The Corpse Star

"The Corpse Star" is episode 73 of SuperQuest Saga. The party emerges onto the rendezvous point only to be immediately swept into a chaotic battle-scape of horrors.

## Synopsis

### Introduction

* William Stark shall be your centipedal dungeon master for this evening.
* Josh Freeland is playing Sebastian Crenshaw, half-orc paladin.
* Your Special Guest Jake is playing Persephone Goldpetal, the galactic druid.
* Codename: Echo is a space wizard and rogue. Played by Brian.

### Recap

Last time a lot of stuff happened. The party set forth on their way to the center of the galaxy and the newly formed Galactic Resistance decided they were coming with. Some last minute preparations were made on the city of Triumvirate: Echo got a new bodysuit, Percy got some new forms, and Seb got a new oath. Persephone made a nice memorial garden for Victoria on *Victory’s Ascent* as the fleet made their way to the central region of the galaxy. Before the party could make their last jump to their final destination, they were ambushed by a six katana wielding robot. They defeated him, launched him out to space where he exploded, and made the final jump to rejoin the army. *Victory’s Ascent* emerged into a scene of chaos and war.

### Do A Barrel Roll! AKA Twist His Dick Pt. III

A blinding, swirling quasar lights up the starscape in this new location from a great distance, casting light on two major scenes. One is a chaotic and massive star battle: illithid, elven, and resistance. Elven dreadnaughts let loose iridescent light beams that slice dozens of ships in half. Illithid nautiloids crush dragon and elven ships alike in gargantuan, writhing tentacles. Draconic breath vaporizes waves of fighter ships. The second thing basking in the gaunt quasar light is a planet-sized Lovecraftian monstrosity. Not alive, but seemingly petrified and made entirely of black Umbrium; like a disgusting, frozen starfish with a thousand arms trying to embrace and crush all things.

Echo immediately does a barrel roll as the flash of their jump attracts the attention of nearby illithid ships. Three laser attacks come towards *Victory’s Ascent* but only one hits them, and the ship resists laser damage. The party fires a pulsar blast at two of the illithid ships and disintegrates them in the beam. The remaining illithid ship pulls up and backs off.

At this point, the party receives a radio signal. They hear Lightsong’s psionic voice. “Thank the Orders you’re still alive! We thought some foul treachery had befallen you. We have to hurry, the Emperor… he’s gone t–” and they lose the signal. They try to use the ship’s tracking system to locate where her signal was coming from and find her about 20 miles away. On the monitor they see that Lightsong and her brother Brightwind are being strangled by a massive nautiloid dreadnought. Crushing tentacles wrap around their torsos and necks; Brightwind is breathing radiant beams furiously but uselessly as the dreadnought begins to twist his neck backwards and away from it. Lightsong tears ferociously at the tendrils with her teeth, to no avail. *Victory’s Ascent* speeds in and tries to grapple the nautiloid to free Brightwind, but the dreadnought’s grip is too strong.

The dreadnought hits *Victory’s Ascent* with one of its two free tentacles and grapples the ship. Persephone fires a pulsar blast and blows a chunk off the nautiloid. Sebastian tries to escape the grapple, but fails. Echo also makes an attempt to escape, but the dreadnought’s grasp is too strong.

The dreadnought crushes with the tentacle that is holding *Victory’s Ascent* to deal damage, and makes a second attack against them with another tentacle that misses. Persephone attacks the dreadnought with the dragonforged’s claws, striking the illithid vessel twice. Sebastian also strikes with two attacks, missing with one but dealing a critical hit with the other. The pulsar blast recharges and Echo fires it on the dreadnought, disintegrating its body leaving *Victory’s Ascent* and the stellar dragons in limp tentacles.

### Starworm

Lightsong tells them in a ragged voice that the Emperor has gone into the Corpse Star. The gate must be within. Suddenly, a dark energy wave pulses from the black moon-sized abomination; it ripples through the battle scene, sending ships flying in its wake. On the surface of the thing, black stone erupts as a super massive monstrosity emerges. A red insectile head a mile wide with piercing mandibles and fangs, yellow segmented eyes, emerges from a hole in the Corpse Star. Attached to it is a segmented, oily black centipedal body 20-miles long with a thousand clawed hands, and ended with a twin stinger. Percy, Sebastian, Watt, and Prim have all seen something like this before: the great skeleton of Starworm City. Echo recognizes it as well from the Blood Gala footage. But this one is alive, fully-fleshed, and four times bigger.

