37 - Against the Odds

After the breakfast, we learn that the ship will be ready at noon for our departure, leaving us time to catch up and reflect, as it's not Senri who got back, but Reylynn.

Reylynn points Nesvalyn and mimes the height change.

Then rest of the party notices it, along Nesvalyn himself, as he grew a few inches, and has much more elongated limbs, and is slimmer.

We agree to try the experiment, Persy properly says "Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdicar" (but slowly), and Azzy turns into a pile of goop. After panicking a bit, Persy properly says it again, and Azzy retrieves their humanoid form.

✒Axel's personal quest added: Earning the Freedom

Lore reminder:

Since the Wonders are gone, they've fallen in obscurity as we're more in an age of technology and scientific part. Wonders are awful gods, but the one of Death have even fell out more.
The Wyrdlings don't believe much into the Wonders.

Persy pulls out Dottie's corpse from the Portable Hole.

Persy starts to investigate Dottie Lombardo's corpse and loot her. We find in her pockets a leather journal, having a bunch of numbers. It's probably money related, as she seems to be tracking something. (It is not a cheque holder)

And the discussions kept going, about how far we came, how we changed... we bounded until the end of the morning. Until discussion is interrupted by someone knocking at the door. An FCA guard enters to escort us directly to our SpellJammer with a few more guards.

The guard ignores the request from Persy, who's trying desperatly to get a Warforged in their blank state to learn more about this.
We finally reach our ship, where a guard mentions that the coordinates to reach Paildreo have been given to Naus, and we have one hour to take off. Before leaving, we give Dottie Lombardo's corpse to the FCA.

Once we're all on the deck of the SpellJammer, we see the console blinking, and when we click on it, a light screen appears:

Welcome back, you have several new alerts.

Before leaving, we're checking the messages. Axel opens the messages, which we notice they are all from Sprigg except one, and starts with the oldest one.

The scene pans to a ship we recognize: It's Fen's Mom's ship, then it pans bag to Sprigg.

A few more messages appear, as we notice there's Fen and he needs to see us. We listen to some later messages.
We notice Sprigg with the lights flickering behind, and he's really sweating, hiding from a screeching rauque metal noise, sounding familiar, but as a war cry.

We keep going for a few messages, as some are just Sprigg trying to say something, but there's an explosion interrupting the message.
We reach finally Sprigg's last message on the list, noticing him in a closed area, whispering like hiding.

He transferred the last coordinates of the Operation SideSpear's base.
The latest message is from the (freshly new Governor) Scrap Queen.

Which leads the party to following choice, should we go save Sprigg or ignore that and go to see Paildreo?
Before making a decision, we decide to try to reach Fen to learn more, but as we learnt from our mistakes, we're heading off the planet, and navigate more in deep space to be away from places to avoid them to be casualties if we don't go to see Fen.

Once far away, we reach Fen using [Sending].

Then Sprigg, with the same method.

And with all these informations, comes the choice about helping Sprigg or ignoring that and reaching Paildreo. The party discuss for a moment, especially Nesvalyn, being that close to his fiancé and wanting to be selfish for once, and yet.
It's pretty unanimous to save Sprigg, and we head towards the Operation SideSpear base to solve the situation.
Naus asks us to prepare for Hyperdrive, he seems to work on an automatic mode, and once the Hyperdrive mode starts, we're all flung backwards to the ship as we go really, really fast. The surroundings look like a kaleidoscope.
We're stuck like that for the duration of the three hours travel, then we're flung back front when we're about to arrive.
We finally see the base, and Fen's ship docked. Except all the lights of the station are out, and it looks to be deserted.
As we approach and start the dock maneuver, it takes a few minutes to get the permission, and after the automatic system grants the permission, we're finally docked on the space station.

Before getting out of the the ship, we're not really sure how to proceed, as everything can go, but we don't have much time to talk as Axel already gets further into the station.

We quickly follow Axel, and we start to the get in the station. We quickly notice several bodies slammed around the area, being torn to pieces. We make the conclusions they were the reinforcements Sprigg called.

Axel keeps calling Fen as we explore. Until we hear the distant sound of the musical language, but in a metallic shriek tone. Suddenly flying at them in the air is a now fully grown Fen, with pink hair, fully blood violet full eyes, long nails, 15ft tall, exploding in the air, and stops and let a growl.

