The Mindflayer ship comes into full view and instead of enemies manning their stations ready for a tough battle, they see a broken ship that seems to have been left there after taking heavy damage from what appears to be at least a month ago.
Captain and the Flumph leave and return with four helmets that they explain hold oxygen roughly for an hour which should allow enough time to explore, loot, and return with no issue.
The wooden galleon stops side by side with the mind flayer ship and the air bubble around the galleon envelops half the ruined mind flayer ship.
Korn telepathically links with the Flumph after realizing it wished to tell the crew something. The Flumph tells Korn who relays it to the others that it can sense something sentient aboard the ship. It doesn't know exactly where or what it is but as it makes the Flumph uneasy it relayed a warning.
Flapjack is Flumph's name and tells them that the nautiloid ship is called the Lucent Edict from the under common written on the side.
The Captain tells the adventurers that since they are new to the scavenging work they will go as a group to one of the entrances and that she will take the other. The two entrances are the large hole at the top of the shell on the ship or the main deck.
The group decides to go on the main deck. They see several spots for mangonel cannons and ballistas that have all been pillaged, broken or are in various states of disrepair. Crush Dim rushes around to all the destroyed pieces and parts and is able to gather enough to be able to make a ballista for their ship.
Crush Dim and some of the refugees from their home planet begin to bring all the pieces he found and assemble them onto their ship at the front over the course of like twenty minutes.
They also find some barrels, but only two empty barrels on the deck are fully intact and usable so they decide to bring them over to their ship and fill them with ammunition not being stored properly.
After looting the main deck they look over to the entrance to the shell, and they find that it is a fleshy opening where the shell meets the deck of the ship and how it goes from a more artificial material to organic fleshy material.
Around the entrance are mangled and chewed-up corpses that are quite difficult to identify besides the somewhat discernable fact that these creatures had some form of tentacle appendages on their face and purple to reddish robes, meaning they were likely the Mindflayers.
Everyone in the group enters stealth before entering the fleshy door ignoring Candarius Newkan's idea to hide under the barrels. They are near the entrance and the fleshy door opens up and a wave of humid and putrid air hits them that they feel even inside their helmets, something had been rotting here and from the smell, they could only compare to the insides of a rotting whale corpse, it was probably for a while.
The insides are extremely dimly lit with a variety of flickering bio-luminescent-looking orbs mounting the walls and hanging from the ceiling in very weird and organic patterns. The light is a dim ocean floor-esque light.
Inside they see even more corpses of Mindflayers similar to what they identified earlier, but they also see corpses of other creatures some that are weirdly green-skinned and kind of scaly in nature wearing red and purple clothes with some brandishing curved swords.
They can tell from the position of the corpses that these were remnants of a battle. Some of the corpses were positioned in ways that showed them stabbing one another, collapsing over each other, being shot by an arrow, and a variety of other things that show it was even seemingly genocidal.
At the end of the hallway, a spiral staircase going both up and down exists illuminated by glowing orbs. Crush Dim curious about the orbs approaches and grabs one of the orbs off the wall and finds it to be glass as it separates from the wall making a suction-cup-type pop sound.
The orb loses its glow and turns into a sort of smooth marble in his hand. Crush Dim then proceeds to walk around skewering some of the bodies with his two glowing longswords he looted from the astral elves in their last bout in a way to check that they were all indeed dead. The others in the group begin inspecting for loot amongst the corpses.
Nakai takes two of the curved swords from the hands of some of the green-skinned ones and puts them in his bag after determining they did not seem to have any magical properties a little further away, Nakai also finds some spent radiant arrows that he also collects into his bag.
Candarius Newkan finds a grey smoky jar or bottle with a rotund base and thin top that almost looked like a smokestack. Candarius Newkan takes a closer look and determines the material to be made of glass with some golden insets carved into it. He shakes it and none of the contents appear to be disturbed, so he turns to Nakai and asks him to take a look and uncorks it in Nakai's face releasing sixty feet of thick blackened smoke hard to breathe in that fills the entire room.
Candarius Newkan simply stands there allowing the smoke to continue leaving the bottle in his hand thinking it would end at some point naturally. Surprisingly all members of the group seem to not truly have their vision impeded by the black smoke all around them.
