Ep 1207: Brains, its all about the brains

Welcome back to this entertaining batch of adventurers! Last episode was quite disgusting wasn't it? Between the flesh golem armor, the flying skinned faces, and Elle losing her lunch at sheer disgust of it all, it's a good thing smell-o-vision isn't a thing. This week's episode was investigation heavy, and a smidge less gross.

The adventurers are on a floating "island" in an under the mountain cavern. It's actually the remains of an inter-planer ship. Which is so not normal. We're currently in the control room talking with the 5 brains in jars that control the ship. We're able to get out of these brains that the ship crashed here eons ago and it's basically just staying afloat at this point.

Now, Leoven and Elle want to blow the whole mess up. These two rarely see eye to eye on anything, so that was amusing. Leoven lamented that we couldn't blow it up, Elle then detailed how she believes she could blow up the ship. Though there is great risk in doing this, she'd be willing.

Well Tsedek, ever the opportunist, heard us discussing the idea, by this point we had brought Itanis in as we need some of his utility spell work to make this happen, and goes "woah! Don't blow it up! Imagine if we make this into a floating viable community and economy!" So the three of us backed off of our blow it up idea for now to let him run with the economic angle for a bit. Elle's not sure about this but any sort of income stream is a good thing to her. If we all survive the adventurers we are on, Elle and Itanis should outlive* the rest of the party, and spell components/research is darned expensive.

But since we had answered the 5 brains in jars challenges, they lowered the "bridge". It turns out that the treasury is on a floating shard of ship, about 80' from the main ship, and the "bridge" is a series of floating discs set across the void like some sort of stepping stones. Good thing we're not afraid of heights?

We get across the bridge fairly easily and start exploring the area. It's not well organized and there's junk about, but Tsedek finds another brain in a jar. And then starts talking to it. He talks to it a fair bit and find out it's the brain for the bone devil from two episodes ago. Tsedek also finds a heavy tome attached to the brain, and discovers the brain is also attached to this floating shard of ship. But the bone devil has a deal for us, he'll help us unlock this tome since its "super tricky" if we'll do it a favor. He wants us to return him to his body. The body we destroyed earlier.

Magnus, upon hearing that this is the bone devil, was all for destroying it. Oddly, Elle was too as she's super uncomfortable with the brains in jars concept. She decided to walk away though and leave Magnus and Tsedek to deal with the brain. Itanis asked Magnus to not destroy the brain till he says so, and oddly Magnus listened. Elle, Leoven, and Itanis wandered off to continue digging through the rubble looking for items of use and treasure.

At this point Elle throws up a detect magic ... to find it doesn't work. Some more digging about and we find a beholder eye throwing up it's anti-magic field. Elle was like yay I want to take this home, apparently that was weird. After some back and forth we realized that she couldn't take it home as it wouldn't fit in the bag of holding (it's the size of a small boulder after all) so she pouted and backed off to let Magnus destroy it. But magic started working again. So that's good as Elle's pretty much useless without magic.

We find some nice items and after identifying them realize 2 of the 3 are going to be sold. The third may be useful though so we're going to keep it for now. We also found some coins to add to our wealth.

At this point Tsedek is pretty sure he can open the tome without the brain, so he does so while the rest of us watch from afar. Itanis preps "wall of force" just in case of explosion, but nothing happens as Tsedek is successful in opening the tome. He realizes its instructions on how to make the portal in the throne room open a gateway to where the high valued item we're trying to retrieve for the metallic dragons is. And that he needs to take the whole book with him, so he needs to disconnect it from the brain.

At this point we're expecting shenanigans if this book is disconnected, so Magnus and Leoven return across the floating disc bridge to the relative safety of the main ship island. Elle tells Itanis to go join them as she can get herself and Tsedek out with dimension door if needed. Itanis only went part way though, that was weird. So Tsedek disconnects the book and the bone devil brain goes uh-oh ... and the ship shard's engine shuts down. The shard starts falling immediately, so Tsedek and Elle ran for the main ship, successfully.

Whew!

And that was the end of our lunch hour. More next week!

* Leoven is the oldest at the mid 200s. Elle and Itanis are both 76 and are considered by their society to not be adults. Physically they're full grown, they're not considered adults till their 100th birthday. All three of them are elves so they can live up to 700 years. Tsedek as a tiefling can live a few years longer than a typical human and is currently a young adult. And then there's Magnus who is solidly middle aged and the shortest lived in the group.