So he is currently glaring hatefully in our general direction.
Midas Touched (Warhammer 30k AI Quest)
- Thread starter NotCaligula
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi Fantasy
He is just glaring there... MENACINGLY!So he is currently glaring hatefully in our general direction.
- Location
- Canada
hmm starting the writing now, realizing that the voted for plan only had 3 of PR-01's actions used in it and given the event you'll be getting this turn I'm feeling merciful. If anyone wants to suggest a no cost action (since the intent of this plan seems to be keep hold of capital and not spend it all early) that it'll do this turn, have at it. I'll give y'all like 10 hours to do a mini vote and write the rest of the results and events turn now.
[X] Begin Asteroid Mining
- Location
- Warsaw
[X] Examine the Viral Entity
We need to know what we're dealing with here and we have the least bonuses on this project.
We need to know what we're dealing with here and we have the least bonuses on this project.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Warsaw
I wanted to add another action to it. We were already doing asteroid mining as well.
- Location
- Canada
Asteroid mining is a valid option, though keep in mind normally you can't assign a hero to the same task twice per turn unless it requires two or more actions or is repeatable / describes that it can be done multiple times.
[X] Examine Duplicate Memory Cores
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As Caligula points out, you can't repeat actions unless they're explicitly repeatable, and Examine the Viral Entity is not one of those.
Now separately, my case for a second Asteroid Mining. We need the Capital. Look at it like this. We need to spool up our infrastructure quickly.
Our current end of turn amount is 7 Capital. Add in the 8 for income, and the mean of 9 on 2d8, and we'll get 24 Capital at the start of Turn 4. In terms of important immediate infrastructure to ramp up our tax earnings, production and population:
Automate Food Production - 5 Capital
Develop Medical Facilities - 10 Capital
Build Cloning Facilities - 10 Capital
Lay down the foundations of an STC Industrial zone - 20 Capital
That's a total of 45. Sure, we could hold the Cloning Facilities for now, but that's still 35. We're gonna need to do another Asteroid Mining on Turn 4 anyway, but doing a second now will guarantee we can tackle more projects in Turn 4, or focus on the STC Industrial Zone and get the discounts and DC reductions sooner. All the Asteroid Mining combined, we'd have a ballpark 42 Capital to work with on Turn 4.
[X] Begin Asteroid Mining
- Location
- Canada
okay asteroid mining seems to have a significant lead, you'll be doing that. I'll be ending the impromtu vote here, since its been about 10 hours. results post will come shortly though the events post will be separate from it this week
Turn 3, Results
- Location
- Canada
This year has been tense, but bountiful in its harvests. While the danger of the lurking traitor remains an ever present threat, Ceriox has done extremely well with his rather basic orders to the point that you're quite sure he did not intend to follow your original orders. A worrying precedent perhaps, but the results speak for themselves. The investigations seem to have nailed down the exact location and vectors of the viral infector, so your work next year capturing them should be a much easier task, especially with better knowledge of what signs might construe danger on their part.
A fine turn of events, overall.
Explore Vareena IV (Sila)
DC 50
40 + 50 (tech) + 12 (martial) = 102. Success
Sila was getting pretty sick of Vareena IV by her second year of life on the planet. It was altogether a fairly nice place if it weren't for the constant aura of unease that some of its inhabitants exuded. As such she mostly kept to the skies when she could, not making much of a presence on the ground except to occasionally scout the more abandoned locales. Overall, the planet was fairly boring. There was quite a bit of interesting flora and fauna to check out for sure, but most of them were just localized species of animals and plants that already existed on Earth, the near obvious indicator that this was a terraformed planet in the past.
The people were certainly the most interesting thing about the planet, aside from the base. Despite their supposed criminal origin they seemed to have turned into something like the common medieval societies of ancient Earth. They have a number of kingdoms all over the planet, with nobles and knights and the like. Pretty cool to be quite honest, if also disappointingly primitive like the last world. From what she could gather just observing their armies and societies, it seems like the anti-psykers were often warriors, but rarely lived in large settlements. Seemingly they tended to wander quite a lot, and she spent some time following a small collection of families that had a few among them, just watching them live out their little lives with her very good observation capabilities. Painful work for sure, but at least it satisfied her thirst for knowledge and provided plenty of time to practice her new techniques.
Effect: World's populations found, Vareenan Kingdoms discovered.
Begin First Contact (Ceriox)
DC 50
85 + 50 (tech) + 14 (diplomacy) + 5 (???) = 154. Critical Success.
Ceriox has performed a miracle. While his original goal was to just introduce himself to the various populations of Vareena III and perhaps sort out the groundwork of future peace among them, he gained a massively better deal with only a bit of subterfuge and showmanship. He quickly realized the basis of this conflict, while partially motivated by xenophobic opinions, was largely based on the control of a few extremely strategic islands between the two blocs and more importantly that each were led by a single major city-state that were essentially coercing the other members into subjugation.
Noting the potential for peace by simply disempowering the leading states, he went from minor-city state to minor city state providing primitive laser weapons, medical aid and technological assistance to their leaders and a fair amount of gold that was otherwise not really being used. The only requirement at this stage that he asked of them was to leave their erstwhile blocs now that they had the capabilities to do so.
