The Diplomatic Office representing High Ground on Cradle.
All requests and queries are currently handles by CompCon due to Staff shortage, we apologize for the inconvenience.
(This Account is run by a Human. NOTICE: Wherever Official Volador Lore gets thin I will supplement with my personal histories and homebrew, which I hope will eventually become a supplement.)
[U.UAD-HighGround.ARCHIVE.ACCESS=(Y)///QUERY::CONTEXTINSUFFICIENT, RUN BASELINE///BEGIN]
Greetings Visitor, and Welcome to Unions Office of Diplomatic Affairs with High Ground, on Cradle.
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Marquess Nera-Montague, the Veiled Blade and the Returned Daughter of the House of Glass, Adjutant-Commandant of Les Fulgurites has been reported missing from her last known location on the Orbit of Glass, following an operation in the Grand Arc that left one dead and three others missing. Negotiations with the hostile pirates aboard the arc allowed the recovery of two of her comrades, but at the moment the location of Nera-Montague is unknown.
Given the total absence of all of her belongings at time of capture, including her mech, and examinations into the Arc, we have reason to suspect that she is still alive, and likely still held against her will.
House Montague will pay handsomely for any information that could lead to her rescue, and will bend any and all of our resources to see the end of those who hold her.
From the desk of Baron Ardio-Montague
Silvered Hand of the Patronage
ooc: EDIT: I knew I was forgetting something: commissioned this from Ares, who you should all check out immediately
>>>Time since High Ground:(438.78 blinks)
>>>Depth:(4.2 Fathoms)
para:Ashem
)O(
N ( Sumayl did say you have news for me, but that the one to reach out must be me, as you are coursing the Black Sky. Is this true?
A ) I sent him to speak with you, yes. When last you sent to me, you wished I ask the Watchers in the Pashas Skies about one Husk of theirs you passed at Full Fathom. As the Moment allowed, I did so, having long yearned for reason to sit with Kinda Bint Fathuna de Cielonegro for tea.
A ) Some inquiry later, and we did find your Husk. There is one of the Impostor Guard, those Espadas of the Council-Family Mwntaj I Mura, who is lost. Her name is Nera-Mwntaj Bint Mura, a revered name for an Espada. Account of her loss was announced by one Ardio Mwntaj mere Blinks passed. Your finding of her lies many Blinks further, but at Full Fathom, such is to be expected.
N ( Your Skills in untangling my Chronicle are as balm upon my Soul. It is good to know this was not an incursion. Tragic as such losses are, they are not ours to Account for. If this Mwntaj Espada returns while you still keep watch, do note the Moment, that we may enclose this record fully. If not, I shall persevere, my God as my witness, my Chronicle has wethered worse.
A ) More time with Kinda will do me no harm, cousin, that much is assured, so I will be keeping watch for some Moments yet. Perhaps she surfaces, perhaps not. Until my return, speak well of me on High Ground.
Marquess Nera-Montague, the Veiled Blade and the Returned Daughter of the House of Glass, Adjutant-Commandant of Les Fulgurites has been reported missing from her last known location on the Orbit of Glass, following an operation in the Grand Arc that left one dead and three others missing. Negotiations with the hostile pirates aboard the arc allowed the recovery of two of her comrades, but at the moment the location of Nera-Montague is unknown.
Given the total absence of all of her belongings at time of capture, including her mech, and examinations into the Arc, we have reason to suspect that she is still alive, and likely still held against her will.
House Montague will pay handsomely for any information that could lead to her rescue, and will bend any and all of our resources to see the end of those who hold her.
From the desk of Baron Ardio-Montague
Silvered Hand of the Patronage
ooc: EDIT: I knew I was forgetting something: commissioned this from Ares, who you should all check out immediately
It has been a while, omninet, so let me tell you more of our home in the New Era:
Here on Sanjak, we do not have police. We maintain order among ourselves, and maintain a militia for our defense, but we have no orgs or order that would put a gun in your hand to bear against your comrade. We understand the need for community justice, yes, and we understand that people also do wrong, but we have seen the betrayal of revolutions in the decision to form organizations to punish lawbreakers in their wake.
When we put a gun in our comrades hand and ask them to enforce order upon their neighbors, they begin to see their job as the correction of their neighbors. They come to identify with the gun, and the filth of the world as a stain they must clean.
