Session 3: The Wreck of the Reliant Report

General Summary

Once the ship gets into space, Zayre plots a fast course for Hecht, which should take about 19 days to reach. Their path will take them out of the inner system, past the orbit of Longpoint, through the Aegis asteroid belt, and into the outer system. Based on the current location of Hecht, nowhere near any known portals to other spheres in the outer system, the party expects to encounter little if any merchant traffic.   A few hours into their voyage, the crew notices that they’ve picked up a dozen or so grey scavvers, following the ship, breathing its air, and eating their scraps. These sorts of scavvers are not typically dangerous unless provoked, and the party has plenty of air for the relatively short journey to Hecht, and so they decide to leave the creatures alone, but keep an eye on them.  

  The first half of their journey is uneventful. When they reach the Aegis, the ship makes its way through the belt alternatively at spelljamming and tactical speeds, depending on how close they pass to individual asteroids. For the most part, though, the asteroids are widely spaced in this part of the belt, and so the ship makes good time (as expected, else it would have been faster to go “above” or “below” the asteroids).   En route, the group starts to get to know each other better. Windellian lectures the others on the importance of good feather care, and the nuances of how different sorts of feathers need to be tended. Only Zayre, who has wings himself, shows any interest in this, and even that interest fades quickly. Jessa spends most of her time working in the workshop she has set up aboard ship, and warns the others that there are sensitive and potentially dangerous pieces of equipment there, and it would be best for the others to avoid the room. Jessa is also very, very interested in Windy Clockitude, from a tinker gnome point of view.   As they near the far side of the belt, the lookout spots a ship in the distance. It turns out to be a damaged squidship, marked with the colors of the Greatspace Navy, and named the Reliant. Fire damage is evident, and the air envelope is cloudy with lingering smoke or fog, but it appears this ship has been here for a while. The Greatspace natives speculate it could be one of the ships sent out under false pretenses during T’Laan’s rule, headed either towards Darkspace to bolster the feeding colonies T’Laan had planned there, or to Realmspace to support the Drow/Illithid forces allied with T’Laan in their attack on Toril. That would mean the ship had been out here for over two years.     At this time, Jessa has the Conn, and Zayre has the helm. Zayre maneuvers the ship to match up with the slowly-tumbling reliant, careful not to overlap air envelopes, and Windellian flys over to investigate, flying around the ship’s air envelope carefully. There are multiple bodies and blood stains visible on deck, all apparently crew members who slew each other. No battle damage is visible, other than the fires.   Unsure of the quality of the air, the party next decides to send BN Sue over, protected by the rainbow-filled aura of Environmental Protection generated by one of Jessa’s tools. Windellian carries BN over to the Reliant, and drops him into the rigging. BN gracefully and safely makes his way to the deck, and can smell the lingering scent of blood, death and smoke. The bodies are badly decomposed. He starts by making his way forward, to where the captain’s cabin should be.   There, he finds more dead, and the captain’s log book. The ship left Thesalys in January 853 TU (just over two years ago), at T’Laan’s orders. Their destination was Belalspace (which would require journeying past Pirtelspace and Darkspace) to set up a supply colony there to support the war against Bruin’s rebels (or at least, that was T’Laan’s pretext). They were to rendezvous there with several other ships from the Greatspace Navy. (This comes as a surprise to the Greatspace natives--while the stories of T’Laan sending ships to Darkspace and Realmspace under false pretenses are well known, they have not heard anything about a 3rd destination. The crew expects that the Greatspace Navy would be very interested in this information).   The log goes on to relate that the captain and some of his officers had suspicions about T’Laan’s story, their mission, and the “diplomatic representative”, a man named Olless, that accompanied them. Apparently, several officers came to the captain with reports of odd behavior by Olless, but then later retracted their stories--and then the captain himself changed the tone in his log, writing less frequently, only providing essential updates on their course and progress. As BN Sue reads through this log, the ghostly form of a bloodied sailor comes through the wall, and slashes at BN with a bony, ethereal hand. BN is terrified, and runs to one of the windows, pounding on the glass to get out, as the ghost croaks to “Tell my story!”.   Windellian, who has been circling around and trying to keep an eye on BN, carefully blasts a hole in the weakened wall of the cabin with his magic, and snatches BN away from the ghost, returning him to the ship.   Once BN has been returned to the Skyrunner and calms down, he relates what he found. After debating their options, the party decides to send Windy over (since he doesn’t need to breathe). Windellian takes over the helm, and Zayre (with great difficulty) flies Windy over, and along the way confirms the air of the other ship is stale with smoke, but still breathable.   There, Windy continues to investigate the ship, and heads aft to the helm room. He finds, to their shock, a dead illithid who has ripped open the skull of the helmsman. The illithid was apparently killed by one of the sailors, whose body lies in a corner, papers strewn around him. The body matches BN’s description of the ghost, and papers (which the sailor apparently wrote as he lay dying, with ink scrounged from nearby, and finished with his own blood) relate the rest of the story.   The dead sailor was the bosun, Brighton Soames. Apparently, sailors continued to be suspicious, especially after the captain and other officers’ behavior changed, and a couple of sailors disappeared, and came to Soames. Eventually, something Olless did confirmed their suspicions that he was not who he said he was, and the sailors set a fire to create a distraction as a desperate gambit to retake the ship. Olless turned out to be an illithid in disguise, and turned the crew against itself during the fight. Overwhelmed by numbers, Olless retreated to the helm, and killed the last helmsman when Brighton didn’t back down. This doomed the crew, who died from the battle, their wounds or the fire, since there was no one to fly the ship.   Soames wrote down the story with his last breaths, and then (apparently) his anger and guilt at having contributed to this kept him in this world as a ghost. Once the crew of the Skyrunner learn this, they decide to attempt to repair the Reliant enough to get it to Hecht, bring the bodies of the crew home, and make sure their story is known. Once they announce this intent, the ghost of Soames is apparently mollified, and watches from the shadows as the Skyrunner comes alongside, and the crew starts to do makeshift repairs.   The air quality aboard the Reliant is Stale from the smoke, but breathable, and brings the air quality of the Skyrunner down to a similar state. However, the crew believes that Hecht is close enough that they should be able to reach it before the air quality gets worse (even with the fact that they still have the dozen scavvers circling around the ships, and the voyage to Hecht will take twice as long with only one helmsman for each ship). The Reliant has a functioning Type II minor helm (similar in power to the one aboard the Skyrunner).   The crew spends two days doing makeshift repairs, to try to get this ship in slightly better shape. (In game terms, a ship the size of the Reliant can take 6 wounds, and one more will Wreck it. The Reliant currently has the equivalent of 6 Wounds from the fire damage and a bit of damage from smaller asteroids. The crew hopes to repair 1 Wound to make the ship a bit more robust). They will also fish for some of the grey scavvers, to reduce their air consumption and add to their fresh food supplies.   They plan to then transfer roughly half the crew to man the ship, and sail for Hecht.