The Empire's exploration team discovered a new fragment of the Star Kingdom Atlas in Black Needle's treasure vault on Kanute. Urgent decoding and restoration work was underway, and the fragment was expected to reveal a new hidden star system.
The accompanying appraisal and auditing teams also sorted and cataloged the treasures the pirates had plundered over the years, one by one. In the process, they discovered large quantities of treasures belonging to the Zirick, M'tok, and Nier, along with numerous artistic treasures from other species.
A large portion consisted of artworks, crudely piled up in the vault. These works could not necessarily be classified as ordinary consumer goods or cultural relics; only particular buyers would pay good money for them.
Xi Yan had little interest in them. He simply returned the artistic treasures whose origins had already been verified to their rightful owners.
His animal friends came first.
He dispatched two transport ships carrying these precious artworks to the Zirick Cooperative and the Nier Guardians Territory.
This time, he had the Community Fleet send a few ships to escort them.
After the Black Needle Pirates incident, Xi Yan dared not let his guard down. Who knew when Paradox Interactive might go off the rails and rework the pirate system into a DLC? Who knew whether some civic like Barbaric Despoilers was already playable in the game?
The pirates concealed themselves well. They could even disguise themselves as ordinary merchant ships and commit crimes where the Empire could not monitor them.
Pirates were at least manageable. If they evolved into Marauders, things would stop being fun. The fleets of the Marauders-the Space Nomads-were far stronger than those of most nations. Rather than rob merchant ships like pirates, they plundered entire countries.
Xi Yan had already heard that a Marauder tribe existed