Flying Out and Dropping In

Expedition

Myska's Menagerie make their flight from New Derth to Fowler's Mill and run afowl of roadkill along the way.

The next morning the companions would begin their flight out towards Fowler's Mill. The travel was rainy throughout the first portion of the journey.
14th of the Thaw

Mid morning of the Fifth day of travel, a splattering a squelching was heard overhead despite the weather. Mr. Tengral called out the anomalous sound as a flock of decaying bird people drifted out of the air all around the vessel. The barren aarakocra were missing feathers, rotting, blistered, and covered in slime. The majority of them falling in style more than flying, they drifted towards the deck as the companions readied themselves. A single mutated avian kept in the air, incanting on the wind its shamanic magic as it did so.
The combat was fast and brutal. The mutant birds lashed with claws and spat acidic vomit at the companions. Undead bodyguards and summoned skeletal spirits assailed the horde with grave bolts and arrows. The shaman leader garbled threats of their demise for opposing what was coming. Astrid strode in with flail and spiritual gavel as the shaman conjured a giant scorpion from its molting feathers. Tengrals father and son channeled lightning sidelong through the rainy sky. Crush summoned up a deck of spiked boards for Chupta to gather the flock of birds from across the the deck and the flying shaman all into the center. Getting there, the Shaman dissolved the spikes with praise to the Elder Evils of the Far Realm but not before multiple of his mutant flock had strode right through them. The vomitters in the back left to their own devices had poured enough bile onto one of Millie's soldiers that the internal structure dissolved entirely. Chupta slowed they assailants with bogging sand and Millie took the opportunity to channel a gravitational ray of gray force directly into the shaman for devastating destruction. The shaman attempted to smite Astrid with a tumorous and toxic assault but she withstood and laid him low. The rest of the birds fell one by one.
  Surmising that the squelching sound had been all of the birds dropping onto the balloon of the airship, Chupta took up his finished Temperance Shard Gem of Seeing and flew back the way the ship had come from to gaze into the sky. Within the ethereal, he witnessed a scar from where a portal had been torn through the planes. Returning to the ship, he looked for scrying sensors but found none. Whether Scizzord had been scrying or not, the implications of him being able to send minions directly to them mid flight was troublesome.
  Re-centering themselves, Myska's Menagerie began the process of cleaning up the mess covering their ship. The corpses of the bloated, slimy, and puss filled aarakocra were lined up across one railing. An investigation began as the companions tried to ascertain what exactly had happened to these bodies. They were clearly the work of Scizzord but not much more could be said.
  A cursory scan for magic revealed that the bodies were faintly leaking out transmutation magic from themselves. Millie took a moment to attempt a gentle repose on one to discover that it caused the body to stop releasing it's stored transmutation magic. Astrid's Lesser Restorations on a body emptied and dried some of it's puss filled blisters but did not undo the mutations to it. In time, that body would continue to leak again as the minor restorative spell managed to purge the body of toxins but did not stop it from continuing to unnaturally decompose after.
In total, it seemed that the bodies had been twisted and malformed by Scizzord's corrupting magic and were quickly rotting because of it. There was an exaggerated rate of cellular lysis with the restorations clearing up the buildup and the repose putting it on pause. Millie would ultimately animate one of the aarakocra as an experiment to see if it was possible to realize that it was. These things, however mutated and corrupted, were still humanoid at the time of death.
The shaman was also put under gentle repose with the pair of stasis-corpses being saved for later questioning. The rest of the bodies and the risen undead would be cast off the side of the airship to plummet to their destructive demise below.
    15th of the Thaw
The next morning, Millie would prepare means of speaking with the dead to better learn of their story. Going to the shaman, Millie created a gray flame that entered into the mouth to facilitate the information extraction. The ritual begun, the gnome had his questions:
1 Were you set upon by a malformed tortle: Yes
When were you slain: Fortnight and more
Do you remember the past two weeks: No
Before you were slain, were you asked questions about crystals or shards: Yes
Do you provide useful answers: No
  The companions would ruminate on this information as they continued their flight onto Fowler's Mill over the next few days. Upon arrival, they found a sight they had not expected.