2023/08/16: SSSSPACE!!! Report
General Summary
Buzz, Lillith, Johann, Kal'vus, Sunderfury
The party named their new spelljammer Unicorn of the Stars.
The ship was cleared to take off by Leithien and Blackmoore. As they were flying up, there was a brief red mist around the ship, and Buzz noticed a tiny vibration, as if there had been a small impact. Found what looked like a wrecked tent skeleton surrounded by unconscious people in what should have been an empty room. Buzz healed the lot of them with cauterize wounds.
Johann woke up first. Managed to check himself over and introduce himself to Buzz (and have his situation very briefly explained) before a second person woke up. Second was a short gentleman in a red cloak. He immediately tried to ensorcell Buzz with his glowing red eyes, some sort of extremely strong domination effect that still massively slowed Buzz despite Buzz's extensive defenses. It was intended to dominate his body completely.
Johann picked his side and cast dispel magic on the short man in an effort to break the effect on Buzz. It worked. Buzz finished pulling his guns and blasted the man, breaking his defenses and driving him off. Buzz also cast Phoenix Gate to free and aid the rest of the visitors, which disintegrated the slave collars on the rest and made Johann feel cleansed.
That left 6 normal-sized or athletic women, 1 big scarred guy who isn't who you'd want to meet in a small alley. They (and Johann) had been enslaved by the guy. The big guy is from Jerritor, one of the women is from Amoria. In fact, all of the women are Amazons from Amoria, and all of them are armed. The Jerritorian gladiator just had shorts, worn sandals, and some straps over his chest. Buzz gave him a spare magic katana to make him feel better. His name's Duff. No last name.
Johann asked if he could archive the story of the party's mission, with whatever redactions are necessary. Buzz agreed, stating that Johann would need to redact pretty much everything about Buzz. Johann was happy to do so.
Buzz identified one of the poles from the destroyed tent skeleton thing. Pole 7 of a "terraton device". Speculation was that it was some sort of ritual flying device that the ship ran into by accident. Khaz-achk-thuum or some gods of Jerritor may have been involved. Or just bardic luck.
Lillith, called in by Buzz, talked to the Amazons. Managed to reach a truce with them and explain the situation. Lillith had her cabbit hopping along with her.
Lillith introduced herself to Johann. He'd heard a few legends of her house, House Ev'val, mostly about stealing artifacts and murdering wizards. She gave him a sort of pained smile when he mentioned that he'd heard of the house. She wasn't aware they were known at all, being one of the dark houses.
Lillith tried to hire the Amazons. Sort of worked. She agreed to give them some money and drop them off at home, or at Yamaca, which is where they'd been sailing to when they last remembered.
The ship carried on. Buzz managed to avoid running into the moon.
After successfully pulling away from Renedge, Buzz pulled out a tricorn hat and eye patch. "Tyberius Blackblade is back in the seven seas." In response to the confused reactions of his companions, Buzz explained that he was a pirate for a bit while running from a trio of gods from Odar. He's safe now because those gods are now dead. They were caught in some epic battle that Buzz was only on the periphery of. Before that, apparently they had some terrible plan to bring order to the universe.
He clarified that the ship was not becoming a pirate ship. It had just been a while and it was nice to do the voice again.
The ship was pulled out of high speed a couple days later when it ran across a neogi deathspider, a big red crystal spider of a ship. Basically a slaver battleship. Very evil crew. Neogi leaders, umber hulk subordinates, human slaves. The ship was dangerous, but the party's ship was in cloak and had no interest in engaging. They were able to get through without issues.
A second encounter happened a few days after that. The ship came across a dark asteroid port of some sort with some ships docked. A pirate port, perhaps. The crews are primarily human, though there are of course some anomalies. The ships seem to be separate, not one big fleet. Different flags and icons and such.
Lillith taught Buzz and Johann what she believed to be the relevant flag language. They brought their ship in very slowly and carefully, following what they believed was the meaning of "caution caution caution safe" that was sent by the tower. Some residents started loading weapons, but it was visibly just a defensive thing. The ship docked. The dock was horribly rickety and blackened, which personally offended Buzz; he said the rest of the group could go on, he needed to build a new dock.
A guard force of young and old pirates (with many hook limbs among them) greeted the party at the dock. They admitted the party under the requirement that they not make trouble.
