After quickly scouting the rest of the ship, Nova makes her way to the Pilot’s helm, taking care not to tread on any of the many veins or arteries that line the floor. She takes a moment to stop and look, pale eyes flitting around the large room as she scans the details of her surroundings, taking mental notes of the various fleshy controls and anything else she deems important enough to memorise. Once she has finished looking she steps forward, running her fingers along the mass of pulsating tissue that filled the room. It was to this tissue she would be connected, mind and body becoming one with the ship as she navigated through the stars. A small shiver runs through her body, cold fingers crawling up her spine at the thought. Still, she felt an unfamiliar buzzing sensation fill her soul, and the colours that surrounded her seemed to grow brighter, more focused, as was usual when she was experiencing some sort of positive emotion. Despite Nova’s situation, despite her rapidly approaching death, was she… excited? Surely not. Surely it was just nerves, anxiety, even. Still, she could not help a thrill of anticipation at the idea of piloting this ship - her ship - beyond the Sigil Cloud.
After completing her vital work, Cas plucks at the nerve bundle on the wall opposite the heart. The wall sinks and unfolds like a fleshy, slimy rose until a recognisably humanoid ear takes form.
“Engine room ready and standing by, Captain. Let me know when to hit the button.”
The ear wiggles as it transmits the message, the cartilage around the ear canal almost touching as Cas spoke as if it was practicing the phonemes it would whisper it into the Captain’s helm in a moment’s time.
Cas keeps repeating Cromwell's name, but gets no response. Suddenly, she realizes... that's not the Captain's name! Silly her! It's Dydo, of course? There is no Cromwell here, and there never was. Who's Cromwell? Why are we talking about someone named Cromwell? Name what? Cr- it's gone. There is only Dydo now, and there always was. Any suggestion to the contrary is madness.
(In less cryptic words, Dydo is just here now, where Cromwell was. Welcome to D&D: Gaslighting Edition!)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Cas shakes her head. Buttons. Cromwell. What? She lets the magic that underlies form drain from her sight and her mind grows that much sharper, like a melting ice sculpture placed back into the cold. Her thoughts grow more solid, and she can see the rivulets and tracks the fugue had left behind.
The ring on her finger begins to turn on its own and she makes a fist, holds that fist with her other hand, clutches it to her chest. She is here. This is real. The mission is real.
She doesn’t want to be in the engineering deck for take-off. Not if she doesn’t need to be. Cas tugs at the earlobe of the messaging bud. “Captain Dydo, Engineer heading to pilot’s helm. Out.”
Captain Dydo Wrand peers out from the captain's helm as workers apply 'Quill' to the side of the ship. Good name, that. Where had that name come from? Mother, probably. The eyes of Aron Targe - lovely, shiny Aron Targe - had made her feel young again, like everything would be alright, and the name seemed to speak itself.
She glanced beyond to the cheering crowd. The eyes of the Empire were upon them. Lots of eyes. Dydo needed to get this right.
"Thank you, Engineer," she says in response to Cassidy. "Alright crew, history beckons, so let's get to work. Assemble in the hold for inspection and inventory. I want you all to put hands on everything we requested. We do not leave until our cargo matches the requisition order. That crowd out there wants a show, but I'll be damned if we go to hell hungry."
Dydo takes one last look at the touches of paint being applied to the hull, then turns and makes her way to the hold.
Captain Dydo Wrand is a tall, broad shouldered, drow woman with dark hair, pale eyes, and skin the color of a fading bruise. She is an Imperial Knight and looks it. By the time the others enter the hold, her fine uniform (with its only adequate buttons) has been replaced with the heavy plate of blackened god-nail. A morningstar of white bone with god-tooth shards for spikes hangs at her hip, gold writing fills in the gaps. She stands with a list, ready to check inventory.
Cassidy sighs, turns, heads to the hold. As she descends her heel catches on a vessel on the floor and in a moment, for a moment, it becomes tumescent and engorged. The instant that she steps off it shrinks to normal size. It’s unbruised. It’s cold to touch.
These vessels should be strong walled, hard to compress. She steps on it again, and this time her weight does not deform it and everything is as it should be.
Odd, she thinks. Concerning. She keeps her observation to herself, but her distraction is evident as she undertakes inventory, her mind elsewhere.
Taking inventory, you find that you have the following:
More than enough rations to last over a year, though if you really fell on hard times you could just eat the ship before you had to start eating each other. Of course, that'd never happen.
Enough ship-feed to last for two months before the ship begins eating into your rations.
100 light cannon rounds, and 20 censor shots, which are large glass tubes filled with some scintillating, brown-black substance with the consistency of warm tar.
