Dragonforged

"Dragonforged" is episode 49 of SuperQuest Saga. The party makes a plan to split up and launch both The Brunhilde and their new ship at the same time. As Victoria takes Artax back to The Brunhilde, Echo, Persephone, Primina, Sebastian, and Watt explore their new vessel. Primina experiments with the familiar technology and is able to strengthen the bonds of the party and form a connection with the ship and they launch successfully... Right into a swarm of awaiting illithid vessels.

Introduction

 * Will Stark shall be your psionic dungeon master for this evening.
 * Josh Freeland is playing Sebastian Crenshaw, half-orc Oathbreaker Hexblade.
 * Your Special Guest Jake is playing Persephone Goldpetal, the firbolg space druid.
 * Brian is playing Codename: Echo, a space wizard who does rogue and fighter things.

Recap
Last time the party got into a fight with Carter Huttenburg, or at least some version of him, a shell of his former self with new and grosser allies. They discovered a final message on Zahn’s computer which revealed a giant ship in the shape of a dragon made from the dark, metallic alloy of Umbrium and the password to open her up.

You'll Know the Signal When You See It
The giant ship stands across the warehouse from the party. It is big, but only half the size of The Brunhilde. Echo sees that the alloy the ship is made from is causing the lights to be dimmer than usual. He asks if they’re getting in, and Persephone asks Prim if they should enter the ship and head to Kadath. Primina thinks they can try it. Victoria states they don’t even know where Kadath is, but it looks like they’re supposed to take the ship. Sebastian suggests there may be a map onboard. Echo thinks they should get on board and figure out how it works and if they can get it going and take it from there, he shouts “XGP15A11, Let’s goooo! Open!” And it opens before Echo.

When the ship is activated a boarding ramp descends from the belly of the dragon and the party sees an opening at the top. Before anyone can react, Victoria’s bracer jack begins to beep a small alarm. She looks down at it and looks displeased, she hits a button and a hologram appears as the bracer jack states “Nearby vessels approach.” The hologram is a shot from a camera on The Brunhilde that displays two illithid vessels patrolling above the frozen lake. They do not seem to have detected The Brunhilde yet. Victoria sighs “Order preserve us” and orders Watt to help them get the ship going and asks if Echo can pilot. He thinks he probably can. She nods and takes Artax to secure The Brunhilde.

Sebastian asks her if she is sure since this seems crazy, and she refuses to leave her ship behind. Echo tries to convince her to stay but will not stop her and tells her to be careful since his baby is on The Brunhilde. Sebastian tells her to be safe and let them know if things go awry. Watt tells her not to do anything stupid, they don’t need a heroic sacrifice play. He knows how the Nova’s operate and it’s a miracle Dag and Dirk still live. “Don’t make me bury another child, my dear.” She assures him that she will be careful, she’s not her cousins. Watt responds that she’s worse. Primina tells Victoria it is likely the illithids will detect her the second she reaches the surface and suggests that she should wait for them to get the ship going. Victoria will try. Persephone walks up and gives Victoria a hug and casts Pass without Trace on her before she goes. Percy tells her to wait for their signal, which is probably the big dragon ship launching. Victoria was hoping the signal would be a call on the bracer but Echo and Sebastian emphasize that she will know the signal when she sees it because it has to be dramatic. She smiles and calls for Artax to go. Sebastian tells Artax to be good.

Echo Moves with Confidence
The remaining group stand before the giant black dragon ship with its ramp down. Echo runs up the ramp and the group follows. The interior of the ship is not made of Umbrium, but of some sort of grayish-silver titanium alloy. They enter into a pretty empty boarding room with a closed sliding door on the west wall and a closed sliding door on the south wall.

