text | un: 76

[personalwar]

[ Given everything that 76 has learned in the past few days, there's no doubt in his mind that he needs to inform the rest of the refugees about what might be coming. That bandit seems to have been telling the truth, or maybe what 76 saw up on Namarak Mountain was staged, but that seems like way too much work for no real gain that he can foresee.

Enough of the details have checked out that a warning seems necessary. Only a few of the refugee group had actually been on the missions to transport the heart and the skull, and there's no telling that all of them learned what he did.

While this is his first time posting on the network, 76 doesn't introduce himself, but just gets right down to business. Who he is isn't really important here. ]

Word probably got around that Nithor's skull and Ysverai's heart were being transported back to Olympia and Wyver, respectively. Well, things didn't really go as planned. Both caravans got attacked on the way by a group of bandits. I managed to chase down one of them and question him. He was surprisingly forthcoming.

Assuming he was telling the truth, and that's seeming more and more likely at this point, it was the heart that they were really after. These bandits are part of the same group responsible for the abductions, and they took Ysverai's heart up to Namarak Mountain to perform a ritual.

Apparently, that ritual was to revive Ysevrai, and if you've seen some of the skeletons of the old dragons, you know what that means.

I went up to the mountain to see if I could interrupt the ritual, but it was already over and cleared out by the time that I got there. I did find a cryptic note that looked like it was written in blood. It said "He Shall Rise Again."

According to the radical I interrogated, this dragon could mean the end of Olympia and Wyver and everything else. I don't know how much I believe that, but we need to be ready for anything. If you've seen anything, let me know. If you have questions, I can try to answer them, but this is most of what I know.

[ Not everything, though. There's one detail he's still sitting on. But Wyver family drama isn't something he wants to report to all of the other refugees, aware of what kind of unrest that could cause among the natives. ]

Comments

[willrevile]

It's gonna get out. It was already a rumor, and yours wasn't the only bandit talking - I know a couple other people on the convoy, and they've got the same intel. Do you know anyone who's got an in with getting word to his father about possible damage control?

The Khali people considered Ysverai a kind of protective sage, who spoke to and mentored early populations on the planet. They saw his death as a sacrifice, and at the end, there's a quote about the Storm. Capitol S Storm. 'Your hearts will fill with greed and malice the moment my own stops beating. Take care in the Eye of the Storm. Find strength in one another, before it is too late.'

[ Jim's got a good memory, but he also took a picture of it, so he can check for specific wording. ]

[personalwar]

Someone responding here is offering to warn Shanrian about Ysevrai. We can tell him about his son too, if we want to go that route. On the other hand, there's a chance he already knows.

Doesn't really sound like the type who wanted to burn everything to the ground. [ Also, since when did dragons talk? ] But that's also the first I've heard of the Storm here on El Nysa.

[ Was there really a connection between Ysevrai dying and the Storm coming? Sounds a little farfetched, but 76 can't just ignore this either. ]

[willrevile]

Good. I don't know enough about Shanrian to predict a reaction, but while I'm sure he knows, does he know half his city's probably going to know?

Same here. It could be fiction, given the nonsense that makes up half the refugee 'records', but it's too weird to ignore. And Rasyc's information seems dead on.

Not helping the timing is what's going on upstairs. I think I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on with the Natha, though. You want in the loop on that?

[personalwar]

Probably not. We can give him the option to do some damage control, but I don't know how we avoid another angry mob at this rate.

I'll have to go give it a read for myself, assuming there's even time for that before everything goes to crap.

Yeah, what'd you find out?

[ It's not like they need something else heaped onto this mess, but 76 naturally wants to be in the know. ]

[willrevile]

We probably don't, so I'd suggest mentally preparing for how to navigate that as a factor of anything that's going to happen, vs hope for a non-reaction, unfortunately.

The Natha left voluntarily, and something is almost certainly out there - guessing it's whatever attacked that first firm. Powering the station up, I feel, would be a real bad move. If Rasyc dragon-nukes the planet, Thesa's all we've got, and Thesa might be in more immediate peril than we realize. This shit down here has to get handled one way or another.

[personalwar]

It's not like I haven't had to deal with it here before.

How did you find all of this out?

[willrevile]

Spent several days on Thesa recording the settings how they were left - plus we finally got into the power grid, and determined what caused the damage. I went down to Olympia to speak to Voss's people about their observations of the moon, since I'm a curious and well-meaning refugee interested in the spiritual destiny of my people, etc.

[ Nothing mysterious, just some middle-grade detective work. Lucky Jim knows a thing or two about space stations, really. ]

[personalwar]

[ There's no denying that Kirk has pulled his weight and then some with investigating all of this. He's the right person for the job, given his experiences from back home. ]

And what did they tell you?

[willrevile]

The astronomical phenomena they observed matches up with the power going, and four 'comets' streaking across the moon are going to be Natha spacecraft bailing from the station. So it hasn't gone unnoticed, but they see religious significance, not 'hey there must be people up there', fortunately.

[personalwar]

For now, anyway. I never really thought it was a good idea to keep lying to them, but that's besides the point right now.

What kind of damage did you find to the Station? Any clues as far as what kind of threat we're dealing with?

[willrevile]

[ Jim's got mixed feelings. On the one hand, the Prime Directive is already fucked, given how much the Natha have interfered, but on the other, if they think riots over Rasyc might be bad... ]

The damage is superficial and all the result of going into low-power mode too fast. Like unplugging a computer instead of shutting it down properly, the more complicated a machine you do that to, the higher risk you run of something going wrong. No info about potential threats.

[personalwar]

So at this point we're assuming they left because they figured the Station was in danger of being attacked. They wanted to get out in a hurry.

[ With that in mind, it's surprising that no one came knocking while they were up there poking around. ]

[willrevile]

That's the working theory. And why we're not trying to get the power restored beyond fixing actual damage. Lighting the station back up seems like a real bad move - the Natha hit the stealth mode button, I think we should keep it that way.

[personalwar]

Yeah, makes sense. It would have helped if they'd clued us into any of this before taking off, but this is pretty much par for the course.

[willrevile]

Either they don't trust us, or whatever truth they'd have to share would cause problems. Nothing for it now, though, we've just got to keep at it.

[personalwar]

We need to keep an eye on things down here and up there, and I don't think either threat is going to be easy to deal with.

[ It never slows down around here. At least they have some answers, though. 76 feels a lot better now than he did in the aftermath of the kidnappings, simply because they've actually been able to answer some questions for themselves, rather than just generating more. ]

[willrevile]

That's why they're threats.

Focus on the planetside problems. I'll do everything I can to keep things managed upstairs.

[personalwar]

Works for me. I'd say that I'd keep you updated, but I'm pretty sure that if this dragon surfaces, you're going to hear about it one way or another.