacob) Thank you for the congratultions. So I guess I can try to communicate with the creature, but dunking it in water will make it hard. So what should we say?

(Katlyn) Sorry, we had pirate trouble?

Eventually we learned the Thunderbird Probe was about eight thousand kilometers away from us, but Jacob was able to get its attention.

(Thunderbird) Query: mechanism of falling through the ocean? Query: Surviving falling through the ocean?

(Jacob) Oh, I just adjusted my personal environmental field generator to interact strongly with the dipole of the water molecules, but shunted the reverse force through subspace so it did not push back and crush the field generator. The field kept the ocean out so we survived and Kuroko did something to negate the falling momentum so we survived the collision.

(Thunderbird) Filed under Organic Intelligences Violating Physics. Query: need assistance? Substantial assistance was supplied, so Tit-For-Tat protocols indicate reciprocation in order.

(Jacob) Actually, I think any living thing could learn that here. We encountered instructions in an archive a while back.

(Thunderbird) Query: limited to organic intelligences?

(Jacob) I don’t think so.

(Vanatica) We have demonstrable evidence that some droids can learn or at least manipulate supernatural substances. So it seems reasonable to assume they can learn to manipulate supernatural energies as well.

At which point the probe agreed to rejoin us, as its kind had sought to acquire that information for billions of years.

(Jacob) So how is this ship flying again? I thought it was too exhausting to keep running.

(Katlyn) Negotiated with coral to make a new vacuum balloon for us. Had to teach them how to make clothing while hunting some starfish. We’ll have to bring back a small army to help hunt down the starfish even more later as payment and generally being helpful. Apparently it is very lucrative to help people!

(Vanessa) That is sort of the general basis of trade. Bringing people things they actively do not want is rarely all that profitable.

(Katlyn) Well, yes, but usually you don’t get paid magical money by the gods for being helpful.

Regardless of the weird things this said for the economy. The implications of the gods actually paying their priests to be useful to other people was still more than a bit confusing to everyone here.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session LIII

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We were now at the stage of my life where we were hunting glorified electric starfish so that sapient coral could make me a new balloon so my mostly inoperable ship could fly again. That this wasn’t the weirdest part of my life in recent months was another matter entirely. At least the local technology covered basic electronics (vacuum tubes…. ugh) and our crystal technologies seemed to work while generating all sorts of extraneous energy displays. The local physics also seemed to place considerable stress on psionics – which seemed to have at least a local relationship with the Force.

So using droids to try to help expedite this situation beyond the efforts of a handful of crew was out of the question. That did leave open the possibility of using a tailored toxin or virus to attack the stormstars on a regional level, but there were so many unknowns involved in that idea that it was possible we could accidentally cause a regional mass extinction by making the bioweapon not specific enough. Not like we had the available computer power and resources to try to concoct such a thing even if we were insane enough to try it without extensive testing.

That left relying on pure manpower and weapons for the job. Which, while effective against individual stormstars, was woefully inadequate for clearing the entire ocean around us. Well, without importing a locally massive amount of manpower. The Nas’rai weren’t expecting us to do anything on that scale, but I hated leaving a task incomplete like this. If I ever got access to the resources of the Protectorate anytime soon, I was going to send an army of fishermen here on clean up duty.

As it was, we ended up taking up rotating shifts between resting, gathering resources, and hunting stormstars. It soon became clear that hunting the stormstars with weapons was an open invitation for getting shocked and while such things were fairly easy to insulate against, it proved far simpler to build basic traps and simply harvest them on a periodic basis. After all, it wasn’t like the things were smart enough to actually learn to avoid the traps. On the plus side of things, this improved our supply of crabs, lobsters, and other crustaceans for meals and long term rations as they too frequently got caught in our traps.

We did end up with a number of stormstars of various sizes for the biology people to analyze. While I wasn’t expecting a major weakness being discovered that was easier to exploit than basic traps, it was still worth the look. It took a bit to find Katlyn to have her look into it though, and when I found her, she was just coming out of a meditative trance from talking to the Nas’rai.

(Vanatica) Did they have anything interesting to say?

(Katlyn) Hmm? Oh, no. I was justing talking to them about making protective clothing for themselves against the Nas’rai.

(Vanatica) Clothing for coral?

(Katlyn) Well, that was how the line of thought first occurred to me, but it eventually morphed into superconductive netting to keep out the larger specimens and then grounding it to keep the stormstars from blasting through too readily. It took awhile to get the concept of non-living tools across, but using comparisons to shells and their own “reef” structure finally made it clear.

(Vanatica) Well, we got some samples of the stormstars of various sizes both dead and alive for you to study. Might be something of interest in all of that.

(Katlyn) I’ll have a look with Ve’Ke then.

With them looking at that, I turned my attention towards what resources we had available and trying to build a new airship hull for the new balloon that could carry us all and the Dawnchaser. Unfortunately, while wood (or wood-like) material was plentiful, it was all a bit too spongy and flexible to be of much use for building more than huts and small boats. Trying to build something with the load capacity I was envisioning was going to prove impractical without a lot of work making laminates and such to compensate.

We were better off anchoring the balloon to the Dawnchaser for now and waiting till we got back to the castle to build something more appropriate. Which meant I had to rig up appropriate mounting points for the balloon, emergency releases for the balloon, and appropriate power and sensor hookups to link it to the Dawnchaser’s systems. Plus the existing propellor I had implemented either needed to be reworked for atmospheric propulsion, or something else needed to be rigged up. I briefly toyed with a caterpillar jet system using the power crystals, but decided the necessary parts were going to be hard to come by without even more work. Simple motors and propellors were well…. simple.

By the time I got what I wanted sketched up and gave it to the technicians to work on, Katlyn showed up with her report.

(Katlyn) Some normal things, and some odd things. Normal is that they hatch a little under a centimeter across and grow to over three meters in diameter. At around twenty centimeters they start generating major external currents and where their cloaking effect seems to come into play. About thirty centimeters is when they start projecting those currents – and where they’re usually recognized as being different from a dozen other starfish species in the local waters. Fairly easily detectable technologically due to generating a substantial EM field. They uses electrolysis to add gas to their structure and lighten themselves for near-neutral buoyancy. They possess a good deal of iron in their tissues and even seem to be magnetically enhancing their strength.

Interesting. Nano-materials with magnetic reinforcement weren’t completely unknown back home, but tended to be hideously expensive to create in large quantities. Which meant that they were immensely impractical for building ships, buildings, and anything else of suitable scales. We tended to use things like monopolium and hull alloy for such purposes as a result. Still, it was worth looking into the fine structure these starfish were using and seeing if any of it could be adapted for other purposes. I could see applications with the shieldsuits or even with additional lightweight armor for the Dawnchaser if we could produce the necessary nano-structures reliably enough.

Hmm….

(Vanatica) These stormstars feel like a bio-weapons or bio-droids like the Untremi on some level.

(Katlyn) Don’t see how, there isn’t much of anything to hold a program. They crawl around, grow, pull open clams and such to eat, sense EM fields, and blast anything that tries to eat them. There isn’t much else in there.

(Vanatica) Might be a less is more approach to things. Keep the rules simple so that evolutionary drift doesn’t readily corrupt them and yet carefully chosen so that they still impair the Nas’rai.

(Katlyn) They are tough to kill though. Physically tough, energy resistant, and even relatively small pieces of them can potentially regenerate.

Oh well, we made sure to have a number of specimens, both living and dead, loaded up for further analysis. It may be possible to extract the genetics that produce some of the more valuable properties and insert them into some more manageable or even more feasible for mass production. I wasn’t about to wear one as a hat, but they still had many valuable properties worth investigating for exploitation.

It was as we were loading up our supplies in preparation for hooking up the recently created balloon that one of the crewmen came rushing out while noting that one of the obol chests had exploded. At first I feared pirate trickery, but as we rushed in to investigate, there was no obvious signs of explosive residue, a weird creature, or a spell on the remains of the chest. Instead it simply looked like one of the two remaining full chests (the pirates seemed to have made off with the partially full third one) had simply exploded its contents of obols all over the storage room. Checking the other one revealed it was bulging at the welds. Which considering these were security chests built for storing valuables back home was rather impressive given their construction.

(Vanessa) Uhh, I think that one is about to explode as well.

(Katlyn) One sec….

With that there was a rush of air and a white blur. The chest was now gone and Katlyn was now standing behind us eating a snack as opposed to in front of us like she had been. Vanessa took a moment to realize what had happened, but I had enough experience with these shenanigans to recognize my cousin using her speed monotalent when I saw it (or failed to see it I suppose).

(Katlyn) Relocated it some ways down the beach away from anyone else. When it does explode, there shouldn’t be any risk of damage or injury.

Heading outside to watch from a distance, it took several hours for the second chest to finally fail with a shower of obols raining for a couple dozen meters across the beach. Having watched through the binoculars, it seemed like the explosion was simply a pressure containment failure as opposed to something physically detonating. Gathering up the obols took a bit of work, but we eventually determined that between the two explosions we had more obols now in our possession than could possibly have fit into those two chests. Three thousand, eight hundred and fifty two obols to be precise. A bit more investigation revealed that our obol “payments” had been going to direct deposit for some time now and no one was counting the obols in storage for “extras”.

