Chapter 4: Asteroid Prison Break
Because who needs "heroes" when you can have VILLAIN PROTAGONISTS and MAGNIFICENT BASTARDS?
During our last adventure, Desstra and Zephyr were squabbling and hurting each other over petty insults, but stopped immediately when they realized Henry was gone, with Charlie pointing this out. The artificer was the one who found the Horn of Osius first, after all, so they needed him when the time came to stage a prison break, and get back all their stuff afterwards.
The three were searching the prison courtyard, and soon enough found Henry in the midst of a crowd of inmates, who were cheering wildly, watching some kind of event unfold.
"Hold on," Zephyr said. "What's going on here, Henry? What the hell are you and all these other idiots screeching like chimpanzees about?"
"There's some kind of prison brawl going on. Look here, the two biggest, meanest convicts in the whole joint are punching each other for no reason at all!"
The four joined the crowd, and indeed saw two very big, strong individuals beating each other up. One was obviously an Orc, with scarred green skin, a shaven scalp, bare feet and enormous fangs, but the other was harder to identify- she had the same proportions as a human woman in her late twenties or early thirties, just on a scale much larger, at nine feet tall.
Unlike most of the frost giants that Henry had sometimes seen working at the spaceports and lightning rail stations on Eberron, she had dark brown hair and deep blue eyes, and was definitely a degree smaller than those brutes, though she still made ordinary humans look small and puny.
The Orc on the left appeared to be winning the fight, and was rocking and socking the tiny giantess left and right... until he wasn't, and his opponent responded by kneeing him in between his legs repeatedly, then belting him so hard he flew across the courtyard.
The giantess wasn't finished, though. She picked up the groaning Orc, who was clearly in a lot of pain from being hit in a spot where his nervous system was sensitive, and asked him this question:
"You know why they call me Frostborn, bitch?"
"I don't want to know-"
"Because I'm the coldest motherfucker in the neighborhood."
She then jabbed him in the neck, instantly putting him in a coma that he would probably suffer permanent injuries from even after waking up.
The crowd cheered again, louder than ever.
"Man, Thianna really fucked Throg up!"
"Yeah, he ain't walking on sturdy legs anytime soon!"
"She's a true *censored* in every sense of the word!"
"Hold on, you can't say that! That's a derogatory slur!"
"Says who, this is prison life!"
After that was done with, Henry got an idea.
"Maybe we should talk to her. The crowd called her Thianna, right? Based on what she did to Throg the Orc, she could really help us out with escaping if we convinced her to."
"Hell no!," Zephyr shouted. "Our current mission is to find out what to do with the Horn once we escape. I'd rather not have another woman fuck it up."
Desstra shook her head.
"I'll pretend you didn't say that last part, but we haven't even agreed on our plans for the Horn of Osius. You and your bucket of bolts want to sell it to the highest bidder, while I want to destroy it, and Henry hasn't even said anything about his motives. We need a plan first before we talk to Thianna. And I should warn you, selling the Horn isn't a very good idea. It's better to destroy it, since you'll be dead before you can even spend your money, 'cause of the war that'll happen shortly afterwards."
"I actually agree with Desstra, a goblin archaeologist told me what the damn musical instrument does," Henry said. "Sounds like she and I have the same knowledge on how dangerous it is. Zephyr, Charlie, start thinking of other people besides yourselves."
"Alright then," Charlie replied, "but only if being the good guy benefits us in return!"
The gang followed Thianna back to the cafeteria, where most of the prisoners had finished eating. The half giant noticed them in no time at all, and clenched her fists, making a fighting stance, automatically assuming more people wanted to get thrashed.
"What do you people want?"
Time for roll for charisma! Unfortunately, the least dependable character in this situation spoke first. Luckily, he rolled a 20.
"You think you can help us stage a prison break? We have a genius plan, and a prostitute like you would come in handy," Zephyr told Thianna.
Her answer?
"You really think I'm a prostitute? Ah, forget about it, I already beat up three people for saying the same thing, not counting Throg. Sure, I want to break out of this joint. But you four have to explain first before I evaluate. Also, tell me your names. Mine's Thianna. Thianna Frostborn, destroyer of crooked racist cops."
"I'm Zephyr, most unique and interesting person you'll ever meet. This bucket of bolts is my best friend Charlie, the super uninteresting generic dark-skinned human is John Henry, and this young drow lass is Desstra, who probably doesn't even know how to write in Engrish."
Desstra replied by saying, "SHUT UP, you furry freak!" It was pointless, though, as Zephyr had spent his entire life unapologetically insulting and mocking people of all different groups, and he just didn't listen to her. More physical abuse would be required to change Zephyr's mind.
