9 -1 – 2010
After the events of the previous day, the next couple of
days seemed to fly by quite quickly.
Ariadne was a flurry of activity, gathering up crew and authorizing
different people to come along. Otso was
particularly interesting. He floated! Well, actually kept a mass of clouds beneath
his feet so he never touched the ground.
Something about a curse or some sort.
And all it would take is a single touch to the ground for the things
after him to locate his position.
It made us scratch our head but Ariadne swore he was the
best and it was her ship after all. He
brought with him a bunch of plants, something that made Twink incredibly
happy. She snipped off a few leaves,
which he scolded her for (but not really meaning it). The plants were known as Oxygensus though
most knew them by their nom de guerre of “oxygen leaves”.
Ariadne also employed Kain, bringing him on as a handyman
and crewmember with the promise of a portion of profit and who knows what
else. Twink spent some time looking for
more herbs to add to her collection and who knows what Sultrani did. Spoke to Collin at least. He had used an interesting martial move know
as the “Wolf’s Fangs”. He was closed
mouthed about it but they had a friendly conversation, nonetheless. She did convince him that the name he
overhead when she cast it into the moon pool was Ariadne’s to give and not
hers. He looked skeptical but acquiesced
after she pushed.
While the crew slowly showed up and everyone else was busy,
Sultrani took some steps to keep pursuers (wonder who she thought was
following…?) from tracking them down.
She spent freely to book passage on several caravans and carriage routes
out of town as well as some billets on airships and skyships. Quite a busy bee. In fact, she was near the docks doing just
that when a freak swell caught her by surprise and right into the drink. Sucked in by a riptide, she was pulled out
but managed to fight her way free of it.
She was a bit out then but started swimming back. She was sucked in by another riptide but was
pulled from it by another merman.
Thinking it Reiner she went along.
She was quite surprised to find out it wasn’t when they
neared shore. He noted his name was Fin
and while not Reiner he was aware of the man.
Sultrani, for her own reasons, introduces the too. After some conversation with Ariadne and
Reiner, Fin joined us. Their discussion
was behind closed doors but in private she assured us he was trustworthy.
The week pulled to a close with the crew going on
board. They were an interesting and
tough looking bunch, reconciled to potentially not coming back for years. Just like we were. That conversation with Araidne after she laid
out that she had acquired a ship had hit us like a stone. Everyone talked, even Sultrani! At least for
a little bit. Regardless, the sense of
adventure and fun in flying across Khaora seemed to much to turn down. Anyway, the crew were as follows:
Ariadne: Captain
Navigator: Otso
First Mate:
Hignphaxis
·
Geof
·
Marjorie
·
Antel
·
Shayn Duomo
·
Sable
·
Kurtag
·
Mina
·
Draj
·
Endil
·
Cade
·
Vangtse (hawkman)
·
Ryx
·
Kain
Twink was our medic and cook. Sultarni was, well, herself. We had one other passenger who didn’t muster
that came on board with Fin. She was
something special, I guess, and there at Kolera’s insistence.
Twink left food outside her door, as she didn’t seem to come
out at all. Maybe late perhaps.
Leaving Khurahaen was a grand adventure that quickly grew
boring. Time slipped away as the drill
of sailing the skies took over and we fell into a rhythm. The first push was to gain altitude to clear
the Prismatic Mountains, which meant pointing the ship skyward at a steep angle
and rising. Otso took it easy on us,
taking his time guiding us upward.
In fact, it was rather boring for a while. At least, until we actually got up into the
upper layers of the atmosphere. Even the
mountain tops looked rather small below us through the clouds. It was dark and cloudy when the watch saw
them first. Multicolored lights, dancing
and moving in patterns with the clouds as a backdrop. One did not concern them. It was when it grew to three and then seven
and then more when they (Ryx) set off the alarm.
Ariadne orders the weapons locker to open and everyone arms
up. Fighting them seemed impossible as
they moved and zoomed across the ship. After some rather dramatic failures, Sultrani landed a blow on one that
destroyed it. I think. She grew very agitated after failing to
defend or attack them and landed upon one of them with a horizontally spinning
kick then thrust her hand inside its core and ripped out its lights. Her hand went dead; numb at the least, maybe
more. That seemed to animate them even
more. It was Otso who struck them with lightning
forcing them away. It charred the ship
in the process and Ariadne orders an immediate payment of 1 GP in hazard pay!
The next day saw some sore heads from celebration of
surviving the first conflict. It was
quiet during the morning as we passed over the mountains but a little more
hectic as we got into some rougher weather that forced us up a little
higher. Everyone was on oxygen leaves
then and during the afternoon count we realized that Kain was missing!
A search of the ship revealed nothing but Vangtse in
scouting the area finds trails of Kain’s hair near a strange creature. It looked, for the lack of a better term,
like a slowing turning mirror floating through the sky. Fearing it had devoured Kain we sailed over
to it and it ignored us, making no attempt to move away or attack.
Unknownst to us, Kain had been snapped up by the creature,
which was a bizarre thing that consisted of little more than a giant stomache
attached to an open aperture. It lived
on bugs and small things mostly with an occasional larger prey (high Kain!)
once and a while.
Kain was not still why we struggle to figure out what to
do. He quickly realized he was getting
weaker (it drained the life out anything inside) and scrambled his way through
the debris of insect husks and bodies to try to find a way out. He had no luck but did stumble a spirit of
another victim. She had been swept off a
skyship as well and died as he would if nothing changed. Her spirit was trapped within and wanted only
escape. She told Kain she had a powerful
voice and knew that the right vibrations would force it to regurgitate its
stomach if they hit the right vibration.
She (Tentari) had been doing that before she died and has
nothing but time to figure out what was needed since. If he would let her possess him, she could
sing them free. Kain quibbles but given
a lack of any choices, agrees. She
possesses him without a hitch and moves to a point indecipherable to him but
where she says they must stand. She
opens her mouth tossing when it happens:
Back on the ship, no one could figure out what to do. After a lot trial and error, they find it can
take things in but nothing seems to come back out. Lacking options, we decided to empty the bilges
and septic tank into it. Poor Kain was
starting to sing when he was deluged with water and shit! He survives the shitfall and still manages to
sing and nearly contemporaneously it belches him and a lot of the shit, water
and insect corpses.
It floods our ship and sends it canting to one side and we
nearly lost two. Luck was with us (even
though nearly all the food was spoiled and the ship stank for days).
Tentari, freed pulls from Kain and begins to fade. As a last gift she burns some of her passing
essence into the ship, building it into a song that brings a gentle rain. It doesn’t last, at least the rain, but the
song lingered, always there with the ship like a haunting air.
We thanked the gods the next couple of days were quiet as we
left Arduin behind us and travelled high across the plains of Falohyr. It ended, sadly, when late one night as we
were heading towards some horrible place called The Withering Lands we caught
sight of a large serpentine form wriggling through the air. Figuring it a dragon we dodged it and went
higher to hide.
We were lucky and dodged it.
Some time passed without problems until we slammed into something we
couldn’t see. It rocked the shop and our
tempers. We rushed out to find out what
was going on.
A quick recon showed it was some kind of translucent webbing
that didn’t show up against the cloud background. Where webbing exists, spiders always follow
and we quickly found ourselves fighting translucent spiders. They fell quickly to our blades without much
effort. Getting out of the webbing took
longer and was interrupted by what I can only call a hail of jellyfish, or so
it seemed. That complicated things but
once we had swept them off deck, we used the webbing to replace some damage (it
worked really well) and their saliva to burn away the webs otherwise.
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