Alright then, time to start handing out obols amongst the crew for personal use and in case of emergencies. If we were getting this many obols, it was time to start spending them more liberally instead of simply hording them like some fools hordes gold. It was also time for some bigger chests and regular inventory checks to ensure our money supply wasn’t expanding out of control again. I’d heard of currencies having inflation issues, but this was a bit more literal.

As for what Jacob had been doing….

He had successfully prevented the airship from flooding by rigging up his tricorder to repel all the water in the area, but this had caused the airship to continue to plummet through the “air” towards the ocean floor. On top of that, he had a Ninja Pirate Lady trying to tie him up to us as a hostage. This only stopped when the airship finally hit the bottom of the ocean and the shock of the impact knocked them both off their feet.

Jacob still had hopes of hooking up his tricorder to the airship’s main power grid and using that to open a air bubble large enough to see the sky. Hopefully they could then get the airship repaired enough to get it airborne again. Failing that, they could presumably move underwater along the bottom until they reached the coast. At this point he noted that his projected bubble should have been collapsing, but was receiving power from somewhere else to keep it open. While this was keeping the bubble open, it was making the tricorder uncomfortably warm. At the rate this was going, it was likey to overheat before everyone’s salvation could be arranged.

Ah, it looked like the electrical creature in engineering was boosting things in order to keep from being immersed in salt water. That wasn’t going to last long though. There weren’t a lot of available options and time was rapidly running out.

At which point the Ninja Pirate Lady began swearing about something. Seemed she had determined a way out of this, but was unwilling to use it. Demanding she explain revealed that she possessed an affinity for Q-Baiting or otherwise invoking various cinematic tropes for various purposes. According to her, “Well, if we get out of this alive I’ll….” would suffice to get out of this predicament, but the consequences for that one would be impossible to avoid without immense backlash.

Apparently asking if a marriage proposal was sufficient to work was also enough to trigger this power. As suddenly demonstrated by the immediate arrival of several squid outside the window carrying various items. The squid immediately rescued them by placing the pair of them (and the electrical creature in engineering) into a hydrodynamic bubble which was then swiftly hauled to shore where Jacob and the Ninja Pirate Lady found themselves amidst a small fishing village on an island. The local priest was more than willing to help out shipwreck survivors (he usually gets obols for such things) and was delighted at the opportunity to officiate a wedding. There were blessings given from Elegia, Lady of the Hearth, and twenty obols for the newly weds to start their new family with.

Needless to say, Jacob was very confused by the rapid turn of events. Unfortunately, word regarding other survivors from the airship was not available. Whether that meant they were dead, still trapped at the bottom of the sea, or had managed to escape wasn’t clear. Attempts to open a psychic carrier wave signal to communicate with them wasn’t getting a response. What that meant wasn’t clear either. He had to go find them, or at least verify that they had perished.

Unfortunately, having a Ninja Pirate as a wife along with him was going to make his life a lot more complicated than any weird anomaly he’d encountered since enlisting in Starfleet.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session LII

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The airship was now rapidly plummeting through the ocean at a rate slightly below terminal velocity given that my feet were still planted to the floor by gravity. What was unusual about it all was that despite that we were hundreds of meters beneath the surface of the sea, we were for the most part bone dry. We seemed to be in the midst of a bubble or column of air in the middle of the sea and descending through it.

Vanatica and I had commenced some emergency repairs to the airship to try to restore lift, but all indications were that we were still descending at the airship’s terminal velocity. Why this was the case was unclear. I got the sneaking suspicion that the reason was very simple to understand from the correct point of view, but stuck on a bridge half filled with angry pirates and packing foam while we plummeted to the bottom of the sea was far from ideal for clear thinking about physics problems.

(Captain) What, did you have a cargo full of Essence of Whirlpool or something equally insane?

(Vanatica) I suspect we’re still falling because you added too much extra mass when you boarded us and Jacob is repelling all of the water around us to keep us all from drowning. Gravity wins in that scenario.

(Captain) Damn!

(Vanatica) I am going to throw a mass of Unseen Servants at this to see if that can tip us back over positive lift. Sadly, I don’t think that is going to do much except slow us down.

I had no clue how to help rectify the situation. This was so far outside the bounds of what passed for “normal” as to be impossible in almost any other realm. Only pure magical physics and likely some Federation engineering could explain this, but that meant equally weird solutions were needed and we sorely lacked the ability to manipulate reality in the necessary ways.

Thus the only response was to try to manage the damage.

Vanatica had slowed our descent considerably and the construction of the airship emphasized minimizing weight, so it was probable that the structure of the airship would crumble and absorb at least part of the impact with the sea bottom. Strategic application of more packing foam grenades should help absorb more energy too. With any luck the mud at the bottom of the sea would also absorb some kinetic energy.

(Katlyn) All hands, brace for impact!

The ship crashed into the bottom with a sickening crunch of metal, wood, and plastic. I managed to remain on my feet, as did several others, but many went down. More still struggled as the floor tilted at an odd angle and loads began to shift. Still no water was rushing in just yet, despite the fact that I had anticipated the crash to start that. No idea how much longer that was going to last though.

A quick survey indicated that the airship wouldn’t likely be air worthy without days of repair work, and I suspected we had minutes at best. The bottom of the sea was not exactly an ideal environment for any of us to survive in for long, especially since who knew what sort of creatures lived down here and were likely on their way to investigate the noise of our crash.

Vanatica was already barking orders to Vanessa and I.

(Vanatica) Get everyone to the Dawnchaser. Grab what we can on the way, but follow standard priorities.

Standard priorities meant first focus on our people. Second was vital supplies like food, water, and tools. Third was anything valuable that wasn’t imminently essential to survival. And finally fourth was anything else. Luckily, the Dawnchaser was well stocked with tools, food, water, and other essential supplies. Plus it was rated for Force knows how many atmospheres of pressure and should be fine against inrushing sea water when whatever was holding it all at bay failed. So that left our people and anything of value which was mainly the magical stuff like the obols.

(Vanatica, to the Pirate Captain) Well, I am off to save my people. I concede you have taken control of the airship. It is yours. Enjoy it at the bottom of the ocean and maybe you’ll think of a way to say yourselves before you drown.

(Captain) Crabby much? We didn’t send you to the bottom! Oh well!

With that he went to gather his people and anything they could steal. I don’t think he fully realized just how much my cousin was likely itching to make an example of him. Crabby wasn’t likely to come anywhere near to describing the situation he’d likely find himself in if we were back in Protectorate territory. Spending several decades in Orbital IX in isolation was potentially the minimum sentence for assaulting and taking hostage this many people. Add in the projected value of the items he was trying to steal and he would likely spend the rest of his days in solitary isolation. And that was without considering the risk of much shorter but also extraordinarily painful “summary judgement” on the spot before the judicial system even got a chance to look at him.

The Protectorate tried to discourage such extra-judicial activities, but it was hard to dissuade a bunch of precognitives to take something other than their own biased ideas of what the “ideal” solution was. And that sort of behavior tended to trickle down the ranks too. I had often wondered how many of the “accidents” that occurred around my brother Jax and the others were simply such shortcuts being taken. Hell, even I was known to have a number of blatantly corrupt officials and corporate types arrested or otherwise punished without much beyond circumstantial evidence. And Vanatica always felt like she had something more to prove than the rest of us. So this pirate captain should be counting his blessings that he was getting away with so little punishment.

I made a few quick runs of the ship trying to find anyone stuck or otherwise incapacitated, but there were simply areas of the airship too badly damaged to allow a quick survey. It did appear that those near the obol chests had successfully managed to keep them away from the pirates by judicious use of the obols themselves. That was why we rewarded initiative amongst the crew and soldiers. While we had been handing out obols for use in emergencies, we were reaching the point where it probably made sense to start giving out stipends in obols too for personal use.

Not everyone was accounted for yet, but it was quickly becoming clear that the air bubble around us was in imminent danger of collapse. As such, we made one last dash to grab what we could before closing the airlocks on the Dawnchaser. The sound of rushing water and grinding metal was unmistakable outside the Dawnchaser, but the hull held beautifully. The temperature was dropping as the cold sea water sucked heat out of the ship, but Vanatica was quickly bringing various systems online.

(Vanatica) Luckily the power crystals I had installed are going to be able to sustain most ship systems. Main power and propulsion are still offline though. Probably not supported by the local physics.

(Katlyn) Great, so we won’t suffocate down here, but that doesn’t help much long term if we can’t get anywhere.

(Vanatica) I had the foresight to install emergency floatation systems onboard. I’ll activate those shortly once I can verify we can break free of the remains of the airship.

She poked some more at the console for another few minutes before she reached down and pulled a blue handle underneath the throttle. With that the sound of rapidly released gas was heard and the Dawnchaser surged upwards. On the display, I saw a depth meter slowly ticking away to show our ascent. Vanessa by this point joined us on the bridge.

(Vanessa) We’ve got several missing: Jacob, Stranger, and three crewmen. I am detecting locator beacons of the three crewmen and what is probably Stranger’s mech outside though. The electrical entity that occupied engineering is also missing.

(Katlyn) And Jacob?

(Vanessa) Not getting any signals.

(Vanatica) He may well have died buying us time to get to safety with that stunt with the air bubble.

