Wildsea: Radioactive Giants!

It's just the one giant, actually. Here's last time. 

Kazera and Chambersson come back on board the Heart of the Seeker, and Jakesta emerges from her rooms. She's been feeling a weird sense of deja vu ever since getting close to this spit, and it was a bit overwhelming for a while, but she's coping now. 

They explain what they found to her - the tunnels, the giant bug, the glowy blue rocks - and Jakesta, always the cautious one, worries about what effect these rocks might have. But Chambersson is interesting in establishing communication across the wildsea, and these rocks - which harmonize with each other when struck - might hold a way to do so. Rozek brews tea from the green moss she plucked from the top of the spit, and in drinking it she sees the bottom of her mug become the blue pool in the shaft, and something waiting inside it, beckoning, and understanding settle in. The realization of truth long forgotten, tantalizingly close...but then gone. This convinces Rozek that they're something down there worth investigating...

They decide to rest for the evening, and then in the morning go back into the cave, pull up some more rocks, and let Jakesta look around (since she suspects she may have some ancestral memories of this place). 

The crew takes some time to recuperate. Chambersson dreams of a slow, comforting, crushing weight and wakes up to find he's wrapped his blanket around his neck. Rozek grates up some ironwood to get her pet salimini, Pearl, back to snuff, but in the more poor Pearl looks listless and sick. 

Jakesta realizes that the glowing blue rocks have a detrimental effect on living things, and so they put the few they brought up in a box and put that box in another box to prevent things from getting any worse. And then Kazera, Jakesta, and Chambersson lower themselves down on the ship's magnet crane to reenter the tunnels. Chambersson doesn't borrow Rozek's furs this time, and she refuses to let Pearl go back down there, so Chambersson decides he'll only go as far as he can push himself before it gets too cold. Kazera and Jakesta, neither of them "alive" in the fleshy sense, shouldn't have any problems.

They enter the tunnel and make their way into the central shaft, and Jakesta remembers again that she has been here before - or maybe not her, precisely, but she has memories of building this place and putting the coolant in the pool. They approach the pool and Jakesta looks in, but realizes the danger of this place and advises leaving. 

Chambersson, though, still wants to grab some of the rocks - if the coolant nullifies the harmful energy, maybe they can take some of that, too? But would the rocks' sonic properties still work if the rocks are the coolant? Chambersson wants to experiment with them, but both Jakesta and Kazera feel this is a bit more risk than necessary...

And as they're arguing, a hand reaches out of the coolant pool, and then another. A torso pulls itself out, a torso make of the glowing rocks and held together with a circulatory system made of the coolant. "JAKESTA," it moans. 

Jakesta turns and sees the creature, and she starts to back up. She yells to Chambersson and Kazera to run, that it probably can't hurt her; she's already dead. "NOT DEAD ENOUGH!" it booms, and reaches for her. 

The creature's fingers strike her just as she goes spectral, but it hurts and drives her back. The creature, which Jakesta somehow knows is called Americium, recoils, and the three of them flee. Chambersson paws through the tunnels, remembering the quickest way back, and finds a crack in the walls. He figures he can make a barrier and starts beating it with a pipe he carries. Kazera catches up and digs her fingers in to help, and they cause a minor cave-in, trapping Americium further down the tunnel. But they've also found a small room...

Jakesta looks into the room and sees that there are a bunch of placards on the walls, all written in unfamiliar writing. She instinctively grabs one and the three of them head back to the crane and pound on the cable.

Rozek hauls them up and they clamber onto the ship. Jakesta hands the placard off to a crew member and tells him to get it to someone who can translate it, but another one points to the island and asks if that is the monster that chased them. They see Americium burst up through the spit (probably out of the loose covering they made when they got here to keep the bug-monster away) and roar in rage and pain.

Jakesta uses a whisper (Hidden Sins) to quiet the crew and keep them focused on their jobs, and Rozek straps into the Storm Rail gun and fires a blast at the creature. It recoils, bits of rock flying off of it, but then lunges out across the wildsea at them. The Heart sets off, the voltaic runners on overdrive trying to outrun it, and Kazera goes to find the box of rocks and throw it overboard.

Chambersson, however, has already removed a couple of them and put them behind the Leviathan Heart in the engine room where no one will notice them. He's not ready to give up on his ideas of long-distance communication quite yet.

Rozek blasts Americium with the Storm Rail again, and more of the rocks and coolant fly off. Americium sinks into the tangle, and the Heart sails on, apparently to safety. Kazera throws the box of rocks overboard, just to be sure.

As things calm down, Jakesta gets the placard to Chambersson, and he translates the markings - apparently salt can be employed to siphon off the baleful energy from the blue rocks. Rozek has some table salt, but not nearly enough, and she demands they plot a course to somewhere they can buy some salt so she can heal her little friend Pearl. Jakesta thumbs through the Captain's Log they got from the Sanguine Dress, and finds there's a marking of an island that sells salt. The Heart sets sail, Rozek at the helm and forging ahead to get there quickly. They pass by a curious tree, with holes in the branches that whistle when the wind blows, but have no time to stop and investigate.

They arrive at the quarry - it's a huge, rectangular stone island with a big hole in the middle where they take the salt rocks out, and immense steam-powered grinders that crush it down to powder and bag it. There are docks for ships all around, but they're all full. The Heart pulls up next to a ship called the Gallant Wren, and a Gau on the deck halloos them.

Rozek calls back and asks how this works; the Gau, who introduces himself as Odsin, says that you just get in line, but it can take a while. She says that theirs is a medical emergency ("For which you need salt?" "YES." "Oh...sure, I don't know how you fleshy people work, I guess."), and Odsin agrees to trade his ship's place in the queue for the Chart of the Brittle Circle (there's a Gau colony near there, and Odsin is very interested!).

The Heart pulls up to the quarry and, after some haggling, trades the copper piping in their hold for some bags of salt. They pull away and Rozek gets to work treating it, and after an initial failure that results in a minor explosion and some smelly smoke, she figures it out. She mixes up enough of the treated salt to leach away the radiation from little Pearl, and starts the process for herself, Kazera, and Chambersson.

Where to now? Rokko, their passenger, reminds them of his existence, and they decide to head for Stonebark (which is actually where they were going when they found the Americium Spit). They set sail again, and Chambersson draws a map as they go. They come to a trading post - what used to be a big cargo ship that's now moored in place (and surrounded by ebony-black ivy leaves, as well as multiple signs saying "NO SINGING"). They disembark and enter the main building, and ask why the prohibition on singing. The proprietor only says that the black leaves react to singing, and leaves (lol) it at that.

They do some trading, a bag of salt for some trinkets - Jakesta finds a sword, Rozeks gets some willow wood and some actual tea, Kazera picks up a pair of iron hatchets, and Chambersson finds a metal disc inscribed with some weird writing. They set sail once again, and they spot Stonebark in the distance, just as a thick fog comes up. 

They circle the island for the night, resting, and wait for the fog to break. In the morning, it's at least thinner, and they head ashore to see whether Stonebark is as Rokko remembers it.