--- 22 - Armory ---
Flamescale had admittedly not done much herself in the aftermath of the bastion invasion attack. Having to work out what exactly she could and should use them for had taken quite a bit of time, although there was also the task of acting as the base of operations for the expeditions into the still ancient controlled areas of the larger bastion-network. That had strangely enough earned her a few ST points, despite not going on the unofficial missions herself and just holding the door open for the others to use.
Together with the big reward for taking the bastions and what she had built up before that mission, Flamescale now had enough points to go to five bodies and heads by putting another forty points into Multiform. It would take out many, but not all, of the second level skills she had been using recently, but the boost the larger form should give her would make up for that when she used it.
"So, does this place actually have enough room to use five heads in combat?" Sledge asked practically as they emptied out the facility side bastion loading area for the attempt. One major advantage of having the new shared base areas and her bastions was that she could actually get in person help with any new developments like this one.
In practice the bastions apparently counted as a sort of shared base space that locals could survive inside once they were marked as captured. Which meant that Flamescale could alter her character and skills while inside of one, although only as long as the gates were only linked to controlled end points. Even linking to an instance that didn't have a long term presence would disable that, although Flamescale had not worked out how exactly that was determined yet.
"We require the increased firepower enough for the larger locations," Yellow-Glow explained, currently in a winged insect themed body plan. "Four heads are sufficient for Ancient Bastions, but the other sites are too well defended." They planned on going over the findings in detail to review after this test, as Yellow-Glow had more information collected from other groups that were now exploring the Ancient Bastion Networks.
"We also need to go with Girant weapons," Stone pointed out from where that short human Void Entity and Jovian the three tailed grey fox man Entity were both waiting for that part of the explanation. Possibly also going with the rest of them on a supply run if they were both willing to help there too. "319 stuff is fine for ammo endurance, but for pure power Girant explosive rounds are what we will need here."
"More heavy plasma rifles would solve it too, without needing over-sized and poorly made guns," Sixteen complained with a huff. "If we have the free time they can even be modified vehicle versions like what Yellow-Glow has been using. My people are strong enough for those as well."
"Unfortunately we can't magically grab piles of those," Flamescale had to tell her infected. "It is hard enough to find an instance where more than a couple of them are in the same place, let alone how many we need. Though let's start with the upgrade that impacts me a bit more. I don't think I'll find ammo for Girant weapons that are scaled up." Given testing at four heads resulted in it trying to grab ammo she didn't have stocked so far.
"Perhaps you simply need to grab a whole vehicle depot's ammo stock," Jovian joked with a laugh. "Now, we've delayed long enough, let's see your first five headed hydra."
Flamescale did start on that, with only her natural bodies for the moment. She didn't want to make her infected serpents give up some time alive to just let her try out a new way to have extra heads. Although she was planning on trying to heal with heads the other way around now. Four heads was good enough for Bastion clearing, but the brief moment she shrank down was a possible risk to lose the body if she timed things wrong. This would let her instead briefly scale up.
Four heads were still the same as ever, although she did shift position a bit to make sure she didn't end up on top of anyone. Then she added the next head, so she had two below, two outside and above those, and one head at the top in a rough pentagon. She also felt just how much bigger she was getting this time, as she clearly was going to hit forty meters, and also be wide enough to look more like a small river of goo than a creature. Where before she could just see the top of the bastion structure, now she could just casually look over the top, and a glance back at the others revealed that they were outright tiny looking now.
"Um, maybe a bit too big?" she rumbled, the word 'said' not quite fitting at her current scale. "I mean, mostly for doing stuff... I am not getting into that doorway without being liquid, and then everyone inside needs to hold their breath."
"The next one is going to be a bit too large for the current threats," Yellow-Glow said unhelpfully, as that was quite obvious now. "Also, we still need to hear the stats."
"I think her point is a bit more practical," Jovian said, now not as amused. "I didn't think we were talking about her being bigger than some shuttles!"
"Well I want to know when she does find some ammo that works in a Girant rifle that size," Stone laughed, the short human clearly thinking of what might work. "Actually, bring one out if ya have it. I might know what is about that size. It's gonna be an artillery piece or shuttle gun, but I know a few that are similar enough."
