Stellaris: One Year Later

Hard to believe that it's been almost one whole year since Paradox Interactive released Stellaris on May 9th, though I'd been getting myself hyped by reading the dev diaries, watching Quill18's space cats, and watching the friendly exploits of the Blorg Commonality on the official Extraterrestrial Thursday streams for months before the game hit. Since Stellaris has been one of my favorite games since then (alongside Starbound and Spore... interesting how they all start with "S"), I figured I'd look back at some of the major changes Paradox has made to the base game since 1.0 with the five (soon to be six) major patches and two expansions, and my personal opinions on them.
(Also, for more information than I could ever explain, you might want to check out the official Stellaris wiki.)

Excellent Changes (or OH MY GOD WHY WASN'T THIS IN THE BASE GAME)

• Borders (1.2/Asimov): It used to be that the game came to a screeching halt when your borders ran up against a rival empire and trapped you in your own territory. Their borders were always closed, unless you were in an alliance or somehow managed to bribe them, and you couldn't explore star systems or complete special project chains (such as collecting animals or surveying dead planets to hopefully avert a mass extinction) or go and kill those fanatical purifiers on the other side. Then along came the 1.2 update, which dramatically improved how borders function. Now, all borders are open by default but can be closed as part of or to instigate a rivalry. I can't tell you how much this improves the game; it means you can complete project chains in much quicker time and gives your science ships much more to do.

• Habitability (1.3/Heinlein): One of the more interesting concepts is the game is colonizing planets: you can only colonize certain planets depending on the biome of your homeworld-for example, humans prefer continental Earth-like planets but can do okay on ocean or jungle planets; and my Lyrites prefer rocky arid planets but can somewhat tolerate sandy deserts. However, before 1.3, the planets were arranged into a wheel pattern that caused some issues: people on arid planets could live on cold tundra planets with no problem, and jungle-dwellers could live in sandy deserts. I actually exploited this once when I uplifted some strong-but-dumb Zukakkans who lived on the arid planet Baidaan III and used some Kenjodans (a race of mammalians whose empire got partitioned into a war; I took two planets and allowed two others to form another empire based on my principles in something resembling a space East/West Germany). To make things even more frustrating, you only gained the ability to colonize planets based on technology, so I had to wait decades until the Kenjodans I conquered could settle new tundra planets and expand my dominion. Of course, this made no sense whatsoever, and finally in 1.3 it was solved when habitability was reworked: now planets are arranged into a grid based on climate, so desert-dwellers specifically prefer dry planets, ice-lovers like cold planets, and humans still like ocean/tropical planets. The technology requirements for colonization were also removed (and the latest patch allows you to start able to colonize... more on that later), so you can colonize every type of planet from the get-go.

• Integrating Aliens (1.5/Banks): As I mentioned, expansion to different types of planets is accomplished through either: 

• Sufficiently advanced robots

• Genetically modifying your people

• Using aliens who've come to your planets, peacefully or not

The latter option is the easiest, most interesting, and most readily available, but it comes at a cost since the aliens may not have the same ideologies and/or be cranky about you conquering their planets for some reason. However, perhaps you're benevolent and want to do more with your new citizens for colonizing; perhaps you want to allow them full rights and even allow them to produce leaders to aid your empire? It was possible in Stellaris, but as with colonization it was only possible via a technology that was really annoying to get. In the latest patch, 1.5, this has been changed so that you can not only have alien leaders from the start but also specially tune the rights each race in your empire has. For example, perhaps there's some lizard people who live long and gain experience quickly (making them amazing leaders), whereas a bunch of bird-people have short lifespans. In this case, you'd allow the lizards to produce leaders but bar the birds.

