"The integral trees themselves existed in a mathematically impossible region of space-time... - Larry Niven, The Integral Trees

"According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in great abundance wherever order is being sought. It alsways defeats order because it is better organized." - Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

"A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship".- J.R.R. Tolkien

"I'm glad you could reverse your position on genocide." - Brendon the Goblin

The Inordinate Amount takes another terrible beating leaving the Nebula of Elemental Chaos and is cast adrift into Wildspace. A conveniently located wandering Gnomish drydock that follows the Bralean principle of commerce of "needs must" comes upon the derelict craft after a couple of days. To find economies in the inordinately expensive repairs, the Command Team negotiates to send an away team to an air globe cast off from the nebula purported to be filled with valuable Integral Trees. Alexis, Brendon, Bronwyn and Dakota fly the spelldashers into the massive Smoke Glob to harvest branches from one of these free-floating, asteroid-sized trees. While they wait for the Gnomish machinery to do its work, they are beset by all manner of fauna and flora. In the process, they are drawn into a mystery that suggests they are not the first goblins to visit this place. The come to realize that there is one survivor of the party of who Ylfe chased those long-ago goblins here. And he is unlike most Ylfe...

SHILYNN: Pilot's personal log... For the record, flying into an elemental nebula was not on my bucket list, but DAMN, it shoulda’ been! What a ride…

DAKOTA: WAIT, WAIT, WAIT…

IMMA LET YOU FINISH…

BUT FIRST… I have the conch

OK, uh… Would you rather have your spelljammer smashed to pieces inside a swirling toilet bowl of elemental death or be double, uh no (one, two… uh…) TRIPLE-crossed by a narcissistic space pirate? Oh, right, you chose both. Weird. OK…

Would you rather your crippled spelljammer be cast adrift in the void, slowly being picked apart by scavengers as the air goes stale and bleeds away or fall into a degrading orbit around the previously mentioned swirling toilet bowl of elemental death, this time with no power and no maneuverability?

Would you rather pay the exorbitant prices of a conveniently located Vagabond Gnomish Drydock, or send your Loyal Gobs off on a dangerous mission to find resources that could offset costs?

Would you rather eat a cupcake that tastes like poop or poop that tastes like a cupcake?

The Gnome’s prices are outrageous. Outrageous enough to make even the most generous soul consider a little piracy, extortion, or even just a classic dine and dash. Apparently the Gnomes have worked those possibilities into their business plan, because they have a Bionoid Guardian – living insectoid armour typically used by the Imperyion. This one has been modified, because… Gnomes.

Dickering with the Master Tinker of the Far-Out, he sensed your urgency and drove up the prices. However, it is also when the Integral Trees came up. Harvesting them from nearby is actually what brought them out this far. The trees grow IN wildspace in zero gravity air bubbles thrown off from the Elemental Nebula. They are much sought after for the qualities they can impart to spelljammers – particularly, greater peed and maneuverability.

The Smoke Glob is an air bubble that has been thrown off the Elemental nebula. It trails a day behind it. It’s quite stable, and it is filled with water globes, forest knots and gigantic integral trees.

Alexis, Brendon, Bronwyn and Dakota will take the two spelldashers to the Smoke. The mission is to find a suitable branch of a tree, release the two Gnomish branch cutters, attach the Gnomish compulsion engine to the spelldashers, and bring the forested section back to the Far-Out.

The trees are filled with all manner of potentially dangerous fauna.

The Trees: There was no horizon visible through the murky gray light, and the sheet of the water droplets was so vast it went from treetop to treetop, underneath a sky that looked perpetually like a hurricane.

Alexis: "I am awesome! Let it happen!"

Dakota: //riding the prow, like in the Titanic//  "Would you rather be a tree in the forest, or a forest for the trees?"

Bronwyn: Captain Ace Owens, on a lead branch, wearing a tiara instead of a cowboy hat... "Yeehaw!"