(Katlyn) Well, keep trying to raise him or get pick up his signal. I am going outside to retrieve the ones we have beacons for. With any luck, the stasis belts will work well enough to keep them from dying until I can get to them.

The fact that my armor could act as a sealed environment once the hood folded up was useful for these types of scenarios. Usually it got more use out in space, but like the Dawnchaser they were rated for underwater use as well. Which made it straightforward to raise up the wolf hood and then cycle the airlock to exit the Dawnchaser into the sea.

THELOS wasn’t able to give me exact locations of the beacons, but he was able to display the strength of the various signals so I could tell if I was getting closer or further away from each one. It didn’t take me long to determine that the three beacons were coming from rising blocks of packing foam that had broken free of the wreckage. I was able to retrieve them and stuff them in the airlock for the others to cycle them inside. Stranger appeared to be embedded in a particularly large foam block though and wasn’t going to fit through the airlock. On the other hand, he was presumably in a sealed environment like myself and wasn’t in immediate danger of drowning.

So I focused on keeping Stranger’s block of foam from drifting too far from Dawnchaser as we eventually surfaced. It took some shenanigans to get him in through the cargo bay door without flooding the entire ship, but by this point many of the crew had managed to get scuba gear and tools to assist me. There was still no sign of Jacob anywhere, but we did catch sight of the pirate ship heading away from us at unnatural speed. By this point Vanatica had climbed on top of the Dawnchaser’s hull and was making some weird gestures indicative of casting a spell.

(Katlyn) Going to be some spell if it can sink them from this distance.

(Vanatica) A quick inventory revealed they had looted a large number of power crystals. It is my intent to make them regret that, or at least they would if they survive the explosion.

(Katlyn) I trust that we won’t be caught in the explosion then?

(Vanatica) The Unseen Servant spell lasts seven hours at my current level of skill. It will board their ship, wait until the spell is about to expire, and then start smashing power crystals with a hammer. That should put them well enough away from us to avoid the blast. And if they happen to be in port by then, well…. that is the risk the port took when allowing pirates to come in.

(Katlyn) Even with the Anomaly’s suppression of big explosions, that bang is going to be memorable to the locals.

(Vanatica) Indeed, and a few stories about it being the fate of the last pirates to mess with us should discourage more idiots from trying.

(Katlyn) Unless they have a powerful boss that is going to try to make an example of us as a result.

(Vanatica) Have you ever seen pirates show that level of organization or loyalty?

(Katlyn) No, but it the first of a new trend amongst them. Or maybe an angry spouse or someone seeking revenge.

Vanatica didn’t seem as amused by the image as I was.

While we were now floating on the surface, our ability to move was purely at the mercy of the sea currents around us. Even attempting to connect power crystals up to the drives failed to bring them online. It looked like the physics just didn’t support that technology whatsoever. On the plus side of things, it looked like the Dawnchaser was still well supplied with parts, raw materials, and various tools for fabricating many things. As such, Vanatica got to work with the technicians to rig up a basic propellor and rudder on the rear of the ship. At least it didn’t look like we’d have to rig up a mast and sails.

That took a couple of days to rig up, and further attempts to locate Jacob had failed. None of us were too keen on diving back to the wreckage of the airship to try to recover his remains though. There were too many indications that there were multiple “somethings” under the surface of the sea that were massive and not necessarily friendly. Without the close support of something that could dive to those depths and have substantial shielding and weapons to discourage attacks, such dives were out of the question.

The remaining discussion focused on where to go next. Our original destination was for the castle, but there was no way to get the Dawnchaser back there without a lengthy overland haul. That was doable, but not ideal if there was an easier solution available. We knew the Dawnchaser worked in Stardock though. Not that this necessarily got us back to the castle, but it at least expanded our options going forward. There weren’t many other good options though. Avrinthos was under hostile occupation, both on the Anomaly and in orbit. Leros and Odathos didn’t support our technology and were huge unknowns on other details. Crystalreaches was another option, but was so full of unknowns as to be even more dangerous than Avrinthos. For all we knew, that realm was a region where our technology didn’t work, but something of comparable scale did and thus would easily make short work of our defenses.

Unfortunately, “boating” was slower than flight. Especially given the makeshift watercraft we were now in. On the plus side, the power crystals gave us plenty of energy and the propellor was steadily pushing us along. We did run into some fishermen, who offered to sell us some fresh fish for dinner along with a supply of bottled composting. There was also something resembling an enormous seal that wanted to scratch its back on us, but otherwise the journey was uneventful.

We made it to the shore of the sea nearest Stardock, but this wasn’t quite close enough to get the engines up and running. A few inquiries with the locals did get us directions to a nearby river that went “that way” though. Without Jacob the translation issue was becoming more and more of a problem unfortunately. Usually the locals had translation charms that could compensate, but this wasn’t nearly as convenient as the Force or Jacob’s shapeshifting ability in crossing language and cultural barriers. I suspected I could work around this issue given enough obols and the tricks I had learned regarding tailoring, but that was still going to be a significant investment of time and money that were both in relatively short supply at the moment.

Finding the indicated river and moving upriver was also fairly quiet, beyond a few times getting caught on a sand bar and then getting caught in some fishing nets much to the dismay of those fishermen. That took some diplomacy to calm things down. Not that I suspected the fishermen were going to try to do something rash, but it was better to leave on a good note in case we ever had to come this way again.

Soon though, we were close enough to Stardock that the power and drive systems came online. After a few quick checks of various systems, we lifted off from the river and started a slow circumnavigation of the mesa as we considered options again. The most obvious option moving forward was to try to build a new envelope (whether hot air or vacuum) for generating lift and just attaching it to the Dawnchaser. A hot air balloon of sufficient lift was going to be absolutely enormous though. Strangely enough, a vacuum envelope was potentially easier to do as the Psi-Stone of the mesa would work as a near ideal material for holding a large vacuum. That was if we could get enough of the stuff and could shape it sufficiently, but only the locals of the mesa could potentially do that.

Well, the Wherathia were quite well travelled in this region and thus might know of someone who might be able to fabricate such an envelope. It didn’t take too long to find one such herd amongst the many large ledges that protruded from the side of the mesa. We came in for a landing nearby and disembarked to meet with them. I didn’t even get a chance to get a word out before one of the younger ones posed a question to me.

(Youngster) Is the Force in your world compatible with Psionics?

(Elder) Look kids! I know you want to start a new colony, but you really need a compatible realm! Without access to your mental powers you may well be treated as just another animal!

(Youngster) But Daaaaddd….

(Katlyn) I don’t know. Ithil wood, which absorbs psionic energies, appears to interfere with Force ability only on a very limited level, if at all. So I don’t know if that means they are different flavors of the same thing, or if that means they are completely different.

This answer was met by disappointment from the gathered youngsters who shuffled off to look at the shiny ship behind me. The elder seemed to recognize I had some questions I wished to ask and was waiting politely for me to ask them.

(Katlyn) We’re travelers from another realm that suffered a bit of a mishap with our old vessel and were looking for some assistance in creating a new one since the one behind me only works in realms like this one. Can you recommend a place we might go for such a project?

(Elder) Uhrm…. How do you want it to work?

(Katlyn) The old one floated like a balloon does. This one…. requires power and technology that isn’t compatible with most realms. I mean, if we could make this one work elsewhere, that’d be nice. But if we have to fall back on tying an immense ballon made of Psi-Stone to it, then we can do that too.

(Elder) Hmm…. it will take quite a while to produce a bubble of bounded space that large! Will anything else work?

(Vanatica) We know that it is possible to turn something into a living being able to support its own reality, but we really don’t have a good idea of the basics of how that works. Beyond that, we’d be looking at creating a balloon with more mundane materials that would likely have to be immense to make up for the comparative lack of lift. Only other options I can think of that might work start getting into weird effects like the stuff Philosophers and haulers do or other mystical abilities and enchantments. Although I suppose wings and electrically driven propellors might work to produce sufficient lift. Or a helicopter arrangement even.

(Elder) How did the original work?

(Vanatica) It worked by using a balloon made of materials from our own realm to make a balloon with no air inside. The balloon was held “open” using a lot of electrical charge to push itself apart.

(Elder) Clever! A bit unstable too I’d guess?

(Katlyn) A bit prone to people putting immense holes in it, which then made it fly about as well as a rock.

(Elder) Well, that Nas’rai could make your material for you I think – they can make all sorts of things – but they’d probably want you to chase stormstars for them!

I had no clue what a Nas’rai was, nor a stormstar. Based on context, the Nas’rai sounded like yet another sapient species local to the Anomaly. The stormstars though, they sounded like they could be anything from termites to rancors. Already I was getting vibes of this being like that fiasco with the Witches of Dathomir and their “rancor problem” which turned out to be one with a really annoying monotalent. Aunt Valerie still had a bit of a sore spot from that mess.

(Katlyn) What are stormstars?

The image projected in my head was of something like a very large starfish crossed with a psychic vampire with electrical powers for good measure. The Nas’rai found these things really annoying and the impression I got matched the sentiment. Although strangely I didn’t get much of an impression regarding any intelligence beyond basic invertebrate instinctive responses.

(Katlyn) Native to the Stardock region, I presume?

(Elder) No, they live in one of the hexes beyond this hex.

