Guide

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Auroria

1.

Alchemist Pontinia’s Plague Diary

Lore

[An informative document containing the alchemist’s analysis of the epidemic plaguing Hycrest in Auroria.]

Health Incident Nexus-1372

-Day 01
Three cases with similar symptoms today, all lowborn. Not surprising, seeing diseases and ailments among their kind, but three in one day raises some concerns. Recommended a series of standard-strength medishots twice per day to all three patients. Standard medishots should be more than enough to destroy any potential contagions – if this is indeed a contagiou
s disease – to near-zero. I hope this isn’t something going around. I have real science to do here. I don’t have time to play nursemaid for every lowborn sod who stubs his toe.

-Day 02
Seven more cases today with the same symptoms, all among lowborn. All were employed at the Hycrest starship facilities in some capacity – laborers or service personnel. More disturbingly, I have heard from none of the three previous patients, and they are not responding to datachron messages. I am going with a more poten
t suite of medishots for these patients, including a slow-release anti-viral and inoculation against all known space plagues. I’ve also informed these patients that they will be required to remain under observation for the next twenty-four hours or until I know what happened to the three from yesterday.

-Day 04
This is, to put it mildly, not good. Fifty-two new patients since last I had a chance to make a note in this… well, at this point I’d have to call it a plague diary. Because there’s no doubt
in my mind. That’s what this is. I just need to understand how it’s spreading if I’m going to kill it. That means I have to contemplate something I don’t really want to contemplate.
Letting this thing run its course through the lowborn for a while.
All my ethics are against it, but I have to be a realist. It would be far simpler to isolate the relatively small number of highborn Cassians in Hycrest from the infected lowborn than quarantine all the lowborn from the highborn.
I also must make sure this
journal never falls into the wrong hands. What a thing to admit: allowing the Hycrest Plague to take hold without trying hard enough to stop it!

-Day 07
More than two hundred cases, now. Twenty-three deaths, including two highborn elders who insisted on dying in their homes, infecting their servants and who knows how many relatives. We must find a cure for this before it spreads to the rest of our territory on Nexus. Or worse – to the other worlds of the Dominion.
My decision to allow the disease to
spread among the lowborn was correct. Today, a breakthrough! A patient awakened from an artificially induced coma on her own. The girl – a teenager, the noble daughter of a local lowborn merchant – said she had witnessed a vision of another girl about her age, hooded and hidden yet alight with holy fire, calling her name just before she awakened. She has requested permission to return home, but I haven’t the heart to tell her the rest of her family is already raving with the sickness.

Guide

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Auroria

1.

Momma’s Family

Lore

[A brief history of the lowborn Kestus clan.]

It isn’t easy being Momma Kestus. All my children, stars above! I declare, however do I keep track of them all? It’s hard enough to keep track of the ones who are mine. I suppose that’s why I went to set down the story of the Kestus family. How we came to be.

It was in the late years of the Ghost Emperor’s reign that Martha Trivvers joined in holy matrimony with one Bartholomic Winslor Kestus, a lowborn Cassian with highborn ambitions and an inherited
highborn last name. That’s before they called me “Momma” of course. That came later. But not much later! Before we knew it, we had five youngsters in the home and a sixth on the way. By then, people didn’t even remember Martha Trivvers. I was Momma now.

Then all those wonderful children started to grow up, right about the time Bartholomic Winslo Kestus decided to take a flight on his personal orbital shuttle in the middle of a meteor storm…
without taking out meteor insurance. I tell you, what was I supposed to do but put all those wonderful children of mine to work?

Guide

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Auroria

1.

Ode to Lucy by Hermit Bilvus

Lore

[A staggeringly romantic work of ostensibly poetic quality describing Hermit Bilvus’s love for the enigmatic Lucy.]

“L” is for the way you make me Love you,
“U” is for your Understanding ways,
“C” is just because you do Complete me,
“Y” of course is one and only You.

O Lucy, you’ve stolen my heart,
My sweet equivar, don’t you ever go far,
And never let us part.
O Lucy, I will always be true,
If you whinny you love me, then love me,
And I will love you.

“L” is just how Lucky you’ve
made me,
“U” keeps me Under your spell,
“C” is the Crazy you make me, my darling,
“Y” is the way that you make me Yell.

O Lucy, this love cannot be!
Wild equivar hearts will always depart,
To run wild and free.
And Lucy, do you know what I mean?
Man and equivar can’t go very far,
Just riding on dreams.

Guide

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Auroria

1.

Tech Seeker Objectives

Lore

[This documentation details the goals of the Exile Academy of Science’s Tech Seeker division.]

