The Cosmic Drill

The Party: Kona, Dacien

Picking up immediately after the previous adventure, we found Dacien and Kona saying farewells to the members of the Roving Council. Dacien, hoping to find additional clues on the Strangers, worked with Overseers Bori and Evette to investigate the site of the Whitespark explosion. While he was able to confirm the presence of sabotage, he wasn’t able to find much more within the wreckage. Nonetheless, the paladin-warlock struck up a relationship with the Whitespark Overseers and promised to visit in the future to discuss working together on tech development.

Two weeks pass. Kona spent more time in meditation, discovering further abilities within himself, including the ability to instantaneously teleport short distances. It seemed that Sekolah, the shark god, held many mysteries yet to discover. Dacien spent time deciphering how to use the docent that Cloudhope had gifted them, an odd, but useful magical assistant.

But it wasn’t long before the pair were sent on another mission, this time to team up with Sirenshell to execute what everyone hoped would be a more permanent solution to the Strangers situation. After some travel, they found themselves on Sirenshell’s engine, drifting underwater in the ocean.

Overseer Amira welcomed them onboard and brought them to Sirenshell’s command center. She explained that for months now, there had been increasingly frequent occurrences of disturbing dreams and visions among the more empathic members of Sirenshell, their artists, poets, and other sensitives. These clan members reported seeing flashes of menacing aquatic creatures, a terrible machine emitting a bright beam of light, and a suffocating, inky darkness threatening to burst through. A few of these cases had devolved into more serious bouts of obsession, depression, or paranoia.

It wasn’t until Lanternwurm brought their intel to her attention that she was able to connect this psychic turbulence to the Strangers. With the lead on Ghostwind Cove (which Overseer Marshe had given the party back in Driftmount), Amira was able to send underwater scouts into the area and immediately recognized a higher concentration of the psychic disturbance. Further searching revealed a strange, unnatural ice formation anchored to the seafloor near the cove, which they referred to as the Anomaly. Strangers had also been sighted in the area.

Based on what could be pieced together from the various visions, Amira suspected that this was the Strangers’ home base and they had built some kind of device to attempt to return to their own plane. However, doing so might do irreparable harm to the fabric of this plane’s reality, creating dangerous psychic aftershocks, and possibly even leading to a second catastrophe.

Now three, the party made preparations to leave soon. Kona asked to interview any of the clan members who had experienced the psychic visions. Amira agreed and arranged for a conversation with Ella, a triton and a painter. Though Ella was still sensitive to the topic, Kona and Amira were able to comfort her enough to describe her dreams of monstrous aquatic humanoids, icy cold, the grasp of tentacles, and a shadowy figure with a bright light where its face should be. Dacien, less tactful, suggested that the fear she felt was something to embrace, because it meant she still had something to lose. Ella, frightened by his intensity, could only dumbly nod in agreement.

Ready to go, Amira showed them to the vessel that would take them to the Anomaly: a bubble transport. It consisted of a large circular platform with some kind of magical mechanics hidden within. As it was submerged in the water, a magical membrane created a dome of air around the platform. Amira assured them that the transport should be magically veiled from detection. As a final warning, she directed the party to be wary of the ambient psychic energy in the area, as it could have long-term effects if they fell too deep under its influence.

Enroute in their journey, Nakoa began catching sight of a humanoid figure swimming in the murky waters just outside of the bubble. Suddenly, a stranger and four of the reptile-like hounds that Dacien and Kona had encountered before burst through the watery walls and surrounded the team. They jumped into action. Nakoa gave a show of his promised knife skills, engaging the hounds in an agile fighting style that left his opponents more open to attack. Kona weaved throughout the battle, using his steed Castaway as both mount and high ground for attacks with his rapier. Dacien struck out with both blade and pistol to dispatch his enemies. The stranger let out a psychic screech, but all the party members were able to resist the stunning sound.

Taking a brief rest to patch up, the party continued on their way in the transport. Soon, the icy Anomaly came into view. Seemingly quiet, the structure seemed to have two open passages deeper in, so the adventurers picked what looked like the smaller one. They followed the tunnel until it emerged into a small air-filled ice cavern that seemed to connect to a larger network of caves. The party disembarked from their vessel and investigated their immediate surroundings.

It seemed like somebody had been using this cavern as a storage chamber. Among the crates of sundry goods, the party found a case of what looked like harvested planeshards as well as a pile of discarded clothes, valuables, and jewelry. Nakoa gasped as he recognized one of the pieces, a small coral pendant, as a gift he had made for a fellow sea elf who had gone missing from Sirenshell.

