Played and Flayed
So we all watched our lives flashing before us as the absolute certainty of a horrible death approached. The huge Nautiloid vessel had hefty tentacles writhing forward at the base of the spiralled shell of doom. Then with a presence of mind rare amongst us, we decided to deal with the more manageable problem of the mutineers, at least this might distract us from the impending brain removal we were all expecting.
Fortunately Traveus and his men were also standing in rapt terror. It was the last mistake the crimelord would make: Elethiel and Escobar both shot him, Pablo’s musket fire killing him stone dead. Before Aleav or I could attack the two minions, they were throwing down their weapons and offering to tie themselves up and submit to any sort of punishment we might care to indulge in. Which we filed away for later.
Now one of the better pieces of news we had heard lately, Sartell gasped in relief: ’It’s a hulk, look at the hull damage, it’s been wrecked.’ And in this way, we learned that our certain death was postponed. Our good captain’s eyes also lit up as she ordered Flapjack to bring us to the floating wreck, one glance told you that a little looting was on her mind, with a side order of asset stripping.
As we closed we could see that the atmosphere envelope was still in operation, so perhaps not such a derelict as we had first thought, but there was no sign of any threat as it drifted aimlessly, great chunks torn out of its exterior in places and ragged scorch marks mutely attesting to chaos, destruction and mayhem in the recent past.
As we closed I caught site of a human male, perhaps 30 years old, it’s always so difficult to tell with humans. He was standing on one of the lower decks near a docking port, gesticulating wildly at our approach. Again I’m not great at human emotions, they hardly ever change colour in any way unless you stop their air passages, so I couldn’t tell if he was happy, terrified, or in love come to that.
As we got closer and our atmospheres began to merge I was able to make contact with him, he seemed relieved to us, his story was that his crew had boarded the wreck with a view to stripping it of anything of value, only to find it to have an infestation of Neogi. Many of his crew were dead, others had retreated to their ship and fled. He had been left behind together with some wounded comrades who were huddled on the bridge.
We pulled alongside to board, Pablo covering us from a vantage point high in the rigging. All seemed ok and he joined us* as we were greeted by the battered looking survivor, who introduced himself as Benoto. He implored us to come to the aid of his injured crew and warned us that he feared there might still be stray neogi aboard.
*Performing his famed double flip half twist pretentious twat dismount, though sadly no one noticed (or cared)
Looking at the precision of the damage we suspected that the githyanki were responsible for the original attack on the ship, we also decided to search the ship from the lowest deck upward so that we left nothing behind us to cut us off from our line of retreat to the Moon Dancer. As we were on the second deck this meant descending to the lowest level first, which turned out to be mainly a holding area for prisoners.
The fleshy cell sphincter style doors generally opened automatically when approached, around ten cells all contained remains of unfortunate occupants. There was a decapitated mind flayer body together with three quaggoths and Elethiel picked up a nifty breastplate from the vile body. One of the prisoners had been a plasmoid and Aleav somewhat disturbingly appeared to assimilate the remains and has noticeably increased his mass as a result, whether this is temporary or permanent I couldn’t say.
Towards the stern we found several areas that are were a mixture of crew quarters and storage areas, in the largest of these we are attacked by a surviving quaggoth, which took a particular interest in attempting to remove Elethiel’s surplus limbs (four being clearly excessive in its eyes). Aleav and Pablo (who as usual had effortlessly disappeared into the shadows) engaged to assist her, the gif in particular scoring a major hit enabling our elf to finish it off. My contribution to the fight was a fire bolt that went wild.
The storage area had a few uninteresting crates and boxes, and there were also some Psurlon corpses and debris of many hatched eggs. At the other end of the ship meanwhile we discovered a sphincter door that had been heavily secured by a network of ropes and githyanki boarding hooks. Someone clearly did not want whoever, or whatever was inside, to get out. Then we heard the sound of someone crying for help from the other side.*
*The Other Side, still available from all good shops
We established that the disembodied voice belonged to Jasper, and Benoto confirmed that he could be one of his crew. We asked a number of questions to probe his identity and Jasper gave the right answer in each case, knowing what he should know and dodging a couple of trick questions. Despite this, we were all suspicious and even Benoto believed that it couldn’t be his crewmate begging for help so plaintively.
