Session Thirty-Three

It will be impossible to reach the Brinkmanships and the Kinori herd by conventional means. The Command Team applies all of its genius and resources to the problem. They come up with an innovative solution to bend the Base Code to their will, and to create an engine that would warp the vast distances of Wildspace, as though travelling from one side of Sentar to the other through the Cradle of Creation... 

Lines of research for the team's "quantum spark" and "maelstrom of innovation": 

• Magnetic Fields of Kinori Migratory Patterns

• Using Stories to travel 

• Chronomancy theory

• Accessing Base Code

• Three Layers to the Device: Mechanical+Alchemical+ Magical

• Secrets of Blink Dog Teleportation from Captain

• Edgar's Stoo: perfect metaphor for something that is too complicated... a realization that the Base Code is fluid

It felt like a horse had kicked me in the guts. Or someplace that rhymes. My two favourites - Connor and Charlotte told us they were leaving the Amount. They were taking Dakota, Blaine and Brendon with them. We’d never forced any of our crew to stick around - it’s not our way. But still… I couldn’t help but feel like my unbeating heart had been broken.

Oh, sure, it helped that Connor was crying as he said it. It helped that our gobbies made it clear that they’d still be helping us from afar and, in fact, building a base of operations for our team on the Integral Tree

It still hurt.

I could tell that Basile made a real impact on Connor as he told him to step up and be the leader we all knew him to be. Khalid gave all the departing goblins a generous pay-out, and commissioned Connor and Dakota as commanders. I’m not sure that made much of an impact on any of them, but when he urged Dakota to be “the Shroktath” that seemed to get through. (I admit - got a chuckle out of that). I just got all teary and enveloped each of them in a big bear hug. 

Also - looks like we’ve become part owners of the shipyard? Even as I write that, I feel as stunned as a farmer thumped on the noggin by the midsummer gujamellon drop, but there you go. It’s true. We have the documents to prove it. We’d negotiated - maybe too strongly? - with the gnomish shipwrights working on the damage inflicted on the Amount by our misadventures in the Nebula. The Integral Tree’s arrival had turned our previous terms all topsy-turvy. We made our case. The Integral Tree provided them with a virtually endless supply of the best quality lumber in the spheres. They could build whole fleets of magnificent wildspace ships. They now owed us, and big time, we said. They looked… sad? Confused? Some mixture of the two? They returned a few hours later with a contract offering us almost 50/50 ownership of the shipyard in return for the rights to harvest the Integral Tree. Suddenly, we were the ones that looked confused.

But we accepted. I’d had some concerns about the harvesting of the Tree bringing harm to the lost goblins, but I quickly realized that if the gnomes ever tried to harm any of the lost goblins our about-to-be departed crew would make them regret it, so I think we were good on that front too.

Not that we had a lot of time to take all these big changes in. We still had to try and catch up with Thaliose number one? Two? And stop him from getting the Crown, and we were now running even further behind. The whole crew, with the help of the gnomes, threw themselves into the problem and what we came up with - frankly - was fucking amazing.

We designed and built an entirely new class of ship’s engine. Much, much more powerful, and - far as I knew at the time - unheard of in the spheres. I remember Illeyesar, when he was in a tough spot used to say - “necessity is the mother of invention.” Truer words. Khalid provided his impressive engineering and organizing talents, Fortuna supplied her powerful magics, Basile (and Brendon) poured in their alchemical abilities. (And, a little “something” more. Brandon’s living tumour provided the life force for the drive. It was gross to see, but we were assured that the tumour was actually quite “happy” in its new home.) I smithed the crap out of that thing until I could barely lift my arms. Hazel greased the wheels of a worn out crew with a calming presence, and even managed to get Captain to reveal some things about the way he blinked through space that helped out in the design of the whole thing.

We ran into problems, times when it looked like all was lost. But as we always seem to, we worked our way around the challenges and even used them to improve on the design. I’d been, literally, going at that engine hammer and tong for nearly a full day, and I needed to clear my head. I just wanted to sit down and look at something familiar, comforting. And so I went to the galley, and watched Edgard slopping out his stoo to the crew in the morning… and it hit me. We had been approaching the base code and the Kindori’s ability to navigate the Spheres all wrong. The base code wasn’t fixed. It wasn’t some cubed graph. It flowed, slowly given the size of the spheres - like Edgar’s stoo off a ladle. The base code moved with the changing creation it lay beneath. It’s what allowed the Kindori to move along the unseen “currents” of the base code in wildspace so quickly. I almost couldn’t believe that I’d had the idea, and rushed back - recharged - to tell my mates and make the modifications to our new engine before I lost the brainwave.

After feverish work for several days, we were ready. Our freshly constructed smaller, sleeker ship - the newly christened “Helezhad” - powered by our new invention “the REGINALD Drive" - allowed us to blink along the flowing code pathways sensed and used by the Kindori herds at a previously unimaginable clip.

