Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session LXV

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It took a few days to gather the necessary supplies of luxury goods and load them into the boat Vanatica had procured before we had fought the Emir, Lecrouss, and Evil Jacob. That also gave time for my cousin to finish constructing a steam engine without cannibalizing all of our spare parts from the airship and for Jacob to send in a scan of “True Love” to Starfleet and the Federation.

Not that I was really sure that what was scanned was “True Love”. Their marriage seemed to be one of convenience first for the sake of magical powers with romance a very distant second on the priority list. If that was truly what love was, then I wanted no part of it. Maybe it was the Sith upbringing, but I felt that love needed to involve a passion for the other person that seemingly transcended time and space for its own sake. Not so one could maintain the ability to manipulate fairy tale themes. Even the Nightsister Virgin Witch cults were willing to give in wholeheartedly to their beliefs and not just pay lip service. Even if we Sith tended to view them as a bit backwater.

So in all likelihood, all the tricorder managed to scan was “performative kiss to keep the illusion going that they actually loved each so her powers kept working”. Which is potentially an interesting scan to have, but not the same thing as “True Love”. Still, still all did get us another tricorder which was always useful to have with us, even if Jacob was the only one really proficient at using it. I did find it amusing how Starfleet replied that “True Love” was arguably against regulations since it interfered with crew transfers and apparently could get a ship off course.

All things considered, it didn’t take my cousin that long to get the riverboat back up and running with a working steam engine. It was also easy enough to load it with a bunch of luxury goods and supplies despite how much the city had been evacuated already since so much of the population had been bartering their possessions for passage to escape the city. As such the city now had a glut of available supplies for the remaining population. We did have to make some guesses as to what was valuable since a lot of things that were valuable in the Protectorate were cheap here and vice versa.

As for a crew, it was decided to limit things to Vanatica, Jacob, his wife Kuroko, and myself. The others were to remain with the castle for the time being to assist with further repairs and the defense in case the Sith army got ambitious. Besides, winding our way upriver on a merchant ship with a small army in tow was unlikely to elicit the type of response we were hoping to achieve. It didn’t help that most of them had…. Issues anyways that made traveling upriver quietly difficult.

Once we were finally underway, the journey upriver was surprisingly pleasant. The use of a power crystal alleviated us of the need of fuel for the steam engine and that ensured we kept a decent pace regardless of the current. As for the surrounding countryside, I was reminded of Alderaan as much of it was well organized parkland as opposed to wilderness or even rural terrain. Probably more hydromancy via little canals, aqueducts, and even little irrigation ditches powering magic to maintain all of that. Not that I suspected it took a lot of power to groom a forest or a grassland.

Still, I had to wonder how well this worked on a normal planet in case of a drought. Since the organization level was city state at best, there probably wasn’t a lot of cooperation in case of lean times. So it was likely that such a civilization was doomed to suffer major infrastructure failures at the same time as they would be facing crop failures. Probably unsustainable for anything more than a century anywhere except a major rainforest and even then that only pushed the timetable out to a few millennia. Never mind that such regions tended to have poor soil quality. Little wonder that such a society ended up on the Anomaly I think.

Jacob and Vanatica were doing something to keep themselves busy. Well, more that Vanatica used some obols to cast a ward upon our boat to protect against anyone paying too much attention to it I think and then Jacob took that tricorder of his, muttered something about hydromancy and warp fields, and then got to work carving something into the hull of our ship. I tried not to pay too much attention to that so as to keep my sanity. Especially when he started excitedly explaining to no one in particular how he thought he could get an acceleration effect going that got more powerful the faster the water flowed past us. It was only when I felt the ship rock followed by the sound of splintering wood that I put down my datapad and ran to the bow of the ship to see what had gone wrong now.

We had apparently just run over a raft. Probably the operator onboard failed to notice us due to the weird science melding of hydrology with Starfleet engineering attempting to mimic anti-divination magic. Now said operator was in the water about to be pulled into the hydrology channels after smacking heads with Jacob. It was a simple matter to engage the flight systems and just pull the operator (apparently a local male kid – possibly early adolescent) out of the water using augmented strength. Definitely concussed, and likely had been fishing.

(Katlyn) Better watch where you are going there! A bit of daydreaming is par for the course when fishing, but it pays to look around from time to time!

Of course, I also heard that fishing involves a lot of drinking and napping too, with actually catching fish to be entirely optional in the grand scheme of things.

(Kid) Buh… Ow! Ow! Where’d you come from?

(Katlyn) Downriver of course!

(Kid) Coulda swore there wern any boats nearby…

(Katlyn) Well, no damage done!

While our boat was easy to repair for a few obols, the kid’s raft was a collection of smashed logs drifting downstream. Should be easy enough to fly him to shore or just drop him off at his village, wherever that was. Unfortunately, he seemed rather reluctant to share that information for whatever reason. All we got was that it was about three days upstream of our current position.

(Jacob) Do you want a lift back to shore or where you were headed?

(Kid) I was headed down to the coast, with the intent of applying for school there. The possibilities back home are fairly limited, what with the warring states problem.

(Katlyn) Well, we’re kinda going the wrong way for that, unfortunately.

(Kid) Aw, I wanted to learn to be a hydromantic engineer! Well, got some rope and maybe a fishing pole or a few days of food? I can just make another raft.

(Jacob) So what is it like upriver?

That got us information on the next hundred and sixty or so kilometers. Several small villages, two of which had gone isolationist, and were not at all welcoming. Three others were mostly business as usual and keeping their heads down, although something called Ridath’s lumbering was currently on hold due to unstable conditions. There was a colony of Hidanthi near the rapids outside of Devorth,. They could organize the currents to make a short-range portal past the rapids in exchange for goods, a few obols, or enough belly-rubs.

One of the isolationist villages was being run by a hydromancer. He wasn’t all that powerful compared to what we just fought, but was charging a “toll” on passing craft. Apparently he didn’t feel the need to charge a kid on a fishing raft. Beyond all of that was Mylan, the next major city. Mylan was closer to his village, and he might have walked there for an education – but the local chief hydromancer got caught up in the madness and tried to relocate the place into a pocket dimension. The kid didn’t know much about that, but it didn’t sound like somewhere the schools were likely to function and he wanted to try for a scholarship.

(Vanatica) Hmm, city we’re aiming for is Ernharite. That isn’t Mylan, but Mylan is probably on the way. Are we keen on dealing with insane hydromancers along the way, or keeping a low profile?

(Jacob) I am not sure. On one hand, us getting used to some more of what they can do might be handy. On the other hand I have no idea if they are similar enough that it is worth the effort. It could get us the wrong assumptions going forward. I still want to cure as many as possible though.

(Katlyn) Play it by ear then?

(Jacob) Yeah.

We gave the kid some supplies and carted him off to shore where he could make another raft to continue downriver. Jacob continued making adjustments to the boat’s hydromancy to elicit better control over whatever effect he thought he was making. Our first “obstacle” was the Hidanthi, who rather resembled small seals to my eyes. They seemed like a friendly enough bunch.

(Katlyn) Do we want to see a short range portal powered by their hydromancy? Or at least see how the setup is built?

(Vanatica) Unless we want to portage, probably.

(Jacob) Oh, might as well take tricorder readings. Can’t think of much we could do with them. I am going to assume the power requirements are quite large.

Turned out the power requirements were relatively minimal compared to what one might think, but the range was half a dozen kilometers at most. For the locals, that wasn’t worth it but most people didn’t want to deal with the rapids. Apparently that scenario caused all sorts of wild magic, although apparently that did make whitewater rafting and canoeing much more of an adventure. I had to admit that sounded like it could immensely fun like the whitewater rafting courses back home that could be set up with access to gates and artificial gravity.

(Katlyn) Oooh! Maybe we can do some whitewater rafting when this is all over! I am sure some of the soldiers and technicians would be up for it!

(Vanatica) Quite likely.

I was curious if more power could extend the range of the teleportation effect. Given enough range one could connect the cities and towns together like the gate system was connecting the Protectorate. Hell, you could then set up smaller gates to areas like this for recreational purposes with easy returns upriver once done with the rapids to either head home or try again. Heck, even a decent rail system could do wonders for this place.

Next obstacle was a heavy boom laid across the river with a couple of bored villagers in a guard boat.

(Guard) Hey, the engineer says we’ve got to charge you for passage! He hasn’t said how much though, so we’ve put the fee at one Obol or a bottle of decent wine. Hey, got any strong tranquilizers? If we can put him out for a few days he’ll likely sober up. The irrigation system doesn’t provide THAT much power!

(Katlyn) Tranquilizers are easy! Might need to verify some things about your species’ biochemistry though to ensure it works.

(Guard) It’s a deal! You need a blood sample or something?

(Katlyn) Blood and for our friend to point his device at you while it makes some noises.

(Jacob) Tricorder scans coming right up!

A few quick tests and scans showed that a number of fairly standard tranquilizers would do the trick, although one of the most common was likely to induce hallucinations. Probably best to stockpile a bunch of those for later use with other engineers at least. Still, easy enough to make several vials, give guidelines about dosages and possible side effects, and then how to treat an overdose if the worst should happen. With our “payment” handed over, the guards looked at the boom with some embarrassment, said a mystical command phrase that roughly translated as “Lower Gate”, and it opened. It looked like the local engineer only knew practical stuff, and just used the spell for sluice-gates to make his barrier.

Which fit the pattern already seen with the Emir where the maddened engineers seem to mostly be tapping existing infrastructure magics to use for defense and weapons. That still made them dangerous just from the sheer power involved, even if it wasn’t very focused or directed. After all, the hypermatter systems that powered a city back home could easily destroy a lot of stuff too if that output was used correctly. Hell, I think it was Uncle Kira that caused a small nuclear level detonation using a city’s water and power supply. Almost anything containing a useful amount of energy could usually be lethal if misused.

Still, it occurred to me that engineers (when they went crazy) seemed to match the legendary Drunken Sith one usually found as bad guys in stupid comedy holos. Those could be fun if you were willing to turn your brain off for a couple hours, but to my knowledge Drunken Sith weren’t something actually seen out in the wild except for weirdos like Handell. It actually felt weird realizing that all of those stupid, but fun holos might have been preparing Vanatica and I for dealing with these engineers. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. On the plus side of things, this area seemed relatively peaceful, prosperous, quiet, and reasonably well organized. The engineers just weren’t very good at being villains, especially since the chief engineers tended to be middle-aged, practical, office workers.

Which kinda reinforced Aunt Valerie’s assertion that at least half of the Sith problem was the holos themselves. Wasn’t sure what to do about that because the Jedi/Sith conflict was just an enormous mine for story conflict. Perhaps exposure to the Anomaly and the associated cultural conflicts that arise from its societies will lead to a holo renaissance that puts less emphasis on the Jedi and Sith? But that doesn’t deal with the thousands of years of holo back-catalogue that existed. Censorship was going to be nigh impossible. Perhaps the best way is to make Jedi and Sith boring with wide tales of real magic, psionics, and whatever the Federation was doing?

At least Vanatica didn’t feel compelled to teach them how to be proper Sith….

As we continued on upriver, the remaining isolationist village pretty much ignored us, although I suspect we were being watched from that tree line as we motored by. The other villages did ask us for news from downriver – which we shared – and then warned us about the next city upriver. The Chief Engineer of this city had access to enough raw power to be entirely out of his mind (like the Emir was back where we started this river boat cruise). They also noted that he had somehow managed to isolate the city. If one tried to get in on land, one just wound up on the other side. Attempts along the river led to a sequence of really weird traps and monsters.

(Vanatica) Go in by river? Or try to bypass?

(Jacob) Hmm, might as well try the river. I have no idea what they might do for this sort of trap, but knowing is better and we can retreat and go around later.

With it decided to try to pass through the city via the river, Jacob took position on the bow of the ship running scans while Vanatica piloted. Kuroko I think was below decks. I simply stood on deck to see what weirdness might happen. Suddenly there was a perceptible shift in the reality around us as we passed a distortion. The world seemed to compress and attempting to look up was headache inducing. There was a city hanging sideways in the sky. The river had straight edges, and was a solid flat blue save for some bow waves picked out in white. Ahead of us…. was an octopus, throwing exploding fish, although there was room to go around it to the right. Further upriver… there were more octopi. The ship was slightly luminous, and almost cartoonish. To further add to the surreal nature of it all, the octopus was hanging in midair, it had a fancy hat – purple with a green band and a feather. We also had all acquired green shirts.

(Vanatica) The shoreline appears to have occasional bumps with trees, but if I try to look past it, there is nothing there either.

(Jacob) We got an exploding fish coming right at us. It has a big smile on it’s face.

Vanatica’s attempt to have the riverboat dodge it didn’t work so well as the fish promptly hit Jacob’s face and exploded. Jacob’s green shirt now had a red fringe on the one side, but he otherwise looked to be fine despite the explosion. Further up ahead a giant wall in two parts kept slamming shut across the river, then opening up again in rhythmic fashion. Vanatica brought us to an idle relative to the slamming wall trap.

(Vanatica) Seriously?! Who builds this kind of thing?!

(Katlyn) This feels like a hologame.

(Jacob) Colliding with an octopus will cause it to explode and damage the ship.

Unfortunately, bringing us idle with respect to the trap made us much easier to target by the flying octopi throwing explosive fish. Several hit each of us turning portions of our green shirts red accordingly. Also by this point there was simply nothing in existence either above or to the sides of us. It was like space simply stopped there.

(Katlyn) This is a hologame! Can you scan this enough to see if you can change the game rules? Like cheat codes or something?

(Jacob) Actually, considering this place is lacking rules… and draining the guy powering it is a goal of ours… physics engine upgrades!

There was a bit of wavering, as the water began to act a bit like actual water – rather than a frictionless surface we slid around upon. Unfortunately, while this was all going on, more octopi were firing fish at us from a number of angles. Fortunately for us, the otter I had acquired was busily stashing away fish that were being thrown at us. I took the cover offered by that to pull out my blaster rifle and shoot the octopi throwing fish at us. It didn’t help to try to maintain footing so I could aim properly as Vanatica kept lunging the ship back and forth trying to dodge things being thrown at us. At least a few octopi I destroyed ended up turning into fruit.

(Katlyn) Are we supposed to be collecting the fruit?

(Jacob) Usually.

I used the variable star attachment to my armor to reach out and grab the fruit as they became available. That immediately removed the red from our shirts and then started turning them an even brighter green. More tinkering with the tricorder by Jacob resulted in the scene changing again as now there were sharks leaping out of the water and gliding across the deck, only to drop back into the water on the other side. The octopi now had clubs in each tentacle as they now charged the ship in large numbers too.

Fortunately, between my rifle shooting enemies and my variable star grabbing the health power ups, I was able to keep us ahead of the damage being done to us. That bought enough time for Jacob to make a final set of adjustments to the tricorder scans that turned everything – including him – temporarily blocky for a few moments before we were suddenly disgorged into the city in what looked to be reasonably normal space.

Our surroundings now were that of a riverside dock and there was a crowd present cheering our arrival. At a glance, the city didn’t seem to be in as bad a state as the Emir’s, but that could just be a superficial observation for the moment as opposed to a reflection of reality. Or whatever passed for reality in this pocket dimension that was at least partially embedded in a hologame. One kid was loudly complaining though about our arrival.

(Kid) That’s no fair! They used cheat codes. I had to get through all the levels the hard way!

I still found it hard to believe that a society on the Anomaly had the ability to make games considering most of the ones we had encountered thus far hadn’t even managed to produce even basic electronics like radio or motors. It was likely they were using magic to simply produce a simulation environment – like how this city was in one but smaller in scale – that was in some way powered by hydromancy. Might be worth finding such a game console – if that sort of a device actually existed – and see how it worked for comparison’s sake. Not that I thought it a better way to do things than fusion and hypermatter powering electronics, but there was always the potential for interesting insights. I wonder if such things were specific to a particular city and wouldn’t function elsewhere?

The kid was still pouting as we docked.

(Katlyn) Well kid, you’re ability to make it through all the levels without cheat codes is something to boast about! The 100% Completion Speedrun community is a strong and dedicated one!

That at least made him more reflective instead of complaining. Not that I understood the speedrun community much at all. Sure, it was one thing to beat the game in record time, but the point behind those that utilized memory execution exploits to trigger the end credits just after starting a game was lost upon me. It also didn’t help that I was banned from most such competitions anyway given my superhuman speed and reflexes.

(Katlyn) So what is going on in this city?

Most everyone in the crowd had their own spin on things, but a number of key facts quickly emerged as well agreed upon. As what seemed to be going on throughout the region, the city was attacked – although random people on the docks weren’t sure by who – and running the defenses overloaded the Chief Engineer. He tried to shift the city out of phase, but had little practical experience with dimensional magic – so instead of just templating the place off reality, he tried to do the physics – and wound up overloading and defaulting to his video game collection. This proved fairly tolerable. He was apparently in the middle of his palace labyrinth, throwing video game challenges at the therapists trying to get in and sitting on a heap of “treasure chests”. What was hurting the city for the time being was a block on trade; it was killing the economy and the emergency supplies of created food were utterly boring, and so on. Spices were selling really well though.

For the most part it sounded a lot like a city or planet under siege back home underneath its own defensive shields back home. Although I suppose in this case the problem was as much internal as external since turning on the shields back home didn’t usually cause engineers to go insane. Plus back home cities didn’t usually take pot shots at each other, that was usually left for Star Destroyers and the armies to accomplish.

Still I had to wonder how much what Seras, Lecrouss, and Jacob really knew about how hydromancy – and its equivalents in other elements – given that all three figured something could be made to work. Vanatica seemed to be of the opinion that they were at the limits of what Precognition and Probability Analysis could tell them about what would and wouldn’t work and where, but I had my doubts. It was never wise to dismiss the plans of the enemy especially when they didn’t make sense.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session LXIV

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Well, the presumed merger between the two Jacobs did not seem to be going well. Swirls of cold air and arcs of electricity danced through the air around the two of them as whatever process unfolded. As they seemed to coalesce into a single body, ice crystals began to form on their skin. The light around them seemed to be subtly sucked in or he was somehow radiating darkness.

Not really knowing what to do, I focused on healing my injuries from the battle with Lecrouss and Mummified Jacob. At least Katlyn didn’t appear to be worse for wear despite me having seen her flung through multiple walls at hypersonic speeds. My cousin briefly looked me over to verify I wasn’t critically injured before she turned her attention to the merging Jacobs.

(Katlyn) This is acting like an infection that modifies how his body works – trying to convert it to something resembling the “metabolism” of the Space Moss. Warmth, nutrients, and stimulants might help with that. If fictional holos are any sort of a guideline, this is an attempt at possession – complicated by inviting it – so a mnemonic enhancer might work. So might some tricorder fiddling, since we now seem to have a spare at the moment.

(Vanatica) So he’s under attack from an undead spirit version of himself. Any form of positive energy would help. Since its largely mental, perhaps directly applied to the forehead would be best. For the love of the Force, this sort of nonsense happens in fairy tales, we’d be just as well off trying true love’s kiss!

I spent twenty-five obols on a healing effect for Jacob, then stooped down to grab one of the dropped tricorders.

(Vanatica) Jacob’s been big on finding “companionship” everywhere we go, perhaps he had found someone here before we attempted this assault?

(Katlyn) Well, he is married….

Ugh, forgot about the pirate lady. Probably attempted to purge it from my memory just for the absurdity of that trope invocation talent she possessed that forced them to get married via a slip of the tongue. Which meant she in some way possessed a magical specialty in fairy tale physics which was exactly what Jacob needed right now….

As useful as the Anomaly has proven itself to be, I find the ways it twists the rules of logic and reason to be headache inducing.

I turned towards one of the hapless attendants that was attempting to make themselves useful to the victors.

(Vanatica) Go find Kuroko Hatfield. She was last seen at the Infrastructure Department Meeting Room. Bring her here with all speed.

It took a moment to figure out which way to hold the tricorder, once I had that figured out suddenly all the buttons and lights seemed intuitive in how they worked. Which made little sense whatsoever. Perhaps such intuition was an innate part of the tricorder itself that was imparted into whoever used it? Did the reality warping nature of the device preclude simply using an actually intuitive interface instead of relying on whatever this effect was? I barely had time to ponder more on that before the attendant returned with Kuroko far more quickly than I had anticipated.

Kuroko seemed to understand what was “needed” as she rushed forward to kiss Jacob. I restrained myself from voicing doubts about how much “true love” was involved given that their marriage was arranged by an accidental invocation of a trope that neither wanted. Going through the motions of marriage to avoid the backlash for disobeying a trope hardly seemed to constitute anything I would be willing to call love. Perhaps that was the point of the talent – going through the motions and rituals of the various tropes in hopes of making them real. Like a magical cargo cult.