In my current game, I conquered a race of spiritualist lizards called the Netraxi, and soon had one of my top-level human scientists die peacefully of old age. I looked in the replacement panel and sure enough, there already was a Netraxi there waiting to get recruited. I of course said yes, and he might just become ruler of my empire, which is interesting to consider (especially since I'm not a xenophobe)

• Factions (1.5/Banks): Another recent change; before 1.5, factions in your empire would form and always be rebel scum that had to be suppressed and/or purged. Thankfully, this was changed so that factions represented political movements/parties that represented specific issues tied to the different ethics in your empire; for example, xenophobes hate aliens having equal rights and like having your primary species as ruler, whereas materialists love having robots but don't like it when you fall behind in technology. It makes things more interesting and actually makes factions helpful rather than an annoyance; it now becomes possible to embrace their ideology and change your ethics entirely!

• The Midgame (1.5/Banks): One of Stellaris' weaknesses is the midgame, where exploration slows and you start to interact with (i.e. conquer) the empires around you. Eventually, you realize that very little is happening and you decide to just abandon your current campaign and see what else there is to offer (well, I do anyways). Thankfully, this has been something Paradox has noticed and is attempting to improve, but I feel they really struck gold with the most recent (as of writing) patch and accompanying expansion Utopia. Now you can choose an endgame goal for your empire, such as uploading your people into robots or becoming psionic, and this gives you a better goal to work with and keep you waiting through the midgame. There's also the option to build megastructures such as ringworlds or Dyson spheres et al., giving you even more incentive to stick around for a bit and keep playing through the midgame slog-fest.

Good Changes (I haven't seen these personally, or perhaps they just aren't as good as the above)

• Slaves (1.2/Asimov): No decent sci-fi would be complete without slaving jerks, and thankfully this has been a key part of playing as collectivists/xenophobes from the very beginning. However, at first it was possible to game the system by enslaving people so that they didn't have happiness and thus join annoying rebel factions. In 1.2, this was changed so that slaves went into one of two factions: Docile slaves who only wanted regulation, and Malcontents who wanted freedom at any cost. With 1.5, this was changed further with an Unrest mechanic that makes slaves highly dangerous and rebellious if not controlled with armies.

• Fallen empires (1.3/Heinlein): Far more interesting than normal empires, fallen empires are ancient beings with advanced technology who once controlled much of the galaxy, though are isolationist and have a relatively small amount of territory (somewhat like the Siranians from Spore Revolution). However, they were relatively uninteresting and not varied enough before 1.3 came out, which made it so that they could awaken depending on galactic events and some of them will even ask the younger races for help. Under the right circumstances (i.e. an accompanying DLC), two awakened Empires can even start a massive War in Heaven that will involve all the younger races of the galaxy and massively reshape the map.

• Infiltration (1.5/Banks): Those of you who have read my Lyrite playthrough will know that it is possible to infiltrate industrial-age aliens in an attempt to gain control of their precious planet (like lizard-people are certainly not doing to our own Earth) by disguising your people to resemble the natives. Though pretty explicitly mentioned as due to genetic manipulation, I preferred to explain early-game infiltration (i.e. before you discover genetic engineering tech) as holographic disguises, until Banks came along last month. Now infiltration explicitly requires said technology, which makes it more of a midgame option. That's okay, because now it makes more sense and invading the poor fools is still a perfectly valid option.

• Space Monsters (1.3/Heinlein): Another classic sci-fi theme present in Stellaris is spaceborne creatures, like the various noncorporeal beings or the Crystalline Entity from Star Trek. From 1.0 onwards, the monsters were spread like butter over regions of the galaxy with no context of how they got there or where they came from (especially since I doubt many of them had "natural" FTL travel). In 1.3 however, space monsters were changed so that they inhabited a particular region of space, with a home system containing a powerful base and special rewards. I quite like this change as it makes finding space monsters less irregular, though it is somewhat obnoxious to see mining drones over and over again like in my current campaign.

Neutral Changes (not good, but not horrible either)

• Hyperdrive (1.3/Heinlein): In Stellaris, you have three options for faster-than-light travel (FTL): warp drive that allows you to travel slowly to any star system (based on the Alcubierre Drive and Star Trek's warp drive); hyperdrive that allows you to travel very fast along predetermined and strategic routes (my personal favorite); and wormholes that require special stations to send ships to any star instantly. Since release, the particular numbers behind the methods have been heavily balanced, but a drastic change was made in Heinlein when hyperdrive charging was increased and required ships to move to the outer edge of a star's gravity well to go to FTL (previously hyperdrive ships could jump to hyperspace anywhere in a system). While it slows down hyperdrive considerably, that particular method of FTL was pretty overpowered anyways.