Flamescale sighed, regretted that because of just how much air she moved with a sigh out of even a single head, and brought out one of the linked Girant heavy rifles she had mostly for her creatures. She actually had some Girant artillery rounds for her vehicles, although none of the associated vehicles were linked yet. Which turned out to matter when it successfully loaded those rounds into the rifle. "Uh, yeah that works," she noted and checked the stats of the gun. The very dangerous looking stats that made it a rather high end Fire attack with a sizable area of effect. "Oh, yeah we might want to go for Girant vehicle ammo too if I can use it like this."
"Let me see what's in there," Stone requested, and then whistled when she removed one of the rounds for him to inspect. "Why do you even have some of those? I would probably put up with being liquid to be able to use those in a gun."
"I still don't like how everyone seems to be acting like being liquid is that bad," Flamescale complained and moved onto her other weapons, after setting down the artillery shells she had now removed from her stores. The standard plasma rifle now had an ammo consumption that was unreasonable for infantry sized depots to sustain, but also had damage usually associated with shuttle sized heavy plasma weapons. Her laser rifle was similarly at a light warship scale now, probably able to outright down a dropship, or maybe one shot an ancient disruptor.
Her skill based attacks were similarly a bit absurd. Her vapors were over one hundred percent infect chance, although she now knew that being over helped with already infected to explain why it could go that high, but she had not considered how that impacted the damage. Which was high enough to be an actual combat threat for lesser enemies, like anything short of a heavy Rhizo or power armor, and that was without having the skill levels to improve its basic damage. Her residue was honestly close enough to actual lava at this scale that calling her "toxic" was outright wrong, and her spit attack would probably count as a volcanic eruption more than spit before taking into account that she could use it five times with a single body.
Flamescale's bio-tech skills were a bit new at the moment. There had been a good mix of one-off bio-tech and crystal skills from the small army of ancient constructs they had defeated, and she had added some of them already. One was a bio-shield, which normally wasn't that impressive, but with the size bonus was honestly enough to take quite a bit of infantry scale weapons fire. Although against anything worth shooting at her it wasn't going to do much before breaking.
Her four launcher Chitin Spike skill had been replaced by a two launcher Crystal Shards weapon. The quantity was worse, and otherwise the stats had been the same as the spikes, but they didn't actually need a full reload cycle after she melted down and even could reload while she was liquid. A two launcher crystal missile skill joined it as an outright better replacement instead of a trade off. Both of them were much weaker than her hand weapons, but her hand weapons were at the point where they could threaten spacecraft. The power was solidly in the shuttle weapon scale, and that was honestly at the point where the missiles would be best used on groups of enemies and the shards on heavy Rhizo or vehicles.
"Stone, I need something strange," Flamescale then said as she took off her bio-shield. "Shoot me a bit with that rotary."
"I've got this thing with my special anti-shuttle ammo. Only stuff it takes strong enough to deal with those disruptor shields," the short human warned her, but still shot her for a long burst anyway. "Flamescale, your health didn't even move."
"Infection Regeneration is percentage based," Flamescale noted a bit unhappily. "I'm going to ignore anything small right up until it overpowers that, and by that point they'll likely have found the big stuff." Which was a problem, because with how small everything around her looked she wasn't sure how well she would be able to tell when a crowd of enemies went from doing nothing to being a threat.
"Did you figure out what you need from the new crystal stuff?" Sixteen questioned. "Because Squeaky wants to know when she can send another supply mission, and I don't want to head back until I have an answer."
"Tell her I held you up for some practical tests," Flamescale answered him and removed those one off-skills. "Also, I'll tell her if she gets upset about an emergency use of them she gets to help fight it." Actually Squeaky would probably be on a combat rotation anyway if the former 319B got any more unreasonable about that sort of thing. Squeaky had turned out to have been named because the former bat could be the biggest and loudest perfectionist Flamescale had ever met, and unfortunately was typically just right enough to not be easily called out about that.
"Hm, that reminds me of some things," Jovian said quietly, and that made Flamescale wonder about her hearing because she kind of expected it to be worse at this scale. "Does anyone mind if I stay behind to talk while the rest of you get some more gear? I don't exactly need it myself."
"Take the offer," Stone said with amusement. "He is nowhere near as strong as he thinks and is useless for carrying actual supplies. If we aren't going for those light little 319 guns he isn't any help."