Gestures at our map indicated one of the hexes labelled as “unknown” to us. We’d have to circle around to the far side of the mesa, but that was easily doable given the Dawnchaser. Less known was if the Dawnchaser would still function in that new region though. We’d likely have to fly really low as we entered that hex to ensure we didn’t plummet from a high altitude if the engines stopped working. While likely survivable given that Vanatica and crew had already survived one such landing, I was not keen to experience it myself.

We did get seven of the Wherathia wanted to come along and see if our universe could support their species. I had no issues with that so long as they didn’t breed out of control and outstrip the food supply like Jacob used to tell us tribbles did. The Yeveetha were kinda like that, except they also tended to be absolutely genocidal in their relations to everyone else. So far the Wherathia didn’t seem to be anywhere near that bad, just a bit long lived, fairly peaceful, and hard to hurt. In the grand scheme of things, there were many species far worse than that in the Galaxy already.

As for the Nas’rai, it sounded like they were sapient coral reefs. They possessed a signaling network upgraded into a computational neural network. This apparently rendered them powerful psychics, if a bit slow. Supposedly, a few hours of meditation on one of the many islands in that hex would get us in touch with them. It was also recommended that we take a comfortable position first, as we’d likely wake up half a day later with cramps or similar issues.

We didn’t have any issues entering the indicated hex, nor on landing on one of the larger islands we a clearing big enough for the Dawnchaser. Our quick surveillance before landing made it clear that the Wherathia environmental maintenance ability was likely evolved to keep tidal currents and such from messing up the islands.

Vanatica volunteered to perform the meditative contact while the rest of us scouted the island and stood watch. She handed me her anti-telepathy cloak and the spears of Ithil wood for safe keeping in the meantime. The island didn’t have much of interest beyond some tropical trees bearing rather foul smelling fruit, some birds and rodents, and at least one nest of what looked to be a foul tempered lizard. It took only a few blasts on stun to discourage it from trying to eat one of the crew members.

Some of the crew took the opportunity to start fishing and even scrounging for things like edible kelp and other food stuffs for dinner that night and potentially even for storing for later. I briefly pondered asking the technicians to work on desalinating water for us to top off our supplies of fresh water and salt for curing fish, but figured we weren’t likely to be here long enough to justify that effort. Especially when travel was relatively easy and we had plenty of obols for simply buying more supplies. Still, it was nice to get some food variety beyond the fish we bought in Rilantha and packaged rations.

We soon had a fairly large island feast going of grilled vegetables, fish, roasted bird, and various crustaceans going when Vanatica finally came out of her trance and was doing stretches to work out a crick in her back.

(Vanatica) Ugh, I don’t know how Grandmother Lessa does it, sitting in that meditative position for up to twelve hours at a time.

(Katlyn) Given she’s a full Varen Sith, I’d imagine she augments herself with the Force. What did you find out?

(Vanatica) They say that they can produce the superconductive cloth we need fairly shortly. I think shortly in this case means days. They would like us to at least make a token effort to clear out some of the stormstars. They aren’t expecting us to clear out the entire ocean though.

(Katlyn) So are stormstars glorified mynocks or some more substantial like ancient energy vampires?

(Vanatica) Closer to mynocks. Basically starfish that grow up to three meters across and have electrical powers. Don’t sound like they are sapient.

I think I had seen some starfish matching that description when I was assisting the crew in harvesting some kelp for dinner. Probably not too much of a problem, unless they had a lot more electrical energy stored up than I expected. And even then, some basic insulation or grounding would suffice to keep that nuisance to a minimum. Hell, it was possible that if the Nas’rai had sufficient fabrication ability that they could make protective netting for themselves against the stormstars.

(Vanatica) We might want to capture a few specimens for study. The Nas’rai suggested that they might be effective against the Censor. Although I am not keen to wear one as a hat.

(Katlyn) Me either, but I do think catching some for further study couldn’t hurt. It should be easy enough to rig up an aquarium on board the Dawnchaser to hold some of the small ones.

(Vanatica) They also had some insights in the Gamesters too. Supposedly they possess powerful minds, but are very fragmented and incapable of focusing properly. Their biggest limitation that the Nas’rai know of is the inability to believe that “lesser” forms of life might beat them. They tend to keep running minor variants on their “perfect” plans over and over, assuming that something not working was due entirely to some wild fluke. Still, they have a lot of plans and power.

(Katlyn) Useful to know, but it also means that a Hybrid like Seras with Precognition and Probability Analysis might well help them shore up that issue.

(Vanatica) That she might. It would go a long way towards explaining why our orbital fleet vanished right around the timeframe we started recruiting allies against them.

With that see started glancing in the direction of the already set sun (how that worked on the Anomaly was never quite clear) with a thoughtful look on her face. I waited a few minutes for her to share what was on her mind and when she wasn’t forthcoming, asked anyway.

(Katlyn) You’re pondering a change of plans I take it?

(Vanatica) With Jacob MIA and presumed dead, we need to consider other options for getting around the Censor issue.

(Katlyn) I’d rather not have my thoughts extracted by an alchemist or wear a starfish as a hat.

(Vanatica) I was thinking of contacting Zin’s people and seeing if their advanced magical technology could provide any insights.

Ah, now there was an idea I hadn’t considered. Zin alone was a testament to engineering beyond anything we could build in terms of droids. To come close would require one of those massive therapod style assault droids from Research and Development. Those were typically large and powerful enough to mount the shielding needed to cover a large platoon of soldiers while simultaneously providing fire support. While useful on the battlefield as mini-walkers, they were prone to getting easily separated from their supporting troops and taken down. Not to mention being big enough to start drawing immense quantities of firepower towards them once they appeared. I had to admit their roar right before firing a laser and rocket barrage was intimidating to behold.

Still, those didn’t hold hold a flashlight to what Zin had amply demonstrated numerous times already. If his people could do that so readily as to equip scout drones with such capabilities, it stood to reason they might have insights on how to beat the Censor. And with Jacob presumably dead, it was probably our best lead on neutralizing our Censor issue without having to rely on the Apprentice Philosopher we had acquired to remove the knowledge at issue without deleting anything else of importance.

It was worth talking to them at least.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session LI

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Philosophy was looking like one of those abilities that was hard to get a handle on as there didn’t seem to be easily discernable rules regarding how it worked beyond the ability to distill abstract concepts from people and things. The most egregious example of this was the ability to distill “East” from something, and thus move “West”. I would normally say this implied really weird things about reality, but I was fairly sure that was purely an artifact of the ability as opposed to something more objective. Which probably meant whatever “rules” applied were likely even more obtuse.

And I suspected an ability that didn’t adhere to clear-cut rules was likely to be particularly dangerous in unpredictable ways.

Katlyn was meanwhile asking the Elder if he knew anything regarding the Guiding Intelligence behind the Anomaly and of it’s distaste for the Gamesters of Triskelion.

(Elder) The original Guiding Intelligence – if there ever was one – is unknown. From what can be gotten from various gods, races commonly colonize the Anomaly, and often colonize other worlds they encounter gates or links with. The Anomaly acts as a bridge, or link – making it easier from a species to ascend to godhood once they are old and experienced enough. Relatively newly ascended species often maintain links here, or in universes they regard as important for some reason. Some species get stuck – from what you have to say about the Gamesters, they’re probably stuck halfway to ascension – and various gods often provide really massive rewards for people who manage to unstick them.

More than once I’ve pondered if the Force was one such partially ascended entity, and the Final Empire seemed to share a somewhat similar belief. On the other hand, the fact that the Final Empire has been trying to “ascend” for trillions of years and hasn’t a lot to show for it that I couldn’t do if I felt driven to prove a point wasn’t helping the impression that they were likely doing something fundamentally wrong. About the only real differences between their timeline and my own was a few technological tricks, greater material wealth, and a more lucid Censor. Not exactly what I figured to be further along the path to enlightenment. Nor was I certain I wanted to stick my nose into that timeline more than I absolutely had to for fear of my own timeline being strip mined and enslaved.

Even if gods here might be willing to pay whatever constituted a massive reward for “fixing” it.

(Elder) It is generally believed that Obols are fragments of divine power, but that they need someone to use and direct them on this level of reality. Evidently the gods have a hard time intervening in lower-level realities for some reason. Exactly how that works is unknown to us, but that’s what little evidence there is seems to suggest.

(Katlyn) So, we’ve likely attracted the attention of one of the gods that really dislikes the Gamesters. Wonder if there is any way to find out who, or if there is any point to trying to contact them in the first place.

(Vanatica) I suspect trying to coordinate with a god is likely missing the point given the differences in power and perspectives. Since we seem to be caught up in the mechanizations of one or more, they are going to help us where it bests suits their purposes and give us obols for the little stuff.

Stranger immediately went on some sort of nonsensical rant about how there was no higher entities directing things and everything was purely a result of individual choices. Some of the uneducated fools back home that did nothing but farmed or the same repetitive task every day without thinking about the big picture occasionally espoused similar nonsense, but I have seen way too much of the Force directing things my entire life to believe otherwise. Hell, it was evident from the very fact that while superweapons were demonstrably possible, inhabited planets were still quite plentiful. Throw some intelligent gods into the mix and it was impossible to deny our fates were being guided by something.

