Greetings from the fragment of Humidia! It's fuckin' sticky! Here's last time.
Our heroes, recall, have been captured and put to work in the slave mines of Radios (fun fact: at no point does the Slipstream book tell us what that mine produces, just that it's radioactive and worked by slaves). The characters leave their cells, get fed a bowl of glop, and then get put in the mines to work for hours. The ore that they're mining makes them itch - Iris in particular, her back feels like something is trying to come out of it - but they aren't given protective gear.
But they're not taking this lying down! Iris realizes that the Primals don't come into the mine itself, they just rely on remote sentries to patrol. That gives the slaves some freedom to wander (but really, there's no point - it's just more mine, and if you stay here too long you'll surely get radiation poisoning). She finds some spokes closed by cave-ins, but no obvious exits other than the one they slaves use. She does, however, find a Bird-Man with a suspiciously noble bearing. She introduces herself, and he tells her his name: Prince Boolar of Avia!
She explains that they're here to rescue him, and he asks if her being a slave is part of an ingenious ruse. She says it is, but the ruse is still a work in progress. She brings him back to meet Abbas and Zeenia, and they talk about their situations. Boolar informs Zeenia that her betrothed, Zeemar (from waaaaay back here) is still alive and being held prisoner in the Queen's palace. That's at least some good news, Zeenia reckons.
The four of them talk over escape plans, but their situation is pretty bleak. Even if they somehow got out of the mine, they're still on Radios, and there are no ships here other than remote ones like the Achilles. The collars they're wearing allow the warden (Handmaiden Erif the Strange) to mind control anyone wearing them, and the characters' attempts to remove them have been unsuccessful. Escape while still wearing the collars is all but impossible. Iris decides that they'll need to take the control room in order to escape, but they still have the problem of how.
Boolar mentions that his cell has a hatch - probably a maintenance shaft. He isn't sure if it's blocked, where it leads, or even how big the tunnel is, but it's something. Later that evening, the characters put a plan into action.
As they're being led back to their cells, Iris cries out about how itchy her back is and starts rubbing on everything. She falls over, trying to create a distraction, but then she really does feel a horrific itch and tears off her shirt (revealing a tasteful crop-top kind of arrangement, this being a PG-13 space opera). As the prisoners and the Primals watch, a pair of wings erupt from her back!
Zeenia, meanwhile, turns invisible and heads for Boolar's cell. She pulls the hatch off the wall and slides in, and moves down the hatch easily enough, but then comes to a drop-off. She tries to brace herself on the edges and climb down, but slips and lands with a splat.
Iris, for her part, is manacled and taken to the control room to see Erif. Erif asks her why she and her friends broke in here - they must be here to rescue someone, so who? Iris says the plan was to take the whole place down, but Erif doesn't buy it, and sends her off to the nightmare suite.
Abbas, down in the cell area, bats the remote sentries around to discombobulate and distract them, but is immediately mind controlled and force to act like a cat (before the Primals get bored and stick him back in his cell). Humiliated and enraged, Abbas decides to rip off his collar and accept death in glorious battle.
But lo! Zeenia has found herself in a huge shipping center, where the mined ore is put into containers about the size and shape of caskets and loaded onto ships. She sees Primals in protective gear doing the loading, and figures that if she could get her compatriots onto the lift with the huge bins of ore, they could sneak into the caskets, get loaded on a ship, and get the hell out. She slips by the Primals and up the stairs, through a room with protective gear on the walls and then a room with nozzles (she briefly considers turning them on to get some water, but decides not to risk it). She emerges into a hallway at a t-junction, and from down the hall, hears Primals talking in their ape-ish, grunty language.
Iris is taken to the nightmare suite, a simple room with a bench and a helmet with no eye slits. She is strapped down and a Primal puts the helmet on her head, and just before it all goes dark she spots a box with a dial going from 1 to 11. And then the visions start...
The first one is just reminders of ignoble defeats in battle, but Iris laughs that off and informs them that she is, in fact, Iris Blue of the Daikini Valkyrie, daughter of Orchid Blue. They crank the device's setting up and Iris succumbs to the visions...but all they do is make her mad.
She tears herself free of the straps and beats both Primals into unconsciousness with the helmet! Free, she listens at the door...
Down in the lower levels, Zeenia hears a Primal coming. He walks by her (she's still invisible), muttering that "Murk doesn't need all four, he coulda given me one." Zeenia realizes that he's probably talking about her weapons! She heads down the hall and finds a barracks full of Primals. One of them, the biggest, does in fact have her tentacle blades, one on each hand and foot. She seethes a bit...
Up in the cell, Abbas summons all of his strength and tears the collar free. He reaches through the bars of his cell and snatches a remote sentry, and smashes it against the door until it opens. And then he steps out, claws bared, as the Primals approach and the alarms go off.
Iris hears the alarms, and, assuming they're for her, hides ready to ambush a Primal. But two rush by the door to the suite, talking about the Lion-Man starting the trouble and how Erif has ordered it killed. Iris decides that with the Primals distracted, it's time for her to take the control room - and confront Erif the Strange.
Zeenia follows the horde of Primals, intending to snatch the one wearing her weapons when they're not looking.
The characters have plans, and next time we shall see if they escape from the mines of Radios!
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