Nakai instantly tries to take the bottle of black smoke away from Candarius Newkan believing that it should not be left in Carndarius Newkan's repertoire of items that he may prank others with especially not in the circumstance of looting a potentially hostile and dangerous ship.
Nakai starts wildly swinging for the bottle and Korn casts guidance on Candarius Newkan allowing him to resist Nakai's attempts to take the bottle from him by dodging around. During these shenanigans, Crush Dim uses Primeval Awareness and detects Abberations he believes to be on the ship and conveys it to the rest of the group. Finally, Nakai decides to stop trying to take the bottle from Candarius Newkan and is able to put the cap back on stopping the endless release of black smoke after waiting a few minutes all the smoke dissipates.
After a quick discussion the rangers, Nakai and Crush Dim decide to head up the spiral staircase, but Korn and Candarius Newkan decide to head down the flight of stairs. Crush Dim leads the way up holding his glowing longsword to brighten the way. A large room greets them with a high ceiling, ahead ascends stairs to the bridge, and towards the stern, a ladder climbs to another balcony. They approach all the supposed controls of the ship, but there are no buttons and levers or any mechanical parts that they expected instead there were weird appendages hanging from the walls and panels.
Nakai focuses on a black Icarus substance that trails across the floor in patterns snaking through the bridge that disappears into a dark corner under the stairway. Crush Dim touches the plant-like tendrils and tugs the vines and rotates things, but the bones, muscles, and sinewy type appendages don't seem to give him any feedback. These controls seem to make up the nervous system of the Nautiloid and in the fury of lack of response, Crush DIm plunges one of his glowing longswords directly into the control panel releasing old blood with a fleshy plsh noise that spills all over the floor. A slice upward leaves a slit in the panel and nothing happens, disappointed he turns around to see what Nakai is doing.
Crush Dim seeing the substance leading into the darkness nods toward Nakai and prepares his spear ready to throw it at anything in the darkness. Nakai begins to prepare a cast of Faerie Fire towards the dark corner under the stairs. The Faerie Fire releases a twenty-foot dim light revealing the creatures that were hiding in the dark.
Underneath the stairs, they see what appears to be a thick writhing mass of four giant maggoty creatures, grey in appearance, wormlike, lacking eyes, but having a large mouth that one end of the wormlike appendage that makes up the head and six feet appear to drag the maggot body out from under the stairs toward Nakai and Crush Dim making weird noises. As they open their mouths to make noises the black substance leaks out of their mouths onto the floor.
We now go to the other group, they descend the stairs stealthily whispering to one another Chucky Cheese Chucky Cheese in what they hope is what they find in the bowels of the Nautiloid ship. At the bottom of the stairs, they find another fleshy-butthole-like door that opens for them once they draw near. What they see beyond the door seems like a mess hall or some type of dining area for the crew that was there before them the area lit by small glowing orbs like the hall above.
Korn looks around and finds a glass jar the size of a gallon of milk filled with blue-grey liquid. Korn Shakes it and sees three human-sized brains floating in the viscous liquid. Korn attempts to connect to the brains telepathically with his Mantis mind and finds no response. The brains appears completely lacking life. Candarius Newkan finds two large barrels of clean water.
At the end of the room another fleshy door exists, but this one has thick chains strewn across it with hooks embedded into the fleshy wall. The door seemingly sutured shut completely. Korn approaches the door and hears *Knock Knock Knock* "Open the door" *Knock Knock Knock Knock* "Help Me" *Knock Knock Knock* "Open the door" *Knock Knock Knock* "My name is Jasper Graves" *Knock Knock Knock* *Knock Knock Knock* *Knock Knock Knock* Korn gets the feeling that whatever is behind the door is not what he initially thought it to be. This was no mortal trying to ask for help it seemed to be a lure. Whatever lay behind the door continues to creepily repeat the entire process again and again.
Candarius Newkan believing it to be a monster thinks to himself about poking a hole through the fleshy and meaty wall and using the water he found to try and drown whatever nefarious creature was behind the door, but he decides against it as water is a nice resource to have.
Korn uses a mage hand to pull slightly at the sutures to see if they are strong and it splits easily. Korn and Candarius Newkan take out some dice and roll to determine if they should open the door and the dice decide to not release the creature. Using a mage hand, Korn sutures it back up. The creatures continue to Knock and ask for assistance.