By this point I had gotten the tricorder scanning what was going on with Jacob. That revealed that an entity powered by negative energy, negative emotions, hatred and jealousy of the living, and the memories of countless evil deeds was currently being burned away by a torrent of positive emotional energy – “True Love’s Kiss” = although the negative energy infection was going to take some time to eliminate.

(Kuroko) You big dummy! We keep having to solve things THAT way and we’re going to get sucked into a happily ever after with a dozen beautiful children and no more adventures!

Yeah, definitely going through the motions there. It was kinda sad that even the more traditional Varen Sith families seemed to possess a healthier marriage than these two. At least Varen Sith acknowledged passion as a vital part of a marriage, even in marriages of convenience. I briefly considered what would happen if I announced that I was legally capable of recognizing and dissolving marriages in the Protectorate and how Fairy Tale tropes would respond to that news. The fact that the tricorder seemed capable of scanning such Fairy Tale nonsense had implications I was hesitant to dwell on.

(Jacob) Um, sorry. I kind of had little other choice there. A phaser going into overload might have killed us all, and I thought I could take him. But now I have a scanner log of True Love’s Kiss to send home. Scientific proof of True Love. Is this something I should frame and hang on a wall somehow?

Bleh….

(Katlyn) Cute, if corny. So…. Various levels of disaster all averted then?

I suspected so, but there was substantial cleanup to do even if we left a lot of the work of rebuilding to the locals. On that note I turned to the former guard for Lecrouss.

(Vanatica) Alright, do you know who I am? I mean, beyond any interactions today?

(Guard, somewhat bemusedly) Well, I DIDN’T until now.

(Vanatica) Right, so either living under a rock, or from another timeline then.

That did line up with the implication that Lecrouss killed a version of Father, which obviously hadn’t happened in my timeline (or at least hadn’t since I came to the Anomaly). While that was a bit of an unpleasant thought, I decided to trust that Father wasn’t likely to get himself killed like that. Especially since he had already survived an encounter with Lecrouss before I was even born. Still, it had been quite some time since I had heard any news from back home. While pondering that, I turned to the Emir.

(Vanatica) Alright, did you get it all out of your system? Or do we need to get you to discharge more power?

(Katlyn) Hard to say he’s unconscious. And snoring.

(Jacob) I will scan him! Must know even if it is obvious! Yep, basically he’s been getting used to having himself supercharged, boosted, and on magical stimulants. And it was suddenly pulled. He’s pretty thoroughly crashed. There’s actually still a fair amount of power left in the reserves – but still a ninety-five percent or more reduction of what was running into him. Shall we notify the remaining city engineers so they can basically get him disconnected while the high voltage is still offline?

(Katlyn) Yes, that is probably best.

(Jacob) Alright, the engineers recommended having him out of range of the power system when he wakes up. Apparently this sort of thing gets addictive. Or they said they have insulated rooms. Perhaps we put him in an insulated room and find a way to use a carrier wave on an x-ray or other harmless form of radiation to extract power into a crystal battery. Might be good for something later just have to find the resonant frequency of the energy in his cells and then we can extract it easily.

After the bulk of the cleanup was done, the city council wished to sincerely thank us for our efforts, and made noises about providing a reward if we so desired. I wasn’t entirely sure what to do regarding a reward. It was easy to graciously decline them when you are a member of the richest and most powerful family in galactic history, but right now we didn’t have a lot of access to those resources either. On the other hand, it wasn’t like a lot of what the locals had was of particular value to us given the differences in technologies. Besides, we had already gotten an ample “deposit” of obols for our efforts here anyway.

We did ask for their assistance in locating the Piece of Lindral we knew was in the region or at least help us narrow down where to look. We already had it down to down to a mere two cities, but beyond that we were running on guesses. From what they knew or suspected, they pointed to the city of Ernharite. It was apparently notable for making fairly extensive use of other forms of magic (instead of what was easiest locally). Location was about a thousand kilometers North and a little to the East. Well, it was a place worth investigating if only because it sounded like the place had a substantial information trade with other regions going on.

Meanwhile interrogating Lecrouss’s bodyguard reinforced the notion that if he wasn’t from our timeline, he was from a fairly similar one. He was, however, mostly just a mercenary – and never seemed to pay a lot of attention to Lecrouss’s enemies list after finding out that at least three-quarters of the people on it were either dead or fictional. He spent most of his time on shooing people away; “bad to disturb the crazy Sith”. After all, if Lecrouss couldn’t handle a fight, it’s not like he could do much.

(Katlyn) Was wondering why that monster needed a guard.

(Vanatica) Rather brave and civic minded of him.

I couldn’t help but let a little sarcasm seep into my voice on that. It was obvious he didn’t have a lot of REAL scruples, regardless of what he told himself. Basically a cheap thug. Still, he might have actually been helping a little bit. Although if he’d had the nerve or intelligence to betray Lecrouss, Lecrouss would not have picked him.

(Vanatica) So, I take it there aren’t more Sith allied to Lecrouss about, an army hiding out in the forest, or ready access to a fleet then? Not that I find this likely, but it is worth asking.

(Bodyguard) There was some looney who wanted to learn Sith Necromancy Sorcery from him! As if that ever worked! Guy’d been at it for CENTURIES, and still wasn’t happy with it! She had a bit of a fleet though. Traded him some cloning tanks for lessons. Dunno where she got the things; seemed to just get them ready in a few hours.

At first I figured that was just her having them dropped from orbit, but it occurred to me that this could be an instance of her using Vespene Gas. In that case our killing Lecrouss (even if temporarily) may well have averted a bigger crisis of him coming under the Gamesters’ sway. And using Green as part of the process likely reset any control they might have had over him, not that I suspect there was much that could be done to manipulate someone that badly damaged and obsessively focused. Now, whether he was able to resurrect himself with those clone tanks stashed on the Anomaly or if he ended up back at whatever timeline he came from was an open question.

(Jacob) Oh yay, she got lessons….

(Bodyguard) Not really my business though.

Katlyn then pulled out a datapad with a picture of Seras and showed it to the bodyguard.

(Katlyn) Is this her?

(Bodyguard) That’s the crazy bint all right!

I was mildly surprised at the sudden flash of anger within myself at the insult directed at Seras. It wasn’t because this was a metaphorical commoner insulting a member of the extended family, I’ve dealt with that before. Ah, it was anger directed at the Gamesters and how their manipulations were degrading my alternate sister and thus the family. Just another reminder to myself to make sure to let the Gamesters know just how much of a mistake that choice was.

(Katlyn) Alright, when and where?

(Bodyguard) About six months ago. She got him some more cloning tanks and eventually pointed him towards this weird place about two months back. Something about finding a way to generate magic locally and using it to keep his undead creations going forever. Promised to help him if he found the key they needed.

(Vanatica) Timeline roughly lines up. Still a cold lead though.

(Bodyguard) Dammit, now I’ll have to find another job. Lecrouss will probably be cranky about me running off.

(Katlyn) Eh, if he comes back, I’ll kill him again. Maybe I’ll get the bounty this time!

It felt weird for anyone to be able to make that sort of boast about killing Lecrouss of all people, let alone for someone like my cousin or I to be making. Nonetheless, we had managed to fight him, an evil Jacob, and dealt with the Emir all simultaneously and came out – not just as the survivors – but as the undisputed victors. Once again, it seemed that our time on the Anomaly has proven to be of immense value.

(Katlyn) Alright, what do we know about Ernharite andwhoever is likely using the artifact?

(Vanatica) According to the locals, Ernharite is a well established city, notable for running a magical research program and collecting a considerable archive of techniques from other hexes. They do seem to have some success at staying out of the periodic chain reactions of crazed engineers, but the locals have doubts as to whether putting up with cabals of crazed occultists is actually any better.

(Jacob) Yeah, that is a bit of a side-grade, especially if those cults come up with new and innovative ways of ending the world.

(Vanatica) Their opinion is that importing outside systems is fine – but they invariably have their own downsides that their origin hexes are so used to that they don’t even think to mention them. A bit of “If the Makers had wanted them to use those magic systems, they would be native here” sort of thing.

(Katlyn) A bit short-sighted and lacking in self-awareness there. So what is the easiest means to get to Ernharite? Preferably unnoticed so we don’t get blasted by the maintenance systems?

(Vanatica) I am guessing a slow boat loaded with luxury goods? Those are all over the place and you would have to be really nuts to blast the people who are bringing in the stuff that you want.

(Katlyn) Doable, so what passes for luxury goods around here?

(Vanatica) Usual stuff, fine wines, spices, specialty foods, rare books and such. More unusual goods around here in high demand include imported youth, vigor, and pleasure. All of that is a bit illicit since the extraction is frequently involuntary or risks transferring animalistic qualities. Also things like personal enhancement devices, magical information, and high quality dreamstones. We should be able to scrounge up some of the more conventional stuff without too much of a problem. We don’t deal in the slave trade or the sub-products of that since the Force tends to frown upon such things.

(Jacob) Selling books sounds like the simplest. We can make all types of books really easily and you have to actually read them to know if they are actually special. So I don’t think that is all that hard to fake, and who is going to bother someone hauling a bunch of books. Wait, since your aging process is tied to your memories, would this mean that Green could be used as a youth drug for your people?

(Katlyn) Indeed that is likely feasible for our people. Not that I would recommend forgetting things just for a little more youth.

I had briefly wondered, since our aging seems to be tied to our memories, if extracting youth from us would gain us more experiences or memories in turn. Maybe from alternate versions of ourselves or pulled from the Galactic Mind somehow? Perhaps that was the source of why memories made one age: by pulling in and integrate aspects of others or the Galactic Mind into ourselves we were slowly “contaminating” our Force Spirits and thus losing sync with our bodies? Maybe aging was a side effect of our slow integration with the Galactic Mind and its slow transcendence.

Oh well, time for such thought experiments and how to ethically test them later.

It wasn’t too hard to get our river boat refit and procure a “large” supply of luxury goods. It was odd to have to actually consider budgeting and short term returns on trade deals given that in the past I was willing to sink tens of billions of credits into projects that might not see positive returns for decades. Some of the projects in planning – if they made a return at all might end up taking centuries to see results at all. Still, with any luck, this venture was going to get us a bit more knowledge and power thus improving our relative position on the Anomaly.

All that left was the discussion as to who to bring with us on this voyage. I was hesitant to bring anyone beyond Katlyn and myself from our side of things given that the castle was still a prime target for our enemies to focus on and was an irreplaceable asset for us too. Valith was tempting though, both for his Force abilities and just due to him being an Iron Sith. On the other hand, he – along with Zin – were some of the best defenders we had and thus were the most valuable guarding the castle against our enemies. So probably leave him behind for the time being and maybe have the castle come in to here for support while we continued upriver.

On the plus side of things, despite us being cut off from the Protectorate, all signs were pointing towards us being able to maintain a sizable coalition of allies and friends with resources to keep us functioning as a significant regional force for the foreseeable future. There were still some relatively larger powers at play, but they were suffering from many of the same issues that kept me from flooding this place with several million soldiers. So in all, we might be one of more effective factions in the region. And if Starfleet agrees to send Starfleet reinforcements, that further secure our position against that Sith and Rakata army long enough for us to regain contact with the Protectorate.

I was just worried that reinforcements from the Protectorate were already underway and likely to fall into whatever trap befell our original support fleet.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session LXIII

Almost immediately, before even I had a chance to react, the Mummified Jacob pulled out a phaser and fired a wide area blast at Jacob, Vanatica, and I. Fortunately, he must of misjudged the angle or something as the blast narrowly missed Vanatica and I, but our Jacob took the full brunt of it. Luckily it appeared that Jacob was still standing, even if his uniform was smoking ominously.

Not waiting for anyone else, I pulled out several vials of trap-spider venom and a bottle of Green and threw the whole collection at Lecrouss. I was hoping that an injector trap might materialize to dose Lecrouss with the Green (hell, I’d take carbonite even), but my heart sank as Lecrouss telekinetically deflected the bottle of Green off to the side. As the vials of venom impacted the ground, a carbonite trap did indeed materialize around him, but he easily dodged that too. At least the act of him dodging that meant he then stepped into the numerous large animal traps that were now strewn about the floor.

(Lecrouss) Ow! What the… this place is just FULL of weird weapons isn’t it?

Then came the upraised hand gesture indicative of Force telekinesis and despite being prepared for it, I was instantly overwhelmed by the sheer anger and darkness of it as I was flung backwards at speeds several times the speed of sound. Only by manipulating my speed monotalent was I able to slow my relative velocity to only many hundreds of kilometers per hour instead before I collided with the first wall. I even managed to land feet first on the wall at those speeds, but the wall wasn’t designed to take that kind of stress as it shattered instantly and I continued flying through another two walls.

I finally skidded to a complete halt after my feet dug a pair of trenches in the marble floor of the museum/palace. Amusingly, this meant I had skidded past the pair of guards from earlier who were now fleeing with all due haste. Their horror at seeing me being flung past them at speeds faster than they could react probably mirrored my own when I realized that this was Lecrouss we were facing (or at least an alternate timeline version of him).

Amazingly, I was unhurt by it all. THELOS was bringing up warning from the armor regarding stress limits and such, but it looked like things held – especially in combination with my monotalent.

From back in the conference room I heard my cousin speak loudly with authority.

(Vanatica) I am Vanatica Nyla Soung, Firstborn of the Second Sith Protectorate, and the history of my family is indelibly intertwined with the atrocities of Lecrouss. He has committed countless mass slaughters of innocents and especially children in his mad pursuit of forcibly turning everyone into undead in a doomed quest to see his family again. His mad quest to resurrect his family that has been dead for centuries and his lust of the power to try to make this happen have corroded his mind into the monster you see before you. This is the fate of those who draw upon power too deeply and beyond their means to control. Look upon my past and know the truth of my words!

While it was a fine speech for a holo and all, I wasn’t entirely clear what Vanatica thought she was doing beyond posturing or doing something weird with magic. Not that I had much clue what would be an effective use of my time in this scenario anyways. Maybe with a horde of soldiers and me pulling on my monotalent and the Vailo Arts to their fullest I could stand a chance of breaking through the precognitive warnings and land a solid hit, but all I had was Vanatica, Kuroko, and our Jacob – and they had their hands full not dying immediately. Even using a desperation tactic like the Green right from the start failed to punch through the brick wall of precognition. The only ones with a chance of that sort of thing were other Force Sensitives or those immune to precognition like the Codifiers.

Wait a minute…

It was then that I felt the presence of the obols in my pockets and realized the needed course of action. If I wasn’t immune to precognition, then perhaps it was time I made myself immune. I fished out a handful of obols from my pockets and focused on my desire to be immune to precognition. Instantly, twenty-five of the obols evaporated and I felt magical energies swirl around me in what I presumed was the spell activating like I wanted.

SNAP

(Lecrouss) Oh for the sake of the Force… who even MAKES large-animal jaw traps with Vibro-blades? And HOW?

Now I had the image that the Deity of Traps was out to make a point against Lecrouss out of spite and had to admit we needed all the help we could get. Explosions and gusts of fire continued to pour out of the conference room as I quickly dashed off down one of the side hallways. My hope was that Lecrouss, not being able to precognitively sense me, would presume I was dead. If so, then our best chance was for me to circle around behind him and use that position to launch an all-or-nothing attack on him that brought him down.

Unfortunately, this museum wasn’t designed with ease of navigation in mind so much as funneling visitors from room to room through a variety of exhibits. As such, what should have been a simple couple of turns ended up turning into more than a dozen as I attempted to circle around to the back of the conference room. It didn’t help matters that I was trying to avoid moving too fast and thus tipping off my continued be alive to Lecrouss. Nor did the sudden burst of vegetation that literally came out of nowhere to replace the hallway with a dense jungle.

As I came to a skidding stop, I noticed that the vegetation seemed to roughly conform to the dimensions of the hallway from earlier. Whether that was a coincidence or evidence that only the hallway had been changed (and not me teleporting) was unclear.

(THELOS) Lady Katlyn, I can verify that the dense mass of greenery before you does indeed show up on my sensors, but not on infrared or ultraviolet. Those inputs still show the hallway from earlier. Would you like me to switch to those inputs for now?

(Katlyn) Yes, do it.

It had to be a magical illusion if it was showing up on computer sensors as Force Illusions were purely mental. At a guess, my cousin was using obols for distraction and confusion. How much that would affect a precognitive was an open question, but I had to guess that every little bit helped. Plus – from all the reports – Lecrouss was addled enough mentally that such things might take longer for him to compensate for given that he apparently thought fictional characters were real people. Although given the nature of the wider multiverse we’ve discovered, that may not be as insane as it originally sounded. I mean, we always suspected there were timelines were Anakin Skywalker, Revan, and Tenebrae/Vitiate/Valkorion existed, but we never considered that in relation to something as blatant as a cartoon character before. Maybe Lecrouss’s precognition was picking up on that level of reality? Kinda of like how true magic made his goals of necromancy much more plausible?

Best to ponder such things later.

More explosions rocked the palace/museum and it was becoming clear that much of the building was crumbling structurally. At least explosions were a decent sign that the battle was still ongoing and Jacob and Vanatica weren’t already dead. I finally rounded another corner to come to a doorway to far side of the conference room. I was about to peer through the door when it was smashed open by a small horde of badger people wearing red robes and cooking pot helmets being flung out of the conference room at great speed. Several of them vanished in a puff of smoke upon hitting the opposing wall, but a few still got back up and charged in.

(Badgers) Faugh-a-Ballagh!

(Lecrouss) What, you silly things LIVED?

There was another great gust of flame that burst from the conference as I tried to peer in that forced me back behind the cover of the wall.

(Mummified Jacob) Fire! My only weakness…. How did you know?

(Emir, muttering) You’re a dried-up mummified corpse wrapped in old bandages soaked in wax and pitch! What do you think, I’m an IDIOT?

(Both Jacobs) But he didn’t consult a science officer!

(Mummified Jacob) Treachery!

(Lecrouss) Be empowered my ally!

(Emir) Waste of Time! Burn!

(Mummified Jacob) AAARGH! STOP SETTING ME ON FIRE! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT I’M A HISTORICAL ARTIFACT?!

Well, it sounded like Vanatica managed to convert the Emir to our side for the time being at least. That had to be evening the odds a bit. Finally getting a glance at the room confirmed this. It also appeared that Lecrouss was lightly injured and Mummified Jacob was moderately injured. At a very wild guess, we were winning by attrition at two to one odds, but that was not a sure thing by any means.

I pulled out another bottle of Green and used some obols to transform the bottle into an injector. I followed that up with more obols to help ensure my aim for this next attack was true. Then with a sprint from a standing run that could crack concrete, I rushed into the melee and rammed into Lecrouss injector first. He had no chance to react as my momentum took us both airborne for a brief moment before we collided with the floor and went sliding through a hole in one of the walls for many meters. I had my weight on top of him trying to help hold him down, but held no illusions that this would hinder him in the slightest.

As we skidded to a stop, I kept expecting Lecrouss to roll over and telekinetically blast me into orbit, but he remained face first on the floor absolutely limp. Rolling him over, I saw his face locked in an expression of absolute shock, but the dead look in my eyes was one I had seen many times indicating that while the body was alive, the Force spirit was quite departed. Whether this meant Lecrouss was permanently dead or would simply reappear in another clone body was not clear, but at least he was out of the fight for now.

Heh, I guess this puts me one up on Uncle Kira. He only managed to keep Lecrouss occupied for forty-eight hours, whereas I just managed to “kill” Lecrouss. Wonder if the rest of the family would believe me or not.

Just then an unmistakable wave of Dark Side energy washed over the area, threw me against the ceiling quite forcefully, and stirred up numerous unpleasant memories. It also shattered many small and fragile objects in the museum that had managed to survive all the other explosions. If experience was anything to go by, we could likely expect temporary insanities in the vulnerable, lots of minor injuries, and minor property damage for many kilometers away.

Extricating myself from the body and what debris had fallen on me, I saw that the battle with Mummified Jacob was still ongoing as Vanatica blasted him with a great gust of flame that seemingly came from her fingertips. The Emir followed up with his own attack that set Mummified Jacob even more on fire. Underneath the flames I thought I saw Mummified Jacob fidgeting with his phaser towards some unknown purpose.

(Jacob) He is setting his phaser to overload and explode the area.

