Minor News Megathread

[Kazkin]

This thread is a record for all minor news articles posted on the discord, kept here for record keeping purposes.

[Kazkin]

Psionic Ascension
A lonestar news logo appears on the holoscreen before fading into communications officer Nowak, sitting at a desk with a few sheaths of paper, here to report news within the colony.

"For those, somehow, unaware with the recent actions of the Soteria, a new avenue of research has begun for the erstwhile institute. For supposedly years, the institutes director has been working towards expansion on the mind towards the ability to make science fiction now scientific fact. This has come in the form of psionic ascension, according to soteria researchers."

Nowak favors the camera with a dry smile, "Because giving the likes of prospectors and other thuggish psychotics mind powers is the kind of intelligent planning the Soteria are known for." He shuffles his papers before continuing. "The first clinical trials were performed by Soteria Director Nakharan Mkne himself on the surface floors and the resounding success has now led the Soteria to offer psionic ascension to any and all capable of obtaining it."

Nowak pauses, checking his papers. "It would appear that those with cybernetic implants, such as death alarms, cruciforms, or organ modules like arm blades, cannot become psions, as the body must have perceived 'purity' according to high ranking Chief Research Overseer Jeanne Petite. As to why this is the case, they are uncertain, but the knowledge has certainly earned the ire of the church, who have been left grumbling about the recent development even while the faction maintains a neutral stance on psions."
Nowak leans back on his chair, tapping his desk with his hand before he speaks off script to the camera. "While some ponder what may become of these psions and what potential unknown dangers they present, is yet to be seen. Spokesman from the confederacy, our void wolf allies, and various frontier factions also have voiced concern with this development. More so when the Soteria have refused to share it with anyone outside the colony. What our allies will do, is yet to be seen. I for one think if they want to benefit from the colonies discoveries, they should pay two arms, two legs, and a few kidneys. But, for now, this is communications officer Nowak, signing off."

The Lonestar news logo appears on screen before the segment ends.

[Kazkin]

Psionic Medicine: Are empaths the perfect psychologists?

A lonestar news logo appears on the holoscreen before fading into communications officer Nowak, sitting at a desk with a few sheaths of paper, here to report news within the colony.

Nowak shuffles his paper, looking at them for a moment before turning his gaze towards the camera. "Good evening, as some of you among the Soteria may have heard, the progress into psionic research as finally hit its first mile stone. Soteria Medical is now offering its first and newest form of psychiatric and psychological aid to the colony, in addition to new psionic thought experimentation." Nowak frowns slightly as he speaks, clearly finding the idea less than welcome, though he continues on. "Soteria Psychiatrist who have 'mastered the mind' as I'm reading." Nowak favors the camera with a sarcastic look. "Have found they have developed additional psionic powers allowing them to aid their fellow colonists. These powers, supposedly, settle the mind and enhance the body through psychosomatic therapy. How that works on a technical level I have no fucking..."

Nowak pauses. "I have no idea if I'm allowed to swear, well that gives my manager something to think about. Anyways, I have no fucking clue what that means on a technical level, so further details need to be found with the Soteria." He shuffles his papers before leaning back on his chair, going a bit off script given his sudden eased tone and small smirk at the corners of his lips. "So now the psychs can reach directly into your head and fix problems, I see no problem with that. It makes me wonder just whats going to happen when Soteria hits its next milestone, but hey, that's what makes living here so interesting, am I right?" He chuckles as the Lonestar news logo appears and the screen fades to black.

[Kazkin]

Colony Games: Boxing!

The monthly colony games comes and goes once more, with the winners being the prospectors and lonestar in a shocking end where both factions tied for first place during the tourney. Presided over by premier Julian Anvil, this months games were sand pit knuckle fights outside the church, catered by the local hunting lodge for food and drink. The competing factions were: prospectors, lonestar, blackshield, artificer guild, marshals, soteria, the church, and a surprised entry from the hunting lodge.

A complete break down of the tourney is listed below.