"This is why I try and just work with simple weapons," Sledge lamented. "Things that need maintenance more than ammo. I cannot remember the last time I actually raided a supply depot... for myself at least. Sometimes the anti-pirate forces need some extra supplies." Given that apparently included nuclear weapons Flamescale wasn't sure she trusted Sledge's idea of 'simple weapons'.
"We should probably start with the new information if Flamescale is done with the tests of her new skill level," Yellow-Glow pointed out, and started up a projector screen. A full sized one that her currently insect looking friend had apparently managed to fit in his body somewhere.
"We probably can start off," Flamescale agreed, then decided to stay giant for this as she started her part. "I'm fairly sure the developers are still messing with what exactly we can do with ancient bastions, as some things haven't been stable. We do not have the doors that it was talking about right now, but we did for a short time yesterday, and we have more than enough gates to link those instead. The structure itself is made out of a combination of the standard ancient building materials and some nodes of an odd Void Material none of us have seen before. I've been hoping to check if the Void Nexus has any of that, but it isn't even in the Void Bases as far as I've been able to see."
"I think I know the stuff you mean," Sledge grumbled while Stone and Jovian both seemed to laugh at the pangolin. "I cracked a wall on one of the other bastions and there were some off looking bits inside."
"'Cracked' he says. I took two grenades to break down a door and he 'accidentally' brought the entire wall down with a single swing," Stone laughed loudly.
"Any luck with working out how the ancient bio-technology works now that we have some live examples?" Jovian asked to continue the explanation, despite clearly wanting to continue to joke about that.
"Not much, there are only a few bio-technology constructs on these bastions," Flamescale admitted. "The gates are the main thing we actually can use, and honestly I'm adding more functionality than they started with. Otherwise it is just some sensor systems and data storage that will need ancient translation to do anything with. The good news there is that looking over the ancient gates was enough for my researchers to work out how to make infected gates that they can move around." It actually added a new entry into her Infected Material options, along with a couple of other project results. Apparently that was something that could happen if you developed the skill more, although most guides didn't mention that aspect either.
"Well that will make some things easier," Sledge admitted with a nod. "I think all of us wanted your... creatures, to be able to actually carry stuff out properly." Flamescale pretended to not notice his clear stumble over what to call the infected snakes, although she didn't really have a better idea herself yet.
Flamescale nodded and then looked towards Yellow-Glow because that was all that she had to explain. "I will preface with the confirmation that, while the ancient bastion networks do link multiple instances, there are in fact different meta-instances instead of just a single ancient network across all instances," her friend confirmed.
"So we will be fighting new ones forever," Jovian complained. "But we also don't have to deal with a group that controls all of existence."
Those were two of the implications, but Flamescale had another, "It also gives one explanation of why we haven't met any other versions of ourselves. If we are also a meta-instance, then we should also have variants."
"Please don't go into alternates," Stone requested with a loud groan. "I do not want to get lost on that topic again. I already deal with enough worries about alternate versions of myself on my own without talking about it with other people."
"Agreed," the other three declared bluntly.
"With that out of the way," Yellow-Glow continued to also cut off that topic. "We do know that the layout of the networks are consistent. On the outside there are individual bastions that each link to a single instance. These are the outermost spokes of the network, and between one and three of these are connected to each of the bastions of the outer ring. Literally a ring of bastions, with the corridor allowing easy access around the entire network."
"'Outer ring' implies an inner one," Flamescale pointed out as she put that into her mind. "Do I want to know how big the outer one gets?"
"Outer ring bastions connect to the inner ring, once again at a rate of one to three outer connected to each inner," Yellow-Glow confirmed, and then his projector lit up with a display of a series of rings of symbols. There were actually four rings if you counted the outside spokes and some larger inside ones that did not connect to the massive symbol in the center. The two middle rings were connected around in circles, and the inner of the two was notably smaller than the outer. "The inner ring has been recorded with between four and sixteen bastions along it."
"Four to one forty four instances?" Jovian asked with clear horror. "Over a hundred instances of reality? How big was the ancient empire?"
"There are very rarely more than a handful of worlds in any instance that were owned by the ancients," Sledge noted carefully. "In fact, there is an interesting mystery that these gates solved according to my local contacts. The ancient sites are specialized too much, it even looks like the pirate king strongholds were actually the ancient homeworld at one point, but even those were specialized to make only one thing at a point relatively far in the past from when they fell."