"My, oh my, you're a colorful crew," Thianna told the four. "I heard from the magistrates about the ruckus you made. Fun fact, I got locked up for getting drunk, taking a few insults and slurs a little too personal, and beating several people almost to death. You wanna tell me your brilliant escape plan now?"
Henry started right away.
"I do know that prisons of this type tend to hold a large arsenal of weapons, both lethal and nonlethal, for the law enforcement to use on dangerous criminals. Combat wands, siege staves, magic guns, destructive spell tomes, enchanted melee implements, automatic and semi-automatic crossbows, solarian crystals, you name it."
Charlie nodded his head, making an additional point:
"And if we could find out how to open the armory to the prisoners..."
"Then all hell will break loose," Desstra assumed.
"Okay, great," Thianna commented. "But how are we gonna open the armory? And how do we let the prisoners know that they have a chance to fight back and escape?"
That's when Zephyr came in with a key detail to save (or maybe doom) the day. This came from his experience of escaping prisons, lots of them.
"There's a terrasteel magic battery hooked up to one of the prison's watchtowers, behind a metal grate, which controls power to the security systems of the cells, law enforcement armory, the place where confiscated belongings are stored, the doors between corridors, and even the front gates leading out to the main city. If someone was to rip that arcane battery out of its socket, the whole joint would be vulnerable to a prison break of epic proportions. So we definitely need to do that if we're gonna escape."
"So how are we gonna get it, plankton brain?," Henry asked, sarcastically. "It's 20 feet up in the air in the most heavily guarded area of the prison!"
"Well," Zephyr said, "I hear the creepy men here find Desstra attractive. Maybe she can bribe them into helping us."
"Like hell I'm gonna use my sexuality as a tool!," she angrily snarled.
"No, really, you'd be attractive to a lot of men, not gonna lie," Thianna answered. "Hell, people still hit on me, and I'm a 9-foot tall asexual virgin wizard."
"Let's face it, it's impossible to get up there without been seen," Henry added.
Zephyr wasn't so happy about his teammates' pessimism.
"I have only one plan, and that plan requires us to grab a terrasteel battery, so FIGURE IT OUT, DAMMIT!"
But while everyone was arguing, Charlie had approached the watchtower without fear or hesitation, and incidentally, the sentry up high had a phobia of robots. He rose upwards on his telescopic extending legs, tore the grate off, threw it away, and grabbed the battery, (the grate flew some distance before hitting someone in the head,) then returned to his companions.
"Is this what you were looking for, lads?"
"Huh, neat!," Henry said.
Then, all of a sudden, emergency alarms started blaring throughout the prison, and this instantaneously made the prisoners think that someone had managed to escape. Not wanting to lose a fine opportunity, the prisoners, who were all out of their cells eating in the cafeteria or getting exercise in the courtyard, scattered in all directions, checking if the doors leading to other parts of the jail were locked. They weren't.
Unfortunately, armed soldiers were going to pour through those doors in just a few moments.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention this part," Zephyr informed his fellow outlaws. "When you steal the battery, everything goes into emergency mode, and even though the security doors are all unlocked, the guards WILL be informed that an escape is going on. The only way they'll restore power and order is by plugging the battery back in its socket. So let's GET MOVING!"
"The rodent's right!," Thianna shouted. "Time to spread our wings and go free!"
"Hey, I'm not a rodent!"
The team sprinted to the armory as fast as they could, but several guards were already there, though they hadn't grabbed any weapons yet.
"You're going down, criminal scum!"
Thianna never let them get a chance. When one man tried to grab a magic firearm, the half-giant did a karate chop which split his head open. She made short work of the other three guards, body-slamming one and breaking his spine, brutally twisting another one's neck, and ripping apart the last one, limb from limb, like a sheet of paper.
By the time that was over with, the room was splattered with gore, and everyone else (besides Zephyr, of course,) was unnerved by Thianna's display of brutality, which was saying something, since all of them were fighters in one way or another.
"Who taught you to fight like that?!," Henry demanded to know.
"Even I know how to kill cleaner than that!," Desstra said, clutching her pearls.
"Long Ears here is making a good statement!," Charlie added.
"I thought that was really cool!," Zephyr uttered, in contrast to everyone else.
Thianna's answer?
"I should tell you, my dad taught me how to do stuff like that. I'll explain my background later, when we figure out our reason to stick together. For now, let's grab some spicy weapons before anyone else comes in here."
"You wanna find out who her dad is, Charlie?," Zephyr asked his best friend.
"No, I'm too scared."
A few minutes later...
The situation had turned into complete mayhem. Prisoners were scrambling frantically to avoid being hit by magic missiles, crossbow bolts and bullets, desperate to escape while all the doors and cells remained unlocked, while our five misfit heroes battled the prison's security forces in a fast-paced firefight.