Bad Changes (why Paradox why)

• Warp Drive (since 1.0): As I mentioned earlier, warp drives are slow; need to charge up and cool down when leaving and entering a solar system, respectively; but have the advantage of unlimited movement between star systems. Since release, however, that advantage has become somewhat moot with continuous nerfs to warp drive, whether it's slowing it down even further or increasing the chargeup/cooldown times. Warp drive is now almost unbearably slow and is not a good pick, which is a problem because I feel that there should be at least some incentive to choosing one FTL type over another, even if it is just to shake things up. However, I have heard that future plans for the game include making hyperdrive the starting option and having warp/wormholes be research options, so that may be the incentive for this.

• Uplifting (1.4/Kennedy): Oddly enough, this particular issue is going to be fixed in the upcoming 1.6/Adams patch on the 1-year anniversary, but until then this poor design decision is still valid and annoying. Anyways, remember how I mentioned the Zukakkans, the lizard people I uplifted from a pre-sentient state? This is a perfectly viable midgame option for empires wishing to gain  one or more of the following: access to new planet types for colonization, a new species, a working class of dumb laborers, or even the fabled cockroaches who can live anywhere (especially nuked planets). While it used to be perfectly fine to simply have their planet in your borders (I got access to Baidaan III by colonizing a nearby Earthlike planet the settlers named Albion), in 1.4 this was foolishly changed so that you had to colonize the planet itself to uplift them. Not only did this "break immersion" since researching/conquering planets has no habitability or colonizing requirements, it also made uplifting less of an incentive and reduced it to merely a prerequisite for actual genetic engineering. Sure, using robots is an option, but it's tedious to micromanage building them manually and there's always the chance they can rebel if your research makes them too smart. Furthermore, roughly 90% of uplifting happens because you want a species to be able to handle new planetary climates to expand your empire. At least this is going to be fixed very soon, but I'm still somewhat annoyed the colonization route was even considered to be a better option than simply allowing you to uplift when the planet's in your borders. Remember, game devs: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Conclusion

As mentioned before, these are only the biggest changes I felt affected me and were worth talking about. There are plenty of other tweaks that have been made over the years, like changing space battles so they aren't horrible swarming messes, minor weapons balances you'll only notice in a mouse-over tooltip, or the new set of beautiful skyboxes that replaced the bland default one. I feel that the game has improved significantly since release, especially with the new Banks update back in April (as you can tell by the changes I listed). Will the game be even more awesome on May 9th, 2018? Only time will tell...

Here's another one of my favorite Banks changes: ship/station colors
based on your flag! This in particular is a Netraxi construction ship,
since they had a purple and green flag.

Stellaris: The Lyrite State, Part 2

Welcome back to my first (recorded) playthrough of the epic grand strategy space game Stellaris, where I guide a race of militant lizardpeople called the Lyrites from their homeworld (or homemoon?) of Lyrass to the voids of space. If anyone is actually reading this and wants to read the first part, I'll put a link down below. As we progress, I'll put links of all prior parts on each post so it's easier to navigate.

Previously...

• Part 1: In Which the Lyrite State Discovers Hyperlane Travel, Meets Strange Alien Races, and Establishes a Colony of Pollen Addicts

I, For One, Welcome Our New Alien Lizard Overlords

The LSS Lorod-Klonol was promptly dispatched to Roich to perform the daunting task of averting an impending nuclear war on the planet. Once it arrived, scientists from the ship worked with infiltrators to arrange for a conference of world leaders that called for nuclear disarmament and international cooperation, many of whom had already been replaced by Lyrites. The conference was a resounding success, and the replaced leaders gained more influence and popularity among the Haahn people.

