u/Khafaniking

R5: Have had Lysator Syng as an Admiral in my empire for perhaps 200 years, and have sent him to do a variety of odd jobs. I wasn't a Subterfuge/Espionage/Cloaking focused empire this run, so he was never the centerpiece to my operations, and got overshadowed by a bevy of other admirals I got; S875.1 Warform, Xondar, and Skrand Sharpbeak. He was kind of the odd one out, always a loner, which is fitting for a former criminal and reformed priate, I guess.

Anyways, I've sent him to solo campaigns in empires in wars I don't really care about, slay some leviathans for techs/advantages I don't really need, or ironically enough, clear out pirates from some isolated systems. In the FE/AE wars I used him to hunt down light reinforcements or army convoys, or occasionally ambush and break citadels. Kind of grunt work for a Paragon, and nothing half so glorious as this final send off to my game.

Unbidden arrived with 2M in fleet power as a first wave, and I had them bottled up in a choke point while I gathered my armada. I figured I probably could make the hard push to their core if I amassed a big enough doom stack. But then it occurred to me that Lysator Syng is my fastest admiral, with the fastest ships. The Unbidden could see through his cloaking, but that wouldn't matter because of his speed.

I had him enter Unbidden space and slip past their defenses; engagement range was too low to proc combat, and any fleets that did respond to him were too slow to effectively tail him. He got to the core system, Hizzel, where the sole Dimensional Anchor and Dimensional Portal were, and where a couple small fleets (still 4x Syng's power) were parked. Syng lured the fleets to another system, looped around the system perimeter, effectively kiting them, and then dashed back to Hizzel.

After that excitement, it was a pretty simple matter of just destroying the Dimensional Anchor and then lighting the Portal up. Lysator Syng, Legendary Pirate and Notorious Criminal, who cashed in and sold out to some braniac synths to do their dirty work for them, almost single-handedly responsible for saving the galaxy.

R5: Just thought that the new species portrait strongly resembled the Broken Lords from Endless Legends. They're both living suits of armor animated by blue vapor/energy/plasma, both have brass/gold armor, and have red robes/tassels. I kind of think it has to be deliberate nod to them.

Pretty much it. Details are that they're Vipra, the Vapor Species. I think they have a strong similarity since they look like living suits of armor animated by a blue energy/plasma/vapor, have brass-like armor, and red robes. You could tell me this was a new Broken Lords Hero and I would believe you.