Various Resource Expenditures
Total Available Spending: 230 RP (Starting Income) - 4 RP (Military Upkeep) = 226 RP
Territorial Devolpment:
Subsector Upgrades
L-10 North East
Upgrade local development to Heartlands and Ridiculously Defended (75 + 60 RP)
Military Expenditures:
Replenish two Mobile Unicomplex hulls for the damaged constellation - 5 RP
Upgrade two Fleethordes from Mag2 to Mag3 - 40 RP
The hum of industry never stops, as over lifeless world after lifeless world Borg cubes show up, and start to beam up chunks of entire mountains, chunks that are then rapidly processed into replicator stocks and sent down in a myriad of forms, as soon parts are sent down onto newly made platforms, parts that are then assembled by the newly arrived drones, relatively fresh from the cloning banks, assembled into larger replicators, larger transporters, all to make the next batch of machines, machines that are rarely touched even by cyborgnetic hands and tools, such is the scale of the newly constructed replicators; these machines are then teleported into place- moved directly from the replicators that made them to their recently chosen resting spots; these machines then start to release the Borg's own nanomachines en masse, produced on the spot to begin to assimilate and steadily reshape the planet itself, enabling the swift creation of sprawling living and defensive complexes alongside what could have perhaps been described as factories should they have been more primitively industrial. Soon enough these complexes are made more complete, as newly made Drones from the recently formed cloning banks move out and in position to perform the tasks that cannot simply be automated away, connecting parts and providing direction and purpose to these newly made machines.
Soon enough, these complexes span across the vast majority of the entirety of their chosen worlds, reaching down into what would have been the mantle should the world have been mundane instead of being made of ruins on top of rubble on top of ruins on top of remains, digging down in the name of security and replicator feed stock even as their spires stretch skywards- sometimes even bridging the gap between the groundside complexes and the ever growing network of shipyards forming above each of them; a network that grew denser and denser as time passed, until at some point they stopped producing just more parts for yet more shipyards, but instead started producing not just ships, bus the seeds for defensive stations, seeds that grew and grew and sprouted networks of shielded, weapon-studded armor, networks that joined and grew, and incorporated the shipyards themselves into it, until even the days were rendered into nights above large swaths of the machinaformed planets beneath them, as the land itself became shrouded under the massive orbital plates hovering above.
Beyond the lower orbits things were taken even farther, as a growing network of defensive stations formed, circling above in carefully calculated paths optimized for energy efficiency, survivability, and concentration of firepower alike. Indeed, the moons were taken even farther, turned into almost hollowed out shells of themselves in the name of layered defenses; indeed, a few were taken even farther than that, as eventually even their crust disappeared into the forming complexes below, complexes that then immediately became mobile and swiftly left their previous orbits, joining and replenishing the Borg's complex of Unicomplexes.
Soon enough, this network of Borg-formed fortress worlds began to stretch across the stars, creating a network that began to encompass the local subsector in its entirety, encompassing all that the Protoss had previously held here and then some, encroaching on the mostly forgotten corners and outskirts of this realm, ready to defend it from the Monsters that lurked just beyond its borders, and the few monsters that were found to be hiding within said dark corners.(to be continued in the 'homefront' section)
(all attempted territory development has been successful, fleet buildup and Unicomplex reinforcement has been completed without issue)
(OOC: three more scenes of Borg-based 'industrial wank' have been written up and saved for later turns)
Research Projects:
~Current Research Credits~
Moderate - 1 Protoss, 2 Vex
{Free Slot} Anti-Boarding Protocols: Our battles against the Vex so far have taught us much about the importance of defending our ships, specifically from boarding crews. Considering the fact that we will be fighting the Vex in the very near future, it's only natural to establish those tactics as a natural reaction to intruders.
{1 Slot} Standard Drone Mobility: While it had come up on rare occasions within the Milky Way, it recently started to become truly apparent that the standard drones… don't really accomplish much. While the shielding each unit carries is useful, the lack of mobility is a significant downside, practically negating the benefits every drone has. Between the Vex and the Eradication War, it has become painfully clear that an upgrade is necessary. Fortunately, the Collective has more than enough processing power to spare now, and the most obvious upgrade is, well, obvious. Even if more agile movement, like dodging, is currently outside of the Collective's contemplation, granting all standard drone templates the ability to run - or frankly, even faster than a leisurely stroll - will be a significant increase to the efficiency of our forces.
{4 Slot} Protoss Resistance to Vex Simulations: The fact that the Protoss seem able to resist the Vex's ability to predict movements and tactics is… intriguing. Considering the fact that the Collective plans on dealing with the Vex however necessary, it proves prudent to figure out how the Protoss accomplish this. Thankfully, there are at least a few Protoss assimilated into the Collective to pick the brains of, and the wreckage from local Protoss forces should have some data to explain these details. Worst comes to worst, we can always simply ask the Protoss directly, provided that initial contact goes smoothly.
{9/16 Slots + Two Vex Credits} Radiolaria Infections: The fact that the Vex can infect things over communications is troublesome, and must be addressed if we are to deal with these pretenders. The methods by which Radiolaria infects over such systems will be studied, and potential ideas for countermeasures to reduce the effects considered for future research.
