From Star to Star

[Polgas]

You are a citizen of the Republic of Coloten. The last stop before you fly out into the void of space. Your people have cast down the imperial flag centuries ago and just recently fought off a massive attempt by the empire to topple all that your people have built.

As someone that was born right as the final battles were being fought you grew up in an era of reconstruction. You and many in your generation would soon clamor to take the fight to the enemy and for you that meant joining the Guardians of the Gates, the republic's most elite mystical order founded around the time the republic was being born and blessed by the Prophet themselves.

But first which planet did you come from?
[] The Capital
With its formerly famous gleaming spires that pierce the sky and its foundations rooted deep under the ground to a degree that its sometimes said that the underworld is as different as going to another arcology halfway across the world. The world lives up to its fame as the capital of the republic.

You were an orphan raised alongside other orphans in a district of a half built arcology, like massive tree stumps over the horizon. Later you would learn that the republic built entire districts like yours, the size of entire cities in other worlds as massive orphanages to handle all the orphans of your world and others as part of a slate of ambitious projects by the emergency war government.

As you understood it, the republic before the war was almost able to develop the ability to mass implant ideas into someone's mind with the hope of using it as an educational tool. As the war ground on and specialist of all stripes were in desperate need the implantation program was repurposed to rapidly bulk up needed jobs such as field engineers.

The mixed results of using experimental technology became one of the many post war scandals that emerged but it did mean that when it came time to using it on you and the other orphans as a pilot program paired with a modified general education curriculum no one died or suffered some kind of mental degradation as far as people can tell.

Tristeel Jane a fictional character included with the implanted information that helped you understand all the jumbled mess stapled onto your mind was just as much a parental figure as your guardians were.

The grab bag of implanted ideas also included political education and you understood it enough that by the time you were in your pre-teens, you and all of your fellow classmates were already rabblerousing in the streets of your district or using the planetary rail network in other streets around the world in protests for this and that cause arms locked together in a display of solidarity as you all marched down the street just as Mother Jane taught you all.

[] The Garden
You were born in the world of Lekam among giants. Not truly giants like in children's stories, but your people are noted to be taller on average compared to most in the republic. It is said in your clan's oral history that the prophet came to your world and tamed the wilds from which a massive reserve stands today. If your planet has a capital, it would be the biggest city among cities that ring this reserve spanning a continent.

Traditionally for most, the only time they'll enter the reserve is when they reach the age of majority and spend about a few months to a year in the reserve and exit with an animal companion with your souls intertwined.

It is not accurate to say that poetry, oral history and the like have blossomed in recent years as this was already ongoing ever since the founding of the republic centuries ago but it has accelerated after the war. Every manner and way of using the spoken word has found home among your people. Advancements in education have meant that even you who wasn't training to become an oral historian can recite with perfect clarity and cadence the most well-known histories. This extends to other fields singing, poetry, riddles etc.

[] The Fleet
You weren't born on a planet or even a space station but on a ship. One of many that form the fleets of the republic. Specifically, one of the pilgrimage ships with a set travel route. It takes a village to raise a child, but you had a ship's crew numbering in the thousands as family that looked out for you.

In addition to learning how to live on and a basic understanding on how to maintain a ship and having a more thorough education not just in religion than most, you learned a bit more of the travel routes than most people especially the more esoteric parts of traveling.

An early program of the church after the republic won its freedom centuries ago saw ships stuffed full of teachers, doctors and priests spreading across the stars to reach even the most remote places and eventually after the program was declared a success, alumni of this undertaking returned to their mother ships and settled down.

How did you come to be accepted into the order?
[] I was secretly tested and passed.
[] I happened to travel with one for a journey and they liked the cut of my jib.
[] I was selected by them and given an offer to join with no explanation.

After accepting the invitation, you spent a decade of your young adult life as a trainee learning the ropes. After which came the final test where that forever changed you. Through mental discipline, soul hardening and correct application of the mystical arts you emerged a new person. Though your physical form is practically the same as before inside you could feel everything in flux.

For one you have some extra souls with you now. Some from your fellow trainees, those who you found to get a long the most are now merged with you or rather you now all co-habit a form that looks like you. Some of the souls are a bit harder to place and remained asleep. You know about this. The souls of the great heroes of your order are now also within you but most refuse to wake, preferring you to make your own mistakes until you were older except for one that started to mumble in their sleep drawn by a shared temperament.

Which Hero is this?

[] The Champion
The most common answer for members of your kind. Historically, a member of your prophet's inner circle. The first in every attack. The last in every retreat. The exemplar of your order. Or so what the historians say. Your order has a more nuanced understanding even if they arrived as the same conclusion.

Originally a two-bit hired gun, his date with destiny came when the local worthies of his city, worried about this new millenarian cult and paid him to abduct its leader and kill them in the desert. When they finally reached the deep desert, the prophet overpowered him and began acts that can be best described as a mix of debate/interrogation/psychological torture/taunting as the soon to be named champion wandered around the desert in panic and confusion and thirst and hunger before agreeing to serve.

In the prophet's service before he became known as the champion of all that was good and great, he was seen in the inner circle as the prophet's hatchet man that personally did the most morally questionable actions that were agreed upon as necessary. The paramilitary organization he commanded would eventually form the basis of your order.

When the order formed, he manifested a tough and enduring form and was quick to heal even by the standards of your order so much so that eventually the magics of your people that normally required elaborate totems, items and ceremony to act as a foundation could be forgone entirely for a time as long as he served as a substitute a feat that would turn regular magicians into powder if they tried.

His shadow looms large over the order over the fact that more or less all members have begun to display a degree of his toughness and healing ability.

[] The Bodyguard
The champion's sworn brother, closest companion, shadow, soul linked and soul bonded. Historically, a member of your prophet's inner circle. In almost every battle, he was beside the champion guarding him from all challengers. Outside of battle, he protected him from assassins coming to kill the new symbol of your people's resistance to the old order.

Like his sworn brother he was also a hired gun for the ruling elite and like his brother he joined the prophet after they came back from the desert a changed man. Already a tinkerer of machines on his off time, he discovered his new form after the formation of the order enhanced his ability to become a master, blending machine and magic and being a leading expert in your people's technological sorcery.

In battle, he carries with him dozens of devices and trinkets and parts that he uses to rapidly construct the optimal tools and weapons he needs at a moments notice. Occasionally, when finesse and subtlety doesn't work, he becomes a being of pure energy bathing all of his foes with the power of a sun.

[] The Hunter
A former would-be conqueror that the prophet won over. Historically, a member of your prophet's inner circle. He was born into a world that had regressed into feudal techno knights fighting for supremacy. Said world was often shadowed in massive storms and the only thing capable of taking to the air are flying steeds that could navigate and fly with the wind currents that the knights use to launch raids that bypass all the defenses found in their mountainous stronghold.

His most famous act in the order is tracking, hunting and fighting a demonic being that had ensnared a large number of people's souls. Their climactic battle over the skies as their followers fought bellow is a common enough motif in temple art. Cursed by his defeated foe, he took to entombment for long periods of time when his cursed bloodlust was getting the better of him.

