Session Forty-Eight
Emotional Collective

Following some trust building amongst the new allies, Estooa used the node to transport the heroes and their rag-tag crew to the vicinity of the Nebula of Elemental Chaos and the Lumberstar. Estooa said he would stay behind at the Node to prevent it from being used by the Psulron. From there, he assured the heroes that he would be at their service. Cut off from his mental connection to other Architects and the Spheres themselves, he humbly asked to be admitted to the heroes' "emotional collective," so that he would not feel so alone. At the Lumberstar, the heroes found the gnomes behind schedule, Shilynn focused on scouting for Imperyion probes, the settlement itself under siege from more hostile flora, and the goblins having up and left in a fit of pique. Coalman let slip what Jennifer had told him about Khalid trying to take something from her. Did they take offense or were they distracted by their discovery that the Lost Goblins of Helezhad had gone to Sentar? Who know! Only Alexis, Charlotte and Blaine remain, and Blaine is a corpse. Again. The heroes learn about the marauding "aartuk" crusader plants from Alexis. They worship a powerful outsider that appeared on the Lumberstar around the time of the heroes. A mighty battle ensues...

"No system is so finely tuned that it is not subject to entropy. Or hubris. - Estooa

"Long ago the Spheres exited the Era of the Mean. We are now in the Era of the Standard Deviation." - Estooa

"I gotta' say, I'm disappointed in the goblins." - Hazel

"You call us heroes, but for us, it is our honour to serve." - Khalid

"No word matters. But people forget reality and remembers words.” - Jennifer of the Unspoken

Estooa

• "I am in your debt."

• "May I inquire, is this what individuality feels like? To be alone in your mind? How do you bear it?"

• "I am of that faction that once believed Glitches were abomination. Corruptions of the Base Code. To be removed. I... I've changed my mind. Is that how you say it? I... I was wrong."

• "No system is so finely tuned that it can escape entropy or hubris. The longer a system exists, the more complex it becomes. The more corrupted from its original intent." 

• "If not for emergent features, like Sentar or the Sailor, and even the Thin Man, I recognize that the Spheres would likely have succumbed to the Indistinction long ago."

• Can only operate the Node with “Blood of the Gardener” magical energy. (Shroktath) Reduce Constitution

• Can use the Node to move to other nodes

• Can use the node to enter Sentarspace (through the Cradle of Creation)

Crown

• Pass through any Sphere as though it were a “key”

• Becomes a Spelljamming Helm for (almost) anything upon which the wearer is standing

Glitches

• They ask to come with you. They do not feel safe in the node. It’s easier to hide out/disappear in the vastness of the Spheres

• Ask him what faction he belongs to. Then decide if you can trust him.

Ratfolk Refugees

Numbers: 217 – they want to stay with Hazel

Manzessine Goblins

• Rodrigo, Paula, Guadalupe, Javier, Eduardo, Antonio, and Catalina 

• +Canto: Stag-person Istorimancer (his antlers have been sawed off). He speaks their language and is listening to their stories. The other storytellers are dead. Canot had found a way to surreptitiously communicate with the goblins through whistling each time his cell was opened. This allowed him to escape the slaughter when the riots began. But that’s a tale for another time. – he wants to come with you

Jormun Goss & Co.

• They plan to rendezvous with a Void Stalker in a far quadrant and to begin the next stage in their battle against the Illithid Central Collective

• Plan to use the Node to travel there

• Jormun Goss offers to send “Dancer” with you as a liaison – goal is for Dancer to get to Braal.

Manzessine Refugees – All have requested to come with you

• A Duergar (Markov) with no hands is taken aback by the opening of the door. - Barbarian

• A neogi with too few limbs. (Tellerann) - Fighter

• A dohwar (Popsicle) stands nearby. - female Rogue

• A beholder with only one eye stalk (telekinetic ray) and a milky central eye (Obseshedyan), rests on a rolly cart, breathing heavily. 

• Three illithid stand guard at the back, keeping watch downward (Pheramin, Cephalon, Dancer). The one is dressed as a prison guardian claims to be an Okkallappa convert). Jormun Goss asks that Dancer come with you as his personal envoy.

Basile 3 – Basile X7B1: This prison cell’s door is specially sealed. There is no mistaking the warrenfolk you see floating in the stasis cylinder.  Despite the horrific his deformation, it is your dear friend. Cephalic tissue has grown out of his head and stretches part of the way down his back. A feeding tube goes down his throat runs to a device outside the cylinder. It has a circular opening about 1’ wide, similar to the door on a pot belly stove, and it clicks occasionally. An air compressor that leads to tubes in his nostrils hisses at regular intervals. He appears asleep, but twitches as though he were dreaming.