He relaxes and transforms back, looks less animalistic and less colorful.

They hug.

[Insight - Pass ✔] He's bluffing.

He stands up, and starts to walk and phase through the Space Station.

Fen goes through the corridor this time, and we follow him. When we turn the first corner, we notice that the floors and walls have been twisted and bent. We see further pierced on the wall is Adala's corpse.

We keep following, we see Chills' corpse, who was supposedly indestructible.

We finally get to the center room. There's around 15 and 18 bodies around the room, all part of the carnage. He gestures the corpses and starts his speech.

[Contested Grapple - Fail ❌] Suddenly in a flash, Fen grabs Axel by the neck and raises them in the air.

Notification we all get a notification for a new double black diamond contract.
Suddenly, the power flips, and a buzzer sounds ringing "Contract target in facility, destroy" and a big cannon comes from the ceiling and shots Fen, sending him through the walls, and being unable to phase through them, he destroys them and the pressure gets out.
[Acrobatics/Athletics check]
↪ Persy and Balnorin are hanging on what they can and are about to be vacuumed in the Astral Sea.
↪ Axel and Nesvalyn manage to hold their ground.
↪ Reylynn snuck away and wasn't concerned by this event.

Persy flies away using his gear, and Balnorin has the some help from Axel, using the Broom of flying.
Sprigg gets out of some rubble and yells to run, which we follow right after.

Persy casts [Longstrider] and [Haste] to reach the ship first and prepare the escape.
Reylynn rides her mount to get away.

Persy make it first to our ship and starts to boot up Naus. He notices that the Hyperdrive has 45 minutes of recharge to do before triggering it again.

The party catches up and boards on the ship, and the subspace engine starts right away and we're taking off, debarking and sailing to the Astral Sea. Sprigg looks really roughed up.

At this moment, we hear a roar and a pink dot is coming towards us.
We override the settings to enable it and it will take 30 seconds to enable.
Naus starts to count to 0, and Fen gets closer and closer. Persy places the Portable Hole, and hopes that the party follows him before the Hyperdrive burst.

And Fen is getting dangerously closer, and when he's about to reach us, we're racing through space, faster than hyperdrive, and we start to stretch, stretch, stretch like we would be spaghettified, and we stop suddenly. We all sit, feeling calm. Around us, an endless white dim space, where we can see perfectly.

The Portable Hole is not here anymore.
As we look over, Sprigg is sitting at a pic-nic table, with a picnic table with typical check pattern. There's a big ball of food on it, and he's staring at it.

He sits and enters in trance. After a while, he gets back to us.

And time passes, at least we assume to. But we enjoy that bowl of food, and we discuss, while waiting.

Suddenly, appearing before the group in a burst of light, a man being an older version of Sprigg, but shorter than him, in his 50s and bald. He stops and looks around.

Nesvalyn looks at Sprigg to wait a reaction to see if he's going to explain, then speaks up after an heavy silence.

Sprigg gestures to let us explain.

We look between each other, not sure if we should play along. But being our only safe way out at the moment, there isn't much to think.

We comply and bow before the Wonder of Planes.

He starts to assume a pose mimicking T, and the scene changes and shifts and we reappear in the Astral Sea on our SpellJammer, and we all throw up as he said. When look around the Wonder of Planes and Sprigg are gone, along the picnic table and the elements. There are newspapers instead everywhere on the ship.

In the middle of the deck, we notice a hole.

We think it's been a few hours, but checking with Naus reveals it's been 8 minutes since we left of the space station.

And a group hug started, as we just escaped an almost invincible foe, and surviving being Nowhere or a godly-like entity whenever it was Persy or the rest of the group.

After gathering our bearing, we finally set to Paildreo's home station, and we're 8 hours away in hyperdrive.

And Naus activates the Hyperdrive, and only the beginning fling us backwards, and once on the way, we're able to do slight light activity.
Suddenly, Naus let go an alarm.

And we stop after around 5-6 hours of travelling in hyperdrive speed. After gathering our bearings, we hear a voice from the reason why we had to brake.

As the voice sounds familiar, we look closer and we notice a small noodle shop, seeing the face of Ludwig, screaming about us not being on an Hyperdrive way (which doesn't exist after quickly checking with Naus).

Next session: 38 - The power of Friendship (and this gun we found)