Hilt and Blade, Wings and Feathers
With the resounding success of the prototyping last year, the order is given to begin the expansion of the shipyard's design and testing centre. Practiced teams are assigned to this project, as well as the construction work on a new group of auxiliary craft. They're needed, too, as without their input it would have been very hard for the Yard to finish the construction and testing of the first Tower and Dauntless class ships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Tower class suffers more setbacks, the unpleasant truth of the matter being that there are far fewer Restorers available to crew a Tower than there are Potentials suited to a Dauntless.
Both prototypes are properly crewed early in the year, however, which means that the Adamant gets to test out the defensive capabilities of its class against half a Dauntless squadron. It's a controlled test, with every safety measure you can think of, but all involved in the projects agree on its necessity. They have to know if what they've made is enough.
[The Hilt: 81 + 38 = 119. Solid Success]
[The Blade: 34 + 38 = 72. Success]
The test goes well, the safety measures proving unnecessary against the monstrous defences of the Adamant. Not that the Dauntless and her sisters are weaker than expected, the Tower class just seems to have been over-engineered in the best possible ways. No one can be certain that it'll be as effective holding up to Shiplord fire, but the tactical doctrine for the Tower class calls for deploying them in groups, and rotating out of the line of fire when necessary. With them to take the punches, and the Dauntless to hit back, the newly minted Naval Command is tentatively hopeful. Support craft are a concern however, and they also flag up the need for more variety in that department.
They are happily surprised when the copy of your construction priorities for the year finds its way to them. A new wing for the auxiliary fleet is greatly welcomed, but it's the expansion of the design and prototyping facilities along with fighter development that raises a chorus of approving delight.
[Wings of Terra: 35 + 38 = 73. Success]
[Design Centre: 43 + 5 (Orbital Construction) = 48. Solid Success]
Practice Roll: 73. Greater Success!
Even though they have to move offices twice over the course of the year, the expanded facilities for the design team are a vast improvement that fails entirely to hinder the strikefighter project. The Potentials assigned to the project building an entire specialist berth for prototype construction has a little something to with that.
All of that would seem to most like all that a shipyard complex would be able to do, but that assumption would rest on faulty logic. What the Home Office finished in 2106 was big enough for quite a bit more than one and a half capital class vessels and some design work. Another Engineering Corps Potential group is brought in to help with the auxiliary craft scheduled for construction, to give their systems an upgrade.
[Auxiliary Task Group Construction: 15 + 5 (Military Orbital) = 20. Success]
Practice Roll: 85. Margin of over 80! Practice Trance roll: 71. Practice Trance!
They get…rather more than that. Only two task groups are finished within the year, a welcome addition to your forces but not enough for Naval Command to be comfortable about it. There is more than just quantity to take into account here, however. Whilst working on the shield systems for the new ships, the entire Engineering Corps team falls into a Practice Trance. When they wake up a week later there are two task groups worth of Practiced defensive systems and power supplies neatly stacked and ready to be fitted.
The crash redesign required after this is what prevents any further task groups from being completed, but the shakedown cruise of the first one is more than enough to reassure your military commanders.
(Wings of Terra locked for 1 year, +10 to Design and Prototyping actions [Limit: +20])
Practiced Leaders 61+ needed
In more personnel related news, Lina's training work a continuing success in turning the warriors who made up most of the First Awoken into soldiers, officers all, makes the decision of who to put at the heart of your unified military is something of a no-brainer. You do weather some flak from the SDC about it, but Gentry is experienced enough in these matters that he raises only a few personal concerns. You pass them onto Lina and hope she takes them seriously.
[Roll: 85 + 38 = 123. Solid Success]
She does, and she makes sure that the core command team she picks out does so as well. Her picks raise some eyebrows, but they're firmly supported by merit. The merge of the SDC into the new command structure doesn't come without waves, and a small handful of the independent formations actually cause the same amount of trouble, unused to working with direct oversight from a present superior. But in the end, the setbacks don't really matter. What matters is that it happens, and it does. There's still some more work to do in finalising everything, but the military will deal with that on its own. And everything being under one roof means that Lina, and by extension you, can make things move a lot faster within their sphere.
