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Sweety Tulip
5bf190
I'd like to answer a couple of issues, here.
> How did Ekia know where the scellor were?
She always knew. Leaving aside the question of how easy it is to spot giant metal ships leaking radiation lodged in the landscape, the scellor are, psychically, really obvious. Every one of them is constantly being fed with psychic energy from the rest of their species to the point of saturation, and feeding information, sensations and thoughts back the other way. Their natural modes of communication with each other are either telepathic messaging or psychically vibrating the air to make sound. Sentient scellor, who have more self-control (read: they have some self-control), can conceal themselves and their communication from casual detection, but drones, who have no mental restraint, cannot. The scellor could have landed anywhere on the planet and Ekia could probably point right at them, so long as they have a pile of drones around.
And this was always a thing! Even during the intro of the quest, when the characters were in the vastness of space, Ekia mentioned being able to feel them. And when Radde listed the reasons why he chose that landing space, concealment was not one of them; in fact, some of those reasons were formed on the assumption that the astranians would attack them there.
> Why did the ayaar attack, so dumb
It shouldn't be a spoiler, now that that section is over, the reveal that the ayaar intent was to cause confusion and chaos, then teleport in, grab a captive and leave. The scellor have effective and scary methods of getting information, and such a captive would be invaluable! But the attempt was always going to be very risky. In this case, the gamble failed.
It's psychological. Scellor, being "immortal" as they are, have a huge safety net under everything they do, most of the time. Almost all their aggressive expansionist policies and the ways their race operates are designed to make sure this continues to be the case. Combine this with the cumulative tedium of repeated living - a big part of why the scellor are such thrillhounds - and any scellor's natural inclination, when faced with a range of options, is to take the big risk with the big reward. Or even the big risk with the medium reward. They're just too used to the idea that, no matter what, it'll all be ok in the long run. High-class scellor, such as Radde and Piyerra and, indeed, the ayaar, are supposed to be above this sort of thing; but it remains a weakness, especially with spur-of-the-moment situations - such as when you're presented the chance to take a valuable captive and your best chance is right now, before the enemy has set themselves up properly. The ayaar leader made the call to take the risk, and dice came up low.
He was sort of crazy anyway.
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