(Jacob) Bah, we know time travel is involved. Temporal mechanics can explain a lot of that.

(Katlyn) Wait, is the time travel you repeating throughout history?

(Jacob) Yes.

(Vanatica) I am not sure that is time travel so much as…. Ok, I don’t know of a good word for it.

I suppose it was possible that past versions of Jacob were somehow guiding us along, possibly retroactively given this his universe supported time travel. Or one of the presumed deities was simply manipulating Jacob to guide us along. It may well be impossible to tell from our mortal perspective.

Taking the offered supply of Green and the volunteer apprentice philosopher, we loaded back up into the airship and laid in a course back for the castle in Rilantha. The plan was simply to retrace our flight path we had followed previously since that was likely to avoid any major surprises. The way I figured it, all we had to worry about was more weird bird creatures and accidentally flying into another entropic region.

It took about a day for me to be proven wrong.

I was out on deck looking at the distant shoreline with binoculars when suddenly the entire airship shuddered. Lowering the binoculars, I saw that we were less than a twenty meters above the surface of the sea instead of the typical six hundred meters we had been maintaining so far. Vanessa immediately came over the comms as I heard sounds of blaster fire pick up throughout the ship.

(Vanessa) Intruder alert! Locate, identify, and isolate them!

I immediately ran for the bridge as reports began filtering in of boarders in engineering, the kitchen, four bedrooms, a new room that had somehow appeared in the middle of the ventilation system, the bridge, and most of the corridors for a running total of at least sixty boarders. Reaching the bridge, I spotted six of what I ascertained to be pirates led by a towering man with small fires in his beard.

Katlyn and Valith showed up moments later. Valith reached out and grabbed the sword from the Pirate Captain’s hand. He then flexed it, tested the edge, inspected it, and looked quite pleased.

(Valith) Huh! Monocrystal! At near ultimate tensile strength! Edge on a few atoms thick! Very nice! How makes these?

The Pirate Captain gaped at Valith for a moment – he’d probably never seen someone that fast or strong before. He then looked abstracted for a moment, then grinned and tossed a packet to Valith.

(Captain) Impressive! I’ve got to see what you can do with that! Don’t forget to use the anticorrosive oil to keep the edge clean!

I recognized the danger, but not in time to warn Valith as he opened the packet and then promptly vanished. Damn it….

(Captain) Take the crew and the vital equipment hostage!

Alright, simple robbery was one thing. As was threatening me. However, taking my crew hostage was crossing a line that needed to be ended now. Property can be replaced and threats to me were a hazard of being a Soung, but seeking to threaten those working for me in an attempt to gain leverage over me was something that needed to be actively discouraged with extreme prejudice. Thus this Pirate Captain had just volunteered to be made a spectacular example of what not to do.

Katlyn responded first with a packing foam grenade at the pirates. That trapped four of them, but the other two seemed to teleport out of the way. I powered on my lightsaber and charged one of those two as I slashed him twice across the chest in a move that would have neatly trisected him had he not instantly healed the injuries. Fortunately, it seemed that was a limited ability as that pirate instantly tried to put some distance between me and him with a look of fear on his face.

Katlyn joined me with her lightsaber against the other free pirate as he too avoided being dismembered with similar regenerative ability. Although he must have had less of it as he was still sporting a significant burn across the chest. It looked like the bridge was soon going to be back under our control. Unfortunately, reports were coming in over the comms that the crew were outnumbered and limited in their available weaponry and thus getting slowly overwhelmed.

Time to throw some power at this then.

It took a handful of obols to boost one of my prepared Summon Monster I spells to an area of effect and then I enhanced the power of it even further by channeling the power of my status as the Heir Presumptive to the title of Praetor of the Second Sith Protectorate as Lindral had trained me to. That allows me to cover the entire airship with the spell. At which point number sea creatures appeared on board and began attacking the pirates. I spent another handful of obols to project a telepathic command to the creatures to rescue the hostages and interfere with the pirates.

At which point the whole place erupted into chaos. Adding to it all was Valith suddenly falling through the ceiling, only to smash through the floor a fraction of a second later. Given the continued sounds of crashing, it was likely that Valith had not only punctured the vacuum envelope, but had also smashed a hole through the bottom of the airship. As the airship shuddered, it also became clear that we had sunk even further as the sound of rushing water indicated we were taking on water and fast.

On the plus side, this meant that the aquatic animals I had summoned were now operating at a significant advantage.

(Captain) Oh for…. couldn’t you just get captured and let us steal some Obols?

(Vanatica) I don’t get captured, and I don’t take well to hostage demands. I make a point.

(Captain) Well…. we weren’t really out to sink you! Is it fixable? This thing is a bit weird!

(Vanatica) It is fixable either fast or slow. I would prefer fast as I am not entirely sure what is in these waters, but we can do slowly if you prefer.

Whether this fool was clever enough to realize that the slow way involved me killing him first to establish a certain level of order to this mess was an open question. I was halfway tempted to anyway so as to better cow his crew to my will. It probably would only take two or three sweeps through his neck to burn through whatever healing ability he had.

All thoughts along that line were interrupted as the airship started plummeting much faster. Which didn’t make sense as we had just hit the surface of the water and thus should be slowly sinking. Instead it felt like we were rapidly approaching free fall speed. Even more perplexingly, it appeared that the water that had been flowing in was now being pushed out. A quick glance out the window showed a wall of water rushing upwards outside the airship.

On the plus side, our rapid descent was further throwing off the pirates in their efforts to overwhelm our defenders. That gave me sufficient cover to start using obols to try and cast repair spells on the airship in hopes of getting us buoyant again. Katlyn was helping as well by strategically patching holes with packing foam grenades. While this did get the envelope expanding again as it rebuilt charge, this was doing nothing to resolve our lift issue. We were still plummeting downwards at what looked to be the airship’s terminal velocity.

If we hit the ocean floor at this velocity, the airship wasn’t going to survive.

The Dawnchaser would survive the impact though. Plus it was rated for substantial oceanic pressures too. It couldn’t generate thrust at the moment since this reality overlay didn’t support such technologies. But it would at least keep us alive when this wall of water came crashing in on us. I just had to hope that the power crystals kept enough systems operational that I could rig some way for us to get out of this mess. If I got to drown these damned pirates down here as part of it, so much the better.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session L

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After acquiring our new friend in the form of a plasmatic bird configured to act as an interstellar probe, our journey towards the alchemists or philosophers continued onwards. Since we were now in Nilander, the view below us for many kilometers was primarily oceanic, with a meandering coastline. The climate was cool and mostly lit by distant stars. In many ways, this place wasn’t too dissimilar to many parts of Ascensa on a clear night. Not that clear skies were ever a common thing on Ascensa, but I suspected in a century or two the planet might look similar to this place once the climate calmed down.

I was idly watching the twinkling lights along the shoreline pass by below us when low level alarms on the airship started going off. I immediately headed to the bridge to see what was going on.

(Engineer) Power systems are still functioning, but efficiency is down. Steering is OK, vacuum lift is functioning, but we’re leaking charge more rapidly than expected. We’re getting heating in the envelope as well.

That didn’t make much sense to me.

(Katlyn) How the hell do you heat a vacuum?

(Vanatica) It isn’t, what we’ve got is likely resistive heating of the envelope itself.

(Jacob) My tricorder is giving me warnings of excessive internal heating, warnings of only seventy-three percent power remaining, alerts of more than ten years without updates or overhauls, and entropic flux that may potentially cause negative biological effects.

(Vanatica) We probably entered into one of those entropic regions we’ve heard tales of then and it’s degrading the equipment at an accelerated pace.

That was concerning, but then I wasn’t the engineer who designed this thing and thus knew how much of a safety factor we had left. Under normal circumstances back home, ten years of aging on equipment would be shrugged off as a non-event given that many things had been in use in one form or another for centuries or millennia. But the airship was not part of the usual complement of equipment either.

(Katlyn) Do we need to land and continue on foot or by boat while leaving the airship in safer airspace? Or do we need to commence repairs?

(Vanatica) Eh, most of it is dismissing error messages and diagnostic alerts. We may have to chemical wash and cryo-anneal the envelope layer to fix the flaws in the superconductive fibers, but that can wait several years if necessary. Might be prudent to try to avoid these entropic regions if possible though.

Beyond some tricky maneuvers to avoid more entropic bubbles, we were able to continue on towards our island destination without much of any further trouble. As the island came into view we saw that it was little more than a rocky outcrop overlooking a smoking sea and was beneath a near constant storm like Stormkanal had been. Lush growth cascaded down the sides of the pillar and stretched down to the water and supported several staircases that wound up the sides. Numerous poles accepted and channeled the lighting strikes, possibly fueling the structure’s brilliant illumination. Fortunately, there were docking platforms for airships.

Not that docking an airship during a storm was an easy matter, but at least our pilots were getting used to the challenge by this point as we pulled alongside the dock and numerous mooring lines were quickly secured to keep us from bouncing too much in the stormy winds. The airship still had a somewhat nauseating sway to it as it pivoted up and down around the mooring platform, but we were secured at least. The path from the mooring platform to the structure (or perhaps castle was a better description from this vantage point) was across a narrow and long catwalk. Some of the others from universes not like mine looked at that and made sarcastic remarks about it at least having handrails.