Anti-boarding Protocols: from implementing extensive networks of turrets and other deployable forms of internal defense, to outright splitting Borg ships into multiple discrete sections that are only able to be non-destructively traveled between via the Borg's own teleportation technology, to internal shield barriers and nanomachine reserves, countless small yet significant improvements to the Borg's internal defensive systems have been thought up, intinerated upon, adapted to, and then implemented throughout each and every single Borg fleet, installation, and complex. Forged in the fire of a form of warfare that the Borg have rarely experience before, and yet predict to happen so, so very often in the near-ish future, these adaptations have massively improved the Borg's ability to repel all reasonable forms of successfully boarding their ships and dealing meaningful amounts of damage once onboard.
Of course, all of these improvements merely ends with them meeting what they are only now discovering is merely a relatively barebones requirement for operating in the pair of galaxies that they have found themselves within. (internal defenses are now up to something resembling par for the Borg's technological level and overall technological reliability; if still limited by the relative sparsity of their ground roster)
Standard Drone Mobility: arguments were made in the past about why the Borg remained with slow drone designs for so long- ranging from the ever so important factor that is energy efficiency- a factor that has been made practically null long ago from some of the Borg's relatively early conquests, to avoiding any and all avoidable avoidable wear and tear on the Collective's members- an argument made mostly null by alloys long since incorporated into the Borg's technological base and then made void by the same inbuilt Replicator technology that allows for their Cubes to reshape themselves at the Collective's practical whim, or at least what could be mistaken for a whim by less advanced races; in the end though, the reason why Borg drones were not made such that they could easily speedwalk, jog, run, and sprint in the past was simply because the Borg had no pressing reason to make their Drones any faster, for even their slow movements have been more than enough in the past, and the slow inevitability of their approach has been an intimidation factor in of itself at times, not that such intimidation was actually necessary; as for when the Drones needed to be faster? Teleportation has almost always sufficed, and might continue to do so in this new universe. Of course, with the changing circumstances, 'might' is a chance that the Borg did not want to take.
In the end though, with the arrival in this new universe, and with the changing times that started even before said arrival, the Borg were forced to do what they've claimed that they've always done: to adapt. Where once Borg drones were limited to a slow walk at best- their own hardware limiting themselves in the name of 'efficiency', now the Drone's legs were collectively upgraded, with better servomotors, better reinforcement, and drastically improved joints- to the point where they could not just make swift strides towards their foe, but break out into what would have been considered a sprint by the standards of the races in question before they were assimilated, and maintain said pace for long enough that their purely biological counterparts would have long since collapsed from exhaustion. (basic Drones can now move up to as fast as a professionally trained humanoid human sized endurance-optimized(which is to say human) sprinter, and Tactical Drones can potentially move a little bit faster than that; which is still slow, even for ground combat, in the grand scheme of things, but is quite a bit better than what they had before this point.)
(Borg infantry no longer suffer a massive mobility based malus when not able to teleport from place to place)
What's up with the Protoss: it was noticeable from the moment that the first protoss was Assimilated, from the moment that their memories were queried and their biology studied. It was noticeable because the protoss, even before being assimilated, held a connection between one another similar to, if drastically lesser in extent and power, to the Borg collective, a connection that allowed for them to share information at the speed of thought and act as something resembling one on even the most chaotic of battles; a connection that, while remembered by the Protoss, held no replicable roots in their biology and could not be traced back to their technology.
Well, there was not quite no source in their biology, as their entire body was clearly made to process an unknown sort of energy, if one without any clear source, one that seemingly both gave them their amazing powers- the ones that the Vex could at best only approximate, and made their entire biology possible, as the semi-photosynthetic cells found in the skin of a Protoss were clearly not enough to supply them with their likely energy needs, and they had no other meaningful way to take in energy from their environment. (welcome to the world of a magicless society without a whole bunch of stories of magic discovering the highly psionic species that is the Protoss.)
Unfortunately, further direct studies eventually needed to be put on hold, as the protoss wanted their people back and the Borg, in the name of wider cooperation, obliged; fortunately, the already mostly stalled direct studies were made much more understandable, and in some cases fully redundant, via the process called 'ask the Protoss about these things'; from there, the Borg learned of the Khala, a quasi-mistified connection between most of the Protoss, one that granted them the unity that they required to reach the stars and thrive, one that is purposefully severed by several of the other cultural groups that have spun off from the Khalai, the main group of protoss that you see here, over the course of their history. The unknown energy is also identified as 'psionics', and from further explanations it appears to be similar to, yet distinctly different from, the sort of extraversal energies that Species 8472, and several other groups, most notably the 'Devils' that are located to your galactic south, seem to use. Further investigation and querries show that it is these types of energy, and those similar to them, that the Vex are unable to simulate.
Studying Radiolaria Infection: Radiolaria is… interesting; part bacteria, part hardlight construct, part computer code, part supercomputer, each and every single cell of it is shockingly intelligent, insanely resilient, and yet also incredibly fragile, liable to semi-explosively die the moment that it can be truly contained against its will. In its resting state, Radiolaria appears to be a relatively simple collection of monocellular creatures, similar to a bacterial mat- if silver in color and much more fluid in nature; studying it in more depth doesn't reveal much else, as at a glance at a certain scale a singular 'cell' of it strongly resembles the bacterium that are commonly found on most semi-to-fully habitable worlds(and livable constructs); look farther in though and one can see that their nuclei are actively using DNA-adjacent nucleoid-seeming chains for processing and information storage, and that their mitochondria-equivalents are technically fusion reactors, and that their other structures are basically highly advanced superheat-compatible superconductors; look even farther in… and you realize that is all a lie, one made up of just hardlight and information, hardlight that has already escaped containment through the very light cone that you've used to observe it, having started moving while seemingly standing still, for they technically started their escape the moment that you started observing them, if not before that point.