In little more than a few months of this year the war was over, as vast swathes of their fleets simply returned home and an obviously more powerful state loomed on the horizon. From this stage he led a propaganda blitz over the next half the year, once their languages had been processed and added to your translations. First he pulled on the fears of the population that supposedly rested in horrendous raiders that seemed to have attacked this planet every few decades and guaranteed that your honorable warriors would come to their aid if ever attacked again, since you were now new to the world. Secondly he invited vast swathes of the city-states' middle and upper classes to visit both the undiscovered lands of the archipelago that were quickly becoming proper settlements and the Prometheus. While you weren't the most enthusiastic with being paraded on short notice, the near reverential awe you could see on the faces of these people as they observed your various capabilities and the artificial life within you was certainly enjoyable. When Ceriox eventually laid the third half of his plan down with a treaty of trade, modernization and autonomy as member cities of your burgeoning nation they fell into your grasp one by one. Even the cities of Altia and Sarto, the former leaders of the the blocs agreed to integration so long as they were given the same benefits as the other cities.
While all of your new vassals are going to enjoy significant autonomy and provide nearly no taxes for a good five years, or until you commit to mass modernization, the return on income in only a few months of trade has already been substantial. While it cost a fair amount of resources to outfit them initially, even just providing them with global positioning services and preserved food through your orbital assets has let them begin to trade vast quantities of refinable material to your settlements. With nearly a hundred million new citizens, you have quite a bit more work to do on the diplomatic front to integrate and modernize them, but it will be almost certainly worthwhile to do so. You have officially unified your first planet, and with such a milestone reached quite a lot of work in government needs to be done soon. You also have learned what the inhabitants of this planet call it: Cantara, or something similar that translates rather uncreatively to The Great Ocean in their dialects. More creative a name than Earth you suppose.
Effects: 5 capital spent on a mixture of bribes and developmental aid. A new faction has been created called "The Cantarans". Massive increase in tax income after turn 8, or until you complete "The Great Modernization" action. Multiple new governmental actions added. Multiple new construction actions added. Unit actions modified. Two tech 1 infantry units acquired. Planetary unification complete. Ceriox, having returned to the work of diplomacy after a good 50 years of freight running, shakes off the rust and gains +3 diplomacy.
Begin Asteroid Mining: (PR-01)
(DC 50)
97 + 40 (tech) + 15 (stewardship) = 152. Critical Success.
Secondary Dice rolls 4+6+7+7 = 24
Once again the Prometheus returned to this system's asteroid field, but rather than the somewhat minimal extraction you prepared previously, you gathered perhaps the greatest bounty of material you've ever extracted personally.
With your mind set on fewer important tasks at once this year you optimized the exact route that time would permit for the maximum extraction of resources. With most of the asteroid fields already scanned you gathered a vast swathe of metal that you processed into completely usable materials with little to no waste of either time or material. With a burst of inspiration over these months you even optimized the routes that your android components would travel through for materials storage and tested a number of new alloys since you had the time free to do so. None proved very impressive, but the sheer amount of material harvested should provide a strong base for further capital accumulation amongst your population, or to repair the various projects you've got on the agenda. A fine use of a few months, and one that leaves you feeling very proud of your capabilities.
Effects: Gain 24 Capital for next turn. Next action that will provide Materials Science research stages will provide 2 stages instead of 1.
Establish the Ministry of Economic Development (Maximilian)
DC 50
43 + 10 (tech) +22 (stewardship) + 15 (Governor) = 90. Success.
Maximilian thought the structures of his new Ministry to be quite the accomplishment. Sure, the actual infrastructure was what took up most of the costs, but they were rather boring in comparison to the brilliant work he had pulled off elsewhere. While he had to work around the cumbersome system of elected fools that made the work like pulling teeth, his establishment of a wide variety of conglomerated state corporations for the most relevant sectors of the economy quite effectively made the actual work of the Ministries clear as regulatory bodies while presenting an effective, scientifically managed and mostly automated base of production that they could command the heights of the economy with, without need of specific legislation or complicated regulation.
Was it perhaps a little underhanded, yes, but if there was anything he learned as a governor it was that you couldn't very well trust the commons to control the economy or else they'd shoot themselves in the foot, either through corruption or the total misallocation of time and effort. With the primitives being hoisted on the government's dime, they needed to make their structure clear and the basis of administration effective or else they might get their grubby hands in the gears and mess everything up. That vile eel's hires in the skeleton of the Ministry were in the very least effective and knowledgeable in the field of economics and the various hard sciences, so it wasn't nearly as much of a problem as he had expected to work with them. In time he could certainly see them operating in a way that would make him proud, and the vast army of clerks, bureaucrats and archivists he hired at this time should keep the ministry grounded. A success, though the legal limits were quite a pain to balance around.
Effect: 1 free action in the stewardship category gained per turn. Economy has become dominated by vast state corporations as fledgling firms have been combined. 5 capital spent assembling the Ministry and its buildings.
Examine the Viral Entity (PR-01)
DC 80
55 + 20 (tech) + 22 (Learning) + 15 (Eccentric) + 15 (Innovative) = 127. Success.
