2025/09/19: A Bridge in the Sky Part 2

Buzz, Kelsey, Knight, Nimbus, Everett, Othar, Union   Kelsey got bored and came to join the group on the ship, replacing Malakai. She found Everett on the way, him having gotten lost in the midst of the last battle. They rejoined the visiting party.   With her newfound crew status, Nimbus was able to access the damage control panel. The damage Othar had done was light, but registered on the display. There was a series of antennae in various spots on the hull that were blinking red.   The party asked the captain if the enemy destroyed the antennae. He responded by looking down and to the side, which Buzz took as inconclusive. Othar and Union recalled that they'd seen antennae or wires or other sorts of lines waving free on the outside of the hull, which they probably shouldn't be doing.   The group started making plans. Find and resolve the curse, find a way to disable the tractor beam, possibly claim the ship. First problem was finding the curse source. The initial bout of scans showed that Nimbus, being a living member of the crew, now appeared to have an aura of curse on her. Othar detected a bit of directionality to the curse, pointing toward the center of the ship.   Knight, who had been neglecting mapping in favor of handling the captured shadow thing (which was now more docile and appeared to be changing somehow), sketched a quick map of what they'd seen so far and a start on where they were going next.   On the way to the center of the ship, they detected an enemy with the Rod of Alertness. Never saw it; it seemed to be circling Nimbus, passing through walls freely. The curse wasn't pointing toward it, so Knight urged the party to keep going.   The party went down several floors and came out on the deck. Dark Souls boss arena. Othar's music changed.   Ahead of them, a shadowy being rose from the floor. Everyone saw something a little different. Evil versions of themselves. More evil appearances, sometimes with goatees. Kelsey's has extra facial scars. Othar's looks like a blood-soaked chaotic evil version of himself. Buzz's has purple flames. Black void eyes for all. All also saw it with a long black overcoat over their usual gear. Except Knight. Knight just saw a collection of Void. An ominous gaseous collection of actual Hallownestian Void.   It stabbed Kelsey in the torso and filled her with Void, enough to knock her to 0 hp and block her regeneration. She stayed standing and kept walking, strangely, but was effectively unconscious. The creature circled the group, but when no others moved to attack it, it hissed at the party and vanished into the floor. Investigation suggested the Void in Kelsey was linked to the creature, still, and was kept under the control of the creature or whatever was responsible for it. The Dream Master's Nail just produced black sparkles pointing in the direction of the creature. And also the center of the ship.   The party carried on towards the center. They passed a set of 2.5-foot-wide spheres on the outside of the ship. Broken. Related to weaponry. "Kinetic storm spheres." Not knowing what they were supposed to do and whether it would be beneficial to fix them, the party bypassed them for the time being.   The sparkles led to a hatch into a boarding prep room. The party dropped down. They found themselves face-to-face with four of those creatures, at least as surprised to see the party as the party was to see so many of them.   Most of the party went full defensive. Everett opted to start a magical discussion with one of them and force them to chat back at him rather than fighting. Kelsey's swords, piloting her body, walked up and opened their own negotiations with a second creature, via sword. They managed to gut-stab it well enough that it poofed and fled.   Knight and Nimbus managed a super tandem defense, with Nimbus semi-accidentally grappling two of the shadows into reality and then Knight parrying them and spiking them into a wall with the Dream Master's Nail, their other swords proving useless. The creatures made a big combined splatter. That left only the one talking to Everett.   Othar, seeing that things seemed to be under control, took another few steps back and decided to test his Darkfire Shell spell. He discovered that he could target the whole party, not just himself. It made a cylinder of darkfire around each of them. The cylinder moves with the target and the target can reach through the cylinder without harm.   Knight, taking the opportunity to confirm the kill and investigate, found out the splatter was a portal into a nightmare realm. Too dangerous to enter normally, but would lead straight to the center of the curse. Everett's opponent, reaching the second stage of the conversation spell, broke the enthrallment and vanished. The party grabbed some resources from the room (ropes, chain, etc.), Knight buffed Nimbus and themself, and then Knight used the Dream Master's Nail to make a safe portal through the nightmare portal.   