Session Eighteen
Time is Money

"Justice isn't about fixing the past. It's about fixing the future."

- Janks Treller, ACLU Meter

"Life is the present and the future. Not the past."

- Crumnubbins Willybits, ACLU Allayor

"Perhaps wars weren't won any more. Maybe they went on forever."

- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

"It's later than you think."

- Luckums

The heroes wake up on the Inordinate Amount to find Janks, Crumnubbins, and Goodboy waiting dockside. Janks is an uncharacteristically good mood having made political gains out of their battle with the brain bull. The heroes start their day by visiting the Drunken Octopus flop house to meet up with the illithid resistance, Okkallappa. The contact, "Perry Loman" is the original copy of the same mindflayer they met and defeated on board the Void Stalker. That was his "quisling" - a psionic golem to stand in his place while he vacationed on Bral. Okkalappa wants the heroes to help free Jormunn Goss, an illithid revolutionary leader, from Mazzesine prison, found deep in illithid-controlled space at the centre of the Shattered Sphere. The heroes then visit the slaver tavern, the Obedient Thrall, seeking any leads on the whereabouts of the Ibixian child, Carmy Bellhain. After dealing with the consequences of interrupting a business meeting, they pay the undead Boggard, Braaap, to gather more information for them about Carmy. Finally they visit the chronomancer Molator in an attempt to learn more about the loss of Luckums's connection to her magic. They discover that the goblin wizard untethered herself from time, and that she has begun to fade from existence altogether. The last of her temporal essence is now tied to her fellow heroes.

Time really gets around.

Time heals all wounds. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. Time flies. Time is on our side. Time is cruel. Time enough for love. Time is a cruel thief. Time waits for no man. Time is the wisest councillor. Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. Time is the storm in which we are all lost. There’s never enough time.

There’s never enough time.

The thing about being well rested, is that the body starts to expect it. After the battle against the Brain Bull and the excitement of being reunited with much of the crew at the docks, you crash in your respective bunks on board the Inordinate Amount

HOW DO YOU SLEEP?

• Shroktath is a good sleeper. He slept like a rock.

• Basile meditates, fitful and worrying

• For Khalid, forced rest is the 18th step of battle procedure, though it’s the one you never get to. The things you need to get done always take priority, including waking up, which will always occur far sooner than you think.

• Hazel sleeps like a rock. He worries about Basile, but he lets Basile worry about everything else.

• Luckums dreams of Luckums things.

The Dockmaster advises you that repairs from your battle with the Ylfen fighters are nearly complete but the full refurbishment required to fix the hull after Tumult’s loving embrace to say nothing of Skitterix’s neglect, will take at least a month. That being said, she is Wildspaceworthy. Enough.

Most of your original crew is here and accounted for, including a Blink Dog named Captain. However, Bronwyn, Shannon One, Edgar and Shilynn are all unaccounted for. Your potentially new crew members are also unaccounted for.

You walk on deck to the “thunk” of a blade hitting wood.

Chet is tied to the mast while Veronica and Glenn are taking turns throwing daggers at him. It looks like he’s been hit a couple of times…

You wake up to find Janks Treller and Crumnubbins Willybits, dockside. Being kept from boarding by Gurunk and his husband, Grubbatug-tug. Janks is pacing while Crumnubbins is keeping the ogres entertained with hand shadow puppets. Goodboy looks like he is dozing behind them, but you know better. He probably heard you walking on deck before you appeared.

Goodboy nods and then Janks looks up and begins gesticulating. You think, it’s going to be a day…

The ACLU's newspaper, The Appeal to Reason ("We Look Out for the Little Guy Literally."), sold its complete print run, while stacks of the Vindicator (an Imperyion-subsidized rag) remains un-read all over the city. She is literally rubbing her hobbity hands together as she talks about their improved political position on the Board of Directors as the Ylfe and the Illithid have impaled their position on your presence here.

Everything is looking up!

