Session Forty-Four
The Manzessine Redemption

They call themselves the Inordinate Privateers. In accented goblinoid, they claim to be the Bosses of a team of goblins. It almost seems too impossible to be true. But Canto the storyteller, casts one of his Plot Device spells and confirms for you that they are telling the truth. Even the part about finding the home that the four of you left behind on the great tree inside the Air Glob. They’ve promised to take you home. But first you all need to get out of this terrible prison.

It is hard to follow the endless debating about what to do, but Canto helps here again. The special illithid prisoner about whom you have heard whispers, Jormun Goss, insists on rescuing as many of his brethren as possible. He needs them for his revolution or something. If it means more dead illithid, you’re all for it. Why are they still talking about it?

While they debate, the Old Witch Mother, Paula, tells you to follow Wardo the Sneak, to see if you can find your special weapons – the one’s she’d crafted inside the prison for your escape, that had only just been confiscated. She had volunteered the goblins for up-spiral sentry duty, so you can easily sneak away to find them…

For gobs’ sake, they’re STILL talking!

Jormun Goss is convincing, but the Inordinate Privateers are worried about a group of ratfolk they left in the main prison. The Architect warns that the illithid are on the verge of breaking into the prison reception area from Mezsoul.

Fighting up through the spiral will be a time-consuming grind for the Inordinate Privateers. Who will be brave enough to run ahead to the prison administration area, slow down the encroaching forces from Mezsoul, secure the spelljammer on the surface and lead the ratfolk to safety!?

Levitation Tunnel to Spacedock: A wedge-shaped room at the end of a bent hall. On one side there is a fresco of tiny tiles depicting illithid spelljammers locked in combat, and destroying an Ylfen warship. The floor is slick with condensed water and covered in drains. 

There is a pile of ten ratfolk bodies in this room at the bottom of a spiral chimney that reaches toward the asteroid surface. All of the bodies are emaciated and have had their skulls crushed and brains extracted. The bodies are covered in welts and bruises, like they were inside a tight metallic cage. Are they being brought in, or taken out? 

In the ceiling, not far from the pile, a segmented tunnel free of any gravity actively bends and twists, making it impossible to see through to where it leads. Its sides are covered with ice. The chill and smell of methane reminds you of Mezsoul (NOTE: Illithids can telepathically levitate at will)

Spiral ramp to Prison Launch Chamber: At the tp of the levitation tunnel, just before the exit to the asteroid surface, there is a fresco depicting tentacles spiralling around into a cone. It looks for all the world like a poster for Gnomish gear metal band.

Asteroid Surface: A walkway twists from the opening across the desolate barrens of the frozen asteroid. Wind howls. Snow blows. Ice stings your faces. Wildspace above twists maddeningly, as though the asteroid were spinning like a skirmish ball in flight, and you were standing on its tip. F.DC 20 or DISORIENTED

At then end of the platform, 120’ as the bird flies, there is a T-junction. One walkway goes to a raised spacedock with a spiral platform that has enough berths for four spelljammers. One is currently in dock – an Illithid Nautiloid.

The other walkway goes to a one-story building that sits on the rocky ground of the asteroid. Ratfolk workers shamble between the nautiloid and the building carrying heavy loads under the watchful eye of an illithid slaver.

There is a pile of something outside the building on the walkway. It seems like bodies. There appears to be four ratfolk standing solemnly around the bodies.

• The ratfolk standing around the bodies do not move. They are snowmen.

• The workers are carrying bodies to the building. They are immune to the effects of the spinning.

• The ratfolk are children (30 of them)

• The workers are children. “We don’t taste good to them… not enough fear… too much hope.”

• Illithid-Spawn Prowlers attack while the characters move across the platform.

Spacedock: A nautiloid cargo-jammer has a massive hold, built for transporting a herd of live thralls. 

Food Processing: As you approach this building you can here the grinding whine of some sort of machinery inside. Inside, ratfolk chattel are feeding corpses into the machine from a scaffolding at the top. Something like a brown-yellow paste is churned out into a vat and then moves through pipes that go down into a chimney that travels into the heart of the asteroid.

The bodies and body parts of prisoners and chattle are fed into a great grinding device to create the paste that serves as food for the prisoners.

The planet [DM: technically, the Lumberstar is not a planet. It is a tree, approximately 200 km long] had never needed a name before.

It had always simply been: a wildspace world of impossible trees, their trunks wider than towers and their canopies braided together so high above the ground that sunlight filtered down like something strained through memory. When the gnome refugees arrived—fleeing wars, tariffs, and promises that had collapsed—they gave the place a careful, temporary designation in their charts. A number. A footnote. Something meant to be abandoned once the ships were ready.

That name did not survive the goblins.

The goblins called it Fort Khalid Free Zone, and the name stuck precisely because it carried a laugh inside it.

Khalid had been their commanding officer once. A good one, most agreed, though that agreement was always followed by a pause and a grimace. Khalid believed in rules that made sense, inspections that caught problems early, and schedules that saved lives. Khalid kept them alive. Khalid also believed there was a right way to do things, and that goblins should learn it.

They had learned enough.