Just then, movement along the roof of the cavern caught their eyes. A creature detached from the ceiling and began flying through the air menacingly. It appeared to be some variety of manta ray, but wrong, mutated, with chunks of the strange icy cavern material growing from it. It was then that Dacien was the first to experience the psychic whispers of the area, as he felt a brief feeling of obsession, in his case centered on his dangerous curiosity of the Shadowfell. He fired off a blast of shadowy energy at the manta, pushing it back. The creature conjured a fog cloud in defense, but despite this, the party was able to shoot down the creature before it could do much harm.

Nakoa thought the creature looked like a familiar manta ray breed, but mutated, perhaps by the ambient planar energy emanating from the place. Dacien connected the ice embedded on the creature to the walls of the cavern, and examined it more closely, discovering that this wasn’t any normal ice. It seemed to be veined with planeshards and some strange force was making it much harder and preventing it from melting. He took some of the planeshards and a sample of the manta creature’s flesh for later investigation.

After navigating various winding passageways and dealing with a patrolling guard hound, the party eventually found another chamber. It appeared to be a makeshift sleeping quarters, with bedding and simple mattresses arrayed along the floors. A human man and woman sat meditating on a couple of the mattresses. As the party came into view, the man looked on them in surprise and asked who they were. He claimed that they had been held captive in these caves and had not been able to find their way out.

Rightly suspicious, Dacien stepped forward to draw their attention in an attempt to examine them more closely. His senses told them they were lying and was ready when the woman made a move toward a gate set in the back of the cavern. He quickly fired a blast of shadowy energy to stop her in her tracks. At that moment, their ruse unsuccessful, the man and woman transformed to reveal themselves as strangers.

The party pushed deeper into the cave and eventually discovered an area where the surrounding walls seemed to grow more crystalline, as if they were approaching the core of the structure. Following the sound of pickaxes, they discovered a small mining site that was being worked by two locathahs, chained to posts nearby. Both Kona and Nakoa recognized them as generally peaceful creatures that had an unfortunate history of being exploited as slaves. Kona approached carefully, speaking Aquan and hoping to help the creatures. Though they shied away, Kona offered some of his rations to convince them that the adventurers were friends. As they freed their bonds, Kona was able to ask what the pair of fish people knew about the Strangers activities.

Nakoa agreed to guide the locathah back to the bubble transport while Dacien and Kona investigated an adjacent cavern that seemed to house a makeshift lab of some kind. Various mechanical parts and scrap lay strewn across the floor of the space. They appeared to be scavenged pieces from sanctuary engines and other machines. Piles of notes and schematics also lay about the tables that had been setup, indicating someone had been doing deep research. Taking a closer look, Kona was able to recognize the language of the notes as Aquan, but a strange fractured dialect that was unfamiliar to him. The notes described designs for a machine and research into the planes that corroborated the story the locathahs had told them. Kona pocketed two of the sheets of notes which seemed to have some interesting magical qualities.

At the back of the lab, a great metal door barred the way deeper into the chamber. The party could hear a deep vibrational hum coming from inside. The door seemed to be constructed from spare engine parts and was held locked by an internal mechanism. A rectangular slot on the door reminded Dacien that he held the strange flat piece of metal lifted from the stranger earlier. Making sure the rest of the party was ready, he proceeded to fit the key into the slot and the door clanged open.

With the door open, a guttural, buzzing voice called from inside in that strange dialect of Aquan that Kona had seen in the notes. The party walked into the alarming scene of the cosmic drill fully constructed, a large cylindrical machine with one end shaped into a cone and a bright beam of light emerging from it. The beam ended at a point in mid-air, slowly pulsing and pushing open what appeared to be a bright portal. Three large, refined planar crystals were hooked up to the drill, seemingly powering the behemoth. A stranger, the source of the guttural voice, stood at a control panel on the drill.

On catching sight of the party, the stranger panicked and moved to do something at the controls of the drill. Despite Dacien’s attempt to hold the stranger in place through his shadowy magic, the stranger was able to push the drill into overdrive, deciding that they had run out of time. The drill began vibrating and glowing unsteadily, as its beam grew in intensity and the portal grew ever wider.