Teams
Blackshield
Contestant 1 - Gharol Vorrod
Contestant 2 - Miki Toshimura

Soteria
Contestant 1 - Risikio Iscariot
Contestant 2 - Aerith Aether

Lonestar
Contestant 1 - Wilson Mounsion
Contestant 2 - Alice O'lart (Late entry, originally AO Twenty-seven)

Marshals
Contestant 1 - Officer Snow
Contestant 2 - Officer Ikamura

Church
Contestant 1 - Vector Bron
Contestant 2 - Vector Timotius

Lodge
Contestant 1 - Karl Rora
Contestant 2 - Charles Astra

Wins/Matches
Scores
-Prospectors: 3
-Artificer Guild: 1
-Lonestar: 1
-Blackshield: 1

* Battle 1 - Artificer Guild vs. Church (Artificer victory)
* Battle 2 - Artificer Guild vs. Prospectors (Prospector victory)
* Battle 3 - Blackshield vs. Marshal (Blackshield victory)
* Battle 4 - Prospectors vs. Lodge (Prospector victory)
* Battle 5 - Lonestar vs. Soteria (Lonestar victory)
* Battle 6 - Prospectors vs. Blackshield (Prospector victory)
* Battle 7 - Prospectors vs. Lonestar (Draw)

Each fight proceeded as one would expect, with the only notable exceptions to the norm being the final bout between lonestar and the prospectors. Both sides put up an extremely good showing between the four. The fight lasted the longest, with Alice being eliminated first on the Lonestar side before being followed by Vigil MacLeod. The remaining two fighers, Pavel Marsk and Wilson Mounsion continued to spar, with Pavel's greater strength and toughness versus Wilson's lightning fast footwork. Yet, in a display that surprised all spectators, the two fighters managed to knock each other out in the very same set of punches. A display for the holovids, surely, as each man collapsed so closely together that the presiding referee made the judgement call of naming it a draw, tying both factions for first place. While questionable, the ruling was ultimately allowed, letting the prospectors and lonestar claim the bounty for the monthly colony games.

A good show for everyone, lets hope next months colony games are just as exciting!

[Kazkin]

Progress!

Soteria is pleased to announce that research has hit a new milestone through the use of their greyson AI Brynn and recovered artifice from the hivemind. While questionable, given the associated risks, hive lord bioprocessors were recovered by Soteria personnel and experimented upon. Though a few were destroyed during testing, use of methods provided by Soteria's captured greyson intelligence provided additional avenues of study which yielded quite extraordinary results. Theories proposed by Soteria researchers that hiveminds worked as "repositories" of information for the hivemind consciousness have now been proven correct, as once a safe and established method to retrieve information was developed the Soteria was inundated with millions of yottabytes of data. The absolute breadth of data has proven a challenge to decode and a large bulk of it proved either useless or trivial, but snippets of metaphysical gold have already been discovered.

So far, these discoveries have largely been towards quantum computing, the methods in which Soteria runs most of its AI and research systems. With it, they have improved a large portion of their research network and applied it to existing data stores and servers. This functionality, while largely unnoticed by the bulk of Soteria, will be quite the boon towards the research and development area.

In addition, rumors are abound that a large portion of data recovered from these hivemind bioprocessors detail information gathered during the hiveminds singular sojourn into deep maintenance. Compounded with this is other rumors detailing that the strange and esoteric nature of the place known as deep maintenance is starting to leak out onto various places, with many believing that we may see strange and unusual changes in the following weeks. Whether these rumors are true or not is currently unconfirmed, but the Soteria director, who at this time has made no comment on the matter, has been confirmed to be dispatching teams to investigate the potential outcomes based on recovered data.

What becomes of the rest of this yet to be plumbed data is yet to be known, but as always, the march for progress continues.

[Kazkin]

Call to Action
For those who are unaware, the bastion of strength and defense to the colony known as the seraph class combat mech "Iron Tyrant" has been destroyed by Aaron Unk, a former member of the prospectors. This blow to the colonies defenses was done by the former prospector under the belief of bias in the Nadezhda marshals, seeking to cripple them for perceived injustices on his behalf. True or not, Unk has been executed by firing squad after being charged with an extensive list of crimes before being condemned by tribunal. His death a landmark in the colonies first execution of a head of staff, Unk being a former foreman before his untimely death. A short funeral via cremation was held for his passing, but reportedly nobody except a single vector, the acting premier, and the acting biolab overseer attended.

This case comes along with the news that, the day prior to its destruction, the iron tyrant had been stolen by an outsider who successfully infiltrated the colony. Despite their best efforts to escape with the tyrant, however, the outsider was disabled and captured using ion weaponry by the combined efforts of the marshals and blackshield. This occurrence happened during a key critical meeting between the low council and is not the first time this has happened by a wily outsider.

As a result of the repeated actions and attacks by multiple outsiders, the provost marshal has declared open season on non-allies and non-citizens of the colony when in the field. A change that has already reportedly been unpopular with everyone who has never had to deal with outsiders. But many reports of prospectors and security team members are not only happy with the change, but eager to finally put these annoyances in the ground once and for all. Time will tell if this decree will remain. Is it a reactionary action taken in anger or simply how life on the frontier must be? Time will tell.

