Recap!In the middle of the conveyor crystal lines is us. This area also includes the Alterin fortress and its elevator-accessable fusion reactor (the large thing and its large multispace icon), the nearest Proxian village/town (the smaller buildings with only the outside shown), The Chained (inside its prison of vault crystals further left than the proxians), an empty cavern, and Outposts Nearby-Proxian, High-Cavern, Surface, Fortress, and Elevatus. The names should be relatively self-descriptive, and they are all Overseer crystals.
The refined crystal box at the top (not the giant cube) is roughly the distance across that the core region is. Part of the Farseer Oversight Sector in the middle is Outpost Undercore, another Overseer crystal. Also in this area: Mana crystal clusters, Thon (who is
not in charge of the entire damn arcana, but if you ask the Proxians he is the Determinor of Continents) the mana crystal structure/being near the large cube area, the location of the point at which The Thing That Went Poom was and where we teleported Explorer from, and some of the Unusual Rocks we haven't named or done more than experiment on. Theres also water at the bottom of the large cave, and the near end of the feeler crystal strand that leads to Relay Alpha-West.
This is the first long-distance Relay Outpost we've setup. It is still a scale 2 image, and is 762.5k energy (61 feeler crystal strands) away from the beginning of the top refined crystal area of the Undercore region. It is under a Proxian Tower with a small mana crystal in it. We're interested in the gemcraftsmanship more than the crystal itself, which is nothing special. It is not however, the tower we were looking for via radar in the first place.
Atmospheric Scan Results:
- LAF-1: Operational in non-Proxian directions. Scouting data received, stored.
- HAF-1: Returning to refuel. ETA: 2 hours. Out of transmission range for exploration data download.
- AISC-48124: Landed, maintenance in progress.
- Far Proxian Tower (west of base): No active energy signatures currently.
Orbital Scan Results:
- AIS Undeterred Wanderer: In standard orbit.
- Satellite Alpha: In geostationary orbit above base. Integrity nominal, no new messages received.
Long-Range Scan components under maintenance, scan aborted.
After reading through the attached legend and verbose output, you sort out the results: Two aircraft, one proxian signature far to the west, past the town. One shuttlecraft from the Undeterred Wanderer. Then that ship itself, an Explorator-class ship with minimal armament and maximal sensor suite setup. Lastly, one geostationary communications satellite, which explains why they didn't have the range you expected for transmitting down here. The shuttlecraft's com-lines haven't been hidden by the general encryption the base has had for some time, so you use it as a point to find out what the ship is here for.
...Interestingly, this wasn't an expected visit. The ship's hyperlight system is damaged beyond safe use, and they had to stop at the closest alterin base and hope they have the parts available. The ship could be here for quite some time, as a quick, slightly malformed request via the shuttle's com to the fortress network reveals the base does not actually have such parts manufactured, after you discard all the other junk text it threw at you in response.
So, next cycle(s) there is 3 general directions for us to go in:
0. Spend the excess energy, as you're going to be very much overcapacity otherwise. But I'm assuming you guys want to do this regardless of what else we go for. We aren't overcapacity this time
1. Keep talking to Thon. Find out whatever else he feels like talking about. Maybe find out if he counts as a social link if we have those. Maybe explore the other anomalies too. We did not do this one and can probably do this whenever if we don't bother him too much.
2. Hack the fortress network properly, find out more stuff if possible, and generally spy on them more while they have guests. We will need to focus on doing this over non-expansion things to do so due to the encryption, or focus the research regions on it to make up for us being focused elsewhere. We have not done this one and could switch to it while Explorer does other things, but not do this, connect to explorer, and expand at the same time.
3. Search for where that tower is in relation to us using the new sensors idea that came with reviving this after a few months. Find what sort of Proxians build towers instead of siege gear. We were in the middle of doing this when we found the closer tower
The large air-spottable proxian tower we'd learned of and went looking for via radar was roughly 3 scale 2 palantir sectors away, the maximum effective distance on our current radar capability. The tower RA-W is under is closer (roughly 1.5 palantir), presumably smaller, and not visible by alterin scout aircraft in the most recent report (perhaps its underground?). Theres also a second proxian town about half as far away as the further away tower, and a large mountain off to the northwest away from either of them. Our Alterin 'contact', for lack of a better word, is the guard near our crystal at the top of the reactor elevator, and our Alterin antagonist at the moment is Senior Scientist Bor, who has told us most of our information on them grudgingly and with much complaining about how trying to get a straight answer exchange from us is like trying to make rocks bleed. Our main Proxian antagonist would be Zov, who previously was a Master Arcanist (the one who summoned The Chained infact) before dying and later returning via his apprentice.
The new kind of rock here, somewhat more gray than the kind involved near mana structures, is for sure your kind of rock. Its solid, it appears to be more or less rock of only one type without any of the rubbish material you find near dirt, theres even some trace amount of mana near it.
After experimenting with different parts of the sector, you still aren't certain what the minimum energy requirement would be to take over the whole thing. Its very peculiar rock. You have figured out several things about it, however:
- If you charge it with energy, the trace mana vanishes. After it does so there appears to be more energy than you put into it, but it refuses to let go of it.
- if you charge it with mana or converted-energy mana, it flares up, then dissipates back down to minimal amounts. From the readings there is more mana than you put into it at peak flare, and it doesn't seem to dissipate out past the edge of the rock cluster.
- Attempting to charge it with both cracks it in two, in an unhelpful way. If there was energy in it beforehand, it lets go of it after cracking. Repairable.
- Blasting it with too much of either causes reflection. Reflection is annoying, since you have to go sort it back into the flow before it gets in the way of something like research.
- Hitting it with too little energy does nothing at all, like forgite.
For Explorer's recap, theres not that many posts of that yet so just go read them again. I think thats everything worth pointing out that relevant to what we could do right now (besides expand) without making a recap of the entire story, which would take awhile to put together.
Those things being: Mess with/possibly use & name the new rock type, Alterin espionage, Proxian tower exploring, Explorer business (after the data is finished transmitting), bugging Thon. If I missed something you think is important point it out tho, I only went back a couple pages to put together this recap.
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Topic: Crystalline - Cycle 84 (Read 86140 times)