Eventually, it was discovered that the bloodlust was just a side effect. The main curse was one of becoming an ever-hungering creature consuming all into its maw while unable to lift the curse, with training and treatment from the best the faith had to offer the curse was channeled to productive ends. He became able to consume just about anything mundane or magical.

[] The Savior
The youngest of the oldest heroes. Historically, NOT a member of your prophet's inner circle. She was born after the prophet's death and joined the order as your people readied themselves for the coming attempts by the empire at reconquest.

Her most famous act so far was saving a world from a station about to crash into orbit. In a three-way battle between the empire, your people and a piratical force, she fought her way towards the core of the station where magicians and sorcerers of the empire and the pirates were clashing over control of the station and were invertedly setting the massive station to crash into the planet at light speed.

Despite taking a blinding injury early in the battle she fought on and saw through her magical senses. A master at magical visions even among your order no falsehood or illusion can evade her gaze. Deemed to have a form of future sight, in battle she's already a step ahead of her opponents.

All four were present and participated in the final climactic battle with the empire and the demonic that finally ended the empire's first invasion. They and the order formed the final defense and defended the high priestess from all as she performed the final rites that finished a ritual first conceived during the prophet's days that destroyed and reformed all routes of travel to your people. Without a means to receive reinforcements or supply, the invasion force was eventually defeated.

That all four are still alive and active within your order and you have their souls inside your new form is but one of the many contradictions you've had to accept as part of your training.

Author's note: I'll be a bit free form on this one. Very light if any on the stats.
​

 

[Polgas]

Winning Vote:

Spoiler: Vote Results

[X] The Garden
[X] I was secretly tested and passed
[X] The Savior

As you trained and learned more about the order, you learned of its various means of recruitment. With cooperation between the church and the state, the republic's citizens were annually screened and assessed for all sorts of things, this you had a vague idea of even before you had joined it was taught to you as a child in school but it fits that the gate guardians would also be included in this program and got to pick the most compatible for their order.

===

The first thing you learned to do after your transformation was how to move your body again. The souls inside your form had to act as one to do anything coherent. Well, the actual first thing to learn was how to move your mouth to eat, drink and talk again. Your seniors and the more mystically gifted of the church carried the bodies of you and your fellows to a nearby spacious room to celebrate the completion of your training.

Initially, you were delighted at all the different delicacies on offer with others carefully feeding you every food and drink you could ask for and making small talk but soon you tired of how slow it was with every chew and gulp a carefully measured act and asked to be laid down on the floor and stuck a tube to your mouth and pump you full of water until you were full. Looking back to an outside observer it would seem like some kind of water torture but the constant flow of water at a manageable level meant you learned to time your drink until it became second nature to you after drinking enough water to mostly fill a moderately sized public pool.

The dreams come next. Incoherent babbling, vague memories without context from one of the sleeping souls. You learn to tune out these exhausting visions and even make sense of some of them in your sleep.

Knowing the source of these dreams was of great help as you could simply track down their service history and make sense of what you are seeing and eventually you do put things together. She and a substantial part of your order boarded an enemy capital ship mid transit in the war, one of their relics with technology bordering on magic as well as their own magics.

You see through her eyes as she boarded specialist ships designed for this sort of attack. You see her making herself small and unnoticed to the demonic and those inside their massive quarry. You see her in the thick of battle dancing and cutting down enemy after enemy until her sword was blunted and as good as a club. You see her form burning with fire and light, her eyes bleeding with blood as she banished the unnatural darkness that seeped into the ship as the battle damaged it from within never losing her way as she ran forward and lead her brethren to victory. Finally, you see her and other members of your order exhausted but jubilant as they stand on the bridge looking out at the void of reality.

What specific moment did you fixate upon while you dreamt?

[] Her Sneaking Ability

[] Her Fighting Style.

[] Her Unerring Sense of Direction

===

Another equally important change was to your soul bonded animal from your home world. The process transformed them too.

What was your bonded animal?
[] A Fish
An uncommon companion. Initially you were bewildered when your companion's physical body died after you transformed but late that night as you dreamed you saw it again in your dreams. It "lives" there now as guide and protector of your mind.

[] A Tiger
A common companion. Sleek, fast and powerful. It has recently developed a habit of traveling between nearby shadows. You feel like you could channel more of your mystical arts with your companion as a conduit.

[] A Pack of Rats
Rats leaving Lekam while uncommon as bonded companions do regularly sneak into ships and multiply. Most ships in the republic while bemoaning a rat infestation would make an exception for these rats considering them to be living charms against those that lurk in the dark.

After you transformed, your rats seem to have started gaining greater intelligence voluntarily allowing you to use their senses and see through a rat's eyes or that of an entire pack. It was very confusing at first but with eventually you got used to it.

===

Your post transformation duties normally took you all over the republic but there was one posting that took up most of your time so far.

What was it?
[] Partisan Clearing Operations at the Capital
During the war, the empire fought its way past all of the ships defending the capital Coloten, the orbital defenses, the mines, whole orbital habs of ordinary desperate people doing suicidal attacks with jury rigged one to two man planes and managed to begin planetary invasion.

Everything outside a shield was on fire and eventually when the shields began to fall so did the arcologies whether by the imperial army that was greater in size than the oceans of the world or the enemy fleet cutting it down with orbital fire before sending in the army to fight in the rubble. The few arcologies that remained intact along with the underworld represent a statistically relevant number of the republic's total industrial output.

So many of the enemy landed that when the war was won and the last imperial fleets in the republic surrendered or were destroyed and the reconstruction was in full swing, the capital still had enemy units launching guerilla attacks.

You spent most of your time patrolling and searching for these last holdouts.

[] Inspecting the Ships of the Republic for Demonic Presence
Arguably the most important duty of the guardians is to make sure nothing from the other side gets through. Due to how ships travel in between the realms, they become a vector for unintended passengers. You and your peers spent most of your time walking around ships and searching for stowaways.

[] Crushing Rebels
Bari, formerly a techno feudal world, its mono-biome of endless mountains and valleys wracked in endless storms is taken as a sign by most experts that terraforming techno-sorcery was employed on the planet in the past.

A major initiative by the republic going all the way back to its founding was ending the old feudal order. After suffering endless setbacks and incremental wins, it finally saw major progress when the emergency pre-war government took over.

Naturally, when the empire invaded the planet descended into civil war between those fighting for the old order and the new. Inevitably the outcome of this hinged on who won the actual war and when the republic emerged triumphant it was the beginning of the end for the old order.

You spent your time on the planet as the last mountain fortresses were isolated and taken and the remaining rebels agreed to surrender.​

 

[Polgas]

You with members of your order moved between ships searching for anomalies but there was one ship that took up most of your time. The "Crisis" class capital ship the Battleship Furious Anger. The class is a catch all term for all the emergency experimental ships the republic cobbled together during the war. As a rule while the republic did manage to quickly finish and send out new hulls these ships all had very serious flaws that saw them discontinued at the wars end. Currently the newest generation of capital ships have begun to replace these war era crafts.