[Kazkin]

Scrap Haven

News has finally come down to the lower colony via the prospectors after thorough checking of a new potential ruin for scavs and other thrill seekers to hit, loot, and die in. Nicknamed the Scrap Haven by the resident void wolves who have already taken up shop, this cavern systems seems to be the crater of a fallen star ship. Some have already speculated that it was a fragment of the blown apart space fortress, a popular idea but not entirely believed as veteran prospectors have already noted much of the ruin does not match the remembered asteroid base interior.

Unfortunately, the area is currently controlled by an unknown group of void wolf reavers who have deployed teams of vat grown workers to strip the place of materials and salvage. The sheer size of the ship however means such an operation is a constant affair and the unknown enemy has set up a permanate rock base inside the walls of the cavern. Some have also reported that outsiders have been seen scaling up and down the rock walls, making the territory hotly contested.

While worrisome to some, for the scrap haven is dangerously close to the colony, blackshield intelligence officers have already concluded it presents little threat. The area is ill suited as a staging point to assault the colony due to a natural choke point at the caverns entrance. As such, it is the problem of the prospectors, who already are making sojourns to the cave to gun down vat growns in search of plunder. The entrance to the scap haven appears to be a small almost hidden passage near the burned outpost, south west of the gate house.

Local lodge hunters have also noted that a secondary entrance is also present, north of the river forest, providing a shorter but far more dangerous path now between the colony and lodge by foot.

[Kazkin]

Catastrophic Outbreak

Soteria is once again in hot water for the actions of a presently unnamed research overseer who elected to retrieve and study the psionic monsters of deep maints through the use of soteria AI and cyborgs. This prospective bot managed to collect and secure several specimens on its own and bring them to xenobotany for study.

However, unknown to anyone at the time, this caused what is now being called a psionic resonance cascade that called the dreaming king and his murderous hound to Xenobiology. Several scientist noted screaming, flickering and blown out lights, and the appearance of unexplained gore on the floors before the resident AI alerted to a potential outbreak. Colony response was swift, but the reaction of these monsters proved as deadly.

Two people were counted amongst the dead, with roughly 16 badly injured after the smoke cleared. Those that perished horribly mutated into genetic monstrosities, a latent effect caused by the crimson jelly that rampaged through Soteria.

To make matters worse, shortly after a scientist and colonist attempted to 'clone' a higher life form, that being one of the diseased colonist. As many readers will know, the cloning of an intelligent life form is not possible for even the Soteria. This attempt resulted in 5 additional casualties, as the attempted genetic mutation of a monkey with colonist DNA caused an immediate mutation that went on to mutate and effectively kill three more people.

While horrific and a prime example of why the Marshals retain the power to halt experiments done by the Soteria for colony safety, the event has been ruled as accidental, with the punishment of actors within Soteria being handled in house. However, Soteria has been levied a hefty fine and cited for this gross incompetency. Another foot note in their already decaying reputation.

[Kazkin]

It's evolving, just backwards.

An amusing if troublesome development has begun on the surface with the presently unnamed "bird monkies" that have infested areas of the forest some months ago. These primitive tribals are heavily armed with spears, rocks, and toxins that they are able to toss and sling with incredible speed, likened by many similar to bullets, given how they impact hard enough to penetrate armor and even embed in an unlucky colonists flesh.

Though somewhat dangerous, these primitives are seen as a mild annoyance at best, often dealt with by low caliber fire arms and sharp edged weapons. Until recently, it was believed that the intelligence they had was simplistic at best, on par with primates and perhaps only beating them out by a small margin. That however has changed now that the primitives made a quite dangerous attack on the colony.

Using what can only be considered a scavenged and repurposed ship mass driver, the tribals rigged a simple catapult-esque system to launch welder tanks at the colony surface and walls in a bid to cause as much destruction as possible. These improvised missiles proved quite dangerous, exploding on impact and leaving burning welding fuel in their wake. Parts of the defensive wall were destroyed until hastily erected colony shields could be powered on to prevent further damage.
An expedition team consisting of Blackshield, the Church, and the Prospectors were immediately dispatched to deal with the sieging tribals. The mortar base was set up on the roof tops of a greyson field office building and guarded by several tribals who appeared to have been taking copious amounts of combat stims and party drops, with expedition members noting that this was likely the cause for their quite clever plan to mortar the colony with nothing but salvage and for the tribals quite lethal methods of defense.

Thankfully, this sect of mysterious tribals have been put down. Leaving some within the soteria to consider what further developments may arise, if any at all.