This is not a tavern. Rather the Drunken Octopus is a front office to a narrow multi-story tenement – you pay for a pad to crash in a room that is outfitted with certain intoxicants, narcotics, elixirs and other mind-expanding substances. Single rooms. Social rooms, specialized by race. Group sex rooms, similarly specialized. The variety is bewildering.

The mature, woman behind the front desk is uncommonly exotic and beautiful. She stands at least as tall and broad as Shroktath and has large black eyes. Her glistening skin is toned in green and blue gradients dappled in silver, and she has grey hair. This is Zoramthanya and the gentle splash from the tub behind the counter and the tentacle she uses to casually push the hair back that has fallen in front of her face, tells you that she is a Cecaelia – on octopus mermaid.

“Do you wish to have your orthodoxies subverted or sustained?”

An Illithid slightly brighter purple than others, dressed in colourful flowing robes, and topped with a jaunty fez comes stumbling up to you. He looks vaguely familiar and smells strongly of patchouli. A voice sounds in your head.

• “Hey guys! Whoah, hey! It’s me, Perietal, You can call me Perry. Man,… you killed my quisling back on the Void Stalker. Aw man, you totally did me a solid! I had stayed on vacation like way too long and that flesh golem was going to expire before I had time to get back and that would have been awkward…

Think, a cross between “surfer dude” and Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, and you have Perietal.

• What was it like to kill MxkTxk? God, I wanted to do that for so long! have you ever met a likable Beholder? My dudes, they do not exist!”

• What about Orcneas? He’s a total douche…

He will ask the heroes to pay for his enormous debts.

Okkallappa is a revolutionary movement founded by the Illithid revolutionary, Jormunn Goss.

• “The war over ideas is everything.”

• “I used to be just like the rest of them,” but living on Bral really opened his mind. Just like Jormun Goss (Illithid revolutionary now imprisoned in Manzessine) He wrote his treatises here…

• “I like the taste of brains as much as the next guy, but IDEAS, man now THOSE are delicious!”

• Illithid can in fact survive on a diet of stories rather than brain flesh. It weakens them physically and causes some discomfort (hence the regimen of intoxicants) but to its adherents, it seems far less cruel.

• Philosophical Question: Why are tales so sustaining? What is the substantive nature of stories?

• Oppose the Illithid Collective’s efforts to re-dominate the shattered sphere

[Placeholder: image, map of shattered sphere with "A High Mind of High Minded Memories" text]

Manzessine is a mindflayer prison on an asteroid 

• There’s a guy there, he’s total awesome, so of course the collective (which is totally lame) locked him up. Jormunn Goss. He’s a great thinker. He totally wants to reform Illithid society.

• Help us break Jormunn Goss and we can pay you… or we can help you deal with the Collective.

• The Illithid Collective are tracking your crew

To learn the current whereabouts of Mazessine is unknown. There is an Okkalappa cell on Mezsoul that tracks its whereabouts. You have to go there, to the city of Mass Chain, which floats above the great methane lake, Fissure.

Why not just kill them: Never kill something you that you can keep alive to use for horrific experiments. The mere existence of Jormun and his revelations are a threat to the entire collective. They are trying to figure us out!

Breaking the Illithid Collective’s attention could save Bral from the Collective determination to recapture the Elder Brain and allow it to focus on the threat from the Imperyion.

There are few creatures alive now as can remember the Shattering. If they could, they’d be old beyond reckoning. Ten thousand years if they were day. To the Ylfe it is known as the First Righteous War, but the Illithid, for their own reasons, call it the Excoriation.  

Both these races of false gardeners sought to control the sphere’s original inhabitants. Magulon it was called then, named for the foremost god of its great population of goblinoids. The war lasted hundreds of cycles and ended when an alliance of Ylfe and Illithid cracked open the sphere itself. Doing so, they sundered the pulsating star at its heart in twain and opened the maelstrom. In the ensuing millenia, they fought one another on an off, always for control. In the process, they destroyed civilizations and even entire planets as casually as you might swat a fly.