Echo heads to the south and the door opens automatically. It leads into a very large corridor with a stairwell heading up to a catwalk. On the first floor is a sliding door to the south, west, and north. Echo continues to head south and reaches a long hallway with two sliding doors on the left hand wall and a big, heavy duty wall on the south end. Echo heads south again, the group deferring to his spacecraft knowledge, and finds a massive room that houses four engines. Echo and Sebastian notice that there is no aether-core or A-Reactor in the room, which is odd. Echo does not understand how it functions, faster than light travel should be impossible without an A-Reactor. Sebastian asks Watt what he thinks and if the ship would even start. Watt states that if the early reports of the party encountering a ship powered by Primina’s innate energies are true, then perhaps this ship is designed to utilize that. Though he is worried about the stress it would put on her body.

Echo asks if they need to prime the engines. Watt shrugs and suggests they’ll know more once they get to the control room. It looks like the flight deck was in the head of the dragon so perhaps they should head upstairs and to the front. Echo remembers a catwalk from the first area. Watt admits the catwalk did catch his eye, but Echo moved about with such confidence that he just followed. Echo suggests they might be on a time budget so they move back that direction. Sebastian checks out both sliding doors on the hallway and finds some living quarters and a mechanic’s workshop.

Up the catwalk they hit a crossroads with a sliding door at the end of the hallways to the north, west, and south. Sebastian asks Echo what he thinks, and Persephone moves towards the door on the south wall and finds a fully stocked kitchen. The group heads back to the north door and inside is a rectangular room with a sliding door on the eastern wall, a sliding door in the upper left hand corner, and a square platform with a module that appears to be an elevator in the center of the room. They pile into the elevator and find a similar room on the next level, with sliding doors on the north, west, and east wall.

Echo goes north and on the other side of the door is an enormous pillar that goes from floor to ceiling. Persephone and Sebastian are hit with some deja vu as they realize they did the same thing in a similar setting right before they met Primina. Percy asks if Primina remembers too, and Prim finds the scene very familiar. Echo asks what’s going on and Primina informs him that Persephone and Sebastian found her in the remnants of a ship similar to what they’re looking at now.

Beeping and Booping
The party continues forward around the pillar and finds the flight deck; an area with a sleek white and black aesthetic, black matte floors, white paneling around the consoles, and black leather chairs with hard-shell white backing. Two chairs are at the forefront of the deck in front of a complex control system and two are in front of their own bespoke control consoles at opposite sides of the room. The enormous windshield is divided into two slanted eye-shaped windows overviewing the warehouse below while providing a good view above as well. On the flight deck side of the pillar there is a set of stairs leading up to it with a control console of levers on the right hand side. This console has an extra computer screen suspended above the levers, making it different from the original one Percy, Prim, and Sebastian remember.

Echo moves to stand by the main console, noticing everything in this ship looks much more streamlined than normal, and tries to turn it on to no avail. Once he takes a seat the power turns on; all consoles in sight turn on and light up with a blue-white lights and auxiliary lighting on the paneling turns on as well. He is unable to access the engines or access the computer for further schematics.

Persephone checks out the pillar and concludes it is running on some sort of electricity. Sebastian investigates the monitor attached to the console and realizes it has a camera for face-scanning tech. He calls Primina over and she agrees to give it a try. The scanner accepts her face and within the pillar they hear something big and heavy move but nothing seems to happen. Echo asks what they’re doing and Persephone explains that this situation is similar to when they found Primina in the tank before but Carter was the one who made it work back then. She and Sebastian can’t figure it out, and she suggests Echo might be able to figure it out with his ship experience. Echo looks at the scanner, he looks at Primina, he looks at the tank, he looks at the levers, reaches out to pull one and glances back at Persephone and Sebastian. Percy urges him to pull the small one, Sebastian is voting for the large one. Echo pulls the small lever and there is a noise that indicates the function cannot be completed at this time, so he pulls the big one.