Looking over hundreds of hours of footage and memories, the more you look at the entity that tried to infest you, the more you're sickened by its appearance. It's not as if it's able to truly sicken you, what with you being a machine, but the sheer bizarreness of its appearance simply makes its entire presence feel wrong. As if it were a corruption of reality itself. You don't know if this is a normal reaction to seeing warp entities, but you definitely do not like it.
Fully dedicating yourself to the examination of your memories you note that code it constantly released, clearly as some sort of digital corruption, seemed to follow a pattern in just how constantly it was shifting. Seemingly none of the code really held on to a consistent quality of writing and clearly was not made by an intelligent mind. It should frankly not function at all, but as your encounter with the door systems showed it clearly could. Through introductory research into the typings of known warp creatures you have assumed this creature to be of the Trickster-Schemer strain of warp entities. While you've not had enough time to properly analyze all of the data, the seeming never ending change of its form and capabilities seems to fit well with what you dispatched. More importantly it seems clear to you that these strain type warp entities seem to operate differently in a key regard from the controllers that you've learned much more of. The controllers specifically pulled on the psychic capabilities of those they infected and transformed to grow their own power and capabilities and were stopped by the automated drones used to attack them. This being however clearly was easily capable of infecting inanimate and non-psychic beings and materials. Clearly something about this strain made it different in a very dangerous and important way, but you're not sure exactly how. Perhaps it was a conceptual difference? If beings of the warp operate by function of contrasting ideas a being of change would likely be more able than most to inhabit ever changing bodies, no?
The main workaround you developed over your period of review and work was an extra automated system that you plan to run through all of your processing cores that while slightly increasing the load on them should allow you to run data verification at a much faster rate than previously, alongside a very tentative inbuilt anti-virus program that you devised out of the scraps your previous work left you. Given the threat of infection you'll keep it running at all times now, and it should prove itself should this be repeated, and might be deployable on other networks to prevent infection of them. If you rebuild the noosphere any time soon you definitely intend to build a far greater version of this program into every node, as you think it's rather likely that the original systems of the old Noosphere was where this originated. A bit of paranoia over communications infrastructure is wise, you think.
As for physical measures, you figure out a fair amount comparing the data with some of your more anomalous sensor readings. You suspect that this entity works similarly to the described "controllers" of the research base. Being a creature of the warp it does not exist in realspace, and thus just as the controllers took over psykers, this entity took over the remains of your mind. Given the radically different medium it seems warp entities are not limited to organic life, a very important note in your mind. You're unsure if they can infect inactive or non-sapient machinery, as it is possible that you've been long infected by this creature, but only the activation of your systems inside let it reawaken as a proper entity and not a mere few lines of ruinous code. It is also possible that the virus and the entity are separate, as it is clear that in comparison to the scrap code it emitted, the original virus was far superior and quite a bit more orderly. Still similar in the nonsensical origin and function you think, and likely warp based regardless.
In the very least it did lead you to figure out the origin of the new infection, as after significant review of items dumped and destroyed you noted a combination of the box you saw the perpetrator bring in alongside what you suspect to be the original viral vector. Some sort of religious fetish fashioned in the shape of a crescent moon was fused into the mass of the flesh and steel. The eye in its placement opposite of a peaking end seemed to have been not connected to the entity as it was not moving, and would have no explanation otherwise to be there. Furthermore, its size would fit perfectly with the box that was carried in and left here. What exactly this fetish can do remains unknown, and you're happy you made sure to destroy it.
Effect: Basic technological countermeasures for scrapcode developed. Eccentric trait modified with the negatives eliminated in cases where your systems are being infected by warp entities. Mechanics of possession noted. Uncover the Viral Origin DC reduced significantly. Some insights on Trickster-Schemer strains gained, and entity confirmed to be of this strain.
Investigate Faction: Realmers (Sister Amara)
DC 80
72 + 50 (tech) + 18 (intrigue) = 140. Success
The conspiracy that PR-01 uncovered was frankly chilling to Leena. She certainly knew that not every member of her flock was a devoted humanitarian or more generally a good person, but what they had done could have killed them all, and was in direct violation of the very reasoning for why one might be a Realmer. Their creed was one of universalism and peace, not an excuse for corruption or murder, and the very insinuation that they were going behind the backs of their entire crew and beliefs made her extremely angry. She did not let this anger guide her however, since the information PR-01 provided was exactly what she needed to right this wrong.
Over the year she spent the better part of every week secretly checking each and every member of her congregation for connections to the disappeared terrorist and for thoughts and beliefs that might have been connected to his creed. In the end, she unfortunately found quite a number of her flock who seemed to have adopted his creed, though with the aid of some other colonists and PR-01 themself, they were able to be held in custody once they were verified to be terrorist's allies or followers.