They back off and decide to start heading upstairs to regroup with Nakai and Crush Dim who find themselves in combat. Crush DIm who had his spear ready to throw with great force releases it toward the closest monster and pierces it but not going all the way through just stuck inside the worm-like thing. After being pierced the worm thing thrashes around and starts screeching. Its open mouth shows it to be full of human-esque molars and bony appendage teeth.
Instantly after releasing the spear Crush Dim casts a guiding bolt at the one directly next to the speared one, as he does this the worm monster in the far back rears up on its hind legs and starts to wave its body around creating vibrations in the air. Crush Dim and Nakai both suffer under the effect of psychic damage feeling their brain squeezing a little, but they are able to shake it off for the most part with minimal damage.
The worm with a spear through it rushes forward and opens its large mouth bites Crush DIm and claws him dealing a good amount of damage. One of them gets a little closer, but not much attention can be paid to it as Nakai summons a totem that grants strength to himself and his allies as well as reinforcing their armor.
Nakai casts Ice Knife on the one in the back approaching slicing off a good chunk of meat from its side and freezing part of the flesh still there. Nakai then backs away trying to get a good range for his bow.
The creature's second closest vomits a portable out of its mouth and crawls through appearing directly beside and catching Nakai off guard. Candarius Newkan and Korn hear the combat as they are ascending and appear in the room shocked by the creatures their comrades are fighting.
Crush Dim casts hunter's mark on the opponent nearest to him and stabs with each of his longswords plunging them deep within the worm's face making it thrash around flinging the black substance everywhere until it eventually flops onto the ground. Crush Dim retrieves all his weapons and barely moves back before the farthest worm monster starts wiggling in the air one more to psychically attack everyone in the group giving them a feeling of their brains being squeezed.
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The now closest worm monster lunges once more at Nakai, attempting to slice with its claws. Its first two attacks merely slide off Nakai's armor and scales, but the third gets a grip and damages Nakai leaving a small wound. Nakai in retaliation casts an Ice Knife that slices off one of its claws.
The second closest worm monster lunges forward at Crush Dim and bites into his shoulder and sinks its claws into his abdomen, and Crush Dim uses stone's endurance, repelling the claws and leaving Crush Dim weak but still standing and combat ready.
Candarius Newkan sneakily approaches the worm near Crush Dim and releases a furry of stabs with his rapier that leaves the Worm on its last legs. Korn casts a shocking grasp on the worm with Candarius Newkan numbing it and making it flop to the ground, but it still moves albeit extremely slowly. It is likely only a hair's breadth away from death. Crush Dim unhooks his mace, raises it high into the air, and begins to rapidly beat the worm on the ground till its paste once again splashes the black sticky substance all over himself.
The far worm once again brings the group to a quick halt with its psychic attack pressuring their brains and bringing Crush Dim to his knees with the mace falling to the ground. Nakai quickly uses healing word to seal and cure some of Crush Dim's wounds allowing him to grab his mace and stand once more ready to attack. After healing Crush Dim, Nakai once again casts Ice Knife at the worm monster that attacked him once again slicing off one of its claws.
The worm monster that lost some of its claws and having been beaten by the group dimension doors away to its companion under the stairs. Candarius Newkan quickly stabs where it appeared in front of the other worm monster the second it leaves the portal making it screech in pain. A second stab into its head makes it stop completely and merely slump onto the ground.
Korn looks at their last foe underneath the staircase and casts an eldritch blast, and Crush Dim casts a second-level guiding bolt but this time it is different from previous times he has tried to cast it, this time it is a golden guiding bolt he launches toward the worm. Both spells hit true and upon contact with the worm monster completely obliterate the worm monster. After the combat has finally ended all the party members shine and feel as if they've had a long rest (They all leveled up after all this combat and in our campaigns, a level-up is equivalent to a long rest, but the experience only accumulates and is given after combats are over). The worm monsters defeated, mere corpses on the ground they see what was behind the worms underneath the staircase, glowing bioluminescent eggs wrapped in a black Icarus substance. Nakai quickly rushes over and begins smashing the eggs knowing that they hatch and grow quickly.