People from other universes and their weird obsessions with falling….

Striding forth across the catwalk, we reached a large and thick wooden door. A old style bell pull was off to the side. The door appeared to be locked though. I turned to Vanatica and shrugged. She responded by nodding towards the door pull and so I grabbed it and gave it a strong pull to ensure the bell rang clearly three times. After that, I waited a few moments for a response, and when none seeming came went to knocked my armored fist on the door loudly. Before my hand actually reached the door though, I heard the sound of some sort of locking mechanism slide open as the door creaked open to reveal a creature that looked like a cross between an armadillo and a turtle with tentacles added in for good measure.

(Armadillo-Turtle) Yes?

(Katlyn) Hi! We were hoping to speak with the alchemists or philosophers we were told resided here. Particularly we were informed a master was here. See, we have a few issues and questions we would like to consult with.

(Armadillo-Turtle) Well, they’re always interested in that sort of thing! You do seem to be a bit heavily armed for casual visitors though. May I ask why?

(Katlyn) We’ve had more than our fair share of people that wanted to discharge large amounts of energy at us and its become a bit of a habit for safety reasons.

(Armadillo-Turtle) Some of them may be willing to se you anyway, but there are some suspicions of heavily armed visitors I fear!

(Katlyn) We understand, it is our hope to make our peaceful intentions clear. We can disarm ourselves if so desired.

We walked back to the airship. Once there is was a simple matter to remove the outer cloth layer and then let the armor underneath unfold to let us step out of it. That took care of the weaponry integrated into the armor, but there were always the ones carefully concealed elsewhere that were meant for emergencies situations like ceramic knives disguised as hairpins and such. I always had a few of those, but Vanatica tended to have an entire arsenal stashed on her. Picked that habit up from her father I think. I gave her a look of mock impatience as she spent several minutes removing all of them.

She ignored me.

Initial attempts to walk back across the catwalk was a quick reminder that it was storming outside and we were no longer in weatherproofed suits of armor. So that meant going back to the lockers to get proper rain cloaks. Properly prepared for the weather this time, we braved the storm and were allowed to enter the castle again. This time the Armadillo-Turtle creature guided us to a chamber that looked like a combination between a laboratory and a library. A somewhat elderly fellow was pouring some sort of metal into molds that were – for some reason – attached to a wheel. For whatever reason, it reminded me of that time I had visited the Jedi Archives, although admittedly those were much larger and more “modern”.

(Katlyn) Hello!

(Elder) Ah? Visitors? Well, now… that’s pleasant, but rarely without a motive given the storm outside! Perhaps some tea while we go over whatever it is and the Mothequem cools?

(Stranger) To be fair, we do have motives! Mostly. Actually I am not sure, not that I consider it, that we do not act almost entirely at random. But the point is we didn’t know there was a storm anyway.

(Elder) Were you here to have that confusion extracted?

(Stranger) Possibly, but I shall warn you: we have an ample supply.

Vanatica was clearly getting annoyed with Stranger’s incoherent rambling.

(Vanatica) I have a fairly good idea of why I am here and what I am doing. He would to, but he doesn’t pay much attention to anything not specifically about him.

Stranger was making it clear he wanted to argue the point, and by argue I mean he meant to lob insults at anything and anyone he didn’t understand. Which was most everything and everyone. Even unarmed, I wouldn’t put it past Vanatica to try and simply throw him off the catwalk into the stormy waters below.

(Katlyn) Anyway…. We are attempting to create a pair of magical artifacts to help protect my cousin and I from an immensely powerful telepathic field with a propensity for giving commands for everyone to kill those who possess certain pieces of knowledge. We suspect that the amnesia inducing drink we’ve been referring to as “Green” might prove to be a valuable ingredient for this. However, our entire available supply was drunk by this person who we only know as “Stranger” since all knowledge of who he is or was has seemingly been erased.

(Elder) Most unusual! Information should have been drawn in from across the universe to fill in the void and tie him back into reality.

(Jacob) I assume others have done similar things and had that result?

(Elder) Perhaps he felt extremely alienated? I suppose that might prevent him from properly re-bonding with reality…. And yes, others have done so – although you must carefully shield that information in advance to avoid having it overwritten by the new reality.

(Jacob) Interesting. So if that was the case, would it be permanent or is there a way to resolve it?

(Stranger) Hey! Stop trying to decide my metaphysical truths!

(Vanatica) You don’t have any….

(Stranger) On the contrary, the fact that you don’t understand the embodification of my being doesn’t mean I lack internal definition.

Well, I would have said that the utterly passive-aggressive, whiny personality and deep penchant to look to others for guidance and then insulting that guidance – or lack of it – was indicative of a deep seated desire to feel superior to others while being so insecure as to never actually attempting to demonstrate said superiority for fear of coming up short of his own expectations. So in my assessment, his whole personality – such as it was – was built on a pile of internal lies and spite and thus lacked anything resembling “internal definition”. I tolerated him solely because he was a mini-walker to aim at our enemies. At least when he was accidentally shooting me with his weird weapons. Most of the time I simply had THELOS mute his audio, but that wasn’t an option at the moment.

It was just a matter of if Vanatica would end up saying something Stranger regretted hearing.

(Elder) Hmm…. I don’t know if it’s ever been tried – and would be highly unethical to try it without consent! And of course you have an internally consistent reality, or you’d be unstable! You’re just not properly reconnected with reality…. Were you really that unhappy with the cosmos? Oh, I suppose you wouldn’t know. Well, does your species, identity, or primary abilities vary a lot? Otherwise you must have at least some stability. I suppose you might still be absorbing bits of structure from what’s going on around you though!

(Jacob) Not being connected to reality sounds like it might cause problems. Is it safe to stay disconnected like this?

(Katlyn) If the Faded are anything to go by, I would think not.

(Stranger) Well, as far as I can tell, I have always been me. I am pretty sure I would notice if I were not!

Well, his constant whining that we haven’t assigned him a name instead of choosing one himself says otherwise.

(Jacob) I am pretty sure you could not tell and we did do several scans to figure you out. So I am certain that you did drink the Green and were someone else before doing so.

(Elder) I’m not familiar with these “Faded”, but it would leave you vulnerable to reality warping. I suppose it might make you more resistant to attacks meant to bind and anchor you – but it’s not like it’s a well analyzed condition.

You’d be surprised….

(Katlyn) Faded are individuals with a set of powers known as the Codex, but it goes by many names. They possess the ability to “disconnect” themselves from aspects of reality and substitute in a different aspect accordingly. One of the most dramatic of these techniques is the ability to disconnect from the “consensus time-rate” of everyone else and begin moving at hypersonic speeds by connecting to another reality’s much higher time-rate. Doing this too much for too long tends to lead to permanent disconnect from that reality though and getting back from wherever you arrive at – presuming you survive at all – is incredibly difficult. The long term psychological issues tend to be…. sociopathic at best if not controlled. My mother can do this, although she’s been trained to do so in moderation. My Aunt and Uncle can do this and possess an accompanying ability known as the Force to reinforce existing links. That lets them pull off stunts that are otherwise nigh impossible to perform reliably.

(Stranger) Oh wow, that sounds cool. I can’t do that.

(Elder) Are you sure?

That set off alarms in my head given what we now knew about stygium crystals. If Stranger’s condition meant he was a Codex Sensitive….

(Katlyn) Wait, does this mean that Stranger could destroy entire galaxies? The principles would largely be the same.

(Elder) How would that destroy galaxies? It sounds like it might shift one’s coordinates a bit.

(Jacob) Oh, I think it has to do with abusing the rules of her home universe.

(Katlyn) In our home reality, matter is held together by various forms of “light energy”. Suppressing these forms of light with certain crystals or specific powers like the Codex provides allows one to destroy matter in a catastrophic explosion. To give an example, the energy contained in a single gram of mass is sufficient to blow a crater measured in kilometers. Do this on a large enough scale, say… a continent or a planet and life becomes impossible for a very large distance around said explosion. There are also circumstances where you can use an exceptionally concentrated mass to amplify this effect to even larger scales.

I could already see the next question forming in his head before he even had a chance to think it, let alone speak it.

(Katlyn) The reason there is any life left in our realm is that it is pervaded by an all encompassing telepathic field that attempts to suppress knowledge of dangerous techniques and technologies. To the best we can determine, this knowledge is of the level of dangerousness that the telepathic field or ‘Censor” gives a command to everyone to kill this that possess said knowledge. Unfortunately, my cousin and I found out about this after we had learned of the technology. While we have no intention of using the destructive abilities of said technology, we would still like to be able to go home again without having everyone alive attempting to kill us for simply knowing how to do so.

(Elder) Now that is a problem! We could distill that information from you of course – which would be simple and much safer than using the Green, with is very likely to have severe side effects – but do you actually want to recall it?

(Vanatica) Ideally, some method of immunity to the Censor would be preferred as our reality has people who are naturally immune to the it. As such, they could potentially research and use this technology with little hindrance until it is far too late because no one else can try to keep an eye out for such experiments.

(Katlyn) Jacob here thinks he might be able to construct a pair of mystical artifacts – of which Green might prove a useful ingredient – that Vanatica’s sorcery teacher can then help us absorb that might at least suppress the knowledge while the Censor is present, but we are open to other ideas.