The pillar sinks into the floor and reveals an empty space with a platform that is meant to be stood upon. Sebastian looks at Primina, Echo asks if she wants to stand on it. Primina knows what needs to happen now and Sebastian expresses hesitation to go through with it. Primina states that the ship was left to them so they might as well use it, there’s no choice now with the illithids outside. Primina steps on the platform and says they can pull the small lever, and Echo does. When he pulls the lever a large pillar of glass rises up and once it seals with the ceiling it begins to fill with a viscous, semi-transparent, blue liquid. Primina stands there with her eyes closed as the liquid rises and overtakes her form. Once her head is submerged the party hears her voice over the P.A. even though she is not talking, she says she could never get used to not being able to breathe in this stuff. She hears her own voice over the intercom and looks to the party quizzically as she asks if they can hear her. Sebastian says yes, Echo jokingly shakes his head no.

Once the tank is full, the liquid starts to glow and Prim expresses discomfort. She thinks they can access the engines now. Echo sits in the seat and is able to access the engine. He starts beeping and booping the console as he primes the engine. The loud engines roar to life as the ship starts to vibrate. Watt is glad the engines are started and asks how they’ll open the roof to launch. Echo asks Primina if she can talk to the building. Primina cannot talk to the building. Echo asks if the ship can talk to the building, if she is psychically linked with the ship it seems like she is in control. She closes her eyes, is silent for a bit, and says she thinks she can talk to the ship. The ship feels almost alive, not sentient, but she feels a presence.

Persephone goes to take a look at the consoles on the sides of the flight deck. Primina points and says those consoles are defense stations, the seat next to Echo is diagnostics, shields, and coms, and Echo is in the pilot seat. She asks if there is a launch code sequence programmed into the ship. He finds a routine titled “Maiden Launch Initiation” that is blocked by a password. He yells XGP15A11 at the machine and a loud buzz alarm sounds and huge hydraulics begin to cause movement under the ship.

I'm Go! Let's Go!
Slowly the ship begins to tilt back further and further on an incline, its nose rising higher and higher. When it hits a 45° angle everything lurches, Sebastian falls prone but everyone else catches themselves. The lights start flashing red as an alarm sounds. The console in front of Echo displays the schematics of an inclined platform outside the ship and one of the hydraulic cylinders outside the ship is flashing red. Echo calls out to see who is on the diagnostics chair and Watt hops on and works the console with his hands, but he can’t find anything specific. It appears one of the hydraulic cylinders is jammed and someone will have to go outside to take a look, the issue can’t be fixed from inside.

Sebastian eagerly volunteers to go check it out. When he gets to the boarding room, the ramp leading out has been drawn back up. He easily finds the emergency open button and the ramp descends. He gets outside pretty easily, it’s a steep slide down to the warehouse floor, and investigates the area. Down underneath is a lot of moisture and a massive overgrowth of some sort of fungus or plant has spread up from the lakebed and is jamming the system. He reports back to the rest of the party and pulls out his flame sword to clear the growth away. After a few minutes he clears enough that the hydraulics are able to move and rip the remaining growth away.

He quickly jumps back up to get back on the ship, and has to climb the steep 50-foot ramp as the ship is mid-launch. Echo checks the console for a way to stall or cancel the launch and Persephone runs back to the platform. Echo calls out that he is unable to find any obvious way to stop the launch. Before she can do anything to help, Persephone sees Sebastian climbing up the ramp at a 65° angle. He hits a point where it’s too steep to continue climbing and has to jump, so he hurls himself up with his massive upper body strength. Sebastian goes to grab the ledge of the ramp but his chest crashes against it and knocks the wind out of him so he loses his grip as Persephone casts Grasping Vine to catch him and pull him in and they press the emergency button to close the ramp. Percy and Sebastian are not secured in seats and are now perpendicular to the floor as the countdown from “10” begins. Sebastian finds some emergency handles to grab onto and Persephone polymorphs into a giant ape, grabs the handles and tries to hold them both in place.

Echo, Watt, and Primina see a seal in the ceiling open up and as it widens thousands of gallons of water begin to pour into the lab, cascading over the ship making visibility through the windshield impossible. After five minutes or so the lab is full and the opening to the lake above is visible.