Four Superdermal Environment Carapaces (life suits)
All tool sets
A deck of cards with no jacks.
Four bolt-action infantry rifles (Range 80/240, 2d6 piercing, reload (5), two-handed) and 200 rounds
Six revolvers (Range 40/120, 2d6 piercing, reload (6) and 300 rounds
Two pump shotguns (Range 40/120, reload (2), scatter (2d8), two-handed) and 50 rounds
Sixteen sticks of dynamite, with a note attached, reading: "You never know when you'll need to blow something up."
Four tasting flights of unrefined dreams, containing dreams from each major New Cascadian city
A concerning number of mirrors
Twenty basic healing potions
Four large lamps and twenty flasks of oil
A seemingly empty, corked bottle reading "in case of emergency, do not open"
200 gp worth of miscellaneous gear that I haven't mentioned, because I've probably forgotten something.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Dydo checks items off the list, frowning at oddities, but the manifest is accurate. Of course it is. These are all important things to bring on a long voyage. Verifying the cargo does not leave her as satisfied as she had hoped.
Was the aasimar distracted? Must be nerves. By the dead gods, Dydo felt distracted too.
"Comrades," she says warmly. "We are all here because His Recrudescent Majesty believes in us. It is our duty to reward that trust."
Dydo hands a revolver, holster, and (18) rounds of ammunition to each member of the crew, strapping her own to her thigh.
"Keep your revolver on you at all time. The shotguns will be kept amidships in the Engine Room. Rifles will remain in our quarters unless we disembark the Quill."
She hands out a logbook and fountain pen, one for each. ((Call it under Miscellaneous Items?))
"Keep daily records. We will run preventative maintenance every morning after breakfast and log any discrepancies. If repairs are needed, a work crew will need to know what went wrong and when."
"Your expertise is critical. If Pilot Nova says we can't make a maneuver, we adjust. If Engineer Cassidy says the core can't take the stress, we adjust. If Gunner Azesia says we cannot fire, we adjust. There may be moments when we must abandon caution, but only if absolutely necessary. In those moments, trust me, trust each other, and trust yourselves."
Dydo dons her black helm. Her voice growls out of it.
"Does anyone have anything for the betterment of all? If not, report to your stations and… let's get intimate with our new ship."
“Hmm?” Says Awlcerse-Crick, as she finishes fumbling with her revolver belt, clipping it into place. Morning preventative maintenance. How simple it must be to be a pilot or a gunner, and check your systems only once a day.
“There is an … orifice under the helm for the Arcane Canon, I suggest we place the shotguns there. Barrels pointing into the orifice, please.”
“I will depend on calibrating the ship’s performance to your needs. I imagine we will have a lot to learn, but if you need more than I am giving you. Tell me.”
"That engine must be defended above all else. Our pilot here will be more immersed than any of us and will likely be unable to repel boarders. Would placing the shotguns in the gunner's helm and my own suffice to ease your concerns?"
Dydo widens the conversation to include the others.
"And if any of you have ideas of how we may improve the functioning of this vessel, do say something."
While the Captain clarifies their intentions, Cassidy takes a moment to scribble down some checks, balances and key diameters and vessel pressures for each crew member hastily recalled from the manual of heaven-worthiness.
“At an operational and tactical level, we will depend on each other. If things are ever … err … tense for us and you exceed these numbers, or your systems fail, I’ll need to give your helm special attention and aftercare — please don’t snicker.”
Azesia still stands near the entrance of the engine room, listening carefully to the ongoing conversation. There's a brief moment where the Captin's voice warps unnaturally, a lull in the tone before it returns - more feminine than it was before. But that couldn't be right. It had always sounded like that. Hadn't it? Captin Dydo. That's the name that had been introduced to her all those months ago during training.
With a quick shake of her head, Azesia steps further into the fleshy room, hands mapping out her surrounding as she goes. "Captin." She addresses where she thinks the Captin may be. She also nods her head at where the crew's engineer had piped up from, taking a pause to hear what the other had to say.
After she’s finished squaring away the inventory, and taken what she needs to the engine room, Cas finds her way to the pilot’s helm. There’s a step up between the two sections of the ship and, just like climbing the ladder down to the hold, the knee length boots of her dress uniform creak and make her joints feel backwards as she makes to look through the window at the city she is leaving behind.
For now, they are not in the enriched environment of heaven, nor dependent on the life support systems. Cas takes a small piece of divine fascia, shaved so thin as to be almost see through, and fills it with tobacco. Her tongue tingles where she licks the roll up. A twist of her ring causes the cigarette in her mouth to catch alight, as the smallest hint of desire and wish creates a spontaneous prestidigitation.
