Author: Plemency

Eulogy For A Friend: Symon Kuesk

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22/07/2,094 BPE (Cy 356.337)

Symon Kuesk was a first generation peldak, born on the coast of the Marvodana Sea, his parents wanted to flee the ever-escalating violence of the Blood War and joined King Arus’s migration. He proved himself as a capable little camp worker during the pilgrimage and was a fully grown adult by the time they arrived on what would be Pelda.

He spent the early cycles as a forester, chopping down trees to keep the city running even during those brutal winters.

Symon was a personable boy, and the Kuesk family built a warm room, with the Konstanty family (mine) invited to bunk with them during the icy season. Even back when I was mute, I remember him being very kind and energetic, always on the move and playing with us, so we loved him. He was extremely talkative, the only time he sat down was to eat or tell us stories he picked up on the job.

That elf was a gossip like you wouldn’t believe, he told me all the latest news and rumors from around the city, and he could string together a story like nobody else.

It’s no exaggeration to say my interest in rumors and gossip, which sparked my later love of accumulating and sharing current events, was sparked by Symon. In Cy 168 he was one of the early colonists to the Sotaura mountains and, with his great strength born of swinging axes clean through tree trunks, got a sotauran wife. He had 30 descendants last I heard.

He was killed this cycle.

Steppelanders came down from the north, and he marched out with his peers to confront them. He chopped the head off one of their terrible homunculi before dying of his wounds.

The steppelanders were victorious, and we’re marching north to finish them.

Prolonged Energy Drinking Kills Little Girl

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24/11/748 ASU

For centuries the Interstellar Commerce Guild has restricted overly caffeinated products due to their negative health effects. The genevek drink ‘Heartbreaker’ has so much caffeine that it makes their hearts beat so quickly and strongly that the walls of the major arteries tear.

But they can return from that sort of death, and Heartbreaker is an example of overdosing.

ICG regulations limit caffeine levels to below 300mg, the equivalent of 3.5 standard cups of coffee. It’s safe, though some doctors theorize that drinking this much for prolonged periods can result in terrible health defects.

This theory has evidently been proven correct as, in the Pel League faction Telerkinrath on Ciratha, a little girl has died due to heart complications resulting from prolonged caffeine usage.

Tara of Fortuahn, 16 years old, grew up in a cutthroat environment of overachievers and future-leaders. Enrolled in one of the city’s many private schools, she was at the top of her game. Perfect attendance even when sick, the second highest grades of her year, she spent her weekends working with charities, and she practiced swordfighting daily to win a Factional Championship. She was the best in her school, the top five in Fortuahn, and the top 100 across the Telerkinrath faction.

But she needed every advantage to compete at the Pel-League level, for there are a million children just like her gunning for the same spots in universities and future careers.

To keep her competitive energy up, Tara, and millions like her, resorted to energy drinks, particularly the new SubZero brand of fruit flavored energy drinks which is a hit among Ciratha’s youth for being uncarbonated and easy on their anxiety-ridden stomachs.

Tara had been drinking an average of six SubZeros a day.

It’s a miracle that her heart lasted as long as it did.

Demilitarized Zone Enforced, Riots Crushed Under Boot

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14/08/343 ASU

Demilitarized Point 17 was staffed by 14,000 soldiers and was designed to be the designated go-between for the zweihorn and the Slavani, hosting talks and negotiations for the future of Eroberen. Other, smaller checkpoints were set up along the long DMZ, designed to keep the side separate and prevent another war.

To the south-west of Point 17’s walls, the zweihorn were demanding the Protectorate back their efforts to regain the zweihorn’s historic homeland. To the north-east, the Slavani amassed an army of a million clones, though our troops reported hearing at least 40 different demands so we aren’t sure exactly what they wanted.

For three days the protests were peaceful and we couldn’t do anything about it. The embassy staff hosted leaders from the two camps and explained in no uncertain terms that we wouldn’t be bullied into pulling favors for those who lost their wars.

This, evidently, was the wrong choice.

Where the protests were mostly peaceful before, they turned riotous. They hammered on the walls and gates, zweihorn threw small explosives over the walls while Slavani cast spells against us.

They turned it into a siege, and so we treated it as a siege.

3,000 peldaks charge into the zweihorn horde, and 7,000 into the Slavani. Armed with clubs, shields, and unloaded muskets, our troops were ordered to crack skulls and horns until they got the message.

80,000 Slavani died, though we still aren’t sure if that means anything to them, and 470 zweihorn were killed, with another 30,000 wounded from strikes or being stampeded.

Days later, delegations arrived and issued a formal objection over our treatment of their citizens, so the Field Marshal laughed in their faces and tore their written complaints to shreds. Next time they try that, he declared, our troops would use ammunition.

