Chapter 1: Seeds of Destruction

I would love to discuss the philosophy and how it would properly be better if you relocated your people. But this is not the time or the place.
I can't allow you to continue that practice.
He stands up and dusts off. He reports to the captain and his friends what he has learned and he is not shy about it. There are plenty of refugees that suddenly know how the elfs have killed their world. They properly want to have a few words about that.

Ziggy watched This One's bad cop routine, ready to jump in with his good cop act if necessary. In the end it wasn't needed.

Ziggy was always just a star man waiting in the sky, wanting to meet everyone and blow their minds. But these astral elves wanted to blow up people's planets instead!

"So you're killing planets." Quaxiver replied coldly, half-expecting his autognome comrade to finish off their prisoner for being so smug about annihilating entire populations. "You deserve the same fate as you have inflicted on millions of others."

"Captain, we leave it to you to decide whether you would like to keep the plasmoids as crew. We can leave here once Imti is done with the ship and we can destroy it." Quaxiver was very ready to burn down the Star Moth once they were done.

Imti tips over the chair, but soon discovers that she's not going to be able to get it back to the Moondancer on her own. Luckily, it's easy to enlist help from the Oerthians on the Moondancer and it's soon in Captain Sartell's care.

She is easily able to determine that this seed she's found is indeed where those massive vines came from, as the crystalline substance inside matches the shard she got from the creatures on Oerth. Once she's done checking on that, she does find some fine astral elven wine in the captain's quarters.

"Once we get to the Rock of Bral, we will turn them over to the authorities," Captain Sartell decides, "I can't trust any creature that would participate in a genocide like that."

Imti dusts off her hands in a symbolic gesture, content that the elven wine is safely secured in her pack. She points out any salvageable material onboard the moth ship to Sartell's crew so they can replenish their own supplies, reasoning that weapon ammunition and food might be hard to come by in the Astral Sea's in-betweens.

"Waste of a good ship, but if we can't use it, we should prevent them from getting it back." Quaxiver cast a series of well-placed fire spells to ensure that the ship would burn and continue to do so until it was scuttled.

"To the Rock of Bral!"

"Alright, let's get to it," Captain Sartell agrees, "Flapjack, take us to the Rock of Bral!"

The ship slows unexpectedly, still a few hours away from the Rock of Bral. Around you, on all sides, colossal chunks of rock float in the void. Some of them are overgrown with vegetation, while others are bare stone. Creatures resembling jellyfish and rays glide through the spaces between them.

Captain Sartell looks about uneasily. "Hmm. Plenty of places for pirates to hide."

As if on cue, a vessel lurking behind a nearby asteroid comes into view. Its enormous spiral shell merges with an open bow, beneath which long tentacles wave as if caught in an invisible current.

Sartell sucks her breath in through her teeth and whispers her next words: "Mind flayers."

THIS IS WHAT I WAS MADE FOR! The autognome seems to be happy about the prospekt of fighting mindflayers

"Do you think we could lose them in this three-dimensional field of giant floaty rocks?" says Imti, looking upward as if she could spy a clear passage away from the mind flayers.

She spies something! "Ooo! Look at that one! He's all wriggly!" she giggles, waving her fingers to imitate jellyfish tentacles.

As the nautilus-shaped vessel drifts closer, Captain Sartell lets out a sigh of relief. "It's a derelict," she says, pointing out its stripped weaponry and broken hull. "If there were mind flayers aboard, they would've attacked us by now. Looks like somebody's already picked it over. Still, there might be something left worth salvaging."



-

"Or it's bait," adds Imti.

I would love to explore that ship, learn something or find something that would make the fight against the mindflaiers a bit less costly.

He turns to the captain. Captain Elaina Sartell, may we board the ship?

"Horrible as illithids are, there's something undeniably sexy about them," is Ziggy's unhelpful musing.

SEXY?! What is wrong with you elf?! This One though he knew the Stardust elf, but apparently there are still uncharged waters.
Is it the mental dominance?
Or the rubbery skin?
Or the tentacles? There is a morbid curiosity in the metal mans voice.

"Bait?" Quaxiver shared Imti's caution, and scanned the wildspace in each direction to see if he could pick up any ambush or even incidental observer around.

Ziggy gazes at This One with compassion. The autognome could follow a thousand yellow brick roads and find a thousand wizards, or thread a thousand labyrinths and find a thousand goblin kings, but would never know the joy of being flesh and blood...Could prove themself to a thousand blue fairies but never be a real gnome.

Imti shrugs. "I mean, something that big, floating around like it's already been picked clean?" she says, indicating the lack of visible weapons. "First thought in anybody's head is, 'Ooo, looks safe, maybe there's interesting stuff inside!' Classic bait."

"That said, if we could get it going again..." Quaxiver's hankering for a ship of his own came to the fore again, no doubt thanks to the years he had spent marooned on Oerth hoping for a ticket to ride. A sudden overwhelming sadness came on him as the thought of Oerth flashed in his mind, and his gaze went to the other survivors on board...

"I understand The One is able to fix ships. And I could learn that as well."