The skyline of the city is gauche heaven wrought architecture, influenced by the indivinity of their time and indivisible from the gore and horror of a godless and lacklustre world. Still her human eyes find themselves drawn to a part of the city where in another time — in response to faith, eminence, and spiritual need — a cathedral would have been built. In the layout she sees the shadow of Old Cascadian architecture, subconsciously draped around the hall that wrongly stands there, and Cas finds a kernel of satisfaction that even the New Empire cannot hide everything. It will have to do. A meagre ration for a long and uncertain voyage.
Lost in thought, she is easy to surprise by anyone who ventures there after her.
Eventually, it becomes clear that there is nothing left to do but to depart. The inventory is checked, the systems are all in functioning order, the relevant goodbyes have been said. With a brief confirmation from the Captain, Nova enters the pilot's helm. The tendrils wrap around her body, pushing into her skin and connecting her nerves with those of the ship. For a moment, Nova experiences incredible pain. Then, there is no Nova to experience anything at all. There is only the Quill, strong and swift. Her heart beats quick, her veins course with adrenaline, as she decouples from Sbloodgate. A twitch of her tail, and she drifts away from the dark, out towards the distant stars of Heaven. A swish, and she is free. The shattered limb of the once-god drifts away, and as the pace picks up, the cheering crowds fade to nothing.
In the captain's helm, Dydo receives a message, sent directly to her mind through trembling cirri that quest deep into her ears. It reads as follows: "You are exiting sending range. Your ultimate destination is Penumbra, resupply, then the cloud. Between here and then, however, you have ultimate authority on where it is necessary to stop. Be wary of pirates, rerevolutionaries, angels, and the like, the Frontier Heavens are dangerous, beyond even more so. New Shafier command out. Good luck, and glory to His Recrudescent Majesty."
With that, the uncomfortable vibration ceases, and Dydo is left seeing through the eyes of the ship. The frontier city of Penumbra is about a month out, straight shot, though that's not accounting for any events which may occur along the way.
What is the Captain's first decree? Shall the Quill go directly to Penumbra, or is there anything that the captain or the others would be interested in doing first? Feel free to ask me any questions about the nearby points of interest.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Cas pats her hands together, but it does little for the empyreal plasma that slowly drips upward from her fingers and vanishes.
She returns to the pilot’s helm to take in the view. Nova lies there, entombed in flesh, tight enough to make out every line of her shape and the impression of her eyes and open mouth. It’s always been a little unclear to Cas whether the pilot can hear the crew, or whether the ship relays messages as it gets them.
“Permission to be on helm?” Cas asks
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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After quickly scouting the rest of the ship, Nova makes her way to the Pilot’s helm, taking care not to tread on any of the many veins or arteries that line the floor. She takes a moment to stop and look, pale eyes flitting around the large room as she scans the details of her surroundings, taking mental notes of the various fleshy controls and anything else she deems important enough to memorise. Once she has finished looking she steps forward, running her fingers along the mass of pulsating tissue that filled the room. It was to this tissue she would be connected, mind and body becoming one with the ship as she navigated through the stars. A small shiver runs through her body, cold fingers crawling up her spine at the thought. Still, she felt an unfamiliar buzzing sensation fill her soul, and the colours that surrounded her seemed to grow brighter, more focused, as was usual when she was experiencing some sort of positive emotion. Despite Nova’s situation, despite her rapidly approaching death, was she… excited? Surely not. Surely it was just nerves, anxiety, even. Still, she could not help a thrill of anticipation at the idea of piloting this ship - her ship - beyond the Sigil Cloud.
(Does the party have any more actions they'd like to take before they set off?)
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
After completing her vital work, Cas plucks at the nerve bundle on the wall opposite the heart. The wall sinks and unfolds like a fleshy, slimy rose until a recognisably humanoid ear takes form.
“Engine room ready and standing by, Captain. Let me know when to hit the button.”
The ear wiggles as it transmits the message, the cartilage around the ear canal almost touching as Cas spoke as if it was practicing the phonemes it would whisper it into the Captain’s helm in a moment’s time.
(Cromwell? You there?)
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Cas keeps repeating Cromwell's name, but gets no response. Suddenly, she realizes... that's not the Captain's name! Silly her! It's Dydo, of course? There is no Cromwell here, and there never was. Who's Cromwell? Why are we talking about someone named Cromwell? Name what? Cr- it's gone. There is only Dydo now, and there always was. Any suggestion to the contrary is madness.
(In less cryptic words, Dydo is just here now, where Cromwell was. Welcome to D&D: Gaslighting Edition!)