"The Girant have a few hundred worlds most of the time, the Leaf even more than that," Flamescale pointed out. "Wait, wait the Rhizo pirates always go for FTL ships. They always go for those. If the ancients had void gates, but didn't have FTL, then their entire civilization might have depended on those gates. Using a bunch of alternate versions of themselves instead of getting new worlds most of the time."
"That does seem to be the case," Yellow-Glow confirmed with a sigh. "But we should focus. As you can see, inward from the bastions of the inner ring are the actual infrastructure of the ancient gate networks. At the very center is the Citadel. Current brief looks with advanced scanners reveal it has a regular polygonal shape with between three and five sides, and those have ranged between ten and thirty kilometers per side. No actual ancients have been found in this arcology like void structure as of yet, as long as the Mucin are not in fact actually the ancients." 'Mucin' was the new official name for the ancient computers, but so far Yellow-Glow was the only one Flamescale had heard use it.
"Given how big those get I don't want to find out they are actually the ancients themselves," Jovian said with a shudder. "We spotted a literal wall of the stuff they were made out of when we tried to look at the Citadel connected to these bastions. I really hope that was a bunch at once and wasn't just a really big ancient computer."
"The other places had some that were a bit too big for my tastes," Stone agreed with a glare at his gun. "That's honestly why I'm happy to see we have something in their size range."
"Yellow-Glow, what does that mean?" Flamescale asked with considerable concern given how big she was at the moment.
"The inner bastions also link to currently unidentified structures. Due to the lack of translation at this time and the threat of Citadel defenses, I feel that we should focus on determining the function of those sites," he explained instead at first. "However, from our investigation they are heavily guarded themselves. Mucin grow larger the more important they are." The projector shifted to showing a model of an ancient computer, but the scale and the details the holographic projector were displaying did not sit well with Flamescale.
"Guys, that thing is at least my current size," she had to point out, fairly sure the green crystal coated goo bird-squid was actually larger than her current mass of red snake hydra goo. "Squeaky," she then ordered when it was clear that they were serious. "Pale," outright dragging both her quartermaster and craft expert to their location. "Prep a bastion for arrival of a 319 plasma gas tanker or two, and get ready to grab some of them," she cut off both of them before they could complain. "We need to be able to arm me at this size, and I think I need that much spacecraft scale plasma weapon gas to have enough ammo. We're testing if ammo stored on bastions counts for Magazine Link now, and we are going for any Girant ammo depots that might have more of these artillery rounds."
"Isn't this a bit extreme of a reaction?" Sledge attempted to ask, but did start moving to get ready.
"If we need to take on something that might have my level of regeneration, possibly to rescue captured Entities, I will need that firepower," Flamescale said bluntly and maybe a bit terrified. None of them really trusted that other players were getting ready fast enough for rescue missions. Ancient disruptors still prevented standard abort, and they occasionally had been noted to heal Void Entities that tried to die to get out with that method. "Liquid Crystal has a regen skill that might get the size bonus, and my researchers are fairly sure that there are ancient constructs inside the tubes of this place that are supposed to heal the computers along with what the starfish can do. We haven't confirmed it yet, or really found them, but it took too much firepower to take down the big ones if there aren't."
"Perhaps that should have been included in your part of the presentation, even if the data was incomplete," Yellow-Glow pointed out with some worry of his own. "I had a secondary target for our supply mission that just became primary. A major Girant ammo supply station that mostly contains vehicle scale ammunition."
"You want to get access to a couple of gas giant harvester stations I know of," Stone added seriously. "There are only a few places that collect and refine the warship grade plasma weapon gas, and an orbital fusion reactor core is about the only place you're going to find enough of those in one spot to be worth getting."
"We got Clumsy from one of those stations around planet nineteen," Squeaky pointed out rapidly, and Flamescale didn't have time to be annoyed with how excitedly her quartermaster reacted to these orders. "She might still have some access codes that could get us through security. They don't change them often enough."
---
Five bodies was at the point where Flamescale could start to consider doing multiple missions at a time. In this case one staying at the bastion to see what happened with using base construction tools to try and make some storage on the captured structure, one or two going to a 319 orbital facility with her creatures to capture some supply ships, and two or three going with Yellow-Glow, Sledge, and Stone to clean out an entire Girant ammo facility.
Clumsy it turned out had problems while there was gravity instead of just in general, as the very stripe covered serpent was able to move quite well in the zero-g environment as they took advantage of a lack of need to breathe in order to get from the civilian ship where their Void Rift had been formed to the 319 supply docks by using the structural elements around the massive station components.
