Hello, my friends and happy weekend! Time for one of my long-winded books, so strap in, grab your favorite drink, and listen up ;)

First, the image - yeah, not a girl this time. What's up with that N2?? Okay, so that is the lift. There are actually 2 lifts on the Aurora, but this is the main lift in the aft section of the ship. It runs from the bridge, down through the residential and recreational decks. The other runs from the fore section of the ship (fore end of the recreational deck) down to engineering and docking bays 1 and 2. As you know, the Aurora has a diranium skeleton with diranium plating. Since diranium doesn't conduct and transfer an electrical signal, it makes the Aurora very difficult to destroy using any type of energy weapons. That isn't to say it is completely invulnerable because, who knows what we will run into out there? There is always a bigger fish, and the Aurora could someday have to run away or find a strategic way of dealing with something more powerful.

Now we'll take a look at our 2 androids, Aury, and arriving this episode, Ecko...

Aurora and Aury connection - I've had a few ask about how Aury is connected to the ship. Put simply, she literally 'is' the Aurora. If the ship could land on a planet with rainforests (bugs, snakes, etc...), she would feel something as tiny as an insect landing on her hull. Very little could happen on the Aurora without Aury being aware of it. Which begs the question... is she spying on everyone? Not intentionally. Aury spends her time focusing on her systems, making adjustments on-the-fly... keeping the ship in tip top shape at all times. That is her primary task. Her secondary task is protecting her crew at any cost, especially the Captain. That is secondary only because if her systems are fully functional and running perfectly, she can better handle everything else.

More on Aury - Although Aury's body consists of synthetic tissue and diranium bones, she is very human-like. Designed and built by Dr. Trent as a companion for his son, he wanted to make sure he would experience human interaction once left alone in the universe. That includes sex of course, but also someone (more like himself) that he could relate to and talk to. If Mike had never met Alexis and Natalie back on earth, sure it is likely he may have run across Pantherians at some point - but if he didn't, he would have Aury there to take care of him and make sure he didn't feel alone out there.

Ecko - Episode 4 will introduce Ecko (who our crew will affectionately always refer to as Echo). Ecko is slightly different from Aury in that she has real biological tissue mixed with diranium bones. She is kept alive and looking young because of some (as yet unknown) Teldarian technology. I won't spoil the episode, but Ecko will definitely be studying the Captain and human life in general, and with only him to go by, hopefully she gets a good impression outside of what she has heard about humans in her past. Although she is very upfront with the Captain at first, she also won't trust him completely right away. Being the only Teldarian left, she has a lot in common with the Captain, and not just because they both have the same bones. Although he'll win her over at the beginning, she will be a bit stand-off-ish with him to start. But I'm sure it won't take long for his charms to win her over. Most of what you'll see with her in the beginning is purely her curiosity forcing her into things.

Moving on... let's get to what you're probably wanting to hear about in this devlog... the release. I don't know if you all read the news about the Microsoft/Crowdstrike incident that happened over the last few days. That article covers a lot of what is going on. The company I work for (my full time job) was affected by this. Just over 80% of our computers were hit with this disaster and so I spent the entire day yesterday at one of our sites repairing them while the rest of my team handled our remote sites and servers. I got a lot done but I'm heading in again today after this is posted to jump back on it while the users are all off for the weekend. It is an easy fix, but time consuming. And unfortunately, as I've always said, my full time job has to come first until I make enough doing this that I can retire from that and do this full time.

So yeah... this definitely will have an impact on my planned release date. I was really wanting to have it ready for my birthday (July 28th) but that is literally 8 days away and if I'm lucky, I'll have a few of those days to actually work on the episode again. And I still have a little bit more to go. Not only did this affect user computers, but at the same time, we had server VM's fucking up left and right. Luckily most of those were quickly resolved by restoring backups. In any case, I just want to get this shit all fixed and get things with the full time job going smoothly again so that I will be able to focus my attention back on LH. So, release date? Shit I don't know. Definitely as soon as I can, believe that. I have a HUGE episode planned for episode 4 of Serenity that is going to be a lot of work. I'll probably keep my break between updates very short this time as I need to get started on that one quickly.

As for how far along the renders are... I am probably about 2 thirds through the episode. There is some great content this episode where we're finally starting to go and checkout new places. And one very slight spoiler maybe... but the Aurora will be returning to Sol because of a transmission that was picked up. I'll leave it at that for now. But I am loving how it is turning out, and don't worry, definitely some one-on-one time with a couple of the girls. Things are going to start progressing with our [pet]s over this and the next episode, with a special episode on the horizon after all of them have been with Mike. Then they return to Pantheria for a break before leaving the Pantherian system to venture much further out. And of course, the final girl... the queen. "Hail to the king, baby..."

Okay, so that wasn't so long now, was it? :) Anyway, that's all for now my friends. Hopefully devlog 14 will have some more positive news about the release but know that I am doing the best I can considering my situation. Have a great weekend! Love you all, ...Fire