However, things were not all peaches and cream on Haahn. The next year, an agent known by the
code-name X-32 went rogue and eloped with a Haahn female, abandoning a mission he felt was unjust. After a year alone with his girlfriend, he sent a transmission to the Lyrite government stating that if anyone attempted to hunt him down and bring him to justice, he would kill to protect himself and his girlfriend, and that the infiltration should be cancelled and the planet should be left alone. When his demands went unfulfilled, he used a list of operatives in his old cell to notify local authorities of their whereabouts. The infiltrators were promptly hunted down, and those who were arrested disintegrated themselves before they could be brought to a trial and possibly discovered.

Despite subsequent setbacks, the infiltration continued as planned and more and more Haahn leaders were replaced. Finally, in December 2218, Lyrite operatives dominated Roich's political landscape: virtually every politician was now a Lyrite. The leaders manipulated their governments so that the planet could be unified. When this was complete, a ceremony was held at the planet's capital, complete with drone fighters, parades and fireworks. The ceremony culminated in an envoy signing a petition for the planet to be officially annexed into the Lyrite State. The path required to achieve this moment had been filled with setbacks and strife, but at last a new species had joined the Lyrite State.

The End of Mharin Kharin

In 2214, on the first extralyrassian colony of Kluxared, the remote-administration had taken notice of a divisions of the colonial defenses. These fanatics were repulsed by the Mharin Kharin plant that had been used as a drug since shortly after the first settlers arrived on the planet. They went as far as to stay indoors due to the pollen in the planet's air. The administration elected to use the troops to mount what they called "an offensive like no other" on the plant.

Thus began what was termed "Project Fregnal-Sud",* a project to remove all traces of Mharin Kharin and improve conditions on the planet. The project would proceed in two phases: 

• Phase one would involve sweeping through populated areas and using herbicides on the Mharin Kharin plant.
• Phase two would involve the construction of atmospheric processors that had originally been used to clean up industrial wastelands left over from the pre-Unification eraon Lyrass. These processors would purge Mharin Kharin's narcotic pollen from the atmosphere, with the dual purpose of preventing citizens from getting addicted and halting the plant's spread.

While the project was not without controversy on both Kluxared and Lyrass, it nevertheless proceeded according to plan. In less than six Lyrassian orbits,** the Mharin Kharin plant had been completely eradicated from most urban areas and confined to controlled preserve areas on the planet. However, it would take longer for the populace to recover from what would come to be known as "the greatest cold turkey in galactic history".

Regarding the project, Consul Kulegaf would say "we should've done this a long time ago", and would soon pass a policy requiring that future colonies take detailed surveys of their planet's flora in the hopes of averting another incident like that on Kluxared.

*Fregnal-Sud literally translates to "Pleasant Breeze", but is commonly used to mean "fresh air".

**One Lyrassian orbit is roughly 15 Earth days, derived from the length of time it takes for Lyrass to orbit its parent gas giant.

An Unexpected War

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -Napoleon Bonaparte 

In 2217, the galaxy (or at least the part of it the Lyrites and their neighbors called home) was shocked when leaked intelligence reports indicated that the Djomar Commonwealth had amassed its main military fleet in the Padjitauron system, on the border with the Lyrite's neighbors and political rivals, the Till'Lynesi Empire. Many suspected that war between the two was imminent, and those suspicions proved true when the Djomar President made a speech on July 28:

For years, the xenos calling themselves as the Till'Lynesi have proven to be incapable of civilized diplomacy. While not inherently xenophobic, they believe themselves to be inherently superior to their neighbors, despite clear evidence to the contrary: namely, us. We have explored space for decades longer than they have, and our fleets are more powerful than theirs. Today, I intend to prove that to them: as of today, a state of war exists between us and the Till'Lynesi Empire. We cannot allow them to spread and become a threat to our neighbors!

Made using in-game screenshots and GIMP. Could've looked a bit better honestly, but oh well. It was a bit rushed...

Lyrite Naval Intelligence reported that the Djomar fleets were more than a match for the Till'Lynesi ships, with sturdier armor and more powerful shielding. Many Lyrites argued that they should intervene and assist the Djomar, but those claims were rebutted with the words of Frexanog:

When someone else fights your enemy, let them do the fighting and come in only after your enemy is utterly routed.