Just how big of an explosion would THAT be? I had no good benchmarks of the energy potential of a phaser to judge such a blast with. It might be hand grenade sized, thermal detonator sized, or space-field explosive sized for all I knew. Would it even be an explosion in the normal sense? All I could do was grab my cousin and make a made dash to put as much stonework between us and the explosion as possible. Before I had a chance to do that though, Jacob once again did something weird.

(Jacob) About to try to do something rash. Since there are two versions of me here, it might be possible to use our shared soul to help my counterpart overpower the evil within him. If I use my tricorder to open a mental connection between us, it should allow me to link us together and struggle for dominance. I shall need to use crystal obols for a boost and try to lock him in mental combat by using my phaser to overcharge the scanning beam.

At which point my cousin muttered something profoundly offensive in Huttese.

(Vanatica) Do these people just MAKE UP their ENTIRE UNIVERSE as they go along and CALL IT ENGINEERING?!

As the two Jacobs were locked in…. combat, I snatched the phaser from the mummified one’s hands. The Emir then followed that up by encasing him in solid stone before focusing his power on ensuring the building didn’t collapse in on top of us. While the battle between the Jacobs was still ongoing, it looked like we had effectively won this mess and had managed to do it without major injuries or fatalities. Plus we had managed to drain the Emir of most of his power and thus return him to a state resembling normal. Not bad considering we got completely blindsided by the presence of an evil Jacob and Lecrouss.

The trade conference on Alderaan had been long and dull. Mother and Aunt Valerie had been able to keep busy dealing with the ongoing discussions and negotiations regarding the construction of a new gate in orbit around Ascensa, but I mainly was sitting and trying not to look bored as they debated esoteric bits of policy regarding gate tolls and what exactly was meant by the term “favored trade partner”. I was glad for the recess which allowed us to relax outside. It was cool out due to the mountain air and mist generated by the spectacular waterfall that fell through the center of the diplomatic retreat like an immense fountain.

Caterers were serving snacks and drinks to the assembled envoys, leaders, and aides. The various Alderaan soldiers and members of the JLA standing guard were obvious enough if you knew what to look for, but were politely ignored by rest of the guests. A number of members of the Republic Senate had lodged a former protest of the conference, but the Senator of Alderaan was the primary official here on Alderaan’s side of things. Aunt Valerie went off to discuss things in private with the security officials, and Vanatica had been waylaid into providing an explanation of gate transit rates to the various corporate envoys. Mother in the meantime was meeting up with her old boss and the current Ambassador for Alderaan. Not having much else to do at the moment, I grabbed a plate plate of thinly sliced strawberries, various cubed cheeses, and a type of cracker I couldn’t identify and went to join her in the conversation. Or at least standing around while she discussed things.

The Ambassador noted my approach and held out his arm towards me in greeting. I gave the appropriate bow of respect in turn.

(Ambassador) Ah, Dorothy, I don’t think in all of this time I’ve ever met your daughter Katlyn. In fact, I think I’ve only met your son Jax and he was five at the time.

(Dorothy) My apologies, but we’ve been careful to limit the exposure the children got to those outside the family until they were old enough to understand what is going on. About the only time they have come to Alderaan has been to visit their grandparents.

(Ambassador) Oh I understand. I really should make more of an effort to go to Ascensa for these meetings than ask that you come here.

(Dorothy) It’s no trouble at all….

(Ambassador) Nonsense! I make the trip to Coruscant every month, so I can handle a trip every so often across the system to visit my former intern! Perhaps you can even show me the family when I visit. How is Nichel doing these days?

(Dorothy) Oh, he is doing well. Right now he is leading a project to construct a large coral reef system on Ascensa to help with storm surge issues on the western continent. He’s even been incorporating some of the grass painting techniques of Alderaan into the kelp forests they’re planting around it.

This small talk between old friends continued for several minutes as Mother and the Ambassador traded stories back and forth. I was about to wander off to refill my food and drink when I saw Mother get a confused look on her face before she tackled the Ambassador to the ground via hypertime. The ground the Ambassador had been standing on now had an immense axe buried into the stone floor to a depth of at least twenty centimeters. Holding the handle of the axe was Aunt Valerie.

Something about her was off, and not just the fact that she had just attempted to kill the Ambassador to Alderaan. There was a look in her eyes that was cold, like she had done this sort of thing so often it was like driving a car to her.

Already the crowd was scattering in a semi-panic as the soldiers and JLA agents rushed forward to surround her. Mother was back on her feet and was interposing herself between Aunt Valerie and the Ambassador. Vanatica came running forward too with her face contorted into one of pure confusion.

(Vanatica) Mother!

(Dorothy) Valerie?! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!

(Valerie) Out of the way and I’ll let you live. I am only here for the ambassador’s head.

Something about that made Mother’s eyes flash in recognition of something and her expression turned to one of fear, but she stood her ground. Vanatica ran forward in-between them and held her arms out to separate them.

(Vanatica) Mother, explain NOW!

(Dorothy) Vanatica! No, get away from her!

With that Aunt Valerie smashed a fist through the shields around Vanatica faster than my eyes could register as she grabbed Vanatica by the neck. Valerie’s eyes were now showing a look of pure disgust as she lifted Vanatica off her feet and held her face to face.

(Valerie) I recommend you never call me that again, bastard child! Stay out of my way, or I’ll kill you as well!

Suddenly Mother was standing beside Valerie with her blaster already drawn and aimed at Valerie’s temple.

(Dorothy) Put my niece down now you crazy bitch. Or do you wish to test my reaction time?

Suddenly it was clear that this wasn’t Aunt Valerie, but most likely this was that assassin version of her that we’d heard stories about. The one that had been bouncing around timelines killing Kiras and had nearly killed Uncle Kira as well. She was more than a match for a hybrid, and consequently that meant she was more powerful than most everyone here combined except perhaps Aunt Valerie herself. And Aunt Valerie was no where to be seen.

By this point I was fully tapped into my monotalent to try to maximize my own reaction time. Mother was engulfed in the flames of hypertime as well. The Alderaan soldiers had weapons drawn, while the JLA agents were pulling out lightsabers and blasters too. I readied my own lightsaber and shield for the fight.

In an instant, Vanatica was thrown towards me at high speed as Valerie tossed her aside and moved to grab Mother’s blaster. I heard dozens of shots being fired as I caught Vanatica. Placing her on the ground outside the perimeter of soldiers, I leapt into the attack against Valerie. Already she was dancing around blaster shots like it was all ballet while using martial arts to knock out or incapacitate combatants like so many droids. Mother was already nursing a broken arm while still maintaining fire at this killing machine, but it was easy to see how the battle was going to go. I tried to run past and grab Valerie’s arm so that I could use my momentum to throw her over the railing and into the falls, but found her as difficult to shove as a death star. Instead the throw was turned against me as I was flipped head over heels several times before hitting the marble floor. Dazed and slightly concussed, I rolled over to try to get back on my feet only to see that huge axe of hers mere centimeters from my face.

At first I thought the fact the axe was actually in my face a demonstration of how easily this alternate version of my Aunt could dispatch me, but then I saw the straining in her arms and face that indicated something else was going on. It was then I noticed my Aunt standing behind her engulfed in the flames of hypertime and holding out her hand in a telekinetic gesture. She spoke with a voice modulated to compensate for the distortions of hypertime.

(Aunt Valerie) I was wondering why I was experiencing headaches, and now I guess I know the reason for that. I do not appreciate it when people threaten my family, or call my daughter a bastard, and just because you happen to carry my face will not protect you from me.

The alternate Valerie continued to strain to move the axe, this time to swing at my Aunt.

(Aunt Valerie) Don’t bother, even your immense strength isn’t going to produce enough power to move that axe against my will. Now, either leave now, or I will humiliate you in all the ways I know you despise.

(Valerie) I’d like to see you try….

With that she let go of the axe and spun around in a round-house kick to my Aunt’s head, but before she could complete that spin a massive chunk of masonry collided with her and slammed into cliff face with enough force to shake the entire retreat. Glancing back at my Aunt, I saw she had raised her other arm in a telekinetic gesture indicating she had thrown that masonry. She also had a look in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before: one of cold fury.

Moments later the block of masonry shifted and then exploded in a hail of shrapnel that could have injured everyone here had not Aunt Valerie once again used her telekinetic abilities to simply catch them all in mid-air. By this point she dropped the hypertime technique and was presumably interfacing in normal time.

(Aunt Valerie) Pathetic, all that power and you squander it by transforming it all into physical strength? You’ll learn to regret that, I assure you.

With that the doppleganger charged with insane speed at my Aunt, only to pass right through her and collide with the railing. Before she had a chance to get turned around, a kick from my Aunt smashed her face into the stone railing and shattered it into a million pieces.

(Aunt Valerie) Even more hilarious is the fact that all of that Force shielding that makes you so hard to sense also means I have little to fear from the resonance between us beyond a minor headache. Even direct physical contact isn’t an issue so long as I have a glove on or something similar. Let’s have a demonstration, shall we?

There was a blur of motion between the two of them faster than I could see, but more sections of the floor and railing were smashed into tiny fragments in a blur of red and white. When I could track them again I saw that the alternate was now streaming blood down her face and had a look of absolute red hot rage in her expression. She had to be deep in the throws of the Dark Side by this point. Not that it was doing her a lot of good given how she was now in an intense maelstrom of shrapnel whirling about her with hurricane force winds. And that shrapnel was slowly cutting her to shreds and lifting her off the ground.

Mother came up beside my Aunt while nursing her broken arm.

(Dorothy) Very impressive Val, but that isn’t going to hold her for long.

(Aunt Valerie) It’s a distraction as I exchange the air out of the center of the whirlwind for pure nitrogen, by the time she realizes what is happening, she’ll be unconscious.

(Dorothy) Any idea how she got out of containment? I thought Kira had her locked in ice from his battle fifteen years ago.

(Aunt Valerie) Not sure, but I suspect Nere is up to something and she would have known where to retrieve my alternate from. At a guess, she was trying to pin the assassination of the Alderaan Ambassador on me, hence why I was “called away” for a few minutes there. Probably some mis-guided attempt at a Pro-Republic negotiations coup.

By this point the alternate of my Aunt collapsed to the ground unconscious and my Aunt ceased the whirlwind of shrapnel. Shards of marble chips fell to the ground like rain for several seconds. My Aunt telekinetically flung a cable at the unconscious body that then wrapped itself around her and finally gave an audible click indicating a stasis field was now in effect.

(Dorothy) Isn’t Alys a hybrid like you and Kira though? Shouldn’t we be worried about some multi-layered scheme to all of this?

(Aunt Valerie) Nere is a manager at her core, not a strategist. She may be acting on guidance from her abilities, but she isn’t developing complicated “she wins even when she loses” gambits. That has always been Kira’s strength. She may be sensing that it is beneficial to launch this assassination attempt and even be clever enough to use my alternate as the assassin, but she isn’t going to be wondering why doing so is advantageous and how to prepare for the fallout of all the different ways it can go down. That relies on the realization that the Force can be treacherous in its insights and Jedi aren’t particularly adept at teaching you that.

(Dorothy) So what happens with our captive here? Put her back in containment?

(Aunt Valerie) No, that just leaves open the possibility that someone else frees her or she gets loose some millennia from now when no one knows who she is or how to deal with her. We’re going to have to come up with a more permanent solution.

(Dorothy) You’re actually advocating killing your alternate? That is cold.

(Aunt Valerie) While I am infuriated that she called my firstborn a bastard and for what she did to my husband fifteen years ago, I think we might be able to find a less drastic solution than that.

I was left to wonder what exactly my Aunt meant by that as she clearly had something in mind. The negotiations were suspended for a few days while cleanup and repairs were completed. Meanwhile the markets were roiled by the news of the assassination attempt and how an alternate of one of the Praetors was implicated in the attack. Later investigations revealed that someone made out like a bandit buying and selling various stocks on both worlds via anonymous accounts. Whether this was that Nere person my Mother and Aunt had mentioned wasn’t clear.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session LXII

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It was looking like my cousin was just about to talk herself into intervening in the current mess in this city before we departed further into Leros. While I was all for helping out where we could, I had to admit a certain amount of trepidation regarding facing someone with the magical power of an entire city. On the other hand, most Sith and Faded couldn’t be weakened almost entirely if you just blew up a few canals and dams. And we definitely had the means of generating lots of explosions.

At least these madmen didn’t have the millennia of holos to fall back on when it came to running a semi-competent dictatorship. Well, maybe semi-competent was a bit too generous, but at least most Sith with any delusions of holding onto power for more than a few weeks had enough sense to try to set up a spy network hunting for dissidents. Not that most such dissidents had a lot of a chance against precognitives/probability-analysts, but they did frequently serve as fodder for public executions and outlets for proving how “evil” one was.

Sadly for the dear Emir, he wasn’t running such an operation and he appeared to lack the necessary abilities to adequately compensate for such issues. It didn’t take much questioning of the locals to get them to point out the location of the resistance movement. They weren’t even trying to hide who was in it or where they were meeting. Normally I would argue that meant the resistance movement was highly ineffectual, deeply unpopular, and not worth bothering with, but this just appeared to be sheer incompetence on the part of the Emir.

In all, it looked like the resistance – such as it was – included the public works department, the police, and most of the government beyond the Emir. And it appeared that many of the department heads were gathering at the planning office. Heading there, we found them currently talking over a map-table displaying the canal layout and a lot of weird arcane diagrams and such on the walls. From what I was able to hear, they were discussing how to divert power back to city services, which services were the most vital, and ways to distract the Emir while this all was being done.

Vanatica – true to form – immediately displayed the talent that got her in trouble with the Senate Guard as she strode right into the meeting and started barking orders as if she was in charge.

(Vanatica) Right! Who is coordinating with the police regarding evacuating people from areas where service will need to be cut off or are in danger from the Emir? Have you identified which feeds are channeling to the Emir himself? What about a map of the surrounding area where we can potentially divert or block the flow of water temporarily while we deal with the Emir?

This was where proper training would immediately cause someone to question who she was and why she thought she was allowed to give orders – as the Senate Guard quickly started doing after that incident with Vanatica and the Supreme Chancellor’s Honor Guard. Unfortunately, or fortunately in our case, they didn’t question her.

(Engineer) Well, we’ve still got small amounts of power going to the city police – mostly from secondary systems. Perisua is handling liaisons with the police and trying to rebuild some reserve power. The Emir is tapped into the primary channels – the ones which normally feed citywide services like the public transport, water-purification, sewage, trash removal, and so on. And the map scale can be enlarged or reduced to show a larger area easily enough.

(Katlyn) Would it be possible to build a secondary feed to city services and shunt the water going to the current feed to that? How big a system would we need?

(Engineer) In part. We’ve been quietly tapping power from the generator canals, and feeding water into local backup systems. The problem is that taking too much power too fast will be easily noticeable.

(Katlyn) Jacob, you think we can build an alternate feed using your experiments with air?

(Jacob) Hmm, yes, we might be able to, but it might be simpler with water. Air is just easir to move so mobile things have an advantage.

(Engineer) Basically the problem is that Electro has plugged himself straight into the city generators and is sucking up 95% of the power! We’re attempting to swipe it back and hoping that he is too drunk on the rest to notice.

(Vanatica) What you do is set up a coordinated shutdown of the feed to the Emir. Once he is cut off from power, you then force him to spend energy he has stored until he either runs out or becomes killable. This is the purpose of explosives, dumping logs and rocks into the river, and otherwise causing temporary – but fixable – damage to the system. You then plan on how to keep things running while you get the repairs done after the Emir is out of the way.

It was the obvious strategy, and one I would figure the locals were already trying so it didn’t need to be said. However the aghast looks she got from everyone quickly made me realize that I had made some sort of critical assumption. It took a bit of back and forth to get the basic issue – they had no independent power sources beyond muscles. A bit like a city where everything drew power from a central plant. It was easy, convenient, cheap, and rather vulnerable – although admittedly hundreds of square kilometers of canals is less vulnerable than a central system.

Although to be fair, even in such cities back home, people had access to power cells, portable generators, independent vehicles, even power connections to other cities. And worlds like Alderaan took things to ridiculous levels as many critical systems would have multiple redundant power reserves sufficient to keep things running even as the planet was being blown apart by a Starbreaker. Still, it just seemed incredibly short-sighted that there wasn’t some sort of backup plan when this sort of thing apparently happened every few centuries.

Fortunately, we had an ample supply of Obols, explosives, technology, magic, some alchemical concoctions, Jacob, and that all important ingredient: vision. Vanatica and Jacob started pouring over maps of the city as they discussed explosives, power flows, and flood plains. I spent my time working with the police to work on organizing the evacuation of the most at-risk population and trying to work out means of attack on the Emir.

Ideally, we would be forcing him to waste reserve power on non-existent targets after we cut off the main power feed, but it was possible (even likely) that we might have to present ourselves as a target to him and force him on the defensive. He was still defending against occasional incoming attacks from other cities, but relying on those was unpredictable at best and dangerous at worst. Getting him to waste power on attempting to restore the canals was an option too, but it ran against the problem of potentially restoring his power and rendering the depletion of the reserve moot.

Quickly it sounded like the plan was coalescing around the proposal to run a series of coordinated, timed detonations of the canals at strategic locations to force the Emir to waste powers on repeated attempts at repairs while we confronted him at his “palace”. From there the plan was to try to either get him to waste even more power, or distract him from efforts by the engineers to regain control of the system in the chaos. Jacob was also rigging up a temporary backup system based on his experiments with the air element and including hamsters running around the tubing.

(Katlyn) This isn’t going to harm the hamsters, right?

(Jacob) Well, they will be being swerved around pretty quickly. We might be able to put them in some hamster balls and give them little bungees that cushion the bounces. Not sure if that would make it safe, but it would be safer. It will be glorious!

(Katlyn) I am not sure that is the word for this…

It wasn’t long before the machinery whirred to life, as a constant stream of hamster balls from the ball-launcher began to circulate in this insane habit-rail fusion to magic generator coils. Jacob was cackling maniacally, for no reason that was understood by us. There were some adjustments – something about “frequency” being different from what the locals were used to working with, but apparently this made it hard to spot.

Meanwhile my cousin was rigging up some underwater drones with explosives to blow up dams and dykes at critical positions along the canal network. Once a sufficient number of those were prepared, it was a simple matter to disperse those into the water with directions on where to go, how to identify that they were in the correct locations, and then a basic timer set to trigger the explosives. The drones were fairly intelligent for machines, but not anywhere near droid or sapient levels though. That made viewing them as disposable a bit more palatable at least. Well that, and the complete lack of any personality, emotional simulation, and ability to (somewhat) adapt to new situations like true droids could.

With preparations made, Vanatica, Jacob, Kuroko, and I made our way to the palace to confront the Emir. Well, the “palace” was more civic museum rather hastily and fairly superficially converted into a palace. As such, security was built more around protecting various exhibits and preventing entry without paying a small ticket fee as opposed to repelling an attempt on the life of the Emir.

Unfortunately, Aunt Valerie purposefully neglected teaching any of us (except my brother Jax) the finer points of infiltration and assassination despite being perhaps the most famous assassin in galactic history. I had to believe she was likely to be able to not only get in undetected, but probably even get right into the presence of the Emir without being noticed. As it was, we weren’t up to doing more than simply finding a less guarded entrance and forcing our way in while hoping we weren’t tripping any subtle alarm systems Jacob and Vanatica couldn’t find.

I was attempting to enter through a partially open window when my foot stepped in a soapy puddle left by the cleaning staff. That sent me skidding down the hallway in a completely uncontrolled slide. I instinctively tapped into my speed monotalent in an attempt to either gain my balance or at least control my slide. Unfortunately, this failed to accomplish anything beyond making my inevitable crash that much more spectacular as I collided with numerous metal sculptures apparently of a local style that used very minor levitation charms to support metallics bits in a slowly-mobile dance that took them through various forms, poses, and patterns – thus allowing one to observe a sculpture of a famous leader of some sort fighting his final battle, speaking to his lieutenants, and so on. Sadly, my collision disrupted all of this and metal bits went loudly crashing all over the place.

By the time I extricated myself from the mess, I saw my cousin looming over me with one of her signature glares.

(Katlyn) Oh please, like you haven’t had some colossal screwups on a mission?

She didn’t reply, but the way she averted her eyes said everything. Unfortunately, a pair of guards rounded the hallway in a hurry to locate the source of the racket and thus found us. They looked to be middle-aged museum security guards with rather hasty vest and name-tag changes that now said “Palace Guards”.

(Katlyn) Will you believe me when I say this was an accident?

(Guard) Oh GEEZE! You know that the mu- er, Palace – is closed! What a mess! It will take DAYS to put these back together! Do you know hard the diagrams for these are to read?!

