EPILOGUE – PATCH NOTES 24.X
(Virtual Room in NERV HQ)
“Damn it, this is happening too soon!”
“We haven’t had time to prep for phase six yet!”
“We were supposed to have another six months to prep for this!”
“We were scheduled to be going into phase three now!”
“Fuck, what will this do to phase four prep?”
Isaac Hayes, lead programmer and chief game-master for Dreams Amongst the Stars, shook his head as he listened to his subordinates bemoaning their fate. He had known from the moment that the Rifts appeared in Sol and Coldana that their schedules were going to get thrown out the window, but by this much? With the rifts closed, it should have been a couple years, in game, for things to settle before things got anywhere close to this point.
Unfortunately, they had underestimated the Ihm. Their pride, especially when getting shown up by people who rejected their caste structure and superiority, had driven them to try something stupid. And, as normally happened when stupidity reigns at the highest levels of government, chaos reigned.
Frankly, the whole situation made him want to just throw up his hands and say, “Fuck it!” After all, at this point there was little that they could do. The systems in place were already moving, and events were picking up speed so quickly that there was no way to stop this train without derailing the whole thing.
But that wouldn’t solve their problems. He conjured a bullhorn, and had it make a loud siren sound, cutting through the chatter. As all eyes turned on him, he tossed the bullhorn to the side, and it disappeared into the ones and zeroes it was made of.
“All right. This complicates things, sure. We weren’t ready for mass exploration of the rest of the galaxy, or the fact that any of the dark gods would be active so soon. Nothing we can do about that. Thankfully, it isn’t something that will just pop up tomorrow. We have time to work on this.”
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He held up his hand to stop further questioning. “Known Space is in the Orion spur of the Sagittarius Arm. Any exploration by the major powers will be limited to the Sagittarius Arm at most until they figure out where more of the Gateway addresses lead. And they don’t have a listing for those addresses, so no one is firing off blind.”
“But what about Black Star?”
Isaac looked over to the guy who spoke up. “Nuevo Edo and Star’s Reach are in the Norma Arm. So far, they’ve been sending their Starhunters through the arm, starting from their bases and expanding outward. The threat of finding the X’thari homeworld and encouraging the swarm to descend upon one of their worlds because they got tracked back is keeping those efforts, and the ones the Nuevo Edoans are starting to put together, small scale, and close to home. They’re no worry.”
He looked back at the group. “Like I said, the current players are no worry. They’re looking in the wrong place. The Three are in the Perseus, Scutum-Cruz, and Outer Arms, respectively. And the storehouses where information about them could be found, without actually meeting their worshipers, are not in realspace.”
“The Chaos Brigade made contact with the Fourth shortly after the Eye opened.”
Isaac nodded. “Yes, I saw the logs, same as you. They met the Fourth, and were given a quest. And, before anyone says anything, I know they went straight to Black Star to talk things through. However, they’re just three ships, and they don’t know what they’re looking for, not really. They’re just guessing, and hoping that something works out. Because of the time dilation, even if they knew where to look, it would take them quite some time, real world time, to find what they’re looking for.”
He took a breath, and said, “I would estimate that we still have six or seven months, real time, before things come to a head. Cancel the invasion plans for the Three, that will buy us some time. We can build the threat with the Fourth starting to make plays in the game world, screwing with people. Max, how’s prep for phase three and four looking?”
“Well, we’re going to have to throw out any plans that involved the Ihm. That was going to be the first big event we introduced for them, since they’ve been having it quiet this whole time.”
“Ihm has an event they can deal with already. See if you can fold the caste war into the demon war. That will make everyone think we had this planned from the start.”
“We have a problem with Phase Four. The Chimera event is solidly on its way, but political winds have been shifting. It might undercut some of the impact if they are no longer kill on sight when it starts up.”
Isaac smirked. “Sounds like a problem that our favorite chimera will need to deal with. Speaking of which, what is the status of the tech needed for the phase four plot?”
“Not good. The Imperial Civil War and the Jagloth exterminatus made people really hesitate before they went to go poking new and untested technologies with sticks. The tech to defend against the dark ships hasn’t been developed like we were hoping. The Jagloth facility was lost, naturally, as were a couple facilities in the Empire, casualties of the war. The other major repository found so far is in the hands of Black Star, and they haven’t shared with the public.”
“Right, maybe we’ll need to give him a bit of a nudge, to start getting the tech out there.”
“Shadowgate already tried to make contact with him, and that ended spectacularly badly for them. He still hasn’t done anything with the tech, partly because of the Sol situation.”
“Damn. Ok, here’s what we’ll do…”