Basile: “I saw inside YOUR Basile as he Became One. He piqued the One's curiousity and lingered for a time.” 

The Lumberstar [MAJOR RETCON]

• 4 km long, about 0.5 km wide, approximately 6.7 sqkm of jungle equivalent terrain (approx. 8 months to survey the surface)

• Of the hundreds of integral trees inside the Smoke Glob, the largest is effectively a planetoid - 175 km long and 3 km thick

• Vennovair’s (missing) Goblin Pups: (1) Freanor (fire) or Fred, (2) Earwe (sea) or Ernie, (3) Taurea (forest) Tory, (4) Ondonor (rock) Annie

The Town _________________________

Only partially built. Fairly slapdash. Footpaths carved in the undulating bark of the Lumberstar.

There is graffiti: “Gnomes are Lame” and “Fuck you, Nomes!” with some responses – “Shut your gob!”

• Two Taverns (Sapsuckers & The Sham-Rackle)

• Lumber Mill (Steam)

• Brewery (sap)

• Forge

• Warehouses, Granary

• Two Rooming Houses, one includes a communal kitchen and hall

• Fort Khalid Free Zone (outside the fortifictions)

• Spaceport tower

• Fortifications & siege weapons

Shilynn

Shilynn moves her unlit cigar around her metal jaw and says, “Do you want the bad news, the worse news, or the worst of all?” Hahaha…

The Bad News: Most of the surviving goblins up and left

The Worse News: The threat from another type of hostile local flora has arisen – we’ve lost people – the Gnomes’ production has slowed down, and some of the new recruits have tried to leave. Can’t tell you much else… I don’t do “ground campaigns”

The Worst News: The Ylfe have occupied Braal and are sending out probes looking for us… its only a matter of time before one finds its way here

I am heading out on patrol now, to see what I can do about heading off that worst part

There’s a bunch of low-level problems, that under the circumstances, barely qualify as “bad” but I’ll leave those for you to find out, because I got to to get this patrol going. You’re going to want to talk to Walter and Coalman and, if she’s willing to talk to you, or that big ugly goblin female, Alexis – she’s still around – giving everybody hell. Couple others as well. 

Once I've finished my run, I'll see what else you've learned and try to fill you in on anything else. 

On the notion that Shilynn has abandoned her leadership responsibilities...

Could be. Or maybe none of this groundling drama will matter two coppers if the Imperyion finds us.

Tell'ya what I did do... I convinced Wee Walther to give up the bodies of the Gnomes that died in the Aartuk attack to add to some debris made to look like the Far Out shipyard was hit by stray voltage from the Nebula of Elemental Chaos... If any Inquisitors show up, that should scatter meteorites on the trail.

Wee-Walther Muzzy Wump

 Circles of clean skin around the gnome’s eyes mark where he’d been wearing the goggles now keeping his greasy white hair from his eyes. The smell of linseed and burnt rubber wafted in with him as he scurried towards you. His feet scuffing on the smoothed out bark beneath his feet.

“I cannae work like this!”

• First, there were too many goblins! Manners worse than dwarves on shore-leave...Now there’s not enough – oh, great, more goblins… are these ones housebroken?

• This hidey hole is not as pacified as you might hope! We’ve lost some good, hard-workin’ folk to some fighty plant monsters.

• We’ve spent most of our productive efforts building fortifications around the settlement

• These blueprints you left me with for your ship -- the Integrity -- are beyond our ability… a living ship? You need elves and fey and druids and plant-saavy shipwrights to build something like this… not just gearwrights and tinkers! Tendrils connecting crew? I mean who ever heard of such a thing?

• We’ve managed to build some spelldashers, a pair of sledges… and repair the Inordinate Amount… but that’s it.

Coalman

Jeniffer came. Met with the goblins. Gave them the Helezhad. She left the next day. About a week after that, most of the rest of them left. They even took Chet with them. Tied up, of course.

Look uh, I may have… I mean… I don’t know what happened out there. The whole story. But I may have let something slip…

It was clear that Jennifer was upset. I pressed her to tell me what was going on. Due respect sir (Khalid) she said that you put your hands on her, demanded she hand something over that she’d found. I guess that didn’t sit right with her.

