The Deep Ether Campaign/Session 19

The party continued its navigation around the outer skeins of the Covens of Corrobel, heading toward the coordinates given by Migna. En-route, the party became drawn into a navigational "floodway," a fortified complex of four vast black towers that seemed to knit and shorten the ether around themselves. Drifting into the floodway, the *Terror* was drawn in by the first tower and accosted by a harbor master, who sought tribute.

After some negotiation, with Klaus posing as Kannibal Kaptain Klaus to make them seem as fearsom as Pickman, the party was received atop the tower by its true master, a Naga with a horrifying dislocated jaw. This Naga was familiar to Dundee as Old Wrymouth, a former raider so mutilated by its repeated encounters with Dundee that it was forced to abandon raiding for an ignoble, sedentary life as a glorified customs boss. Wrymouth also sensed Dundee, and bargained with the party to receive him unarmored so that it could exact vengeance.

The inevitable ensued, and the party turned on Wrymouth and sacked its tower. Dundee finally finished the job he started with Wrymouth's first mutilation long ago, and established his dominion over Wrymouth's lesser Naga hangers-on (to Allie's fascination and horror). Valuable samples, cadavers, stolen skiff-fighter and maps in hand (courtesy partly of some intrepid thieving by Barty Shen), the party left the tower and narrowly wove the *Terror* through the rest of the "floodway" (with as only major casualties a dead sailor and a badly maimed Fyodor).

Escaping the towers and ahead of the news of the sack of Wrymouth's Tower, the party pushed on to Migna's coordinates. At the coordinates, the party found a surprisingly modern-looking gate defense system. They were warned by an Aeldman voice not to speak while on-world, on pain of death.

On-world, the senior officers of the crew were summoned and met by a bloated emissary, held aloft by slaves. This blessed servant of the Naga handed the captain a precious document of safe passage, repeating the grim instruction to speak nothing and directing the party to wait for transit deeper into the world. Finally, the party was met by a carriage drawn by Gul'Dan, transporting a strange trio with Imperial-looking fashion and weapons.

These men bade the party come aboard: Regi, Allie, Klaus, Jessie, Garrel (specially requested by the trio) and Faolan joined. The party was taken deep inworld, leaving the ziggurats and slave-huts of the port for the dusty wastes and, then, a green valley shielding a compound of some dozen buildings. There, the party was taken from the carriage to the front patio of a central building (resembling a colonial governor's manse). Regi and Allie were invited inside.

Therein, the captain and the physician were taken to the study, where they found an elf, looking about 180 years old, dressed in an ATC officer's day-uniform, who was the first to allow the guests to speak. The strange elf introduced himself as Dion de Turenne, and after some greetings and realizing that both Regi and Allie could understand elvish (de Turenne, like Regi, was of the Enclaves, not Aeldrum), explained that he was *de facto* the Naga's chief intelligence officer in their struggle against social apocalypse.

de Turrene explained that a mind virus, a "question or incongruity in reality that consumes the attention of the infected unto starvation," was being spread socially and especially psionically through the Naga worlds. As a soulless man, he was not affected, and could study the virus without endangering himself or his Naga patrons. Learning the party's interest in strange (especially Imperium-era) knowledge, de Turenne proposed a collaboration to understand the virus and other phenomena of Naga space.

de Turenne ended the meeting by inviting Regi, Allie and the rest of the crew to dinner. Again, they would speak to nobody save de Turrene himself, but the elf would use the dinner to make the acquaintance of the party's senior leadership. The party ended on the second story of the manse, taking dinner in a wing specially insulated to allow open conversation without endangering de Turenne's servants.