(+1 Military Action dice)
The Walls of Sol 51+ needed
And finally, with the Trance still holding, Lina works extremely closely with Vega to ensure that everything involved in forging humanity's orbitals into the most powerful and safest constructions that they can be. Both hope that the small group of Potentials involved can hold up to the strain.
[Roll: 10 + 38 + 5 (Orbital Construction) + 5 (Military Orbital) = 58. Success]
Practice Roll: 9, 64 + 34 = 98. Solid Success
In an interesting exception to normal Trances, although this one can scarcely be considered normal given its length and the vast distances over which it's occurring, the Potentials involved are entirely capable of independent movement and interaction. The few readings that can be gleaned from monitoring are truly fascinating, but neither Vega nor Mary have the time to look into them right now.
Most of what's needed this year is simply materials, but on a much larger scale than before. These orbitals are larger than most out-system ones, scattered between the orbital space of Mars and Earth. The Virgo Orbital is the main hub of this construction, and acts also as the main hub for the Trance itself. No Miracle springs forth this year, but the power of the current process is definitely not to be underestimated.
(Locked for 1 year)
Swords from Ploughshares 61+ needed
In a war, coordination is everything. Especially when a war spans a solar system, and when fighting an enemy who has spent millennia honing their craft in void warfare you want every home field advantage you can get. The Shiplords jammed communications when they entered the system forty-five years ago, and swiftly destroyed the Hermes station that could punch signals through the interference. Communication technology has come ways since then, but the distributed network would need some upgrades to function as a coordination platform.
[Roll: 95 + 40 = 135. Greater Success!]
Given how short on work you've left them, the Home Office leaps on this task with a wild energy that you worry for the first week they themselves might not be able to control. Luckily, it's the other type of wild energy that Adrianna lets loose, the type that can at least be directed. Contractors are pulled in, and fabricated equipment pours out of the earthbound factory complexes. By the end of year, the basic network of relay platforms and satellites has been vastly expanded, with signal boosters and lagless broadcasting fully integrated into every orbital in the system.
(Shiplord jamming effectiveness will be severely reduced, -1 year to Phoning Home)
The Heart Remembers 41+ needed
The Week of Sorrows was a terrible wound to humanity, but it was also one from which it rose anew. Most of the time the second part of that is emphasised, but sometimes it is good to remember what was lost. With open war a bare four years away, you have Kazuki prepare a remembrance ceremony, leaving the exact mechanics to him.
[Roll: 99 + 47 =146. Margin of over a hundred! Overwhelming Success!]
You'd attended ceremonies before. You'd even done a small part in preforming in them, a very long time ago. But none of those experiences could have prepared you for this. There is grief, there is sadness, and much of both that is to be sure. But what Kazuki plans and pulls off takes all of that emotion and channels it into something more. Not anger, he wouldn't do that even if you wanted him to. He pours all of it into the foundations of unity that you'd helped him lay with your singing and speeches a few years past. The result is beyond your wildest hopes, and far greater than your best expectations.
At the end of it all, when the old phrases are recited, the world looks forward with a determined awareness that all it has lost will not come to dust.
(Action unlocked, opinion stabilised and morale improved)
Suspicious Offices 56+ needed
In another example of needed, but disliked espionage, you accept Marcus's logic to use the ceremony as a cover for further probes into the Delegate offices that appear to be compromised. The clear signs of Shiplord intervention in the system and the lack of connection to the offices after the links to Terra were cut make it very clear who they were, perhaps unwittingly, working for. Checking to see if there's anything usable left over is simply common sense.
[Roll: 65 + 44 + 4 (Network bonus) = 113. Solid Success]
[Infowar Roll: 38 + 42 + 4 + 10 vs 62 + 20 + 15 = 94 vs 97. Slim Failure]
Marcus is extremely satisfied to report that there were several anomalous data packets and a program hidden in each of the office servers. Forced to destroy the program after each instance of it attempted to fry or blow up the data stack, he's able to piece together four sets of communication access codes from the remains. You would see this as less than satisfactory, but it's clear that he's happy with the achievement. The access codes are useful, he tells you, but the real treasure was the ability to pick over the remains of Shiplord code.