(OOC, now to be officially revealed when overall vex research gets farther in, yet belongs here more than most other places: and yet, on further investigation even their hardlight nature seems to come into question, as later peeks into their existence reveals them to be outright simulating themselves into existence.)
After many failed containment attempts, a theory is made, a theory that summarizes itself down into the fact that Radiolaria can move to anywhere that a 'light cone' of theirs can reach, from anywhere that a given 'light cone' was when said light reached them. Finding this out took a heck of allot of work and literal tons of (likely temporarily) lost Radiolaria, but it is one that seems to fit, and one that also seems to fit their teleportation patterns.
Fortunately, their ability to project themselves effectively backwards in time along a cone of light seems to be relatively limited, at least on the level of unsupported radiolaria, and so eventually, with the additions of a few restockings brought in from the other ongoing conflicts with the Vex, a few of them are successfully isolated from that means of escape, allowing for many of their other properties can be found. These range from the ability to turn themselves into pure data, jumping into any computerized system that is within approximately half a meter of one of them, and from there transferring themselves along any means of data transmission before reconstituting themselves out of said data, and a bit of energy, at the other side.
Other tricks include their ability to replicate themselves like lines of code, multiplying themselves within the limits of whatever amount of processing power that they've managed to hijack, seemingly taking up a mostly fixed percentage of the available processing power for this process before using the rest to help run the simulations that they very much crave. This too, is why they make the physical forms that they tend to default to instead of mostly remaining as memetic malware, as their physical bodies are better processors than most computers out there, and replicating semi-biologically is seemingly more efficient for them than doing so with code alone.
Now, making use of this data, taking advantage of how the Radiolaria actually works, let alone bringing even one of the Radiolaria cells into the Collective, is a whole different thing than understanding enough to successfully contain even one of them in a non-destructive manner.
Diplomacy & Intelligence:
Target: Protoss
Nature: Friendly
Resources: 1 turn, 4 RP
Seeing as they share a mutual foe in the form of the Vex, and considering the apparent scale of said foe, the Borg have come to the conclusion that it must try something new. This something is what is usually referred to as "diplomacy". Efforts shall be made to open proper communications with the Protoss, offering a (tentatively) friendly hand to these new humanoids. Discussions on how to combat the Vex will be encouraged, and the Borg will endeavor to make it as clear as possible they have no hostile intentions towards the Protoss.
The meeting with the Protoss, while hesitant on both sides, starts off surprisingly well, as both sides decide to start, and continue to, talk peacefully instead of resorting to threats, be it accidentally or not. While the Borg's diplomats are hesitant, unused to needing such a role in the first place, and the Protoss's own Diplomats are perhaps even more so, knowing of the assimilation of some of their kin and having far too many negative interactions with similar-ish groups to not start off extremely wary, things end up going surprisingly well, assisted along by the Borg's diplomats collective choice to hide many of their more visible, more off putting cybernetic enhancements in favor of looks that much more resemble their original species. Combine that with the recent 'enemy of my enemy that isn't also my own enemy' interactions between the Borg and the Protoss, and you end up with a surprisingly cordial first official contact.
Soon enough, it became clear that both sides would prefer peace, and maybe even cooperation, over war, and that both sides would actually hold to such an agreement, at least for a decently long period of time; and from there it was only a matter of fully laying out the actual terms and conditions involved before a non-aggression agreement was agreed upon- the Gyst being that the Borg don't assimilate any more Protoss into their collective and don't enter Protoss territory without permission, and in return the Protoss will respect the Borg's borders, both in the present and the likely future, and will help introduce the Borg to the wider galactic community, such that it is.
Eventually, as things do, the conversation moved on, from the establishment of current peaceful relations to the topic of future cooperation, and towards that end the conversation eventually shifted to the topic of the fate of the Protoss that have been assimilated into the Borg's collective, and weather or not they could be separated enough from it to somewhat rejoin Protoss society, if amongst the ranks of the Purifiers instead of the Khalai, or if whatever individuality they had was permanently lost. Fortunately, the Borg could do one step farther than merely stepping back and having a few of its members pretend to no longer be a fully incorporated part of the collective, and could do even better than stepping back and forcing the original person to rise to the surface over all others within its original body; for they could, if grudgingly, remove someone from the Collective in the entirety, releasing them back to their original species bereft of all control methodologies and all methods of making more Borg.
For this, the Protoss were extraordinarily thankful, to an extent that quite frankly baffled the Collective. For the return of their people, limited in number as they were relative to those lost to the Vex, the Protoss offered up an even deeper connection than a mere 'non-aggression treaty', going so far as to offer their help with several minor-ish problems that the Borg were having, answering a few of the Collective's seemingly incidental questions surrounding the ongoing fight with the Vex, and putting in the good word with their own allies and friendly acquaintances instead of merely facilitating introductions. In fact, they went so far as to allow for badly hurt Protoss to be assimilated into the Collective, and for said individuals to be given a choice on wether or not they want to stay after the fact, instead of needing to be immediately brought out of the Collective as soon as they were no longer in life threatening danger! Past all of that, they've aggreed to help in future conflicts against the Vex and other hyper aggressive hostile foes.