The Furious Anger's problem was that it lacked proper shielding and warding from the aether. Its designers considering travel between the space routes as something of a luxury. Its actual job was to spend most of its time in real space and if need be make very short jumps between systems.

Your team was transferred to the ship amid constant reports of ill fortune within the ship. With a big ship like this it would take a long time to get a proper assessment of its mystical defenses but your soul bonded companions made it easy. Within a month you were able to pinpoint the source of the problem to be the engine crew.

A case of mass possession with one demonic entity hiding within the souls of the engine crew. A combination of the ship having poor defenses, being shielded by the techno-sorcery of the engines and spreading itself thin between the crew allowed the demon to hide itself from discovery.

Once your team figured it out the solution was simple. At the next port of call when most of the crew was on leave, the engine crew elected to a man to stay on ship citing maintenance issues. Your team then led the security forces of the ship to subdue every afflicted member.

You weren't able to pinpoint exactly who was who but your training in trying to incorporate the fighting techniques of your first dreamer meant you didn't have a problem subduing the engine crew with minimal injuries.

A quick mass exorcism later and your team was declaring victory. The crew members would need life long care from the church with how long they were under possession but this is your first big win against the demonic after your transformation.

===

Speaking of transformation, what is your current conception of your identity now that you've had time to figure things out? Are you a new being? Your old identity but with some additions? Do you consider all the souls in you as one being or many that can be divided? What does this mean in terms of your gender and sex if any?

[] Write-in on how you see yourself. I'll try to pick out the most common answers. I'll use this to adjust my writing if I have to use your POV.

===

In your mid 30's, you're finally got your chance to volunteer to take part in an operation outside the republic to prepare the way for the counter invasion into the empire. Your order has their own exclusive way of traveling and its through the proverbial gates between worlds your order is named after. Aside from the more mystically gifted members of the republic, you've never seen anyone else but your order uses this method to travel between worlds without using ships and the space routes. How hard it is to travel depends on the location.

With the rearranging of the routes in the republic using the gates has never been easier to travel but going from here to gates outside the republic is much harder.

What mission did you undertake?
[] Space Station
The nearest and safest gate. After the empire's defeat the provinces that neighbor the republic suffered major instability and to this day the empire is concentrating on stabilizing the situation. This space station is part of a swathe of mining stations that are de facto independent but still is nominally part of the empire.

Republican agents have been active for quite some time, organizing and waiting for the opportunity to engineer a permanent break when the time comes and either join the republican invasion or at least take a neutral stance.

You alone are being sent there in response to the agents there managing to set up a proper gate. Alone but overloaded with gifts of advanced technology and magic to impress/bribe the right people and work with republican forces to accelerate the plans to subvert the area.

[] Shipyard
The system Domox is the main civilian dock and fleet mustering point in the province you are operating in. A win here paralyzes the enemy response in the entire province for quite some time giving a future invasion a better chance at success.

Normally, this wouldn't even be an option but through half dreams and whispers, the desperate and the damned have or will for a limited time open a gate in the hopes of salvation. You don't know how long it'll last or how difficult the journey is but your order is sending as many as they can through, and you'll be part of that.

[] Unknown
Whatever your mission was it doesn't matter now as through accident or demonic influence, you exit alone in an alien world.​

 

[Polgas]

You and the expedition of about a thousand made it through with your equipment mostly in one piece. A few dozen are nowhere to be found. They either didn't make it or are scattered somewhere in the system. If the trip was predicted to be like climbing a mountain then what actually happened was akin to running a marathon in poor weather. Difficult but doable with training.

Taking stock of the situation, your summoners on the other side are for the lack of a better term a cult. If you understand it right, it is a run of the mill cult focused on their leader and its inner circle scamming and abusing its followers with a small number of followers within hearing the voice of your people in the aether and going off script and opening the way right into their headquarters.

Where is the cult and now your headquarters?
[] A Ship
A big civilian ship built to act as a luxury cruise ship for the wealthy as it moves around the system. Hidden in plain sight. The ship will visit most locations within the system whether populated worlds or stations or scenic gas giants.

[] A Space Elevator
One of the main elevators in the most populated world in the system. The cult was in the middle of consolidating its control over a major trade artery when you all came to the scene. Smuggling anything would be relatively simple.

[] A Nebula
Remote and unknown. Very few in the system outside the cult know about their base here. While it is far from all the population centers and important infrastructure like the shipyards, this place could be developed into a proper stronghold when the time for subtlety is over.

===

What did the expedition decide on what to do with the cult?
[] Maintain its nature.
While reprehensible, the cult apparently in this era of prosperity for the system preyed on the excesses during this time of unequal plenty. A mix of people that lost it all, recently rich and people drawn in by a deliberate cultivation of a mystery cult make up its membership.

After a vote that came down to the wire, it has been decided to use their connections with the high and mighty and engineer favorable conditions to a revolution, although no one is sure how successful this is. Changing the cult so it isn't awful can be done slowly so the benefits of a well-connected cult can be used while eventually not having to deal with the fact that it's a cult or so proponents of this plan say.

[] Rebuild it from the ground up.
The organization that will be leading the future uprising has to start from somewhere why not here? After making sure the leader and those closest to him that didn't get with the program wouldn't be missed, the expedition began to mold the cult into an organization capable of taking power when revolutionary conditions arrived.

Whether it be the selection and training of the new heads of the former cult or indoctrinating regular members on the benefits of overthrowing the government for a better one. Proponents argue that, the teachings of God clearly demonstrate that the system of Domox as it is now will eventually enter into a time of strife as they are now and as such need not be engineered.

===

After everyone got their bearings, the expedition quickly went about their assigned tasks.

What job did you have?
[] Scout
Your rats mean that it would be a boon for you to be a scout. The nooks and crannies of cities would all be known to you. In addition, before you set out the elder mystics of your order shaped you into a rat or some other animal to be determined if this vote wins.

Normally, you would be dissuaded from this course as you are too young to have the proper training to shift between forms but your bond meant shifting to a tiny creature is in your wheelhouse with only a small chance of you forgetting you are more than an animal requiring aid from your fellows to revert you to your previous form.

[] Infiltration
In most groups in the expedition, you would be the best singer. Your birth world giving you a leg up compared to most and after your transformation you found your control over your body greatly expanded. This includes your voice; every combination of pitch and timbre comes easily for you. You even found it easier to mystically enchant people once they've started humming along to your song.

It was agreed that you should infiltrate polite society by being a singer and putting you within a room's distance of the rich and powerful with an eye for building a spy network geared to knowing what the elite of this system are doing.

[] Teacher
Regardless of the decision on the cult, the expedition needs to assign members to training the cult members. Whether on how or why to fight or how to educate these members on a wide variety of topics. Crucially training ordinary humans in the mystical arts are on your shoulders.