The ordeal over they discuss what they've found both up and down the staircase. Crush Dim heads down alone to the presumed mess hall to collect the water and bring it onto their ship but pauses upon hearing the voice and knocking at the door. Candarius Newkan and Korn head up the ladder and find an area that seems like the Captain's Platform. Nakai heads up the stairs to the observation deck.
Up the ladder in the Captain's area, they see what would be a spot for the spelljamming helm that would be used to fly and control the ship. Up on the platform is the headless body of a mind flayer, the stench of the rotting corpse is unpleasant and it lies where they assume the helm would be. Lying near the body's hand is a glowing stone. Looking up they see the hole out of the ship that their captain should have entered from, but she is nowhere to be found.
The glowing stone is identified as a caster stone with a single-use shield spell held within it. Nakai on the observation deck finds splintered remains of mangonel cannons and various piles of ammunition. The ammunition consists of forty intact ballista bolts and roughly forty mangonel cannonballs. Nakai marks this down for later to move onto their ship.
Back in the mess hall, Crush Dim takes his spear and goes to the wall near the fleshy door and begins to make a can-sized hole in the wall to try and peer and see what creature resides on the other side locked away.
A long red crab claw begins to expand the hole and begins to tug at the sutures on the door. Crush Dim quickly grabs his mace to bludgeon the claw making it thrash back and retreat into the hole. Crush Dim peeks into the hole and a large spiderly spiky limb pierces through the hole and then retracts back in.
Trying to think quickly on his feet, Crush Dim rushes over to the barrel of water and rolls it over hoping to plug the hole he and it created together to seal it away once more.
Back in the Captain's Area Korn and Candarius Newkan see green glowing maggots crawl all over the corpse of the headless mind flayer. They near the chair and corpse and the maggots grow wings and all begin to swarm the two adventurers. Candarius Newkan and Korn feel bites all over their bodies from the maggots.
Candarius Newkan grabs the bottle he got earlier believing their odds using the smoke are better than a rapier against the maggots. The black smoke emerges and disperses all the maggots. A drawer pops out of a chair, and Candarius Newkan pulls out an obsidian tube. Sliding the top of the tube over a spell scroll falls out. The spell scroll contains a wall of force. Korn gives it to Candarius Newkan as he is the only non-caster in their group. Seeing nothing else they decide to head down to the mess hall.
Not knowing what Korn and Candarius Newkan were facing up the ladder, Nakai after seeing the munitions and making note to get them later, descended down to the mess hall where Crush Dim informs him of what is going on. Nakai casts Flaming Sphere into the hole and screeching can be heard.
A large vibration can be felt as something began to impact the fleshy door, a second later the door breaks as a large monster bursts through. It continues to announce its name as Jasper Graves and asks for help before charging toward Nakai.
Nakai quickly retreats and summons a large Bayannurosaurus. (A dinosaur related to the stegosaurus with large spikes in its shoulders.) The dinosaur sits in between Nakai and the monster. Crush Dim casts a level two guiding bolt that slams into the creature leaving an indent in its skin, then Crush Dim casts a shield of faith on the Dinosaur.
Korn and Candarius Newkan hear and feel the fighting and quicken their pace down toward the mess hall arriving to see a weird monster that Korn can identify as a Neh-Thalggu facing off against a dinosaur, Crush Dim, and Nakai.
The Neh-Thalggu approaches the dinosaur and begins to use extract brain, its two claws grab the dinosaur to hold it in place and pull the head of the dinosaur closer where little claws around its mouth begin to act akin to scissors cutting open a perfect circle in the dinosaurs head. The dinosaur barely left standing swipes with its arms against the Neh-Thalggu, but it is too damaged to actually follow through with Nakai's commands.
Nakai casts a moonbeam at the Neh-Thalggu, and a silvery light beam shines onto the Neh-Thalggu engulfing it in ghostly flames that cause it searing pain making it thrash around and screech. Crush Dim casts a second-level guiding bolt crushing one of its limbs almost knocking it over, but it remains upright not too bothered by the loss of limb.
Korn casts a third-level Witch Bolt and an arc of lighting between Korn and the Neh-Thalggu is formed constantly shocking it with great amounts of smoke generated by the creature being burnt by lightning and ghostly flames.
Candarius Newkan seeing that the Neh-Thalggu is distracted by being electrocuted and burned sneaks around to its rear and shoves his opened bottle of smoke into its rectum. The Neh-Thalggu glassy over can visibly be seen smoking over and smoke starts to release from its mouth.
