The NME Within

[size=18]The NME Within*

*For copyright reasons we are not able to title this piece ‘The Enemy Within’, we would also wish to point out that this bears no resemblance to any popular music periodicals

A new and real mission for us now: Elethiel the Battle master was to take command and chef Winston Ryebeck would oversee us and no doubt supply meat and beans. An adamantine meteorite has struck the spire of H’Cath, we are to investigate, locate and recover the meteorite. How to achieve this? Well we have a handy spacecraft in orbit above at this very moment, ideally suited as it is a Beholder’s ship.

Ok the first twinge of alarm as my forward antennae vibrate softly at this news: Why would we need to use a beholder ship? Well of course the discworld planet H’Cath is a beholder stronghold, you know the beholder- floating spheres of death encrusted with multiple eye stalks each one capable of dealing death , disintegration, multiple spells and worse.* And the planet full of them. Of Course.

*Worse? Vicious sarcastic remarks perhaps?

The tyrant vessel lacks one key component, a spelljammer helm, so we need to install it before setting sail; then we just bluff our way through any picket lines and search the hostile planet for an object likely already found and under guard. Apart from ourselves we still have the young scamp who thinks himself a spelljammer, Miken Havenstance; a carpenter’s apprentice, Krik, a Thri Kreen like myself and a plasmoid deckhand named Pffredd. So a magnificent seven to deal with the massed horde of blinking eyestalks awaiting us, no problem, I almost feel sorry for them.*

*I may be lying at this point

We board the Flighty Foundling, a typical hammerhead transport with which we are already familiar and dock with the strange beholder craft: The vessel is spherical and made of stone, it has an opening at the base like a diving bell with a large spherical void within where presumably a gaggle*of beholders had room to float. Within the gently curving side walls there are cargo chambers at the base and several vertical tubes that ascend to the command deck which tops the internal cavity, with a hole in the centre of the floor allowing easy access between the command centre and the central void. If you can fly that is.**

*Anyone know the correct collective noun? An overkill of beholders perhaps, any number greater than 1 being overkill.
**To be fair access is also pretty easy if you can simply fall, so we all qualify on that score

The floors and wall surfaces are strangely frictionless so it’s like walking on ice. However in anticipation we have been furnished with a large stock of rope, pitons and climbing gear and we spend an entertaining ten hours rigging a network of ropes to enable safe travel up and down the tubes and across the slippery floors. There is also a gravity plane across the middle of the ship so that whether above or below you will always fall towards the centre of the ship, even if that means falling in an upward direction.

Ryebeck meanwhile gets the galley set up and oversees stowing of rations and supplies in the cargo areas, we then look at the major task required: Raising the spelljammer control chair to the command deck and securing and integrating it into the ship’s command and control systems. This involves a great deal more rope work, cradling the chair in a sling enabling it to be hauled up. This takes us around six hours. We also block up the hole in the floor to prevent accidents, using some of the timber supplies we had brought aboard.

No sooner were we finished hauling and began to position the spelljammer chair and there was a sudden lurch and the ship began to rapidly rotate, throwing us to the floor. Ryebeck, no doubt channelling a well-known admiral from another reality shouts ‘It’s a trap’. Real helpful Ryebeck. Pffredd taking advantage of his amoeba like body has secured himself to a wall, the rest of fare less well, being tossed everywhere, and not in a good way.

I make it to the chair but in attempting to attune I realise that it needs to be secured so I can take control. I can influence the oxygen gravity envelope however and I try increasing the gravity to stop people crashing about quite so much. With some effort the chair gets secured and control floods through me, I begin to brake the rotation, gently so as not to cause more problems. Several of us have taken quite a battering including me, and Elethiel uses some healing on me.

The spinning finally stops and I restore normal gravity, though several of us remain lighter for a while as a result of the featherfall spell cast by Ryebeck during the confusion. I carry out a full systems review with my new found control and sense some movement in the ship’s central void. Surely not a beholder? Peering through cracks in the makeshift cover we cannot see anything, but there is a scuttling noise and some faintly mechanical sounding clicks and whirrs.

We three cadets figure we are the team to sort this out and we descend the Jeffries tube* to the level where you can look into the huge cavernous void area. The floor is covered with debris, looks like a lot of metallic junk. I am using my dark vision to scan for the source of the sounds – there – I pick out three large insect like creatures more than a metre across, with tools largely of the razor sharp quiteathomeinatorturechamber thank you very much type equipment.**

*Not a Trekker? Get off this site!
** I refer you to the 1995 sci fi thriller Screamers for more info.