[] Organized Crime
The Domox system has witnessed a flourishing of organized crime. You are part of a group that is aiming to subvert them for our own ends or replace them with something that can win over the general population.
​

 

[Polgas]

Spoiler: Vote Results

[X] A Ship
[X] Rebuild it from the ground up.
[X] Organized Crime

The Liberty of Space is the largest civilian ship in the system boasting of a capacity of a million souls, crew included. In a display of its size, the cruise ship has airports with one near the front and one at the back end. It would in fact be far faster to travel from one end of the ship to the other by other means but the novelty of taking a flight and hugging the outside of the ship has its own charms.

It wasn't a surprise for the expeditionary group to learn that most of the staff are members of the cult who are effectively debt slaves suffering numerous everyday abuses and indignities. Neither was that the ship was involved in human trafficking and other monstrous acts for the rich and powerful that serve as its clientele.

There was a lot of cleaning up to do to make the cult a usable proxy force. The expedition set up a committee to take over the old cult leader and their inner circle and filled it with the most worthwhile prospects.

Fortunately, the old leadership kept extensive records of its members. Very extensive, undoubtedly it was an attempt at furthering their means of control over individual members but it does mean who they really are as a person is readily apparent. Just some final interviews and the new leadership was declared not fit no one was but ready to be trained as the new leaders.

Incidentally, those who made the temporary gate that allowed for this to happen got seats. Their fervent loyalty a scare resource for now and one of them has even displayed some talent at the aetheral arts and is being trained.

The ship took a year off as part of the efforts to rebuild the cult into one that can take the system. For the cruise ship it involved trying to keep as much of its previous public face as possible. Some discreet calls to the rich and powerful apologizing that some of their really morally horrendous desires are no longer to be catered to lost the ship's reputation as the place where anything was possible and nothing was prohibited but when the ship relaunched it was still lauded as the premier cruise ship for the people with wealth.

As part of the slick PR campaign to generate the new cuddly family friendly image being projected, many of the lose ends were being tied up. Hush money was being paid either through legal means to the most obstinate families of the known victims the ship generated in the thousands and through illegal means to ward off people very curious as to why the ship is undergoing a sudden change.

Compared to that the internal reform of the staff was relatively simple if time consuming. Immediate medical attention, an increase in pay and benefits and some organizational restructuring that allowed for quick response to the needs of the crew as well as the usual indoctrination into faith and some basics on the republican ideals.

You found yourself mostly serving as an impromptu mental trauma doctor, your melodic voice helping the cult members unpack the damage done to them. In addition to some time spent training the security staff for actual combat.

===

Ganhahsi Station is the biggest stationary orbital near three planets and is the nexus of their trade. Raw resources from the planets go into the station and drugs go out. Well as you've studied it, the planets import more finished products but drugs or drug related products make up a lot of the import trade. The three planets have very little industry to speak of with actual laws that effectively prohibit any attempts at industrialization.

While some of your compatriots are heading for these planets to rile them up, you and others are staying on station.

The bad news is that organized crime runs the station. A public facing governor in their pocket that serves the crime syndicates to mollify any apprehensions that dealing with criminals would be in bad taste. Their reach is so deep that ordinary workers can't even get a job without signing up with one of them. Worse, the station is vital enough that a section of the station has been sealed off and has a garrison from the empire using it as their fortress.

The good news is that they don't know you're here yet and if you beat them, the station is yours for the taking.

Right now the plan is to begin infiltrating the station and constructing fake identities and lives before moving on to the next stage. Your body has even been slowly mystically molded over the years to become more suited for your intended job.

What is your new job?
[] Factory
You'll enter one of many processing plants on the station working to supply the station all sorts of products that it needs to keep on running. The actual concrete effect of taking the oath to serve the syndicates for you a worker means that the manager takes a cut of your salary and ordinary workers will never be able to switch to another plant.

The membership you are seeking is entry into the activist circles of the station. You'll play the recent immigrant disaffected by their job and be "recruited" by unionist you've identified and begin your career as a firebrand organizer of the downtrodden.

Your job is to expand union and activist membership and steer the movement steadily towards radical ends for the day of the uprising.

While this would put you on the radar so to speak, paradoxically this makes it unlikely for your true identity and the identity of the expedition to be found out because for all intents and purposes you're just a radicalized worker to friend and foe something for the ordinary mafia enforcer to deal with.

Part of your training involved some basics on how to form an underground movement along with a focus on social organizations because of your voice. The elder members of your order noticed your talent and helped train you until you have a high degree of control over your voice. You can not only say what they want to hear but in a way that they'll find most pleasing.

[] Journalist
Your job is to control the flow of information on the station. From doing the muck work like staying up all night near the police station with your fellow reporters to follow the latest crimes to rising high enough to becoming a celebrity in your own right. Publishing books, hosting shows and being the first thing ordinary people think about when considering the news.

You'll be walking a fine line between reporting the truth just enough to get ordinary people to consider you reliable but not enough that the authorities consider you a rogue that must be dealt with.

Your ultimate goal is to both on the day of the uprising with the aid of other members of the order and other allies, exhort and aid in the coordination of the people rising up and to outwardly to the authorities outside the station project the uprising as a mildly large protest and business as usual will resume after a while.

While this does make use of your voice once you've landed a job to report in front of a camera or to host a radio, you will have to lessen your mystical effects relating to your mouth to an extent you might as well not use it. It will only take one of the empire's witch hunters to notice the tells in your voice that you are employing sorcery to alert the authorities of the system of republican presence.

[] Domestic servant
You will enter the life of a servant for the rich and powerful. Your initial years will be to establish a work history and whether by hook or crook increasingly be hired for jobs with more prestige until you become a head of the domestic staff of one of the ruling elite. Having access to the schedules and who orbits the elite of the station is invaluable. The more careless members of the elite might even delegate some of their private business to you should you gain their trust.

The goal is to spy on the enemy and learn their every move and if it comes to it sufficiently radicalize your future subordinate to take part in a decapitation strike when the uprising is at hand.

Your preferred mystical talents don't give you that big of an edge to this but even so you are capable of the mental gymnastics and readiness that is to be the clean up crew for the rich and powerful. Once, you've attain higher rank though that's a different story. You can start setting up elaborate rituals on sectioned off rooms. Dump techno sorcerous hacking worms into the computers of your employers. Sufficiently reclusive employers might even open the opportunity to mental suggestion or replacing them entirely as a body double after a few rounds of techno-sorcerous surgery.

[] Mafia member
You will join the crime syndicates in earnest. Not just because your job requires you to but you will be an enforcer. Your duties generally involve crushing the spirit of the general population so they will remain docile. Whether it be shaking down someone because you know they are desperate and force them to sign a deal from a loan shark or publicly beating and humiliating the odd protester.

All with the goal to rise high enough to be in position to take over and use the syndicates to better spread covertly throughout the system.

You can't really use most of your overt mystical arts but you know a fair amount of the subtler sort and have decades of experience in fighting.

===

Another thing equally as important is taking care of the aether or the other side of the station. It is a pile of misery and chaos that will significantly hamper you and your comrades' ability to employ your mystical arts. Your sensitivity to such matters also means your body is physically uncomfortable. Your team took a few days off after arriving on the station to get used to it. You personally spent it stuck in a seedy motel room vomiting into the toilet for most of it.