Primina announces that she will begin trying to launch. Echo asks if they can get Percy and Sebastian into chairs but Primina advises they wait until the gravity is not pulling them towards the back of the ship. She asks if Sebastian and Percy can hear her, reporting that they are going to launch and asking if they are okay. Sebastian pets Percy as he hesitantly says “Okay.” Echo pulls up a monitor and sees Percy hugging Sebastian in place and thinks it is nice.

The ship begins to move slowly, gaining speed as it rises. The frozen surface of the lake is looming and a collision course is imminent. Echo searches for weapons and Watt moves to a console to check out their options. Echo tries to turn the ship and notices that for such a supposedly high tech ship it is handling very slowly. He tries to scan for a weak point in the ice, but he does not think he has enough time.

Primina begins to light up, she closes her eyes, and she lets out a guttural scream. The engines cut and the reverse boosters fire off and the ship comes to an agonizingly slow stop just before the ice, righting itself so Percy and Sebastian can walk normally. Primina is heaving and is in great pain. If this ship runs like the training simulations she did, there may be a psionic element to running the ship. The illithids wanted her to form a psychic circle with the crew and with interconnected minds the ship was supposed to act as a single entity. She checks if Percy and Sebastian are okay, and Percy as the giant ape gently puts him down and ruffles his hair. She shifts back to herself and gives him a hug before they head back to the flight deck.

The Power of Friendship
When everyone is together again Primina explains they may need to become psionically linked to run the ship, but none of them are naturally psychic. Primina has some limited training. Echo asks if he needs to open his third eye to the universe, and Primina looks to him hopefully, asking if he has psychic training. He does not. Persephone is able to talk to plants, but the ship confounds her. Sebastian can control undead but that won’t help in this situation. Watt suggests that Zahn designed the ship with non-illithid operatives in mind. He designed the ship for Primina and her allies and Zahn would have known that even one illithid ally would be unlikely. Earlier Prim could sense something with the ship and Watt suggests that may be a good place to start. Echo suggests they all take their crew positions; Echo in the pilot seat, Watt on diagnostics, and Persephone and Sebastian take defense stations.

Primina describes a very fierce and willful energy coming from the ship. Watt has heard a legend that the oldest and mightiest of dragon-kind can give their bodies over to the Star Sovereignty to be forged into semi-living vessels; the Dragonforged. He does not know the truth of this legend but suggests the pulsar dragon research they have been uncovering at the laboratories could have been pursuing something similar. Primina feels a connection with the ship that is similar to the illithid circles, she believes the ship is supposed to function as a psychic conduit; the isolation chamber is acting as the heart but it is missing the directives. She can control it a little bit but it is too much for her alone.

Echo continues to fiddle with the console, it should be running much more smoothly than it is; everything is sluggish, nothing is where it should be, it is not as fluid as an advanced technology should be and it is clear there is something wrong. He tries to get into the settings as he complains out loud. Sebastian finds that his station is not working intuitively or well either. Persephone asks Primina if there is anything they can do to assist her, if they are able to connect to the ship.

Primina says that at first her training was very difficult but became easier with time, and asks everyone to close their eyes and clear their minds. During her training there was a creed master to help guide her into existing circles but they do not have that here. She instructs everyone to focus on her, their bonds with each other and memories, and when they are ready they can reach out and she will try to connect them to the ship. Each of them works on finding their inner calm and quiet to connect with the memories.

Echo finds himself reminiscing on his limited exposure with the party. He thinks of Prim and he is brought back to the moment he met her in the throne room on Kaebooros, a moment he thought for sure she had been turned by the devils but it was revealed she was just happy to see her family and friends. This reminds him very much of how long it’s been since he has seen his family and friends. He remembers defending the party, strangers really, against the famed bounty hunters The Freelancers. He sees this scene from not only his point of view, but through Primina’s eyes as well. She sees him defending her friends at Outlaw’s Horizon and how much that means to her. He remembers standing before this group of people and sharing his story with them, the truth of his origins. Echo is not one to do that so it was meaningful.