We moved on and up, passing a sub deck with a smashed ballista at the bow. Pablo confided in me that he was increasingly uncertain about Benoto, who doesn’t seem to ring quite true.* I discreetly searched his aura looking for some sign of illusion or magical deception but I sensed nothing untoward. I did share his unease; how had he survived weaponless? What will we find on the bridge? We both decided to keep a firmer eye on our new best friend.
*Sam’s Deception Syndrome (SDS). Are you a sufferer? Contact our helpline.
On the third deck we discovered a mangonel, sail lockers, more sleeping quarters, these last apparently for thralls, whose bodies still littered them. There was also an observation platform, perhaps used for targeting the ballista below it and the catapult on the deck behind. Now though, it was time to enter the bridge on the level above, where Benoto’s story would finally check out.
Or not.
We emerged from the central stairwell onto the bridge; at the stern a ladder climbed to a balcony overlooking the main deck. Forrad, two staircases, one on each side accessed another elevated section. Doors around the bow section led off to the main ballista platform that ringed the bow area mounting a battery of four weapons.
But where were Benoto’s mates? He strode confidently towards the bow with us following, ready for anything. But not everything apparently, specifically not for the four Psurlons that ambushed us from their places of concealment underneath the two forward stairs. They were on us in a flash, curiously ignoring Benoto. Oh, not so curious, he also turned and attacked us.
In our centre, the Elasto plasmoid phenomena that was Aleav attracted the main attention of the attack, but Elethiel took a mighty blow and on our right I fell too, critically wounded. Pablo threw a force grenade from his place of safety in the rear and Sartell was fighting for her life near my bleeding body. Elethiel, who like me had been suffering a lot and had already needed emergency healing from Pablo twice, now made a cowardly withdrawal using misty step to leap forward onto the upper forward deck, cravenly clearing the combat zone, from where she used her murderous archery skills, cutting down one of the foe.
I on the other hand, after courageously playing dead in a move of brilliant strategic genius, cast misty step, heroically clearing the combat zone.* From my vantage point at the stern I shouted warnings to everyone that, in the words of the well-known Thri Kreen General K’rowe, I was about to unleash hell.**
*Just as far and as fast as my magical muscle could carry me
** I may or may not have deployed my full Australian accent
Aleav killed one of his opponents before stretching clear of the impending blast zone, I threw in the fireball as far as possible behind the fray to avoid Pablo, the good Captain and our deadly jellybaby. Two of the three were melted by the blast, Benoto reverting to his true form as he fried. The third was still fighting Sartell, though it looked pretty medium rare. It was Pablo Escobar with his trusty musket who finished off the last one and we took stock, thoroughly battered and bruised.
I managed some healing on myself through the use of my grim harvest ability, but remained badly hurt and most others were in a diminished state, except perhaps Pablo who no one could ever find to hit. With the faint whiff of fried Psurlon in our nostrils we pondered our next moves. I decided to investigate the upper rear deck and came upon another headless mind flayer who lay next to an ioun stone that had clearly been of no use to him at all. It contained the spell shield.
There was also another ladder up from this quarterdeck and I rashly decided that in my injured state there would be no harm shinning up it* to check it out, after all, we had dealt with all threats now had we not? I was also tempted by the thought of possible booty to be had to add to my shiny new ioun stone.
*Given my wounded condition and noted prowess in the fields of climbing and acrobatics generally, ‘shinning up’ may be an exaggeration.
Reaching the top deck I came upon the spelljammer chair complete with complimentary headless mind flayer. Resolving to add this detail to my trip advisor review I approached, noting a large number of luminous maggots enjoying the putrefying flesh. Searching carefully around the chair I located a secret compartment containing a scroll of the spell Wall of Force.
Unfortunately the sea of maggots chose this moment to coagulate into an amorphous mass that struck out at me and in moments I was coated in a writhing wriggle cloak of leech-like horrors. I went down with a cry, or possibly a click, and it all went dark. I awoke to find myself still in my predicament, but Pablo had somehow brought me round bless him. I staggered upright trying to claw and shake and scrape off the hideous flesh eaters, but it was no easy task.
I concentrated for a moment, attempting to remain calm and fired off a thunderwave, hoping it would expel my attackers. Sadly they remained firmly attached though it did crush a few, their bodies exploding messily. I was then somewhat alarmed as an arrow passed through my attackers, barely kissing my side. My alarm then increased as, perhaps inspired by Elethiel’s shot, yoicks, Escobar raised his autogun and shouted at me to be very still before opening fire.