The Neh-Thalggu now blind, under electrocution from lightning, and burning from ghostly flames simply finishes off the dinosaur it had within its grasp and begins to wildly attack all around it. Nakai draws his bow and readies an arrow but the smoke messes with his aim, it flies through the space and hits Candarius Newkan right in his chest piece.
Crush Dim face palms at the sight of friendly fire unbinds and grasps his mace with both hands, leaps toward the Neh-Thalggu, and brings it down onto its head it caves it sending goop everywhere.
They make sure they have all their equipment and clean themselves and quickly then proceed into the room that the Neh-Thalggu was in. It was the cargo hold, but the Neh-Thalggu was obviously not there for the cargo. The cargo hold looks and smells like a slaughterhouse with bodies strewn about everywhere and the deck and floor stained with blood. The bodies aren't eaten or consumed in any way, the heads are cut open in perfect circles the brains missing.
Most of the bodies appear to be humans, but one of them is an arachnid form with an eel-like neck and a head that lies motionless. The adventurers look around to see if their captain somehow found herself here before them, but they find no traces of her.
They begin to take note of all the loot around them checking all the corpses and piling everything near the doorway. While going through the bodies they notice that some of the bodies are roughly a week to three days old and others have died within the last twenty-four hours. This makes them believe there to be another entrance/exit in the cargo bay since the way they entered was sealed.
A variety of simitars and crossbows are everywhere within the room making a small pile. Korn finds that one of the newer bodies has the name written Jasper Graves on it realizing that the Neh-Thalggu was using it to try and deceive others. Korn then finds twenty-three copper pieces in the pockets of some of the corpses and puts them on the dead body of Jasper Graves as a way to honor the dead.
Candarius Newkan finds a hundred and seventeen silver pieces in the pockets of corpses and adds them to his wallet. Crush Dim finds a black ring fitted with a round red gemstone that he finds is not a natural stone but some form of congealed blood. Nakai finds three gold pieces and stuffs them into his own money pouch.
After investigating the whole cargo hold the adventures find enough food and water in crates and casks to nourish ten medium creatures for roughly five days, as well as a variety of pickled brain jars. They begin to slowly move everything they have found from the ship from the barrels of water in the mess hall, the ammunition on the deck above, and the food and resources in the cargo hold onto the ship and then return to the cargo hold wondering where their captain has gone to, as she left alone but never returned.
In the cargo hold a ladder downwards is found and Crush Dim casts primeval awareness noting that aberrations are still present. Korn thinks that the Neh-Thalggu and the mind flayers have some form of connection since they both eat brains.
Korn with his dark vision peers down into the dark room below the ladder and sees the rotting corpses of headless mind flayers amid the corpses of three large creatures with white fur splattered with red crimson blood. The corpses have bite marks showing that something has been feeding on the corpses. Crush Dim is able to piece together what exactly happened here through the clues on the ship and stories he had heard of the mind flayers and how a race known as the Githyanki hated them with a passion. The Githyanki were green-skinned lizard people with white hair that hunted down mind flayers and took their heads as trophies.
The Githyanki obviously attacked the mind flayers and slaughtered many of them, but then something else happened. What the adventurers can tell from the room below the ladder the area appears to be a fifteen by-fifteen-foot area. Nakai casts Faerie Fire in the middle of the room releasing a dim light showcasing the room to be bigger than they originally thought as they all descend the ladder.
Crush Dim finds that the mind flayer is wearing a solid metal breastplate of armor and instantly shakes it off the body and puts it on after realizing that it is a plus-one breastplate. Crush DIm after removing his other armor and putting this one on approaches the corpses of the Quaggoth and Githyanki and attempts to skin its white fur hide and is successful. A long piece of white furred hide is made only needs to be processed and treated correctly to be able to form clothing.
While Crush DIm is skinning the corpses the other three stealthy look around the room and notice that there are ten cells with nine of them having open doors. There is a dead dwarf, a dead humanoid monkey, and a puddle of bluish goo on the ground. Korn casts an eldritch blast at the bluish goo that was supposedly a dead plasmoid.
Nakai casts detect magic and does not seem to find anything besides some equipment of his companions. They find a sword that looked similar to the captain's sword and think that these prisoners likely wouldn't have access to a sword such as that.
