The Command Team wakes up on the way-marker for illithid-space, Mezsoul. Non-illithid so-called "slave races" may travel here, no further. Disoriented and unsure of how they got there. How did they get here? How long did it take them from the last place they left? What was the last thing they remember? So begins a journey of living backwards and remembering memories. They had arrived on a Dohwar trading vessel. They passed a cluster of psionic amplifiers sooner than expected, and they had not yet consumed their brain tea. They struggled to find one another in a collective mindscape and emerge. But before departing deeper into their memories of what had passed, Fortuna casts Wish to create a doorway that would lead out of their dilapidated hovel on Mezsoul where they waited, either for word on their revolutionary contact or certain arrest! There's a knocking at Fortuna's door. Quickly! hide inside an extra-dimensional space. But entering they pass into memory, or do they experience that which had come before for the first time? Who can tell? The Lumberstar. They spent three months there before leaving through Mezsoul. Three months, remembering Basile,  helping the gnomes and goblins to clean up after the One had poured out of the veil of reality through the artifact, establishing their base of operations, and making allies of the troublesome local megaflora.  Sinking into the bog of the wildspace ents, they sink deeper into memories past to live more things that had already happened for the first time. Slaughtersite. Returning on the back of their kinori spelljammer after Basile had sacrificed himself to assure the integrity of the Spheres. Imperyion Drop Troops are scouring the site, searchig for something. Orcneas is there too. The companions isolate and capture some of the Ylfe and interrogate them regarding their objectives. They learn that Braal has been taken. How long have they been gone? When did this occur. Fortuna's hand reaches towards the door. She opens it...

You wake up.

Mezsoul. You’re still on Mezsoul.

It’s been three weeks. Or has it been two? No, definitely three. It’s hard to tell. Your mind is a blur. This thought makes you smile bitter or sigh exhausted, you choose. Your fingers are always cold, you never feel like you get enough sleep here. Wherever here is.

Mezsoul’s orbit marks the frontier between Illithid-Space of the inner-Shattered Sphere and the ungoverned realm that stretches to sphere’s edge. It is supposedly one of the only planetoids left undestroyed from the millenia of Nyn’ylfen wars. Well, partially undestroyed. It is unlike any place you’ve ever imagined, because it only exists as a place you’ve imagined.

To understand that, you have to understand that backwards.

The last thing you remember was the approach:

• QUESTIONS

o   Q: How long did you spend getting from Mezsoul from the last place you were before that? 

      A: 2 WEEKS

o   Q: How did you get to Mezsoul? The Inordinate Amount or Dori or some other way? 

      A: HITCHED A RIDE WITH A TRADING VESSEL, DOHWAR

• The last thing you remember…

• You came upon the psionic amplifiers much sooner than expected. You passed a cluster of them, each similar to the one you found in the ruins of the Other Brinkmanship…

Each psionic amplifier is an over-ripe melon the size of a cow. Its bruised and glistening skin is covered with quivering tendrils that poke tentatively from fatty folds and sway in a non-existent breeze. At each of its extremities, moistened flesh petals, swollen and erect, fan out in a parabola that changes its facing with darting, off-putting movements. The whole cluster orbit one another in an impossible dance, that stirs unwanted feelings deep in your blood.

• After that, you followed the instructions of Perietal Loman of the outlawed Okkallappa Collective. On Braal, he provided you with the mind-enhancing “Brain Tea” whose vapors you had to inhale upon reaching the amplifiers (“Whoah chill, man. They’re made of fungus people who are actually really cool with being inhaled.”)

• The amplifiers are distant relatives of those “fungus people”. The effects of the tea will make operating in Illithid space possible for “non-slave” races, because it allows limited access and approval to their psychic networks.

• Then you were here… on Mezsoul, in the City of Mass Chain, circling above the shores of the methane lake globe, called Fissure. It is the most habitable place for non-Illithids on this toxic and fractured world, head together by will and chains.

• Your mission is to rescue Jormunn-Goss, the mindflayer revolutionary from the Illithid prison, Manzessine… by weakening the Illithid Collective, you push back their dark designs against Braal and the Shattered Sphere, and make an ally of Okkallappa against the Imperyion…

• But to do that, first you have to find Felon-Goss – the Okkallappa contact here in Mezsoul who should have reached you by now…

• But every day drags you further down a rabbit hole psychic torment, frightening bureaucratic tests, and an impossible investigation…

• So far, your cover stories have held, but something is wrong.

