Recap Intrigues 20: Death from above
Renegar Subitai: Pete
Jek Kemetou: Steve
Taefala of Vamana: Mike
Cirian: Bob
GM: lil’ ol me, Storn
{We left last ep on a cliffhanger. 3 scout ships from the Black Spire had responded to Renegar raising Jarita’s dad’s ship with magic. They were already in the area, responding to psi energies released by activating the cache/control and command center inside of Windward Island. I had originally said that each ship had disgorged an Illithid… but I changed my mind and retroactively changed it to Illithid shock troops, in this case, a servitor race of Bugbears.}
The large 8 ft tall, armored Bugbears hit the ground with force. Dual wielding psionic maces, they started forward towards our heroes. Quite a bit of ground between the two forces, this was going to be a ranged battle. Cirian was the fastest, linking hands and minds with the untrained Jarita, he fired a tremendous bolt of mental energy, flipping one bugbear end over end, hurting him horribly.
http://s2.photobucket.com/user/Storn/media/Illithid%20enforcer%20F72_zpsrukzcjpq.jpg.html
The other two bugbears waded through arrow fire from the heroes, bringing their psionic maces up and firing beams of green seeking energy toward Cirian. Much to his comrades amazement, Cirian stood firm and deflected the beams with his mind. {Cirian rolled 10+ on his Intellectual Fortress move. Very cool.}
The heroes continued a withering pace of arrow fire from Jek, Taefala and Renegar. But the armor and the parrying ability of the psi-maces allowed the bugbears to keep creeping closer. Renegar switched to earth magic, but one of the bugbears managed to break up the spell. (Ren rolled -6). Jek called upon the spirits of the dead to aid the party, but something went horribly wrong. The spirits in their capriciousness decided to heal the Bugbear that Cirian had pushed out of the fight and had hurt so bar.
Meanwhile, the bugbears had decided, or were programed, to respond to the psionic abilities of Cirian and were combining their psi-mace beams into one big one. Despite Taefala charging towards them and more combined arrow fire, the bugbears were pushing their beam towards the young man. But yet again, Cirian managed to deflect the giant beam with ease (total of a 14!).
Finally, an arrow finds one of the lead bugbears, ending his servitor life. The other one, realizing that things are lost, signals the one that was healed by the spirits of the dead to retreat. That one flings open his arms and his scout egg drops down upon him and scoops him up. More arrows end the one closest to the group. Renegar taps into the winds and summons a mini tornado (10+!) and hammers the retreating scout ship into the treeline.
The last bugbear scout weakly tries to fend off the approaching heroes, but Cirian swats his mind aside and kills him. Renegar pulls his body out of the scout ship and all of them start to investigate the weird craft. {At this point, we have gone so far to Thundaar the Barbarian territory with the super-science/sorcery, that we actually had to discuss it in modern terms…like the med kits the bugbears had and the view screens inside the cockpit}
The craft is disturbing, Jek sense many souls, many of them alien and unknown, were sacrificed to create. The psionic engineering is a corruption of Cirian’s people elegant crystal psionic crafting. They decide to start a fire in the cockpit, destroying everything but the husk.
Jek tries to commune with the dead bugbear pilot’s soul. Bits and pieces of being a servitor race come across, but the intel the company was hoping for wasn’t really forthcoming. Jek then decides to try and contact Bartholomew, Jarita’s father and the pilot of the Euprhaxia. Things go a bit askew as an angry Bartholomew possesses Jarita, his daughter. {Steve rolled 5 failures this night! Even with an +1 aid coming from Cirian, it wasn’t at all that they wanted. One cost was that Jarita and Cirian’s psychic link was severed and couldn’t be re-established… for the moment}
Through Bartholomew, fixing the Euprhaxia is possible, the biggest obstacle is growing a new control crystal or finding the old one that was struck from the ship during a lightning storm some 30 years ago. The control crystal might have fallen on land over a small island called Dydae’s Cove. The memory crystal of the Euphraxia judged that around 38%
But Bartholomew was stuck in his daughter’s body and causing her soul to shrink. He wanted to be let go. But Renegar asked if he would want to stick around and help his daughter, if there was another vessel available. Bart died when Jarita was 3 and that was a huge temptation.
“What vessel?”; BAtholomew asked.
“Me”. Answered Renegar.
Stunning everyone, Renegar was insistent. It was settled, Jek & Cirian coax Bartholomew into Renegar’s body. Renegar is now a man of two souls. And this seems somewhat permanent, some greater powers will be needed to separate the two souls. {A success with a cost, 7-9 result on Jek’s roll. Pete really roleplayed the two personalities really well and there were interesting conversation between Bart, Jarita and Cirian, who have this shared culture in a ways.}
The company+one camped on the top of Windward island and returned to the village below in the morning. They buy a ship, Bart had become a fisherman after he married Jarita’s mom and had even been to Dydae’s Cove several times to fish. He didn’t know at the time that the Control Crystal might lie on the atoll. And as he explained to Cirian, after awhile he no longer cared, he loved living on Windward Island with his wife and child.
Buying a boat was easy with Jarita’s connections. Off they set for Dydae’s Cove. The journey is easy and well-travelled. They arrive to the atoll of crystal blue waters and the ruins of an Ashanti fort. {And that is where we leave it}
http://s2.photobucket.com/user/Storn/media/Dydaes%20cove%20F%20100_zps44me2rep.jpg.html
