The Usurpers
| "You see clearly that Philip Andrada's vision has been corrupted from the glorious early days. The ministries have fallen to infighting and corruption; our fleets are bloated with incompetents, our factories run by degenerate plunderers. The martial virtues which defined our once-glorious Diktat have been lost - we must reclaim them." | ||
–Yannick Ram pitching his idea. | ||
"The Usurpers" is a campaign mission in Starsector. Yannick Ram will task the player with nothing less than saving Sindrian Diktat, and the player shortly becomes entangled in an intrigue plot surrounding it.
Acquisition
First, the player needs to trigger a bar officer raid event that can happen on any Diktat market at least 65 days after the game starts. After that, docking with a Sindrian Diktat market can trigger a call that will start the quest.
Walkthrough
Regardless of what you did during the raid event and what you told Ram, he will invite you to his safehouse on Volturn (you can make some preparations before the safehouse visit, but these don't matter either). He will outline his plan, to test the loyalty of Diktat's "three arms of power":
- The navy, nominally under command of the Grand Star Marshal, who is incapacitated and hasn't been replaced for some reason, is de facto controlled by Deputy Star Marshal Oxana Hyder.
- Lion's Guard, led by Guard High Deputy Executor Horacio Caden, second-in-command to Supreme Executor.
- Head of the internal security services, Chief High Inspector-General Dolos Macario.
At this point, Dolos himself appears at the scene and kills Ram. He will state that he intends to use Ram's plan, and invite the player to join. After a conversation (and hinting that something's wrong with Andrada), he will give the player the first task: Hyder ordered a subordinate to purchase armaments from a smuggler. He suggests that attacking the subordinate will provide an opening to talk to Hyder; he'll add that she has a rivalry with Caden, she hates Dolos, and that simply talking to her would not work.
Dolos is correct on the last point: finding Hyder's fleet and talking to her won't allow you to proceed. You have to deal with the patrol first. You have options:
- Simply attack the fleet. There is no relationship penalty for this. The fleet is about 75 DP total. Note that attacking the fleet is the only way to obtain the Gigacannon.
- Trying to get him to surrender peacefully causes their fleet to attack head-on instead of needing to be chased down.
- You can get his own crew to turn him in for 1 SP 100% XP.
- You can offer to drop him off on a neutral system, earning 10,000c for 1 SP 100% XP. You can then take them to an independent market to fulfil the promise.
Now go talk with Hyder; she's commanding a fleet somewhere in Askonia. The conversation with her can go differently depending on your earlier choices; she will ask you to transfer the officer to her, or provide information about his last known location if he was released. You can accept, refuse, say you'll transfer him to Macario, or lie. Finally, you can ask her questions; the answers you get depend on how well you handled the previous conversation.
Go to Macario, who is now on Sindria. You can give him the subordinate if you still have him. Report about your conversation with Hyder. After you're done, he will send you after Caden's agent on Umbra that's actually a double-agent and a part of the resistance.
You can either:
- Talk to someone on Umbra and claim that the agent is a triple-agent for 1 SP 100% XP.
- Raid, difficulty 200.
Go talk with Caden; he's commanding Lion's Guard fleet, usually near Sindria. Again, he'll demand the person of interest transferred to him. Refusing to transfer the agent to him will leave you with only an option to fight him; this doesn't fail the quest, but skips the questions and the first half of the next conversation.
Report to Macario again. After the conversation, he will send you to intercept his agent next to a jump point. There you will run into an independent fleet (about 100 DP total) surrounded by debris fields and ship wrecks; what you need is in one of the debris fields. The independents will hail you and tell you to stay away - you can comply then salvage stealthily. Alternatively, attacking them won't hurt your relations with independents. Having a Hegemony commission will cause the fleet to stand down and leave after opening a comm link.
Return to Macario for the last time.
Rewards
Finishing the scene at Ram's safehouse grants 40,000c and three Kinetic Blasters.
Dealing with Hyder's Subordinate's fleet through combat grants a Gigacannon.
You get 15,000c after reporting to Macario about Caden.
Finishing the mission rewards 150,000c (and extra 200,000c if you pick "My silence..." option), one story point, as well as an Executor, if you ask for it in the last conversation.
- Quests
- Potentially outdated