Thankfully it didn't seem as if most of them were true believers of him just yet, and most were quite easily dissuaded off of his positions, but what caused both her and the AI quite a bit of a fright was the fact that seemingly a fair few of his followers seemed to have completely different understandings of his identity. Very few actually knew him as the minor priest she had known for a few years. Most had instead known a variety of men, women and aliens of different sorts who through analysis seemed to have spoke with a universally gravelly tone, the one she knew to have belonged to him. Even more alarmingly it seems the different identities were being used to proselytize different variations of the Realmer scriptures, not just the somewhat erratic but more understandable sort that he had tried to push on her. While nearly every variation of the beliefs is different, they seem to revolve around four different divine figures that are syncretized to the beliefs of a number of the flocks gods and divine spirits. Seemingly, going back as far as she can with the investigation, they may very well have joined the flock years ago, before she had even led this branch of the movement. For whatever reason, between then and now the number of divine spirits they seem to be syncretizing increased from three to four. Perhaps whatever was summoned was the new spirit?
She had to do a lot of work detaining and trying to deradicalize the various sorts he had gotten into contact with, but she was largely successful. They will be kept under surveillance in case of a repeat of the previous incident, but otherwise it seemed that the terrorist's beliefs had not spread too far within the Realmers, nor had they been internalized too deeply. They had caught them early, in other words.
Using this as a piece for the investigation she found even more connections that she had previously missed and with some of the AI's sensor footage she was able to track down the last known location one of their seemingly shifting forms might have gone to this year. For now she put the bet on them currently residing in the orbitals above Vareena III, likely plotting some sort of operation, though for the life of her she couldn't figure out how this disguise worked. It may have been psychic, or perhaps some unknown biological technology.
Effect: DC of tracing the viral origin is reduced to the lowest possible level. Realmers cut off from the dangerous individual. The Individual seems to be trying to introduce new religious beliefs surrounding three to four new deities.
Investigate Hero: Ceriox (PR-01)
DC 50
26 + 50 (tech) + 10 (intrigue) = 86. Success.
Over this year you've spent a very long time interacting with Ceriox, and you've come to rather clearly understand why the man is so beloved by his crew. While he holds about as much physical charisma as a swaggering centipede-eel would to most humans, he seems to hold hundreds of small and big legends with the crew. While the vast riches he earned plying the freight lines was the most proud he was of himself, much of which was spent either on his old fleet or crew, the greatest story of Ceriox seemed to date back to when he had only been a minor trader a decade or two fresh out of Earth.
Years ago, before your infection, the Confederation and the Aeldari Empire had been at each others throats over a human world that had declared independence and who had somehow captured not only the captain, but also the family of one of the Eldars' vast trade ships. This very nearly started the Second Human-Aeldari war, if it wasn't for the intervention of one Ceriox Z'azz. Parked in orbit of the planet as it made this ambitious combo of an attack on the Eldar and a secession from the Confederation, he had his fleet confiscated from him and his alien crew taken away by the extremely xenophobic military of the planet. While he was hidden away by the human portion of his crew they supplied the planet with much needed resources while the few day deadline before the Eldar likely invaded the system approached rapidly. Their intrepid crew, brave beyond measure, then smuggled him and whatever armed forces they could assemble into the planetary capital under the guise of supplying their now dictatorial ruler with luxury goods. Half of the crew would sacrifice themselves in an attack against the planet's dictator while the other half broke the alien crew and the Eldar out of the prison they were in. How exactly they did so varies from story to story but from what you can tell in your damaged archives it did seem to occur.
Ceriox seems to minimize his role in that story when he tells it to you personally, as the various Pro-Confederation forces on the planet had actually done a very significant portion of the actual work making the event possible, but it seems he was still the main person that was rewarded for the daring rescue. Both the Eldar which he personally returned home to their Craftworld, and the Confederal government, who had used the opportunity to butter up the Confederal Trade Consortium with glory over the incident, had given him a fortune in rewards and opportunities. In his mind it seems to be a tale of the importance of being in the right place at the right time and with the specific tools you need. Or nearly purely luck, as he jokes.
Otherwise the opportunity to simply converse and talk is rather pleasant and gives good insight into his opinions and beliefs. He is notably quite ideological when it comes to governance, mostly that in his opinion every Human government he's been under seem to be far too focused on always maximizing such and such metric of productivity or success and that while much of that is correct in his mind, the methods seem always to be wrong. In his mind, he valourizes the old naval and economic traditions of the Laer and how with his kind they had near every facet of politics and life decided by those who did the work, fought the battles and who were elected into their positions across a wide swath of Laer life. A rather fair point in your estimation, given that from what little you can remember, quite a lot of the old confederation seemed ruled more by bureaucrats and appointed officials than by its citizens, especially in your own opinion, their mechanical ones.
He does seem to have a distinct dislike of religion and general cynicism towards most aspects of life, for whatever reason. You don't seem able to find out exactly why, but the guesses the other crew makes seem to point towards his upbringing before he had exited his larval stage.
Otherwise, he seems a surprisingly quaint fellow. In his old age it seems he's trying to keep healthy and eat well, but otherwise he doesn't seem to be up to much outside of work nowadays, with his body becoming ever more sluggish. On the topic of digitization, he seems tentatively agreeable to the matter, but in your view perhaps more motivated by a desire to see his capabilities still serving his crew more than anything else. A noble opinion and you can tell he cares for his people a lot. He's a good man.
Effects: Ceriox's traits are revealed. He seems to lack connection to any conspiracies or other factions.
Asteroid Mining 2: Electric Boogaloo (PR-01)
15 + 40 (tech) + 15 (stewardship) = 70. Success.
