:Of course.: The Unison Intelligence connected to the room's central display console and activated it. The familiar spirals of the Milky Way took shape above the projector, but there were some new additions to the image. Dots of red light blinked steadily across it, their frequency split between two major categories. A moment later, a handful of violet icons joined them, burning steadily.

You took a moment to thank Sidra, then gestured towards the display. "The red dots represent the locations of every Shiplord relay station and fleet base in the outer spiral, as of last night. Tahkel included some deployment figures, too, though they're not complete. And these," you highlighted one of the unblinking purple symbols, "are the locations of every War Fleet that the Shiplords currently possess."

Twelve lights, to represent the most lethal concentrations of applicable force in the galaxy. It was at once a little underwhelming, and subtly terrifying. "Tahkel's best estimate puts the closest one to us less than two weeks away at maximum jump rate. However," you added quickly, countering the descent into deathly silence, "War Fleets rarely use their maximum jump rate to reach a combat zone, due to logistical and maintenance concerns. A more reliable estimate would be four to six months. Not long, I admit, but a calculation made without considering how the Shiplords will react to the Group of Six rebelling against their control."
Huh. Well that was helpful of them. Hopefully Phoebe can get in touch quickly to confirm the ETA on that predictably approaching War Fleet.

Also, good to get a count on the War Fleets. Twelve. Gotcha.

"And you're absolutely certain?" It wasn't what Lina was focused on, however. "They can use the Artefact you created to build a drive that can jump without restrictions?"

"Tahkel believes so," you replied carefully. "They could do a great deal more, no doubt, but creations like that Artefact should allow them to act in reality to some degree without triggering the Shiplord detection web - what we may reasonably assume caught Insight's Thoughtcast before the Second Battle of Sol."

"Can you replicate them?" Lina asked, almost demanded, really.

"I," you shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, Lina. We've spent years trying to just understand that thing. Now that we know what it is, that might be easier. But replication? I don't know. We'd need time to break down how it does what it does, and given the complexity of what we're talking about here," you looked over at Mary. Your friend had been silent through the entire discussion thus far, but this was more her field than yours. She caught the look, chuckled once, then nodded.

"The issue, Lina," Mary said softly, "is that the nature of how the crystal allows for interaction without detection isn't understood. We know that Potentials can influence the world around them without detection, but that's a result of their souls being anchored to reality. The crystal allows for the same thing, in a limited sense. But the workings of that process…we'd need to observe an Uninvolved working through it to get a good idea. And I'm not sure if that's a process that could be reversed."
Hm. I'm imagining the Void Crystal acting as a sort of 'heat sink' to damp out the signature that an Uninvolved's activity would otherwise generate...

Oh my goodness it's a faidon.

Anyway never mind.

How much preparation time does Amanda believe the mission into Shiplord space should take? You must define a time here, as Amanda is an involved party in this decision process. If you choose to leave ahead of the War Fleet, you will not be back in time to defend against it. No write-ins this time.
[] Shakedown – Depart as soon as design, construction and shakedown of the
Adamant are complete. 1 month. Will leave little time for research, but makes departure ahead of any War Fleet assault all but certain.
[] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.
[] Implacable – Delay your departure until after the War Fleet assault has been handled. May take up to six months. May allow for more research time, but could also add significant delay to a potentially critical investigation. Ensures your participation in the Fourth Battle of Sol.
I think we should either hurry up and get there ASAP or wait until Fourth Sol has already happened.

I suspect it will be impractical for us to somehow avert Fourth Sol or gain a decisive advantage in it with haste in this mission... but I don't actually know and that may be a gut feeling.

...

@Snowfire , to be clear, which if any of these actions give us a plausible expectation of arriving at our destination before the War Fleet reaches Sol?

Do we have any idea whether we can somehow avert the impending battle by our actions (I'm guessing 'no, no you do not know')?

...

Because if Iris AND Amanda are both gone, that's a pretty significant dent in our defenses, and I don't want to have a scenario where we succeed in our mission, only to find out that the War Fleet broke through our defenses and exploderized the sun.
 