Everett stayed behind. Buzz almost did, but ended up coming. The rest of the party went in.   Beyond the portal was a vast twisted landscape of volcanic rock. Tron lines in the sky of various colors. A big darksteel vault was sitting in the center of the landscape, with the realm getting more twisted and dreamlike in the distance away from it. The vault was made of slick black metal. Chains and locks all around it, though they seemed excessive. There did not seem to be a door.   Othar and Knight collaborated to speculate on what the thing was. The thing appeared to be the result of a big teamwork ritual similar to Knight's mask replacement ritual, making something to offensively trap and eat souls and then protecting the core in this big box. The shadow things seen outside were essentially mouths for the thing.   The group attacked the box after buffing. Othar negate-sliced it, using his belief that in the dream his negation could cut it. Knight did similar, focusing with the Dream Master's Nail. Buzz negated its defenses, Kelsey and Nimbus attacked, and Union prepared group defenses for when the thing inevitably blew up and hurt everybody.   The attacks worked. They saw a tortured-looking yellow cloudy sky inside the box. The top of the box blasted off into space as the chains and its structural integrity failed. The bottom of the box ripped open and the terrain around the party changed drastically. Piece of floating rock around a giant crater. A ring of other rocky islands.   A gigantic corpulent demon thing of tentacles could be seen on another floating rock. It looked like a giant obese roper. Big (6' tall) soul crystals containing crew souls, and also Kelsey, were embedded in it. 251 in total. An ugly green eye of Sauron thing was floating above the thing's head.   Battle ensued. Knight went burrowing (slightly less than 10k damage). Buzz neemed the thing with Ray of Salvation and managed to get Kelsey out of the crystal and back in her body. Kelsey promptly went on the offensive herself. Union prepped buffs and defenses. Nimbus, seeing that the crystals were too big to reasonably steal out of the thing, opted to play defense for Buzz, expecting that Knight and Kelsey could at least take a hit.   The thing retaliated with tentacle grapples and psionic eyebeams. The former grabbed Knight, but Nimbus parried the latter, and Kelsey successfully fought off the grapple attempts. Other returned fire with a Darkfire Lance that he invented on the spot, blasting another giant hole in the creature.   Buzz, trying to apply a damage-over-time effect, accidentally began the collapse of the dream realm with Blackmoorian Miasma. The Totenkreuz crew, some of whom had been freed by Buzz's earlier blast, got the last of their members out and disappeared. Nimbus managed to finish the monster off with a kick to the eye. Then everyone who remained made a rapid, stressful flight through a portal to "outside" that Knight opened.   The party came out between a four-story building and a three-story building in a large city. In an open alleyway. (Someone had peed in it.) Large reinforced stone buildings. Brownish stone. It looked like human or dwarf construction. Detection located the Ragnarok as 862 miles away to the northeast. Othar and the other party members with exceptional hearing heard a half-dozen halflings (barefoot) coming toward them.   Tan, white, and black clothes. Halfling gang member street thugs.   Knight's sky gem showed the city from above, revealing it as roughly the same size as Radaghast. It's a port city, the party just hadn't landed near the port. On one side of the city was a mountain, with what appeared to be an airship port partway up it. Military ships were present in the harbor. More airships were visible in the region than water ships.   The party had landed in a run-down business district. Some buildings human-scale, some halfling-scale, some dwarf-scale.   Union decided to go to a bar. About 20 dwarves and a half-dozen halflings were inside. Union and Kelsey completely ignored that this seemed to be an ethnic bar, walking up to the barkeep without a care. The barkeep took no issue with this; he happily served them both drinks and information, for an appropriate price. This turned out to be the city of Pharence. Union ended up buying a whole bunch of beers and a party's worth of illegal work permits from the bartender, just for the sake of making contacts. Also bought directions to an info broker. (There was some joking speculation that he and Kelsey had jumped out of an airship after being smuggled in.)   He handed the work permits out to the rest of the party and explained what he'd learned.   Their business concluded, the party made their way back to the ships. Union worldwalked back to the Ragnarok. Killgleam tried to teleport everyone else back, but he missed by a bit; they all landed in the ocean a bit away. They were able to get up to the ship with some effort. Union showed up a while later with a Starbucks.