6/15/24

Q: What is your poop schedule like? A: Once a day, every day, about the same time of day.
 
BEGIN SESSION
 
Captain Gail is a little less than pleased with the dangers of travel, believing having us on board to be responsible. During breakfast, Marda asks if we all dreamed of Asmodeus (mistakenly. She meant Astrea), which we affirm. We're going to try to extract some knowledge from the magic scroll that drains life, a phenomenal idea if ever there was one. We're going to check in with Lenny first, covering Dragon Island and soulstones. He doesn't have much by way of help, but they do still have some old, filled soulstones. Pretty much nothing on Dragon Island. Goblin trade routes are only about 100 years old, and we know more than the rest of the world. We're about 1 day from Dragon Island.
 
Scroll touching time! Druss is going to touch it with his flesh arm first, fearing damage to the magical metal arm. In Marda and Melfine's room, I am using a long pole to hold the framed scroll in place while Druss moves in for the touch. Initially, he is injured pretty heavily and almost can't pull away. He does manage to get free, and some of the text appears on the scroll. I cast Identify on Druss's magical arm, to see if I can fix it and if it is more suitable for touching the scroll. The arm reeks of Necromancy; it is utterly covered in it. It allows 1 casting a Vampiric Touch per long rest; resistance to necrotic damage; if you absorb 100+ with Vampiric Touch, you get a free casting of Finger of Death; there is a maximum amount of damage it could take and become unfixable, even to me trying to fix it; there is also a hint of sentience in there. I pass this along to Druss, and anyone else listening.
 
Druss opts not to use the metal magic arm full of someone/something, but we're gonna try again. Druss touches the flesh, and quickly recoils. He looks startled, and says there's a voice in his head. It seems like his magical arm is awake now, and pissed. He tries to remove it, grunting in pain, ultimately failing to take it off. He says he needs to go sit for about an hour. It mostly seems like there is something going on in his mind, as he sits there still and almost unmoving. Yun Commands the arm to sleep, and Druss quickly removes it from his person, laying the arm on the deck. After a moment, the arm crawls about (Thing-style) and tries to move away, but I pin it to the deck. Yun Entangles the arm as well, then Druss summons his axe and goes to smash the arm. It takes a few more hits before Marda fully pulls it apart. A black spectre coalesces in the room, and Druss fucks off, joining Yun outside the cabin. This mind was Daja's ex, and she beat him to death with a hammer for raising tons of undead and bringing them to her for some reason. He was trapped in the arm as punishment for all eternity for this action. Spellen kinda reaches him and then Melfine bonds with him over the trauma of tons of memories flooding back all at once. The spectre is sort of brought up to speed on why we need the spell from the scroll and the soulstone, and mentions our need for a wizard (-_-), not knowing they're pretty much all gone. They have some back-and-forth trying to fix this man, but I mean, when has a dude ever actually been fixed? The spectre does slip that they used to be an elf. They eventually agree to stick around, and are going to store a spell (Magic Jar) in an empty potion bottle, which no one can touch until the time comes that Marda is again possessed by Asmodeus. Once she is possessed, she has to touch the thing and the spell will enact upon her. Then, we need 100 ft of clearance from the Jar in every direction.
 
The spectre does reassemble the magic arm, but it's not as good as we had just learned. He's saying his goodbyes and vanishes. Marda brings the now uncursed arm back to Druss, but he's too suspicious to put it back on. After Melfine proves it's safe, he puts it back on. It works, but is less responsive. We're going to move on to using the earlier advice to heal the scroll directly instead of sacrificing life from a party member. We get some more info, but to get the spell instructions, Melfine is going to have to Heal it a few more times over the next few days.
 
Evening comes, and we need to make a water landing before pulling into port. The seas around Valorant City are a fraught with dangerous features, but this is where we find ourselves. I precast Fly so that I can control myself better during the rough touchdown. Even when the floor lurches out from beneath my feet, I maintain my position in space, so it looks like I'm floating above the floor now. I maintain this altitude and wander the halls. I run into the folks with whom I repaired the hull after the kraken attack. They're fans, and I show off the wings by tuck-and-rolling through a doorway to show my mobility.
 
We pull into dock, and Yun scouts the city as approach. The horizon is brightening a little even though it's evening. Stormy notes that it is actually a very large angler fish, does a double-take, and runs to sound the alarm. The boat rotates around me, as I am fixed in space until I choose to move in the air. I get topside, and call Sylvio to me. Melfine lights up this angler fish with Guiding Bolt and Helen basically finishes the thing off with a wicked sick critical. Before death, Yun does Speak with Animals to tell the fish it'll die if it doesn't stop. But, it was too late to live, as Helen had killed it from within its closed mouth.
 
Melfine and Spike work to get the fish and its blood on board, and the chef is going to make some hot pot of it. Next session we're pulling into port, full of junk, down some arm function, and ready to party.
 
END SESSION
 
Ship HP: 400/400
 
INSP Inventory: INSP