[ Now it's Claude's turn to be quite as he thinks through what Matt's suggested. It's too fitting, for a lot of reasons, and none that he finds particularly reassuring. ]

You know... that sounds reasonable. Unfortunately.

[ Bad news for all of them if it's true, and unsettlingly so. ]

I think you're likely spot on about them wanting higher standing compared to Thorne since from what I understand, the Free Cities split off from them. The nations back home where I'm from where like that: the Kingdom split off from the Empire, and the Alliance - my nation - split off from the Kingdom some centuries after that. If it's anything like that, there's likely some bad blood between them. No wonder they'd want to bring as many of us here as they can before getting rid of it.

[ But also, just as importantly: ]

I have to assume destroying the Singularity could effectively trap us here, and that's not an outcome I'm fond of either.