(Katlyn) I can clean this up I swear!

(Guard) Hey! You aren’t from around here!

(Katlyn) And just because I am not from around here doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to view the exhibits!

(Guard) You had better clean this up young woman! A good thing the Emir is in conference! Or he might do something nasty!

(Second Guard) And those people are unpleasant anyway! Seriously, who wears so much metallic black? It is positively tacky!

At first I thought he was referring to the designer (well, I was the designer) long coat.

(Katlyn) TACKY?! I designed this myself I will have you know!

(Second Guard) Not you! I would NEVER comment on what a WOMAN was wearing! That’s likely to get you the couch for a week if you say something nice or screamed at if you say something bad!

(Katlyn) Well, as long as we’re clear on that part.

(Guard) Unless it’s your wife, in which case you get screamed at if you don’t say something nice even if it IS tacky! Oh yes! As intruders you are under arrest! Er… you WILL come along quietly won’t you?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the others trying to use the momentary distraction to sneak around the guards while they were focused on me. I made a token effort to clean up the mess I created in hopes of keeping the guards’ attention.

The guards said that the Emir was currently meeting someone described unpleasant wearing significant amounts of black. While I had no evidence to support it, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I worried that they may have been referring to a “proper” Sith. Vanatica and I tended to refer to ourselves as Sith – or at least Sith-trained – but the term was typically presumed to mean those with the requisite Force Sensitivity (no matter how much the Varen were trying to change the definition to mean only Varen Sith). Now, Vanatica and I were trained in the Vailo Arts and thus how to combat Sith and Faded, but that only went so far. Against someone with true power, such things frequently came up short. I had my monotalent to fall back on, but Vanatica didn’t.

Perhaps we might find out how much of an equalizer our new talents actually were…

By this point the others had successfully gotten past the guards, leaving me to contend with them. Given that they were mere museum guards until recently, I figured a quick and flashy demonstration would be sufficient to spook them. As such, I pulled out my lightsaber and sliced a marble pedestal in half with a quick swipe of the blade. I then twirled the blade menacingly before pointing it at the pair of guards.

(Katlyn) I am going to highly recommend that you depart the premises at high speeds before the fireworks start.

They didn’t question it and ran for what I presumed was the exit. Following in behind the others, it appeared that the remaining “guards” were staying well away from the conference. Not that they seemed to be particularly enthused about being palace guards to begin with. By the time I had caught up with the others, I found them standing outside the conference room listening in through the door. I followed suit.

The voice was rather congenial, but it felt falsely so. There was a coldness about it, and it seemed less like it was negotiating, and more like it was stating what it wished and felt would inevitably occur. Was this Arkad? No, Arkad was more emotional in presentation and how he placed emphasis in his wording. This… felt almost dead, like something that had lost almost all capacity for human emotion and still maintaining some semblance of life through pure obsession. Something about this voice sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Whoever this was, it was speaking Galactic Standard or English.

(Voice) So, a three-dimensional flow pattern can be more efficient than a two-dimensional one, but you have little experience in such? What would you say to a layout of up to five by five kilometers, in three dimensions, and up to half a kilometer thick? I can do without most of the crew quarters.

(Second Voice) That would be more than sufficient if you can indeed supply a living substate to work with and keep the flow rate high, although tuning the output as you wish will render it useless for most purposes!

Now why hadn’t I considered the use of Ambrosia as a working fluid for hydromancy? Had to be careful with the stuff, but it might be near ideal for that purpose. Meanwhile I had to figure the second voice belonged to the Emir based on dialogue. A few hand gestures to Vanatica verified that she thought it was prudent to listen in on whatever was being discussed. If I had to guess, it sounded like our mysterious Sith was hoping to use a large star destroyer or small super star destroyer as a mobile hydromancy power source.

Which didn’t make a lot of sense. Hydromancy couldn’t possibly work in our cluster of universes. Someone in the millions of years of galactic history would have stumbled upon it by now unless it was Censor forbidden, but nothing we knew suggested that such a thing was likely. So how did our mysterious Sith expect to make something blatantly magical work without the ability to create a reality bubble like around Stormkanal or forcibly linking the structure to the relevant portions of the multiverse via elaborate artistic expressions like I thought possible? Maybe this Sith doesn’t realize the nature of the problem? Perhaps some variation of how Seras was performing Sith Sorcery?

At this point an indicator appeared in my field of vision showing that the first of the explosions would be going off now.

(Second Voice) Wait. Something is… interrupting. I must repair the interruption!

At which point a third voice came in that also felt familiar and yet incredibly dry and gravelly, like it was coming from a body that hadn’t seen moisture in centuries.

(Third Voice) Simple chemical explosives? Do your people dare to rebel?

(First Voice) They can easily be rendered incapable of such behavior!

Vanatica gave the signal to storm the door. As we burst in, I saw five people – one Sith in light armor, albeit with an “expressive” faceplate, one local guard (trying to remain unnoticed), one Sith soldier (also trying to stay out of the way), one fellow wrapped up in bandages and looked practically mummified, and finally at the head of the table there was a rather heavy set man in clothing that was trying way too hard to look ostentatious and was only managing to appear gaudy.

The Sith looked at Vanatica.

(Sith) Kira? No… offspring. He was a bother! Where’s that troublesome cat then?

(Katlyn) Oh Uncle Kira had offspring alright! He and Aunt Valerie didn’t seem to have issues on that front!

Then the Sith stood up and I got a good look at his face. Instantly all sense of bravado I had evaporated and turned to pure fear as I recognized this as Lecrouss. He was one of those truly monstrous Sith in both disposition and power as evidenced by the fact that even Uncle Kira and Aunt Valerie together – two of the most powerful hybrids in the Galaxy – feared facing him. Lecrouss was also the one who came the closest to killing Uncle Kira – except Aunt Valerie. Most plans for dealing with him usually relied on pointing Uncle Chan at him. There was a very high probability that Vanatica and I were about to be killed unless we did something utterly desperate.

Making matters worse, it appeared that the mummified individual was a version of Jacob and this one had a beard under all of those bandages. If the usual rules of evil and insane individuals being more powerful and dangerous than their more sane counterparts, that left us facing three insane and overpowered individuals (I had a hard time believing the guards would step in) with Vanatica, Jacob, Kuroko, and myself to oppose them.

Well, Keldav family motto: it isn’t crazy when you’re desperate…

Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session LXI

Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

Well, I can’t say that entering a regional war zone was much of a new experience. Doing so in a region where the combatants were canal maintenance technicians using the power of flowing water to shoot at each other was a new one though. The fact that using so much power tended to damage the minds of those wielding it was far too familiar at least. Right now the plan was to use a boat to move inland, at insofar as ‘land’ meant anything in this hex as everything seem to be marshes, swamps, and river deltas with the occasional hills that might be better classified as islands in an incredibly shallow lake. Where the locals got enough stone to build canals with was not entirely clear. Perhaps most of their building supplies came from other hexes. If so, all available boats looked to be loading up with refugees and supplies and get out of the region as quickly as possible. So procuring a boat might be difficult.

(Jacob) I wonder if the hydromancy works for other elements and water is just the most convenient and controllable.

(Katlyn) Wouldn’t that make a fusion reactor the most powerful fire source then?

(Jacob) Perhaps channel plasma through a bunch of weird shapes? It’d be mildly hard to do with solids, although I suppose a bunch of segmented conveyors might work. Or blow air through pipes.

(Vanatica) And I think we lost him to the urge to experiment. Sigh, I suppose it might be possible with some convoluted repulsor fields channels, but that wouldn’t work here. Magic could work. On the other hand, hull alloy occasionally recharged with tardions could provide a solid enough means of channeling plasma like that. Or perhaps more reliably done with plasma.

Jacob hurriedly ran off to set up complicated arrangements of air pipes. Very quickly the engineering section of the airship was looking like an overly elaborate mess of hamster tubing. The technicians and engineers were complaining about the pipes blocking access to everything. Jacob claimed the layout was of some sort of occult significance.

(Vanatica, snidely) Would it help if we put hamsters in the tubing to be blown around under pressure? (Jacob) It might invalidate the experiment. Hamsters are mostly water.

I’d have said mostly hair and air, given their ability to seemingly turn around in passageways little bigger than their own skulls.

(Jacob) First we’ll try highly purified air to avoid contamination and then attempt with air from outside.

(Katlyn) This is getting weird…

I couldn’t disagree with that sentiment as there was much tinkering with pipes arranged to form various occult symbols as highly filtered air was blown through under pressure.

(Jacob) There is a tiny trickle of magical power coming from the arrangement. Currently uncontrolled and manifesting as strange whispers heard around the ship. Also, I am picking up very faint traces of fairly high-energy radiation and photons.

That was concerning. Pulling out my own sensors, I was able to confirm the slight increase in both gamma rays and neutron emissions consistent with a small fusion reactor leak. The exact spectrum didn’t match anything our equipment would put out though. Jacob was still tinkering and narrating as he went.

(Jacob) Normal air works substantially better. Now let’s pressurize the air to see if density effects it. Hmm, linear increase in radiation with the increasing density.

By this point the chief technician in charge of the work crew installing piping developed a case of spontaneous background music and occasional ventriloquism. Meanwhile the radiation reading were stronger and slightly more variegated. Further increases in ‘power’ resulted in improvements in the selection, volume, and quality of background music. I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected there was a selective dampening of annoying sounds as the pressure continued to increase.

I was about to call a halt to the experiment, but then the pipes burst because they weren’t designed for these kinds of pressure. Katlyn immediately ran to check on the chief technician as he fell into a chair.

(Katlyn) Very slight fever, but no additional calories being burned. Very slight increase in neural activity. Both are very small effects though.

(Jacob) Interesting, there are at least two recordings of similar incidents! From back aboard the Enterprise 1701! One involving transiting the Edge of the Galaxy and the other during the breakup of the planet Psi 2000.

(Vanatica) Why would passing the edge of the galaxy result in people developing theme music?!

He ignored me and kept going.

(Jacob) Both showed certain mental effects, exotic physical effects, and were never adequately explained.

I was beginning to think the Federation universe wasn’t a proper universe and more a region that mostly existed between other ‘proper’ universes and thus depending on which border you were approaching the rules would change dramatically. Thus the shapeshifting was more an effect of the locals being somewhat ill-defined and thus susceptible to taking ANY pattern they came across.

By this point we had gotten a match on the radiation signature as being primarily fusion involving carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. There were also indications of neutron total-conversion events, but it was hard to be sure; if that was happening, it’s rare and there wasn’t a lot of data on what that might look like anyway. I frowned at the tubing with a disapproving look. It shouldn’t be this easy to build a fusion system. Especially not one that would normally require a temperature of over one-and-a-half billion degrees to work.

(Vanatica) What was purified out when you filtered the air?

(Jacob) Dust, bacteria, and larger particles. Mostly leaving pure gases of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and a bit of water vapor with the usual traces.

With that Jacob continued to do more tinkering and experiments. I got some of the soldiers standing by to be ready to knock Jacob unconscious in case he went (more) insane or was endangering the airship or the crew.

(Jacob) Increases in power output with increases in density of the working medium and in the amount of life it carries, with ‘higher’ lifeforms more effective. Sophistication of the layout and symbology also has some effect. The Enterprise 1701 had some appropriate piping layouts in the water coolant systems. Secondary effects dependent on chemical composition; a higher proportion of lighter elements works best. Also a correlation with the speed of movement.

(Katlyn) I wonder if elementals would boost the effect or not.

By this point the chief technician had now decided he was a musical star and that all must listen to his concert. Crystals began to shatter all over the place as the music echoed around the ship. Katlyn immediately ran to pull power from the pumps while I pulled my blaster, set it to stun, and unloaded a series of blasts into the technician to knock him unconscious. Several of the crew (and annoyingly, the guards I had watching him) were expressing mild disappointment as they felt he was getting pretty good there.

(Katlyn) Looks like mild fever, and overstimulated neurons now. A lot of extra energy was pumped into his nervous system.

(Jacob) I wonder if ball droids in liquid mercury counts…

(Katlyn) No! We are not torturing people or droids with more experiments!

I had to agree, while this was informative, we were getting to the point where further tests were risking the airship and crew. I was against much more powerful experiments without a means to safely ground out the resulting energies that didn’t rely on shoving fusion energies through people’s skulls.

(Jacob) Looks like the lifeforms are exposed to radiation and occasional atoms out of place. At reasonable flow rates that’s pretty minor compared to normal background radiation and metabolic byproducts. Depending on the setup, if giving fish a slightly shorter lifespan is a worry, incorporating a minor healing symbol into the flow would cover repairs at any reasonable production levels. A system where tardigrades are actually suited to. Will have to get a bunch and see how it rates them.

I left him to continue his experiments with orders for the guards to actually stun him this time if he started endangering the ship or crew. As we approached the coastal city, it was easy to see that everyone was doing their damnedest to evacuate, but many appeared to be struggling. While it appeared that there were plenty of boats available at the moment, it appeared that few of the locals actually knew how to repair or run a boat given the numerous boats in various forms of disrepair at the moment. Quite a few of them looked to be needing on a few leaks plugged as opposed to a major overhaul. Still, the locals seemed to be struggling with this. Perhaps the shipwrights and crews had already left and the only people remaining were the ones that didn’t know how to use a ship.

Of course, that crew we rescued earlier seemed to have difficulty understanding that their ship was dependent on laws of nature that only applied in this hex.

Disembarking from the airship, I used the flight functions of the armor to land at the docks and took a survey of the available ships. It looked like ships capable (or at least supposed to be capable) of handling the rough seas of Nilandar were going for a substantial premium, as was anything that actively floated. As such, riverboats and – in particular – riverboats in need of substantial repairs before being ‘seaworthy’ were relatively cheap. Many looked to have been caught in some sort of battle and thus were going to require substantial portions of the keel or hull outright replaced.

I did locate a rather nice wooden riverboat where the damage looked a lot more severe than it actually was. Mainly damage to the structure above the water line and in need of having the sealant patched up below the water line. There also appeared to be plenty of supplies about for performing repairs so long as one was skilled at actually doing the requisite work. It only took a few obols to buy it off the hands of the trader who was looking for funds to book passage on one of the ships heading out to Nilander.

With that done, I procured the requisite materials and set about fixing the leaks below deck. I had just about gotten the leaks plugged when a voice spoke behind me.

(Katlyn) Installing some insane amounts of firepower and a fusion-powered rocket engine?

(Vanatica) Wasn’t planning on it, Although I admit some shields would be nice. I am debating the steam engine though since we are going to be heading upriver. That should give us a substantial advantage in terms of speed and maneuverability.

(Katlyn) Well, shouldn’t be too many issues with unintended fusion reactions from one of those. This place doesn’t look to be a good locale for procuring the requisite parts though.

(Vanatica) I’ll be borrowing some of the spares from the airship.

(Katlyn) Meanwhile, Jacob has put forward a motion that the airship be named the ‘Tesla’. From what I can tell, a Tesla is the name of an important Earth scientist when it came to electricity. At least that was what I could gather beyond something about communicating with something called martians and some sort of tower.

We elected that the crew of the boat would consist of myself, Katlyn, Jacob, Kuroko and a limited number of droids. The rest of the crew were to stick with the airship and use their judgement to either assist the locals in evacuating, hovering in place, or returning back to the castle.

Once repairs and upgrades were completed, we loaded up our supplies and ‘crew’ before setting off to the main harbor and the river that fed it. The river at this point was huge, slow, and laden with silt, rich with plants and fish. It was obviously the outlet of a major river system ‘ and the fact that it’s been rigged to flow around the city, with shunts from upstream pouring water through various canals, obviously generated enough power to make this an important center ‘ in normal times. The place was clearly designed for upper floors to be accessed by flying carpets, the remnants of a climate-control force dome was still providing some protection, and it was obviously prosperous and ‘ in it’s own fashion ‘ industrialized. Here in this hex the great rivers had remained the centers for civilization for uncounted years.

While it was clear the city was badly damaged from above, the view took on a whole new dimension from ground (or sea) level. Much of the power from the canals was now being devoted to the defenses, to the personal glory of the local Emir, and to launching occult attacks at his or her ‘enemies’. The docks in the city proper were almost deserted, with only a few ships being hastily refurbished and prepared for departure.

(Vanatica) Continue on, or stop and ask for information? Or ask somewhere else where we’ll be less likely to draw the attention of powerful people?

(Jacob) Let’s stop and ask for directions. We are effectively a weapon seeking one of their enemies. Not sure if we can help in any way with the evacuation, but maybe we can help pass on information we encountered coming in.

Pulling in to dock, we were immediately approached by a small horde offering substantial pay for passage out, and recommendations that we do not stick around as there was little profit in trading here at the moment.

(Katlyn) Sadly, we’re heading further inward and not here as traders, otherwise we’d take you up on your offer! We do wish you luck with getting out though!

It was clear that they thought us more than a bit crazy – it was implied that it was really bad in some places upriver – but then they seemed to notice the weapons and armor we all carried and toned down the comments that might be perceived as insults. Jacob immediately began sharing what news we had from Nilandar while I spoke with some of the people who seemed less’ eager for any means of escape.

(Vanatica) Any rumors of someone who has recently gained a lot of rare skills or unknown abilities? No so much power, but abilities and techniques is what I am looking for.

(Worker) Not so much of that here ‘ but that may well be hundreds of miles away. The Emir has clearly gone mad with power ‘ several attempts to assassinate him have failed, and he is diverting much of the city’s power to himself and to use in launching attacks. It is the madness of the Verichauaung that sweeps over the land every few centuries. Most of us wish to wait it out for a few years until the power wanes and the Emir can be either eliminated or returned to sanity. Hopefully it will be several centuries before this happens again!

The lunatic ruler with far too much power in a stupid war scenario was far too familiar. Part of me wondered if it was prudent to intervene here or not. It was hard to judge just how dangerous the Emir was to someone of our caliber, and yet freeing the city would provide a friendly base of operations to push further inland.

(Vanatica) What is known about the Emir? Does he magically fireball everyone that asks questions about him?

(Supervisor) Eh, the Emir was a fairly reasonable person up until recently. Chief City Engineer, in his forties, fairly well respected, wife and three kids. Usually used the power systems as indirectly as possible, setting up water purification, powering the flying carpets, and all the other citywide effects with static circles and diagrams. Took direct control of a major part of the city’s power to block a series of incoming attacks ‘ no time to set up external circles and such to reduce the load ‘ and didn’t recover. Seems to have combined it with a midlife crisis. Failed to relinquish direct control. Promptly appointed himself full ruler, built a palace, demanded all kinds of luxuries, set up a harem, and keeps throwing attacks at his various ‘enemies’. There isn’t much actual hatred or anything, but nobody wants to live here until sanity and city services resume.

That suggested the Emir wasn’t directly pulling on the instantaneous output of the infrastructure and instead there was a buffer of sorts. So simply cutting him off from the canals wouldn’t suffice as we’d have to get him to expend power and deplete those reserves. Still, it wouldn’t take too much in the way of explosives to knock most of the nearby canals out of commission temporarily. Given the ‘technology’ level of the locals, it wasn’t likely that they could rapidly trace such timed explosions to us without a lot of careful investigation and time. That period of anonymity would be very helpful in avoiding reprisals while we waited for his power to drain.

A brief look at the locals also suggested that there wasn’t a well established informant and enforcer network set up to look for people plotting such things. Too much of the population was calling him crazy out in the open while actively fleeing for such a police state to be operating. With any luck that meant there was an active resistance movement. And any resistance movement with half a brain would have a map of the critical sections of the canal system.

It wouldn’t take much. Just a few tiny shards of power crystals with some remote or timer detonators. Hell, just a few simple underwater drones would suffice. We’d need a target for him to expend energy against, but that might be automatically arranged depending on how on the ball the rival cities are on taking advantage of the damage to the canals. If not, perhaps a few decoys can be arranged or something.

Though I wasn’t sure I could fix a society too lazy to not use the quick, easy, and oh-so-simple conveniences of drawing power from city services as opposed to doing all the work of learning how to handle things personally. You’d think here on the Anomaly that various societies facing these types of issues would at the very least look towards other hexes for potential solutions that could be imported as opposed to leaving it for the next generation to figure out and then fleeing in a massed panic when it turned out they were the generation that had to do something.

Sith Alchemist Katlyn Sarah Keldav

And here we have an updated character sheet for Katlyn now that she’s reached Level 10 and has mastered the arts of Sith Alchemy and Mystic Artist.  A hefty stash of Obols certainly doesn’t hurt either.