Reacting before anyone else, a void dragon teleports before the starworm and unleashes the full fury of its gravitational-well breath. The gravity vortex is so powerful that nearby illithid ships are vaporized on the spot as their atoms are ripped apart by the void dragon’s attack. Huge chunks of the Corpse Star are torn up and pulverized as they get sucked into the void dragon’s mouth. But the starworm is completely unaffected. It writhes its way up to the breathing dragon with a malignant gleam in its eyes. With a single massive, clawed hand, it grabs the void dragon and stuffs it down its massive gullet. The lump of mass in its throat that is the void dragon slides down its vile body before it disappears as it is seemingly digested and assimilated on the spot.

A psionic shriek escapes the starworm as it charges the host of warships. Cannons and lasers rain down on the starworm but there seems to be no effect. The hundreds of clawed hands on the ends of its legs crush and feed into its maw dragon, elven, and illithid ship alike. And, as if possessing a preternatural sense for the party, its head turns towards *Victory’s Ascent* and the starworm charges.

Echo thinks they should make it look like they’re going to engage with the starworm and then dodge at the last possible safe second. Prim thinks it sounds dangerous but she trusts Echo. Persephone, Sebastian, and Watt agree that they trust his piloting skills. Echo grabs the tentacles of the destroyed illithid dreadnought in front of them and uses it to push off downwards before rising back up to meet the starworm. Right before they are set to collide, *Victory’s Ascent* does a barrel roll and rides along the belly of the beast. The starworm attempts to redirect the flow of its body and grab *Victory’s Ascent*, but Echo narrowly escapes its many clawed hands. *Victory’s Ascent* blasts past and the starworm twists its body to begin the chase.

Echo makes a break for the abomination that is the Corpse Star with the starworm right on their tail. Right as it seems like they will have to engage because they are not fast enough to get away, three golden bars of molten plasma strike the starworm from its right-side, burning off one of its arms and leaving holes in its body that begin to heal almost immediately.

“We will handle this festering abomination. Pursue the Emperor. Lightsong, Brightwind, Lieutenant Vermilion, accompany them. Galactic Resistance, cover them at all costs!” The three Nova Kings descend on the starworm, fighting with tooth, claw, and plasma breath attacks. The starworm in turn battles with its mandibles and a hundred hands.

Lieutenant Vermilion in his red-gold ship appears beside *Victory’s Ascent*. “I believe it’s time to go.” Sebastian responds with a “Hell yeah!”

### Gotta Go in the Hole

As *Victory’s Ascent*, Lightsong, Brightwind, and Lieutenant Vermilion descend upon the Corpse Star, the battle around them rages. Illithid ships attempt to intercept them, but are quickly swarmed by Resistance forces. The Corpse Star looms greater and greater on the horizon until its gravity well begins to pull *Victory’s Ascent* downwards. They adjust to the new gravity and enter through the most obvious entrance, the gaping hole left by the starworm.

The hole leads them to a labyrinth of winding tunnels within the Corpse Star. The interior is darker than the void of space; the Umbrium of the Corpse Star causes all radar and tracking to go completely haywire. The party deduces that the gate may be in the center, but they’ll need to rely on visual cues to try to find their way.

Sebastian searches the area for signs of which direction the starworm came from; he finds tell-tale signs of its travel, heavy scratches and mucus on the wall. They follow this trail to another tunnel with a two way fork. Echo notices the trail leads down the right fork, and they continue to follow. The tunnel begins to descend very drastically, *Victory’s Ascent* is actually pointed downwards for quite some time, and eventually opens up into a vast, craggy chasm that runs east to west farther than anyone can see.

This time they do not notice any signs of the starworm. Sebastian uses Divine Sense to try to get a vibe of the area, but the Corpse Star is emanating so much evil that it overwhelms his senses. Echo keeps an eye out watching for ambush in this large open space as they head east. He spots two elven scouts moving very slowly towards the chasm towards them and warns Lightsong, Brightwind, and Vermilion to hide. The stellar dragons are not very stealthy, and Vermilion’s ship backfires loudly. “I appear to have made a mistake.” He says, as the elven scouts zip in to engage them.

### Do I Have to Name This Guy?

Echo fires the pulsar blast at one of the ships, obliterating it. The second ship turns tail and runs. Brightwind asks what to do and Persephone says they need to stop it before it can warn the others of their presence. Brightwind charges forward with a radiant light breath attack. Echo jumps in to suggest they try to keep the pilot alive so they can interrogate them. Brightwind fires his breath and thoroughly damages the scout ship, but it is still up. Vermilion asks if he should take the ship down and if they want it alive. He moves in and fires on it with his lasers, the elven scout crashes to the bottom of the canyon.

Echo scoops up the scout ship with the dragonforged’s claws and opens it up to reveal the pilot before quickly realizing that is a bad thing to do in the vacuum of space and closing it again. He tries to establish a link with the comms.