• Oh, and… Brain Tea! You need more Brain Tea!  You need more Brain Tea! Your supply is running out…

• Two days before you arrived, the mind link between you stops

You are disoriented, as you always are, when you wake up here. What do you do to prepare for the day? What do you do to prepare for the day.

• Suddenly, there’s a knocking on your mind! Someone has entered the Inferior Races Quarter looking for you! Is it Sulcus-Ra, or Tundar-Ka? You will know in moments…

Preparing for another day of waiting on Mezsoul…

• Shroktath meditates on the Base Code

• Hazel prays to Azael and the Saints

• Fortuna uses wish to create a doorway that would ostensibly offer an exit from any fabricated mindscape

• Khalid tries to get a sense of the flow of the city – a civil engineer’s flowchart

But before all that, there was the Lumberstar...

Music. Dancing. Tears. Fires. SO many fires…

Q: How long did you spend there?

A: 3 months

• REPORT

o   Following the Life Day attack by the Old Ones, clean up took a while. The gnomes and the goblins have begun working together to plan the settlement.

o   Compact of Steam and Steel patrol-bots entered the SMOKE-GLOB, but were harassed by local Fauna, so they left. They are nosing around some more.

o   One of the Explore-Patrols led by Coalman found two old sites on the Lumberstar that may have been temporary Compact camps or smuggle-holds at one point…

o   That local fauna chased off the Compact, and there’s evidence in battled some of the Old Ones, but it’s also started harassing the settlement, making life difficult for the gnomes and goblins.

LUMBER GIANTS – (Problematic local megaflora)

You’ve been 4 days tracking down a family group of what you’ve taken to calling Lumber Giants, a sort of Wildspace Treant. They are cultivating bogs which they seem to be protecting (food source, nests)

You can each bring a goblin or NPC companion whose skills you can call upon…

Before that, there was the Slaughtersite, arriving after Basile’s disappearance into the One

• • What did you do at the Slaughtersite?

  • When you arrived back after your confrontation with the GREAT OLD ONES and the One Artifact?

  • NOTE: There is a large amount of negative (necrotic) energy accumulating at the site

  • It was shortly after you arrived back here that you noticed you could no loger communicate with one another psychically

 A Battalion of Ylfe, led by a Bionoid Insect-armoured Leader… Orcneas!

They seem to be scouring the wreckage, looking for something? What are they doing here?

PATROLS Vs NECROTIC FLESH GOLEM

• Two Swan Riders, 10 drop suits

• They are scouring the asteroids, and the larger wreckage and flesh balls

Q: What are the Imperyion intentions at Slaughtersite? 

A: Looking for a group of troublemakers; take them, or evidence of them back to Braal, where we've established a base; looking for an Ylfen renegade, a Zealot of the One; looking for an artifact

It is not known when the Festival of the Blinded Eye started.  The ratfolk on this day feast with friends, drink and celebrate the patronage of Saint Basile.  Basile is ever watching but on this day, worshipers burn small wicker likenesses of their saint to blind him for one evening.  The first part of the day is spent reflecting on the accomplishments of the past year.  Children make small wicker dolls in the likeness of Saint Basile.  In the evening these effigies are burned to “blind” their saint while the celebrations of the evening take place. 

While the worship of this saint is generally characterized by study, focus and learning, this festival is meant to celebrate his sacrifice and ascension to sainthood.  Oddly the festival is often celebrated by small groups of gnomes and goblins who favor the more festive elements of the tradition favoring the celebration over reflection.  Goblins especially love the burning and drinking aspects.

Priests of Saint Basile run from house to house trying to playfully put out the effigies as they burn.  Hearing the shout “he is ever vigilant” brings children running outside to light their creation anew.  Larger settlements with many followers create larger wicker effigies that are ceremoniously lit during the celebration and then extinguished by the priesthood at midnight.

After the reunification of the ratfolk this celebration sees the mixing of former factions and families that once fought and is often used to sign peace accords and settle disputes.

May the watcher keep you safe

In your travels and your tasks

May no fear come to thee

Through troubles big and small

Saint Basile keep you safe

And protect you evermore