Agents Of Empire/The Iavo Conspiracy

This page is dedicated to unraveling the "big mystery" of the game.

It is unknown currently if Iavo are the master controllers, knowing pawns of another group, unknowning pawns of another group, or just one group in a tangle of competing ones. They do seem to be involved in every big event so far:

Facts

1. We know from decrypted Gwyne data that the sites Iavo suggested for their meditation retreat on the colonies were the same as suggested as good sites for a "secondary beacon" by Gwyne.
2. We know at the party Basinbloke talked about the emperor's abdication (or something else?) being forced, and Iavo and a giant space baby being involved somehow. He was saying something about Iavo, and something about only doing this under compulsion, and at first I couldn't see who he was talking to, but then I looked past him and realized the thing I thought was a giant aquarium had a giant baby in it! I think I -- I started to follow the emperor as he left, I was going to ask him about using the imperial restrooms, and then the baby suddenly LOOKED at me, and all I could see were eyes, and I was sinking -- and then I woke up in this room. (From the party transcript)
3. We know a Nif@x shipment of a space baby was destined for Iavo.
4. Reig's original dream on Iavo took place the day the baby shipment arrived on Iavo (as far as we can work out). It was mildly helpful; it's possible that he picked up on some sort of cry for help from the shipped babies.
5. Reig's second dream seems to indicate that the babies are being stolen from somewhere, and that the person/group who is being stolen from isn't happy about it, and planning revenge.

Open Questions/Hypotheses

1. Who is Frost working for?
   1. Iavo
   2. Gwynne
   3. The emperor
   4. The babies
      • This, at least, seems unlikely: he was arguing with the baby and had a bomb installed in his head, presumably to blow it up if the negotiations went sour.
        • Except maybe it wasn't a bomb but instead only a psychic suppressor field that gave people headaches.
        • Since "MATTERS CAN PROCEED" only occured after disarming Frost, it is possible the device was the only thing preventing the baby from influcing its mental mojo on the party.
2. What happened during the missing 48 hours at the emperor's party?
   • The memory wipe turned out to have included the bit in the transcript with the giant baby, so the 'missing 48 hours' were actually 24 hours of stuff-in-the-transcript, and 24 hours of normal wandering around the party.
   • Still, the baby said MATTERS WILL NOW PROCEED AS SCHEDULED and everyone woke up in their beds after blacking out, so something had to have happened in between those two occurances; were people moved to their beds, or did they put themselves there and had a genuine memory blackout?
3. Who is behind the abdication?
   1. It's an internal human struggle, with Iavo/Gwynne on one side and the ruling class on the other
   2. It's part of the babys' revenge plot against the humans stealing them.
4. How many involved human factions are there? Are Iavo and Gwynne conspiring together, is Gwyne calling the shots, or are they both beholden to a third party?
   1. Iavo and Gwynne are working together
   2. Iavo and Gwynne and the Emperor are working together
   3. Iavo and Gwynne and an unknown third party are working together
5. Basingbloke heard the Emperor say "something about Iavo, and something about only doing this under compulsion" What?
   1. Iavo is the one forcing the Emperor to do something
   2. The baby is the one forcing the Emperor to do something
   3. The 'doing this' means 'abdicate'
   4. The 'doing this' means something else (steal babies?)
6. What's up with the "secondary beacon" site?
   1. There didn't seem to be anything there that happened when the wormhole invasion occured. This could mean
      • Something happened, just it was too secret to notice
      • Something was meant to happen but it was aborted because of wormhole shutdown or other reasons
      • The "secondary beacon" refers to something different than the wormhole invasion
      • Iavo wanted the site to hinder rather than help Gwyne
      • The connection between the hexes was a sheer coincidence and we've been barking up the wrong tree (only two out of the four sites mentioned match the decrypted message, although the message is truncated)