Perhaps this is what having an 'ally' is like?
(OOC: non hostility is confirmed, and the Protoss will help in future fights against the Vex, and likely other foes, if their forces aren't all busy on other fronts, and the Borg might eventually end up with an actual population point worth of Protoss at some point down the line should they fight together for long enough; there is also at least one hidden negative trait on the Protoss's end though, and is why Trade isn't an option quite yet(as that will require another action with decently good rolls))
Target: Autobots
Nature: Friendly
Resources: 1 turn, 4 RP
Second verse, same as the first. Similarly to the Protoss, the Autobots will be approached with an open, but nonetheless wary olive branch. Once more emphasis will be placed on combating mutual threats, avoiding unnecessary conflict between the two.
Unfortunately, things do not start off quite as well during the meeting with the Autobots, as while the Borg have not yet assimilated any Autobots into their collective, the Borg and the Autobots have not yet fought together, and the mere act of putting nicer faces on the Borg's Diplomatic drones does not cover up the truth of what the Borg once were, and maybe still are, to the Autobots, for they have fought many like you in the past, and are set to fight many others just like you in the future.
Thankfully, you're able to show them large quantities of data gathered from the battlefields in which both Borg and Protoss fought together against the Vex before anything actually bad happens, and with the timely intervention of a few of the Protoss's own diplomatics, something more than a somewhat wary non-aggression treaty can be reached.
for while they will not fight aboard your ships, or on your planets, the Autobots are willing to fight alongside you, at least against the Vex, so long as you do not assimilate either them(the Autobots) or their ships, even in a that-or-death situation; for given their mechanical nature they do not trust you to actually be able to remove any of their members from your Collective, and given their own relative secrecy about their shockingly advanced, if somehow still primitive seeming, technology, their unwillingness to let you simply adapt samples of it into your own technology base is understandable, at least for now.
From there, it is only a short bit of time before they introduce you to the third member of their alliance: Dodeka-Terra, which in of itself was a steadily consolidating alliance of multiple earths, similar to yet (mostly) distinctly different from the Federation that a few of your far flung scouts had contact with back in your prior dimension. While contact with them is limited, they do come and, alongside the protoss, assist you with a few minor problems that were lingering in your home territory.
(non-aggression treaty with the Autobots has been gotten; unfortunately, they're currently unwilling to share any of their highly advanced technology, and their willingness to fight alongside you in the future is tempered with more weariness than is arguably strictly necessary.)
Target: The Vex
Nature: Hostile
Resources: 1 turn, 8 RP, "Task Force Alpha", Collective Queen
With the threat that the Vex poses, it stands to reason that the Borg must adapt to overcome. The Vex must be analyzed and studied, taken apart to the smallest piece to see how they tick. The difficulty of the task is irrelevant, nay, appreciated - for if it were easy, the Borg would already have a solution in hand, would they not? Naturally, the first step of such a process is the acquisition of specimens. Conveniently, the nearby Vex territory is looking rather undefended, and ripe for exploitation….
(large swaths of Vex loot has been gotten, ranging from literal tons of trapped Radiolaria, to more immediately useful things, including, but not limited to, things such as assimilated copies of all of their usual shells, an assimilated Axis Mind shell, a bunch of partially assimilated Radiolaria(unsuccessful attempts), a partially assimilated gate to their 'Infinite Forest'(it's fully assimilated, but without also assimilating things from the other side it simply doesn't work) and several partially assimilated Vex Network Hubs(hardlight is hard to assimilate), and large quantities of assorted Vex building materials.)
(two large Vex research credits gotten, along with a bunch of minor, project dependant stuff)
(successfuly assimilating Radiolaria is locked behind putting at least ten research slots(in the form of slots or credits) into Vex stuff, with the probability going up with each thing researched, until reaching a nigh-certainty at twenty) (currently at 4/20)
(stuff beyond loot has been included below)
Military Activities:
Total Forces
Eight Mag2 Fleethordes, 80% damage
Two Mag2 Fleethordes, 50% damage
One Constellation "Mobile Unicomplex", 4/4 hulls
One Constellation "Mobile Unicomplex", 2/4 hulls
Task Force Alpha
Eight Mag2 Fleethordes, 80% damage
One Constellation "Mobile Unicomplex", 4/4 hulls
The Collective Queen
An invasion force tasked with conquering the nearby subsector of L-9 South-West. Working in tandem alongside the intel mission "Studying the Vex".
(phases: (Ruined territory, Rebuilding defenses: complete), Vex worlds, The Vex network, The Infinite Forest, Victory)
Upon initial arrival, the borg do not meet any significant resistance, as the first few systems that they arrive in greet them with nothing but ruined debris fields and worlds churned into a molten red mass; unfortunately, that streak does not last, for deeper in they find more- more patches of ground stained brass-bronze instead of a molten red or cooling black, more bits of more intact debris, some of which even restarting to emit a faint power signature, and some of those even slowly re-shaping themselves into more than just hunks of twisted metal. Fortunately, these remnants are easy enough for force into the grave that they narrowly avoided, being cleansed with a level of mechanical precision that the Protoss and their allies seemingly didn't always have.