Our damaged ship limped into a gnomish dry dock named Farout after we cleared the nebula.  Our crew injuries and ship status were so dire that we could neither afford the repairs nor mount an independent effort to get underway in any time to resume our chase.  Shroktath reminded me of the previous successes of lone goblin teams on Asteroid B last winter, in the middle of a Phase Spider~Blink Dog war and then alone on Brahl for months.  Nonetheless, I was driven by what I saw as a desperate situation and with great reluctance agreed with a plan to send four goblins out on a high-risk mission.  They would fly in two goblinwings to a wayward airbubble in the phlosogen stream trailing the nebula.  The gnomes described a particularly large one named Smoke that contained a massive ecosystem of city-sized plants called Integral Trees.  Wood from such a tree would be our payment since it could in general improve speed and manoeuvrability of spelljammer ships.  With much consideration we sent Alexsis, Dakota, Brendon and Bronwyn with two cutters to collect the proscribed amount of wood that would pay our fees and improve our own ship.  It took us about an hour to prepare the cutters and the ships and they all stalked off to prepare their equipment and seek expert advice.  I have no confidence that they did either.

With great trepidation I watched them launch and disappear into the distance in roughly the direction we sent them.  A simple and straightforward task like this was estimated to comfortably take two days.  Almost two years on the Inordinate Amount made told me four days was more likely  It was after five that I started discussing contingencies with the command team as hope was dwindling.

The following is an account of those days from that team that I was able to piece together from reports from Basile’s investigations, Shroktath’s direct inquisition and even Coleman’s causal commentary (once he stopped saying “tree, tree”) to fill in the large gaps in Alexsis’s verbal report to me:

So we four launched from the Inordinate Amount and I was in charge because I was larger than the rest and the prettiest in spite of what Dakota and Bronwyn think.  We found the bubble named Smoke without trouble and entered it using my amazing piloting skills.  Khalid needs to let us pilot more often.  Landing was challenging because the winds were crazy hard.  I think the humans would call the outside of the bubble a hurricane.  A suitable tree branch the size of the Inordinate Amount was easy to find.  I was able to get the cutters into good position because I know trees.  Nature is my enemy.  Getting the dumb gnome cutters started was harder and not because we forgot to ask how to do it but because gnomes are dumb.  When the cutters were cutting away, we were attacked by gripplis and giant toads.  I say attacked because they shot us with poisoned darts and were all “blah, blah, hate, hate, attack, attack” in their dumb toad language.  Nature is the enemy and they made enemies of us, really fast.  I had enough of their blah, blah and turned into a bear.  A clawed slap to their dumb faces shut them up pretty fast.  The cutters were still blazing away so we decided to investigate the grippli lair since we could handle following a war party of things that had grown up somewhere we had never been and were retreating into their home base…not dumb but tactical smart, Shroktath.  Also we would not be wasting any time, Khalid.  Inside we found some grippli eggs that Dakota was a bit too interested in eating.  It was more important that we found markings on the walls that showed signs of an ancient goblin presence here.  It was like Connor was actually right about the Heljon stuff.  The marks pointed towards another goblin settlement down tree so we went, because *goblins*, Khalid.  In that field, we were attacked by two battleswans.  They were wild too.  Dakota jumped up on one battleswan and killed it.  Alexsis the Master of Nature though got up on the other one and as always, bent nature to her will.  A little taste of Bronwyn’s severed ear seemed to be enough to win its heart.  That battleswan was her best friend and did she ever look awesome flying around…a lot better than Bronwyn and her stupid butterfly wings.  Better than that other stupid ylfe guy Orcist and his beautiful blond hair.   Alexsis named her new flying friend Flamewing after she healed its burned feathers.  Not content with being totally off mission and deep in undiscovered country, the goblins went further down tree.  It was not long before the intrepid goblins were attacked by a giant venus flytrap.  Nature is the enemy and nasty.  Goblins are nastier and use fire.  During the battle, they were joined by a wild elfin warrior.  Together we smashed the fly trap.  This ylfe Veenovere told the goblins about how his people once hunted the goblins but got trapped in Smoke and eventually joined with them.  This combined group had worked for years to turn an integral tree into a spell jammer but none of the spellcasters lived to see that completed.  With Alexsis and Brendon, they were able to pilot this giant tree ship.  It did not matter that the stupid gnome cutter thingees did not work; this was better.  

It was at this point in their mission that I can directly account for their achievements.  Their integral tree spelljammer was an utter surprise for us.  Ten times the size of Brahl, a living tree sailing the phlosogen and piloted by a triumphant giant bear and a crying goblin was a new standard for “unbelievable” in Wildspace.  They returned with incredible information about Heljon, loot, viable eggs of gripplis, a battleswan and a sympathetic ylfe warrior.  Many days I wish had a better word to use than “inconceivable”.

The gnomes of Farout immediately wanted to renegotiate their agreement with us given the impossible possibilities brought to us by these four goblins.