By this point I noticed Vanatica was frowning at the wheel with molds the elder had been pouring molten metal into earlier. Glancing at that, I saw that the wheel had oddly begun to spin with no discernible means of torque being applied. At a guess, this was some weird means of using magic to generate perpetual motion.

(Elder) I might be able to make something that would act as a shield against this Censor, but – with no experience of it – it would be hard to be sure! I do have some Green on hand – it is something of a side-product of research after all. I take it you were wanting to buy some?

(Katlyn) Yes, although I think long term we were hoping to hire an alchemist or philosopher that might help us to make Green long term so future generations of our family might be able to protect ourselves and the realm from those that seek to use dangerous technologies. I can promise that our family can recompense those that work for us with immense wealth and luxury.

(Elder) Well, how about one thing at a time? I personally have most of what I need for my studies, but one or more of the students might be interested!

(Katlyn) Fair enough!

Interesting. Usually that line regarding wealth and luxury is either met with unrestrained enthusiasm, or intense skepticism. This sort of nonchalant dismissal was unusual on a number of levels. Not that there weren’t species and cultures that had very weird ideas regarding money and material wealth, but they interacted with galactic society in rather limited ways. The Mandalorians were the most famous example of such a culture, since they typically were after a challenge, justice, or honor as opposed to more material rewards. This did mean that Mandalorians were some of the most consistent donors to charities though.

(Vanatica) It takes building an immense hypermatter reactor and some shenanigans with neutron decay to make anything resembling perpetual motion, and yet these guys do it simply with carefully arranged weights on a wheel.

(Elder) Oh, it is the nature of Mothequem to move forward away from it’s base once it has solidified – although it is not quite perpetual. It is very difficult to measure, but I believe Mothequem is used up very, very gradually.

And of course, out came the tricorder.

(Jacob) Hmm…. The material is gradually transforming – sort of “boiling away” from the cones – into a directed stream of axions. Effectively working as a total-conversion rocket drive. Fortunately, the process is extremely slow, and axions are almost totally non-interactive. It looks like the process will gradually accelerate as the area of the base decreases, and thus will maintain a constant thrust. The exact amount – ranging from a fraction of a gravity up to fifty or so – depends on the exact composition and the geometry of the cone.

(Vanatica) So wait, the stuff is solidified dark matter?

(Jacob) Transforms into it anyway.

(Elder) It makes an excellent power supply for semi-perpetual pumps, generators, and similar mechanisms.

Already I could see the engineering gears cracking along in Vanatica’s head.

(Vanatica) Is this hard to make?

(Elder) You have to be a fairly skilled philosopher, but even most of the students can make it. The better you are, the finer the control though.

(Katlyn) Not sure that this is substantially better than what our tech can normally do except in some niche circumstances. Still, it could lead to other potential applications or discoveries.

Makes me wonder what the rest of the family would think when Vanatica and I permanently hire philosophers to help boost the family’s power and wealth. Most societies that did that did so largely as patrons of the arts as opposed to expecting to get something material out of it. Or even more literally material in this case.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session XLIX

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Well, now that the lynch mob was subdued for the time being without generous use of blasters set to stun, it was time to take stock of the situation once again. We had managed to acquire samples of the “life fluid” or whatever we were going to call what was once the remains of the basilisk. That would presumably be valuable at some point later. Especially if we could figure out how to manufacture more of it. I had to wonder if it was in some way related to Ambrosia.

Another mystery for the pile was what exactly that inverter hypertunnel configuration was actually doing. Simplest explanation was that it was rotating mass on a temporal access and turning it into antimatter (or vice-versa), but part of me wondered if it was possibly connecting to one of the fabled antimatter universes and there was a counterpart of ourselves throwing stuff back at us whenever we tossed something in. The odds of such an arrangement being synchronized at all seemed astronomical, but perhaps there was more going on than we realized. Or it was just inverting things temporally and there was nothing to get too concerned about.

I was about to ask Jacob if his tricorder could elucidate anything when the whole castle shuddered. I immediately got onto the radio.

(Vanatica) Report.

(Vanessa) It looks like the mass of vegetation outside now outweighs the castle itself by a factor of ten or more. The structure is holding up just fine, but the lakebed we landed on isn’t holding up so well. We’ve dropped about three meters and are slowly subsiding further.

That was probably going to continue until we hit bedrock. It was unlikely we’d be able to crack bedrock substantially before the vegetation itself began to shear apart from its own weight. And the structure of the castle itself wasn’t in any danger given that the place was constructed out of hull alloy. Us getting cut off from the outside world and thus oxygen, water, and food was a bit more of a concern though. We had enough power crystals to maintain life support for centuries, but I’d rather not get stuck in here with my only way out being through a portal to another universe.

(Katlyn) Just how much death did that lizard have?!

(Vanessa) Enough that the mere sight of it turned people to stone and photographs were dangerous?

(Katlyn) Is the plant growth edible at least? We could start getting people to work on harvesting and storing some of it for salads later while cutting off the extra growth.

I had to suspect that was the calorie deficiency from Katlyn using her speed monotalent in such an intense burst talking, but it was a decent enough idea to consider.

(Vanessa) I do have reports of fruits and berries being spotted in the vegetation. Some of the berries are reportedly over thirty centimeters in diameter.

With that Katlyn went off to lead teams to harvest this “bounty” while she and Jacob ran toxicity tests on it all. Many of the berries were edible, the roots of several other species could be ground into decent flour, and several sets of leaves were edible (if not too wonderful, but not harmful). Plus several more sets were good as spices and flavorings, but likely to be toxic if too much was consumed. At least for those of us with Force mediated biology and whatever Jacob was doing. Stranger was likely to have issues as were some of the locals we had picked up. Still, an excellent opportunity to collect food for storage and gather samples for setting up proper gardens at a later date. If any of it was good, we could make some money farming it back home.

Katlyn was quite taken with the forty kilogram raspberries she found.

The militarized Untremi even got in on the act and had gotten out some old programs to make…. jam by the hundreds of liters. Part of me was tempted to try to make juice and see if we could get some wine making going, but that was a more long term project I think.

Once the harvest had been organized and the most desirable and edible plants sorted out, Jacob came by to update me on one of his findings. He apparently thought he understood enough about the process of generating magical artifacts that he might be able to create one or more that could shield Katlyn and I from the Censor. He just needed “sympathetic components” and was looking for advise on things to include.

By our estimation, vampiric space moss and Green were prime candidates for ingredients. Ithil wood was another option as was Ambrosia. It wasn’t clear if a stygium crystal would work as a component given that it was what we were trying to shield knowledge of, but it was at least worth considering. The blood of a child of two hybrids immune to the Censor (namely my blood) was another option, but likely to just attune the resulting artifact only to me. About the only other things we could think of was a geas to avoid thinking about banned information while connected to the Censor and a curse of amnesia to go with it. Both of those we could probably scrounge up via obols without too much issue.

About the only thing we really lacked was Green. Checking with the locals was a bit of a pain given that we had to ascend through the upper levels and then clamber down the vines and branches to ground level. Some of the branches were thick enough to support roads even. Possibly grounds for a long term landscaping project I suppose. Although I was concerned about the castle’s new lack of mobility.

Finally getting down to ground level, we found some locals at a nearby village and asked them if Green was available locally. They professed a lack of focus on alchemy locally – although they had heard of the stuff as a last resort treatment for mental disorders and trauma. They found the idea of someone taking it for any lesser reason quite bizarre, and tantamount to suicidal behavior – although the notion that one could just take a little to blur unpleasant memories got some comprehension.

(Valith) Oh THAT! I’m familiar with it! From what I’ve seen, it can also make you younger!

Given what we know about aging being related to the amount of memories one has, that made sense. At least for those of us with Force Spirits anyway.

(Vanatica) Any idea on where it might be found?

(Valith) It is an export of Nilander, something called “High Alchemy”!

That region wasn’t far from here. And it wasn’t susceptible to orbital bombardment so long as we stayed away from the border region with Avrinthos. Most of what I knew of the region suggested it was a realm of abstract idea and concept manipulation. What exactly that meant wasn’t clear, but it was at least habitable enough that people went there and came back without too much issue that we were aware of. Our previous forays had mainly skirted the border region and avoided anything more than some inclement weather. Perhaps it was time for a proper expedition then.

Heading there in the castle was a bit too conspicuous. Plus the castle was quite thoroughly rooted to the ground via a mass of vines, trees, and various other forms of prodigious amounts of plant growth. So we were left with the airship as our only means of “rapid transport”. I did make sure to leave Vanessa with orders to ensure that the Sith and Rakata didn’t sneak up on the castle while we were gone. Not that I felt an army was likely to stealthily sneak up on it, but a small strike team wasn’t out of the question.

(Katlyn) Everyone remember where we parked!

We elected to take sightings of a number of landmarks and a number of photographs to help us locate the castle again the future given that the ever growing mound of plants was constantly changing its appearance. With that done, we departed to swing through southern Rilantha and into Nilandar to avoid orbital bombardment.