The fleets move deeper. The patches get larger, the bits of partially active twisted debris begins to resolve themselves into incomplete stations, then mostly complete stations situated at the hearts of massive debris fields, then the debris fields start to thin, and the Vex make their continued presence known in more ways than just a few at best half hearted hacking attempts and sporadic teleportation flickers that are quickly isolated and eliminated. Eventually, as the Borg cross the mid way point through this warzone, having already fully cleansed and confirmed cleansed a third of it, they start to meet actual resistance, as what once was the occasional half active defensive station turns into several fully active ones hiding in a already partially cleared debris fields, and as remnants turn into full blown planetside defensive instillations that need at minimum highly concentrated orbital firepower to be unleashed upon them when they don't need to be actively invaded to deactivate defenses and confirm the full extent of the required purging. Soon enough, losses are suffered, as active combat with the Vex begins to reach an actually meaningful state that doesn't boil down to 'already defeated'.
Even worse, is when the repaired stations are not small outposts, focused on hacking and teleportation attacks, but larger complexes, armed with weapons that have the Borg wondering why they weren't seen on any of the Vex's more offensively minded forces. Indeed, for a spinal-adjacent, 'battlecruiser' scale cannon capable of turning a Borg Cube into an expanding cloud of debris with a single shot would have been quite the game changer, in the wrong ways(for the Borg), in the Vex's own previous battle-war with the Borg. Fortunately, these stations seem to be(made to be) rare in this region of space, as for every world with even one of these intact over its surface there are ten where any such installations have long since been reduced to orbital debris fields. Their rarity makes it simple enough for the Borg to adapt to them, and so the losses that they incurred, while not small, were perfectly well manageable for as this conflict continued onwards. Unfortunately, all attempts to loot this specific sample of seemingly advanced Vex technology were thwarted, as the reactors for these stations had an 'unfortunate' tendency to explode when the Borg attempted to assimilate them, destroying the station in the process. (looted intact examples of all standard and standard-adjacent Vex shells, did not loot the still mostly experimental 'wave motion gun' (the reactor keeps on exploding at the slightest bit of incoming damage past its shields))
Eventually though, as the Borg made their way into the final third of this region, having already cleansed over half of it, the defenses went from a few stations over some steadily rebuilding outpost-complexes, to savaged defenses over scarred, yet still mostly intact, machinoformed worlds. And it is here where the Borg's advance went from what boiled down to a cleanup action, to an actual war, as isolated, short lived skirmishes gave way to battles, battles that, while certainly not on the same scale as what was seen both here and in the adjacent subsectors not all that long ago, were still full blown battles nevertheless.
While the battles in orbit cost the Borg the occasional Cube, be it to those weapon platforms, or to the usual massive waves of boarders and hacking attempts, the groundside conflicts were drasically more costly; for while the Vex barely had anything heavier than what would be considered to be infantry by the standards of the Local Galactic Group, and almost nothing, outside of defensive installations and hacking-corvettes, that wouldn't be considered to be mere infantry by the standards of these Warring Galaxies, the Borg only had infantry, and not particularly heavy infantry at that even without taking into account the insane standards of these Warring Galaxies into account, to fight against the Vex within their complexes; and even worse, is that even in comparison to the Borg the Vex had numbers without end on their side.
And so, outside of the smallest of outposts, each and every single groundside invasion that the Borg were forced to make became a series of precision strikes, aiming to take out their chosen targets before the nigh-infinite swarms of Vex took them out in turn; and even those attempts were usually suicidal, for if the Vex did not get them, then often the Borg's own guns would, as their own orbital fire cleaved through the now vulnerable areas within the targeted Vex complex, regardless of if there were any surviving Drones down there or not. (the Vex were too good at messing with opposing teleportation for the strike forces to not need to travel through at least one layer of Vex forces to reach their target, and too good to ensure that all of the surviving Drones could be teleported out afterwards) thus, losses continued to pile up here, to the point where it was only the cloning facilities onboard the cubes that stopped their Drone complements from once again being stressed to the point of near collapse.
Thankfully, most of these worlds were mostly normal sized, lacking the same depth of simulated layers inherit to their World Engines, and those that did always seemed to have said massively layered simulation area be connected to the rest only through a series of doorways, a series of doorways that could be destroyed, denying access to the incredible quantities of Vex forces that might or might not actually exist within that massively layered realm of simulations. Other, smaller regions of simulated space also existed, but each of those were clearly limited, and connected to their own localized network, each with a destroyable hub that was both more vulnerable and easier to reach than their equivalents that were seen in the depths of the World Engines. They were so vulnerable in fact, that several of them were almost assimilated by the Borg, with only the dissolving of their hardlight based structure preventing the Borg from making an admittedly, and disappointingly, crude copy of their physical form via their own replicator assisted nanomachines. (partially complete copies of several Vex Network Hubs have been 'assimilated'; more understanding of Vex 'hardlight', or computational technology, is required for complete assimilation)
Unfortunately, all attempts to physically invade, and perhaps even figure out the inner workings of, the realm(s) behind the gates were thwarted, not just by the sheer number of Vex lurking within, but by the sheer scale of said realm- for whatever might be maintaining even a small section of it, let alone the entire realm, was never reached by the swiftly scattered invasion forces, nor was anything else that might seem actually important; well, more important than clearly simulated battles between the Vex and an assortment of enemy races/factions, many of which the Borg hadn't seen up to this point, and none of which could be assimilated, just like the structures within said realm couldn't be assimilated. It was only upon seemingly successfully assimilating a single gate that any information beyond the obvious could be derived about said realm, and that information was merely its designation: The Infinite Forest. Unfortunately, all attempts to use the assimilated gate to connect to said realm failed, just like how the Gate itself shut down within moments of being assimilated.