The stranger made a break for the portal, but was stopped short as another figure began to emerge from it. This enigmatic stranger was humanoid in shape, but seemed to have a body made of a smooth liquid metal. Instead of a face, the being had a bright, blinding light. With a flicker of their face light, the being sent a psychic suggestion through the stranger and forced them to fall to their knees in supplication. At the same time, more portals began opening throughout the chamber as the barrier between planes became thin, and sets of frigid tentacles emerged from them grasping at whatever was nearby.

The party knew they needed to disable the drill before the planar energies got out of hand. However, first they were forced to fight off the grasp of the cold tentacles. Kona and Nakoa fended off the attacks of some of the smaller tentacles, while Dacien decided it was time to pull out the black elemental pearl in order to deal with the largest tentacled creature. Putting aside the trauma he experienced fighting the black orb in their last encounter, he threw the gem on the ground, releasing the power of the watery elemental. The orb emerged from the ground and began to silently engulf the mass of tentacles, as the two strange creatures began an epic struggle.

Meanwhile, the enigmatic stranger, taking in their surroundings, began a slow methodical march forward, leaving the grovelling stranger where he had fallen. Shaking off a passing blow from the black orb, it focused its glowing face toward Nakoa and forced a suggestion onto the sea elf to grovel. Nakoa, struggling with psychic echoes in his mind, eventually fell to the influence of the stranger and complied.

Seeing his ally in need, Kona focused his enmity onto the enigmatic stranger and struck two deadly blows with his rapier. Perhaps not expecting this level of resistance, the enigmatic stranger was cut down and disintegrated into a pool of viscous liquid. With the creature dead, both Nakoa and the stranger woke from their psychic thrall. The stranger, taking advantage of the chaos of the battle decided to take his chances through the unstable portal opened by the drill and leapt through, disappearing to some unknown fate.

Dacien had turned his attention toward the rest of the tentacle creatures, unleashing the pyroconverger that Whitespark had given the team. The cold flesh of the tentacles melted in pain under the flames of the flamethrower. Seeing that the black orb had occupied the bulk of the tentacles, Kona turned his attention to disabling the drill. He picked a weak spot on one of the crystal power sources and struck a deep blow, once again calling on the shark god to destroy his target. The crystal shattered in an explosion of lightning energy, burning Kona in response. Dacien turned the pyroconverger on the rest of the crystals, eventually destroying them as well.

It’s power source cut, the drill slowly began to whir to a stop. The portals that had allowed the tentacles through were suddenly snapped shut, taking care of any remaining enemies. A brief, eerie quiet took hold as the drill completely came to a stop.

But it was short-lived as the entire ice structure of the Anomaly began to rumble. Whatever planar energy that had been sustaining its existence was now suddenly cut off entirely and it began collapsing in on itself. Cracks in the ceiling of the cavern began opening allowing sea water to rush in and fill the caverns. It was time to go.

Kona and Nakoa led the dash back to the bubble transport. Dacien didn’t follow immediately. He seemed mesmerized by the black orb being he had summoned. In some kind of bizarre revelatory moment, he submerged himself into the grasp of the orb and allowed it to carry him back to the transport. Both Kona and Nakoa found this concerning, but there was no time to worry as they made their escape.

With a small detour to collect the unconscious stranger Dacien had left tied up, the party made it back to the transport just as the Anomaly was collapsing. The transport whisked them away, now a kind of strange lifeboat of refugees with the prisoner they had freed, the locathahs, and Dacien’s black orb.

Their mission accomplished, the party was welcomed back to Sirenshell as heroes. Amira congratulated them all, solidifying the alliance between Lanterwurm and Sirenshell. In the days following, Nakoa, interested in branching out from his somewhat isolated life aboard Sirenshell, decided to travel with Kona and Dacien aboard Lanternwurm, at least for a while. He presented each of the adventurers with a custom precious red coral carving.

Upon their return to Lanternwurm, Linde commended the group on their work. Though the Strangers had been a kind of phantom threat, not known to many aboard the engine, Linde made sure that everyone knew the extent of service that the adventurers had shown for the good of the clan. It seemed that the Strangers had been stopped... at least for now.

Loot:

• Assorted gems and jewelry worth 300 gp.

• 50 gp, carried by stranger guards.

• Potion of cold resistance, found among the sleeping quarters of the strangers.

• Scroll of summon lesser demons and scroll of locate object, found among the research notes of the strangers.

• 2 precious red coral carvings from Nakoa, each worth 500 gp.

• Samples of the mutated manta ray, icy planeshards, and green fluid from the storage pools.

• -3 potions of healing used

• -1 black pearl elemental gem