Wildsea: Behold, the Heart of the Seeker

Yesterday we launched into our inaugural session of The Wildsea! Some introductions:

The ship is called The Heart of the Seeker, and it's a bit of an odd beast. Wedge shaped like many ships sailing the wildsea, but the Heart runs on voltaic runners, big electrical devices that cause the ship to hover slightly above the tangle. It's formed from the chrysalis of some giant leviathan, and powered by its still-beating heart. But in addition, a cocoon - perhaps the parasite that killed the leviathan in the first place - clings to the heart and feeds on the crew's dreams, acting as a secondary power source. 

The crew of the Heart, our heroes, are:

• Jakesta, the Navigator: Jakesta is an ardent, but died out on the wildsea and returned as one of the anchored. She remembers almost nothing about her life or death, but hopes to discover her past out on the wildsea.
• Kazera, the Screw: Kazera is an ironbound, formed of wood and metal, the living wreckage of other ships. She claims chunks of metal salvage to improve her metal body, and travels with a magnetically charged swarm of debris she can send out with a flick of the wrist.
• Rozek, the Steep: Rozek is a ridgeback, from one of the few permanent cracks of land amongst the Verdancy. She is an expert at making and reading teas and other hot and foamy draughts. 
• Chambersson, the Wordbearer: Chambersson is one of the mysterious Ketra, the cephalopod-like people who have evolved to live in this strange green world. He is amberclad, trapped in suspended animation for years, and is now a deliverer of messages on the wildsea.

Our crew begins leaving port from a small spit, urged to hurry by Jakesta - the people of this spit seem like they're hiding something and she doesn't want to find out what or why they're so secretive. And Chambersson agrees. While he was there, he met a man who was struggling from hunger, barely strong enough to move, and helped him. The man told him a rumor about where he might find an ironbound named Clanksburg, for whom Chambersson has a message. Actually it's one of his oldest messages, one that he hasn't been able to deliver because he's never been able to find the recipient. But now there's a lead, and the Heart has a direction! Rozek reads some tea leaves and sees all the leaves pushed out to the sides of the mug, creating a ring that she can see straight down into. A Rift, perhaps, a place where the tangle and thrash give way and allow sight into the sink, or even the drown? She shudders at the thought, but knows Chambersson will be thrilled - he has something of a fixation with such places.

Jakesta takes the helm and Kazera goes on watch. Jakesta pushes the ship - she wants to put distance between the Heart and the spit - but Kazera spots something up ahead in the tangle and yells a warning. Jakesta manages to steer the Heart enough to avoid crashing into it - it looks like a small spit. But having a closer look, the crew realizes this is something strange.

Most spits are just small chunks of land or rock that jut up out of the tangle, and are generally swallowed back up by the Verdancy quickly. But this one looks like the top part of a cavern, leading down into the dark. Could this be the ring that Rozek saw in the tea leaves? In any case, Rozek was watching the weather, and storm-clouds are gathering. 

The crew can't just pass this strangeness up, though, so they tie off ropes and lower themselves into the dark. The trees don't grow into this cavern, so they're essentially rappelling down the side of the thrash. They note that the cavern walls are covered in lichens and fungus, and Rozek swings over to scrape some into a sample pouch. As she does, she hears whispering in the dark and hears something move. She calls to the others, and Chambersson cocks an ear-hole and recognizes the voice as speaking Gaudimm, the strange language of the mushroom-people called the Gau. Chambersson doesn't speak any Gaudimm, but calls out in Low Sour, the pidgin language that has developed amongst travelers, hoping the unseen beings understand it.

A young Gau appears clinging to Rozek's rope, above them, legs linked around the branches in the thrash. In halting, broken Low Sour he establishes that the characters are not here to hurt anyone, and indicates that they should go below (he drops back into the branches and wavewalks down fluidly). The crew lands at the bottom, and discovers that this whole place is a concave, almost half-spherical structure made of rock. Actually, when Kazera lands, it gives out a loud clong - this place is as much metal as rock. 

The crew talks with the Gau youth a little - there are a bunch of other Gau here, and after a little tension everyone relaxes. Rozek signals to the Gau in Old Hand, the gesture-based language that predates the Verdancy. An old Gau tears itself up from the floor and joins the conversation, and with some difficulty the crew learns that this place is called the Bell, and that they are not the first visitors - one like Kazera was here, but went mad and struck out into the thrash. The crew was headed in the right direction to find him.

The crew takes their leave (Rozek gets a small pouch of purified earth from the old Gau, and trades some spirit gum for it), and they climb back up their ropes to the Heart. They strike out again, this time with Chambersson on the helm and Jakesta on watch, while Rozek draws a map of the area and includes the Bell. The crew notices a ship following them, and Jakesta recognizes it from the Secretive Spit - she saw it in port, and it had something big on the deck covered in a tarp, shaped like either a crane or a gun. Either way, the crew doesn't want them catching up. They grit their teeth and sail into the storm.

Lighting cracks above them, but the larger issue is what's in front of them! Jakesta spots a group of insects and warns Chambersson, but they decide that they can handle some bugs and the ship forges ahead. They discover, however, that these aren't just bugs - they are Lightning Cicadas! The cling to the hull and when they touch, an electric charge builds up. A whole swarm of them touching means the charge gets too big, and shorts the front two voltaic runners. 