Well, see now… Connor asked me, after she left, if I knew where she was. They’d planned some sort of Great Ruckus at their fort to welcome her home. She’d already gone.

Connor and I got to talking and seeing as he was full of questions, I ended up telling him what Jeniffer had told me. He got all quiet, like. Said “I see,” and left.

That night Alexis’ third expedition came back. They ended up having a ruckus alright. It lasted a week! They wouldn’t let me in. All painted up they were. Said it was “goblin business.” After that, they started calling it the “Fort Khalid-Free Zone.”

Alexis confided in me later, said what Khalid done, made him no better than a Hobgoblin and no wonder Jeniffer left.

See, sir, seems “Finders Keepers” is one of the highest goblin principles – up there with “Jeepers Creepers” and “Heebie Jeebiies”. I’m not sure I understand goblin legal thinking, sir, but she said any other Goblin that wasn’t Jeniffer would have fought you over something like that, on the principle of, “Loser weepers.” Near as I can tell, those that didn’t want to fight you, left on the Helezhad. I asked why, after everything, would they leave… Dakota said it, sir… “Would you rather fight a Hobgoblin, or someone you love?”

Alexis said that her expeditions had found enough clues to indicate that the “Lost Goblins” had ended up going to Sentar! So that’s where a bunch of them decided to go… Connor told me he argued against it, but decided someone had to take care of them, given as he got a Commission from you and all. He said he’d make sure they come home so they could all beat you up, take some of your stuff, and see how you like that, sir.

Me and my big mouth sir.

The gnomes only managed 75 days of work while you were away (of a possible 120 days), because of the predations by the Aartuk, In this time, they repaired and completely re-fitted the Inordinate Amount, and built 2x tug-jammer sledges, and 5x spell-dashers (5 tonnage each). 

• "We need more workers!" 

CHARLOTTE: Blaine’s dead again! He got killed by plants. I forget, didn’t that happen once already? Or did he just get kidnapped?

• Stayed because she likes it here

• She is utterly loyal to Shroktath

• She also wanted to stay to fight Khalid ("I'm not afraid of him!") She dug around his pockets. Tried to lift his leg. Then kicked him in the shin. "How's it feel?" Then stood panting. Gave him back hist stuff and said, "That's all I got."

ALEXIS: I’ve been studying the Aartuk. I’ve managed to parlay with one of their priests. It seems they new Vennovair’s goblins and had a soft spot. They keep attacking the settlement because it’s a part of their religion. If we could give them something more worthy of attack, we might be able to refocus their attention.

• Stayed because she’s banging Coalman (it's consensual)

• Also because those guys are idiotsAs long as he's not stealing from me.

• Wha'do I care what Khalid steals or tries to steal or doesn't steal? 

• No one ever tries to take anything from me – I make "losers weepers" (she actually has that tattooed on her fingers)

Holy Moly // Liar Liar Pants on Fire // Winner Winner Chicken Dinner // See You Later Alligator // Fuddy Duddy // Okie Dokie // Teeny Weeny // Artsy Fartsy // Loosey Goosey // He who smelt, it dealt it // Lame! // Boring! // Whatever!

Alexis has learned a fair bit about them, from her solo excursions and expeditions

First encountered when you guys were still here, returned from Slaughtersite. But that was only a couple. Now they have become more than just a nuisance. They’ve grown into a full blown threat. The more we defend ourselves, the more they regard us a worthy foe and want to kill us!

• Aartuk warriors fight by throwing pellets of solidified sap generated by their bodies

• They constrict opponents with their powerful tongues, which could grab up to 30 feet away

• They then proceeded to use their other club-like appendages to crush the entangled opponent to death.

• Elder Aartuk had more powerful sap projectiles, which produced sparks when hitting their targets.

• The elders also wield clerical magics drawn from some divinity and channeled through whoever the tribe designates and subsequently worships as its "demi-god" The Elders are immune to magic that manipulates movement or the shape of plants.

• They live to make war. That is part of their reproductive process. They fill the bodies of the fallen with their spores. They literally have sex dead bodies! So gross. I love these guys! When they ran out of worthy opponents, their tribe (pod? Cluster?) entered a sort of stasis. 

• On the Lumberstar, we found evidence that they were dormant until recently… Some sort of powerful creature arrived around the time that we did and awoke them. Now they worship it. I haven’t been able to get close to their god-guy… he’s powerful and intelligent and meaner than a 

Roughly one thousand aartuk crusader plants worship you now. They want you to tell them where to make holy war, that they may plant their seed in the bodies of their enemies. 