Secondary rolls: 2, 6
Sadly with the best of the pickings taken in the asteroid fields closer to the planets you had to fly out to the outer solar system to grab resources. With the time required for scanning and acquisition in the less dense collection of asteroids out there your time was wasted in comparison to your early mining work, but more resources means more capital to be accumulated once processed and made into useful tools and supplies.
Once spacial assets in the system are expanded you should really set about automating this work. It's not the most boring work you could do, but it's certainly close to it.
Effect: 8 capital acquired.
AN: I'll be busy with my brothers' birthday and some other work this week so I might be kinda slow with getting the event turn and turn 4 up. It should still all be done by next weekend at the very latest, but I only have so much free time to write. Event turn will be separate this time and you'll get your first choice in an event turn this week, as among other things including a Dark Eldar invasion you'll be selecting which potential Cantaran hero you'll be getting as your newest council member this turn because of that Ceriox crit. Ceriox's traits are also being revealed.
Edit: added the Capital spent for the ministry in effects. Also hot damn y'all got a lot of capital this turn.
A fine turn of events, overall.
Explore Vareena IV (Sila)
DC 50
40 + 50 (tech) + 12 (martial) = 102. Success
Sila was getting pretty sick of Vareena IV by her second year of life on the planet. It was altogether a fairly nice place if it weren't for the constant aura of unease that some of its inhabitants exuded. As such she mostly kept to the skies when she could, not making much of a presence on the ground except to occasionally scout the more abandoned locales. Overall, the planet was fairly boring. There was quite a bit of interesting flora and fauna to check out for sure, but most of them were just localized species of animals and plants that already existed on Earth, the near obvious indicator that this was a terraformed planet in the past.
The people were certainly the most interesting thing about the planet, aside from the base. Despite their supposed criminal origin they seemed to have turned into something like the common medieval societies of ancient Earth. They have a number of kingdoms all over the planet, with nobles and knights and the like. Pretty cool to be quite honest, if also disappointingly primitive like the last world. From what she could gather just observing their armies and societies, it seems like the anti-psykers were often warriors, but rarely lived in large settlements. Seemingly they tended to wander quite a lot, and she spent some time following a small collection of families that had a few among them, just watching them live out their little lives with her very good observation capabilities. Painful work for sure, but at least it satisfied her thirst for knowledge and provided plenty of time to practice her new techniques.
Effect: World's populations found, Vareenan Kingdoms discovered.
Begin First Contact (Ceriox)
DC 50
85 + 50 (tech) + 14 (diplomacy) + 5 (???) = 154. Critical Success.
Ceriox has performed a miracle. While his original goal was to just introduce himself to the various populations of Vareena III and perhaps sort out the groundwork of future peace among them, he gained a massively better deal with only a bit of subterfuge and showmanship. He quickly realized the basis of this conflict, while partially motivated by xenophobic opinions, was largely based on the control of a few extremely strategic islands between the two blocs and more importantly that each were led by a single major city-state that were essentially coercing the other members into subjugation.
Noting the potential for peace by simply disempowering the leading states, he went from minor-city state to minor city state providing primitive laser weapons, medical aid and technological assistance to their leaders and a fair amount of gold that was otherwise not really being used. The only requirement at this stage that he asked of them was to leave their erstwhile blocs now that they had the capabilities to do so.
In little more than a few months of this year the war was over, as vast swathes of their fleets simply returned home and an obviously more powerful state loomed on the horizon. From this stage he led a propaganda blitz over the next half the year, once their languages had been processed and added to your translations. First he pulled on the fears of the population that supposedly rested in horrendous raiders that seemed to have attacked this planet every few decades and guaranteed that your honorable warriors would come to their aid if ever attacked again, since you were now new to the world. Secondly he invited vast swathes of the city-states' middle and upper classes to visit both the undiscovered lands of the archipelago that were quickly becoming proper settlements and the Prometheus. While you weren't the most enthusiastic with being paraded on short notice, the near reverential awe you could see on the faces of these people as they observed your various capabilities and the artificial life within you was certainly enjoyable. When Ceriox eventually laid the third half of his plan down with a treaty of trade, modernization and autonomy as member cities of your burgeoning nation they fell into your grasp one by one. Even the cities of Altia and Sarto, the former leaders of the the blocs agreed to integration so long as they were given the same benefits as the other cities.
While all of your new vassals are going to enjoy significant autonomy and provide nearly no taxes for a good five years, or until you commit to mass modernization, the return on income in only a few months of trade has already been substantial. While it cost a fair amount of resources to outfit them initially, even just providing them with global positioning services and preserved food through your orbital assets has let them begin to trade vast quantities of refinable material to your settlements. With nearly a hundred million new citizens, you have quite a bit more work to do on the diplomatic front to integrate and modernize them, but it will be almost certainly worthwhile to do so. You have officially unified your first planet, and with such a milestone reached quite a lot of work in government needs to be done soon. You also have learned what the inhabitants of this planet call it: Cantara, or something similar that translates rather uncreatively to The Great Ocean in their dialects. More creative a name than Earth you suppose.