“HELP! Oh god!! Oh god!! Why?!” the scout shouts. Echo assures the pilot that they’ll spare him if he gives them the information they need. The scout reveals that the Emperor is looking for the center of the Corpse Star and he has sent his scout ships to find the way. The scout provides the data that he’s mapped out from the eastern direction.

Echo asks if they should let the elf on board, Persephone is adamantly against it. Echo asks the elf if he will behave and the elf readily agrees; but Echo knows that this elf will say whatever it takes to not be killed. The party discusses whether or not it is advantageous to take a hostage. Vermilion shares that the Emperor historically has not cared about hostages so it might not gain them much leverage. Watt would rather not have him on board.

Echo tells the scout that the party doesn’t want him on board and starts crushing the ship. The elf says that they can just leave him here. He does not have any more useful information for them. Primina states that he’s sided with the Emperor so as far as she is concerned, he’s trying to annihilate the universe. The elf hears this and responds. “Lies! The Emperor would not do that!” At those words, Echo opens the scout ship and kills him.

### Secret Tunnel

On the western side of the chasm they find a tunnel that goes deeper down into the Corpse Star. They follow this secret tunnel and it transforms into a treacherous stretch of Umbrium spikes that slows down their travel. Victory’s Ascent crashes up against a few spikes and while this does no damage, it is uncomfortable.

Exiting this area they find they are at the nexus of a dozen different tunnels all pointing in different directions. They look for more starworm signs and Percy spots a fairly fresh trail of black mucus in a tunnel that heads southwest and down. This tunnel winds and twists but goes ever downwards as it does so, criss-crossing with other tunnels on the way. Persephone takes some time for a short reset. Echo checks in with Lightsong and Brightwind to see if they also need a rest, but they want to keep going.

Echo and Sebastian keep an eye out for fresh starworm trail to make sure they’re on the right path. As Echo reports his findings, everyone begins to hear this strange whispering sound of a multitude of voices, getting louder and louder. Some sort of invisible psychic wind rips through the party causing mad gibberings in everyone’s head. Brightwind and Vermilion both scream in panic as they take damage before the whispers dissipate. Percy and Echo check in with them, and both Brightwind and Vermilion confirm they are okay.

The party continues descending down the tunnel. It stretches twice as long as any of the other tunnels they’ve traversed so far, the signs of the starworm become more and more visibly obvious as they go. It eventually opens into a wide cavern about a thousand feet wide, its floor entirely littered with disgusting looking yellowish-green eggs.

Primina feels a strange sensation, almost as if she’s being pulled forward through the cavern. Percy asks if they should follow this feeling, and Primina thinks they should. On the other end of the cavern is another tunnel that descends directly down. The fluid in Primina’s tank begins to slowly pulse with a light as they get closer to the center of the Corpse Star. Sebastian checks in to make sure she’s okay. She feels the pull getting stronger, they’re close. They descend further and further down the tunnel and they emerge into a vast open area.

The ceiling and floor are far out of sight as far as they can tell. As they glide out into the darkness the pulse and the pull grow even stronger and faster. The entrance behind them fades into darkness and the other end of the chamber seems to be nowhere in sight. Without any visual cues, it appears and feels as if the party is adrift in the deepest most deserted corner of space.

And then it appears.

A looming, grotesque monolith, like a bulbous black pustule made of Umbrium stone. It is hundreds of feet in diameter; countless petrified tendrils extend from it in all directions. Without a doubt, they have found the Corpse Star’s heart. The pulse of the isolation tank fluid has reached a frenzied flicker. Prim says, “This is it. I can feel it. This is where the original world, The Prime, used to exist. Here we can open the gate.”

## Characters

### The Party

* Sebastian Crenshaw: a half-orc paladin. Good at tracking the starworm.
* Persephone Goldpetal: an albino firbolg druid. Not down for sharing space with Imperial elves.
* Codename: Echo: an elf wizard/rogue. Doing some fancy flying.

### NPCs

* Lightsong: a stellar dragon and a stellar friend. Sister of Brightwind.
* Brightwind: a stellar dragon and a stellar friend. Brother of Lightsong.
* Watt Wainwright: an elderly gnome. He's still here even if he doesn't say or do much.
* Primina: a genetically engineered young woman. The MacGuffin. She's about to do something big.
* The Nova Kings: three gold dragons, the only known Nova dragons. Triarchy of The Draconic Star Sovereignty.
* Lieutenant Vermillion: a dragonborn. Leader of The Crimson Wings. A very noisy dude.
* Unnamed Imperial Elf: a captive. Had no information and was a fanatic.

## Trivia

### Dice Breakdown

#### Nat 20's (2 total)

* William (Grapple as nautiloid)
* Freeland (Attack)