Three great asteroid belts coalesced from the ruin – the outer ring, called the Grinder and the inner ring, called the Flayer, and between them the Astromundi Cluster, where the refugees of the Nyn’Ylfen wars gathered. Inside the Flayer the Illithid Collective holds sway, obsessed with an immeasurable ring structure that surrounds the Wounded Heart binary star – the Heart Ring. It is said to be an artifact that predates the gods themselves.

The Ylfe retreated beyond the Grinder after the last Nyn’Ylfen war extinguished the last of the goblins who dared to defy them. They eventually left the Shattered Sphere altogether. Having their sphere-spanning Imperyion to manage, they found the costs of bringing the final hold outs to heel beyond their value. So it was, they left the territory beyond the Grinder under the sway of their proxies in the Compact of Steam and Steel. These thugs and mercenaries ensure that no order rises inside the sphere capable of challenging the Imperyion.

Deep inside the Shattered Sphere are the twin suns, the Wounded Heart, Atroa (the larger) and Ventroa (the smaller, a dying pulsar). The Collective has the entire zone cordoned off and lays claim to all the territories within. They’ve even pushed back the mighty Imperyion’s attempts to find out what they are doing. But I know! They are attempting to finish what they've started and snuff out the suns, casting the entire sphere into an icy crystal death.

There is no sign on the front entrance inviting patrons inside. However, Goodboy assures you that you are standing in front of the Obedient Thrall. The password to enter changes regularly, and the latest was provided to by the ACLU - "COLLATERAL."

ACLU had warned you about this place. Walking in the front door (or trying) is bound to be seen as a provocative. As a general rule, as you’ve learned, everyone on the Rock knows someone who knows someone. Outsiders stand out

At the bottom of a rickety flight of stairs there stands a thick wooden door.

• Knock: a peep hole slides open, and a voice growls something imperceptible 

The Obedient Thrall is not a nice looking establishment. It is not a place that people visit to have a good time. It is a place that people visit to do business that is best not overheard. To this end, it appears purpose built. The place is all dark corners and curtained alcoves. There are no tables in the centre of the room. Instead, rough boards sit atop barrels in a rectangular enclosure serves as a wet bar.  There are two doors on the far wall.

There was no general din in the bar to go quiet when you entered. No one turned to gawk. That being said, eyes lingered, backs stiffened and the temperature of the room dropped precipitously.

Of those patrons whose identity is not hidden in the folds of cloaks and cowls, there is a mix of Moreaufolk, a few Neogi, and various Brutes – mostly Bugbears and Gnolls.

Normally when you scan a room, you are accustomed to picking out the shady characters. The ones who are most likely to cause you trouble. The hard men who would snap you in half as soon as look at you. The scum who would stab in the back for the thrill of it. In the Obedient Thrall, that’s pretty much everybody.

The one eyed cobra Yuan-ti bartender says “I don’t know nothin about that,” while he gestures to a darkened corner where a toad person is speaking to two panther people (PERCEPTION – There is someone standing behind the toad person in the shadows… VERY well concealed – you see the eyes of a cat staring back at you from under his hood… apparently wrapped around his neck).

Luckums, you distinctly remember the path back to Molator’s that Goodboy had once provided. The Mercane are famous for being merchants of magic found throughout the spheres. They are said to be the creators of the original helms, and they continue to corner the market on the sale of the spelljamming devices. They are great blue creatures with too many eyes in their heads and too few fingers on their hands.

A wooden tower leans precariously six or seven stories over the street, blocking out the sky. It is easily the tallest building in the entire district. You know it must be the right place because it features five large clock faces, one on each of its sides. One of them starts up a jolly carillon before small wooden figures pop out beneath it, flap little wings and squawk a musical welcome. Below them it says in Wildspace Cant, omni tempore rebus. Every moment counts. A big smiling blue face with several eyes is painted above an arrow pointing up a rickety staircase.