Name: Katlyn Sarah Keldav
Age: 20
Species: Monotalented Star Wars Human
Gender: Female
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Violet
Height: 5′ 8″ (1.73 meters)
Weight: 130 lbs (60.0 kg)
Profession: Charity Fundraiser, Artist, Second Sith Protectorate Independent Operative, and Soung Family Heiress
Home: Soung Residence on Ascensa in Alderaan System
Education: Home-schooled via personal tutors
Parents Occupation: Father is a Terraforming Planning Specialist for Soung Terraforming Corporation, Mother is a Second Sith Protectorate Diplomat to the Alderaan System and Republic Senate

Star Wars Birthright World Laws:

• Cinamystics: Star Wars characters have free access to their choice of one of the following sets of Action Skills – and may purchase Mana with Reality Editing, Specialized and Corrupted for Triple Effect / only to substitute Mana for the temporary drain resulting from using Action Skills (2 CP per 1d6).
  • Adventurers may purchase Erudite Focus, Narrative, and Stealing the Scene.
  • Jedi/Sith and Hybrids may purchase Psychokinesis (Alter), Sensitive (Sense), and Tough it Out (Control).
  • Codifiers/Wraiths and Hybrids may purchase Bullet Time (Tempus), Dimensional Manipulation (Phasing), and Fortune (Shifting).
• Heroes and Villains: All characters have the Karma ability (6 CP). They may also spend a Karma Point to freely combine their Cinamystic skills for a brief period.
• The Galactic Union: Star Wars characters always seem to be able to understand each other, use, other civilizations technology, and pilot various vehicles. They enjoy an Immunity to the penalities associated with dealign with different races, technologies, and cultures, reducing them by six.
• Advanced Technological Civilization: Star Wars characters have access to a wide variety of advanced equipment using the D20 Modern and Future systems, but it tends to be almost as expensive as buying magical devices in ‘normal’ D20 – usually several times the base price. They do not have access to advanced magical devices or abilities and rarely show any true psionic abilities.

Monotalented Star Wars Human (31 CP / +0 ECL)

As a monotalented Star Wars human with no Force or Codex potential, Katlyn has had to rely on technology, wits, and determination in addition to her monotalent in order to keep pace with more talented Sith and Faded. Now, with the powers acquired on the Anomaly of Obols, Mystic Artist, and Sith Alchemy, she stands a much greater chance of standing evenly against the enemies of her family.

• Bonus Feat (6 CP)
• Fast Learner: Specialized in Skills for Double Effect (6 CP). Star Wars Humans get +2 SP/Level, and +8 at Level One.
• Adaptability: Star Wars humans can breathe in thin or exotic atmospheres, need little more than an oxygen mask in airless space, fight right next to lava flows on volcanic worlds, eat stuff that would make a normal person very sick, and ignore all sorts of minor environmental issues. Swiftly fatal stuff will still kill them, but if most humans could survive for a short time in an environment, they can handle it for considerably longer (Immunity / Environmental Extremes, Common, Minor, Major 6 CP).
• I Can Hear You: Star Wars humans never seem to notice, but they can hear ships moving in a vacuum, make out what people are saying underwater, and do not even notice effects such as ‘Silence’. Occult Sense / what you would have heard in a normal environmental, Specialized for Reduced Cost /only to compensate for difficulties with normal hearing (3 CP).
• Looking Good: Immunity / unintentional clothing mishaps, messy hair, being overly dirty for more than a few seconds, and so on. (Common, Minor, Trivial, 2 CP).
• Coincidental Presence: Star Wars humans keep running into people they know and plot-important items despite the scale of the Galaxy. Immunity to Encounter Probability (Common, Minor, Major, Specialized for Reduced Cost / also increases the odds of running into enemies, solitary monsters, and similar (3 CP).
• Disease Resistant: While there are diseases in Star Wars, there are not endless plagues spreading across the Galaxy despite compatible biochemistries and the ability of so many species to interbreed. That’s immunity/Disease (Common, Severe, Trivial, 3 CP) – not enough to stop really nasty diseases, but enough to stop minor ones and greatly moderate others.
• Steady Footing: For some reason Star Wars Humans see nothing wrong with leaving out the safety rails, installing huge pits in control rooms, and using narrow catwalks and bridges above massive drops. +1 Bonus to Athletics, Specialized in Keeping Their Balance for Double Effect (+2 for 1 CP) and a +3 Skill Specialty in Athletics / Keeping Their Balance (1 CP) for a total of +5.

Low Level Template – All characters in this campaign have the Low Level Template. Effects include:

• A -3 penalty on all unskilled skill checks.
• Slow character advancement, by direct session-based character point awards rather than experience points. Succeeding in goals helps, but killing things and taking their stuff does not.
• A +3 bonus on five skills which suit their backgrounds and training. Sadly this cannot be applied to active psionic or magical skills. These are, however, considered to be natural skill ranks.
• Extra Hit Points equal to [12 + (2 * Con Mod)].
• Two minor special talents or “knacks” appropriate to their home universe – one Class A (roughly equivalent to the effects of a first level spell or power) and one Class B (roughly equivalent to the effects of a cantrip).

Available Character Points: 264 (Level 10 Base) + 10 (Disadvantages: Accident Prone, Attracts Weirdos, Huge Eater) + 6 (Racial Bonus Feat) + 24 (Bonus Feats from Levels 1, 3, 6, and 9) + 52 (Fast Learner in Skills) + 20 (Clan Duties) + 55 (Bonus from Int: 16, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5) = 431 CP.

Disadvantages:

• Accident Prone: Katlyn has always been a bit of a klutz and her growing super-speed monotalent has only made the effects worse when disaster strikes. The fact that this tends to result in scenarios that look really bad and are hard to explain to the authorities doesn’t help matters.
• Attracts Weirdos: Keldavs seem to have a weird knack for drawing towards them insane, but highly talented weirdos that skirt the line between being incredibly useful and more trouble than they’re worth. The fact that these weirdos tend to associate with Keldavs doesn’t help the view of the authorities on Keldavs either.
• Huge Eater: As a consequence of the speed monotalent, Katlyn’s metabolic needs are quite large compared to normal humans. She’s been known to consume as many calories as entire parties when she’s particularly hungry after a large feat of speed.

Basic Attributes (Pathfinder 25 Point Buy): Str 10 (+6 Equipment = 16), Dex 17 (Base 16, +1 Knack, +2 Enhancement = 17), Con 10, Int 20 (Base 16, +2 Knack, +2 Level Bonus), Wis 14, Cha 14 (While reasonably fit for a non-sensitive human, the presence of weapons like the Rakata Rifles and the fact that so many of her peers possess Force or Codex Potential means she must rely on her wits and cunning to effectively compete)

Basic Abilities: (229 CP)

• Hit Dice: 8 (L1d8, 4 CP) + 30 (L2-10d4, 0 CP) + 18 (12 + 2x Dex Mod Template) + 30 (10 x Dex Mod) = 86 HP
• Damage Reduction: 8/- (Shielding), 10/- vs Falling
• Evasion Grace/Advanced Finesse: Uses Dex Mod for HP in place of Con Mod (12 CP)
• Skill Points: +23 (Purchased) +55 (Int Mod) +52 (Racial Fast Learner and Bonus Feat Fast Learner) = 130 SP
• Base Attack Bonus: +5 (Corrupted: Does not provide iterative attacks, 20 CP) +1 (Morale) +2 (Circumstance)= +8 BAB
• Saves:
  • Fortitude: +3 (9 CP) + 0 (Con Mod) + 1 (Luck) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Evasiveness) = +6
  • Reflex: +3 (9 CP) + 3 (Dex Mod) + 1 (Luck) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Evasiveness) = +9
  • Will: +3 (9 CP) + 2 (Wis Mod) + 1 (Luck) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Evasiveness) = +8
• Luck: Specialized for Saves Only (3 CP) + 8 (Bonuses Uses x2, Specialized for Saves Only 6 CP) = 9 Luck Points
• Proficiencies: Simple and Martial Weapons (9 CP)
• Initiative: +3 (Dex Mod) = +3
• Move: 30 (Base) + 10 (Celerity, 6 CP) + 40 (Improved Celerity, 12 CP) – 10 (Heavy Armor) + 30 (Circumstance) +10 (Wind Dance) = 110 Feet/Round
• Armor Class: 10 (Base) + 2 (Dex Mod) + 10 (Armory) + 8 (Kite Shield) + 1 (Luck) + 3 (Magical Enhancement) = 34 AC, Flatfooted – 32 AC, Touch – 13 AC
• Usual Attacks:
  • Collapsible Staff: +11/+11 (+8 BAB + 3 Str) for 2d8+4
  • Lightsaber: +13/+13 (+8 BAB + 3 Str) for 2d10+4 Fire Damage
  • Blaster Rifle: +11/+11 (+8 BAB +3 Dex) for 3d8+1
  • Grenade Launcher: +11/+11 (+8 BAB +3 Dex) for 5d6+1
• Karma Pool: 5 Points
• Informational Armor: Created by Jacob Hatfield using the Living Fire ability and made permanent via expenditure of XP, all stats only valid vs Informational abilities
  • Spell Level 7 Informational Armor Construct
    • HP: 13d10 + 10
    • Size: Large
    • Initiative: +1
    • Speed: 40
    • Natural Armor: 21
    • Deflection Bonus to Armor: 4
    • Total AC: 35
    • Attack: 2x +20
    • Damage: 1d10+14
    • Space/Reach 10×10
    • Saves: Fort +4, Refl +5, Will +4
    • Str: 35, Dex: 13
    • DR: 5/Informational
    • Fast Healing 2
    • Engulfing
    • Enduring
    • Armoredx2, Heavy Deflection

Other Abilities: (204 CP)

• Varen Sith Training
  • Fast Learner: Skills (6 CP)
  • Legionary (6 CP)
  • Adept: x2 (12 CP)
  • Block (Lightsaber Blockable Attacks): Specialized (Requires a lightsaber) (3 CP)
  • Block (Multiple): Specialized (Requires a lightsaber) (3 CP)
  • Intense Training: (Innate Enchantment – 7,000 GP) (8 CP)
    • Evasiveness: +1 to Saves (700 GP)
    • High Spirits: +1 Morale Bonus to Saves, Attacks, Skill Checks, and Damage (1,400 GP)
    • Fortunate Destiny: +1 Luck Bonus to AC and Saves (1,400 GP)
    • Fortune’s Favor: +1 Luck Bonus to Skill Checks (700 GP)
    • Personal Haste: +30 to Movement, +1 Attack at full BAB when making full attack (2,000 GP)
• Speed Monotalent
  • Mana with Reality Editing: 4d6 – 19 Mana (Corrupted and Specialized: Only to perform Speed Stunts) (6 CP)
  • Rite of Chi: (Specialized and Corrupted: Only for Speed Stunts) (3 CP)
  • Bonus Uses: Rite of Chi (Specialized: Only for Speed Mana) (3 CP)
  • Reflex Training: (+3 Actions/Day) (6 CP)
  • Innate Enchantment: 19,000 GP (18 CP)
    • Rapid Recovery: Cure Light Wounds 3/day, Lesser Restoration 2/day (1,400 GP)
    • Light Foot: +30 Circumstance to Move, +10 Circumstance to Jump, DR 10/Falling (1,400 GP)
    • Augmented Reflexes: Dexterity +2 Enhancement Bonus (1,400 GP)
    • Stepping Disks: Only to allow the user to run over inappropriate surfaces, up walls, or to break falls and such. Only works while the user remains in rapid motion. (980 GP)
    • Wind Dance: 50% Miss Chance, No Damage from AoE on successful Reflex Save, +2 Circumstance to Hit, two extra 5 foot steps each round, 25% chance to step into ground-based hazards (12,000 GP)
    • Supercharged Metabolism: Relieve Illness 3/day (840 GP)
• Occult Skills
  • Armory Skill (3 CP)
  • Wealth Skill (3 CP)
• Advanced Medical Certification
  • Healing Touch: (Corrupted and Specialized: Requires appropriate Medical Supplies/Equipment and treatment takes time) (2 CP)
  • Augmented Bonus – Healing Touch (Int Mod to Cha Mod) (Corrupted and Specialized: Requires appropriate Medical Supplies/Equipment and treatment takes time) (2 CP)
  • Bonus Uses x3 (Healing Touch) (Corrupted and Specialized: Requires appropriate Medical Supplies/Equipment and treatment takes time) (6 CP)
    • 7 (Int Mod + Cha Mod) x 10 (Character Level) x 13 (Bonus Uses) = 910 HP/Day
• Touched by Magic
  • Mystic Link with Power Link: Links Katlyn with the appropriate aspect of the Greater Multiverse to allow her to pull on magical energy despite the dispersion across the various Star Wars timelines (6 CP)
• Censor Immunity
  • Innate Enchantment: Absorption (Censor Immunity Artifact) (6 CP)
    • Ability is not yet active as an appropriate artifact is still under construction
• Mystic Artist:
  • Mystic Artist (Architecture) (6 CP)
  • Composition (Architecture) (6 CP)
  • Influence (Architecture) (6 CP)
  • Mass Influence (Architecture) (6 CP)
  • Acclaim (Architecture) (6 CP)
  • Mystic Link with Power Link (Architecture) – Specialized: Requires venue host performances, exhibitions, galleries, and parties (3 CP)
  • Create Item: Specialized and Corrupted: only as a prerequisite (2 CP)
  • Transference: (Specialized and Corrupted: Only for use with Transmutation to provide funds) (2 CP)
  • Transmutation: Increased Effect – only to transform donated XP from Transference into generic cash, all such funds are automatically spent on buying Obols (6 CP)
  • Equipage with Purchasing: Corrupted – Only to obtain Obols, only using “money” from Transmutation (4 CP)
• Craft Item: Tailoring (6 CP)
  • Artisan: Specialized – Tailoring Only (3 CP)
  • Transference: Specialized – Tailoring Only (3 CP)
  • Artificer 75% Off XP Cost: Specialized – Tailoring Only (12 CP)
• Sith Alchemy
  • Mana with Reality Editing (Alchemy) 6d6 – 19 Mana: Specialized for Increased Effect (the products it is used to produce are stable for lengthy periods) and Corrupted for Reduced Cost / Only for Reality Editing, only for Alchemical Manipulations, must have purchases at least 1d6 per level of reality Manipulation (24 CP)
  • Rite of Chi – Specialized and Corrupted for Reduced Cost / only to restore the “Alchemy Pool” above, requires at least half an hour of some chosen type of intellectual effort per die recovered (2 CP)
  • Bonuses Uses: Rite of Chi – Specialized and Corrupted for Reduced Cost / only to restore the “Alchemy Poo” above, requires at least half an hour of some chosen type of intellectual effort per die recovered (4 CP)

Skills: Uses the Condensed Skill List (130 CP)

• Acrobatics (Dex): +13 (6.5 CP) + 3 (Dex Mod) + 3 (Low Level Template) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +21
• Occult Skill – Armory (Str): +13 (6.5 CP) + 3 (Str Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +18
  • Soung Shieldsuit Powered Armored (Heavy Armor)
    • Armor +6 (3 Points)
    • Stength +6 (3 Points)
    • Communications: Local Tactical (1 Point)
    • Sensors: Nightsight, Flash and Hearing Protection, GPS and Basic Environmental, Mapping, Motion Sensor, and Friend-or-Foe Identification (3 Points)
    • Environmental: Temperature Control, Breathing Apparatus, NBC Seal, Recycling/Space Capable (3 Points)
    • Heavy Fortification (3 Points)
    • Stealth +8 (3 Points)
  • Soung Kite Shield
    • +6 Armor (3 Points)
• Athletics (Str): +13 (6.5 CP) + 3 (Str Mod) + 3 (Low Level Template) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) + 8 (Equipment) = +29 (+10 Jump)
• Craft (Int): +13 (13 CP) + 5 (Int Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
  • Tailoring, Jewelry, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Grass Painting, Alchemy, Gemcutting
• Healing (Wis): +13 (6.5 CP) + 2 (Wis Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = + 17
• Martial Arts – Vailo Arts (Dex): +13 (6.5 CP) + 3 (Dex Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +18
  • Basic Techniques
    • Attack 2
    • Power 2
  • Advanced Techniques
    • Weapon Kata: Lightsabers
    • Mind of Chaos (Immunity / Psychic and Magical Combat Senses, Opponent Intuition Bonuses, and Similar)
    • Mind Like Moon
    • Combat Reflexes
• Perception (Wis): +13 (6.5 CP) + 2 (Wis Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +17
• Perform (Cha): +13 (6.5 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 3 (Low Level Template) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
  • Cello, Acting, Flute, Magic Tricks, Oratory, Dance, Sing, Piano
• Persuasion (Cha): +13 (13 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 3 (Low Level Template) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
• Profession – Command (Cha): +13 (6.5 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +17
  • Covers: Strategy, Tactics, Leadership, Morale, and Logistics
• Scholar (Int): +13 (13 CP) + 5 (Int Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
  • Favored Enemies: Sith, Faded, Rakata, and Yeveetha
• Socialize (Wis): +13 (13 CP) + 2 (Wis Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +17
• Stealing The Scene (Con): +13 (13 CP) + 0 (Con Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +15
• Occult Skill – Wealth (Cha): +13 (13 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 3 (Low Level Template) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
  • Subsumes bargaining, persuading people to accept installment payments, strange gold coins, credit checks, and similar

Equipment:

• Amulet of Non-Detection (35,000 GP)
• Clothing of Any Outfit (1,200 GP)
• Handy Haversack (2,000 GP)
• Healing Belt (750 GP)
• Boots of Big Stepping (6,000 GP)
• Hand of the Mage (900 GP)
• Soung Mark III Shieldsuit Powered Armor
  • Improved Fire Resistance (42,000 GP)
  • +3 Magical Enhancement (9,000 GP)
  • Glamered Armor (2,700 GP)
• Ring of Feather Fall (2,200 GP)
• Psionic Tattoos (Single Use, Caster Level 18)
  • Dimension Door x3
  • Dispel Psionics x3
  • Body Adjustment x2
• Personal Force Field (DR 8/-)
• Holographic HUD
• Repulsor Pack
• Variable Star (Grapnel)
• Color Changing Robes
• Radiation Negating Stygium Amulet
• Antimatter/Matter Crystal Lightsaber (Destroyed)
• Collapsible Spear
• Hand Blaster
• Blaster Rifle with attached Grenade Launcher
• Censor/Telepathy Negating Cloak
• Spare Breath Masks
• Stasis Belts
• Bracer Computer (THELOS)
• Spacefield Clock
• Commlink with Orbital Range
• Computer Tablet
• Multitool
• Advanced Medkit
• Substantial Supply of Snacks and Energy Drinks
• Philosophy/Alchemical Ray Gun
  • Vials of several Alchemical Essences like Ignorance and Up
• Dozen vials of Trap-Spider Venom
• Psi-Stone Knife
• Ten Ceramic/Plastic Throwing Knives
• Starfleet Combadge
• Starfleet Tricorder
• Starfleet Phaser
• Substantial Supply of Obols
• Spare Power Cells
• Fusion Lantern
• Bardic Instrument: Flute Charm
• Flux Iron Charm
• Hidden Pocket Charm
• Local Guidebook Charm
• Peace Cord Charm
• Weave of Light Charm
• Loaded Brush Talisman
• Shifter’s Cloak (Wolf) Talisman

Sith Sorceress Vanatica Nyla Soung

And here we have an updated character sheet for Vanatica now that she’s reached Level 10.  She’s now become a full Sith Sorceress over her initial role as a Star Wars gadgeteer.

Name: Vanatica Nyla Soung
Age: 24
Species: Non-Sensitive Star Wars Human
Gender: Female
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Green
Height: 6′ 2″ (1.88 meters)
Weight: 170 lbs (77.1 kg)
Profession: Second Sith Protectorate Independent Operative and Soung Family Heiress
Home: Soung Residence on Ascensa in Alderaan System
Education: Home-schooled via personal tutors
Parents Occupation: Praetors of the Second Sith Protectorate

Star Wars Birthright World Laws:

• Cinamystics: Star Wars characters have free access to their choice of one of the following sets of Action Skills – and may purchase Mana with Reality Editing, Specialized and Corrupted for Triple Effect / only to substitute Mana for the temporary drain resulting from using Action Skills (2 CP per 1d6).
  • Adventurers may purchase Erudite Focus, Narrative, and Stealing the Scene.
  • Jedi/Sith and Hybrids may purchase Psychokinesis (Alter), Sensitive (Sense), and Tough it Out (Control).
  • Codifiers/Wraiths and Hybrids may purchase Bullet Time (Tempus), Dimensional Manipulation (Phasing), and Fortune (Shifting).
• Heroes and Villains: All characters have the Karma ability (6 CP). They may also spend a Karma Point to freely combine their Cinamystic skills for a brief period.
• The Galactic Union: Star Wars characters always seem to be able to understand each other, use, other civilizations technology, and pilot various vehicles. They enjoy an Immunity to the penalities associated with dealign with different races, technologies, and cultures, reducing them by six.
• Advanced Technological Civilization: Star Wars characters have access to a wide variety of advanced equipment using the D20 Modern and Future systems, but it tends to be almost as expensive as buying magical devices in ‘normal’ D20 – usually several times the base price. They do not have access to advanced magical devices or abilities and rarely show any true psionic abilities.