True to predictions, the war went badly for the Till'Lynesi. Their ships lost engagement after engagement until they did not even have a fleet to speak of. When the last of their ships was annihilated, there was nothing stopping the Djomar from bombarding the Till'Lynesi homeworld of Tilla and their colony in the Lambda Serpentis system. Once the planetary defenses were reduced to rubble, the Djomar landed their armies and began an all-out invasion.

A Djomar fleet raids a mining station near the Till'Lynesi-Lyrite border.
Due to the placement of a nearby colony, this skirmish was the
only battle in the war picked up on Lyrite sensors, allowing Lyrite Naval
Intelligence to evaluate Djomar vessels.

Overrun, the Till'Lynesi had no choice but to surrender. As part of the Treaty of Tilla, their government was officially disbanded and replaced with a Djomar-led puppet regime called the "Democratic Till'Lyensi Suns" that was seemingly independent but was in reality only a vassal state with no democratic freedom other than what the Djomar demanded.

True to the President's words, this did indeed prove the strength of the Djomar as a superior power that was not above using force to secure their territory. Thankfully, they maintained a cordial attitude towards the Lyrite people and considered them worthy of respect, in no small part because both understood the merits of allowing individual freedom.

The End?

This brings us to the end of another part. Unfortunately, this may ultimately be the last one. You see, Patch 1.2 (nicknamed Asimov by the development team) has recently been released, and it brings significant changes to the game, especially to diplomacy. I fear that these changes may possibly break the game I'm currently playing. If it doesn't break things too badly, then I will continue this without any delays. But if it turns out this is utterly unplayable, then I plan on starting up a new game with a different species and chronicling their history.

Whatever the case, I hope whoever is actually reading this enjoys my playthroughs.

Stellaris: The Lyrite State, Part 1

For my first detailed playthrough on this blog, I've decided to cover one of my new favorite games: Stellaris, a space grand strategy game with an incredible level of depth, detail, and (most importantly) storytelling potential. It was developed by the Sweden-based company Paradox Interactive, who you may know better as the developers of historical strategy games like Crusader Kings II.

Stellaris has been out for about a month and a half as of the time of writing, and I've only played a few games yet had many stories to tell. I figured it was time to combine Stellaris' potential for stories with my literary talents here on this blog. So, without further ado, let me tell the story of the Lyrite State, a democracy with an emphasis on military:

New Life and New Civilizations

The Lyrites evolved from intelligent lizard analogues in the temperate poles of the arid moon of Lyrass. After they began settling their first cities in fertile lands roughly 5,000 years ago, they formed a multitude of city-states that vied for influence and the moon's limited resources. This stayed pretty much the same until the early 22nd century AD. In that year, as the city-states became technologically equivalent to Earth in the early 1900's, a warlord named Frexanog began a series of conquests that would culminate in the unification of Lyrass and the foundation of the Lyrite State in the year 2120. The Lyrite State is a democracy led by an elected Consul where citizenship is earned through military service. Contrary to what may be expected, the Lyrite State is non-oppressive and guarantees several freedoms to all, citizen or not.

Societal Ethics: Fanatic Militarist (better-trained armies), Individualist (values
freedom over the state)
Species Traits: Communal (like living together),
Charismatic (friendly to aliens),
Quick Learners (leaders gain experience faster),
Sedentary (less willing to leave),
Arid Preference (greater habitability/happiness on drier planets)

In the year 2180, Lyrite scientists discovered that all stars in the galaxy were connected by a network of "tunnels" in space-time. Any ship entering these tunnels would be able to achieve faster-than-light speeds, able to traverse interstellar distances in mere days. For this reason, they were called "hyperlanes", and research & development into hyperspace engines began. 20 years later, as the 23rd century dawned, the first fleets of FTL-capable ships were launched into orbit of Lyrass, and the Lyrite State began a new chapter in interstellar history.