And so, the war ground to a close, it ended not with a bang, but with a proverbial whimper, as the last Vex stronghold within the region went silent, and the molten husks of the charred worlds found within started to cool, even as the debris fields found overhead started to slowly coalesce, with parts of it flying off into independent orbits, parts of it falling to the ground, and parts of it slowly coalescing into what might one day be a series of beautiful orbital ring systems.
(all involved Borg forces were left Bloodied(70% strength), with most of said losses coming in the form of extremely massive numbers of lost/destroyed Drones; to be repaired up to Battered(90% strength) by the start of this coming turn)
Holding Forces:
Two Mag2 Fleethordes, 50% damage
One Constellation "Mobile Unicomplex", 2/4 hulls
Holding in L-10 North-East. Note that these two Fleethordes are the ones being upgraded, if such needs said.
While all of this was going on, as the development of the Borg's new home region continued on-pace, the forces left to guard said home front were not left without work- for in this Galaxy of Monsters, no region truly remains quiet for long, for even in seemingly purged space there are often hidden dangers, biding their time and surviving on the edge of conflict zones. Sometimes these survivors are relatively good, as refugees flit from one area of relative safety to another as they make their way to the relatively safe galactic cores; other times they're at best neutral, as the same refugees turn to raiding and as the more resilient of the local megafauna cling to life; other times they're threats in their own right, as refugees, in their desperation, fall to assorted sources of Corruption, and as merely mostly defeated Monsters lurk in the shadows, awaiting their chance to once again rise up to fight in these Warring Galaxies.
The first of these threats that the Borg face are a semi-natural result of the enemies that they just fought and the temporarily undeveloped nature of this newly cleansed territory, for the Vex were nothing if not good at building up to be a massive threat from small remnants. Thankfully, with the Borg still having fleets in this region, the Vex didn't have the time required to rebuild to such a level, as what outposts they had managed to rebuild from previously undiscovered infections and only partially cleansed rubble alike are swiftly cleansed under the weight of the Borg's sheer orbital dominance, and deeper, even more hidden outposts in the making are often dug out by the very expansion of the Borg's own defenses, turning it into a localized battle of attrition, one that the Borg actually consistently win here, as their own assimilation of the terrain drastically outpaces the Vex's, for unlike the Vex, the Borg did not have to remain hidden.
The next few threats that the Borg stumble onto aren't so much threats, as surviving oddities and surprisingly intact, if previously buried, ruins, as the Borg's own drastic expansion throughout this territory and their downwards oriented assimilation on the planets that they already have a presence onwards uncovers some surprisingly intact technological samples, all buried and hidden from easy surface scans under layer layer upon layer of debris from later battles and other such remains from the assorted groups that attempted and failed to make a permanent presence in this small corner of this region of space.
Most of these samples were worthless oddities at best, as buried ships and other such finds are made note of- all either technologically lesser than the Borg and only notable for their surprisingly high level of intactness; others possibly more advanced, but long since stripped for parts, leaving behind only a surprisingly somewhat intact, if still badly damaged, hull. Of the remaining finds, most of them are only really notable for their composition, as fragments of hulls made out of previously thought impossible materials make for an interesting find; in fact, only one find truly stands out: for under the crust of a notably large trash-world, the Borg found something that they never expected to: a shockingly intact, if still entirely dormant and lifeless, Fortress World, equipped with unpowered, yet still fairly advanced, defensive technology, simply perfect for assimilation. Perfectly intact, whatever rendered it lifeless and inert seemingly did not do any lasting non-cosmetic damage to its surface, and that alone is telling.
While most of this shieldworld's technology is redundant- as its massive anti-orbital cannons are only special in their sheer size and apparent power throughput into what is otherwise a series of relatively low tech laser and mass-driver(railgun/coilgun) based systems- all clearly inferior to the Borg's own phaser technology in all ways save for in the sheer amount of energy that is in theory delivered to the target. It's surface armor is little better, as while it is more durable than most known materials, its self repair capabilities are drastically below that of the Borg's own replicator-armor, and its defensive capabilities still fall woefully short of the Hirogen Armor that the Borg are considering fully adapting into their own standard capabilities. No, the things that make this Shield World a truly worthy assimilation target are twofold: its shockingly efficient planetary scale shielding technology, and the apparent mindset that led to the sheer number of guns and fortress-like hardpoints that layer not just its surface, but each and every part of its surprisingly deep reaching internal layers.
Their shielding technology, while extremely efficient, to the point where even a relatively small generator, at least by the standards of planetary shields, could, at least in theory, hold back the firepower of an entire armada for an extended period of time, had its own weaknesses relative to the Borg's own shielding technology. For one thing, said shield would likely take a noticeable amount of time to come back up after being taken down, meaning that against sufficient firepower a planetary shield with only one emitter would be of limited use, for a single layered shield would simply not last against a sufficiently determined foe without orbital forces of your own to prevent such a sustained bombardment; secondly, and arguably more importantly, the shield could be simply moved through by a sufficiently slow(in terms of relative velocity) object, meaning that planetary scale invasions are all too possible even while said shield is up. (detering those, and deterring prolonged bombardments, is the job of the planetary guns)
(OOC:: you now have two Planetary Shield variants: the Borg's original all-blocking, yet relatively weak, variant, and the local's version that is much stronger for your tier in return for not preventing actual ground invasions while it is up.) (in addition, Borg defenses are no longer suffering a hidden debuff from simply not having enough anti-orbital weapons relative to the average for your technology level and assorted perks and drawbacks while existing within the Warring Galaxies- you still probably need some more experience though.)