You have to tarverse several flights of steps. Many more than you would think would be necessary to reach the clocktower. It’s a good thing you have your disc! And some of these passageways are narrow even for you. Finally, you arrive on a small doorless landing that opens up inside an enormous space. It is far larger than it ought to be based on what you saw of it from the outside, and it’s jammed with whirring, clicking, swinging clockwork machinery. You actually have to swoop out of the way of some of it as pendulums of it swing through the room.

That large creature in the flowing robes could only be the Mercane. It’s heavy set and taller than Shroktath, so you are a little surprised by its lilting almost feminine voice.

Welcome travellers. Who are you, and how may I help you?

• Molator has never met Luckums before. There is no record of her having been here. 

• Luckums is “untethered”. No one on the Rock of Bral or the Inordinate Amount remembers Luckums. She has effectively become a “Magic Sink” – not unlike Steel Stone.

• In Chronospace, everyone’s timeline is like a thread in a tapestry. Sometimes they are intertwined, woven and entangled, sometimes they wander off or are cut short. But they stretch forward and backward in time and are bound on either end. 

• Luckums timeline exists only in the tangled mess amongst the Core Four: Basile, Hazel, Shroktath and Khalid. She has no past and future (“What a delectable puzzle!”). She exists entirely out of time.

• It is as though Luckums has never existed, except in the context of her relationship with the party and a few other distant echoes back on Sentar (heroes of Ancorato)

When the heroes leave the chronomancer's clocktower, they find the streets unusually quiet. Being engrossed in the details of what they have just learned about their friends affliction, it is a moment before they realize that people everywhere are silently looking up.

There, still at a distance, but close enough to be visible is a single Ylfen Battle Herald. It is a stout corvette built for speed. Though much smaller, the style is unmistakably that of the Cygnet Terrace. A few spelldashers wait in formation between it and the Bralean Navy frigate hastily launched to meet the challenge. You can see a pair of battle swans swoop and loop between the corvette and the spelldashers. 

The rest of the Ylfen fleet will not be far behind.

So, who’s into visiting a drug-addled (and foul smelling) mind flayer practically planted in a “house of ill repute?” No one. Okay, let’s sweeten the pot. Let’s follow that up with a visit to a seedy, downright dangerous bar favoured by slavers, and some of them are powerful undead. Interested now? Still no one?

That’s the kind of day we had, really. We definitely were not on the beach anymore.

Day started off well. Helluva sleep. That brain bull had knocked the crap out of me, and I needed a rest. Thanks to Hazel’s healing, I felt right as rain when I woke up. The four of us met, talked it over, buckled up, and went to the Drunken Octopus. We needed to do something about these brain suckers, and as gross as I found our plan, the Illithid collective weren’t exactly about to approach us with a peace offering. To mess up the brain suckers, we needed to contact their resistance - the Okkalappa - and this grungy, seedy bar was supposedly the place. Awesome.

It wasn't all bad. As we walked in the door, I got hit by the frying pan of love. Hieronius’ holy areshole. I’ve seen some beautiful females in my life, but I’ve never had a feeling like this. What. A. Woman. Greenish skin. Tentacles. And talk about gujamellons! I felt like a schoolboy again. Could barely speak, and blushing. Blushing now as I write this down. Can’t remember the last time I blushed. Sumbitch.

Anyways, we get taken to this critter's room - Peryton Loman. Turns out this is the same Illithid we thought we killed on the Ylfen ship all those months ago (except, you know, that we didn’t. Can’t remember what he called the thing we killed - a golem or something that he controlled?) I knew the damned Illithid contact’s name seemed familiar. 

Whole damned thing was pretty gross really, but most disturbing was the ask to “join minds' ' with us. In my experience, this is something you’re trying really hard to avoid where the Illithid are concerned. Anyways, “Perry,” (as his friends call him. I’m puking in my mouth a little as I write this) said (well, not “said, more “thought.” Into our brains. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that) to communicate more about the Okkalappa. 