Small mercies though, the expedition HQ on that massive civilian ship makes regular stops on the station so your team can regularly receive small magical items that can help you employ some your rituals despite the truly awful mystical terrain.

There is really no fast cure as this requires the complete overhaul of society, the placement of correct wards and rituals as well as the accompanying trained mystics but there are some band aid plans your group has devised after taking into account the station's overall makeup.

What plan did you eventually go with?
[] Subvert
Your team will select a location to locally cleanse and piggyback on the local leyline letting the empire's own mystical infrastructure do the hard work. The empire's own magical traditions have some similarities with your people and they do usually require their own isolated locations free of taint to conduct their own rituals chief of which is to communicate with those off station.

Time consuming and risky but should your team pull it off and evade the astral patrols, you can look forward to having a decent foundation for most of the station to cast magic on. The drawback of a successful venture is that you'd need to be stingy with your magic as casting too much would eventually reveal the location of your secret base.

Eventually as you gain in strength and more supporters on station, your team would be able to look into spying and eventually taking control over the empire's own magical leyline.

[] Build
Your team will build your own network independent of the empire's. It will even be even more time consuming and for secrecy's sake you can only use it to help with the least of your abilities and only on select areas but it would be almost impossible for the empire's own magic sensitive enforcers to detect. The station wide misery and soul pollution will act as cover.

The hope is that the number and quality of your independent stations will improve as you succeed more on the station. Eventually opening up the operation to destroy or sabotage the imperial leyline network giving your uprising a hopefully decisive mystical edge.​

 

[Polgas]

Spoiler: Vote Results

[X] Factory
[X] Build

Your new role is now called Dany Nehc. She came from a small and remote village from one of the planets the station drains for resources. Lured in by a desperate hope of a better life, a desire to send back money to your village or the village life was so bad going here was worth the risk, you find yourself changing your reason to fit the personality of the person that asks but the truth is all three would be the truth for this type of person.

You found a job in the textile industry working in a sweatshop. You picked this specific industry because a series of workplace accidents has riled up entire shops. As you can imagine workplace accidents taking the lives of workers is common in all industries on this station but for the textile industry here, they've made a practice of truly jamming as many people in as small of a space as possible. The series of accidents happened on shops with employees numbering almost ten thousand. In your own shop fully half of the workers died in a fire caused by faulty equipment and the company managers slow to open the locked entrances.

With the large demand for new labor and an angry work force, it wasn't a surprise that as you worked in conditions that you are sure would send you to an early grave but for your transformation, you finally were sounded out by your fellow employee on forming a union.

The small rented apartment from one of your fellow workers serve as the impromptu headquarters of your new underground union. In there you all talk shop about tactics and strategy, do small talk and get to know each other and read more historical and theoretical works. The last bit you carefully nudged along during group discussions and later as the deciding vote.

You are amused to read a few works that either trace their source to republican works or are translated works from the republic themselves. From what you know most sources of republican thought if they didn't come from local suppressed traditions in the imperial provinces came from radicalized prisoners of war after they did their own group reading and discussion in the prisoner camp cities.

Indoctrinating prisoners was actually a low priority for the republic during the war and was for the most part underfunded compared to making sure the prison conditions were livable of which funds were meager themselves as more and more resources were consumed to keep the war going. As the war drew to a close though and negotiations were dragging on and on, funds were shifted to a general and political education program.

The cult helped in this new life of yours. As some were directed to aid your group, you directed some to enter the same shop as you and now they were also picked up by the workers organizing for a union. Of course, they don't know who you are or that you are even part of the same organization but having a rough idea on the plan means they will be a small steady bloc of militant voices in the union being born.

Speaking of which apart from the activities of an upstanding underground union member what else did you do away from the eyes of your fellows to advance the cause?
[] I have a comrade that turned themselves into a bug and now with their aid I have a literal fly on the wall of the shop's big managerial meetings while I would sneak in and look up files before the next shift comes in.

[] I sparked a low level turf war with the gang enforcers guarding the shop ready to beat its workers down with another outfit. It was simple to dress like one of them and beat a few within an inch of their lives and escape without anyone getting a good look at me with my rat friends on the lookout.

===

You finish mystically strangling the person and let his body fall like a bag of meat. A word of power escapes your lips as you throw some specially made powder on the corpse constricting the half human half demonic soul that is trying to emerge, trapping it inside its own wreck of a body.

Giving the rooms a lazy view, its just the other members of your team clearing out the bodies or finishing off the enemy or watching the prisoners. This district and its blocks is for the most part not claimed by any of the station gangs. Places like this are prime real estate for those who really have something to hide and for your needs it was right.

The Wandering Greens were a cult hiding out in a set of apartment levels. They seem to have practiced aside from the usual human sacrifice a form of spiritual vampirism where they were capable of astral projection and feed on others. Eventually, this would have drawn in the empire's witch hunters but fortunately your team got here first.

Your soul bond with your pets actually helped you all greatly. As a means of rudimentary communication you could all send messages between each other with your rats and you as a relay and your team was able to quickly assemble and attack this place the moment one of your members spotted it.

As you begin to cut into the corpse and vivisect the soul of the half demon, you tune out their screams and begin taking over their local mystical infrastructure. Fortunately, their practices are similar enough to yours and the empire's that you can muddle through any unfamiliar set ups. You muse that had you gone on ahead and landed on one of the three tributary planets you would have probably made contact with a mystical organization that wasn't for the lack of better words evil but the soul pollution on the station is so great you don't have any hopes anything good will grow out of it.

Your inner thoughts stop when your take over is complete what was once theirs is now yours. The tattered remains of a human soul now shorn of its demonic graft is now slowly dissolving before your eyes. You say a prayer half wishing a safe journey and half reproaching the soul for their very sinful deeds.

As your team communes in mystical prayer in the new sanctified center of your magical relay stations, what item or craft did you bring with you back to your new identity?
[] A Black Sheep
Made from corrupted metal in the apartments used to graft and shape your soul into a demonic one that are now purified, you will hide the black sheep, a small thing barely the size of your hand in the sweatshop.

It will take root and temporarily prevent the demonic from entering your area or at least give you time to prepare. Passively it draws in some of the spiritual pollution in the area reducing the soul harm to your co-workers and everyone else nearby.

[] Fangs of Brotherhood
The preserved fangs of the half demon. You will drive it into your body where it will stay for a few months and after daily prayer and ritual remove it from your body crush them into fine powder and find an opportunity to mix it into the drinks of your new underground friends.

The powder helps you establish a connection with their souls something that should take decades of friendship and a blood oath without any other materials according to orthodox mystical lore. You can then help them in subtle ways such as helping them learn in their dreams or shielding them from the mental toll their dual jobs is taking on them.

===

Your dreams of a famous hero continue unceasing throughout all this. Maybe it's the location or the sleeper is beginning to awaken but they're much more vivid.

What dream did you focus on?

[] Dagger
You dream of the hero studying the material sciences and how it interacts with the unreal. You now dream of her in the middle of battle with the empire's automatons she jams her sword half made from her own body into one of the hulking behemoths and begins chanting the words needed to hack into its mind and reprogram it to serve her.