A Concentrated Caffeine Concoction: The Energy Drink

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11/05/730 ASU

In an effort to give their warriors a much needed boost when on assignments, the hemlock have successfully synthesized artificial caffeine, which functions exactly the same as natural caffeine.

Filled with a proprietary salt-caffeine-water mixture, the hemlock’s new enhancement booster comes in small glass syringes they keep in a pack on their belts. Hemlock Guardians have recently been modifying their armor to create a quick breakaway section on their gauntlets for easy access to their veins.

The mixture is completely illegal for everyone except the hemlocks and genevek because they contain the equivalent caffeine of about 20 cups of coffee, which would make a normal human or elf’s heart explode.

But while this sounds enticingly out of reach, worry not for the zatadun company Klaus Cola, a subsidiary of Rudolf Food and Beverage, has taken this artificial caffeine and released a line of hyper-caffeinated beverages they’re calling Schub Cola (Push Cola), an ‘energy drink’.

Schub Cola is a sweet drink no less flavorful than KC’s usual assortment of soda, with a hint of apple since their apple cola was a best seller. It’s a carbonated beverage with a satisfying pull tab, and one drink contains the equivalent of three cups of coffee – just under the limit set by the Interstellar Commerce Guild.

It definitely feels different than coffee. It’s more of an explosive, sudden burst energy. Coffee has more of a gradual rise and shallow fall, whereas these energy drinks are a spike followed by a similar collapse of energy levels.

The first time I tried one my chest hurt for a while and my body couldn’t stop shaking, it was like I was a kid again. The post-caffeine crash was also exactly what I remember from my childhood.

Southern-Fox Fish Exterminated From Monsoo’s Koh Tao Reef

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22/06/410 ASU

Concentrated conservation efforts within Monsoo’s Talaysedaeng Sea has seen the presumed extinction of the invasive Southern-Fox Fish from the largest coral reef in the region, Koh Tao.

The methodology to determine that they’ve been hunted to extinction is simply that none of the hunters who go out specifically to hunt them has found any in weeks, and non-SFF species are flourishing once more. At the very least, the SFF’s numbers have been lowered to the point where they aren’t overeating the native wildlife.

The Joint Monsoorai Oceanic Administration reports that they’ll keep an eye on Koh Tao to make sure they’re well and truly dead.

But fishermen and restaurants needn’t worry that their access to such easy prey is gone (though said fishermen they would certainly understand this already), for while Koh Tao is the largest coral reef in the Talaysedaeng Sea, there are many others with low levels of infestations by the SFF. Easy hunting and yearly competitions will continue, and the JMOA expects efforts to continue for no less than another decade.

The worry within the JMOA is of jealous fishermen replicating this near ecological disaster.

In the SFF Extermination Competition earlier this year, sailors from across Monsoo, even citizens of opposing empires, arrived in the Talaysedaeng sea for a vacation of drinking and easy eating. Some sailors openly joked about taking a few Southern-Fox Fish back home and releasing them in their territorial waters, which led to a few arguments and at least one brawl by the true conservationists, who hunt because they love the sea.

The JMOA is pushing for regional governments to adopt harsher laws against oceanic vandalism, but those governments are looking at the potential benefits of hosting such widely loved hunting competitions in their seas.

Olympia Brand Coffee Flops With Interstellar Market

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05/02/507 ASU

Queen Olympia has failed.

It doesn’t happen often so we’re gloating while we can.

Last year Queen Olympia announced her desire to break into the coffee market with domestically produced Olympian Brand Coffee Beans, grown in one of the tropical regions around Arcadia’s equator. The beans would be grown, harvested, roasted, and all of the proprietary bits and bobs would be added to make her coffee unique and flavorful.

With an investment of some 30 billion drachma (about 5 billion zloty) Arcadia built all of the necessary infrastructure and, last year, began shipping barrels of beans to foreign markets.

But Olympia is very late to the game and the coffee market has largely filled every niche.

Olympia Vanillight is a vanilla-flavored coffee pre-mixed with sugar and vanilla flavoring for a delightfully sweet taste. It doesn’t taste as good as the cirathan’s Vanilla Flavor Packets, which can be easily added to any type of coffee.

Olympia Black is a bitter dark roast coffee meant to be enjoyed without any sweeteners. The monsoorai’s Midnight Roast, Chocolate Roast, Sunset Roast, Oliviay Roast, Bark Roast, Capree Roast, and to be honest even the original Standard Roast all do the bitter flavor better.

Olympia Decaff (sic) has no caffeine and is just for the flavor. I’ve never understood the point, but the D’Sev love it and they own the market with hundreds of decaffeinated brands.

Olympia Double Shot has twice the caffeine as a normal cup of coffee. The hemlock colony on Vrakoli produces everything from double to nine times the amount of caffeine per sip. Though the Interstellar Commerce Guild forbids everything above four from being exported anywhere other than Hemlock.

