Episode 24: The Squid Hunt Part 2 Report

Beware Grags Bearing Presents

Exploration of pandemonium continues into a dungeon where 4 grags are in chains half dwarf, half duergar. They offer to fill the officers in on why so many grags are down here, but Spark is suspicious.

El cognizant of the duration of their magic states they will free the dwarf-kin on the way out. However, while trying to investigate beyond them, their heads explode revealing brain monsters had been hiding in their skulls. The intellect devourers pounce on Spark, but their natural psychic assaults are no match for a now highly trained psi warriors defenses.

The brains are otherwise small and easily squished. Moving on the crew finally finds a portal made of rune-carved adamantine sucking the winds of Pandemonium farther into a plane of incomprehensibility.

Before it lies a suspicious stone statue, and a mental assault begins as soon as Spark leads the way out of the hallway. Two illithids attempt surprise mind blasts, but magical defenses hold. The xenobuster comes out and begins frying floating flayers, crit machine El keeps the smites flowing, and magic flows from Lance and Nia.

The mind flayers fall quickly, but that statue turned out to be a golem and put a hurting on Lance. So, El and Nia put it into a corner. Lance then gets revenge with his babingka powered huge constricting trouser snake. Leaving the golem with the anaconda.

Attempted Mooning From the Far Realm

The crew leaps into the portal to madness, into a room overflowing with flowing channels of psychic mucus and impossible geometries. In the chamber a massive mind flayer with a spinal staff is summoning some massive brain thing in an even more massive illithid skull hooked up to said mucus channels.

Some star spawn block the way. Lance turns himself and Nia invisible to stop the summoning, but Nia's magic is hampered by a wall of force. The starpawn at first seem to be only a hindrance, but the seer unleashes some weird spell combo that knocks out Spark and weakens El, but Nia needs that wall down and sends her scroll monkey.

El dispels the wall of force and tries to get some space, but the starspawn stay in pursuit. Lance revives Spark with some healing just in time to watch the massive mind flayer telepathically shout, "I ,Lugribossk, summon thee my master Ilsensine to arise as a moon over this godless and usele... "

It is cutoff by Nia channeling her fathers eldritch might and spellblasting the aberration straight into hell. This gives the crew a moment to try and put down the starspawn who turn out to be surprisingly crafty and resilient, swapping places and just being tough.

El does realize the spellcasting starspawn is the bigger threat with the magic it pulls from its comet staff, so she pole dance twirls it out of his hands and next to Lance leaving him mostly powerless and letting Nia finish him with a shot of the old eldritch. Lugribossk returned from his nether plane romp with a hell of a hangover and immediately invoked his magical power to escape this plane to relative safety, but Lance invoked his divine right to say 'No'.

The crew then unlesahed whatever fire power they had on Lubvest. Spark pulled out Bigby's Crushing Fist and fireball, Nia kept a blasting, El closed in for a smiting. The starspawn followed El, but couldn't keep up with her broom. Lugribossk tried to use his formidable psychic powers to annihilate El's mind and personality, but then Lance spake, 'Nay'.

It was the last move Lugribossk would take as the crew finally put him down. The starspwan fell soon after.

Meeting the Navigator

The crew looted and fled only to find the Red Feather Battlemancers outside the portal led by Battlemaster L'Dante Katigbak who quickly brought Chagroth Durinhelm to close the portal which he did with the Staff of Infinite Penumbra. The crew told him about the mind flayers, he took a jar of brains he mentioned as being an intellect devourer womb. Scanned the only surviving grag to make sure he wasn't an intellect devourer than went back to piloting the world.

They touched hedrons with Chagroth and L'Dante. L'Dante warned them to not contact Chagroth directly and to message him first. Also remember that Chagroth had to pull the Staff out of the Orrery of Worlds to seal off the dimensional cyst that the mind flayers had been concealing. He used a 1/year power of the staff to nullify mind flayer fuckery. He's going to spend the rest of the day before dawn reassembling the Orrery.