As I yanked my spear free from the corpse of the evil monster that had nearly destroyed everything we had going on the Lumberstar, something became clear in my head.

The next time I met Jennifer, she would either make amends for the harm she had caused, or I would prune her from the Architects’ garden. [DM - Somehow, I feel like I keep messing this up...]

It was a sad but unshakeable realization. I had looked up to her, viewed her as kind of a big sister. I was filled with joy when we managed to bring her back from the dead. I was heartbroken when she and Khalid had their falling out. Granted, I judged Khalid to have been wrong to demand what he did of her. But I also felt that her response was way over the top. None of our party, save Khalid, had done anything wrong to her. And even for Khalid, you could chalk up to an insult for what he’d asked (but not gotten). In return she had actually wronged our entire group by stealing something that we’d poured our blood, sweat and tears into.

Even so, I’d felt sorry for the disagreement and hard feelings, I’d been willing to forgive her theft, and I’d hoped that some day we might be able to patch things up again. Now, however, her acts had led to destruction and death among those we held dear. 

We returned to the Lumberstar after 4 months away, having completed our mission to liberate Yurgon Gos from the prison of the mind munchers, dealing a serious blow to a great force of evil in Magluon. This was a mission that, I’m quite sure, the old Jennifer would have strongly agreed with and been proud of.

Her “thanks” was to have thrown our young settlement and its inhabitants into chaos, and seriously weakened it in a time of great need. She’d driven a rift between our goblin crew, and sent many of the most capable off in pursuit of the lost goblins of Helhezad (at exactly the time, I might add, that we were bringing back rescued goblins from that lost tribe complete with the information they had on what had become of them). For this division and weakening - brought about by Jennifer - had happened at a terrible time. Some sort of creature from beyond our plane had arrived on this massive space tree, and set itself up as a sort of god among an evil race of plant beings. I believe Alexis called these warlike tree beings the “Hegsethians.”

The Hegsethians valued war, and saw themselves as dedicated to being warriors. They liked a challenge, so as their attacks on Fort Khalid met strong resistance, it actually encouraged more and more deadly attacks. The survival of the whole community was in jeopardy, and several of the gnomes, goblins, and others in the settlement had been killed fending off these attacks from the Hegsethians. 

We’d arrived just in time. I had used the power of the Gardeners to allow Estooa to send the Mindflayer rebels to where they needed to go to keep undermining that evil empire. We’d established a connection with them through the Architect, who remained at the node. I had used more of my life force to power Estooa and his ability to use the node to transport the rest of us to the Lumberstar only to find Fort Khalid and the neighbouring town on the edge of collapse under the attacks of the Hegsethians. We’d had a chance to heal up, gather information, and lead a successful assault on the Hegsethians and kill their evil “god” who had stirred up this whole conflict. 

The Hegsethians now seemed to have switched their worship to us, which gave me the creeps in more ways than one. 

But my focus was really on Jennifer.

Jennifer left a note with Coalman for the heroes. He just found it: "If you are still of a mind to act as Deputies of the Unspoken (Once Removed) and maybe save the Federation, the Helezhad will be able to get you to Sentarspace. It worked for me. It's the only way I knew to get what I had found as far away from you as possible. It can't hurt you anymore.

"As my friend Asteri told you, before I killed him, if you want to know more, find Sadore. He's returned to Vfernyulian on Seluna from the Lunar Elf Embassy in Riot's Gate.  I used the Helezhad to alert him about you before I came back here. He's now studying what I couldn't let Khalid have and should be able to give you more answers than I ever could about it. 

"I told him I gave you the Crown because I trusted your roles in its story, even if I didn't understand your roles in mine. No one understands the Crown of Lost Sphere better than him. He has spent his life researching it. As I told you before, its your story now. If you no longer trust me, that's now part of your story too, and I have to learn to trust that was for the best as well...

"For what it's worth, I didn't intend to tell Coalman what transpired between Khalid and me. It still makes me sad. He was kind, and I was lonely and drunk. I hope you don't mind. He assured me he would be discreet. I figured, 'You guys trust him, so I can too.'

"It's funny, the difference between how a story is conceived and how it is received. All these years an Istorimancer, and the way a single element--like a misunderstanding between friends--is able to transform an entire narrative, and vice versa, can still surprise me."