There are many more examples, but novelty alone is what initially sold Olympia’s coffee, and everyone has since returned to their usual brands.

D’Sev Demagogues Dein To Deny Demarcation

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03/06/341 ASU

With the war between the Zweihorn Empire and the Slavani Freehold finally over, we peldaks are taking strategic positions between them, creating six, several-thousand miles long demilitarized zones to keep peace. D’Sev rabble-rousers have already started causing their usual problems. Agents have been sent to both sides, gathering crowds and giving impassioned speeches about how we peldaks are, somehow, the big threat.

To the zweihorn they say we have failed them. The Slavani invaded the six zweihorn worlds, killed millions, and despite the peldaks having the strength to push the Slavani off their worlds, it would be inconvenient, so we refused to restore their ancient homelands.

To the Slavani, they say we are Interlopers. The Slavani were handedly winning the war through overwhelming numbers, dedication to their cause, and it was clearly the divine will of the Slavani’s god-queen master that they prevail over the zweihorn and fishmen.

The D’Sev aren’t instigating either side to restart the war and push the Protectorate off their rightful worlds because the leaders of neither side are stupid enough to try. Instead, the D’Sev are appealing to the populace for ‘modest’ territorial adjustments.

The D’Sev are coaching the zweihorn to at least demand the return of their ancient homeland on Eroberen. It’s where ancient zweihorn clans originally formed into the first Reich thousands of years ago, and peldaks hold this sort of historical legacy in high regard.

The D’Sev are telling the Slavani to appeal to our martial spirit. They won the war and therefore deserve additional gains.

If they want to exchange territory that’s between them, but we aren’t their mercenaries. The zweihorn were defeated so they lost their homeland, and the Slavani already conquered half of the six zweihorn worlds before being crushed by us, so they don’t deserve more.

Mass Reindustrialization Needed To Secure Supply Chain

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07/09/635 ASU

When looking over every failure of the last 80 years High Command has announced their resolve to reverse one of the worst unforced errors in Protectorate history: the willful de-industrialization of peldak military production.

The logic of deindustrialization made sense. The greatest resource of the Peldak Commonwealth is we peldaks. The greatest resource of the Peldak Protectorate is our vast network of allies and industrialized member states. Therefore, peldaks should be soldiers, our alien allies should arm us with the tools to fight.

To its credit, the plan worked right up until the complete economic collapse of 611 and subsequent death war against vampires and even an Axis intervention.

Recruitment soared and we had more than enough troops for every planet. But once the economic collapse hit and our orders were left unfilled, the supply chain broke and our forces were left drained.

Therefore, now that we have a breather, we must reverse course.

Of the over 120 million legionary positions, 20 million are being dismissed, and factories across Peldor and our colonies will begin the transition back to military goods.

Elves are largely insulated from the consequences of an economic collapse since rather than a life-ruining tragedy, our immortality allows us to treat it as a momentary annoyance. Mortals work their entire lives to build something and have one chance at success. But in the event of a crisis, we can consider decades of unpaid work as simple charity.

The plan going forward is to have a mixture of domestic elven military production and contracted work from alien companies. Our interstellar allies produced excellent work, and we would be fools to ignore them. Ideally there would never be an economic collapse again, but if there is, the goal is to insulate the legions from this sort of failure.

Alien Coffee? The Monsoorai’s Flurry Of Caffeine Beverages

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03/12/021 ASU

When disregarding the language barrier and translations, it’s been discovered that the monsoorai have an equivalent of coffee beans, which are then boiled in a pot to create a beverage that gives energy through the release of caffeine.

The elven coffee bean grown across much of Peldor is relatively sweet, only needing a little milk to make a delicious light-brown drink.

Monoorai coffee beans are black and bitter; thoroughly unpleasant for consumption. Some monsoorai ‘like it black’, while others sprinkle in extra spices and mix them thoroughly.

When trying monsoorai coffee, elves have reported terrible and unmentionable stomach issues. I too purchased a barrel and needed to add so much milk to cover the taste that I might as well have just drank the milk itself.

Monsoorai drinkers partaking in elven coffee say they enjoy the ‘standard’ roast but detest the sweeter milk additions. Not only do most monsoorai dislike the taste, it seems their stomachs have difficulty processing milk for some reason. Upon further research, Monsoo doesn’t have a domesticated animal that produces milk for alien consumption. Perhaps they just aren’t used to milk.

It was hard to translate on the fly, but the monsoorai male who introduced me to black coffee, my friend Sundarak, said that ‘real males’ drink it black, while overly flavorful beverages was the domain of girls. So, when I first tasted black coffee and choked, he and his buddies laughed at me. No different than when I ate their spicy cuisine and couldn’t breathe.

The top of his head barely reached my ribcage, so that was humiliating and I’ve decided to guzzle down only black coffee until I acquire a taste for it.