Non-Sensitive Star Wars Human (31 CP / +0 ECL)

As a fairly normal Star Wars human with no Force or Codex potential, Vanatica has historically had to rely on technology, wits, and determination to make up for the lack of any personal abilities. Now, with the discovery of the secrets of Sith Sorcery, how much of a power gap still exists remains to be seen.

• Bonus Feat (6 CP)
• Fast Learner: Specialized in Skills for Double Effect (6 CP). Star Wars Humans get +2 SP/Level, and +8 at Level One.
• Adaptability: Star Wars humans can breathe in thin or exotic atmospheres, need little more than an oxygen mask in airless space, fight right next to lava flows on volcanic worlds, eat stuff that would make a normal person very sick, and ignore all sorts of minor environmental issues. Swiftly fatal stuff will still kill them, but if most humans could survive for a short time in an environment, they can handle it for considerably longer (Immunity / Environmental Extremes, Common, Minor, Major 6 CP).
• I Can Hear You: Star Wars humans never seem to notice, but they can hear ships moving in a vacuum, make out what people are saying underwater, and do not even notice effects such as ‘Silence’. Occult Sense / what you would have heard in a normal environmental, Specialized for Reduced Cost /only to compensate for difficulties with normal hearing (3 CP).
• Looking Good: Immunity / unintentional clothing mishaps, messy hair, being overly dirty for more than a few seconds, and so on. (Common, Minor, Trivial, 2 CP).
• Coincidental Presence: Star Wars humans keep running into people they know and plot-important items despite the scale of the Galaxy. Immunity to Encounter Probability (Common, Minor, Major, Specialized for Reduced Cost / also increases the odds of running into enemies, solitary monsters, and similar (3 CP).
• Disease Resistant: While there are diseases in Star Wars, there are not endless plagues spreading across the Galaxy despite compatible biochemistries and the ability of so many species to interbreed. That’s immunity/Disease (Common, Severe, Trivial, 3 CP) – not enough to stop really nasty diseases, but enough to stop minor ones and greatly moderate others.
• Steady Footing: For some reason Star Wars Humans see nothing wrong with leaving out the safety rails, installing huge pits in control rooms, and using narrow catwalks and bridges above massive drops. +1 Bonus to Athletics, Specialized in Keeping Their Balance for Double Effect (+2 for 1 CP) and a +3 Skill Specialty in Athletics / Keeping Their Balance (1 CP) for a total of +5.

Low Level Template – All characters in this campaign have the Low Level Template. Effects include:

• A -3 penalty on all unskilled skill checks.
• Slow character advancement, by direct session-based character point awards rather than experience points. Succeeding in goals helps, but killing things and taking their stuff does not.
• A +3 bonus on five skills which suit their backgrounds and training. Sadly this cannot be applied to active psionic or magical skills. These are, however, considered to be natural skill ranks.
• Extra Hit Points equal to [12 + (2 * Con Mod)].
• Two minor special talents or “knacks” appropriate to their home universe – one Class A (roughly equivalent to the effects of a first level spell or power) and one Class B (roughly equivalent to the effects of a cantrip).

Available Character Points: 264 (Level 10 Base) + 10 (Disadvantages: Accident Prone, Attracts Weirdos, Huge Eater) + 6 (Racial Bonus Feat) + 24 (Bonus Feats from Levels 1, 3, 6, and 9) + 52 (Fast Learner in Skills) + 20 (Clan Duties) + 55 (Bonus from Int: 16, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5) = 431 CP.

Disadvantages:

• Soung Family Precognition Talent: Vanatica is prone to experiencing weird dreams, visions, premonitions, and flashbacks regarding the past, present, and future. Try as she might to ignore them and their vague meanings, they always seem to find a way to force her to act upon them whether she likes it or not.
• Hunted: The Soung Family has accumulated a number of enemies over the years and Vanatica is theoretically one of the easier targets to go after. The fact that her alternate timeline sister Seras Keldav is keen to defeat Vanatica and thus prove herself as a valid heir to the Soung legacy only makes thing rather personal.
• Biographical Info Dump: Everyone who meets Vanatica or sees her face gets a quick biographical summary of who she is. While this hadn’t been discovered back home, her arrival on the Anomaly where everyone had no reason to know who she was still managing to recognize her quickly became apparent. Needless to say, this feeds her ego a lot as she believes the Force deems her that important that it people who she is for her. Most everyone else is of the opinion that this is just a really obscure Force/Codex monotalent.

Basic Attributes (Pathfinder 25 Point Buy): Str 11 (+1 Knack, +6 Equipment = 18), Dex 12, Con 12, Int 20 (Base 16, +2 Knack, +2 Level Bonus), Wis 14, Cha 14 (While reasonably fit for a non-sensitive human, the presence of weapons like the Rakata Rifles and the fact that so many of her peers possess Force or Codex Potential means she must rely on her wits and cunning to effectively compete)

Basic Abilities: (242 CP)

• Hit Dice: 8 (L1d8, 4 CP) + 38 (L2-7d8, 24 CP) + 10 (L8-10d4, 0 CP) + 14 (12 + 2x Con Mod Template) + 10 (10 x Con Mod) = 80 HP
• Damage Reduction: 8/- (Shielding)
• Skill Points: +36 (Purchased) +55 (Int Mod) +52 (Racial Fast Learner and Bonus Feat Fast Learner) = 143 SP
• Base Attack Bonus: +5 (Corrupted: Does not provide iterative attacks, 20 CP) +1 (Morale) = +6 BAB
• Saves:
  • Fortitude: +3 (9 CP) + 1 (Con Mod) + 1 (Luck) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Evasiveness) = +7
  • Reflex: +3 (9 CP) + 1 (Dex Mod) + 1 (Luck) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Evasiveness) = +7
  • Will: +3 (9 CP) + 2 (Wis Mod) + 1 (Luck) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Evasiveness) = +8
• Luck: Specialized for Saves Only (3 CP) + 8 (Bonuses Uses x2, Specialized for Saves Only, 6 CP) = 9 Luck Points
• Proficiencies: Simple and Martial Weapons (9 CP), Exotic Weapon Proficiency – Economics (6 CP)
• Initiative: +1 (Dex Mod) = +1
• Move: 30 (Base) – 10 (Heavy Armor) + 30 (Circumstance) = 50 Feet/Round
• Armor Class: 10 (Base) + 1 (Dex Mod) + 10 (Armory) + 8 (Kite Shield) + 1 (Luck) + 3 (Magical Enhancement) = 33 AC, Flatfooted – 32 AC, Touch – 12 AC
• Usual Attacks:
  • Lightsaber: +10/+10 (+6 BAB + 4 Str) for 2d10+4 Fire Damage
  • Blaster Rifle: +7/+7 (+6 BAB +1 Dex) for 3d8+1
  • Grenade Launcher: +7/+7 (+6 BAB +1 Dex) for 5d6+1
• Karma Pool: 5 Points
• Informational Armor: Created by Jacob Hatfield using the Living Fire ability and made permanent via expenditure of XP, all stats only valid vs Informational abilities
  • Spell Level 7 Informational Armor Construct
    • HP: 13d10 + 10
    • Size: Large
    • Initiative: +1
    • Speed: 40
    • Natural Armor: 21
    • Deflection Bonus to Armor: 4
    • Total AC: 35
    • Attack: 2x +20
    • Damage: 1d10+14
    • Space/Reach 10×10
    • Saves: Fort +4, Refl +5, Will +4
    • Str: 35, Dex: 13
    • DR: 5/Informational
    • Fast Healing 2
    • Engulfing
    • Enduring
    • Armoredx2, Heavy Deflection

Other Abilities: (189 CP)

• Varen Sith Training
  • Fast Learner: Skills (6 CP)
  • Legionary (6 CP)
  • Adept: x2 (12 CP)
  • Block (Lightsaber Blockable Attacks): Specialized (Requires a lightsaber) (3 CP)
  • Block (Multiple): Specialized (Requires a lightsaber) (3 CP)
  • Intense Training: (Innate Enchantment – 6,000 GP) (7 CP)
    • Evasiveness: +1 to Saves (700 GP)
    • High Spirits: +1 Morale Bonus to Saves, Attacks, Skill Checks, and Damage (1,400 GP)
    • Fortunate Destiny: +1 Luck Bonus to AC and Saves (1,400 GP)
    • Fortune’s Favor: +1 Luck Bonus to Skill Checks (700 GP)
    • Personal Haste: +30 to Movement, +1 Attack at full BAB when making full attack (2,000 GP)
• Occult Skills and Skill Emphasis:
  • Occult Skill: Armory (3 CP)
  • Occult Skill: Wealth (3 CP)
  • Occult Skill: Foresight (3 CP)
  • Skill Emphasis: +3 Intimidation – Glare (1 CP)
  • Skill Emphasis: +3 Command – Bavarian Fire Drill (1 CP)
• Born to Rule:
  • Leadership (6 CP)
  • Strength in Numbers (3 CP)
  • Horde (3 CP)
  • Enthusiast: Specialized and Corrupted – Languages Only (3 CP)
    • Total Available ECL: 2x (2 Cha Mod + 10 Level) = 24 ECL
      • Sair Cantel (Lotados) – Pilot (4 ECL)
      • Cuzao (Ranath) – Technician (4 ECL)
      • Donovan Rote (Cybernetic Human) – Spy (3 ECL)
      • Orzi Tihl (Hutt) – Archivist (3 ECL)
      • Ve Ke (Kaminoan) – Doctor (4 ECL)
      • V2SO (Droid) – Astromech Droid (1 ECL)
      • THELOS (Drone Swarm) – Logistics Coordination (1 ECL)
      • Vanessa Soung (Human) – First Officer (4 ECL)
• Sith Sorcery:
  • Mana: Taken as Generic Spell Levels 16d4 (53 Spell Levels) – Specialized / Manifest as Spell Coins which can be stolen or lost (24 CP)
  • Caster Levels: x10 – Specialized / Only works with Spell Coins, Spells must be prepared in advanced and require obvious gestures and spoken words to work (30 CP)
  • Mystic Link with Power Link: Provides link to appropriate sections of the multiverse to efficiently draw magical energy from (6 CP)
  • Mystic Link with Communications (Remote Tome): Provides remote access to the gathered portions of the Great Library of Lindral (6 CP)
  • Dominion: (6 CP)
  • Shaping: (6 CP)
  • Dragonfire: (6 CP)
  • Breath of the Dragon: (6 CP)
  • Eye of the Dragon: x2 – Absorb 40 Spell Levels per Day and Store Maximum of 48 Spell Levels (12 CP)
    • May power prepared spells as per Rod of Absorption (12 CP)
  • Known Spells:
    • Level 0: Air Helm, Animated Teddy Bear, Blanket, Laze, Caltrops, Conjure Micro-Elemental, Conjure (Obedient) Rat, Create Element, Drawthread, Seance, Spice, Stabilize
    • Level 1: Benign Transposition, Cure Light Wounds, Dawn (Positive Energy Cantrips), Generator, Hearthfire, Lesser Orb of Cold, Mage Armor, Nightfall (Negative Energy Cantrips), Summon Monster I (Known Summons: Celestial Badgers, Cat-Person Rogue), Unseen Servant, Wall of Smoke, Web Bolt
    • Level 2: Baleful Transposition, Choke, Create Pit, Debilitating Cloud, Dimension Leap, Glitterdust, Summon Monster II, Web
    • Level 3: Convenient Conveyance, Halo of Stars, Mad Monkeys, Gloomblind Bolts
    • Recent acquisition of two more portions of the Library of Lindral and an alliance with the magi of K’aresh has expanded this list significantly, but the exact spells learned have yet to be decided
• Censor Immunity
  • Innate Enchantment: Absorption (Censor Immunity Artifact) (6 CP)
    • Ability is not yet active as an appropriate artifact is still under construction
• Companion: Virtual Agent (Tele-Holographic Estate Logistics Operating System – THELOS) (6 CP)
  • Originally built to act as the Soung Family Central Computer on the Soung Family Moon, THELOS worked to manage affairs for the family and organize the servants/slaves. Finding success in this role, over the generations the system has been expanded and replicated numerous times across the centuries and has gotten very good in his role as caretaker. As such, Vanatica has a copy of the system installed on her armor to help her with logistics, communications, and analysis out in the field.
    • Companion with +2 ECL Template, Specialized / only exists in appropriate computers, has no actual physical presence, 6 CP
    • A Virtual Agent is a limited-function droid intelligence / Computer Aide. While it only exists in the virtual landscape of the Holonet, within that domain it is a potent ally – and that may extend into the physical world depending on what machinery and droids are around to manipulate.
    • Assistant Specialized in Data Searches, Computer Operations, Programming, Mail and Call Screening, and Similar Items for Double Effect (+8 Bonuses, 6 CP).
    • Improved Returning: If destroyed, a Virtual Agent may simply be reloaded from backup or put onto another system (12 CP).
    • Mindspeech (Specialized / only with people connected to it’s host system via cybernetics or commlink, 3 CP) with Mindlink (Holonet, Specialized / requires an available subspace network or similar network, 1 CP).
    • Occult Sense / Information from unshielded systems in the area (6 CP).
    • Stipend (6 CP). A Virtual Agent can manage your accounts, perform minor online trading, and work with cryptocurrencies better than you can (6 CP).
    • Innate Enchantment (6 CP)
      • Advanced Smartphone Sysems (25 CP)
      • Remote Interface (with unprotected or hackable systems, 25 GP)
      • Desktop Computer functions/basic programs (50 GP)
      • Weapons Functions: Tangler (33 GP), Laser Pistol (45 GP), Vibro-claws (50 GP)
      • Shielded Systems: Personal Force Shield (+4 AC, 1400 GP)
      • Firewall (Mage Armor +4 Force, 1400 GP)
      • Immortal Vigor I (+12 + 2x Con Mod HP), 1400 GP)
    • Enthusiast, Specialized and Corrupted for Increased Effect (6 floating CP) / only for use with Create Relic (Downloadable programs) to enhance it’s user’s online abilities/avatar or add to it’s own skills and functions (6 CP)
    • Create Relic, Corrupted / only for use with Enthusiast, above (3 CP)
    • Four Double Occult Contacts (online entities or organizations) with the Well-Travelled Modifier (15 CP)

Skills: Uses the Condensed Skill List (143 CP)

• Acrobatics (Dex): +13 (6.5 CP) + 1 (Dex Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +16
• Arcana (Int): +13 (13 CP) + 5 (Int Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
• Occult Skill – Armory (Str): +13 (13 CP) + 1 (Str Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +16
  • Soung Shieldsuit Powered Armored (Heavy Armor)
    • Armor +6 (3 Points)
    • Stength +6 (3 Points)
    • Sensors: Nightsight, Flash and Hearing Protection, GPS and Basic Environmental, Mapping, Motion Sensor, and Friend-or-Foe Identification (3 Points)
    • Environmental: Temperature Control, Breathing Apparatus, NBC Seal, Recycling/Space Capable (3 Points)
    • Heavy Fortification (3 Points)
    • Stealth +6 (2 Points)
  • Soung Kite Shield
    • +6 Armor (3 Points)
• Engineering (Int): +13 (6.5 CP) + 5 (Int Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) + 3 (Low Level Template) = +23
• Occult Skill – Erudite Focus (Int): +13 (6.5 CP) + 5 (Int Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
• Occult Skill – Foresight (Int): +13 (13 CP) + 5 (Int Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
• Martial Arts – Vailo Arts (Dex): +13 (6.5 CP) + 1 (Dex Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +16
  • Basic Techniques
    • Attack 2
    • Power 2
  • Advanced Techniques
    • Weapon Kata: Lightsabers
    • Mind of Chaos (Immunity / Psychic and Magical Combat Senses, Opponent Intuition Bonuses, and Similar)
    • Mind Like Moon
• Narrative (Cha): +13 (13 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +17
• Perception (Wis): +13 (6.5 CP) + 2 (Wis Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +17
• Persuasion (Cha): +13 (13 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 3 (Low Level Template) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
• Profession – Command (Cha): +13 (6.5 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) + 3 (Low Level Template) = +20
  • Covers: Strategy, Tactics, Leadership, Morale, and Logistics
• Scholar (Int): +13 (13 CP) + 5 (Int Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
  • Favored Enemies: Sith, Faded, Rakata, and Yeveetha
• Socialize (Wis): +13 (6.5 CP) + 2 (Wis Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) + 3 (Low Level Template) = +20
• Stealing The Scene (Con): +13 (13 CP) + 1 (Con Mod) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +16
• Occult Skill – Wealth (Cha): +13 (13 CP) + 2 (Cha Mod) + 3 (Low Level Template) + 1 (Morale) + 1 (Luck) = +20
  • Subsumes bargaining, persuading people to accept installment payments, strange gold coins, credit checks, and similar

Equipment:

• Amulet of Non-Detection (35,000 GP)
• Clothing of Any Outfit (1,200 GP)
• Handy Haversack (2,000 GP)
• Healing Belt (750 GP)
• Boots of Big Stepping (6,000 GP)
• Hand of the Mage (900 GP)
• Soung Mark III Shieldsuit Powered Armor
  • Improved Fire Resistance (42,000 GP)
  • +3 Magical Enhancement (9,000 GP)
  • Glamered Armor (2,700 GP)
• Ring of Feather Fall (2,200 GP)
• Ring of Suppress Biographical Monotalent (5,500 GP)
  • Provides Instant Briefing Blasts into the heads of targets
• Sunstone Staff (Unknown Value)
• Psionic Tattoos (Single Use, Caster Level 18)
  • Dimension Door x2
  • Dispel Psionics x2
  • Body Adjustment x3
• Personal Force Field (DR 8/-)
• Holographic HUD
• Repulsor Pack
• Variable Star (Grapnel)
• Color Changing Robes
• Radiation Negating Stygium Amulet
• Antimatter/Matter Crystal Lightsaber
• Collapsible Spear
• Hand Blaster
• Blaster Rifle with attached Grenade Launcher
• Censor/Telepathy Negating Cloak
• Spare Breath Masks
• Stasis Belts
• Bracer Computer (THELOS)
• Spacefield Clock
• Commlink with Orbital Range
• Multitool
• Advanced Medkit
• Philosophy/Alchemical Ray Gun
• Psi-Stone Knife
• Ten Ceramic/Plastic Throwing Knives
• Computer Tablet
• Starfleet Combadge
• Starfleet Tricorder
• Starfleet Phaser
• Substantial Supply of Obols
• Spare Power Cells
• Fusion Lantern
• Mandarin’s Pin Charm
• Flux Iron Charm
• Industrious Tool Talisman
• Makeover Kit Talisman
• Shifter’s Cloak Talisman (Wolf)
• Three Pieces of Library of Lindral

Anomaly Mission Logs by Katlyn Keldav – Session LX

A year ago I would have objected sternly to the idea of importing massive quantities of ignorance for any reason. And yet here we were making a trade deal to take the toxic waste of ignorance from one culture in the hopes of using it as a weapon against the false gods of another culture. It wasn’t a bad plan, and certainly was less resource intensive than attempting to build or import an army into the Stardock universe. Whether this meant it was a good plan was unknown, but at this point it seemed worth pursuing.

At least the reports of Starfleet reinforcements arriving was encouraging. I was beginning to worry regarding the lack of news from home, but we couldn’t attempt to force contact with us still vulnerable to the Censor’s wrath like this. What radio traffic we were able to pick up from Avrinthos was indicative of the hostile forces still being around in significant numbers, but determining more than that was impossible given that the communications were all encrypted and we didn’t have access to the Protectorate’s full resources to try to break it. At least that was what I thought until Vanessa back at the castle began giving an update on the latest intercepted communications.

(Vanatica) Wait, you’re reading their encrypted traffic? Is Starfleet able to break our encryption technologies?

(Vanessa) Nope, one of the technicians had the brilliant idea to have one of the locals try to distill the information content out of a printed copy of the traffic. I started laughing out loud at that one. That technician was definitely due a raise or a promotion for that clever thinking.