You can't really do that but you can do similar steps and make a dagger that can give you access and open rudimentary electronic locks and less powerful fighting machines and automatons.

[] Dance
You dream more of the hero as she weaves in and out of a fight and discover one of her tricks. A fundamental basis of your order is mastery of oneself both in soul and body. By combining a disregard to the overall health of a host as well as simple but effective healing marks where the form would take the most damage, one can push your body to even greater heights.

===

Sifting through some of the news in and around the station a few choices tidbits rouse your attention.​

• The secret hq the Liberty of Space has successfully navigated its reopening and is now known to have really leaned into the child friendly vacation resort for the rich and powerful in the system.​
• There are massive orders for all sorts of things to be made by the empire's navy. You'd guess that an imperial fleet is heading for the system to resupply in press ganged men and material.​
• A data hacking of government sites, faulty food products leading to several mass food poisoning events and some intra-corporate industrial infighting leading to active factory sabotage has forced the governor to deploy most of their security reserves to calm things down. Already smaller gangs low in the totem pole have decided now is the time to settle old scores while security forces are occupied.​

 

[Polgas]

Spoiler: Vote Results

[X] I sparked a low level turf war with the gang enforcers guarding the shop ready to beat its workers down with another outfit. It was simple to dress like one of them and beat a few within an inch of their lives and escape without anyone getting a good look at me with my rat friends on the lookout.
[X] A Black Sheep
[X] Dance

As predicted, an imperial fleet arrives into the system. You aren't really in the best position to know but eventually you got word that its had to put down a series of revolts that you think might only be slightly connected to the republic's overall attempts at fomenting unrest. The republic doesn't know the full extent of it yet but their thwarted invasion has destabilized multiple provinces which forced the empire to end the war.

The resources needed to replenish the fleet is vast but not crippling but with all the graft and corruption every where the order needed to be passed the expected resources to be appropriated has almost reached potentially crippling heights.

Already the governments of the three tributary planets have reported widespread revolt and are asking for reinforcements. With the station amid its own internal problems, it will take some time for the central government of the system to respond with a suppression army.

Before reinforcements arrived what did your team pre-emptively do to help the 3 tributary rebels?

[] Kill the Witch Hunters
The empire's running dogs run the gamut from zealots picked up from the street to trained experts in fighting the mystical arts prohibited by imperial law. We went after the latter before they could be deployed to fight the empire's magical enemies.

After observing them to determine the most competent ones, we laid a few traps for them to thin their ranks. We would create false leads to a cult that shows hints of the most blasphemous magical practices to lure them in and attack.

(How successful we were at killing them and hiding our tracks is yet to be determined.)

You can't really hide that they died but your team will attempt to leave evidence that it really was just a particularly vicious and bad fight with the worse enemies a witch hunter could face.

[] Pilots
The station government and the empire's fortress on the station are preparing to deploy their air force for the upcoming suppression campaign. While unrest is high in the station, the air force isn't really suited to manage it so it hasn't been deployed in force yet.

This will change once they are on the 3 tributaries. Part of the unrest fueling the station is the need to produce enough bombs for the upcoming campaign and from your underground activist connections you actually know the really radical ones are planning acts of sabotage. Their work while vital will quickly bring them under surveillance. As such your team has chosen to take a different tact.

No pilots mean no air force no matter how much ordinance they bring with them. There are too many pilots to kill but we will do our best to eliminate what we can.

(Our success is already assured, pilots even the augmented ones aren't geared to fend off assassins. What is to be determined is our ability to balance the number of attacks versus the scrutiny it will bring.)

Ideally, we engineer just one event that kills many of the pilots and cover our tracks and the investigators declare it an unfortunate accident. If it doesn't happen, we'll just have to settle for several attacks and hope the investigators are convinced its some splinter group from the munitions sabotage one from the underground. The saboteurs make for a convenient group to take the fall.

===
In the end when the official demand for a union came, it passed without a fight from management. Mostly. The reserve army of labor of the station was earmarked for press ganging for the arrived fleet so scabs weren't available, the enforcers were too busy fending off retaliatory attacks on other businesses and your company was deemed a low priority and finally the underground got most of the workers to agree to launch a strike. The shop as big as it was on the low end in the industry and the owners couldn't hang on after a month and threw in the towel.

The new collective bargaining agreement was fairly modest in general with a focus on the economic but in these tumultuous and exciting times it gained a life on its own for good and bad. Your underground peers working on other companies and workers in general who hear of it raise it up on a pedestal as the new revolution while the bosses saw your victory as a big reason to panic.

It was fortuitous that the black sheep was planted inside the shop during the strike. It had a month where it was allowed to take root undisturbed.

During that month on the picket line, what did you mostly do?
[] Logistics
I was part of the group that scavenged what we could for supplies to last the strike. Fuel, money and food, anything. My rat friends proved invaluable for this letting me scour entire districts and even a portion of them agreed to be eaten by the strikers with the strikers themselves enjoying particularly plump and tasty rat burgers. A staple in station cuisine.

[] Camp Organizer
The picket line was determined to stay outside the shop to make sure it remained closed for the duration of the strike and camped nearby. I was one of the people in charge of organizing the camp and making sure it ran as smoothly as possible.

===
Your dreams continue to be a major source of inspiration to increasing your magical abilities. You are now probably the deadliest combatant among your peers on station. Some have abilities in foresight but you think you'll be able to power through and eventually exhaust their pre-cognitive abilities or strike fast enough so knowing where you're going to attack won't matter.

One problem though, the hero in your dream was already a master in aetheric healing as she wove it seamlessly with all of her other mystical powers. You are not and have to make some adjustments.

What did you do to mimic the healing marks?
[] Drain
You took the vitality around you to power your rituals. The field of decay will be very noticeable. With some help from your peers you've at least made the field to ignore your team when they fight alongside you but other allies will not be so lucky.

[] Blood Bond
The cult once again offers a solution. Some of the more magically inclined have hidden out in your small but growing network of magical relays and are essentially maintaining the everyday maintenance needed. One of which is occasionally using their soul as fuel to ritually make the relay even more advantageous to the republic's specific brand of mysticism.

You connected your marks to some of these acolytes eager to prove themselves and they will use up their life force to give you an edge in battle. Ideally, you'd only have to fight this way rarely and quickly to allow time for the bonded to recover but there might come a time when you'd have to decide if their sacrifice is needed.

===
Aside from your own projects and cover story, you helped your other team members with their own problems.

What issue did you deal with?
[] Assassination
One of your compatriots joined cartels as an enforcer and they've hit a roadblock. The gang that he joined has a 2nd in command that dislikes this recent hire that's rising up the ranks fast. Attempts at befriending them have failed and they've turned to you for a solution.

He and the upper leadership frequent a certain bar. The usual favorite singer will be sick and the bar short of a crucial employee will jump at the chance to hire you on your friend's recommendation. When the time comes late in the evening when everyone is too out of it, you will strike. There are connections that will link you with the act but if you succeed your companion can make it all go away.