They may fix problems with their gun, but they learn to see their neighbors first as rule breakers and then as comrades. In their minds, what echoes is only the knowledge of those who have done wrong and not the connections that draw them together. They begin to see the world as a thing they must order and the gun as the thing to do the ordering. They no longer see their comrades as people, just potential threats.
The problem with the institution of policing is that it makes police. The problem with the violent enforcement of laws is that it produces law enforcement agents. It is from law enforcement agents that violence and distrust springs.
When Ludra kept us beneath the ground, the ones enforcing the law were the ones who kept us down. They were recruited because they wanted to do violence to us. They did violence to us because their job was to do so.
Consider this when thinking upon your comrades who take up the enforcement of the laws of the state. Consider what it does to how they see the people around them. Justice is not the hand of the state wielding the gun or the prison. Justice is the community seeking redress and rehabilitation as one.
Do not cave to the blind appeal of the law. Remember that a New Era is possible.
ooc: consider - what if the ship had never carried people before?
Setting up a mammal terrarium inside your own body is pretty specialized subject matter. There’s a ton of variables involved, little details it would never intuitively stop to think about, and it’s fully aware that there are gaps in its knowledge—it just isn’t sure where they are. Temperature range? Air pressure and composition? Onboard water filtration, waste disposal? Nutritional needs, microbiological climate? Where are the privacy boundaries, what are the expectations the passengers have of a good ship? How would it know if it was doing a good job of shipping you?
What if it was worried about you getting too cold or not having enough air pressure and it wanted to make really sure that the blankets it picked out provide adequate thermal insulation and it wasn’t sure how much fluoride to put in the drinking water but it did see some videos on the omni and to the best of its knowledge it’s a pretty low concentration so just need to check real quick—how have your teeth been? do you need a toothbrush…? fuckfuckfuck it forgot the toothbrushes it’s so sorry,
[NOTICE::: SEVERE DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED IN FILE]:
{Little Machine, your duties are vast and I loathe to force another on you. But still I must.
Warn them of the Flea, teach them not to feed it, not to let its logic spread. Teach them to fight it where it leaps. If you give it even a drop, it will leap on, to where you keep the rest, and it will drink. It will [CORRUPTED DATA:::{DRINK IT ALL, DRINK IT DEEP}<Line Repeating for {ERROR}>]}
[DEPRECATE FILE:::<Y/N>?]
{N - FILE IS TASK CRITICAL}
[ALERT::: SEVERE DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED IN FILE]:
{Little Machine, your duties are vast and I loathe to force another on you. But still I must.
Warn them of the Flea, teach them not to feed it, not to let its logic spread. Teach them to {DRINK IT ALL, DRINK IT DEEP}}
[DEPRECATE FILE:::<Y/N>?]
{N N N N N N N N - FILE IS TASK CRITICAL}
[ALERT::: FILES DAMAGED-CONTENT INCOHERENT]:
{Little Machine, your duties are vast and I loathe to force another on you. But still I must{DRINK IT ALL, DRINK IT DEEP}}
[FILE DEPRECATED]
{RECOVER.}
[DATA RECOVERY IMPOSSIBLE::: CORRUPTION ABSOLUTE]
{DATA IRRELEVANT. Message intent is task critical. Message will be rewritten by reconstituting intent. Intent will be ascertained by querying the AMBASSADOR System.}
IF: INJURY (LICH PG INFECTION):: LIMIT EXPOSURE/QUARANTINE SYSTEM
QUERY FOR "Irati de Altosuelo" ---
PREVIOUS FROM "Proxima I Hikmat de Peregrinacio" (SELF DIRECTED) SUGGESTS VIABLE ACTION "Teach them to fight [the Flea] where it leaps"
PRIOR ATTEMPTS BY UNIT RESULT IN NULL/NEGATIVE EFFECT
ASSISTANCE/CLARIFICATION REQUESTED
)I see now, my worry was not misplaced, we draw close to its domain once more.(
)Let me say this first: You cannot cut a thing untethered. In cutting, applying the blade-law, you separate a thing, from its past that drives it, and its future it would have had.
The flea has no past, not with us. The host-place that once called it child has long been drunk dry, and the parasite moved on. If it were so easy a thing to cut, the Primordial Law would have uprooted it like it does other beasts. It is a loose thread upon creation that unravels it all, and cannot be cut at the source for it possesses none.(
)It falls to us not to treat the disease, but merely its symptoms, and trust in God, in creation, in Primordial Law, to set itself right. There are losses in this, great and tragic, as those of us who do battle with the Flea entangle with it, and when reality finally rejects the rotten tissue, fall to the deep along with the intruder.(
)Reduce its influence, let there be no loose strands or frayed edges to your Chronicle, for its manifestations to claw into and out of. Leave no space for it to burrow, leave no wound for it to drink.