Effects: 5 capital spent on a mixture of bribes and developmental aid. A new faction has been created called "The Cantarans". Massive increase in tax income after turn 8, or until you complete "The Great Modernization" action. Multiple new governmental actions added. Multiple new construction actions added. Unit actions modified. Two tech 1 infantry units acquired. Planetary unification complete. Ceriox, having returned to the work of diplomacy after a good 50 years of freight running, shakes off the rust and gains +3 diplomacy.
Begin Asteroid Mining: (PR-01)
(DC 50)
97 + 40 (tech) + 15 (stewardship) = 152. Critical Success.
Secondary Dice rolls 4+6+7+7 = 24
Once again the Prometheus returned to this system's asteroid field, but rather than the somewhat minimal extraction you prepared previously, you gathered perhaps the greatest bounty of material you've ever extracted personally.
With your mind set on fewer important tasks at once this year you optimized the exact route that time would permit for the maximum extraction of resources. With most of the asteroid fields already scanned you gathered a vast swathe of metal that you processed into completely usable materials with little to no waste of either time or material. With a burst of inspiration over these months you even optimized the routes that your android components would travel through for materials storage and tested a number of new alloys since you had the time free to do so. None proved very impressive, but the sheer amount of material harvested should provide a strong base for further capital accumulation amongst your population, or to repair the various projects you've got on the agenda. A fine use of a few months, and one that leaves you feeling very proud of your capabilities.
Effects: Gain 24 Capital for next turn. Next action that will provide Materials Science research stages will provide 2 stages instead of 1.
Establish the Ministry of Economic Development (Maximilian)
DC 50
43 + 10 (tech) +22 (stewardship) + 15 (Governor) = 90. Success.
Maximilian thought the structures of his new Ministry to be quite the accomplishment. Sure, the actual infrastructure was what took up most of the costs, but they were rather boring in comparison to the brilliant work he had pulled off elsewhere. While he had to work around the cumbersome system of elected fools that made the work like pulling teeth, his establishment of a wide variety of conglomerated state corporations for the most relevant sectors of the economy quite effectively made the actual work of the Ministries clear as regulatory bodies while presenting an effective, scientifically managed and mostly automated base of production that they could command the heights of the economy with, without need of specific legislation or complicated regulation.
Was it perhaps a little underhanded, yes, but if there was anything he learned as a governor it was that you couldn't very well trust the commons to control the economy or else they'd shoot themselves in the foot, either through corruption or the total misallocation of time and effort. With the primitives being hoisted on the government's dime, they needed to make their structure clear and the basis of administration effective or else they might get their grubby hands in the gears and mess everything up. That vile eel's hires in the skeleton of the Ministry were in the very least effective and knowledgeable in the field of economics and the various hard sciences, so it wasn't nearly as much of a problem as he had expected to work with them. In time he could certainly see them operating in a way that would make him proud, and the vast army of clerks, bureaucrats and archivists he hired at this time should keep the ministry grounded. A success, though the legal limits were quite a pain to balance around.
Effect: 1 free action in the stewardship category gained per turn. Economy has become dominated by vast state corporations as fledgling firms have been combined. 5 capital spent assembling the Ministry and its buildings.
Examine the Viral Entity (PR-01)
DC 80
55 + 20 (tech) + 22 (Learning) + 15 (Eccentric) + 15 (Innovative) = 127. Success.
Looking over hundreds of hours of footage and memories, the more you look at the entity that tried to infest you, the more you're sickened by its appearance. It's not as if it's able to truly sicken you, what with you being a machine, but the sheer bizarreness of its appearance simply makes its entire presence feel wrong. As if it were a corruption of reality itself. You don't know if this is a normal reaction to seeing warp entities, but you definitely do not like it.
Fully dedicating yourself to the examination of your memories you note that code it constantly released, clearly as some sort of digital corruption, seemed to follow a pattern in just how constantly it was shifting. Seemingly none of the code really held on to a consistent quality of writing and clearly was not made by an intelligent mind. It should frankly not function at all, but as your encounter with the door systems showed it clearly could. Through introductory research into the typings of known warp creatures you have assumed this creature to be of the Trickster-Schemer strain of warp entities. While you've not had enough time to properly analyze all of the data, the seeming never ending change of its form and capabilities seems to fit well with what you dispatched. More importantly it seems clear to you that these strain type warp entities seem to operate differently in a key regard from the controllers that you've learned much more of. The controllers specifically pulled on the psychic capabilities of those they infected and transformed to grow their own power and capabilities and were stopped by the automated drones used to attack them. This being however clearly was easily capable of infecting inanimate and non-psychic beings and materials. Clearly something about this strain made it different in a very dangerous and important way, but you're not sure exactly how. Perhaps it was a conceptual difference? If beings of the warp operate by function of contrasting ideas a being of change would likely be more able than most to inhabit ever changing bodies, no?
The main workaround you developed over your period of review and work was an extra automated system that you plan to run through all of your processing cores that while slightly increasing the load on them should allow you to run data verification at a much faster rate than previously, alongside a very tentative inbuilt anti-virus program that you devised out of the scraps your previous work left you. Given the threat of infection you'll keep it running at all times now, and it should prove itself should this be repeated, and might be deployable on other networks to prevent infection of them. If you rebuild the noosphere any time soon you definitely intend to build a far greater version of this program into every node, as you think it's rather likely that the original systems of the old Noosphere was where this originated. A bit of paranoia over communications infrastructure is wise, you think.