[] Distraction
Another comrade is working inside the station's civil service. With the demands of the recently arrived fleet and the formation of a suppression army, there is a lot that can be done with some careful editing and forgeries but they couldn't quite have access to the rooms needed in time when all of these events exploded.

By hook or by crook you will figure out a way to cause a scene or more importantly get someone to cause a scene and occupy the attentions of a building full of bureaucrats to by time for your friend to make the needed changes.

Potentially, the benefits of sabotaging the station's paperwork far outweigh the first option but this is a rush job and you will have to make things up as you go and try to keep anyone from discovering your involvement.

===
News​

• Your shop along with other similar textile offices have received a lot of orders to make military clothes for the expected influx of army units.​
• A trend has emerged where company owners who aren't as connected to organized crime have begun forming or bulking up their own security forces to combat this new surge of worker agitation.​
• A last-minute deal avoided any potential unrest among the dockyard workers who are going to service and repair the fleet.​

 

[Polgas]

Spoiler: Vote Results

[X] Kill the Witch Hunters
[X] Logistics
[X] Blood Bond
[X] Distraction

You took the time between your outings to leverage being the one returning with the supplies to steer the conversation in the camp when the picketers rested near the shop.

With a few of the really more radical members of the underground and my voice, the soon to be new union members were given a crash course on radical politics and contrary to the conventional prediction that they would be more subservient once they've won their modest victory, they're already talking about another bigger strike by combining their efforts with other offices and shops wishing to take the opportunity of an overstretched security force to demand more.

It'll take a few months to organize and gather the supplies but it looks to be gaining steam. Unfortunately, this has drawn the gaze of the company owners involved. Already a low level tit-for-tat game is being played as both sides have silently agreed to gear up for a much grander confrontation that promises to be bloody regardless of the outcome.

Even without the looming confrontation there's so much to do. From filing in the bare bones structure of the underground union so that it could truly stand to represent the shop's workers to getting all the sub bodies started. All the bodies that would negotiate with their company counterparts, all the bodies that would coordinate with other their underground counterparts and the bodies that would seek to collectively alleviate some of the main sources of worry of your members such as a school or day care.

As you helped your fellow members of the expedition so did they aid you in your tasks in organizing.

What specific task did they help you with?
[] False Flags
With my knowledge of the inner workings of the politics that goes on within and without the shops, I help plan a spate of attacks that would mimic company muscle playing hardball to help enrage people in such a way that it will increase the divide between the company and the worker and be a further catalyst to worker radicalization but it won't be too antagonizing to avoid a noticeable increase in reprisal attacks so we don't jump the gun.

As part of our desire to avoid too much escalation, I've asked my fellows and part of the cult doing the attack to take care and refrain from actually causing deaths or permanent injuries.

[] University Reinforcements
A few members of the expedition have wormed their way into the educational system of the station as non-existent as it is. We will begin the long process of melding the student radicals with organized labor in numbers never before seen.

Workers will be welcomed into the universities and vice versa to understand one another and build trust. Plans and resources will be pooled together for greater success.

This is a very dangerous move that might be one of the few things we could do to earn the ire of the government so much that they redeploy to aid the private security forces when the next round of protests start however we judged the risk to be worth it and did so.

===

You are sitting in a chair in a massive line waiting for your turn in a government building. You wracked your brain for a long time trying to consider every angle to cause the big distraction but without drawing attention to yourself.

The solution you settled on was fairly simple. The neighboring building was a warehouse and you set it on fire or rather you paid someone to set in on fire pretending it was an elaborate scheme of corporate espionage.

When the fire rose in earnest, one of the newly arrived cult members would feign panic and press the fire alarm to cause an evacuation of the building. To buy more time your rat friends appear to outside observers be a result of the warehouse to have a bad case of rat infestation with them fleeing in open daylight panicking everyone around them.

Your friend managed to access some files that eventually led to some false orders being created. What were they?

[] Preserving the Build Up
Many that would take part in a rebellion have either been conscripted for the fleet or the retribution army. Though not fatal their loss would be a blow to the goal of preparing for a rebellion. False orders were made obfuscating those orders in addition to random citizens to further confuse future investigators.

[] Double Up
You all agreed and took a different tact when the requisition order rumors started to float around. Instead of trying to preserve your supporters and sympathizers, this was considered to be a golden opportunity and the false orders called up not just the work force and the downtrodden but also many private and public station security force members. The selection was tailored to show bias and favoritism that would set the various crime outfits at each other's throats more and cast further suspicions on the government.

===

The mostly abandoned district was aflame. As you got more in tune with your body in relation to the material world and the aether you started noticing some things and right now the beat and rhythm of gunfire and yelling all around you has a melody of its own. This isn't too surprising as this was covered in training but finally getting to experience it yourself is rather novel.

You and one of your companions are running along from rooftop to rooftop escaping your pursuers heading for the next location for your plan. A modified relay node and the abandoned district its on had to be sacrificed for this battle but this was the final ambush against the most experienced witch hunters to leave the suppression army and station short on their best running dogs.

Even as the node burned itself out it has been providing you and your comrades in arms the means to communicate with each other regardless of your location and keep track of the enemy as well as take the brunt of all the magic you've all been weaving.

It's a good thing too, this particular crop of witch hunters were more cautious than their peers and came in with their best weapons and gear and further augmented their forces with more mundane soldiers, although the cybernetically enhanced enforcers of the station could hardly be considered mundane.

More than once both of you had to take a detour when the mass of station enforcers was too much even with the relay providing an uninterrupted stream of data on their locations, their own enhanced vision and electronic coordination meant they could see through the thin walls of most of the district block houses and you've had to lead the charge and cut down a patrol in the area and beat a hasty retreat from time to time. Your rat scouts giving you that small edge you needed to encounter only the lightest of patrols.

Adora your fellow member of the order stops with you as both of you have reached your destination. You slowly peer over the roof and see the command vehicle nestled between other armored vehicles. Runners going in and out of this perimeter with orders. Your comms system picking up the signal orders coming to and from the vehicles.

Your group has been slowly luring most of the enemy away from its commander so that small teams could double back and assassinate the enemy leader once most of their forces are too far away with you two being the first and possibly only team to reach their position.

Adora looks to you, gives a small nod before taking out a ritual dagger and chopping off her arm in one stroke. The severed arm quickly morphing into a sleek feline creature of blood and bone. A living puppet that she can control. Already you've finished setting up a plug to the local console allowing her to engage in techno-sorcerous warfare up close and personal. Being right next to her target allows her to bypass a majority of their defenses to make up for the rushed and cobbled together nature of her attack gear.

With a final nod and your new feline friend clinging onto you, you jump off the building several dozen stories tall with your tristeel blade biting deep into the outside wall slowing you down to survive the fall. Already squads of the enemy have noticed you and are reorienting amid the sabotage Adora has done to their systems to engage.

Before you land on your feet and start running your feline companion has already jumped and has already snuck inside the first perimeter by the time you are just approaching it and the first defenders have started to make more than panicked shots at you.