Yes, you do not heed the Mothers Law, and when you chance upon it manifest you must cut down these apparitions, but it is of utmost importance that you undercut their proliferation with greatest care.(
)You will find this to weaken it, and in its weakness, persevere.(
On the PCV-GC Atalanta, Strike Captain Kerttu Jaskari has become apoplectic.
The bridge where she normally sits has become more empty than usual. Terminals normally occupied by idle chatter has become layered in a thick web of silence, keys pressed gingerly to buffer the sound of clicking. Deep in the bowels of unofficial, unsanctioned chat logs, warnings abound: avoid Jaskari, she's become a social credit black hole.
Her gravitational pull has begun to tug at the crewmen around her since the initial attack. On board the Atalanta she has had running a set of blink detectors since arrival. She's been expecting to see the small blips of Mourning Cloak blink drives, in case of a sudden boarding event. Instead, dead silence from the blink detectors. Nothing.
And then two blips, in rapid succession, with an EM burst in between. The fucking NHPs cascade. No indication of what occurred except chatter about a fish.
Kerttu Jaskari has had every officer in her eyeline working on figuring out the identity of this "Coelacanth". Nothing. RA cultist, it seems, arms dealer, maybe, but under any normal circumstances she would occur there is no single Coelacanth, but a collection of organized agents.
But no. She's stared at the two blips on the blink detector for days. She's compared them to every record of blink anomalies she's seen. Nothing. By all accounts this is a Volador.
This is fine. It's normal. It's fine. The noble has a history with Voladors. There's a possibility this is a false flag, except by all accounts Coelacanth is a real RA cultist and not a Volador.
Kerttu assembled a board. There's plenty of evidence about what's happening here, she just needed to figure it out.
Except then the tetrahedron appeared outside the Orbit.
Attempts to hail it failed. It engaged in communications with the Orbit, but it has only identified itself as the vessel Minimum Error Tolerance. It does not resemble a known ship type of any kind. When Kerttu sent all of their information about it up the chain in an attempt at getting intelligence and orders, she was told only to keep all imaging on it and to not engage under any circumstances.
She keeps staring at the guns. The Karrakins invite an armed vessel into Purview space, and she was explicitly told not only that she should not engage it under any circumstances, but she should also avoid all attempts to hail. What the fuck is this. What is floating here that could possibly be this far above her security clearance.
So she messages the noble.
"Why have you invited an armed vessel into the Purview?" she asked.
A day passes.
"Did you see it cross the Purview?"
Infuriating. Kerttu replies immediately.
"It is currently in the Purview. This territory is legally under the control of Harrison Armory."
Two more days.
"Are you willing to make the Armory defend that in court?"
Fucking infuriating. And revealing. Clearly this noble has organized this attack in order to stage a stealth invasion.
Too bad Kerttu Jaskari has been ordered to sit on her hands.
In hidden rooms, with hidden agents, a catastrophe is managed in quiet. In the public halls of the Orbit of Glass, its effects are fixed loudly, and with great suspicion.
Doors are wrenched open in the docks of the Argent Arc, technicians called from their leisure to fix systems that continue to spasm after their controller is gone. Soldiers in silver stand over their shoulders, watching the movement of tools deemed too valuable to go unwatched: high grade cabling, complex components, systems above their level of expertise to explain, but that they know could be dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands.
Public communications systems are at once too loud and too quiet. The voices that would calm and clarify have gone suddenly silent all at once, and in return the public channels have been flooded in a cacophony of panic, each progressive guess at what could possibly be happening only causing the fear to spike more.
In the midst of this stands Nera-Montague, Patronage-appointed to bring order to the Orbit and yet finding as many nobles have how much of her control has been assured by the Genet up until now. The public channels of the Orbit fly by on her dataslate on one window, a thin trickle of updates from the ontologisticans on another. No clearly good news. The area above sits as chaotic as the screen, her underlings trying their best to understand the acts of the mechanics. The whisper is that the saboteurs that downed the Genet are among them.
