20240326 - Run 50

We think that the raiding elves/lifestealers might be using refined time to fuel their ships. We could take their ships out to get some! Or hit a refinery or something. We don’t really know that the raiders are using refined time, but they might be. We can’t fix the portal until we get a little bit of refined time, so it’s sort of a question as to whether we wait here and try to intercept pirates, even though they may not have any refined time, or we go off looking for some and leave these people at the mercies of the pirates.

I manage to lock down a reasonable blueprint for a biocoded potion of fire breathing. Tai lets me into the old alchemist’s hut; I pick up supplies for a bunch of healing potions and enough to prep 3 potions of fire breathing for her defenders. D.va reconfigures her armor and builds herself a better shield. Chad tries to drill some of the locals in crossbow drill. Chad tries to get Nyla to catalog all of the useful items in the colony left by the skilled abductees, and Nyla quickly discovers a love for academia and goes off to help D.va interpret Felginor’s notes on mycology-influenced gate mechanics. Caleb just kind of hangs around and I think I saw him bowling with some people. Caleb, with his bowling league, actually discovers a latent psychic on the planet - one of the victims from the initial attack with intermittent precognition. It might be trauma linked from the attack, but it does seem to be some kind of psychic capability. Caleb waffles a bit between just supporting them and training them as kind of a protege, but the psionic settler does want to learn how to kill the people who attacked their town, so Caleb ends up training them up a bit.

A week passes. Caleb is enamored of training his new protege, I’m making medicine, Chad’s training militia, and D.va and Nyla are studying Felginor’s notes. We decide to wait for another week before bailing; after that, they’ll have 2 weeks of training and a bunch of supplies, so hopefully that will thwart any raiders that come in to invade. D.va and Nyla come to the conclusion that at some point, all matter was colocated, and the entire teleportation network was based on reminding objects that they were in the same place, presumably assisted by the application of refined time. By Day 8, D.va and Nyla are staring at multiple rooms worth of blackboards and notes saying “I understand it now. It’s all connected.”

In the late evening of the 8th day, a familiar weight settles on  Nyla’s shoulder and a former American luminary whispers into her ear: “Don’t be alarmed, but we have hit DEFCON 1.” And then Dickfingers disappears, saying “I’m heading to a secure location” before his presence fades completely. We all form up and get ready to go break some raiders.

We get the militia to form up with their crossbows, as we hear a rushing white noise coming towards us, And then suddenly, we can just barely see glimmers of light - not from the ship itself, but a splash of light over trees and rooftops as something comes screaming in towards the center of town, from the east. At least they’re taking the same route in. The raider’s ship is this large, insectile sharklike thing, with horrible spines, that comes in gliding just above the ground. It doesn’t seem to notice the Highwind at all, which is good; it settles close to the center of town again. And the bay doors open. There’s a deep, purplish-red light inside the bays that light up a number of figures coming down the ramps. It looks like there’s 16 of these raiders coming again this time. (2 bays per side, 4 raiders per bay, presumably 2 bays on the other side of the ship as well. The bays don’t really angle in such a way to support each other, though. These people are pretty arrogant.)

I hear them talking. “Prithee, we shall feast upon the flesh of our enemies, and their bones shall be your playthings”, goes the order that some assclown gives the landing team. So that’s great. It’s in a Pre-Fall dialect of Old Kraskyan, and I no longer feel upset about murdering these cannibal elves. D.va opens with a pair of lightning blasts from her armor, slamming into one of the quartet closest to us;  Caleb runs in and preps to break some elves. Chad signals for the crossbows to volley with his spiritual weapon, and attacks the enemy D.va hit, as well as moving closer and doing some kind of intimidation aura against the raiders. Only one of the raiders seems intimidated, but 40 crossbows produce a lot of outgoing fire.

“it’s D&D Beyond, not 40k Beyond” — Cassie

A hail of crossbow bolts just pastes that landing bay. I was about to head in and I kind of lost a step seeing this. Each of the raiders gets hit with several bolts. The raiders in this squad are 3 wearing half-plate and one wearing breastplate; we’d focused on the one in the breastplate. The crossbow volley didn’t take anyone down, but the breastplate wearer is very wounded and one of the half-plate wielders is also looking pretty bad.. I move in and drop a javelin into the one with the breastplate, who is still somehow up. Nyla follows up with a pair of eldritch blasts, which somehow still doesn’t take the fucker down, so she summons a tentacle to finish the job. The tentacle …. disappears … into the raider wearing the breastplate. The raider does not appear to enjoy the intrusion.

“Well, this planet has ass worms now.” — GM

The raider we’ve been focusing on coughs blood and drops to the ground. I say “Prithee. Kindly eat my ass.” At this point, the figure in half plate at the front screams and runs in the other direction, and the other two half-plate raiders charge towards me. I can hear that they’re not just calling for reinforcements, they’re calling for everyone else to come deal with “this scum”. The two elves are wielding huge greatswords as though they were wielding bastard swords. I manage to evade their blows, but it’s a near thing. I’m close enough to notice that when the one who fled turned and ran, they got maybe a step before disappearing as though teleported. So that’s a bit of an unwanted twist.