The Final Frontier

The Lyrite State began its interstellar history by surveying its home system of Karuss for deposits that could be of use, while a military fleet was dispatched to scout the stars connected to Karuss by the hyperlane network. Three months later, scientists on Lyrass were startled to learn of the existence of an alien species in the Mathonis system. Apparently, the fleet had discovered alien vessels and infrastructure in orbit of a habitable moon orbiting one of Mathonis's gas giants. From initial scans, it was determined the aliens were technologically on-par with the Lyrites.

The scientific community was rocked again in September 2201, with the revelation that Lyrite activities were beginning to cause a mass extinction of many species on Lyrass. The scientists suggested researching other worlds in an effort to determine how to undo this, as Lyrass had a very delicate ecology.

As science ships began making their way beyond the Karuss system over the next few years, they uncovered evidence of an ancient alien species in the Gilprim system: the Vultaum, a race of worm-like creatures who controlled the space in the vicinity of Gilprim some 12 million years earlier. However, the most astonishing finds were yet to come.

First Contact

While spaceborne creatures ranging from the docile Tiyanki to the ethereal Void Clouds had been discovered and several habitable planets had been surveyed and evaluated for future expansion, the Lyrites had yet to meet a fully-fledged star empire. That changed in the first few days of the year 2204, when they were contacted by the previously-discovered natives of the Mathonis system: the Mathin.
Much to the relief of Consul Faragulek, the Mathin turned out to be a peaceful, religious race of octopus-like creatures interested in cooperative co-existence with other species, such as the Lyrites. Once news of the event reached the Lyrite public, they had mixed opinions: some viewed the Mathin as potential allies, while others viewed the Mathin as weak pacifists and targets for potential conquest. Nevertheless, Faragulek began work on improving relations with the Mathin in the hopes of gaining a new ally.

Soon, more alien races revealed themselves: the Till'Lynesi were an avian race alike in ideology to the Lyrites but were viewed as a potential competition and threat since their preferred conditions matched those of the Lyrites; the Bokasherans were much like the aforementioned Till'Lynesi but not as much of a concern; and later the Djomar, who were more advanced than their neighbors but were thankfully peaceful and democratic spiritualists like the Mathin. However, xeno-diplomacy would have to wait, as a new threat emerged within the Lyrite State's borders.

Here Be Pirates

Marauding gangs of criminal thugs had lurked on Lyrass for many centuries, looting whatever they could find. While many were kept in line by the military, they were viewed as non-threats. But in 2206, one gang managed to steal a number of civilian freighters and convert them into warships. Establishing a base on an asteroid in the Satrinas system, they called themselves the "Feral Companions" and began raiding mining stations in the hopes of gaining resources to further their piracy. At first, the newly-elected Consul Kulegaf was content to ignore the pirates; he viewed them more as a nuisance. But the pirates proved themselves when they attacked and destroyed an energy refinery station in orbit of the gas giant Atlabba II. 

Kulegaf began preparing the fleet for a counterattack by building new corvettes to augment the fleet's relative power. Unfortunately, just as the fleet was in position, the pirates raced back to their base in Satrinas to prepare for another attack, and the fleet followed them. With the combined power of the base and the raiders, the Lyrite fleet was destroyed. However, the raider fleet was cut in half, which was a small victory in an otherwise crushing defeat.

In response, Kulegaf prepared a new fleet of corvettes equipped with newly-discovered deflector shields, appointed an admiral, and changed the name of the fleet to "F███ You Pirates" as his own personal revenge. The fleet had to be deployed early when the Feral Companions returned to Kurass to menace the civilian ships. The fleet was pursued back to Satrinas, where this time both raiders and base were destroyed. The few pirates who survived the destruction of their base were arrested and returned to Lyrass for a court-martial, and the victorious fleet was renamed to "F███ You Till'Lynesi" as Kulegaf and the Lyrite military began making plans for invasion.

The Mharin Kharin Crisis

In December 2205, amidst the discovery of other spacefaring races like the Mathin and Till'Lynesi, the Bax system showed particular promise, as it was discovered there were two worlds with conditions suitable for colonization. However, with initially only one colony ship, the planet of Bax I was chosen to be settled first. The first pioneers named the world Kluxared, after an ancient Lyrite messenger god.