How much preparation time does Amanda believe the mission into Shiplord space should take? You must define a time here, as Amanda is an involved party in this decision process. If you choose to leave ahead of the War Fleet, you will not be back in time to defend against it. No write-ins this time.
[] Shakedown – Depart as soon as design, construction and shakedown of the
Adamant are complete. 1 month. Will leave little time for research, but makes departure ahead of any War Fleet assault all but certain.
[] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.
[] Implacable – Delay your departure until after the War Fleet assault has been handled. May take up to six months. May allow for more research time, but could also add significant delay to a potentially critical investigation. Ensures your participation in the Fourth Battle of Sol.

Oh boy we have decisions to make and no write-ins available because @Snowfire doesn't want us taking the obvious until the Orrery is Complete option. So let's see what the options are:

[] Shakedown – Depart as soon as design, construction and shakedown of the Adamant are complete. 1 month. Will leave little time for research, but makes departure ahead of any War Fleet assault all but certain.

The fastest route and also the most risky as any knowledge of the Void Crystal and some of the more advanced tech is being risked with Mary coming with us. Also the Potentials that come along will not be there for the Fourth Battle of Sol. Yet the Shiplords' commander themselves asked us to hurry and try to stop this war.

[] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.

The study route. We get some basic info on what the Void Crystal does and how it works and we're probably not there for the Fourth Battle of Sol, but we can insure that the preparations for it are done better. Still no potentials that come with us to defend against a War Fleet and the Shiplords get time to prepare their military apparatus for any incursions on our part.

[] Implacable – Delay your departure until after the War Fleet assault has been handled. May take up to six months. May allow for more research time, but could also add significant delay to a potentially critical investigation. Ensures your participation in the Fourth Battle of Sol.


This is the War Footing. We wait until the Fourth Battle of Sol and we have proof that War Fleets can be beaten (or we're dead, whichever) and we can take it to the other members of the Group of Seven. Potentials coming with us after this battle will be a lesser loss since the new blood will have bloodied themselves and be ready for war. The Orrery gets proven as a defensive concept in battle, but the Shiplords have spun up their military into a higher state of readiness and we will have a harder time moving trough Shiplord territory. More research and a better prepared mission is also a gain, but not a large one.

I don't know what to choose here. The old Serbian saying: "Shortcuts cut you short, but going around is closer." applies here, but I can't tell which is the shortcut and which is going around.
 
Hrrm. As I see it it boils down to what we sacrifice/prioritize.
Shakedown means we don't get to take another shot, it's do or die on this attempt to got the 'True' Ending and if we fail the Shiplords will do their best to use the opportunity to grind the hope out of us, making a point to mock our decision.

Evaluation is setting up for being able to do this again so these aren't truly irreplacable (Insofar as one can replace potentials, much less Amanda and her fellow Crusaders.) But the Shiplords come that much closer.

And Implacable means we bail after the WarFleet fight. This one slightly worries me as it garuntees the Shiplords get to do a number on us before we even begin to look but on the flipside, it might also cause a serious hole to open in their control of the space near Humanity...

...And something just struck me about the Shiplords and Practice and Potentials that we've all overlooked.
Amanda is a Mender. She literally must work within those constraints.
What if that's what happened to the Shiplords? That they focused on becoming the strongest and now they've got it but they're also stuck like that, relying on 'the arrogance of being the strongest' to open holes and pray for races that can defeat them and let them sieze the wheel of destiny once again?
 
...And something just struck me about the Shiplords and Practice and Potentials that we've all overlooked.
Amanda is a Mender. She literally must work within those constraints.
What if that's what happened to the Shiplords? That they focused on becoming the strongest and now they've got it but they're also stuck like that, relying on 'the arrogance of being the strongest' to open holes and pray for races that can defeat them and let them sieze the wheel of destiny once again?
I'm pretty sure, if something is broken, Amanda still has the option of not fixing it.
 
Oh my goodness it's a faidon.
What's a faidon? My google-fu fails me.

Amanda is a Mender. She literally must work within those constraints.
Not true. After all, the Void Crystal is in and of itself certainly not a thing of Mending, and neither is her Concert Set. Mending is her Focus but she's skilled enough to go outside of that.



