Session Six: Oops, All Tentacles!

The suriving scientists at the Eston Plant

Upon entering the Eston Warforged facility, the party finds a large number of inactive warforged units littering the floor and an alarm blaring. Fletcher notes that the creation forge's power source, the party's objective, is not in the spot where it's supposed to be; it should be screwed into the ceiling in the middle of the room, providing power to the production lines, but it's nowhere to be seen. Fletcher uses his Mark of Making to open a door to some kind of lounge area with a garden, but the door to the administrative section doesn't unlock, which confuses Fletcher as that has never happened to him before.

In the lounge area, the party finds some more inactive warforged, including one that is considerably larger than the others with six arms. They also find a tunnel that seems to have been digged through the concrete wall, but it doesn't reach the next room. Spotting some airvents at the top of the room, Xander blows one open with a firebolt An intellect devourer crawls out of the vent and attacks the party. As the party kills the monster, several more jump down from the vents, but are easily destroyed. Luu then uses a draught to fly into the vent and ends up in a security office with a collapsed wall. He uses the security console to lift the lockdown, and the alarm stops blaring. Luu blows the rubble out of his way, only to find another locked door. He flies back through the vent.

Fletcher can now open the door that remained locked, and the party splits up at a crossroads, much to the chagrin of Quartz, who remains paralyzed with fear that splitting the party will cause the warforged to attack them again.

Luu discovers three strange machines, two of which were smashed and smoking, Damarris discovers a room with a mysterious terminal and Xander discovers an office with complicated schematics and technical documents. Nyx and Fletcher enter a lab where they find three mutated people in labcoats; their skin has a bluish hue and tentacles are growing out of their face. The three mutants yelp when the door opens, and begs the party not to kill them, assuring them that they are still themselves.

When questioned about their appearance, the scientists explain that after the Mourning, they managed to lock themselves in a sealed area and survived for about three years on magically-created food and water, thinking the apocalypse had happened. Then, a few months ago, warforged managed to break into the facility and started using the creation forge again to make more warforged. Their leader, who called himself the Lord of Blades, used the factory to graft multiple limbs to himself. The scientists remained undiscovered in the locked-off administration area for several months, until the factory suddenly stopped working, though the scientists didn't know why. This sent the Lord of Blades and his warforged into a rage, and they tried accessing the administration section. One of the four scientists managed to reach a security console and lock the admin door, but the Lord of Blades started digging through the wall in the lounge area. The quakes from his punches made the entire structure shake, and a wall came down and trapped one of the scientists in the security office, where he starved to death.

Knowing they would be slaughtered when the Lord of Blades inevitably reached them, the scientists decided to reactivate Starrin's Time Machine and flee to a time before the Mourning. However, they quickly found out that the Mourning had changed how the time portal worked, as the portal opened to another plane of existence and a Mind Flayer came out of it. The scientists tried to negotiate with the mind flayer, who accepted to get rid of the Lord of Blades for them, but the illithid also planted a mind flayer tadpole in the scientists' eyes, beginning the slow process of ceremorphosis, turning them into illithids. After the mind flayer killed the Lord of Blades, one of the scientists ran into the portal to the mind flayer's plane, and the monster followed in pursuit. The other scientists managed to close the portal and turn it back into a time machine, effectively trapping the mind flayer back in his dimension. Being cut off from the mind flayer slowed down the scientists' ceremorphosis, allowing them to have kept their sanity until now, but did not stop it; they will eventually turn into full-fledged illithids sooner or later.

After learning the scientists' story, the party decides to retire in a Leomund's Tiny Hut to talk things through and decide their next move. The scientists also formed a caucus on the other side of the room.