So when they named the place after him, it wasn’t devotion—it was closure. Fort Khalid was the past they survived. Free Zone was the part they cared about. The name was a joke, a scar, and a victory all at once.

The gnomes didn’t fully grasp this nuance, but they liked the confidence of it and stopped correcting their maps.

At first, there was no takeover. The goblins simply arrived and began helping in ways that ignored hierarchy entirely. Bronwyn lifted beams and set them down where they felt right. Glenn treated trees like honest opponents and laughed when they fought back. Connor vanished into the canopy and returned only to tell people they were about to make a terrible mistake.

Alexis painted symbols on bark and hulls and said the forest preferred to be warned. The gnomes, practical creatures, decided that warning a forest was cheaper than angering one.

Decisions happened where people stood. Authority followed momentum. If Lewis was singing, people listened. If Edgar was cooking, people stayed.

Then Shannon Two made a door.

No one saw her build it. One day there was simply an arched doorway carved into the living wood of one of the tallest trees, impossibly smooth, lantern-lit, and draped in fabric that absolutely did not belong in a work camp. Shannon Two lounged nearby in silks and polished leathers, rings on her fingers, boots spotless, as if she had always owned the place.

She dressed like a spoiled princess who had never lifted anything heavier than a goblet—and moved like something that could end you before you finished the thought. She smiled sweetly. She spoke softly. She watched everything.

Shannon One swung through the doorway first, boots muddy, grin sharp, delighted by the drama of it. She declared the space perfect, insisted it needed cheering, and immediately tried to slide down a rope that did not exist yet.

Lewis followed, humming, eyes bright with possibility.

Edgar arrived last, hauling crates, muttering the entire time like an ancient mountainman dragged out of retirement. He complained about the wood, the air, the fire pit placement, and the general decline of standards everywhere. Then he started cooking—and the complaints became part of the atmosphere, like wind or gravity.

By nightfall, there were tables.

Dice appeared. Cards followed. Coins moved from hand to hand with a sound that carried far through the platforms and rope bridges. The space grew upward, spiraling inside the tree, levels stacked like layers of temptation. Shannon One leaned into the chaos, laughing, calling bets, making everything feel like a dare.

Shannon Two never raised her voice.

She reclined. She adjusted a ring. She allowed people to win just enough to feel clever—and lose just enough to feel invested. When she looked at you, you felt chosen. When she stopped looking, you felt nervous.

Lewis named the casino The Tall Hand, because luck, like arrogance, climbed higher the longer you chased it.

Attached to it—inevitably—was Edgar’s kitchen.

Edgar called it the Gravity Plane.

“Everything ends up here,” he grumbled, stirring a pot that smelled like memory and hunger. “Same as gold. Same as fools.”

The Gravity Plane fed everyone. Edgar complained about portions while serving them. He complained about debts while extending them. He complained about people while remembering everything about them. He accepted payment in coin, labor, favors, and promises, and he never wrote a single thing down.

Refusing Edgar’s food was unthinkable. Arguing with Edgar was pointless. Winning Edgar’s approval was rumored to be possible but unconfirmed.

The games weren’t unfair.

They were worse than that—they were personal.

Debt crept in quietly. Blaine owed and was owed, a living knot of obligation who somehow kept the whole place supplied. Dakota owed a little, tried to work it off, and accidentally promised herself three times over. Brendon owed heavily after betting against one of his own bombs and losing in spectacular fashion. Glenn owed once, laughed, and hauled beams until Edgar grunted approval and fed him something celebratory.

Shannon One laughed about debts. Shannon Two remembered them.

She never threatened. She never demanded. She simply asked—politely—for help. Or suggested that someone might enjoy sleeping better once a small issue was resolved. Or smiled and let Edgar mention, casually, that a certain meal might taste better after cooperation.

And things were resolved.

Disputes between gnomes drifted toward the Tall Hand and settled there. Arguments about ship priority ended after long nights of food, music, and quiet reckoning. Alexis admitted that fate felt clearer near the tables, though she refused to sit down herself.

Charlotte took up position near the entrance, arms crossed, making sure disagreements stayed verbal. Veronica watched from the shadows, never betting, never owing, and therefore untouchable. Connor observed from above, warning Lewis when moods shifted like weather.

Above it all, ships continued to rise—crooked, spiked, asymmetrical spelljammers that somehow sailed true. The forest remained standing, scarred but alive. The goblins argued, laughed, sang, and worked, many of them deeply in debt and pretending not to notice.

They told themselves it was temporary.

They always had.

But Fort Khalid Free Zone endured—not because it was orderly, but because it was free. Free of inspections. Free of schedules. Free of being told there was only one right way to survive.

Khalid would have hated it.

Which made it perfect.

Outsiders eventually asked who ruled the Free Zone.

The goblins would grin and gesture upward, toward the lights in the trees, the sound of dice, song, and Edgar’s constant complaining drifting down.

“No one’s in charge,” they’d say.

Then, after a pause:

“But if it matters… you talk to the Shannons.”

And if it mattered a lot—They’d nod toward the kitchen. “—you eat on the Gravity Plane first. Everything falls there eventually.”