The group begins to call out for the captain and Nakai approaches the one unopened door. Upon opening it a pitch-black darkness meets him as well as a terrible stench fills it worse than the rest of the ship. The rest approach and as a group they can hear a being breathing in the dark.
Nakai once again casts Faerie Fire and a Quaggoth is revealed that instantly pushes Nakai down and begins to maul him. Nakai summons another dinosaur into the room while on the ground being attacked. Crush Dim casts a second-level guiding bolt that knocks the Quaggoth back damaging it in a golden light that they all can tell seems to be weak against and off Nakai. Korn casts an eldritch blast sending a crackling energy streak at the Quaggoth leaving it weary. Candarius Newkan stabs the Quaggoth in its eye and like a blender rotates turning its brain into mush leaving it to immediately collapse.
Nakai starts to sniff around for signs of the captain and with his nose on the ground, it touches a boot. In the corner of the room, a lightly glowing bioluminescent light is a clutches of eggs and corpses. The captain is stuffed into one of the egg clutches and they remove her from it and all begin to check on her. Korn casts spare the dying just in case to ensure her survival. After making sure the captain was all right they begin to crush the eggs.
They begin to question the captain on what happened, how she was taken off guard as a veteran scavenger, and how she appeared in the bowels of the ship without going through the Neh-Thalggu. Looking around the area in one of the other cells they see a vent and maintenance shaft in the wall that appears to be what the Quaggoth used to get around the ship and how it got more victims and brought the captain here.
With the Quaggoth the pieces are put together and it seemed after the Githyanki killed the mind flayers and sealed away the Neh-Thalggu that was the mind flayers' pet with Gith and other prisoners down below. The Quaggoths were allies of the mind flayers and one that had survived down below had used the vents to attack the captain and bring her down to the prison block and tried to use her to feed and spawn the maggot things that it had been using to feed itself that was why there were some on the captain's corpse and chair making a little farm.
Once more making a sweep through the ship making sure they moved over everything that could be used or was of value they get back to their ship. The adventures get a long rest and go to their quarters or talk to the other refugees.
A dark shape glides across the face of a nearby asteroid. The new ship resembles a giant spider, complete with long delicate legs meant for grabbing and a weblike rigging, starlight gleams off its metallic hull. A night spider captain Sartell shouts to everyone. They were using the nautiloid ship as basic bait and they had fallen into their trap.
A cannon shot rings out from the night spider that impacts and shakes the entirety of their ship, but two even larger ships appear resembling hammerhead sharks. Portholes open from each ship and tens of cannons blow the night spider into smithereens in a matter of seconds.
The wooden galleon is slowly enveloped by the shadows of the hammerhead ships pulling alongside and a man in a captain's uniform, blue military uniform, and a golden trim approaches introducing himself as commander Kavorich aboard the Incorrigible asking for the captain of the adventurer's ship.
Captain Sartell pleads for safe passage to Bral Rock. The commander questions the captain about their travels, any contraband, and where the refugees are from being able to tell they aren't used to space travel. He says he will escort them to the rock.
As they clear through the asteroid field they move into a more open space territory and the scale of space truly opens up to them. Nearing view the Rock of Bral shows in all of its glory. Sunlight illuminates the rooftops and spires of a city built upon a giant asteroid. The asteroid's underside holds structures as well as they can see structures and spires sticking out underneath it, including a giant fortress and giant fortress and giant sales made of a fabric they have not encountered before.
Wooden docks protrude from one end of the asteroid and a variety of ships are there. Space-dwelling fish scatter in front of the ship as it adjusts to the docks ahead. Pier workers await ready to tie the ship as it comes to a slow stop. Welcome to the Rock, captain Sartell tells the adventurers and refugees telling them that this is where they part ways.
The captain lets them take all of the loot they gathered from the Nautiloid ship off so that they have something to trade and start a new life on the Rock of Bral with explaining that she has a normal crew that would not allow her the space to allow them all to join.
Candarius Newkan takes a book from captain Sartell's quarters and the adventurers begin to think about how they should go about life now. Should they join the military or mercenaries, should they try and start businesses with the other refugees, or shall they join tournaments to gain fame and hopefully rewards fitting it?