"Lab one zero five is that structure there, we should make sure not to get too close," the former 319A specified over a cybernetic comms unit as they approached with an indicator marking a large block of the station rather close to the docked ships. "The cloning tubes are the most well guarded parts, but the real reason is that the docks don't like putting plasma weapon gas tankers on those slots. The pipes to transfer it are harder to use and take longer to draw from the station's main tanks. If we want to do this quick we need to go to the other side, next to those fuel bunkers over there." Those were half kilometer tall and quarter kilometer wide tanks on the opposite side of the smaller craft docking area.
While that group made its way to try and steal some space ships the two bodies with the other Void Entities arrived with three heads each, and the new crystal weapons back for both operations. She was only using laser weapons, mostly because it didn't make sense to waste ammo to get ammo, although Stone was at least using conventional and cheap Leaf rounds to get rarer and harder to get Girant explosive shells. The Girant were guarding the large tan concrete structure, in the middle of a large military base that the Slinks of that instance were actually asking them to eliminate.
Naturally with four Void Entities present the only question was how much of the contents of the base would be taken instead of destroyed, so Flamescale was mostly focused on her bastions. The gates were ready to move to both of the target sites, and she currently had two bodies taking advantage of the lack of a current link to a mission in order to add some base building options to the ancient structures. There were storage boxes and containers available for a wide variety of uses, and while there wasn't entirely a need to have them purpose made she was still using a tank design for plasma gas storage to mark off where she wanted to set the tankers. Along with another place that was being made into a fairly standard ammo depot they would be ready to start testing by the time the gates needed to be opened.
"So, I must admit," Jovian started, the only one of them staying behind entirely. "It is a surprise to see you with a command interface Skill Tree." The fox man paused deliberately. "I had thought your reason for avoiding them was the typical one, but seeing this I can clearly tell I was mistaken."
"There is a typical one," Flamescale didn't question. She had realized that this was the sort of confrontation that was the real reason he was staying behind, although not the specifics of what the issue was.
"After the update to the command interface there was a new aspect to intelligent minions," Jovian explained at that prompting. "Suddenly it was possible to get into all of the minds of whoever you took over. There are three ways players typically react to finding that out. They stop using those control skills entirely, like I did when I stopped being a necromancer. They could instead just stop using the intelligent skills, which is far more common and the only method that gets talked about on the forums. Or, they go all in, often staying in an instance that they practically take over in order to protect their new children-"
"Do not use the 'c' word," Flamescale cut him off instantly. "I am doing everything I can to use these skills and still avoid having to deal with being a mother to eternal eldritch monsters that are extensions of myself. Call it literally anything else."
Jovian didn't look impressed. "The local ideas on family isn't going to help you there," he pointed out, unfortunately quite correct. "319 consider being remade and put under the control of new management the closest thing they have to adoption. The Slinks have demon gods that you practically inspired, if we aren't dealing with time travel so you are their demon god. The Girant are a mess that still uses slaves after going interstellar, with social standards that match. And do I need to point out the Leaf ideas of family? We had an entire war that nobody liked because they think having a part of someone else added to them makes them family to the point they need to follow the family leader."
"There is a difference between people I've stolen from their lives, and creatures that only exist, that were created new and unique, because I made them," Flamescale clarified, well aware of all of that massive set of complications. Pale-Three-Moon-Sky had turned out to be a survivor of the mess with the Pale Stem General who had been sent on the mission to die, and the 319 under her command had barely changed what they had been doing before. She had spent plenty of time learning more about their thoughts since her poor idea of asking them about family and being converted.
Jovian simply gave her a look, while in the instances Clumsy was expertly disarming the local 319 with movements that were anything but, and Sixteen had Squeaky help start up a forklift hover unit to begin shifting the pallets of artillery shells.
"I'm probably going to try and get them to call 'Clumsy' 'Orbital' instead," Flamescale then sighed, resigned to her fate as probably counting as at least some form of family. "Not to mention I can't use the idea of letting Squeaky go into combat as a punishment now."
"Oh, and why not?" the fox Entity questioned while clearly ready to laugh.
"She just smashed a half dozen Girant off a bridge with a forklift, laughing all the way," she answered as Stone laughed loudly as well at the sight and Left-and-Right began to move the first infected gate to the Girant facility.
