Session Eight: Human Gory

From the logs of M'K'Splswap

Scene 1: Baleen Out

It had taken weeks to recover from our wounds -- mostly Aephyr's -- but finally the time had come to travel by blood-stained Tarot card to an ancient Human outpost located who-knows-where and filled with who-knows-what, borne in the belly of an astral whale not so different from the one we'd recently butchered. As reasonable as that sounds, there was nonetheless a sense of apprehension; we checked and re-checked our voidsuits, some of which had been provided by the eager bliss-lizards who temporarily made up the bulk of our crew. We didn't know exactly what we'd find.

Whale-ships don't have artificial gravity, so we floated through the beast's gaping maw like Djon Ah did in the Second Book of Vectron, our redshirts behind us. Two-meter-wide tubes snaked around organs big enough to host a game of ultra-cricket, leading us to the bridge. We could hear the thumping of a giant heart, the churning of ichor, and the skittering of rust monsters just outside the tubes, which were made of plastic, given the rust monsters.

A close thaumaturgical analysis of the card had indicated that it would carry everyone who was touching it when it was torn, along with everyone in a radius that would be greater the more violently the card was destroyed. Once the blood samples, collected from whale and crew, had been carefully mixed and applied to the card, we huddled around. Aephyr took point, slashing wildly at the card, some bizarre halfling artistry ensuring that the damage would all be done at once.

There was a sickening lurch, pulling in every direction, though most didn't seem to feel it. Igneous staggered, and M'k frowned, having felt us arrive in a crystal sphere and then immediately leave it.

When we saw the sphere behind us, we realized why we had been ejected: it was scarcely ten meters wide. Active augury showed nothing else nearby, not even a portal relay, which was unsettling. We'd need to find another way to leave.

First, though, we needed to get in. Hoping that the sphere was bigger on the inside, we set our entire crew to the task of spelljamming into the sphere and staying there. We failed repeatedly, each time ejected after the briefest moment.

M'k, who by his nature and training saw and felt the warp more intimately, sensed (as he later explained) that he could choose to stay within the sphere, and so he did, hoping the rest would join him.

They did not.

Scene 2: [Unintelligible]

While the others fretted over how to join him, wondering who was more boned than whom if they couldn't, M'k found himself in a circular room, perhaps ten meters wide (not a good sign), staring at his own body. After briefly considering the advantages of discorporation, and then weighing them against never being able to finally drink that expensive brandy Aephyr had been saving, he decided to reach out, straining as far as he could, and reinhabit his flesh-sack. It was a close thing.

Suddenly his senses were returned, and he heard a loud alarm, punctuated by a recording in what was probably ancient Human, and saw a room filled with various types of utterly bewildering technology, which is to say, technology. There were lots of screens and lots of buttons, several large glass tubes (showers?) with ancient Human labels, and a thick layer of dust covering everything. Scattered papers, though also unreadable, displayed figures and drawings, some of which looked worrisomely daemonic. Claws, horns, and patches of evil-looking hide, carefully sketched.

The human station also lacked artificial gravity, and so the "ceiling" looked much like the floor. More tables, more tech.

There was also, in the center of the room, a pillar, which slid partially open at M'k's approach to reveal a ladder leading both up and down. Peering in either direction, M'k's view was obscured by the back of his own head. This was one of those spheres. A light breeze, no doubt from the ventilation system which (thank Vectron!) was still quietly humming, blew "upwards", though at this point "up" and "down" were arbitrary labels.

The recording was now alternating with another. M'k had been on spelljammers long enough to guess that they meant something along the lines of, "Everything is fucked, and someone should do something about it."

When one of the tubes started to blink and beep and whir, M'k guessed that it was a stasis tube containing that Someone. Not wanting to see what the mysterious tube-dweller would Do About It, M'k made himself scarce, ducking "down" through the hatch, which is to say upwind. That would get confusing.

M'k took the first exit from the access tunnel, the tube again sliding one-third open at his touch, and was nearly telefragged by the BATNA's shuttle, which had been loaded into the whale as a precaution. Out stepped Doktor, Igneous, Aphyr, Scarlett, and Dewey Scrubs. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, apart from Igneous, who just said, "Ooh, the engineering room!" and wandered off.

Our captain explained that they had made their way in by carefully timing the shuttle's exit from the whale, which he could barely believe had worked. Doktor looked less relieved when he was informed that an inhabitant of the station was perhaps about to wake up; we decided to be there when they did, and climbed back..."up". "Downwind". "Back", anyway.

The tube was still beeping. Igneous cleared some of the dust, pulled out a flashlight, and pressed face and light against the glass. The nude figure inside was very muscular, for a human. Familiar enough with the technology to ignore the unreadable labels, Igneous declared that several key "defrost/decant" systems were not functioning; we decided to ask Igneous to reactivate them. No sense letting the guy get brain damaged, if we might need his help to leave.

The tube opened several minutes later, with us waiting in a semicircle around it. Aephyr, our best talker, stood front and center, flanked by our humans, Dewey and Alta, for the comfort of our host. Doktor didn't even have his greathammer raised all the way.

The human didn't stumble, barely tremored as he woke from what must have been thousands of years of sleep, though his eyes were wide as he took us in. He spoke.

Yeah, knowing ancient Human really would have been useful.

We responded in Trade: the human was nonplussed. We went through every other language we knew, with similar results. Aephyr tried Draconic last, though it should have been obvious that such an ancient language was our best shot, and finally the human replied, in what Aephyr described as, "The most dogshit-broken Drac I've ever heard".

We muddled through a conversation, Aephyr pausing before each utterance to confer with the rest of us, the human answering rapidly and with inscrutable intensity. The gist seemed to be that he thought that the station had been breached, not just by us, but by Baator. We thought it was probably just us, but, damn, better safe than sorry.

We offered to help, and for the first time he looked hesitant.

"...human glory?"

"Yes", we said.

Scene 3: Immovable Object

Our butt-naked host gestured us back down the hatch, silently insisting on bringing up the rear. This was not a great sign, but we put Doktor last; he was certainly the most durable person in the room. We passed engineering, then another few doors, until butt-naked indicated another room.

"Butt-naked" isn't great. We'll call him "Karen". Alta said that's a human name.

M'k, leading the way, activated the palm thingy, and we filed into what was clearly the armory.

Karen grabbed a flak jacket already laden with several grenades on the left breast, as well as, near the right hip, a gigantic holstered revolver -- bigger than any hand-cannon we'd ever seen. He grabbed an assault rifle for good measure, then hit a button.

A section of floor hinged down to form a ramp. We followed Karen down to the next floor, which featured several machine-gun turrets pointed towards the room's centerpiece: a black vertical disk, as tall as the room. It looked like the iris of a camera.

Karen looked...mildly...surprised? Disappointed? Relieved?

All of those, but also somewhat, M'k thought, like he was about to try to kill all of us.

M'k whispered this to the rest of the party just as Karen shot a rocket from his ridiculous revolver, straight into Doktor Meetslab's face.

I'm not sure what that was meant to accomplish, but, whatever, right? We had this guy outnumbered. Igneous, the glorious bastard, managed to shoot the revolver right out of Karen's hand, obviously damaging it.

Karen pulled a grenade even as he readied his assault rifle.

Aephyr decided to swap the grenade out without Karen noticing, because halflings are nearly as crazy as goblins. But Aephyr, and Vectron damn it I still haven't forgiven him for this, Aephyr decides the best replacement would be a bottle of brandy. An empty bottle. So even as he's sprinting towards Karen, who by the way is still wearing nothing but a flak jacket and an angry scowl, Aephyr chugs THE ENTIRE BOTTLE. That stuff was from year 184-Fλ-Rhombus! They don't make brandy like that any more! Not to mention that the guy weighs a buck-nothing and doesn't even drink; I then thought our only likely casualty would be from alcohol poisoning.

So, OK, Aephyr pulled it off perfectly. Karen didn't even see him, didn't even look as he expertly tossed his "grenade" at Igneous' feet while aiming his assault rifle, again at Doktor. Some people never learn.

By this point a few of us have shot at Karen, but didn't seem to hit anything vital.

M'k realizes something is wrong when he teleports behind Karen and spears him in the back of the knee. Right in the PCL. Karen buckles, but the spear doesn't go through. Doesn't even scratch him. No blood.

Aephyr then put a phase sword through that flak jacket. Tink. Nothing.

Who tanks a fucking phase sword? Suddenly this didn't look easy.

Doktor reached the fray and tried blunt force, landing a big hit with his greathammer. Karen sprawled, but still looked unharmed. Doktor pounced, pinning the human on the floor. If he even was human.

Our captain, still winning the grapple because thank Vectron the ancient exhibitionist wasn't as strong as he was durable, pulled a krak grenade, shoving it into Karen's mouth and holding his jaw shut. That would have to kill him.

It didn't even hurt him.

We started getting creative. M'k tried to shove his Rod of Immobility down the Karen's throat, hoping to at least immobilize him, but that proved to be pretty tricky.

M'k was still failing at this when the second ancient human showed up. This one was gracile and graceful, even beautiful, for a human. His sweat pants and camo vest looked like a runway model's vaguest gesture towards tactical gear, and he carried a pistol. We'll call him Jen; that's another human name.

Remember how Igneous had just shot a gun out of someone's hand? Well, Jen dodged Igenous' next shot like he wasn't even trying. At the same time, he practically danced over and slapped something onto Igenous' long las, which the goblin dropped as though an ancient human had just put an explosive on it. Jen's ridiculously overpowered ability seemed to involve dodging.

M'k having turned his attention to Jen, Doktor switched gears and started strangling Karen, just like Vectron did when the skin of the Namekian Mechalion could not be pierced.

Igneous rolled away from his long las, which exploded. He reached into his bag of holding, a look of horror passing across his face as he rummaged for long seconds. He set his jaw and settled for the lasgun slung across his back.

It was disheartening to see a third human show up. It also made us wonder what our redshirts were up to; Dewey and Scarlett had stayed in the tube room. But more importantly, another ancient terror with (presumably) another impossible power. We'll call this one Ben. Yeah, Alta tells a lot of stories about humans. Anyway, Ben was female, dark-haired, and also comely by human standards. She was nude, carrying nothing but a pair of flight goggles.

Ben was putting on the goggles as she descended the ramp, and adjusting them as she approached the ongoing wrestling match between Karen and Meetslab, which in hindsight was the most confusing part of the entire fiasco, because the goggles were instantly destroyed when she reached the scuffle and exploded.

She exploded, but she wasn't harmed, just like the Exploding Bush in the First Book of Vectron. She began to try to peel Doktor off of her comrade. Meetslab, still diligently strangling, was enough ork for both of them, of course, and barely harmed by the explosion, so then it was the three of them careening around the room, bouncing between the floor-ceiling and the ceiling-floor.

(You didn't forget that this was all in zero-g, right?)

We heard screams from above, distorted by echoes. Familiar screams. Scarlett and Dewey were still alive!

Jen, who'd been posing seductively while dodging fire from Aephyr and Igneous and also keeping them pinned behind cover, and also simultaneously dodging spears from M'k while chipping away at his mage armor, chose this moment to extend his arm lazily backwards, literally not even looking, and take a shot at Aephyr.

These guys were crazy powerful, but it was this moment of arrogance that turned the tide of the fight. Jen might have been the dodgiest waif on the wheel, but Aephyr was a halfling's halfling's halfling, and he was just barely able to twist away from the shot, contorting himself absurdly in mid-air.

The shot hit Ben instead. In the face. So, good news: Ben was not invincible, even if she wasn't harmed by her own explosions. More good news: Ben seemed to be blinded, her eyes damaged by either the bullet itself or the pieces of orbital bone it had dislodged.

Bad news: Ben apparently reacted to bad news by exploding even harder. At point-blank range, even Meetslab (still throttling Karen) was wounded; across the room, the shockwave briefly knocked out M'k's armor, the ensuing fireball wrapping him in third-degree burns.

(Though he'd seen the blast coming, M'k hadn't been able to teleport behind cover fast enough. M'k had never failed to teleport anywhere. Ever. This would need to be remedied.)

(From above, we heard an extremely deep roar, followed by crashes and sounds of tearing metal, followed by a familiarly squeaky scream. "There's a dragon up here!")

Aephyr was grievously wounded by the blast, but halfings are indomitable, particularly when they just drank ALL OF OUR BEST LIQUOR YOU MONSTER. Ahem. Aephyr leaped towards Jen, phase sword in hand. Jen fired another barely-aimed shot, but this time Aephyr was ready, using our PRICELESS MAGICAL MARBLE to block the bullet, which he placed in his pocket because halflings are kleptomaniacs when they're sober and just ridiculous when they aren't.

Jen dodged away, of course, but Igneous saw his chance, pinning him to the floor with a web too wide to be dodged.

M'k, finally able to turn his focus from Jen, saw Ben closing her eyes and pursing her lips, looking very much like she was about to explode again. He put a spear through her shoulder and deep into her chest. She stopped looking like that.

And then Dewey showed up, sprinting down the ramp with terror on his face and what looked like a warp grenade in each white-knuckled fist. What a guy! Holy shit, had he already taken the pins out?

Doktor, still squeezing the neck of a nearly docile Karen, asked where Scarlett was.

"Scarlett's dead, sir!"

"Get rid of those fucking warp grenades!"

Dewey was so bewildered that he almost dropped the grenades at his own feet.

"Up the ramp, you idiot!"

We scrambled to the room's periphery as the grenades soared upwards and bounced mercifully out of sight. We saw a glimpse of orange scales and orange flames peeking around the gap between floors, but then the grenades went off, spewing sparks and black clouds and strange bugs and other warpy things, and we heard a cacophony of warpy howls and shrieks, and then we heard something that sounded very much like a dragon being sucked unwilling into the warp.

Warp grenades are terrifying, but you have to admit they're pretty damned cool.

Unfortunately, the blast kept coming. A wave of rotting, freezing fire, bright and scintillating octarine to M'k but pitch black to everyone else, roared down the ramp and across the battlefield.

Igneous was behind cover, and Doktor simply took the hit.

M'k let his armor absorb the worst of the blast, his eyes on Aephyr. The halfling's armor was in tatters, his flesh was torn and bloody beneath, and he had looked like he might die even before being engulfed by magical not-fire. M'k was still angry about the brandy, but this anger gave way to insight. Aside from his wounds, Aephyr was by now thoroughly, dangerously drunk, and a raging bender had been known to deepen M'k's own connection to the warp.

As the flames rolled over him, M'k willed a message into Aephyr's mind.

"Steal it."

Aephyr didn't need magic to wordlessly reply, "What?"

"Steal it. You'll die otherwise. Believe you can steal it, and STEAL IT."

Aephyr put on his most confident grin, backflipped to where the brandy bottle lay, cartwheeling as he picked it up, and caught the reality quake inside the empty half-pint.

He stoppered it.

Aephyr stumbled over to Jen and prepared to pour the bottle of torn reality right back out over the human. At our shouts of dismay, Aephyr shrugged one shoulder, furrowed his brow in concentration, managed to shrug both shoulders, and simply stabbed Jen in the throat.

We turned to our captain, who was still squeezing the neck of a limp Karen.

"There is still a pulse. Give me the Rod, M'k. Aephyr, give me the Marble." And if you block another bullet with an irreplaceable magic item of sphere-shifting power, I will throw you out of an airlock, Doktor was able to convey through body language alone.

Doktor loosened his grip just long enough to shove the Rod nearly two-thirds of the way down the invincible human's throat. This was much easier now that he was sleeping like a big naked blood-soaked baby.

Doktor placed the Marble in Karen's mouth, pressing it against the palate. "Go get 'em."

For half a second, Karen's tissues merely stretched. Then there was a sound like a spelljammer being torn in half by a black hole, and the human's skull split messily into exactly two pieces, an irregular disk of bone and scalp carrying with it a portion of brain. Doktor retrieved the Marble from a perfectly Marble-shaped hole in said brain.

Captain Meetslab paused to check for a pulse before pocketing the Marble and returning the Rod.

"...Captain?"

We turned to Dewey, whose uniform still bore a few patches of burning ice.

"...did I just kill a dragon...?"

"Yes. We are very proud of you...Lance Corporal Dewey Scrubs."