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Cas shakes her head. Buttons. Cromwell. What? She lets the magic that underlies form drain from her sight and her mind grows that much sharper, like a melting ice sculpture placed back into the cold. Her thoughts grow more solid, and she can see the rivulets and tracks the fugue had left behind.
The ring on her finger begins to turn on its own and she makes a fist, holds that fist with her other hand, clutches it to her chest. She is here. This is real. The mission is real.
She doesn’t want to be in the engineering deck for take-off. Not if she doesn’t need to be. Cas tugs at the earlobe of the messaging bud. “Captain Dydo, Engineer heading to pilot’s helm. Out.”
Captain Dydo Wrand peers out from the captain's helm as workers apply 'Quill' to the side of the ship. Good name, that. Where had that name come from? Mother, probably. The eyes of Aron Targe - lovely, shiny Aron Targe - had made her feel young again, like everything would be alright, and the name seemed to speak itself.
She glanced beyond to the cheering crowd. The eyes of the Empire were upon them. Lots of eyes. Dydo needed to get this right.
"Thank you, Engineer," she says in response to Cassidy. "Alright crew, history beckons, so let's get to work. Assemble in the hold for inspection and inventory. I want you all to put hands on everything we requested. We do not leave until our cargo matches the requisition order. That crowd out there wants a show, but I'll be damned if we go to hell hungry."
Dydo takes one last look at the touches of paint being applied to the hull, then turns and makes her way to the hold.
Captain Dydo Wrand is a tall, broad shouldered, drow woman with dark hair, pale eyes, and skin the color of a fading bruise. She is an Imperial Knight and looks it. By the time the others enter the hold, her fine uniform (with its only adequate buttons) has been replaced with the heavy plate of blackened god-nail. A morningstar of white bone with god-tooth shards for spikes hangs at her hip, gold writing fills in the gaps. She stands with a list, ready to check inventory.
Cassidy sighs, turns, heads to the hold. As she descends her heel catches on a vessel on the floor and in a moment, for a moment, it becomes tumescent and engorged. The instant that she steps off it shrinks to normal size. It’s unbruised. It’s cold to touch.
These vessels should be strong walled, hard to compress. She steps on it again, and this time her weight does not deform it and everything is as it should be.
Odd, she thinks. Concerning. She keeps her observation to herself, but her distraction is evident as she undertakes inventory, her mind elsewhere.
Taking inventory, you find that you have the following:
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Dydo checks items off the list, frowning at oddities, but the manifest is accurate. Of course it is. These are all important things to bring on a long voyage. Verifying the cargo does not leave her as satisfied as she had hoped.
Was the aasimar distracted? Must be nerves. By the dead gods, Dydo felt distracted too.
"Comrades," she says warmly. "We are all here because His Recrudescent Majesty believes in us. It is our duty to reward that trust."
Dydo hands a revolver, holster, and (18) rounds of ammunition to each member of the crew, strapping her own to her thigh.
"Keep your revolver on you at all time. The shotguns will be kept amidships in the Engine Room. Rifles will remain in our quarters unless we disembark the Quill."
She hands out a logbook and fountain pen, one for each. ((Call it under Miscellaneous Items?))
"Keep daily records. We will run preventative maintenance every morning after breakfast and log any discrepancies. If repairs are needed, a work crew will need to know what went wrong and when."
"Your expertise is critical. If Pilot Nova says we can't make a maneuver, we adjust. If Engineer Cassidy says the core can't take the stress, we adjust. If Gunner Azesia says we cannot fire, we adjust. There may be moments when we must abandon caution, but only if absolutely necessary. In those moments, trust me, trust each other, and trust yourselves."
Dydo dons her black helm. Her voice growls out of it.
"Does anyone have anything for the betterment of all? If not, report to your stations and… let's get intimate with our new ship."
“Hmm?” Says Awlcerse-Crick, as she finishes fumbling with her revolver belt, clipping it into place. Morning preventative maintenance. How simple it must be to be a pilot or a gunner, and check your systems only once a day.
“There is an … orifice under the helm for the Arcane Canon, I suggest we place the shotguns there. Barrels pointing into the orifice, please.”
“I will depend on calibrating the ship’s performance to your needs. I imagine we will have a lot to learn, but if you need more than I am giving you. Tell me.”
The armored knight tilts her head.
"That engine must be defended above all else. Our pilot here will be more immersed than any of us and will likely be unable to repel boarders. Would placing the shotguns in the gunner's helm and my own suffice to ease your concerns?"
Dydo widens the conversation to include the others.