(Vanatica) It can’t be this easy…

(Katlyn) Of course it can. We’ve already seen magic that can heal wounds instantly, teleport us reliably, summon allies from across the multiverse, generate entire worlds inside living paintings, and distill the essence of such abstract concepts like East. Pulling the information out of an encrypted message is hardly the most impressive thing we’ve seen.

Although I was now reminded of an old Earth horror movie I had seen where robots using the fluctuations of the vacuum as a random number generator. It turned out that the fluctuations were not as random as supposed and the robots slowly turned malevolent over time. Part of me was interested in trying this new technique on such random noise and another part was terrified of what we might find.

(Vanessa) Well, it is that simple. Several droids suffered immediate breakdowns seeing this though. The surviving protocol droid is complaining about us organics using “cheat codes”.

(Katlyn) Why is it complaining? This technique VASTLY improves our odds of surviving and winning. (Vanessa) Apparently it is worried about losing its job.

(Katlyn) Well, if it is one of the lucky droids that counts as living, it might be able to learn how to do this as well.

(Vanessa) It says it will give it a try.

Even one droid able to do that reliably would be worth more than an entire core world to us back home. Most of the best encryption protocols were deemed pretty well unbreakable millennia ago. If we can successfully import the basics of Philosophy back home it will change things as much as Vanatica’s sorcery would. All the more reason for me to begin studying to become a Sith Alchemist then.

At this point, even if only one in a billion droids was alive and thus capable of learning these and other unusual techniques, that alone was worth the manufacturing costs. And right now our best estimates suggested that the percentage of alive droids was far higher than that. That might be enough to push for droid rights for those droids and wages.

(Vanessa) Sadly, most of what we’re getting is troop movement directives. Right now it appears that the primary interest is Maldor, Haldon, and Ulture. Some interest noted in the wooden mecha and the “orcs”.

In other news, it sounded like the preparations for receiving the first shipments of Green were underway. At first Vanatica was advocating that the stuff be kept in a deep bedrock pit far from anything with valuable data and from anyone that might stumble upon it, but then I pointed out that bedrock around here was frequently that weird Psi-Stone material. And we had learned the learned the hard way that mixing weird materials, energies, and substances wasn’t always the smartest idea.

(Jacob) Damn it, now I want to know how those interact!

(Vanatica) Well, if you really insist, see if a previous version of you had tried this experiment and what the result was.

There was some furious queries of the database before he promptly announced that there was no record of a prior test being done. With that he started talking excitedly about all the different tests he could perform. As he began to wind himself up with the testing possibilities, I decided to have a little fun at his expense.

(Katlyn) Everyone get away now! Testing in progress! He’s doing SCIENCE! RUN!!!

Many of the soldiers and technicians played along with the charade, but it wasn’t as fun as it could have been since Jacob was completely engrossed in his experiment planning.

(Jacob) Normally a vial made of Psi-Stone is about as good as you can get for safe storage, but this is probably something that could eat through it like acid if they interact. Or alloy and make it even stronger as nothing could know about it till it depletes its charge.

Vanatica was at least able to convince Jacob to wait until we could offload him and his experiment onto an uninhabited island where we could watch him from presumably a safe distance without risking the crew or airship. Once he was offloaded and we fell back, the signal was given for him to go ahead with his experiment.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then nothing continued to happen for some time. Jacob seemed to be standing there looking puzzled. He would pick up the vial with the tongs to look closely at it. He’d then get that confused look again, set the vial down and look around. Then he’d pick up the vial again in a seeming loop.

(Vanatica) Well, I suppose we should have anticipated that.

I tilted my head to indicate to THELOS that I wished to speak over the radio to Jacob.

(Katlyn) Umm, Jacob, you’re looping!

(Jacob) What?

(Vanatica) It is possible that while the Psi-Stone is holding the liquid, it isn’t holding the erasure potential. So whenever you pick up the vial, you are in some ways directly touching the liquid. Which is why you seem to be looping.

(Katlyn) Except he isn’t touching the vial directly. He’s using tongs.

(Vanatica) Perhaps the Psi-Stone radiates the erasure potential then?

(Jacob) Looping?!? Well, that is a bit annoying as it requires not doing anything like observing the object of the experiment. Ok, maybe we can try further tests with some breaks between steps to listen for interrupts and have others watch for symptoms. Next is to test the strength of the vial to a falling hammer. And then the hammer wielded by the experimenter if it survives the normal hammer that has no chance against a normal Psi-Stone vial.

Well, it appeared that the Psi-Stone retained it’s “normal” properties as the vial remained unbroken to such efforts. It did appear that the amount of Green was slowly decreasing though. From what was discernible, the Green in contact with Psi-Stone was undergoing a phase change into “radiative ignorance” at a rate related to its pressure. The radiative ignorance passed through Psi-Stone, so the Green gradually leaked away. Interestingly, the field produced was distorted by the shape of the Psi-Stone in a manner similar to light passing through glass.

(Jacob) Oh yay, we can make ignorance ray-guns. Not sure I like that being a possibility.

I had to admit to being apprehensive as well, but it had potential applications that were hard to dismiss outright. At least in radiative form the effect was quite diffuse and thus only affected the most recent memories. This was likely the mechanism behind the purported whimsy rays we had seen the effects of earlier. Which also suggested other alchemical/philosophical concoctions could be used as well. Hmm, friendship and trust rays could be immensely useful. Although how to ethically acquire those substances wasn’t exactly clear.

We didn’t have any further issues with our travels for the next four days as most things were willing to simply ignore us. However, then we stumbled upon a small, relatively barren island surrounded by significant coral reefs. What made this one particularly notable compared to the dozens of other islands we had seen so far was the presence of was appeared to be a classic smoke distress signal and the remains of a ship on the reef. Ship appeared to be of the seafaring variety and made of some sort of leather like it was from the hide of a giant reptile or snake. There wasn’t a lot left of it though. We pulled up over the island and lowered a rope ladder for the eight survivors to climb up.

(Jacob) What happened?

(Survivor) We were attempting to reach land on the other side of the sea – but the drive lost power steadily, until we were adrift. With little control, we wound up on the reef about three months ago.

(Katlyn) Does anyone need medical attention?

Getting a closer look at them now, I would have classified them as near-humans given the very close to baseline human form with slight varying “animal” features that ran the gambit of cat-like, bird-like, and various other animorphic traits. Medically, there were a few mostly healed broken bones that were going to need re-broken and set again, a missing eye, lots of minor injuries, and nutrient deficiency issues. Probably all the result of washing over a reef and then rough living with minimal resources. All of that was treatable, although the eye was going to be tricky without a full medical lab, but then I had plenty of obols for resolving such issues.

We did learn that this bunch was from Leros and that they had been fleeing the region as survivors of a defeated action in some sort of civil war. From the sound of it, it was pretty bad by local standards. Most of the water flow is being channeled to power weapons and defenses, production is collapsing, famine, and general disaster. In essence, a civil war combined with what was effectively a collapse of the local technological base. Fortunately, it sounded like those working to get refugees out were being supported by the obols they picked up for doing so.

(Jacob) But why? What is worth that sort of disaster?!

It sounded like this was a quasi-religious conflict over which beast-attunement was “best” and thus had the “right to rule” – instead of everyone cooperating. Apparently, the “real gods” didn’t approve, but every so often some of the groups wanted power more than prosperity. Then they started fighting over it, then they don’t get paid any longer, and finally the grab for resources begins. All in all, it was very shortsighted, but if one had too many people who valued ambition highly in power at once, the wars started again.

(Katlyn) Can’t say it is really all that different from home in some ways.

Whenever the Sith reached some sort of critical mass the Republic usually got invaded and quite a bit of the Galaxy got trashed as a result. Usually nothing on the scale of entire planets, but it wasn’t unusual for cities to disappear due to orbital bombardment. Not to mention the destructive occupations, damage to fleets and infrastructure, and the battles between the Sith and Jedi didn’t do much to help much either.

(Jacob) Yuck, well are we still going that way? Getting involved in wars like that is trouble we can’t do much about.

(Vanatica) Well, one of the pieces we are looking for is in Leros unfortunately.

(Jacob) Drat, must be done then.

(Katlyn) Traveling by airship is likely to be too conspicuous during a war. We might want to consider alternative means of transport.

We were able to extract information on major cities, factions, and areas of fighting from our new passengers. From the sound of things, there were only two factions that made much use of what we would call True Sorcery. Most of the rest relied on spirit-channeling, mechanics, and the power-generating hydromancy. Since those factions were the ones collecting sorcerous items, the fragment of Lindral was probably being used by one of them – which at least cut things down from an entire hex to just two cities.

We dropped off our passengers near the border region with Avrinthos and continued onwards. There were no additional issues as we approached the shoreline, which was somewhat inside the hex border. Terrain looked to be mostly marsh, river deltas, meandering rivers, and the occasional patches of light hills that hadn’t been eroded away yet with a climate of near constant rain.

There was one mostly-wrecked city on the coast nearby, looked like it was a sizable port at one time. Evidently the normal climate is very wet, but quite a lot of areas appeared to have localized patches of very unnatural weather, which was fairly obviously being used as a weapon. The water ran through complex networks of canals and terraces, although the layouts did not make a lot of sense. There were several pillars of light, fire, and various exotic energies erupting from areas where the canals were damaged. A few areas were covered in ice, threw off darkness, or otherwise were apparent energy drains instead.

The cities… looked like they functioned as fairly modern places. The construction tended to be stone and wood, but the layout indicated internal air transport, environmental control, and plenty of other conveniences. What little we had been able to gather indicated that the local hydromancy involved running water through mystical patterns to generate immense amounts of magical power. Very useful from the sound of it, but by all appearances was a tempting target for the ambitious to seize personal control of.

Honestly, the general situation of people channeling more power than they can handle through themselves and remain sane – was more than a bit familiar. On the plus side, the fact that the power failed as canal maintenance collapsed tended to reset things without what constituted a major Sith War back home was different, and possibly a plus. I just wasn’t sure that having the general infrastructure everyone depended on catastrophically fail every generation of so was a good system either.

It did mean that in the worst case, we could utilize our ready access to prodigious quantities of explosives to tear apart the canal infrastructure empowering the crazies and pacify them indirectly. We usually didn’t have that sort of luxury with Sith or Faded unfortunately. This was likely to be a deeply unpopular approach with the locals though.

It was becoming clear that continuing further via airship was asking to be shot out of the sky by the locals during their war. However, I didn’t relish the idea of traversing that terrain on foot either. Normally this would be solved with a few repulsorcraft, but that wasn’t an option here. I would also wager the waterways weren’t likely to be deep enough to hide a submarine of anything but the absolute smallest size.

There was some discussion of taking a cue from ancient ironclads and armoring a ship with a combination of Philosophical ignorance and Psi-Stone to act as a cloaking field for our ship. Problem was that was liable to be as much a problem for us as it was a help in distracting people trying to target us. Probably best to focus on doing things simply with a basic boat that didn’t stand out from any of the other boats about. Sometimes the simplest approach was the best approach after all.

It did seem though that almost every species or civilization on the Anomaly possessed some sort of serious “glitch” somewhere. Otherwise they wouldn’t need to be on the Anomaly to begin with. So far we hadn’t seen any sign of a large scale inhabitation by anyone from our universe or even cluster of universes. Most of what we had seen along those lines was expeditions and the stories about evacuees of major catastrophes like the Great Burning. I suppose that was comforting in that at least our civilization didn’t appear to have a glitch reaching that level of problem.

It did make me wonder though why previous expeditions hadn’t effectively colonized this place. All it would have taken was just one major effort from one of the many timelines to make it happen. While Vanatica and I were likely atypical in terms of available resources, it wouldn’t take that much effort to effectively take control of a good number of hexes with what we’d learned over the last few weeks. And surely groups like the Rakata, the Wraiths, the Republic, Faded, and other Sith would see the absolute potential to be (metaphorically) mined here. For all we knew, the Sith-Rakata alliance was attempting to do just that over in Avrinthos now. But we don’t see much of any evidence that this sort of thing had occurred before. The most we’d seen so far was some tales from the Archive and Stormkanal being built by versions of Jacob, Jacob, and Ben.

I was beginning to suspect that the Force played a role in this. If the genetics of the locals and other we had met were any indication, our own genetics were likely highly unstable without the Force itself helping adapt things if such people were born with Birthrights other than our own. So any descendants from people of our universes were liable to have fertility issues at best and substantial biological failures of major systems and basic metabolism at worst. Add in the compounding issues presented by not having the cultural and technological backing of the Force and it would stand to reason that any such “colonies” would fail within a generation or two.

If true, this didn’t necessarily bode well if our efforts to introduce magic back home caused our timeline to massively diverge from the cluster and as a result Force and Codex abilities began to fail for everyone, including the various monotalents that keep us all alive. While we could very likely convert some people to a more stable form, doing that to an entire galaxy was going to be problematic. That left either fleeing somewhere more conducive to our biology, or actively trying to prevent such a split from occurring in the first place. We could fairly simply move the entire galaxy to another timeline (again) to keep ourselves (or our descendants) stable, but that only delayed the issue.

As for preventing our timeline from splitting off from the others, I was at a lose as to how to do that except possibly spreading magic to as many timelines as possible to try and drag as much of the cluster with us as possible. I wasn’t sure of the wisdom of that idea either, and that would surely put us on a path of conflict with the Final Empire sooner rather than later too. Although I suppose our access to magic could substantially tip the odds in our favor on that end.

Oh well, I suppose we have a few generations at least or possibly even several millennia before such issues come to a head though. Notes for our descendants to be aware of and work on solutions for.

Anomaly Mission Logs by Vanatica Soung – Session LIX

Photo by Emiliano Arano on Pexels.com

Pumping the locals for information on best paths to Leros was not as productive as I might have hoped. I had been expecting known trade routes, but instead got a rough map indicating where pirates were presumed to be operating in Philosophical Lawless Zones. There just didn’t seem to be much of a government to speak of beyond the village level at best and what trade there was seemed to largely be with the immediately neighboring villages as opposed to regional.

Still, that was sufficient to get us a rough idea of a course to chart around the lawless zones. It looked like trying to avoid the lawless zones entirely would increase our six day journey to Leros to twelve days. While I was annoyed at the idea of having to add to our journey to avoid idiot pirates, it was a better option than having to battle more of them trying to steal our stuff.

There was some debate of taking the castle with us or leaving it here while taking the rebuilt airship instead. I was not entirely comfortable with leaving the castle unattended for long given that we had a known hostile army that was keen to acquire it. On the other hand, the castle was large and unwieldy at best for transport around the Anomaly. Plus taking the castle on a flight high in the sky was a sure way to attract attention to it. After significant debate back and forth, we elected to take the airship now that we had moved the castle to a more central location for our trips. Hopefully leaving most of the powerful members of our team behind to help the Untremi defend the castle such as Valith and Stormfire would keep assaults to a minimum.

In the end, the decision was made that those going to Leros would be Katlyn, Jacob, Kuroko, enough of a crew to run and defend the airship, and myself. The first day was largely uneventful beyond some fishing vessels, and a couple of locals in a balloon. On the second day though the airship shuddered and our speed dropped dramatically as everything lurched forward as a result of inertia.

(Vanatica) Status report!

(Bridge) Losing some altitude, minor damage to the front hull, slimy stuff on the front windows, and one rotor is nonfunctioning.

(Katlyn) Did we hit something, or are we being fired at?

(Soldier) If we’re being fired at, it isn’t very effective.

Katlyn sped off to the deck to get a look around while I made an albeit slower dash for the bridge. Once there, the view from the deck window was sort of wavering and distorted. Which made it hard to discern what exactly was going on. Katlyn was already reporting her findings from the deck.

(Katlyn) Some sort of goo on the deck. A sharp stinging sensation on any exposed skin that touches the stuff. Extremely painful from the look of it. Got a few crew up here that got splashed with the stuff.

Sounded like jellyfish venom or something similar. That also went along with the reports of goo or slime on the front of the ship. I was not particularly enthused about the idea of giant flying jellyfish if they were anything like the tales I had heard back home.

(Katlyn) Stuff looks difficult to counter outright. Superficially damaging, it apparently is fairly normal nematocyst stings, but the “venom” is simply expanding nitrogen gas. So it inflicts mechanical damage as it blows up the tissues. Artificial bends essentially. I am going to have to use some obols as proper treatment of this is going to be problematic with the resources on board. Still not seeing any sort of a creature out here though.

(Jacob) Looks like we’ve run into a cloud-jelly: a creature built of atmospheric gases via enhanced interactions between them. Not likely a major menace, but we are entangled in the fringes of the “tentacles”. Semi-solid, but detached bits will slowly revert to normal atmosphere. Their “toxin” is painful, but rarely affects anything past the upper tissue layers of dense-matter creatures.

(Katlyn) Alright, everyone inside the hull then!

(Vanatica) So keep plowing through and we should break free?

(Jacob) We may be able to power through. Otherwise we’ll have to cut the tentacles.

(Katlyn) Any easy ways to detect it? Like does it show up on thermal or ultraviolet?

(Jacob) It will show up on magical detection, air current or cloud detection, and distorts sound passing though it to some extent. It’s just hard to separate from the surrounding atmosphere save for its relative lack of small scale movement.

(Katlyn) Alright, I am sealing my armor and going to go cut us free. I’ll use an obol to give myself the ability to see it.

I heard the distant sound of a swinging lightsaber whirling around at great speed, but we did not seem to be breaking loose like anticipated. Katlyn flew up to the top of the airship to try to better ascertain as to why.

(Katlyn) Problem: this thing is several cubic kilometers in size. Mostly ahead and above us too. Going through it isn’t really practical.

(Vanatica) Alright, we’re reversing course then.

It still took awhile to get free and drop altitude enough to get out of the way of it. What “slime” was left on the airship sublimed into atmospheric gases within an hour – albeit at a great increase in volume. The “lift areas” did the opposite, as near vacuum areas contracted. The blatant violations of the ideal gas laws managed to annoy even Jacob amazingly enough. He took out his frustrations by tinkering with the forward view screen to allow it to highlight the creatures in the future so the crew could steer around them.

That eventually revealed a fascinating, if largely transparent (or occasionally foggy) gaseous biosphere, drifting in the sky – normally high enough to avoid hills and such. None of it was apparently sapient though. Part of me wondered if this was an artificial ecosystem, or if this had somehow naturally evolved on some strange world in the multiverse. Reminds me of the stories of creatures living in the depths of gas giant worlds in the cloud layers far below most people entered. Some tales claimed that such things could reach the size of a star destroyer or even larger. If these jellyfish were of any indication, then there was likely to be truth to those tales. Although probably such creatures were likely made of something solid or semi-liquid as opposed to compressed gases like these things.

At least they weren’t likely to pose much hazard to us while we were inside the ship. The sheer difference in density made affecting us as difficult as us affecting a creature made of condensed matter.

Day four saw us boarded by “pirates” who adamantly insisted we were a flying bar and demanded drinks. Jacob quickly got swept up in the revelry, card games, and drinking games. They were mildly amusing, if not especially serious.

(Katlyn) Frat boy rarely change, even across the multiverse it seems.

Katlyn’s theory was that these people had extract their worries philosophically. That (or some variation of it) would certainly fit the pattern seen so far. They definitely seemed slightly detached from reality, genuinely couldn’t take anything seriously, and seemed to be more than a bit drunk on something other than alcohol. I just had concerns that this was cover for some more subtle act of piracy than the previous instance of taking hostages and demanding ransom. As such I began conducting a sweep of the airship looking for anything untoward going on.

It quickly became apparent that the “aura of fun” around our new guests was contagious and not just something that affected only Jacob. Quite a number of the crew were quickly getting caught up in it all and beginning to act silly. So far it didn’t seem to be affecting Katlyn or myself, but there was no clear way to discern how long that was going to last. At least there didn’t seem to be a bunch of pirates looting our stash of obols or taking my crew as slaves. By this point Jacob seemed to have at least partially broke free of whatever was influencing him and began reciting readouts from his tricorder.

(Jacob) We’re being affected by the residue of a whimsy cannon. A rather delicate distillation, but it will leave those directly affected without the ability to be serious about anything for at least a week. The effects of the residue usually pass in ten or fifteen minutes after you are out of contact. An unusual and generally non-lethal combat option, likely useful against nigh-invulnerable sorts.

(Katlyn) So these pirates were shot with a whimsy cannon?

(Jacob) Looks like it, or they used it on themselves. Otherwise they’d probably want to steal something.