Unfortunately, most finds are not quite as great, for within some of the caverns within these trash worlds many other dangers lurked, ranging from half functioning machines set on purposeless functions that leave them hostile to all others due to a lack of those that they used to defend, to oddly common clusters of eggs that then proceeded to hatch into oddly phallic creatures that then launched themselves at the face of the nearest Drone, to energy draining 'space bats' that greedily attempted to feed off of the nearest piece of Borg technology.
Fortunately, these buried threats were all fairly easy to deal with, being minor in scope and scale and being further reduced by assorted past actions, both the Vex's and the Protoss's, within this region, and then easily dealt with by the Borg Collective. Unfortunately, the threats that were found near the edges of this subsector were not quite as minor.
For while the conflicts between the Vex and the Protoss-Autobot-Multiterra alliance had cleared away much of the minor threats from their semi-shared borders, the regions between this area and the Infernal Nonarch's Fallen Realm were much less purged, and so the threats that survived there were much bigger, as exemplified by a particularly large Stellar Antlion that managed to use an anomalous gravitational field to ensnare and consume most of a Borg scouting fleet before it inevitably began to be assimilated, partially by the very Borg that it had managed to consume earlier and partially by the Borg forces that had been sent in response to its emergence, its hide pierced and its stomach acid not quite strong enough to eliminate all of the Borg Nanomachines before bits of its internals were assimilated; and after that it was only a mater of time, as even its withdrawal back into the supergiant star that it was hiding in did not save it from the infections hidden deep within its core. (gravity based interdiction research credit obtained, alongside a large yet relatively weak technically category zero battleplanet in the form of said assimilated megafauna)
The second notable threat was more of an anomaly than a direct threat, as what would you call a stellar system in which every single body is made out of nothing but what human-derived archives would call paperclips? With paperclip based star lifters feeding matter into paperclip based atomic forges, all to make more paperclips that are then turned into more paperclip based stellar lifters and paperclip based factories all to churn out more paperclips, which are then rapidly turned into swarms of paperclip based fighter-drones in response to them detecting the arrival of the Borg? As while the resulting swarm is incredibly vast, they are nothing but metal, technologically weak despite their uniqueness, ripe for assimilation. Despite their vast numbers, despite the billions upon billions of drones that they threw at your relatively small scouting force, it all comes to nought, for Phasers and Assimilation Beams have no need to care about ammunition, and the low tech state of the enemy drones leaves them uniquely vulnerable to assimilation. In the end, it is only a mater of time before the system falls, and their rather unique technology is assimilated into the Collective's knowledge…. And universally found wanting, as even after one strips out the inefficient adaptations forced around their reliance on paperclips for everything, the resulting technology, even their fairly rapid assembly techniques and magneti-weapons, are all found to be at minimum drastically less efficient than the Borg's own equivalent when they aren't outright drastically worse. (OOC note one: some tier Primus civilizations would have gotten a manufacturing research credit from this find, but the Borg very much have universally better options that are already in use everywhere(aka Replicators).)
(OOC note two: if it wasn't for the other losses suffered from the other random events here, this battle, such that it was, would have actually potentially removed a damage level from at least one of the two warfleets that you have deployed in this region)
The next major find would have been extremely dangerous… if the two dangers weren't already fighting one another. In a system, nay, encompassing a system almost in its entirety, is a fight between the Vex and the tainted mechanical creations of the semi-infernal realm to your galactic south; taking place in the area where your current not-merely-normative territory meets both the Vex's and the Infernal Nonarchs, this fight would still have been considered a large skirmish by the standards of the galaxies that you've arrived in, only made special by the sheer concentration of said forces, as both sides sought to destroy the other as swiftly and completely as they could manage. On one side, there is the Vex, a seemingly neverending swarm centered around an already mostly broken World Engine; on the other is the Infernal Nonarch's chosen puppets, a tide of ships and titans, born from twisted nanomachine swarms eating away not just at the moons of a nearby gas giant, but at the World Engine itself. So while the Vex still have numbers, the Puppets own twisted nature makes them close enough to immune to Vex assimilation that your remote scans don't notice any such events, and the sheer scale of the machines that are being produced here means that the Vex's other weapons simply lack the required effectiveness to take them out… combine that with the Puppet's steadily and actively increasing numbers, and it is only a matter of time before they loose.
Thankfully, just as the Vex lose, the Borg move in a large fraction of one of their Warfleets, centered around one of their Unicomplexes, and smash this still relatively small Puppet force from orbit with overwhelming numbers combined with actually sufficient firepower to actively take out their chosen targets.