Tech Seekers, you know why we’re here. Some other folk in the XAS may think Eldan Tech is just for studying or for storing data they can work up into a treatise on a dead culture that’s gone from the universe and ain’t coming back. They think we just need to learn what they were all about. But Tech Seekers know what Eldan tech is good for: killin’ Dommies.

So that’s what we want to see. Killer constructs.
Superweapons. Cascade bombs and orbital cannons. Defense systems. Tactical analysis. Anything that will help the fight against them fascist bastards.

One more thing. If you can take it apart and learn how it works, all the better, but don’t dismantle a single piece of tech until you are sure you can put it back together again. Remember, even if we can’t use it against the Dommies direct-like, it can always be sold off to pay for something that can.

All right, Tech Seekers. You ain’t typical scientists, so I don’t expect typical results. Get out there and seek some tech!

-Tech Seeker Supreme

Guide

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Auroria

1.

Directives from the Widow

Lore

Dominion operations in Auroria feed more than half their settled population. Yet they still seek to expand their farmlands and use technology and Eldan secrets to increase the yield of this place. Their precious spaceport, Hycrest, sits like a blight in the middle of all this greenery. It’s like my colleagues are fond of saying, “Sometimes only a culling can end a blight.”

Agents, we’re going to hit them where they’re most vulnerable: right smack in the lowborn. The highborn, the Luminai, even the
Draken and Chua look down on Cassian lowborns. They get less of everything: less food, and generally speaking, far less of the Dominion’s vast wealth than their highborn counterparts. It’s a wonder they haven’t all rebelled to join the Exiles, and it’s a testament to the hold their superstitions have over them.

Fortunately, my alchemists can create a plague that doesn’t care whether you’re highborn or
lowborn, only that you’re Cassian. And this won’t harm our Exile human allies, either. My alchemists are that good. Better yet, the highborn’s own arrogance will be their undoing.

You each have your individual objectives. I expect them to be accomplished with efficiency, secrecy, and professionalism. No one fails me a second time.

-The Widow

Guide

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Auroria

1.

Proposed Cubig Promotion Proposal

Lore

Protostar’s Cubacon-Flavored Calorie-Neutral Wafer-Chips! Get all the goodness of factory-produced cubacon without any of the messy nutrients! Yes, Protostar’s patented “Calorificient” technology removes anything of physiological value from these food-like objects, leaving you with nothing but deliciousness. And is that not why you eat? Cubacon-Flavored Calorie-Neutral Wafer-Chips… from Protostar!

———————————————————————–
HEAD OF CREATIVE’S NOTES
—-
——————————————————————-

-Too many hyphens! If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a quadrillion times – too many hyphens are the mark of poor naming protocols!
-“Deliciousness” is not yet ready for release to the public. Please use the approved term “flavorocity.”
-“And is that not why you eat?” Idiot! Never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. ESPECIALLY in advertising! What if they eat to provide caloric intake to maintain minimal life
requirements, for example? Or because they really hate food and want to see it suffer? YOU DON’T KNOW. So don’t ask!
-In closing, I want every employee responsible for this to report immediately to a recycling facility immediately for new copywriter templates – immediately!

Guide

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Auroria

1.

I, Cubig

Lore

They say I am cubig. Cubig Prime, the green men say. Yet they do not “tell-me” tell me, do they? They do not know Cubig Prime understands. Green men do not know what I, Cubig, can feel. Do not know I, Cubig… can love.

She was unlike any cubig I have seen. Admittedly, all Cubig Prime saw before was inside of cubig pen, with other cuboars like Cubig Prime. And you might say, “Cubig Prime! Who is ‘she’?” And Cubig Prime would not answer because Cubig Prime cannot speak. But Cubig Prime would think
at you. Think at you very hard. And you would know. You would see, as Cubig Prime sees. She is everything. She is the mud in my wallow. The slop in my trough. She is the Cubig Sow. And then she is gone.

Cubig Prime has never seen her kind, because her kind does not usually exist. The green men tell me this. Their thoughts are simple. They did not bring the Cubig Sow here. She was… is… an “anomaly.” Should not exist. They think Cubig Prime should not know of this. Should not know she escaped.
Think Cubig Prime cannot know of this. They are wrong.

Cubig Prime will not be in the cage of green men forever. Cubig Prime has a plan. I, Cubig, shall be free. I, Cubig, shall find her. And I, Cubig, will prove to her that love conquers all.

[While it is no doubt impressive that a hoofed animal was able to write it in the first place, the rest of the story continues in this derivative vein and lacks a satisfying third act.]