Working out how to switch names for one of her creatures was another question, and unfortunately probably had to wait until after that rapid infiltration force had already got away with the two tankers they had found in a good state. Flamescale was going to need Left-and-Right's team helping a bit more there to increase the base size of the gate to fit the spacecraft, and then Squeaky's people to get it set down.
"The Girant are getting ready to hit us with a small army," Yellow-Glow warned just as that first gate opened. "I believe they realize that the site is lost, but do not want to go for an orbital strike on this much ammunition."
Sledge responded to that by dropping a small theater shield generator, and then a mobile fusion unit to run it, out of his linked storage. "It still counts as one piece of gear," he then argued when they all stopped to stare at the two trucks bigger than he was that he had just materialized in the middle of a warehouse that was clear of every local except some Slinks, who honestly were probably going to be evacuated with the ammo if Flamescale had the choice. She didn't know where she was going to put some random Slinks after the fact, but she now had the option for them to not die.
"How serious were you about that Slink thing?" Flamescale asked Jovian as the first of the ammo started moving into the bastion next to them, thankfully successfully being stored in the new eldritch containers that held more than their volume.
"If time travel turns out to be a thing I will be quite upset," Jovian answered darkly. "However, with how strangely time seems to pass for some instances, I think we cannot rule out that it is a relatively recent idea inspired by your actions."
"I meant how they think about my new creatures," she specified while she started getting an idea of what the Slinks' existing plan was. "I want to make sure I don't give the ones I'm planning to evacuate the wrong idea." Their existing plan unfortunately was the typical idea of 'die while sabotage happens', and unfortunately she probably couldn't sneak them back to their instance easily.
"Flamescale, I mean this as nicely as possible, but taking a bunch of Slinks to this place, with its alien look and all of your red not-quite-lava goo, will very much look like their demon god's home," Jovian said somewhere between amused and exasperated. "To be blunt, they are going to be confused if you do that and don't just turn them into more snakes."
"I'll try and avoid that one," Flamescale sighed as the station team began to move to take the ships. Clumsy/Orbital easily leading some of them to the farther one from the tanks to check its load and hopefully try and top it off, while Flamescale personally did the same for the closer tanker. The ships themselves were probably forty to fifty meters long, and it would be a bit complicated to dock them, but it seemed the reaction time would be slow enough to at least get a partial load.
Opening a gate into space was surprisingly simple, as was making the gate larger to the scale they needed, although it did imply some uneasy things about just how arbitrary the ancient bastion's artificial not-instance was. If they actually had an atmosphere or not was still uncomfortably unclear, but at least it wasn't venting one if it had it. Getting the two tankers into the gate, well that was where things got strange.
"I have negotiated the transfer of these tankers in exchange for scanner data on the attempt," Left-and-Right suddenly cut in, as the 319 present pulled back from the two partially filled tankers. "We now should have time to fully fill them."
"Next time let me know before you try that," Flamescale immediately complained from next to the two head researchers. "I want data on void anything to be mostly contained. Get me your contact, and let me get Yellow-Glow here. Sledge too if there is a local anti-pirate group representative on the station."
"Boys, I have social issues that need handling. I'm sending more snakes to get the ammo, get ready for zero-g and no atmosphere in order to figure out what my researchers just messed up," she then said to the other team.
That worked to at least give her an idea on what the locals could actually figure out from their poorly tuned sensors while the attempt was made, and it also turned out to save them from having to deal with a laser cannon turret that they had missed during their infiltration. Then it turned out to give them additional help when they discovered that even the area around the bastion itself had eldritch gravity. Where there was a clear 'down' even well away from the structure, but the degree of that 'down' seemed to change by odd rules that took well over an hour of letting the 319 station crew into her bastion to help to get the ships docked.
This did have the upside that it convinced the Slinks that they were not in a demon god's abode quite clearly, but Flamescale honestly just wanted to make sure she had ammo for when something really went wrong by that point.
---
[Author's Note]
I'm not sure I can properly describe what it is like to try and balance both making sure readers understand what I mean, and also explaining things over time to slowly build up details. A mixture of unhappiness and pure amusement that honestly can make writing worthwhile.
On that note I'd like to thank IndustrialVice2 on SpaceBattles for some insightful commentary that impacted this one directly, if not in the exact way they thought it would turn out.