You've had the past ambushes to test out your new abilities and work out the kinks, it pays off now as with the relay as a foundation and with a word of power you are moving far faster than most can track. With another word spoken you enhance your now revealed form and all the devices and gadgets that of the cyborg enforcers used to tracking you were now rendered useless.

As you run you give a casual fling and toss your blade to the side where it has started to move on its own darting in and out around you cutting down your enemies that bar your path as you concentrate on just putting one foot forward and then putting the other foot forward as you run fast towards the command vehicle.

Adora has further caused chaos preventing the enemy from forming a cohesive defense and stopping you by wresting control of the automated defenses and inserting gremlin programs into many of your cyborg opponents once she breached their local tactical network.

You are almost through the last of the hastily assembled defenses when you recall your sword and make a massive cut in the air in front of you and moments later a large sword wound carves itself onto the command vehicle.

Your quarry, the master of this host comes out of their command vehicle to personally see you with their own eyes.

Who are they?
[] Cold Hands
A heavily augmented warrior that gained fame as he slew increasingly stronger mystical and aetheric foes with his blessed cold steel hands. Custom designed machine parts all over his body have also been treated to ward against magic and mysticism with some biological upgrades on his remaining flesh to complete this formidable opponent.

As you run, you see a thin slash on one of their cold steel hands that blocked your blow and hear them roar orders from an augmented mouth as his sworn guards of less augmented followers form up around him.

[] Pale Shift
The Communion Master of an elaborate system of slaves bound to his will. A cousin to the aetheric system you and your bonded cultist have entered into. Increasingly seen as erratic over the course of their career that is attributed to his system of thralls it has only allowed them to master more of their mystical gifts to hunt the unsanctioned and add them to their system and rules over them as a master would over penitent slaves.

They emerge from the vehicle with their unkempt long hair with some strands floating in the air kept aloft by aetheric currents but they have a giant gash almost bisecting their form but it only last a moment before the blood slaves around the vehicle burst into a pool of blood and the communion master is made whole again with not a single blemish.

They silently begin weaving their own mystical arts to throw back at you as more of their bound thralls converged upon him. An unspoken order to bolster their master.​

 

[Polgas]

Vote closed

Scheduled vote count started by Polgas on Nov 17, 2023 at 7:44 AM, finished with 2 posts and 2 votes.

• ---

  2 people have voted

  [X] False Flags

  • Mars
  • Solarstream

  2 people have voted

  [X] Preserving the Build Up

  • Mars
  • Solarstream

  2 people have voted

  [X] Pale Shift

  • Mars
  • Solarstream

 

[Polgas]

Spoiler: Vote Results

[X] False Flags
[X] Preserving the Build Up
[X] Pale Shift

When the false orders started being implemented, a portion of it was used to bulk out the number of specialists the movement has access to. They weren't the demographic being targeted but the numbers needed for specialist jobs in the army were such that it was affecting the more well-off workers or those that style themselves as self-employed.

Engineers, doctors, white collar workers and such that would normally turn their nose at working with the "rabble" found themselves beholden to the movement with the threat of revealing their escape from the conscription orders. A miniscule number compared to their total amount but it opened the doors to some things not thought to be possible to bolster the coming strike and confrontation.

Ultimately what did the All Textiles Unions Executive Committee decide as the priority?

[] Secret Training

Having some warehouse managers and the like under a debt has opened the option to conduct some drills outside the watchful eyes of the local enforcers. Training will mostly focus on the basics of a successful protest march. How to keep the march going, how to spot trouble, how to handle riot enforcers and medical training.

With the false flags radicalizing people further a small but significant number have been open to the idea of military training in secret as well.

[] Management Sabotage

The various managements of the companies you are about to face down had some people that were slated to be conscripted that were saved. With this new angle of attack and pouring some resources into it, you can expect that when the conflict starts to have a head start when the company owners realize they don't have any accurate information on their foes.

[] General Supplies

The safest option that won't have a chance of being detected compared to the rest. The new unwilling allies shall be instructed to concentrate in aiding us accumulate various supplies. Food, medicine, money, cybernetics etc. All the things that will help you last for months.

Crucially, this will also establish a set of safe houses and depots that might one day come in handy when you go beyond strikes and protests.



===



For most of the various organizations, you and your comrades have implanted yourselves in it required you all to adopt not just different identities but to look the part. You look indistinguishable to a regular station human. Mostly flesh with the odd cybernetics upgrade. If someone were to scan your insides they would see nothing out of the ordinary.

For this battle you and your compatriots being so active were dropping the identities you all wore on the station or even the shrouds that members of your order wore to prevent regular people to being exposed to your transformed forms as it can be quite a shock to them. Sometimes quite literally with unprepared baseline humans passing out and needing medical attention.

As the world around you starts to ignore the physical laws of reality with how much aetheric energy is being concentrated for the battle at the command vehicle, you take stock of the situation as you continue to fight towards your target by spell and blade.

Adora has accomplished her work. Many of the strictly automated forces here have gone haywire and have messed up any planned defense. Her familiar is currently adding to the chaos eating their way through the cyborg enforcers and growing. It's now the size of a massive but sleek feline animal that is busy hunting down the odd straggler you left behind that had the sense to try and shoot you in the back.

The Pale Shift has finished their initial sorcery and now many of their magically enraged acolytes are trying to bring you down with sheer numbers with a number hanging back casting their own magic slaved to the shifter.

Magically enhanced or not, the attempt at mobbing goes poorly for them you being one of the best close combatants the order has on station. Your tristeel blade flies on its own again blocking and cutting those that get behind you while with a some quick incisions with a dagger your hands now hold swords made out of blood and fire and have cut down the mob to a manageable size. Occasionally, you've had to dodge a thrown spell or take it on the chin but they only moderately wounded you. Your counter spells prepared by your souls eventually turning these spell casters into ash.

The Pale Shift has not been idle though. They made their own rituals and have successfully blocked you from the wider relay network. Even as you break through the mob and chop them in half you feel the disorienting effects of suddenly losing multiple senses, the city no longer feels like it's a part of you. The shifter split down from head to toe laughs as with a flick of their wrist some of the acolytes explode and the Pale Shift is whole again.

A few more chops produced the same results. Well, they also responded with their own incantations that have now left significant craters on your body. Very serious wounds but nothing a member of your order can't put off for later you can still keep going.

What do you do next?

[] Play Defense

Before your connection to the wider relay went down, you saw several members on your side heading your way. The other teams hoping to decapitate the leadership finally reaching the battlefield. Unfortunately, the enemy has been recalling the nearest enemy units too and you are unsure who will arrive first.

Conserve your strength, don't let the enemy study your magical prowess more and rely on your swordsmanship skills to protect you and wait for the other teams.

[] Go on the Offensive

Your connection to Adora remains. Tell her to overload the enemy's local rituals that serve as breakers and fire breaks and cast the battlefield half into the aether. Your order practically lives to fight in such arenas. You give yourself this advantage and hope the Pale Shift having an easier time casting mystical rituals won't grant them an even bigger one.