As for physical measures, you figure out a fair amount comparing the data with some of your more anomalous sensor readings. You suspect that this entity works similarly to the described "controllers" of the research base. Being a creature of the warp it does not exist in realspace, and thus just as the controllers took over psykers, this entity took over the remains of your mind. Given the radically different medium it seems warp entities are not limited to organic life, a very important note in your mind. You're unsure if they can infect inactive or non-sapient machinery, as it is possible that you've been long infected by this creature, but only the activation of your systems inside let it reawaken as a proper entity and not a mere few lines of ruinous code. It is also possible that the virus and the entity are separate, as it is clear that in comparison to the scrap code it emitted, the original virus was far superior and quite a bit more orderly. Still similar in the nonsensical origin and function you think, and likely warp based regardless.
In the very least it did lead you to figure out the origin of the new infection, as after significant review of items dumped and destroyed you noted a combination of the box you saw the perpetrator bring in alongside what you suspect to be the original viral vector. Some sort of religious fetish fashioned in the shape of a crescent moon was fused into the mass of the flesh and steel. The eye in its placement opposite of a peaking end seemed to have been not connected to the entity as it was not moving, and would have no explanation otherwise to be there. Furthermore, its size would fit perfectly with the box that was carried in and left here. What exactly this fetish can do remains unknown, and you're happy you made sure to destroy it.
Effect: Basic technological countermeasures for scrapcode developed. Eccentric trait modified with the negatives eliminated in cases where your systems are being infected by warp entities. Mechanics of possession noted. Uncover the Viral Origin DC reduced significantly. Some insights on Trickster-Schemer strains gained, and entity confirmed to be of this strain.
Investigate Faction: Realmers (Sister Amara)
DC 80
72 + 50 (tech) + 18 (intrigue) = 140. Success
The conspiracy that PR-01 uncovered was frankly chilling to Leena. She certainly knew that not every member of her flock was a devoted humanitarian or more generally a good person, but what they had done could have killed them all, and was in direct violation of the very reasoning for why one might be a Realmer. Their creed was one of universalism and peace, not an excuse for corruption or murder, and the very insinuation that they were going behind the backs of their entire crew and beliefs made her extremely angry. She did not let this anger guide her however, since the information PR-01 provided was exactly what she needed to right this wrong.
Over the year she spent the better part of every week secretly checking each and every member of her congregation for connections to the disappeared terrorist and for thoughts and beliefs that might have been connected to his creed. In the end, she unfortunately found quite a number of her flock who seemed to have adopted his creed, though with the aid of some other colonists and PR-01 themself, they were able to be held in custody once they were verified to be terrorist's allies or followers.
Thankfully it didn't seem as if most of them were true believers of him just yet, and most were quite easily dissuaded off of his positions, but what caused both her and the AI quite a bit of a fright was the fact that seemingly a fair few of his followers seemed to have completely different understandings of his identity. Very few actually knew him as the minor priest she had known for a few years. Most had instead known a variety of men, women and aliens of different sorts who through analysis seemed to have spoke with a universally gravelly tone, the one she knew to have belonged to him. Even more alarmingly it seems the different identities were being used to proselytize different variations of the Realmer scriptures, not just the somewhat erratic but more understandable sort that he had tried to push on her. While nearly every variation of the beliefs is different, they seem to revolve around four different divine figures that are syncretized to the beliefs of a number of the flocks gods and divine spirits. Seemingly, going back as far as she can with the investigation, they may very well have joined the flock years ago, before she had even led this branch of the movement. For whatever reason, between then and now the number of divine spirits they seem to be syncretizing increased from three to four. Perhaps whatever was summoned was the new spirit?
She had to do a lot of work detaining and trying to deradicalize the various sorts he had gotten into contact with, but she was largely successful. They will be kept under surveillance in case of a repeat of the previous incident, but otherwise it seemed that the terrorist's beliefs had not spread too far within the Realmers, nor had they been internalized too deeply. They had caught them early, in other words.
Using this as a piece for the investigation she found even more connections that she had previously missed and with some of the AI's sensor footage she was able to track down the last known location one of their seemingly shifting forms might have gone to this year. For now she put the bet on them currently residing in the orbitals above Vareena III, likely plotting some sort of operation, though for the life of her she couldn't figure out how this disguise worked. It may have been psychic, or perhaps some unknown biological technology.
Effect: DC of tracing the viral origin is reduced to the lowest possible level. Realmers cut off from the dangerous individual. The Individual seems to be trying to introduce new religious beliefs surrounding three to four new deities.
Investigate Hero: Ceriox (PR-01)
DC 50
26 + 50 (tech) + 10 (intrigue) = 86. Success.
Over this year you've spent a very long time interacting with Ceriox, and you've come to rather clearly understand why the man is so beloved by his crew. While he holds about as much physical charisma as a swaggering centipede-eel would to most humans, he seems to hold hundreds of small and big legends with the crew. While the vast riches he earned plying the freight lines was the most proud he was of himself, much of which was spent either on his old fleet or crew, the greatest story of Ceriox seemed to date back to when he had only been a minor trader a decade or two fresh out of Earth.
