Venture to the Messenger

[DM Bob]

The heavy rain prevents any great detail to be seen from the Great Warrior Tohr.

So Ande feels a slight connection as her one attack lands a tangent. Then she feels the slow build of defenses. Feeling this, she disconnects and opts to wormhole the tiny man out of the odd corridor instead. The wormhole does not breach the edges of the hall, but otherwise functions as intended.

Quila drips soaking wet, but doesn't feel that as she mentally navigates the alien corridor. Turning the bend past the tiny man she sees a strange looking large, pinkish, fungoid, crustacean-like entity the size of a human (so bigger than the unconscious body); where a head would be, it has a "convoluted ellipsoid" composed of pyramided, fleshy rings and covered in feathery antennae. It about five feet (1.5 m) long, and it's crustacean-like body bears numerous sets of paired appendages. It also possess a pair of membranous bat-like wings. Laying upon it's side maybe? A blackened hole is seen through the central torso area.

You successfully pull the dread-locked body from the ship as she sees this.

Turning it over, you see a yellow mold has eaten away the left side of it's face. It smells of rotten apples and dead kank flesh. No pulse. You believe it to be a halfling.

[Attilius]

"SHIT!" HurK quickly reels back checking to see if any of the mold is on him. If any is found he'll use molecular agitation to burn it away.
"can Anyone talk to the dead?" He asks deflatedly

[Deleted]

"I can," Chat'cho declares, stepping forward to begin the casting of a Speak With Dead spell. "Ixh this doesn't work, nothing will, I xhear."

Should the spell succeed, her first question is 'How long have you been dead?'

[Skrye [AC3; 48/48HP]]

-Eslyk turns around looking for Quila and gets close to her - "I may be able to gather who was the previous owner of any of the items within the Messenger, if they can bring one, or I can try to land at the top of it and gather it myself although it might not be as accurate.. Same if there are any bone remains that could be obtained as well.
I can communicate with big HurK but I'm worried he might see it like a tangential attack" - pulling slightly his robe to get his attention

[Skrye [AC3; 48/48HP]]

- Eslyk focuses her mind in the collected item to gather some information about the previous owner, only to awake and concentrate in touching and sharpen her mind to the history of the remnants

[OOC: Object Reading successed (7 out of 12) , Bone Reading successed (8 out of 16, still needing the malus to gather its antiquity), PSPs:72/99]

[DM Bob]

The small corpse turns slowly to face the insect druidess, jaw spilling mold onto it's odd faded red jerkin - richly embroidered by the way, with golden threads and piping... the piping is not at the edges like standard noble garb, but instead all about like veins or the ventricles of a lung.

The words coming out of it's mouth are incomprehensible. It seems that this wee voyager does not understand your speech. Your spell is still active if you can find a way to posit in a way it can comprehend.

Eslyk has better luck. This is a halfling male. (Object Reading results.) The Bone Reading yields much more. Although, after learning this it makes you wonder if you've failed somehow or if the results are being warped by the same obfuscation that causes the Messenger to be focused on directly... as he is read at being 14,422 years old. Efurth Rin'Dahlan was a Lawful & Neutral Shaper of Life that died five days ago due to alien blows to the right side of his face and head. She also gets a solid vision of how he'd looked before the trauma... quite handsome, with arm and chest tattoos that cannot be seen as he is clothed.

***

Quila sees a narrow azure tube(?) beyond the strange alien corpse... perhaps about 5 or 6 feet beyond the body. It is about 2 feet long, scaled, with a wide bulbous nodule on one end and a narrow opening at the other. Six dark things protrude from the bottom (or is it the top?) of the thing, reminding one of insect legs in their spacing.

[Skrye [AC3; 48/48HP]]

- Eslyk gasps and open her eyes all of the sudden and slightly pulls Quila's garment - "He's a halfling male, a venerable halfling!

Please tell Chat'cho that, I am pretty sure he is many many fully moon cycles ancient, what you call years. His name is Efurth Rin'Dahlan, a strict follower of the rules of life shaping" - she pulls Quila's garment again, not hardly but, maybe, annoyingly - "He died five moons ago due unknown attacks to his head. Tell her, tell her" - she seems a bit agitated with the discovery

[Attilius]

Aug 28, 2023 5:18:03 GMT -12 DM Bob said:

The words coming out of it's mouth are incomprehensible. It seems that this wee voyager does not understand your speech. Your spell is still active if you can find a way to posit in a way it can comprehend...

