Issue 2.9: Death and Maxs

In our last issue the Vanguard used sabotage, manipulation and subterfuge to work against the fake princess in control of Lor-Var. Split into two groups they attempted to both recover the two Sacramundi Stones from the Royal Palace and take control of the central telepathy hub in the Monks of Lore's Great Monastery with mixed success.

The team of Space Wolf and Scartax, Crown Prince of the Moon infiltrated the Palace inner sanctum and managed to wrestle the two stones from the Arcane Master using them to impersonate Princess Lorik. During the brief battle Scartax was knocked unconscious, revealing himself to be another member of the shapeshifting Grue race. When confronted by Space Wolf with this knowledge Scartax used his Tensor weapon to digitize the snarling space knight...fearing that contact with the Stones was somehow corrupting his judgement and senses.

The team of Dr. Robot, Adela and the true Princess Lorik teleported into the central telepathy chamber. When Lorik connected herself to the device the feedback from the machine nearly killed her, and alerted the Great Monastery's three caretakers, the Panglossian Colloquim to their presence. A stand off began with both sides blaming the other with sabotaging the telepathic hub. Eventually Adela was able to telepathically convince the Colloqium members that they meant no harm to the Lore Republic, despite Dr. Robot's computer virus deactivating the hub mechanism, effectively disabling their pan-galactic telepathy network. During their negotiations Adela suffered her own bout of mysterious telepathic feedback, resulting in a spasm so jarring she broke her own arm.

Once reunited the Vanguard rebooted the hub enough to present indisputable evidence that their Lorik is the true Princess and ruler of the Lore Republic. During this Space Wolf used the power of the Sacramundi Stones to escape Tensor confinement and accuse Scartax yet again. The two argued that neither could be trusted. In the midst of their argument a much larger threat arrived on Lor-Var. The artificially intelligent machines that have been plaguing Lore Republic outposts have appeared in orbit. To make matters worse they know resemble the face of the Vanguard's old enemy Maximilian Mars. Speaking collectively in Max's voice they demand the inhabitants of Lor-Var turn over the Sacramundi Crystal to him or he will extinquish all life on the planet. The Vanguard responded with a giant middle finger comprised of Dr. Robot's force field projections.

No matter what happens next, only two things are certain to result from this encounter: