Session Seven: Zombies and Demons

From the logs of Doktor

We found ourselves once again facing the would be familiar sights of Centuria. Would be. It seemed an old problem had come to haunt us. The Necromancer Orobas had found his way to Centuria, wreaking an unbelievable amount of havoc by starting a zombie apocalypse on the surface.

I admit I felt somewhat responsible for the havoc he was wreaking. I both released him and failed to put him down. As we entered the system we heard a message that had been playing every hour on the hour. A message from our old friend Amira. She had revealed that Orobas was a Lich and that his phylactery was the amulet that the Thief of Stars had stolen from me.

A thought occurred. I asked Octocat, and apparently lichs regenerate next to their phylacteries. I don't know when I stopped smiling.

Through hailing people on the surface we found Orobas's last known location. The city was scanned, and an enormous spike of necromantic energy was found in a structure made from undead corpses. It was time to inaugurate the big gun.

In order to get the best possible shot, I put someone in charge of the ship who had some skill in shooting guns: Dewey Scrubs. Acting captain Dewey Scrubs assisted Tau Bond in firing the unwieldy Cannon. It missed the first time anyway, glassing a nearby neighborhood. The next shot hit the mark, obliterating the tower. However, between our shots, Orobas had tried to escape in a getaway vehicle. He foolishly hailed us, I don't know what he said, as I flipped him off before hanging up. The third shot finished him off, letting him be that hafling's problem instead. All in all a pretty good day, we don't really have a lead yet on the whole human outpost thing, but that can wait. I want us to help out here a bit.

Captain's log, date: 4

We've been moving refugees to the less zombie infested areas. Me and the crew have established safe areas via kill teams, by shooting at zombies from the Batna's shuttles.

So far so boring, will update tomorrow.

Captain's log, date: 5

More of the same, refugees were pretty happy to be rescued. Couldn't look them in the eye.

I find killing zombies to be a very relaxing activity, like mowing the lawn, if the lawn could fight back.

Captain's log, date: 6

We have more safe places now, without Orobas to direct the zombies they seem sort of aimless.

Tau agent has been getting restless. Asked around for maps. Got a map that, for some reason that eludes me, leads from here to Baator. Who could possibly need a map like that? In any case the man also led us to a map repository where we could find actually useful maps. Guarded by tigers apparently.

I ordered a stealth team to infiltrate the building and retrieve as many maps as they could find. Of course, of the three of them one of them fucks it up and we fight a bunch of tigers. Well I say fight, they didn't lay a paw on us as we utterly massacred them with a couple of grenades.

I almost attacked the mass of scrolls that approached me, before realizing that Octocat was buried in the middle of them. It was cute.

We're considering our options now, we have many travel options now, including a way to Sigil if we can get to Arcadia. I'll have to put a pin on it though, we still have a job to do.

Captain's log, date 7

We discussed it among ourselves. The only bit of Tau civilization that the Agent was aware of was in Elysium, but we lacked a map to go there, making the trip dangerous.

On the other hand, the option remains to try to go to the human outpost ourselves, see what we find. The concern is becoming stranded, as we might teleport there only to find ourselves with no means of returning. The solution was to bring a ship with us, but the only way to do that was to find a ship that bleeds.

The Bastion of Blissful Joy has such a ship.

Date 8: Sick of Warp travel, told Mik to take a shortcut.

Date 9: Smooth sailing all around.

Date 10: Talked to Alta. He hasn't been to Sigil, I told him it's nothing special, but he insists he wants to see it. I told him my boss would want to see me, it's been a long bathroom break so far.

Date 11: Tried to cook, still not very good, I got yelled at to not waste the stock of food like that.

Day 16: Stared out the window for a while. It's weird how every section of the Warp looks very different and yet the same.

Day 21: Cramped my arm exercising. Gotta find some way to transplant my soul into a robot body.

Day 23: Igneous is still esconded in his room, I asked him what he was doing and he tried to explain, but it all went over my head.

Day 24: You know, I was pretty sure it was smooth sailing up until it wasn't.

Freaking hell. Too many things happened at once. I felt something trying to influence my mind, and judging by the looks on the rest of the crew, so did they.

The Tau agent, Aephyr and Octocat were all affected, along with several crew members. The only one's unaffected were myself, Mik, Alta and to my utter amazement, Dewey Scrubs. What a hero.

The rest were filled with happiness and bliss and that sensation you get where everything just seems to be going alright.

A perfectly fine attitude to have. When we're not being attacked by demons. I didn't mention the demons yet, did I? Yeah, we had daemons on the BATNA. How many? I had no clue. At first I thought it was just the one, some crab monster that we dispatched with our only Krak Grenade and a couple of hammer swings.

I got scratched a bit, but it was fine. I then get a call from engineering that something has killed three crew! So I run there, carrying Mik for support. I try to get a hold on the situation, asking what other daemons were aboard. Several afflicted crew were indisposed by a cuddly cat Daemon in the mess hall, and one crew had gotten killed by something crawling in the goddamn vents!

The monster in Engineering is easily dispatched. I'm pretty sure Mr. Tau got in a fight with the vent monster, judging by the claw marks on his face. He tried to hug the damn thing and I emphatically commanded him to shoot it and to my enormous relief I head the gunshots over the combeads. Apparently at some point in all this chaos we entered the Materium, so many crew were indisposed that piloting the ship had become difficult and couldn't avoid the planetoid we found ourselves hurtling towards. Dewey ordered us to brace for impact, I held Mik and dug my fingers in the floor plate.

Whatever hope I held of controlling the situation fell by the wayside as we started venting Plasma when the impact broke something important. Truly desperate, me and Mik attempted to fix the problem, we failed, I don't know what knob I broke and apparently those cables Mik was tugging on were coolant cables. Thankfully I could get Aephyr in there and coaxed him into making emergency repairs.

That problem solved, I decided to go to the mess hall to sort out whatever mess was waiting for me there. Over the intercom I could hear Dewey asking for people to man the main Arcana console, I don't know what happened with that, I left Mik to handle that.

The mess hall contained a creature much bigger then I was expecting, and much less cuddly. It slammed me once in between me fucking ending it with my hammer.

So I'm hoping the worst is dealt with. I'm wrong, because of course I fucking am. The feeling of hope has started ringing mental alarm bells, warning me that something horrible is about to happen. Aephyr had opened the airlocks after my crew sent some very worrying messages over the coms. So I run towards the airlock.

I'm still not sure what I saw. Besides the happy looking lizard people with fishbowls on their heads. What was next to them was something called a Greater Daemon.

The moment I saw it I could feel it trying to worm into my brain, to make me feel happy. If that thing thought it was going to force me to feel anything it was painfully naïve. Transcendental bliss? Try Axiomatic Spite. I grab Aephyr and Tau and get them the hell away from it, bring them to Mik and tell him to hold onto them for dear life and to not let them leave his sight, then turn around to run back to the airlock, I still had a Daemon to sort out.

I charge it, swinging at it with my hammer, but it doesn't feel right. It keeps trying to make me happy, I make myself miserable and angry out of spite. I opened the airlock and tossed it out with all my strength, closing it behind me and telling Dewey to get us the hell away from that thing.

Finally. Finally, I had managed to regain control of the situation. I had got three seconds into calming down until I remembered we had a second ship. We attempt to contact them but there's no response. When we go over via shuttles, we find that the ship is nowhere to be found, tow cables broken.

I wanted to feel bad about losing an entire spelljammer and the crew inside it, including Tau's boy toy. I really did, but at that point it was one less thing to worry about.

The crew had calmed down by then, except for the Tau'va agent, but we'll get to that. And I'm not sure about Octocat, but honestly, she always like that so it's hard to tell.

There was still the cuddle-creature in the mess hall. I briefly considered keeping it, but I could immediately tell by the looks on the five crew that had glued themselves to it that this was going to be a problem. So I pried my crew off it and killed it. The rest were upset, but I wasn't going to have that thing on my ship.

Control was reestablished, the BATNA was put on a stable orbit around the Bastion, while I gave each of the dead crew a 'jammer's burial.

I called a crew meeting because my day still wasn't done. I talked to the Tau. He was compromised, but not to an extent where I needed to kick him off the ship. Part of the Daemon has latched on to him, permanently altering his personality. I could tell it was still mostly him though, so the alteration wasn't too major. He also said something about gaining new powers, so we'll see where that leads.

Next was getting a space whale. We went with diplomacy this time, I let the Tau, Octocat and Aephyr handle the negotiations. We struck a deal where we would borrow the whale and leave the BATNA as colateral.

And here I am, on our third 'ship'. My crew has yet to inform me of the full specs of this thing, but it lacks a shield and I'm pretty sure it's unarmed, so that's a downside. But whatever. I'm really tired right now and if you don't mind I'm going to take this lovely vial of Comfort sitting on my desk and lay face down in my bed.