It turned out to be a great move. In a way words couldn’t possibly get across, he gave us an understanding of the Illithid philosopher, Vogon Gos, his non-violent philosophy, the prison where he was being kept and tortured by the Illithid collective, the goals of the collective to “turn off” the “twin hearts” (suns) at the centre of the shattered sphere. Moreover, I got a really cool sense of the shattered sphere itself. People had always talked about these places - the Grinder, the Maelstrom, the Rock of Brahl, but I’d never felt like I had any idea where anything was in relation to anything else. I’d just nodded and gone along. But after “touching minds” with “Perry,” I could just let my mind wander around Magluon like remembering “Hieran,” the monastery where I grew up. Weird, but kinda neat weird.

Apparently this Gos [Jormunn Goss - DM] philosopher guy was the key to unlocking - connecting - the scattered Okkalappa resistance. So we left with some hope, and a lot less gold. (Khalid decided to pay “Pery’s” - considerable! - debts) And with the dreamy image of a beautiful, be-tentacled woman the likes of which I’d never even imagined could exist. Well, I guess that was just me. But wow. That’ll keep me going for a while.

We then went to the Slaver’s place - the Obedient Thrall. Fuckers. I swallowed hard. We had some business to do. We got let in, but it was a bit dicey really. I’m not sure the doormen really bought our story about me being Basile’s slave, but whatever. Bartender directs us towards one of many shady corners where some leopard people are in some clearly intense dealing with a creepy toad critter. Death, evil, black magic - there was some bad juju coming off that froggy fucker. Again, swallow hard and approach. Basile’s playing it that he’s a slaver, and has a client with very particular tastes - wants an Ibixian boy (Carmy). Our “act,” went over even worse than at the door, we pissed off the leopard people, and they moved to attack us.

It didn’t go very well for them. So, a minute or so later, as the bodies of the leopard-folk are being hauled off by some of the bartenders, we again tried talking to the foul toad fucker. Except it wasn’t just this lump of evil. Behind him the whole time, is an even more creepy “thing.” Clearly undead, and unconcerned with us, or any of what had gone on. Unconcerned? Uncaring? Would happily gut you like a fish for a copper, but more just on a fancy? That’s what I felt, anyway.

Toad-thing was trying to send us away, but we managed to convince it that it was better to do business with us and make a profit. It told us to come back the following day, and we’d get our information. Hmmm. Even I know that could go badly sideways.

Anyway, one last stop. Luckums wanted to stop by a chronomancer’s place. Apparently, she’s come “unstuck” in time. I guess most creatures are solidly rooted in their timeline, their past, present, and future all fully interwoven into the web of life. But I guess, cause of some of her magical hijinks, she’s like a stranger to this timeline now. A stranger from her magic, too. Only thing that keeps her present is her connection to us, and our roots in the timeline. Did that explain some of the weird shit I thought I’d been seeing with Luckums lately? I never brought it up with anyone cause it only happened a couple of times, and I thought I was just imagining shit, or suffering from too many knocks on the ol’ gujamellon. But it was like, if I was alone with Luckums, and I looked away from her for a bit, it was like she wasn’t even there in the corner of my eye anymore. Just for a second. But whenever I looked back at her directly - poof - she was there again. Creepy.

The chronomancer said that Luckums was in trouble, and could only continue to exist here only as long as we all did. Kinda gave me a shiver when I heard that. I always figured that, when I died, the others would just carry on and do lots of great things. I never thought about me dying being partially responsible for Luckums’ death. Didn’t like that at all. The chronomancer said that she could root Luckums back to the timeline through us, and that this would restore her magic, and we all said we would do whatever we needed to tie her to the timeline. Luckums was wrestling with it though. She wanted some time to noodle on it.