We closed in on the Brinkmanship rapidly. But, as we approached we realized that we were faced with a much bigger problem than we’d reckoned. BOTH of the Brinkmanships were there (the Thalioses lied to us about one of them going to the Illithid prison. Shocker.) and they had already found the Kindori herd on which Jennifer had hidden the actual Crown of the Spheres. The Brinkmanships were herding the Kindori into a cluster of Murderoids - psychopathic and gargantuan asteroid creatures that gloried in death and destruction. Even from a distance, it was awful to see, as the pack of killers tore through the beautiful creatures with glee, forming an ever-growing ocean of carnage around them. 

Adding to the happy fun times, we’d figured out on our way to this awful scene that a Psulron vessel was lurking, cloaked, somewhere in the area. Its exact goal was unknown but unlikely to be of the happy/friendly type. Not only that, we’d figured out about the Psulrons because we sensed that some other ship had been using the base code flows to speed through wildspace like us. In other words, we weren’t going to be able to outrun them if they found us.

In the back of my mind, I could hear Basile reviewing a mental ledger of our situation. On our side - our new, smaller and less powerful ship. Arrayed against us, the two Brinkmanships, the 5 Murderoids, and the hidden Psuluron ship. Any one of these by its lonesome was a mismatch for our new little ship.

But to be fair, we had more on our side too. We had prepared a replica of the Crown of Spheres, gilt in Steelstone for at least a first glance chance to fool an eager observer, and rigged it as a bomb to go off in the presence of either/both of the Thalioses. We knew that there was only the thinnest of alliances between the two Thalioses, and that the chance of victory and glory for one would very likely turn the second against the first. We knew exactly which of the Kindori Jennifer had hidden the Crown on, and our opponent clearly did not. We were still invisible and undetected. We had enough information on the Murderoids to know that their evil natures could also be manipulated. They could be goaded, tempted, distracted… I thought that this might be the key, honestly. If we could somehow turn these monstrosities on each other or on our enemies, we might be able to rescue the Kindori and the Crown. The question was how? How might we get the Murderoids pointed in the direction we wanted?

Oh, yes. And - wildcard -  the lurking Psuluron ship. 

Some might say, we faced a bit of a challenge. But enough for now. Duty calls. I hope to write more later.

I tried strenuously to maintain our urgent preparations to ready the Inordinate Amount and renew our pursuit of the Brinkmanship.  It was a losing battle in the face of a flying tree the size of a city.  Most practically, the gnomes were relentless in trying to negotiate the future in the face of such an incredible opportunity provided by the integral tree’s arrival.  The festivities were infectious, and I was only able to get a few hours of rest after drinking too much.

It was the crack of whatever passed for dawn that morning when Marine Connor approached Shroktath and me.  He was the spokesgoblin for himself and six other goblins that intended to leave the crew and set up their own endeavor.  The advantages to our mission were immediately apparent to me so I rapidly wrote and presented the terms of their release from our crew’s service.  With papers and money in hand, they were on their way.  I acknowledged Connor as the leader I knew he was capable of being.  More importantly, I charged Dakota to be the partner in command that Connor needed to be truly successful.  In the Orders of the Day I recorded the official dismisal with honours of Alexis, Blaine, Bronwyn, Connor, Dakota, Jennifer, Shannon One, Shannon Two and Blaarg.  Standing Orders were also amended to reflect that the Watch of the Day was to accept them on board at any time, provide a daily ration of food at that time and then fetch the Officer of the Watch.

The remainder of our crew elected Chet to replace Connor as their spokesgoblin or kick doll or burning effigy…something…  Nonetheless, the departure of those goblins would be noticed but not disastrous.  The crew was skilled, experienced and well-trained.

The bigger problem was how to catch up to the Brinkmanship.  We could think of no stratagem or ruse that could slow it.  We had no allies that could intervene in its journey.  We had traversed time and space since we had left Sentar just a year ago.  We decided that developing a radically different way of propelling the Amount was our only hope in this pursuit.  An innovation of magic and engineering necessary to move ever faster than previously imaginable.  Using the crew’s abilities and knowledge to the extreme we had the inconceivable mixture of arcana, wildspace and mechanization needed to completely repurpose the ship.  Our ultimate achievement was a propulsion system powered by a maelstrom of chaos and controlled by goblin’s familiar.  We named this barely contained catastrophe the Random Engine Gate, REG.  We would equip it on to a medium-sized dasher that could carry a boarding party and launch from the Inordinate Amount like a skiff.  Such a dasher was easy to install with the Luckums/Fortuna invisibility screen.  When the drive was activated, it simply dropped out of wildspace and reappeared at its destination: inestimably thousands of leagues away in a heartbeat.

Our plan was to jump to one Brinkmanship and deceive it in such a way as to cause it to attack the other.  Our preparations made, we jumped to a scene of utter horror.  As we stalked the Brinkmanship, we saw it herding a kenori pack into an ambush of meteoroids (murderoids?).  These would smash the helpless creatures while a swarm of Thaliosse’s spelldashers picked through the offal in search of their prize.