(Various bonuses/actions unlocked for Shadows of Sorrow Mini-turn)
Middle Way 61+ needed
With the moderate success of last year, Marcus is determined to make more of it in this one, and the vast majority of his focus goes into this task. He's got a foothold, but he needs to get more than that for him to be able to properly decapitate the hostile subnet in the network. He warns you at the start of the year that, given what he's found himself up against, it might require a physical assault.
[Roll: 68 + 44 + 4 (Network Bonus) + 5 (Eyes to See) = 121. Solid Success]
[Infowar Roll: 64 + 42 + 4 + 5 + 10 vs 41 + 40 + 10 + 15 + 10 = 125 vs 116. Success]
His prediction proves true. In late April he arranges a meeting with you, Vega and Lina. He's found the station at the heart of the network, one of the seemingly inert pieces of old Shiplord craft left scattered across the system. Unfortunately, he's also found enough to now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you want to end this cleanly, someone is going to have to go in and disable it.
When you ask why, he delivers the most chilling news of all. Although he couldn't pin down the location of the launch platform, there is a FTL-capable courier hidden somewhere in the system. Simply destroying the subnet hub will almost certainly trigger an automatic launch.
(See Mini-turn: Shadows of Sorrow)
Corpses Leave Clues
[Roll: 98 + 44 + 5 (Eyes to See) = 147]
(See Mini-turn: Shadows of Sorrow)
A Gift of Blood and Soul 61+ needed
Ordering the release of all documents relating to what the Dragons were and what it's theorised they did to humanity to Mary is a simple thing to do. It's even simple to put into action, given that all there is on the subject is two folders of handwritten notes. They're delivered with intense secrecy to her labs, and she vanishes into them for a full week to read them.
[Roll: 42 + 47 = 89. Success]
When she emerges, she deflects all attempts to quiz her on the subject for most of a fortnight before finally giving in and inviting you for a briefing on the subject. She's incredibly serious about it, and when she lays out the options to continue from this point you start to understand why. The Dragons had powers that couldn't have come from the Second Secret, and they passed those on to humanity, yes. But, almost predictably, it's more complicated than that. Although she clearly hates to say it, Mary says she needs more time to get a grip on what really happened forty-five years ago.
According to her, it wasn't just the Dragons that gave something to the process. Something in the humans that died fighting beside them came with the gift, and might have changed it.
(Actions unlocked)
Writing on the Soul 61+ needed
As your Science Minister, Mary is able to access large portions of the distributed network, but needs Presidential release to use all of it. With the message from Project Insight and the information from Mary's delving into what the Dragons actually did, looking deeper into the underlying theory of a Potentials power seems wise.
[Roll: 71 + 47 = 118. Solid Success]
This goes rather better than Mary's first project of the year, but that could be because she's working with a theory decades in the making rather than reports written forty years ago that have probably never seen the light of day since. She's much happier with what she's able to offer you from this research, but advises you defer the decision until the end of the year as further research might inform it.
(Actions unlocked)
From the Other Side 66+ needed
The main part of that research being a deep search of the Red Tower's archives for information on reality physics. The pre-Sorrows world saw everything around them very differently, and it's unlikely that their knowledge would be without use.
[Roll: 13 + 47 = 60. Slim Failure]
Unfortunately, the complex permissions web successfully lames any attempt to access the anything useful. Finding the entries is easy enough, but it proves more trouble than the Ministry has time to deal with to break into them. They do gain some knowledge from working with the Tower's operating system however, which could prove useful.
(+5 to next attempt)
The Elder's Wall 51+ needed
Mary is thankfully distracted from the recalcitrance of the Red Tower's operating system by the mystery of the seamless doorway left behind in the northwest of the pre-Sorrows state of California. You're reasonably sure that her ending up there as you happen to be passing through the local area is only a coincidence, but it's probably better not to question it.