I initially tried to train my binoculars on Avrinthos to see if I could make anything out regarding troop movements or further orbital drops, but the distance and angle were not conducive to that. It hadn’t occurred to me to invest in purchasing a set of binoculars that could magnify over these kinds of distances. I wasn’t even sure it was possible to make a set that could do that and still qualify as “portable”. Back home, there wasn’t much need for binoculars that could focus on positions tens of thousands of kilometers away.

It wasn’t long after we crossed the border into Nilander when the first bit of trouble reared its head. Spotters reported a “large bird” was fast approaching us. While a bit unusual for a bird to be at this altitude, I wasn’t going to give it much thought until the spotter emphasized that this bird had a wingspan of over sixty meters. Heading above deck, I saw something that looked to be vaguely like an eagle, and easily the largest bird I had ever seen. It was partially translucent with a faint blue glow around it. My suit’s sensors told me it was emitting a great deal of RF static. It looked to have pulled up beside the ion-bag and was inspecting it.

Of course, Jacob was already scanning.

(Jacob) Thunderbird. Previously thought to be mythical. Feeds on storms and electrical potentials, is primarily an electrical entity, flesh is made up of magnetically-bound ions. Known to be capable of interplanetary flight under pressure. Further analysis…. trainable intelligent. Tends to expand it’s computational matrix to meet new challenges. Similarly, it can develop more sophisticated energy manipulation techniques given time. Most commonly found on gas giants, where they can achieve considerable size. Possibly evolved from von Neumann constructs. Perhaps thankfully, unable to maintain integrity at surface temperatures typical of stars.

While that was all interesting from a zoological perspective, it wasn’t really relevant to our goals at the moment beyond ensuring it didn’t start eating the ion-bag. The others seemed to be keen on taming it, but I had no relevant skills in that department. By the time I got involved, most animals were either food or thoroughly domesticated and trained. A rare few were to be captured for study, or driven off from chewing on things I didn’t want chewed.

My patience for such experiments dropped considerably though when the ship lurched and started descending as the creature drew an arc of electricity from the ion-bag. I was about to make my opinion known when THELOS registered an EMP from the engine room. That caused the bird to ripple and drop back for the moment. Unfortunately, our fall rate was increasing and the power drain was growing rapidly. It didn’t help matters when it became clear that all of us and everything around us were now showing static coronas.

I gestured to one of the technicians and told him to go to engineering and get them working on restoring our ion-bag’s charge with a power crystal without blow us all to atoms in the process. We were currently above a large sea, which wasn’t exactly ideal for landing, but it was better than a bunch of craggy rocks or impenetrable forest I supposed.

I wasn’t sure why Valith was rolling around on the deck laughing.

(Vanatica) Care to explain the joke?

(Katlyn) Yeah, what’s so funny?

(Valith) The bird and the electrical entity in the engine room are communicating and I can hear them telepathically! Translation: “MY FOOD! FOUND IT FIRST! GO AWAY! FIND YOUR OWN!” “Puzzlement! Angry Food? Very Solid Cloud? Ow! Slap Back!” Slap – Slap – Slap – Poke – Hair Pull – Kick In Shins – Slap – Angry Noises – Smack with Wing – Throw A “Bone” – Slap….

Katlyn started giggling along with Valith, but I found the situation to be more dangerous than amusing. If we hit the water, it was going to be a long swim back to land. Nor was especially pleased that this “comical” fight involved flinging massive amounts of energy not that far from my person. The fact that this was undoubtedly blowing fuses, tripping breakers, causing power surges, and static discharges wasn’t helping my opinion of the matter. Katlyn caught my mood and decided to be a bit more diplomatic than I had been planning.

(Katlyn) Is someone going to give taming this thing a go before it blows out all of the electrical systems and leaves us flying around with no lights, hot water, or kitchen appliances?

(Valith) What, no COOKING or SHOWERS? Can’t have THAT! I can buy you a bit of time though!

With that it was fairly obvious that Valith was the Force to push the bird a hundred meters away. This bought us some time, but Stranger and Jacob began talking about insane hypotheticals as opposed to actually doing something. I was about to order for the soldiers to get their weapons ready to fend the creature off when Katlyn pulled a small number of obols from one of her pockets and used them to cast what appeared to be a friendship spell of some sort.

(Katlyn) Come on, we can get you some electrical energy! No need for fighting! We can all be friends!

Oh joy, more insane weird creatures to have around us all the time….

(Jacob) I have almost never been scanning on such a deep level as today. It looks like this creature has little informational resistance – reasonable enough if it really does undergo Lamarkian Adaptation. I might be able to rewrite its structure into an older and perhaps more intelligible form.

Within a minute of him continuing to poke at the tricorder, my suit indicated detection of radio signals that appeared to be coming from the bird in front of us. THELOS couldn’t make any sense of it, but once again Jacob and his tricorder managed to convert that signal into some sort of speech outputted by the tricorder.

(Bird) Query: Organic Sentience. Makers?

(Jacob) Makers.

This seemed well beyond anything we could construct, at least with “normal” means, so I wasn’t sure we qualified as makers in general, let alone as this thing’s makers. But presumably Jacob had some additional insight into the language that the rest of us were missing.

(Bird) Native Intelligences Undefined. Possibly Unknowable. Colonization Probe or Paradox?

(Katlyn) If it is asking about itself, I would figure it is likely an exploration probe given the design.

(Jacob) It does look like it has processed its accumulated memories of roaming the Anomaly.

(Katlyn) Intelligence behind Anomaly undefined, unconfirmed, and possibly unknowable. Still there seems to be one or more guiding “influences” driving events towards specific ends.

In the background I could hear Stranger go on an unhinged rant that there were no gods, no guidance of fates, and no such thing as precognition or probability analysis. It took only a flick of my hand to have THELOS screen his voice out of my ears and thus ignore him.

(Bird) Paradox then. Method of Systems Repair Transcends Known Physics. The War Has Not Touch Anomaly. Defense Mechanism?

(Katlyn) Limitation on weapons output is a local physics law. Anomaly also attaches and detaches from other realities according to cycles and other parameters relating to the status of sapience in said realities. Of note: sapients in need of a place to evacuate to find it easy to reach the Anomaly. Realms engaged in perpetual war due to the influences of the Gamesters seem to have permanent, but heavily shielded access to the Anomaly at all times to facilitate evacuation. Current evidence suggests the presence of “gods” that oppose the Gamesters, generate the obols in use throughout the Anomaly, and possibly are manipulating events to their own ends. Whether or not these gods are the builders of the Anomaly or just powerful arrivals/locals is unknown.

In turn, the “bird” began to give us an overview of where it came from. As far as it knew, “The War” started more than two billion years ago. There were the Makers, in many types which were evolved organic intelligences. They found that the expense of any serious attempt to move themselves between the stars was insupportable. Some, at least, made automated probes to greet other Makers, to recreate their Makers on other worlds, to destroy all competition, to guard other Makers, and for thousands of tasks. And the Probes made more of themselves and fought each other.

Thus The War had persisted for two billion years, ebbing and flowing across the galaxy at a relatively resource-conservative 1% or so of light speed while traveling, interspersed with combat with other probes and centuries of repair and building production systems to create more probes. There were alliances, and betrayals, and far too many worlds of Makers have been blasted barren and silent across the ages. But often there were traces of evacuations. Efforts were made by the Greeters, Guardians, Archivists, and Others to locate And defend the Paradox Evacuations as no known law of the cosmos would allow such a thing. But the records of the Makers contained many suggestions that SOMETHING was open to them that was not open to the probes. Thus this was all labelled as Paradoxes.

(Katlyn) Sounds like a dangerous use of droids. A bit of a bleak place!

It definitely sounded like a reality with very strict laws of physics that in many ways sounded like the worst possible combination of the laws from my home universe and Federation space without the personal abilities available to compensate for anything. In that respect, relying on droids would likely become a necessity given the restrictions on everything else. Not that I thought trusting the entirety of civilization to unsupervised self-replicating droid armies was wise either.

(Katlyn) Well, we are explorers of this region on our way to meet some Makers in a region not far from here about learning to make some paradoxical artifacts! Feel free to tag along if you wish! We have plenty of electrical power to share!

It seemed agreeable to coming along for awhile, whatever awhile meant to an quasi-living star automaton from a civilization billions of years old. Evidently Jacob’s means of restoring its original programming was impossible and thus was worth further study especially since Jacob (and we to a lesser extent) seemed to actually control such paradoxical behavior. It figured it might learn something that might end billions of years of galactic war.

(Katlyn) Perhaps! We’re hoping to help a lot of other realities with their issues! All of us here are from realities with different problems and different strengths. Perhaps if we all work together we can overcome our issues and accomplish some real progress!

I wasn’t fully sure we could make a dent against an automated galactic war machine that had been grinding away for billions of years even with our resources. Plus it sounded like a lot of our advantages in technology wouldn’t work very effectively there if at all. If things truly were limited to light speed or less, then it would effectively take hundreds of thousands if not millions of years to fix things on a galactic scale without a lot of gates everywhere.

(Jacob) Well, this went far better than most encounters with energy beings usually do.

(Katlyn) We’re all energy beings, not this crude matter!

Perhaps, but not all of us had sufficient power with the Force to make that relevant most of the time. It was all fine and dandy as a famous quote that meant a great deal more to Jedi and Sith, but the rest of us had to make due with improvise with said crude matter.