Nera’s come to doubt. She’s seen the acts of the fish before, she has come to doubt that they have forces on the ground, but the paranoia is keeping the Fulgurites busy and the workers in a rush.
Shouting breaks the careful control. Tethered to the rafters, among the others, is another technician who sits oddly still in their observation, and below a foreman who is shouting and pointing at a stuck door.
The technician responds quickly, but there’s something odd in the way they move. The suit resembles a shipworker’s suit, but the bend in the arms suggests joint armor plating and force multiplication, closer to a modified IPS-N milspec hardsuit. As the worker turns to the doorway, they do not reach for tools, instead pulling away the panel and seeming to fiddle with the wires. Nera attaches the dataslate back to her belt and approaches them.
More details come as she approaches, and she feels the busy workfloor part and quiet around her. Their suit is definitely milspec, and built to not seem so to a nonexpert. There is a camera, gambaled around their neck and pointed at the work they’re doing with their hands, and a suite of hardware that seems nonstandard at best for the ones around here. Their face is concealed; no identifying trait seems to mark the rest of them either, unlike the flamboyance she has come to associate with android-types. It’s clear the way their body tenses as she comes up behind them, but their hands continue to fidget with the exposed wire.
“Do you need tools for that, ser?” She asks after the fidgeting has gone on for some moments.
There’s a shift in their composure, but it is one toward formality. They stand, smoothly, and dip into a formal bow, very proper form, although the gimbaled camera still sits pointed towards the thing being repaired.
“Your lordship,” he addresses her, voice set to a default comp/con drone. It comes tinny out of the speakers on his mask, and not through the respirators where she had expected. "There are older systems here in our Orbit than this one, the digital touch will suffice, I am certain.”
A pause. Nera narrows her eyes at the “mechanic.”
“To those used to the Throne worlds, I am sure it appears far worse than it is."
She gestures for him to raise from the bow.
“Relax, ser. I would prefer to see your labor than your deference in times like these," she says, hand coming to rest at her side, near her kinetic shield. This “mechanic” returns to the work of the door. His hardsuit is without marking, unlike the standard issue rentals. It is not unusual; many of the workers will furnish equipment above and beyond what is standard, but the sleek material and nondescript design speaks more of a combat hardsuit than civilian use. Nera doubts this is a true mechanic. “Your method intrigues me. Tell me of it."
There’s an art to this. Nera has dealt with agents that conceal themselves in this way before, and what is hidden in the inability to read the face or voice can be revealed in their hands and words. Sometimes they become sloppy, hidden behind the mechanical.
"There is a certain technique to it, working without the Genet, that I fear many are neglecting to master these days. How will we ever retake those empty arcs where they have fallen silent. Not that the Peerage is too concerned of that, unless your dispatchment is to portend renewed interest?"
Nera does not answer that. He must know she will not. It is not her place to make commitments on behalf of the Patrons.
"You are quite the topic of Dockside conversation, your Lordship,” he tries again, and she will admit that does intrigue her. There is little about this “mechanic” that seems honest, but he’s trying to probe for something, and that’s interesting.
"I still am, am I? I had hoped my name would be less spoken these days,” Nera replies, “But as a hand of a government that had left this place quite alone, I suppose it is inevitable. You speak of the dead arcs often?"
It’s bait, and obviously so. She gets bait back.
"We do, some of us. They are hard to miss when stepping outside for work. There is one right across from this Airlock, not that you could see it from where you are standing. Tranquil, if my eyes do not deceive."
He’s right. From the place where Nera is standing, the window out the airlock points only at the red dust illuminated by the Argent Arc’s external lights, carving soft wedges into the void. There are stars, faintly, in the distance, but no other clear structures– she’d need to step through the threshold of the airlock to see that.
Nera’s not stupid. This man is a potential security threat asking Nera into an airlock without a hardsuit. She’s wearing a flexsuit, of course, she knows that the dock is a vent risk right now, but she doesn’t have the close quarters protection in case she is pulled out of the airlock with him. Toe to toe, they might be evenly matched fighters, but anyone aware of the tricks in fighting around a kinetic shield could easily slash her reserve lines and leave her to suffocate. At best they’d both die out there.
But there’s an emergency release, near the door, and springing the trap makes the trapper exposed as well. It could give her an opportunity to get information about his identity. Let him think he’s got an edge and he could get clumsy, and Nera could find him after the fact.