We left, but there’d been a question nagging at me the whole time Luckums and the Chronomancer had been talking, so I quickly snuck back. “Excuse me,” I said, “but can you tell me anything about who I am?” I was a bit nervous, and fumbling over my words. “That sounds weird, I know. I mean, where did I come from? All I really know about me is that I’m a half orc, who was captured by a group of soldiers in a raid, and brought up by the temple of Hieronious back on Sentar. Then I found out that I have the blood of the gardeners in me. Still not really sure what that means, tell the truth, but… who am I? Can you tell me? I can pay, if that helps.”

Sularday Eoweek Korda - Day 203

The day we had a slow start to just properly clean up, eat, stow our gear from Sentar and stage our equipment.  We woke up to the routine sounds of Brahl which was a pleasant surprise after the drama of the previous evening.  Our ship was in a good operational state of repair but had structural issues that could take even longer if we wanted to address.  Coleman introduced us to Captain the Blink Dog which was such an incredible experience that consumed our morning. He also explained his efforts to find additional crew he had lined up that should be coming in the next few days. Unfortunately, we were not able to account for Edgar, Bronwyn, Shannon One and Shilynn.  We felt the greatest threat to our crew needed to be addressed at the Drunken Octopus.  We departed after an early lunch with the help of Goodboi.  

It was a large building and once we got past the arrogant receptionist, we went to the seventh floor to find Periotow Loban.  He was immediately familiar to us since it had been his flesh golum quisling that we had destroyed at the First Battle of Algail.  Within a minute of speaking to him, it seemed clear that his brain was almost a bowl of glue.  It was hard to believe he was leading the Okkallappa Resistance.  He spoke though about another leader, Jorman Gos, who we knew from his revolutionary books in our own library.  We touched minds with him and he showed us images of Magulon “the Shattered Sphere” and told us about its history and the Unelf War.  To break Yorman Gos out of the prison of Mazaseem, we had to go to Planet Mezeem.  I settled his debt at the Drunken Octopus on our way to the bar, the Obedient Thrall.

[Placeholder: image, mindflayer]

We disguised Shroktath as a slave and made our way into the Obedient Thrall.  We wanted to confirm details about Carmy but the slavers inside wanted a fight.  My revolver made short work of the muscle and a cowardly gnoll archer.  The toad leader though was willing to deal and told us to return the next day for the information.

We used the remaining daylight to visit a chronomancer to aid Luckums.  Mercain explained that she was “untethered”; she was only connected to time through our squad.  Without that link, Luckums would cease to exist.  As this was being explained to us, the sounds of Brahl shifted.  We went outside to see what was going on.  We were shocked into silences as the sky filled with an y’lfe battlecruiser as vile and vast as the Cygnant Terrace.  We knew more ships of its kind would follow.  [Perhaps as vile, certainly nowhere near as vast - this is a Battle Herald, built for speed. The style  is the same as the Cygnet Terrace - DM]

[Placeholder: spaceship in nebula]

Something stirred and the squad turned to face Luckums.  She was so very still but not scared.  Her demeanour was such that none of us felt worried.  She smiled and said, farewell.  

Luckums, untethered in time, faded away into the chrono-verse.

farewell dear friend

we understand your departure

our hearts still hurt

Sularday Eoweek Korda of the Forty-Nineth Annum Independencia

1. In recognition of her abilities and service, I am appointing Luckums to the rank of Acting Warrant and Chief Thaumaturge.

2. Daily Orders have been posted to announce it is with sadness that I am regretfully declaring her Missing-In-Action.  My investigations have determined that this is a result of an accumulation of magical and tactical actions directly related to combat duties in the face of the enemy.  She will be retained on the platoon nominal role as fully active but excused all duties.  At her acting rank, she will continue accrue leave, pay and seniority benefits as per standard scales until further notice.  Standing orders have been amended to reflect that the duty officer is to maintain an active watch for her return.

3. Acting Warrant Officer and Chief Thaumaturge Luckums is awarded the Unit Commendation for her services effective this date.