Privateers of Lssthp II [IC]

[TriciaOso]

Spoiler: Fork, Perception 20+

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Fork, as you ascend the ramp, you can see three other docks similar to the one where you hid; rings of metal, each supported by a central pylon that blazes with stored energy. They are connected to a central ring by ramps like this one, and from the center of the central ring a structure rises. Two of the docks are mostly obscured by the structure, and the fourth connects to the central close to where this ramp does the same. About three stories up you can see the lights of the roof -- arcane artillery emplacements and communication masts.

As you move closer to the structure, you immediately feel a strange tingle you haven't felt since Baratano. Your training and experience allows you to sense when a dragon is close; now you pick up a very faint sense of one. It's very, very weak -- perhaps a wyrmling, or an egg? Or one that is dying or held unconscious? It's definitely not the full-blown magnificence of a dragon, which even untrained people can often sense. But it's here, inside these walls.

Scooting ahead of you up the ramp is the plasmoid with its odd little modular tool belt. You realize it's converging with two other plasmoids up here on the central ring; one the same size, and one about twice as big. They seem eager to recombine; when you drive them apart with one of the orc prods they flinch away and mill around you.

Not far from here is a door to the central structure; a strange folded-up flower of gold metal. You could try the keys you took off the orc supervisor, but you would have to leave the plasmoids unattended.

Spoiler: Servius & Nibum, Investigation 50+

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The two arcanists of the group move onto the tender to investigate it while Fork scouts ahead. It's a weird mix of the organic, the arcane, and the unfamiliar technology the illithid have created or stolen from other worlds. The main cabin is a huge nautilus shell, and tentacles depend from the other end, but the deck is solid underfoot and the shell has a door. There are furled gossamer wings to either side, which you are able to recognize as astral sails; this thing can move on invisible arcane winds.

The door is unlocked, but strange and tricky to open; Ttharg, of all people, points out where the switch is. The cabin looks big enough to accommodate one person comfortably or four in a slightly cramped fashion; if you piled people onto the deck it could maybe take eight total at a pinch. At a table with greasy boot prints you see the remains of some kind of card game the orc was playing; there are five other hands. Was he playing with his plasmoids?

You find a maintenance log that is incomprehensible to Nibum and perfectly clear to Servius; perfectly clear and fairly dull. Leafing through it and counting names, you can see that the orcs use a rotational schedule. From the doodles you can tell that tender maintenance is one of the more boring jobs on the rig. All in all, it looks like about 24 technicians and 6 supervisors rotate through, night and day, which means some of that thirty are likely asleep right now. Weekly, the log is countersigned by an overseer, and you see three different names. 33 orcs? Plus maybe more who aren't part of the maintenance rotation?

Mounted in the center of the cabin is a simple chair, bolted to the ground. When you gingerly sit in it, illusions spring to life in front of you. You are able to intuit fairly easily that these are controls for the tender. In addition to the astral sails, there is a water jet that can propel it through the water. The boat moves shell first, which is opposite what you might have imagined. You find controls for large tools that can operated by the tentacles; welders, saws, scrapers, buffers. It does not look like the tender is designed to leave the rig; you find a display for the battery level, which shows it is fully charged and indeed still charging while docked.

It looks like the tender can levitate above the surface of the water, but not far; no higher perhaps than the rings of the docks. There are definitively, no weapons.

Moving beyond the displays to look at the technology, it seems like power is stored in the spiral of the shell. You think between the two of you you could figure out how to charge it if you took it away from the refuelling station. You also find a bad-smelling hopper that seems to be composting organic material, perhaps for the living parts of the ship.

Tucked into a narrow gap you find a few vials of the drug ink; orcs are dependent on it, and it is dealt out to them in very limited quantities by their masters. Some orc has squirreled away a few vials here. Two of them are empty but two are full of murky evil fluid.

Spoiler: Ttharg, Insight 10+

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As everyone else splits off to investigate, you are left alone with the First Mate. The fury and impatience he has shown since the illithid structure appeared is still banked, but he paces back and forth on the ramp with suppressed energy. This is obviously a deeply personal mission for him.

"They can infect dragons, you know," he tells you in a bitter, fast monologue. "Not with one of their vile tadpoles, no, it takes a full elder brain to do it. But they can do it. They could do it to our dragons, all of the Malaki. They could turn us into troglodytes or worse; degrade us like they did these orcs. They're an existential threat. Tenebrous saw that and set out to stop it and he paid the ultimate price. And then the Malaki add insult to injury and disown him!"

(The Malaki is the ruling body of Lssthp, the council of all the noble Dragon Houses. Recent centuries have added a lower chamber, the Council of Admirals, made up of dragonborn of high birth or wealth. But everyone knows the Malaki rule Lssthp... under the Emperor, at least. But the Emperor doesn't do a lot of day to day governing.)

"This should've been our whole mission," Cocytus continues to rant. "Scouring this threat from our waters. You know the islanders use ink freely. The metallic dragons don't like it but they love freedom too much to do what needs to be done. The metallics whining about freedom and the Malaki quaking in their lairs about the Mother of Us All, and all the time the squids are eating away at us..."

Spoiler: Insight 15+

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This is a deep and infected wound in the man's soul, and you realize it's hard to predict what he may do out here.