I decided, possibly rashly that now was the time to test out my dazzlingly new second level spell, Shatter. I can get two of the mechanical monstrosities in the area of effect and fire off the spell. It spectacularly does less than 25% of maximum damage possible and no doubt irritates our clockwork friends. I now recognise some of the clicks and mechanical noises, they are actually speaking Thri Kreen!

They are thanking me for re-establishing the ship’s control system which they can now take over, and just now wish to tidy up the vessel that seems to have become infested with nasty living organisms, that as everyone knows are nothing but trouble and cause all sorts of unpleasant mess wherever they go. The crablike creatures scuttle toward me at some speed and another bit of movement hints at a fourth on the far side of the chamber.

Belated attempts to negotiate on my part fail in the face of implacable computer logic and my attempts to alter gravity to hamper them have no effect. I fire off a Thunderwave spell forcing one back and inflicting some more minor damage (though more than the pathetic shatter spell)

They fire bursts of lightning at me and everything goes dark for a while. I am told that Pablo opened fire ineffectually whilst my life ebbed away and Elethiel screamed for assistance, retreating up the Jefferies tube. She did manage to cast spare the dying on me, enabling me to knock back one of the ten healing potions we had received for this trip (I had already consumed my own because of the severe wounds I suffered being thrown about the command deck and hit by flying objects, possibly a well-known Gif I won’t name).

Ryebeck arrives first climbing up to us (down actually) and starts swinging a vicious looking pair of longswords. The horrendous machines having managed a critical hit on me now decide that inaccuracy is the order of the day. I stay back and cast the first trio of nine magic missiles I will confine myself to for the rest of the battle. Escobar also tries his blunderbuss and even he can’t miss at close range with such a weapon, though these creatures are clearly extremely tough and resilient.

Elethiel has used one of her new battlemaster abilities to encourage the enemy to confine their efforts to slaying Ryebeck. Pablo manages to get behind the combat, somehow effortlessly blending his 300lb bulk into the scenery but it is one of my last magic missiles and Ryebeck that actually strike the three mortal blows (Though admittedly Escobar did manage one spectacular critical hit.)

We spend some time licking our wounds. Escobar investigating the other movement discovers a gnome autobot, sole survivor of half a dozen. This worthy is named ‘Whizzpop’* helpfully engraved on its adamantine forehead, apparently beholders, his former employers/masters had terrible memories for names. Whizzpop is pathetically grateful to our jif who has saved him from horrible dismemberment and guides him to a small iron chest containing a fortune in pearls and a scroll of Rope Trick, both of which he keeps.

*Amongst the scrapped metalwork we also found the remains of Whizzsnap and whizzcrackle.

In conversation with the gnome it becomes clear he has been here hundreds, possibly thousands of years and the crew of beholders are long gone to the planet below. The mechanical horrors had apparently been brought aboard from another ship and have the ability to regenerate over a very long time so may have been dormant for years. Escobar smashes the crystals that are the key to their existence after hearing that they may yet return.

But enough of all that – another immediate issue – Miken emerges looking sooty bedraggled and singed, the aroma of burning hangs around him: ’Fire in the galley’ he gasps and we are ascending or possibly descending to the galley to face the next problem. We arrive as Miken gabbles an explanation, he has cast a glyph of warding to contain the smoke but Ryebeck is in there with no fewer than four magma mephitis, infernal demons of heat and flame normally resident in warmer parts. Where in all the nine hells did they come from?

A little alarm bell gentled trembled in my mind at this point, something Miken said… but the immediate issues- extinguish the fire, save Petty Officer Ryebeck who had been badly wounded by the mechanical monstrosities and eliminate the mephits either with extreme violence or banishment to their own plane of existence – took priority.

I need to re-attune to the ship with a view to venting the atmosphere and stopping the fire. I head back up/down to the command deck. Miken’s glyph is safe to pass through for us so Elethiel leads others into the smoke filled galley to tie a rope to the prone gif. Visibility is poor but there only seem to be three mephitis, not the 4 reported. The party improvise face masks to keep out the fumes apart from Pffredd who does not breathe although he only advanced into the room after a considerable argument with Pablo who didn’t seem to want him to go.