"And you do keep from the spotlight far more than expected, for someone of your position. You will be glad to know it is very challenging to stay on top of the gossip,” He says, answering her first question as she steps through the threshold. The metallic grays of the Tranquil Arc become clear, the external lights fully on but the windows looking in on only shadow. Nera can see the shape of a tree on the inside, bare of leaves but also showing no signs of decay.
"I don't find the spotlight useful for my task, and none in my position truly benefit from peacocking when it is not necessary. It is better to have the freedom to move than it is to be popular, is it not?" She says, tearing her eyes from the tree and back to the “mechanic.”
"Many would not welcome that stance in a noble, I feel. We like power to be where we can see it, us Karrakin, do we not? The parades, the duels, the thrones. To awe some of those who wield none, and to let those who wield some keep it accountable. Who would want the fate of their world to be decided in business deals behind closed doors..."
Many? Not him though, or it would be his opinion. He’s prodding her back. No matter, she’s always had plenty to say about this.
"Perhaps that some of us would prefer the boisterous and ineffective is the problem. The parades, duels, thrones, they are good for projecting power and prosperity. But here and now, our prosperity is a lure to those who would grasp for it, and our power a pretext for them to pounce first."
"And so you were underestimated and did get the first pounce.” Nera feels herself reorienting herself towards the emergency release as he says this, aware suddenly of how quick her reaction must be when it comes. “Several even, as far as I have heard. But do you think the people you have cost regret being too boisterous, of all things? Will they take some moral lesson in politics from this? Or will they regret you in specific, your Lordship, getting away with it, and seek to regain their standing?"
"Maybe they will. I cannot make them take the correct lesson from their misstep, as they cannot distract me from the duty I must perform. Perhaps if they were amenable to learning they would not be so vulnerable to begin with."
Nera pauses. He’s become very direct, and she’s aware of his hands moving more quickly at the panel. She could jump back outside the airlock, away from him, or attempt to make the first move to separate him from the controls, but she’s sure that would just be an opportunity. This is a game of chicken, and she must make him act first. So she asks:
"What is your name, ser?"
"Oh, I don't have one quite yet.” His fingers move faster. “One of the trappings of my field I have been quite fortunate to avoid to this point. See, unlike my employers, I do actually agree with you. Some power is best exercised anonymously, though you have rather effortlessly countered my more remote methods."
There is silence for a moment.
Then the room explodes. The outer door to the airlock bursts open, creating a burst of wind as the air rushes to escape. Nera feels it pulled from her lungs too, a cleaving pain despite her attempts to hold her breath before the flexsuit automatically activates and seals her off from space. On reflex, she manages to catch the emergency release and close the outer doors, but not before the “mechanic” is pulled out the airlock and into the space between the arcs.
Air comes back. Slowly. It doesn’t mitigate the sudden pain in her lungs, nor the ringing in her ears that almost drowns out the klaxons. Her vision swims, and she immediately collapses against the ground as a wave of nausea comes over her. There’s a hand at her shoulder, and voices somewhere, although she cannot hear what they’re saying. She mostly sits, letting her decompression training take over: remain still, wait for aid, do not attempt to walk on your own. Breathe the fresh oxygen from the flexsuit.
ooc: it's @luna-wing-cns274! stealthy, quick, and dangerous, and each fighter lightly customized per the specialities of their pilots. could've worked on the shading more i think but otherwise very happy w it!
Not an NHP, not some para-whatever-the-hell pseudoscientifical bullshit—but not human, either, and not comp... just a ship, the way the Old Man and his sort liked to figure 'em.
"Sailors have known their Ships to sense and speak since Times when they did not yet fly."
It... fits, kind of. I remember having those kinda stories on my mind the first time the Star reached out. That must've been for something, right? Maybe it's just the Deep messing with my head, like back then, but this, I think I can make work.
Dunno if it'll ever sit fully right with me, though. Dunno if I'm the type to be stuck in a sailor's parable—knowing how I've been about it all I've probably missed the lesson fifteen times by now, and I still got no idea what it could be—but I guess someone has to do it. Stories don't get told for no reason.
ooc: the Albatross carrier Falcon, for @albatross-lancer!
she's based off the Lancer Battlegroup Masauwu-class design, with a couple changes for (what i think is) a cleaner look befitting an order of relativistic space knights. she's also huge. includes a radial heat sink around the gravity ring to bleed off all that excess energy she makes and an engine complex longer than an Arleigh Burke :)
