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// report from the far frozen north team 
// Story: The equis union 
// by white1498 
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To the governing council,

It is the teams' great honor to report that upon completing our survey of the far north that they have been found and are currently frozen inside of dark crystals. When the teams resident magic users tried to free them it ended with them passing out from mana exhaustion. After the magic users recovered from their exhaustion they then started to scan the site and what was found is shocking. The dark crystals are being powered by the very planet its self, but there might be a way to free those imprisoned in these crystals if they were moved off-world, because these crystals, are empowered by the very planet its self and with the crystals way-line mana cut the crystals should become brittle and with a little bit of magic the crystals should start to fall apart.

The teams' engineer has already drawn up plans for tech that if the balefire rockets are used then spaceflight might be seen in the next thirty years. However much work will have to be done: rebuilding large amounts of infrastructure, decontaminating enough ground to start growing food among plenty of other things to get back on our hooves to even start toactually work on space flight.

Once spaceflight is actually achieved at least three freshly designed and built corvettes will be required to defend the system, an orbital construction vessel and a science vessel to explore and survey new systems that are found. Of course, once the orbital facilities are built the crystals should be moved to them as soon as possible to free those who are imprisoned within the crystals. 

with best regards, Iceshard