As for my own thoughts... I know we can't rush it and get back in time to help, but hopefully our military is capable of holding down the fort without us. They've had plenty of time to prepare and Lina seems pretty confident.

I think [] Shakedown is my preference. I don't see a whole lot of value in doing the research right now -- we can spend the time to figure that out later, when we're not trying to prevent galactic civil war. We only need the one ship.
 
Oh boy we have decisions to make and no write-ins available because @Snowfire doesn't want us taking the obvious until the Orrery is Complete option. So let's see what the options are:

[] Shakedown – Depart as soon as design, construction and shakedown of the Adamant are complete. 1 month. Will leave little time for research, but makes departure ahead of any War Fleet assault all but certain.

The fastest route and also the most risky as any knowledge of the Void Crystal and some of the more advanced tech is being risked with Mary coming with us. Also the Potentials that come along will not be there for the Fourth Battle of Sol. Yet the Shiplords' commander themselves asked us to hurry and try to stop this war.

[] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.

The study route. We get some basic info on what the Void Crystal does and how it works and we're probably not there for the Fourth Battle of Sol, but we can insure that the preparations for it are done better. Still no potentials that come with us to defend against a War Fleet and the Shiplords get time to prepare their military apparatus for any incursions on our part.

[] Implacable – Delay your departure until after the War Fleet assault has been handled. May take up to six months. May allow for more research time, but could also add significant delay to a potentially critical investigation. Ensures your participation in the Fourth Battle of Sol.

This is the War Footing. We wait until the Fourth Battle of Sol and we have proof that War Fleets can be beaten (or we're dead, whichever) and we can take it to the other members of the Group of Seven. Potentials coming with us after this battle will be a lesser loss since the new blood will have bloodied themselves and be ready for war. The Orrery gets proven as a defensive concept in battle, but the Shiplords have spun up their military into a higher state of readiness and we will have a harder time moving trough Shiplord territory. More research and a better prepared mission is also a gain, but not a large one.

I don't know what to choose here. The old Serbian saying: "Shortcuts cut you short, but going around is closer." applies here, but I can't tell which is the shortcut and which is going around.
I think Shakedown and Evaluation give us a chance to return before the War Fleet arrives, with Shakedown giving us better odds.
Edit: As Coda pointed out, my reading comprehension failed again.
 
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Basically, we can't make the round trip ahead of the War Fleet. We MIGHT be able to make the one-way trip ahead of the War Fleet. I genuinely don't know; @Snowfire hasn't weighed in on that. It's theoretically possible that something we learn or do at our destination might make the War Fleet irrelevant, or help the human defenders of Sol defeat it... but far from certain.

I am very averse to risking a scenario where Amanda and her family are off doing something else while humanity faces an attack by a War Fleet, for fear of a scenario where Amanda, Mary, and Iris return to find a dead solar system, with half-melted planets orbiting the husk of a Sol that was artificially induced to go supernova.

What's a faidon? My google-fu fails me.
Faidons are found in Doc Smith's Skylark series- the first interstellar space opera featuring FTL travel, among various other things.

Faidons are crystalline in appearance, but in reality are these functionally impervious things made out of crystallized space-time*. They can only be worked or altered under conditions found in the interior of collapsed stars. Our Heroes have to learn to (among other things) work these faidons to use them to make the lenses and other tools required to manipulate certain exotic forces.
__________________________

*(well, "ether," but if I want to communicate the idea to a 21st century audience I have to adjust for the language of 100 years later).
 
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The whole reason we are going for this journey is to avoid as much megadeath as possible. Means, the faster we get a resolution to the SLs the less burned out stars.
For that reason, I'll be voting to go on our journey as soon as possible. I trust in humanity to survive a War fleet without Amanda holding hands.
 
I'm very torn on this.

Obviously, getting whatever info is there sooner is great, and trying to analyze the void crystal more so that it can be replicated is amazing too, but there's another major concern I have.

The possibility of Iris not being around when the first War Fleet arrives.

Vision was able to defend our networks against the Regular Fleet's assault alone, but we have no idea how much more powerful the network assaults of a War Fleet will be, and damage to our networks would be disastrous to the Orrey, which is essential to our ability to survive the encounter.

Given Insight's knowledge of War Fleets, there isn't a major difference between the level of infowarfare tech carried by them and a Regular Fleet. Remember that War Fleets are used generally to clear the outer edges of a system, and then keep a species contained whilst they deploy a special weapon against the inner system. This can be a nova inducer, a massive swarm of comets from the Oort cloud, subversive nanoswarms, or other, similarly fun things.

In terms of infowarfare defences, Iris was on total offence for the Third Battle of Sol. Vision and the MoS between them were capable of holding back the Regulars quite handily. They also have a lot of tactical data from that conflict, which they're going to be applying as fast as possible. Insight has yet to weigh in directly, but previous estimates still apply. And you're in a better situation now than when those were made, given experience gained in the Third Battle of Sol.

@Snowfire , to be clear, which if any of these actions give us a plausible expectation of arriving at our destination before the War Fleet reaches Sol?

Do we have any idea whether we can somehow avert the impending battle by our actions (I'm guessing 'no, no you do not know')?

You have multiple destinations to visit. It's basically impossible that you'll be able to hit all of them before the War Fleet gets to Sol. As to if any one of them would be capable of averting the battle? There's no way to know without actually going to those places and finding out.

Because if Iris AND Amanda are both gone, that's a pretty significant dent in our defenses, and I don't want to have a scenario where we succeed in our mission, only to find out that the War Fleet broke through our defenses and exploderized the sun.

As I've said to @justinkal, the functional reduction to your anti-War Fleet defences wouldn't be particularly extensive. It's pretty much all down to the Orrery working. Potentials should be able to screw around with some of the more exotic special weapons deployed by the War Fleets, but there's not much they can do against a starbuster other than blow it up and pray to get out safely.

Oh boy we have decisions to make and no write-ins available because @Snowfire doesn't want us taking the obvious until the Orrery is Complete option.

That would fold into the Evaluation option, really. The main thing you're being asked is how long you want to take to get ready. I'll have some more information below on why Evaluation could be so important, in some cases.

I'm pretty sure, if something is broken, Amanda still has the option of not fixing it.

She does indeed, yes.

I think [] Shakedown is my preference. I don't see a whole lot of value in doing the research right now -- we can spend the time to figure that out later, when we're not trying to prevent galactic civil war. We only need the one ship.

To explain the value of Evaluation, here, a success could allow other Potentials to create Void Crystals. This would allow humanity to have the Uninvolved build you things. Like, say, a fully functional, hyper-efficient lagless computer. Which would make your Orrery very much non-rudimentary and elevate your cyberdefences to absolutely ridiculous levels of hax. There are reasons to look into this beyond building you another (presumably) War Fleet tier FTL drive.

Shakedown is go as soon as possible, once the ship is complete and tested. Evaluation holds on in the hope of working out how to replicate Void Crystals. Implacable means sticking around to fight off the War Fleet. If you have any questions about this, please ask. I'm going to hold off on opening this vote until I get home this afternoon, in case more clarity is needed.
 
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[X] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.

Voting is not open yet.
 
Humanity needs everybody on-deck for the warfleet. If humanity wins, there will be time afterwards. If humanity doesn't, nothing else matters.
 
[X] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.
 
[X] Shakedown – Depart as soon as design, construction and shakedown of the Adamant are complete. 1 month. Will leave little time for research, but makes departure ahead of any War Fleet assault all but certain.
//
If we can resolve the crusade fast (smash and grab style), that's the least total number of casualties. If it takes longer, taking more time to do void crystal research will be more beneficial.
 
[X] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.
 
A final thing I'd like to make sure is clear to folks voting, as I realised it might not be:

Voting for Evaluation does not guarantee success in any shape or form. It just means you'll have the time to try and understand the Void Crystal. The degree of any success will be down to a roll.
 
[X] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.
 
[X] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.
 
[X] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.
 
[X] Evaluation – Remain for long enough to complete a proper evaluation of the Void Crystal, now that you have some idea of what it does. 2-3 months, depending on rolls. Good chance of being gone before the War Fleet hits.

Replicability is the eternal bane of Potentials. Let's not run away with the only prototype.
 
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