I briefly contemplated simply throwing them overboard into the ocean below as a final reward for engaging in piracy, but elected against it since they hadn’t done anything hostile to us yet. As it was, we took precautions to prevent thefts once these pirates came out of their revelry. At that point they would be given a choice of either the easy way or the hard way off the airship.

Eventually the pirates came out of their revelry and elected to take the easy way off the airship. Especially since they were badly outnumbered and outgunned. We were able to find a small island along our route that was suitable to leave them on. It was small enough that there weren’t any villages for them to harass, but not so small that they were likely to starve or be unable to build a small boat to go somewhere else. The leader of the group did make a declaration that they would return one day to steal something to prove that they could.

(Vanatica) And I will vaporize you like the last bunch, just to make a point.

At which point one of the pirates suggested to Katlyn that I needed some of my anger drained off.

(Katlyn) You know, they have a point.

I shot her a look that told how much I did not appreciate the sentiment.

(Katlyn) Oh come now, what if we could drain off the Dark Side from Sith? Or antisocial behavior from the Faded? Hmm, we might need a really big bucket for that stuff. Disposal of it all might also prove to be an issue.

(Kuruko) That is possible based on what I have seen in your movies, but would be a stopgap measure if the underlying behavior didn’t change. Hosing someone down with an opposing emotion to whatever they fell to would be even more temporary.

(Katlyn) Hmm, locations strong in the Dark Side are places where people have been extracting the Dark Side philosophically and then dumping the waste into the environment.

(Vanatica) We have no evidence that knowledge of Philosophy has ever been present in our universe.

(Katlyn) But we’ve also haven’t been able to understand the core mechanics of Sith Alchemy either. Much like we hadn’t really understood the true nature Sith Sorcery until the Anomaly helped us crack that little nut.

Oh, now there was an interesting point. So much of Sith (and for that matter – Jedi) lore was lost to time and only indirectly referenced from ancient holos and the occasional holocron promising power at a terrible price. Just how many Sith Sorcerers and Alchemists had there been at the precipice of the deep well of knowledge we have acquired in the last few months? Even limited mastery of those forces based on very incomplete knowledge could very well have entered into legends and myth. And we, with a much more complete understanding of the underlying principles….

(Katlyn) Perhaps if you are going to be the Sith Sorceress of the family, I shall become the Sith Alchemist!

I wasn’t sure that was wise, but then again, I couldn’t exactly claim I wasn’t experimenting with powerful and potentially dangerous abilities. I highly suspected Mother would hardly be approving of what I was doing either.

Things were relatively quiet until the eleventh day when alerts started sounding about inbound missiles. Reaching the bridge, reports started coming in that the missiles were inbound from some sort of submersible. Evasive maneuvers weren’t really practical in an airship and we lacked any substantial shields or armor due to the very nature of the design. There wasn’t much to do beyond hope that the missile guidance systems were particularly atrocious. Depending on the size of the warheads, one hit may well bring us out of the sky very quickly.

There was a loud thud that rocked the airship and immediately the computer systems went offline. Several members of the crew began stumbling around in a daze while I felt something push at my mind. My training against Force Mind Tricks kicked in and I was able to effectively push back at that. Once that passed, the first thing I noticed was that Jacob’s tricorder was beeping. I also noted that the pilot was no longer at his post and was holding his head while stumbling across the bridge. I moved quickly to take the controls and push for a rapid ascent to hopefully put us out of range of the incoming missiles.

(Jacob) Ugh, Memory read errors, data corruption, missing files…. They are stealing my data and not even in the polite way of just making copies. Watch out, we have data thieves.

(Katlyn) Missiles appear to be a payload loaded with some sort of alchemical concoction. Possibly Green.

(Jacob) A good deal of historical and past scan data is missing. Several books are now filled with randomized text, computer files are missing, several crew members are quite confused, and the cook has lost several favorite recipes. The missiles are definitely loaded with a variation of Green, but are set up to transfer information to the attackers as opposed to simply erase it.

I briefly pondered whether this was an attack by someone with a grudge against us, but decided the profile fit too well with what we knew of the locals and their “eccentricities”. Ergo, this was likely the work of more pirates or whatever they wanted to call themselves. They probably were running on the insanely naive idea that since they weren’t physically hurting anyone, that escalation in retaliation was uncalled for. I, for one, wanted to get our data back as well.

It wasn’t difficult to rig up some explosive depth charges given the materials we had on board. Once we had those set up, it was a simple matter to drop altitude and start dropping the explosives where Jacob’s scans said the submarine was located.

Meanwhile Jacob was fiendishly hammering away at the sensor controls muttering about no one stealing his data. The air around him began to sparkle with an ominous green glow. At a guess, he was doing that informational attack trick of his and was engaged in fierce combat with somebody on board that submarine. At a guess as he started snickering to himself, he was winning the fight.

With sensor (and obol) scans indicating the location of the sub, it wasn’t too difficult to stay ahead of it and keep dropping depth charges in its path to prevent attempts at escape. If they were smart, they’d surface soon to surrender before we damaged their hull enough to cause it to implode. Then any survivors would be sent off as witnesses to the tale of horror that is the doom of those that mess with the airship and the crazy lady in charge.

Soon much of the crew was getting to be extremely confused as to what was going on and we had reports of a lot of green fluid pooling in various locations onboard. On the other hand, Jacob announced he had managed to transfer all the stolen information back and had it stored in his tricorder for safe keeping. Presumably he could restore all the missing memories and data to our crew and systems as well.

(Jacob) I am rotating hull polarization in this frequency to stop future attempts to steal our data. I am open to any suggestions beyond that.

(Katlyn) Force them to surface somehow so we can board them? They don’t seem keen to do the obvious.

(Jacob) Sure.

What came rising to the surface was not what I would have expected in the form of a submarine. Water was pouring out of numerous holes that appeared to be screen doors as opposed to hull breaches caused by our depth charges. The ship itself was less smashed than a ship filled with air would be. Likely the creation of a fully aquatic species then. Definitely didn’t appear to be a species I recognized though. It also appeared that much of the crew had abandoned ship. Oh well, time to board, take prisoners, and then loot anything of value as the spoils of combat.

(Jacob) Why would any of them stay if they are an aquatic species?

(Katlyn) Probably they were covering the escape of the others.

If the captain stayed behind, that was going to be a point in his favor. If he had fled, well, that was going to reflect quite poorly on him if I ever ran into him again. On the whole, we recovered hundreds more flasks of Green, a fair supply of other philosophical essences, and some odd technical gear. Definitely appeared that the undersea species had a better technology base than the surface bunch. We also found that we had a total of five captives: the Captain, Chief Engineer, two gunners, and a random crewman who had been trapped in a compartment. With them firmly in our control, it was a simple matter to take the Captain aside and put him through the process of intimidation and interrogation.

(Vanatica) Alright, let me guesss: the modus operandi is to steal knowledge, technology, and techniques from others using the Green?

(Captain) Actually, we extract information from nowhere and dump the green waste product on other people. We’ll steal data too, but mostly on intent on inflicting our own accumulated ignorance on others. Probably not surprising why no one ever remembers where their supply of Green comes from.

(Jacob) Why dump it on other people rather than store it somewhere?

(Vanatica) Because to them it is a hazardous waste that others sometimes find useful I think.

(Jacob) Then why not sell it instead of dumping it on people?

(Katlyn) Insufficient demand for the stuff compared to how much they are generating?

(Captain) Nobody wants that much of the stuff. And if we try to store it underwater, it tends to leak.

Ah, I had forgotten the issues less developed aquatic species often had with maintaining separation of fluids in their environment. Most I had interacted with (like the Lotados) had access to full galactic technology and thus had the materials, seals, and welding techniques needed to prevent such issues. These locals likely didn’t have a fraction of that knowledge.

I was somewhat tempted to let them back into the ocean at an altitude of twenty kilometers for their trouble. After all, I had seen people spreading ignorance, but nothing quite so literally as this. Still, I found myself hesitating. There was a situation here that could potentially be of value to us if we played our cards intelligently.

(Jacob) Do you think we could sell this much in Tindalos? I would rather have a way to make this work for everyone even if they were being obnoxious about how they were doing it.

(Katlyn) Tindalos is a relatively rare birthright though. Not going to be a lot of demand there I suspect.

(Jacob) Not to people with the birthright, to people in the actual dimension. The creatures there are a cognito-hazard. And while the birthright is rare, it does tend to affect others as well. The “recreate yourself” level dose can change Birthrights though. The creatures of Tindalos that get summoned tend to be at least half-informational, if only due to the entropy level there.

(Katlyn) Well, I suppose we could set up a market in Avrinthos with a decent shipping method, although the issues with the enemy fleet and army would make that an issue.

(Jacob) And Vespene Gas is an informational manipulation at a basic level. Wait, there is a connection with it to the source of the blueprints, which is the Gamesters.

(Katlyn) Wonder how big a dose would be needed to rewrite a false god or even a pantheon?

(Jacob) Zin’s world may have uses as well.

Already my mind was racing through the implications of this development. With a bit of targeting trickery, we might be able to dump a load of Green onto a batch of Vespene Gas and deal a heavy blow to the Gamesters without firing a shot against their fleets and armies of slaves. With sufficient amounts of Green, we might even be able to force a rewrite or ascension. And this did open up the avenue of dumping Philosophical waste by exporting it to universes where it was better suited to either repair damage caused by other means, or as a weapon against things that were robust against more conventional attacks. Still that was a level of control we were lacking and the locals definitely seemed to be “unrefined” enough to meet that need fully. We needed a society that worked on this stuff at the level of a science.

Closest match for that was the Federation and Starfleet.

We still hadn’t gotten word regarding the arrival of reinforcements from Starfleet yet, but it had been eleven days since the last check in on that front. A quick radio call back to the castle returned the news that the first preliminary groups had started arriving with more on the way. It looked like either by luck or the design of someone above us that we were rapidly accumulating the weapons we needed against the Gamesters.

One final thought did occur to me.

(Vanatica) Hmm, concentrated ignorance would be a life extension drug back home.

(Jacob) Oh wow, THAT is a huge market. Sure everyone only needs some every few decades and probably very little, but it gets multiplied by such a huge number.

I wasn’t sure that it was the wisest thing to be selling – the trillion year stagnation of the Final Empire was evidence of that – but the potential market for what would otherwise be “waste” was hard to deny. I still felt that having some generational turnover every so often was ideal so long as there was a means of keeping the knowledge and wisdom of the previous generations around to act as a guide. Jedi and Sith did that via holocrons (when they weren’t seeking immortality), and most of the rest of us had to settle for ended up in the history books and holos despite the Jedi and Sith almost always taking center stage in most conflicts.

One thing was for certain, there was likely to be a place for a Sith Alchemist if Katlyn decided to go that route.

Anomaly Mission Log by Katlyn Keldav – Session LVIII

Photo by Asad Photo Maldives on Pexels.com

Despite the reservations of Jacob and many of the others who came from different universes, re-entry into the atmosphere was largely a non-event.  Apparently there were concerns that we’d burn up due to the heating of re-entry, but I haven’t heard of that happening to a ship without massive damage to the hull and shields.  And for all of the damage inflicted on this castle, it had plenty of hull and shields to spare.  I was more concerned about something on this castle having a spontaneous transporter accident than that.

Once we were in the atmosphere and in a stable hover, we crossed the border into Nilandar.  Almost immediately the technicians were complaining that overall system efficiency dropped noticeably once we were in Nilandar.  Probably an aspect of the local physics that was overpowering the ability of the castle’s living aspect to counter.  At least it wasn’t like we had a major shortage of power available though given the sheer amount of power crystals available.  Pushing things too much might start making waste heat an issue on the other hand.

Jacob was quite disappointed about not being able to jury-rig some sort of insane solution.

(Jacob)  Drat!

(Katlyn)  Why drat?  Do you want to rig up something else that halfway threatens to explode and kill us all?

(Jacob)  Well, not really, but I don’t have much of a job if nothing is going wrong.  It’s such a rare thing here.

(Technician)  To be fair, there are plenty of malfunctioning systems, things that aren’t functioning well, and stuff running on backups.

(Jacob)  I can work on that stuff I suppose then.   Would have been nice to be needed to do something non-standard though.

(Katlyn)  Listening to Vanatica, it sounds like everything here is “non-standard” in some fashion.

(Technician)  Given that we have a cross-wired together hybrid of Sith/Republic tech, Federation “tech”, Mad Scientist Steampunk, and whatever passes for local technology, I think “standard” gets a bit odd.

Part of me wondered if we’d be better off with a reality bubble that wasn’t an amalgamation of various realities and instead was a distillation of one in particular.  It would severely hamper those not native to that reality, but it would mean much easier importation of that reality’s technology into a cohesive system.  Then again, much of the point of this expedition was to push the limits of our understanding of reality to depths of the Tier IV Multiverse.  Playing it safe in our cushy reality bubble, while comforting, was counterproductive.

While we were definitely still flight and space worthy, the decision was quickly made to land and make repairs on the various systems and structural components damaged during the phasing experiment.  We ended up locating a semi-isolated peninsula of seashore that looked stable enough while not occupied by anything likely to be badly impacted by having a castle land on it.

I don’t think any of us were anticipating getting a door-to-door salesman almost immediately after we landed.  And true to the tropes of old Earth movies, this one was selling encyclopedias.  Was this an unbelievable coincidence?  Or was there some supernatural force (or even the Force itself somehow?) at work here to ensure that new arrivals learned the local magic/science/philosophy?  Probably more like a salesman with some sort of weird ability to find and be where potential customers might be found.

(Salesman)  Twelve Obols for the full set!  Suitable for any apprentice philosopher!

(Katlyn)  Twelve Obols seems kinda high for a set of encyclopedias to me.

(Salesman)  Primers are included!

(Katlyn)  How do we know that this isn’t a scam?  I’ve had innumerable people try to sell me fake holocrons after all!

(Salesman)  Well, it would be a lot of printing for a scam!

Hmm, sounded like he was telling the truth.  Looked like getting rid of old texts that were no longer particularly useful, since building up one’s stores of Philosophy required studying things one did not yet know.  I could probably negotiate him down to eight Obols if I was so inclined.

Now I was pondering what all counted as something sufficient for studying to build up stores of philosophy.  Even cut off from the subspace network and the Holonet, we had enough data in the computer core of the Dawnchaser on galactic history, cultures, biographies, sciences, engineering, surveys, movies, books, and games to keep a person occupied for hundreds of lifetimes.

Eh, even if I don’t use them, I am sure someone will find a use for them or at the very least serve as a useful reference when trying to understand what other philosophers are doing.  I briefly considered paying with precious metal coinage, but decided that Obols were (relatively) more plentiful and this was potentially valuable enough information to be worth the loss of the Obols.

Collecting my new purchase, I handed them to Orzi Tihl and asked that the contents be digitized and made available to everyone.  The salesman had mentioned the cost of printing the books, but I don’t think he realized how cheap printing books was in our society even if it was an industry that catered to hobbyists that liked having impressive looking libraries.  Or that we had even more economical means of propagating large amounts of written text for everyone to use.

Jacob and Kuroko were soon browsing the preliminary scans and offering commentary.

(Jacob)  Looks interesting, but I am not sure if this is legitimate or not.

(Kuroko)  The introduction books do explain some basics, and you do have to study regularly to build up your reserves of philosophy.  Rather like how you need to tinker with devices to build up your reserves of engineering!

(Katlyn)  Umm, I am not the engineer of the family, but I don’t think that is how it works.

(Kuroko)  I was talking to my husband on that point.

Which might be true for a sufficiently broad definition of engineering to cover whatever it was that Jacob was doing.  I think it said more about Federation technology that it seemed to be more in line with what the local Philosophers were doing than anything sane.  The fact that we didn’t understand what the detriments were to this magic or science was not putting me at ease either.  I understood the rules for Sith, Faded, Jedi, and Codifiers, but this place changed the rules every seven thousand kilometers or so.  That meant there were plenty of opportunities to be had, but it also meant that the threats we faced kept changing and morphing as we explored further.

And this was one scenario where learning more didn’t necessarily make you more prepared for the next encounter.

At least nothing seemed intent on bothering us as the Untremi and technicians went about repairing the damage from the latest disaster.  Vanatica and Jacob got a lecture from the Untremi regarding disastrous experiments, and that set Vanatica off in even more of a foul mood than before.  I elected to pass word around amongst the crew to give her some space for the time being.  I pondered asking Ve Ke to ask Vanatica to stop working so hard and do something to relax, but decided that letting her work in peace was probably the best option at the moment.

On the whole, damage was relatively light in terms of structural damage.  A few major systems needed patching and some minor systems were in need of serious repairs, but that was minor in comparison to the major damage centuries of neglect and fighting had done to the place.  That didn’t get into the hundreds of experiments that were in various states of destruction and neglect, but the records of those was in many ways more important than the devices themselves.

Not that there was a lot for me to do with helping the repairs.  I amused myself with painting the beachside setting we were in for a while before taking one of the datapads with a preliminary scan of the texts we had gotten from our salesman earlier.  I wasn’t going to say that the philosophical concepts were particularly “new” in galactic discourse, but this region of the Anomaly actually gave such concepts power beyond debates on school campuses and poetry reading circles.

As for the nearby village, everything seemed comparatively “low-tech”, but also low-labor and the population seemed generally contented with an enjoyable lifestyle.  I guess one could say the life here was pleasant, with most jobs spending a lot of time reading about whatever one found interesting.  I could see how many might want to live this life, but I felt abandoning my life back home to live on a beach reading books for the rest of my days a tad bit irresponsible.

Besides, I had a deep suspicion of anywhere that appeared too idyllic.  There always seemed to be a price paid somewhere and many societies had a tendency to hide that unpleasantness somewhere in the shadows.

By the time the repairs were complete and we were contemplating getting underway again, the locals insisted on throwing a “bon voyage dinner” for us.  Not wishing to be rude, we elected to attend and try to be friendly.  Again, the food was low-tech, but the dishes were all hauntingly delicious.  The locals called it the “Essence of Flavor”, but I suspected it was a philosophical extraction of flavor from other foods then added to these dishes.  This was quickly confirmed while discussing with the locals.

Part of me felt like this was cheating.  Cooking good food needed to be an effort of some sort.  Whether it was artisanal chefs pursuing the art of culinary cuisine or armies of food scientists working to adapt and develop new meals through nutritional science, there had to be an effort made to get better at it.  This idea that one could simply study the best strategies for a holo game and use that store of “philosophy” to make better food just didn’t sit well with me.  The level of abstraction between labor and result was just too large in my opinion.  It also meant no one knew what they were doing on a technical or artisanal level.  That had to have hidden consequences that were poorly understood by the locals.  Did they even understand the concepts of cooking food long enough and hot enough to render it safe from pathogens?  Or that people needed to eat certain foods, not for the taste, but for the nutritional contents?

Vanatica spent much of the meal asking questions regarding the best route to Leros while avoiding getting too close to Avrinthos.  They didn’t seem to be particularly knowledgeable regarding routes, but did have a list of places to avoid (mostly just areas on the map to go around).

(Villager)  Those are fairly substantial Lawless Areas, thanks to attempts to distill law and organization from some of the oceanic areas to make things more pleasant at home.

(Vanatica, muttering under her breath)  And there it is…

(Villager)  Well, they mostly get pirates, but they’re rarely actually violent.  It encourages nonsensical behaviors mostly.

And here we had a perfect example of the issues with Philosophy: it either produced “waste” in the form of Green or other weird concoctions, or resulted in materials or areas being drained of properties to be used elsewhere.  While one could argue that this was little different than mining or converting wilderness into farmland, those were in theory reversible given enough time and money.  It wasn’t clear at all that Philosophy changes were reversible or that its byproducts could be disposed of safely.  And based on everything we’ve learned or at least suspected about black holes suggested they weren’t likely a safe dumping ground even.

It seemed like an awful lot of the societies of the Anomaly were “stuck” as a consequence of their own technologies or powers and thus unable to fix fundamental flaws in how said societies functioned.  It did make me wonder how much of galactic society fit the same pattern.  After all, much of known galactic history either involved tyrannical empires or endless cycles of war and this pattern didn’t seem to vary much between timelines either.  The fact that the Final Empire had been locked in societal stasis for billions or even trillions of years certainly wasn’t helping the case that galactic society was doing better than those on the Anomaly.

Perhaps the introduction of magic back home will stir some much needed change into things.  On the other hand, one could make the argument that a society being stable on timeframes measuring anywhere from thousands to trillions of years was not something one wanted to disrupt that much.  Philosophy could solve a lot of problems, but it looks like it might generate all sorts of new and difficult to manage problems as well.