The ship's front end drops into the tangle, and the back end flies up into the air a ways. All of the crew is banged around a little, but no one is seriously hurt. The ship has stopped, however, and it's still storming, and their front runners are out.

Rozek quickly mixes up a repellent/grounding solution and sprays it on the hull, causing the bugs to peel off and fall into the tangle. She grabs one of their carcasses, and notes with some alarm that it kinda looks like the same kind of carapace of the leviathan that makes up their ship. Is the Heart formed of the body of some giant cicada? A question for another time. Kazera heads to the engines and works her magnetic magic to get them running, and the Heart presses on.

They pass through the storm and realize they can no longer see the other ship behind them, so apparently they didn't want to chance the weather just to raid the Heart. Up ahead, Jakesta spots a weird circle where the leaves are just a bit yellower than the rest of the tangle, and warns Chambersson. He pulls the Heart alongside this area, and through a bit of trial and error they discover that this whole circle is brittle and crumbling. Their ship would travel over it, because of the runners, but a sawprow ship would crash right through. Looking carefully, they see that the branches between the tangle have thousands of little white eggs on them. Rozek wants to get a sample - mostly to see if she can figure out what's happening and maybe stop it, since if this spreads it would be really bad - but she's not particularly good at wavewalking and asks for help.

Jakesta agrees to go (she is, after all, dead, so what's the worst that could happen?) and clambers down into the tangle. She moves to gather some eggs, but they are more delicate than she thought and she crushes them, getting egg goop on her fingers. She hovers back up and realizes that the goop is starting to burn, which is weird because again, dead. Rozek and Charness (the ship's mothryn medic) scrape the goop off Jakesta into a vial, and the burning sensation goes away, but Jakesta starts to feel euphoric and see sparkly colors - whatever this stuff is, it has an effect on the mind. 

Chambersson and Rozek get on the ship's crane-mounted salvage magnet, and Kazera lowers them down into the hole that Jakesta inadvertently created. The hole goes all the way down into the sink, and it's cold down here, cold, dark, and quiet. Everything here seems...dead, but those eggs are still everywhere. Rozek gets some into a sample jar, and Chambersson looks around and sees an odd branch growth - looks like five wooden fingers grabbing a stick. And then he looks more closely and realizes, no, those are fingers. It's an ironbound, covered in brittle wood, trapped. 

Chambersson signals for Kazera to activate the magnet, and pulls the ironbound from its wooden prison. The crane drops it on the deck, and they hear it moan "help me". The crew scrapes off the crezzerin and brittle wood, and slowly the ironbound reanimates. It stands up, and points to itself - "Clanksburg."

Chambersson is overjoyed, and hands over the message that he was carrying. Clanksburg reads it and then rolls it up and stashes it in a hollow in his arm, and turns to Kazera and begins speaking in Brasstongue, the language of merchants and traders (Kazera does not actually speak Brasstongue, but possesses the ability to speak with any ghost or ironbound regardless of language). Clanksburg thanks them and says that he was on a ship called the Sanguine Dress that hit...something, he isn't sure what. The ship went down in the thrash, and Clanksburg was cast overboard. He made it to the Bell, but something there screwed with his head, and he warns Kazera to pay attention to how she's feeling lest it happen to her, too. He struck out from the Bell hoping to find a spit or a ship, but found the Brittle instead and fells into the sink, where he became trapped. 

Clanksburg is happy to direct the crew to the wreck of the Sanguine Dress if they want to try and salvage it, but perhaps they could drop him off at a spit or port whenever it's convenient? They agree, but decide they really should drop anchor and rest, and they also want to see if they can stop the Brittle before it gets worse. 

Rozek and Chambersson stay up and experiment with the eggs. They manage to hatch a couple by raising the temperature, and the things that come out are like tiny white termites. They burrow into living wood and start feeding on it, almost like they're draining its life, and then lay eggs. Their life cycle becomes clear - they eat the wood and lay eggs, the wood becomes brittle and eventually crumbles, exposing the eggs to sunlight, while warms and hatches them, the new bugs spread, and on we go. 

Curious, Chambersson exposes one of the bugs to a bit of crezzerin, and it twitches, turns over, and molts. What emerges from the skins is bigger with pointier claws - it cracks the jar it was in and runs for the dark corners. Chambersson tries to grab it, but he's been experiencing jolts and starts in his extremities (anxiety and electricity), and misses. The creature scampers away and is lost on the ship.

Jakesta spends the night going through a leather-bound journal and making some notes about the area, while Kazera stays up and talks to Clanksburg about his experiences on the Dress. In the morning, Chambersson and Rozek are pretty rough-looking - they've been up all night unsuccessfully chasing this creature. It's still on the ship somewhere. Chambersson isn't necessarily worried about it damaging the ship; these creatures only feed on living wood and the ship isn't made of wood anyway, but Jakesta isn't nearly so hopeful. They decide to stay where they are, find the damn thing and kill it, and try and deal with the Brittle before moving on.