Sebastian remembers giving Primina her very first ice cream in Sableside. He sees this from her point of view and even though she did not like it she really appreciated the enthusiasm the party had for sharing her experience. He remembers her, and she remembers herself, cheering them on during the Blood Gala Tournament. Primina remembers Sebastian finding her at the victory party and he remembers the moment when she opened up to them about her worries about the pain they were causing untold strangers. She remembers Sebastian fighting Saturos for her freedom.

Persephone and Primina remember together the training they did to help control Prim’s different forms, and how Persephone stepped up without being asked. Persephone saw that she was needed as the only one with experience shape shifting and she helped Prim a lot. They remember the day at the aquarium in the Atheneum and the magical moment they met the Prismatic Serpent. They remember all the hugs and tea they have shared together, and all the times Percy was the first one to ask Primina how she felt after certain events and would really listen to the response.

Prim remembers that Watt was the first person to ever greet her with a smile. They remember the time when the party left them together on The Brunhilde to search for the goblin dreadnought. They remember the many lessons on how to operate The Brunhilde. She remembers the late nights Watt spent working to solve her questions and her problems, and the times she found him passed out in his workshop and she had to put him to bed. And the moments before when Watt looked to Prim to guide the group, the trust and pride in his eyes looking at a young woman he sees as a daughter who is both capable and strong.

One by one they each feel a warmth and connection in the back of their minds. First they sense it is Primina, and then they feel more with each other. Each party member feels the others as a sensation in their mind. When focused on that sensation it becomes thoughts and emotions exterior to themselves, they can hear and feel each other and what they’re thinking. Primina’s eyes open, her szuldar glow brightly. In their minds they hear her warning to be careful of putting pressure on the bonds, none of them are trained in empathetic resistance and another’s thoughts can be overwhelming to deal with. She connects them to the ship and it is difficult for them to process the sudden influx of information and sensation from the psionic network, but that pales in comparison to the primal fierceness of the ship’s presence. Primina reminds everyone to relax as she stabilizes the connection. Watt asks how she is able to do all this and she is not sure.

Primina, and the chamber she is in, is the heart of the ship and the blue fluid flows throughout carrying the psionic connection. The Umbrium shell of the ship amplifies the connection even further. The ferocity of the ship settles as it becomes an extension of their minds, a sense of true unity between ship and crew. Percy is reminded of the sensation she felt on the day she became bonded with the Galactic Spirit; through the Galactic Spirit she felt connected to all living things because all living things are one. They all are connected and in control. Echo thinks about needing to smash the ice, so Persephone and Sebastian feel that thought and execute the command at their consoles. Two energy blasts burst open the ice and the ship follows and immediately the illithid ships descend upon them.

The Party

 * Sebastian Crenshaw: A half-orc paladin/warlock. Beastly upper body strength.
 * Persephone Goldpetal: A firbolg druid. Gives the best hugs.
 * Echo: An elf wizard/fighter/rogue. Looks like he knows what he's doing.

NPCS

 * Victoria Nova: A female tiefling. Worse than Dag and Dirk.
 * Watt Wainwright: A male gnome. So proud of his chosen daughters.
 * Artax: A robot. Doing his best.
 * Primina: A genetically engineered young woman. Stronger with the power of friendship.

Music

 * SuperQuest Saga Theme - by Brian

Out of Character

 * Will had Brian pick “evens” or “odds” and roll a d20 to determine whether only Primina could open the ship or if anyone could do it. He rolled a 4 so anyone could give the voice command.

Nat 20's (2 total)

 * Will (Dexterity Save for Watt)
 * Special Guest Jake (Dexterity Save)

Nat 1's (2 total)

 * Brian (Investigation)
 * Special Guest Jake (Investigation)