Years ago, before your infection, the Confederation and the Aeldari Empire had been at each others throats over a human world that had declared independence and who had somehow captured not only the captain, but also the family of one of the Eldars' vast trade ships. This very nearly started the Second Human-Aeldari war, if it wasn't for the intervention of one Ceriox Z'azz. Parked in orbit of the planet as it made this ambitious combo of an attack on the Eldar and a secession from the Confederation, he had his fleet confiscated from him and his alien crew taken away by the extremely xenophobic military of the planet. While he was hidden away by the human portion of his crew they supplied the planet with much needed resources while the few day deadline before the Eldar likely invaded the system approached rapidly. Their intrepid crew, brave beyond measure, then smuggled him and whatever armed forces they could assemble into the planetary capital under the guise of supplying their now dictatorial ruler with luxury goods. Half of the crew would sacrifice themselves in an attack against the planet's dictator while the other half broke the alien crew and the Eldar out of the prison they were in. How exactly they did so varies from story to story but from what you can tell in your damaged archives it did seem to occur.
Ceriox seems to minimize his role in that story when he tells it to you personally, as the various Pro-Confederation forces on the planet had actually done a very significant portion of the actual work making the event possible, but it seems he was still the main person that was rewarded for the daring rescue. Both the Eldar which he personally returned home to their Craftworld, and the Confederal government, who had used the opportunity to butter up the Confederal Trade Consortium with glory over the incident, had given him a fortune in rewards and opportunities. In his mind it seems to be a tale of the importance of being in the right place at the right time and with the specific tools you need. Or nearly purely luck, as he jokes.
Otherwise the opportunity to simply converse and talk is rather pleasant and gives good insight into his opinions and beliefs. He is notably quite ideological when it comes to governance, mostly that in his opinion every Human government he's been under seem to be far too focused on always maximizing such and such metric of productivity or success and that while much of that is correct in his mind, the methods seem always to be wrong. In his mind, he valourizes the old naval and economic traditions of the Laer and how with his kind they had near every facet of politics and life decided by those who did the work, fought the battles and who were elected into their positions across a wide swath of Laer life. A rather fair point in your estimation, given that from what little you can remember, quite a lot of the old confederation seemed ruled more by bureaucrats and appointed officials than by its citizens, especially in your own opinion, their mechanical ones.
He does seem to have a distinct dislike of religion and general cynicism towards most aspects of life, for whatever reason. You don't seem able to find out exactly why, but the guesses the other crew makes seem to point towards his upbringing before he had exited his larval stage.
Otherwise, he seems a surprisingly quaint fellow. In his old age it seems he's trying to keep healthy and eat well, but otherwise he doesn't seem to be up to much outside of work nowadays, with his body becoming ever more sluggish. On the topic of digitization, he seems tentatively agreeable to the matter, but in your view perhaps more motivated by a desire to see his capabilities still serving his crew more than anything else. A noble opinion and you can tell he cares for his people a lot. He's a good man.
Effects: Ceriox's traits are revealed. He seems to lack connection to any conspiracies or other factions.
Asteroid Mining 2: Electric Boogaloo (PR-01)
15 + 40 (tech) + 15 (stewardship) = 70. Success.
Secondary rolls: 2, 6
Sadly with the best of the pickings taken in the asteroid fields closer to the planets you had to fly out to the outer solar system to grab resources. With the time required for scanning and acquisition in the less dense collection of asteroids out there your time was wasted in comparison to your early mining work, but more resources means more capital to be accumulated once processed and made into useful tools and supplies.
Once spacial assets in the system are expanded you should really set about automating this work. It's not the most boring work you could do, but it's certainly close to it.
Effect: 8 capital acquired.
AN: I'll be busy with my brothers' birthday and some other work this week so I might be kinda slow with getting the event turn and turn 4 up. It should still all be done by next weekend at the very latest, but I only have so much free time to write. Event turn will be separate this time and you'll get your first choice in an event turn this week, as among other things including a Dark Eldar invasion you'll be selecting which potential Cantaran hero you'll be getting as your newest council member this turn because of that Ceriox crit. Ceriox's traits are also being revealed.
Edit: added the Capital spent for the ministry in effects. Also hot damn y'all got a lot of capital this turn.
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Happy Birthday to your brother and take your time, no need to rush the story. Quality over quantity.
Oh god chaos is on the move
- Location
- Belgium
Happy birthday To your brother and take your time we can wait a bit longer
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Well Slanneshi cultists may be a problem in our future.
Other than that pretty good turn especially with the diplo roll and asteroid mining. Though I wonder why our eco guy is such a prick.
Other than that pretty good turn especially with the diplo roll and asteroid mining. Though I wonder why our eco guy is such a prick.
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He is an elitist, there will always be shades of prickness in such people.
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I guess, I'm assuming his ilk have and will become the 'nobility' of the galaxy in the current and later eras of the setting. Though I'm not sure why his attitude exists unless he is from some kind of specialized abhuman strain created for administrative duties, shouldn't anyone off the street be able to obtain the necessary education or enhancements considering how advanced DAOT society and tech is?