In January 2209, as the colony continued to be developed, several botanically-minded settlers noticed

that several plants on Kluxared had complex pollen. The scientific ship Lorod-Klonol was dispatched to investigate the pollen, but found no noteworthy qualities other than its stimulating effects on Lyrite settlers and ability to mutate. Further studies of Kluxared's flora were put on hold as colonial development took priority and the Lyrite State continued to reel from the effects of the space pirates. However, it would later be discovered that this pollen acted on Lyrite pheromone receptors as a mild aphrodisiac and gave Lyrites a barely perceptible high. One plant in particular produced an extremely potent pollen: a flower found all across Kluxared that had been uncatalogued due to a hold on botanical studies but already known to the colonists as "Mharin Kharin". Intrigued by the phenomenon, Kulegaf decided to see what could happen next.

At first, little happened, but in 2211 studies showed the pollen made the settlers less productive. Once again, a science ship was ordered to investigate methods of making production on Kluxared more efficient to compensate. While production would later remain low, administrators managed to separate colonists from flower (it had been discovered the settlers loved being next to the Mharin Kharin flower, obviously addicted to its pollen). A survey published a few months later in 2212 showed that Lyrites were less willing to move away from Kluxared due to the effects of Mharin Kharin. Kulegaf, who had been re-elected, opted to continue observing the effects Mharin Kharin had on the populace. But the worst was yet to come.

Four months after the survey, administrative officials on Kluxared had trouble communicating with Lyrass. Kulegaf declared a code mauve and deployed an administrative task force to hopefully restore order on Kluxared. But the task force sided with Kluxared officials and did little to help. Their dissension was soon discovered, and the difficult decision was made to administer the colony directly from Lyrass. Soon, Mharin Kharin's proliferation across the planet was surpressed and colonists were instructed not to "use" it, even though this meant preventing them from smelling flowers.

The Slow Invasion of Roich

An overview of the planet Roich and its natives.
Paradoxically, Haahns learn slowly but their leaders are highly
skilled...

In 2209, as Kluxared's addictive pollen was first being discovered, a survey of a "dead end" on the hyperlane network initially discovered another colonizable planet orbiting the star named Galpan, but as exploration of the system continued, another discovery was made: a pre-FTL species named the Haahn was discovered living on the oceanic planet Roich. The Haahn nation-states had discovered how to split the atom and were constantly on the verge of nuclear holocaust. After much deliberation, Consul Kulegaf had an idea: several covert agents disguised as Haahn would manipulate national governments and prepare the planet for Lyrite control by infiltrating society and replacing key leaders*.

At first, the infiltration went well, and Kulegaf was intrigued as to what would happen. But the project was soon plagued with setbacks as a infiltrator-backed coup in a major Haahn nation failed with the deaths of those involved. Nevertheless, Kulegaf remained hopeful that a positive result could happen. 

But many of his hopes died in 2214 when an attempt to replace a particularly powerful Haahn leader
backfired: The agents were discovered, and those who weren't killed by the leader's guards committed suicide to avoid capture. While this in of itself was bad, things got even worse when a rival nation-state was blamed for the incident. This sent diplomatic waves across Roich, and many nations built up their armed forces. The infiltrators had a plan to avert global war and possible nuclear annihilation with the aid of specially-prepared propaganda, but another ship needed to be dispatched to aid them. The doomsday clock on Roich was ticking...

*No confirmation has been made as to whether similar incidences have been reported on a mostly-harmless world named Earth.

To Be Continued...

Well, that's what I call a cliffhanger! And no cliffhanger would be complete without me asking rhetorical questions, so here I go:

Will nuclear war be averted on Roich? What will happen to the Haanh when the infiltration mission is complete? What else is the Mharin Kharin plant on Kluxared capable of? And, most importantly, will Kulegaf finally get fed up with the Till'Lynesi and send in a fleet to invade them? Wait for the next part to find the answer to these questions and others!