[Roll: 57 + 47 = 102. Solid Success]
Coincidence or not, she applies her customary focused genius to the problem in front of her whilst keep you away from it, and is able to give you a basic rundown on what she thinks will happen if you or another Potential who meets the message's criteria approaches the door.
Put simply, she thinks it's a test. A way to make sure that whatever is hidden away behind it is only granted to a humanity that is ready for it. She's not quite sure how it will do that, but she managed to rig up a scanner that revealed a neural transceiver net built into the chamber holding the door. Walk into that room, she says, and whatever the Elder First prepared will happen.
(Preparation bonuses applied to Eldest Legacy)
Small is Beautiful 61+ needed
And throughout the year, the scientists that actually do most of the grunt work of the Ministry for Science work away on the nanotech problem. Progress has been made, but they need to keep it going for there to be any chance of the research bearing actually useful fruit before the Shiplords return.
[Roll: 45 + 47 = 92. Success]
Even with Mary away, there are more than enough brilliant minds to keep up momentum. Once again there are no vast breakthroughs, but on looking over their work at the end of the year, Mary tells you that she can almost taste a breakthrough coming. A bit strange, perhaps, but you've learn to trust your best friend's intuition.
(Locked for 1 year)
Be Harmonious 46+ needed
Before leaving to help Marcus with his rather complex work breaking the Shiplord network, Vega finds the time to focus on finishing the work she began last year. It's a rushed process, but she's on a tight schedule.
[Roll: 76 + 34 = 110. Solid Success]
That is why she has helpers though, and with what she manages to do before she's pulled away for the rest of the year is enough for them to finish her research. None of them are exactly sure as to what they're looking at, but after the third time that the data recompiles itself it's clear that something very strange is going on here.
(Actions unlocked)
Look to the Centre 66+ needed
The downside is that it leaves a much depleted group to collate all the data on internal Focus use. With Vega elsewhere, and her main research group focused like a laser on what the hell is actually going on with the data file they created, the project starts elsewhere and is a definite last priority.
[Roll: 25 + 34 = 59. Slim Failure]
For all that, those involved do surprisingly well to actually get any work that matters done. It isn't enough to account for a proper year's work, but given the resources involved it's actually quite a bit better than you'd hoped for.
(+5 to next attempt, locked for 2 years)
Songs of Balance
As for yourself, you dedicate your time to finishing the process of healing on your soul from the wounds you inflicted on it saving your body. Working with Vega is one side of this, but it's limited by the lack of her being around, so you find yourself working a lot more on your own. You remember her rather pointed comments about respecting your limits, and the potential consequences, but at the same time can't help but try to reach deeper into the connection between words and Practiced effect.
[Music of the Soul: 54 + 22 = 76. Progress: 226/210]
[Power in Balance: 39 + 34 = 73. Progress: 290/220]
Relieved doesn't even cover it when you feel your power lift itself back into your soul. Vega's help has been an incredible aid, but she thanks you for what you gave her too. Being able to watch the process and see, in her words, one of the most skilled Potentials alive work has led Vega to a further understanding of her own power. Now with your powers fully restored, you're able to spend the rest of the year reaching for that elusive link. Here and there you catch glimpses, but nothing concrete comes of it until winter closes in once more. It's a simple enough thing, a slip that leaves one of the only things you had left from your parents shattered, and you perilously close to tears.
Like any desperate soul, you almost plead for it to get better.
Shockingly, it does.
You now have emotional whiplash, and a cup that you fixed by talking at.
…Mary and Vega are going to want to hear about this.
(Amanda Hawk loses trait Drained, Amanda Hawks gains trait Speaker of Practice, new options unlocked, Vega Cant gains +1 Practice)
Opinion
Earth: United. Serene.
Mars: United. Uneasy.
Spacers: United. Secure.
Congress: Supportive. Secure.
Administration: United. Serene.
Military: United, High Alert.
I'm not seeing the changes you made.