I reach the command deck and find when I try to meld my mind back into the control system that a certain snotty little spelljammer called Miken is still in control and I have to throw him out. The effort of this may explain how in my haste I slightly miscalculate to atmosphere depletion calculation. I shrink the field in that quadrant of the ship and affect the corridor outside the room as well as the galley itself.

Pablo, Krick, Pffredd, Miken and Elethiel are all trying to haul Ryebeck’s (enormous) body out of the room but the explosive decompression sends several of them tumbling back down the corridor towards the access tube. Several are only saved by frantic grabs from their comrades. Fortunately I only wanted a quick decompression to blow out the fire and I quickly restore normality as I head back down/up.

The smoke turned to soot still trapped by the glyph, everyone could now take on the three mephits, one of which was thrown heavily against the glyph when the air rushed out. Pffredd who had briefly expanded into an orb when his plasmoid body was subject to loss of external pressure now returned to normal size but Ryebeck remained unmoving.

The exhausted Elethiel now gets tangled up in some of the myriad ropes around the place. Pffredd is hacking frantically with his shortsword, Miken, usefully for once, fires three magic missiles into the fray. Pffredd and Pablo now both kill mephits, which unsportingly explode on death causing near fatal injury to our big gif who falls. I now arrive and cast Chill Touch seriously wounding the other which Elethiel finishes off.

Once again we are all in a sorry state, many blackened by flames largely caused by exploding mephits. We realise that Ryebeck is beyond help, characteristic flame damage he has suffered tells its own story; he was caught in the blast of the first mephit when he killed it. Apart from this we have lost most of the supplies stored here, including water, rations, oil and the cooking stove brought aboard that seemed to be the source of the fire.

Looking at the cooking surface I sense a faint residue of magic, this could have been part of a summoning ritual for creatures from the elemental plane of fire. I sense the contents of the ship again, no one here but… us. The stove could have been primed with a spell or…it occurs to me that a glyph of warding is an easy cast. For a 7th level wizard or higher. Not for a 17 year old 1st level idiot.

Escobar has also been thinking dark thoughts and in a few seconds his dagger is at Miken’s throat. We tie his hands and gag him so he cannot cast spells, of course I can still interrogate him. Elethiel assures Pffredd and Krick that we have reasonable suspicion when they voice concerns, but under questioning Miken gives innocent explanations:

He had 2 scrolls of glyph of warding, given him by his father, when he came down to the galley, the mephits were materialising but did not see him, only Ryebeck. He panicked and the first glyph failed but he managed to raise the second and get away to raise the alarm. Searching him there is nothing untoward, 2 empty scroll cases, his focus and spellbook.

Elethiel contacts the academy below and explains what has happened. The Flighty Foundling will return for us but the Bosun also requests we pursue our investigation. Escobar makes it his personal mission, keeping Miken under constant questioning, ensuring that Whizzpop keeps him awake with minor electric shocks.

Whilst we await the transport we search Ryebeck finding nothing untoward other than a large number of guns and knives. We leave his body in as good a state as possible for honourable interment. We also rest up recovering spells and health. After some hours we change tack on the interrogation. We have been questioning Miken about what happened; the key inconsistency as far as I’m concerned – why carry 2 scrolls of the same spell, especially one like Glyph of warding, what if the other scroll had been a monster summoning spell to bring the mephits?

Miken did manage to hold his story consistently apart from he changed his reason for going to the galley at one point, but that was not damning. The turning point came when we changed tack from the sequence of events, to his motivation. Why did he do it? For money for his fiancé, he’d not meant anyone to die, no one was supposed to die, Mercan had given him the scrolls and instructions, he’d also helped smuggle a box into the academy, undoubtedly the one we had unwittingly taken to the old wolf, and had been responsible for the explosion at the end of our training simulation.

He denied any knowledge of the thefts however and had never met Mercan always using a burner sending stone, so when the Bosun arrived we had a broken traitor and full confession to hand over. The Bosun came with the Moon Elf Absine, the two of them will replace Ryebeck, our mission remains unchanged. Surprisingly Pablo sends Whizzpop back to the academy with instructions to offer his services to Mr Blip. We also sent back plenty of scrap adamantine.

We are resupplied, hopefully with plenty more healing potions, now at last we can get underway into the jaws of death.

20.8.23
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