"Will your Tongues spell work on the dead?" Asks the Psion.


Watching Eslyk use the way on the halfling, HurK says to Ande and Quila
"Are you able to wormhole his killer here so Eslyk can use the Way on it too?"

[Skrye [AC3; 48/48HP]]

- Eslyk looks around to check if she recognises any of the present equipment from Rhulistic stories

[Quila Oris (John M.)]

Aug 27, 2023 23:16:28 GMT -12 Skrye [AC3; 48/48HP] said:

-Eslyk turns around looking for Quila and gets close to her - "I may be able to gather who was the previous owner of any of the items within the Messenger, if they can bring one, or I can try to land at the top of it and gather it myself although it might not be as accurate.. Same if there are any bone remains that could be obtained as well.
I can communicate with big HurK but I'm worried he might see it like a tangential attack" - pulling slightly his robe to get his attention

For a second Quila looks down at Eslyk, confused, as if she did not quite get what she was asking, then her eyes get the faraway gaze again as she establishes a new viewpoint within the Messenger again, mumbling to Eslyk through sputtering lips dripping wet from the rain, "Do what you think is best."

Then she shivers a bit from the rain, or so it seems, until you hear her drone on and think the shivering might have another cause, "Around a bend I see a weird large, pinkish, fungus-like, crusty lifeform the size of a human. Where the head should be, it has a rolled up sphere, almost a head in a spiral. But it's not a head. There are pyramided, fleshy rings and it has some feathery antennae, almost like a gaj. It has many paired appendages and a pair of bat-like wings. It seems to be dead, on it's side. In the torso is a large blackened hole."

(OOC: Quila will keep scanning around inside the Messenger to get a picture of a) what happened? b) what happened to the halfling in the corridor? c) is it a risk for us to even interact physically with anything from and of the Messenger? d) do I encounter anything that could be interpreted as having to do with a door or opening)

(OOC2: Bob, the strange looking fungoid crustacean-thing, can you draw us a picture visually, beyond words?)

[DM Bob]

The corridor keeps going, I will pause, like I just did to describe things if you care to interact, examine further, etc... like the weird object on the ground of the corridor. There are no doors, but the itself corridor is not straight, think of it like following the inside of a burrow or walking through someone's hollowed out intestines.

The simplest explanation is that these two, the halfling and the weird creature got into a melee... and they both managed to inflict killing blows or the ship or something else killed the odd creature.

It looks similar to this:

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e6e51saq0obkbsruylboo/Alien.jpg?rlkey=7vpshffkth1onjhoh0xc0dq9z&dl=0

[AthasianLaborer]

"Would you have me collect it?" Ande asks  "I am able to do so once again and this time would not drop it on HurK"

Clairvoyance on the fungus-corpse Quila described rolled a 4 needing less than a 16

Wormhole rolled an 12 needing less than 18

She's down another 43 PSPs, not 100% on her total now, but I know it is less than that now.

Dropping it on the solid ground Chat'cho created for us, next to Fruit Cart, in front of where I imagine that any dismounted party members are standing.

I will edit with rolls momentarily.

[Skrye [AC3; 48/48HP]]

- Eslyk looks in her backpack for a piece of obsidian shard and a piece of hard kank chitin and shows Chat'cho, now a bit more calmed down - "Can he write which city is he from or something else? Maybe in writing is easier to match with current time places and names to decypher his language.. He lived nearly 14,500 years, as you count the time" - handling them to her - "Alien blows provoked the damage to the right side of his head and face(1)" - she keeps looking at Efurth for any other sign, symbol or clue of some sort, as her eyes turn here and then to his jerkin, turning to Quila - "Is anyway big HurK could bring me something shiny from inside on his way back?"

[OOC: (1) I'll describe how the head looked like, as I don't know if it was different physiognomy]

[DM Bob]

As he's still dead, he is unable to write anything - just answer questions if he understands and you conversely understand his tongue. -Bob

[DM Bob]

There is a man sized alien corpse on the ground in front of you in the heavy rain.

J'lact and his clutchmates, hiss and click in surprise.

In Tohr-kreen: "What in the freezing Cano is that thing?!"