Buzz about the dock: "I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing it for me. It makes me twitch."
Void Port. Apparently it's a good place to hide out from all the neogi and other horrible slaving dangers of the region. Bad times in space at the moment. No giving out the coordinates to the slavers. Lillith offered to give the coordinates of the base to Humphrey, since he's hunting slavers at the moment. She was treated to a story about Humphrey apparently being someone who was chasing a woman and who had had his hand eaten by a crocodile but it apparently grew back. Regardless, the pirates were willing to have him show up.
1500 people on the asteroid base. The party knows because Buzz set up a lemonade stand and offered free orange juice to everyone on the station to stave off scurvy, and pretty much everyone showed up. Lots of refugees here.
Defenses hidden around the shanty town. Pretty much everyone has weapons. Weird mix of wealth levels here, but generally poor. Low food variety. A mix of gangs.
There's a sort of fortress towards the center of the port that's controlled by some of the more well-armed gangs. Looks like someone hollowed out a mine and fortified it. Might have been the original main city, with the shanty town rising up during the refugee crisis. Mostly residential, but with a central commercial district and keep. Shanty town promises only mundane gear, while the central commercial district might offer some low-end magic items. There are a handful of highly competent warriors around and there are some spellcasters manning small shops (like a witch selling remedies).
Buzz and Lillith arranged for a month's worth of food from the ship's stores to be given to the port for the refugees. They were originally planning to sell the stuff, but decided that was unwarranted; these people needed all the help they could get.
There's apparently a spring in the middle of the asteroid that generates water from nothing, which is the only reason life is possible here, but it's not enough for everyone. Most are reliant on clerics and other magic.
Lillith chatted with the local thieves'/scavengers' guild, arranging for the party's stuff to be left alone in exchange for a small donation. She also bought a magic morningstar for Duff to use.
As the party went to leave, 78 of the locals volunteered themselves as crew. Volunteered as in "if you feed us we work for you". After much debate, Buzz and Lillith agreed, with Buzz using magic to expand and supplement the air envelope to support the excess crew. Buzz also armed the lot of them with iron shields and spears.
En route, Kal'vus set about training the new recruits in which end was the pointy one. He ended up with 20 effective marines and 6 lieutenants. Not strong, but better than nothing. Kal'vus also ended up with 2 level 1 monks who Buzz armed with magic katanas. One was a human, the other was a thri-kreen. Lillith recommended that Kal'vus keep the thri-kreen away from the elves, because that would go violently. Lillith managed to find three humans among the recruits who had some magical potential, along with a little waif girl of an elf who wasn't aware she was an elf but was willing to do whatever was needed to survive. Lillith started training that group as apprentice wizards.
The ship next slowed down at a massive debris field. Ship parts and people parts scattered across the void. A collection of space sharks, called "scavvers", started to move towards the Unicorn. They have trilateral heads, with three jaw segments and three eyes. Buzz pulled the ship back away from the debris field and prepared to fight the scavvers, supported by an inspiring story and music from Johann and Lillith.
Buzz stepped outside to face the swarm. A few scavvers slipped into the ship behind him, but he shrugged off the first few that went for him. Then a bigger one grabbed him by the leg and started swimming away. Kal'vus objected vehemently to that, flying into the melee to grab Buzz and try to get the shark to release him. By removing its head. He was very successful.
Buzz zapped a bunch of the scavvers. Johann continued his story, but realized partway through that this one ended with everyone getting eaten by sharks, so he had to pause and flip through his book to find a better story. Meanwhile, the mob of recruits stabbed enthusiastically at the three scavvers that got in.
The battle went on for a while, with more scavvers getting in and being slain by the crew, again and again and again.
Finally, after some thirty minutes of constant combat, the scavver threat was depleted. A few minutes later, Johann's inspirational story was as well. "And that's how Zoyoun Tang slew the shark king and his armies, and saved his kingdom! The end."
Rewards Granted
3 xp
Character(s) interacted with
Duff, the Amazons, the red-cloaked man, lots of pirates and refugees
Created Content
Notes
Lillith has a green cabbit (cat/rabbit) with stripes. It's intelligent. Pretty friendly.
Kal'vus
Johann Erstklein
Zaran
Lillith
Sunderfury Ironspire
Buzz Gizmo
Report Date
16 Aug 2023
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