Some deity must have protected me, as when I opened my eyes I was unscathed. Reciting some of the nine million names of god I got off a firebolt as I attempted to scrape off the final clusters of glistening, crawling bloodsuckers and had the satisfaction of watching them incinerate in the intense heat of my vengeful wrath.
Somehow I had survived, both rescued and very nearly blown away by my trusty companions. I wasn’t sure whether to embrace Pablo or toss him over the edge. In the end, I compromised with a firm handshake. A final search of the upper decks including the captain’s cabin found nothing of note. A few of us took some satisfaction in smashing and desecrating the charred remains of Benoto.
We returned to the cargo deck and discovered some dozen human corpses from which we gleaned a 50GP ring and a modest amount of gold and silver coinage. The final loose end was to assuage our guilt by freeing the poor crewman Jasper who Benoto had cunningly cast doubt on to protect his cover. At least, that was what we thought…
So Elethiel began to break away the hooks clamping the fleshy sphincter door shut on Jasper’s prison. She got a couple off, then started to try and cut a hole in the door with her longsword, she made only limited progress, but as soon as a hole was big enough, the Neh-Thalggu inside who was impersonating the late Jasper punched a couple of its tentacles through it, seriously wounding our luckless elf.
In a panic, not knowing what we were up against other than something pretty powerful that seemed to be trying to rip out Elethiel’s brains, Pablo tried to pull her clear, but only managed once Aleav helped. I was shooting fire bolts through the hole, delivering some significant damage I have to say. Escobar had passed a force grenade to Aleav but he was concentrating on saving the elf, so the grenade hung comically rolling about within his transparent torso.
Pablo meanwhile was tying together five grenades and setting a time fuse, as soon as he finished this was hurled through the aperture and we all legged it. Sartell, in telepathic contact with her spelljammer all this time had Flapjack pulling the Moon Dancer away as soon as I, bringing up the rear (boy that plasmoid can move, even carrying an unconscious comrade), had embarked.
We eased away, painfully slowly, eyes fixed on the Nautiloid that still loomed over us. The jif had been a little unclear and approximate with the time fuse, but he assured us he had set for a very runny egg. We were not far away with our life support envelopes still mingled when the sharp blast rang out and a significant piece of Nautiloid hull was blasted away, followed by the ruined body in all its tentacled glory, of a very mangled Neh-Thalggu, every mind flayers favourite brain sucking pet.*
*Apologies, I believe the current PC term is companion animal
All done then, almost wiped out several times and that was dealing with a crippled ship with a dead crew. Just as well no actual mind flayers involved. Mind you what was that shadow moving from one of the many nearby asteroids? A large ship configured like a massive spider drifted menacingly into view. Sartell, who felt exposition was her mission in life for some reason gasped: ‘Neogi! Flapjack, all ahead flank!’
Further exposition indicated that Neogi-captained pirate ships with crews selected for their cruelty and general nefariousness rather than race, were one of the many scourges of the area, often lying in wait close to wrecks that baited in the unwary/ greedy/ just plain stupid.*
*Categorise us as you will, but in our defence it was Captain Sartell’s decision to board the Nautiloid
I joined the flumph on the helm aiming to take an evasive course close to asteroids to make pursuit as unpalatable as possible. Aleav, Pablo and Elethiel lent hands in the rigging to coax every ounce of speed and manoeuvrability out of our vessel. We were keeping our distance for the moment, but it seemed doubtful if we could evade the relentless pursuit, when suddenly two galleons appeared and opened fire on the spider ship.
Exposition Sartell cried ‘It’s rogue Githyanki pirate captain Darvik aboard his ships the Stalwart and Incorrigible, he’s no friend to the Neogi’ Sure enough the outnumbered spider ship made itself scarce, and one of the galleons pulled into hailing distance.* A githyanki was visible on the command deck amidst a crew that appeared mainly hidozi and human and he asked our destination. On hearing it was Bral, he offered to escort us there, but did mention that he would regrettably need to take possession of our ship as payment for services rendered.
*At around this point Escobar decided now was the time to dump his embryonic collection of githyanki ears, and we all commend his decision on this one.
Captain Sartell politely declined, and to our surprise with a cheery wave our saviour turned his prow away from us and headed off into the sunset. What a guy. We meanwhile, after noting the course the spider had taken, set sail for Bral. Hopefully the final leg of our journey will be uneventful. Completely uneventful.
24.2.24
Home 