"And if any of you have ideas of how we may improve the functioning of this vessel, do say something."
While the Captain clarifies their intentions, Cassidy takes a moment to scribble down some checks, balances and key diameters and vessel pressures for each crew member hastily recalled from the manual of heaven-worthiness.
“At an operational and tactical level, we will depend on each other. If things are ever … err … tense for us and you exceed these numbers, or your systems fail, I’ll need to give your helm special attention and aftercare — please don’t snicker.”
Azesia still stands near the entrance of the engine room, listening carefully to the ongoing conversation. There's a brief moment where the Captin's voice warps unnaturally, a lull in the tone before it returns - more feminine than it was before. But that couldn't be right. It had always sounded like that. Hadn't it? Captin Dydo. That's the name that had been introduced to her all those months ago during training.
With a quick shake of her head, Azesia steps further into the fleshy room, hands mapping out her surrounding as she goes. "Captin." She addresses where she thinks the Captin may be. She also nods her head at where the crew's engineer had piped up from, taking a pause to hear what the other had to say.
Noire Havensong | Harengon Archfey Warlock 6/Lore Bard 4 | Westmarch - Guild of the Phoenix (Discord)
Tanatari Crelieu | Kalashtar Druid 2 | Damian_May's Sleeping Gods
Jynx Starrkeep | Changling GOO Warlock 2 | Astien's Tyranny of Dragons
DM | Eberron Eternal (Discord)
After she’s finished squaring away the inventory, and taken what she needs to the engine room, Cas finds her way to the pilot’s helm. There’s a step up between the two sections of the ship and, just like climbing the ladder down to the hold, the knee length boots of her dress uniform creak and make her joints feel backwards as she makes to look through the window at the city she is leaving behind.
For now, they are not in the enriched environment of heaven, nor dependent on the life support systems. Cas takes a small piece of divine fascia, shaved so thin as to be almost see through, and fills it with tobacco. Her tongue tingles where she licks the roll up. A twist of her ring causes the cigarette in her mouth to catch alight, as the smallest hint of desire and wish creates a spontaneous prestidigitation.
The skyline of the city is gauche heaven wrought architecture, influenced by the indivinity of their time and indivisible from the gore and horror of a godless and lacklustre world. Still her human eyes find themselves drawn to a part of the city where in another time — in response to faith, eminence, and spiritual need — a cathedral would have been built. In the layout she sees the shadow of Old Cascadian architecture, subconsciously draped around the hall that wrongly stands there, and Cas finds a kernel of satisfaction that even the New Empire cannot hide everything. It will have to do. A meagre ration for a long and uncertain voyage.
Lost in thought, she is easy to surprise by anyone who ventures there after her.
Eventually, it becomes clear that there is nothing left to do but to depart. The inventory is checked, the systems are all in functioning order, the relevant goodbyes have been said. With a brief confirmation from the Captain, Nova enters the pilot's helm. The tendrils wrap around her body, pushing into her skin and connecting her nerves with those of the ship. For a moment, Nova experiences incredible pain. Then, there is no Nova to experience anything at all. There is only the Quill, strong and swift. Her heart beats quick, her veins course with adrenaline, as she decouples from Sbloodgate. A twitch of her tail, and she drifts away from the dark, out towards the distant stars of Heaven. A swish, and she is free. The shattered limb of the once-god drifts away, and as the pace picks up, the cheering crowds fade to nothing.
In the captain's helm, Dydo receives a message, sent directly to her mind through trembling cirri that quest deep into her ears. It reads as follows: "You are exiting sending range. Your ultimate destination is Penumbra, resupply, then the cloud. Between here and then, however, you have ultimate authority on where it is necessary to stop. Be wary of pirates, rerevolutionaries, angels, and the like, the Frontier Heavens are dangerous, beyond even more so. New Shafier command out. Good luck, and glory to His Recrudescent Majesty."
With that, the uncomfortable vibration ceases, and Dydo is left seeing through the eyes of the ship. The frontier city of Penumbra is about a month out, straight shot, though that's not accounting for any events which may occur along the way.
What is the Captain's first decree? Shall the Quill go directly to Penumbra, or is there anything that the captain or the others would be interested in doing first? Feel free to ask me any questions about the nearby points of interest.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Cas pats her hands together, but it does little for the empyreal plasma that slowly drips upward from her fingers and vanishes.
She returns to the pilot’s helm to take in the view. Nova lies there, entombed in flesh, tight enough to make out every line of her shape and the impression of her eyes and open mouth. It’s always been a little unclear to Cas whether the pilot can hear the crew, or whether the ship relays messages as it gets them.
“Permission to be on helm?” Cas asks