Fortunately, here the Vex's own assimilation beams seem to have slightly more luck than the Vex's own means of assimilation, as while you're unable to assimilate any of the Puppet's creation complexes, nor any of their processing hubs, to say nothing of their extremely twisted nanomachine swarms, samples of many of their seemingly standard vehicles have been isolated from their compatriots, beamed up into newly prepared storage units, and assimilated; while most of said units are still badly damaged pre-retrieval, and several of their seemingly key components were too corrupted to receive any meaningful data through their assimilation, you have received some bits and pieces, ranging from their composition(generally the same as the Shield World that you encountered earlier), to their general weapon layout(directed and kinetic energy weapons, all surprisingly powerful for how primitive they seem at a glance), to some of the design concepts behind their creation.
(you have some idea of how the Infernal Nonarch's puppets fight, and have made some basic adaptations to their weaponry; you have also received a reverse engineering credit towards making larger ground vehicle classes)
Finally, in the galactic south-west of your subsector, you find the final two notable-ish threats within this region, and unlike the rest, they are not something that the Borg can seemingly deal with, not with just the knowledge and technology that they have right now, not without either time or the assistance of others.
The first, and lesser, of the two is an anomalous world, one that is as much a morbidly obese humanoid-adjacent entity of flesh and blood as it is a planet, nestled at the core of a starless system(although the light and gravitational influence of said star still seems to be present), tinted orange and purple via the weird energies spreading throughout the system, energies that seem to be emanating from the anomalous planet-adjacent thing floating near its heart. Fortunately, the Borg's own shields seem to be able to withstand this energy at the concentrations seen farther away from said planetoid; unfortunately, all attempts to teleport forces onto said world to investigate its nature end in failure, as the vast majority the attempts are intercepted and redirected to a rather warped realm that swiftly ends the Drones that made the journey, either through data corruption or [DATA CORRUPTED]; those attempts that do make it through are seldom better, as while the area that they end up in is somewhat more defined, they barely manage to send any information back before meeting their end to either data corruption or to entities that could only be described as the sort of demons/Daemons that show up in the fiction of many of the cultures that the Borg have assimilated in the past… when they don't fall into an orifice that spontaneously opens up under their feet, find themselves submerged in a mire of extremely potent acid(non-technical term), or infested by impossibly virulent worms, flys, and maggots, all preternaturally empowered to bypass the Drone's defenses against such and not be assimilated by the nanomachines contained within the relevant components.
Attempts to send in the Probes are similarly intercepted, falling prey to otherwise impossible phenomena soon after entering the atmosphere when they aren't forced to withdraw or self-destruct… or even turn on the rest of the Collective… through Data Corruption soon after they reach the lower orbits. Full cubes sent in to the lower orbits manage to last longer, but are inevitably forced to withdraw and eventually be purged through the self-spreading Corruption of their data and eventually their shell. Soon enough, orbital bombardment is attempted from the nearest semi-safe orbit; unfortunately, this too ends in failure, as those shots that do manage to not end up being swallowed up by anomalous energy fields that visually resemble clouds, or force dto disperse via swarms of flies, or otherwise intercepted and neutralized, seem to not be able to deal any significant damage, as what wounds they do manage to cause are mostly healed up in insanely swift timeframes, leaving behind only cosmetic scars and new festering pores to replace those that were cauterized by the blast that happened mere seconds ago.
Sustaining this bombardment seems to do nothing more than the opening volley did, as whatever effect is sustaining this anomaly's existence seems to be of the sort that cannot be dealt with via orbital bombardment; and the Borg's Probes and Drones are certainly not enough to deal with the source by themselves, not with how swiftly the earlier attempts were dealt with.
Fortunately, this anomaly seems to be mostly passive, at least for now, content to wallow in its non-spreading field of corruption; unfortunately, the other such anomaly seems to be even more hostile, for its mere investigation cost the Borg several entire scouting groups, and would have perhaps cost them even more than that if it weren't for some swiftly provided advice from the Protoss.
It starts with the sudden disappearance of a scouting force, being drawn into an unknown realm of [DATA CORRUPTED] soon upon entering a new stellar system, and then the forces tasked with following up on why those forces disappeared suddenly disappear upon attempting to observe where the previous scouting force vanished, and then many of the Drones that were observing the data surrounding those disappearances start to disappear… and then [DATA CORRPTED] starts to emerge from where those drones disappeared, only to vanish, soon after, as if they've never existed, under the crushing realness of reality… and then some of the Drones that observed those {ERROR] start to invert into more of them, only to disappear… it is only the swift scrubbing of any and all involved data, and the swift implementation of some of the data algorithms swiftly provided by some of the Protoss's own uploads upon you notifying them of the sudden issue, that prevented the spread of this issue any further than it did reach. Since then, the system in question has been quarantined, with all devices pointed in its general direction scrubbing all direct observational data on it from their sensors before it reaches any sort of processor that stopped this issue from recurring, or worse: spreading any farther.
Fortunately, an elite team of Protoss, along with a strike team from an 'SCP Foundation' is on the way to deal with both this issue and assist with dealing with the Daemon World, and should be in position some time in the coming Galactic Year(aka Turn).
Fortunately, the last unique thing found this turn within your own nominatively friendly territory is actually friendly, and comes in the form of a single, rather massive vessel, over 100 kilometers long, at the core of a small-ish refugee fleet, one armed with surprisingly advanced technology, although clearly desperate for more raw resources to conduct repairs on their clearly aging main vessel. (diplomacy to be conduced next turn if you so wish; otherwise they will simply be continuing on through on their way to Refugee Space)
(all forces are effectively at 90% strength going into the coming turn(turn five) once the magnitude increases and repairs are taken into account.)
