The Ethereal Valley

The first—and last—time UNA ever dealt with the Starhounds mercenary company was when the Council paid them an extravagant amount to hunt down a nadorean defector named Ilyin Ohlar, before he had the opportunity to transmit state secrets to information broker Fisheye—“no matter what”. They tracked him down to a terraformed colony of the ailuri’s on Dotatis’ only moon, and were about to go in for the kill when a botched surveillance attempt—uncharacteristic sloppiness that was spurred on only by the speed they had to keep in pursuit—alerted Ilyin to their presence. He bunkered down in the official Dotatis transmissions building in the middle of the colony and took several members of the crew hostage, including the chief technical officer. As he planned his escape route, he forced the officer to set up a connection to Fisheye to complete the deal they had negotiated. The attempt to establish contact was detected by the Starhounds, and they decided there was only one way to complete the contract as written and prevent the transfer of any data in the mere minutes they had left: striking the entire heavily‐reinforced facility from orbit. The attack caused an impact so severe it burned the topsoil and formed a layer of trinitite across the blast site from the terraformed soil, leaving a nearly square‐kilometer “valley” of glassy green stone, as if in a twisted eulogy. The casualties were widespread, affecting over 120 citizens and three of the Starhounds’ own top agents; when faced with outrage, they merely stated that they completed the contract exactly as written.