Charlie was the center of attention. Several combat drones (from Starfinder and Shadowrun) were swarming him and bombarding him with all kinds of projectiles, but the shots merely bounced off his mithril armor. He swatted several drones out of the air with his bare hands, one by one, and let Zephyr climb on top of him while wielding a fully automatic crossbow to shoot down the rest of them.
"TAKE THIS! AND THAT! AND SOME OF THIS!"
"Yeah, come and get some!"
After Charlie and Zephyr had taken care of the drone problem, Henry, Thianna and Desstra cleared a path to the prison's open gates using different arcane weapons. Although, it was very risky, and the three had come very close to losing their lives to deadly enemy attacks. Fortunately, Thianna's iceberg cannon, Desstra's lightning carbine, and Henry's Ifrit-class flamethrower were by far the most effective and destructive of all the weapons stored in the armory.
At one point in the ferocious skirmish, Desstra snapped a guard's neck with her bare hands, and Henry also contributed by shoving someone over a ledge.
Soon, inmates began grabbing weapons from the dead and wounded, and the security forces were quickly being overwhelmed thanks to the surprise advantage the fugitives had.
With all the systemic prejudice and police brutality against nonhumans that occurred on the Rock of Bral, a catastrophic event like this was bound to happen.
It didn't matter much to our gang of five, though. They all needed to work together to accomplish the same goal.
However, Thianna didn't know about the mission yet, since she was the newest member of the party. Henry, Charlie, Zephyr and Desstra were digging around in the confiscation bin, looking for a particular object of interest.
"We already have all of our possessions within reach!," Thianna said. "Let's grab them and go, before we're caught!"
"No, wait," Desstra told her. "There's something we need first."
"Found it!," Charlie proclaimed. He held the Horn of Odin in his mechanized hand.
Thianna's eyes went wide with shock and horror.
"Where did you find that horn? No, this isn't possible..."
"So you know what this is," Zephyr replied. "I was told it was too dangerous to sell, because it would start a war."
"Damn right it would!," Thianna shouted. "Do you know how much suffering that thing has caused? I've spent many years tracking it down, in order to destroy it!"
"So we're all in the same boat," said Henry. "Literally, too. Let's just find my spelljamming ship, the Righteous Indignation, and get the fuck outta here. Then we'll discuss our next steps."
The escapees got their bearings and soon found the prison complex's hangar, which featured an opening to the vacuum of Wildspace, that was sealed by a force field responsible for keeping the artificial atmosphere intact.
The good news? The Righteous Indignation was easy to spot. Being a heavily armored damselfly shuttle, its legs and wings made it stick out amongst the other spacecraft and spelljamming ships.
The bad news? Escaping the broken prison wasn't going to be the end of the party's problems...
As Henry climbed into the steering seat of the ship, and activated its unmanned spelljamming helm, Desstra's ears began to twitch- a sign that something was off.
"Guys, I have this bizarre feeling that something incredibly horrible awaits us just outside of the city."
Zephyr wasn't believing it.
"Look, we got our hands real dirty and stained with blood in this prison break, so how bad can the rest of our mission be?"
The Righteous Indignation soared out of the prison's ship hangar, and circled the Rock of Bral once.
Then, OUT OF NOWHERE, a fusillade of glowing green magic missiles tore the damselfly ship's left wing off, causing it to spiral out of control!
"Someone fired on us!," Henry shouted. "Brace yourselves, we're going to crash!"
Everyone held on, and miraculously, nobody was hurt, even though the Righteous Indignation was damaged beyond repair.
Charlie opened a sealed hatch that let the crew get out, and they quickly realized they were in the middle of a field of wheat and rice, crops to feed the Rock's teeming urban population. But the real question was, who shot Henry's spelljamming ship out of the sky with the magic missiles?
It wouldn't take long to find out, as Thianna noticed something very, very wrong with the city in the distance: It was burning down, as if someone had cast a whole bunch of Level 20 meteor spells for maximum devastation.
"Guys... you might want to see this. Really bad news. It's an invasion force, probably on the hunt for what's currently in our possession."
And true to her words, five enormous, universe-hopping interstellar warships with hulls covered in Gothic castles, cathedrals, bastions and fortifications, were hovering above the besieged city of the Rock. It was a full-blown WARZONE.
The Imperium of Man has arrived.
"What should we do?," Desstra asked.
"We really don't have many options, because there are no spelljamming ships on this side of the Rock," Zephyr added.
"We go into the inferno, and we fight to kill, until we get our hands on a ship and figure out the whole deal behind the Horn of Osius. There has to be someone out there, some organization, that wants to dispose of it. We have to act, and the fate of the multiverse might just depend on whether we destroy this blasted musical instrument or not."
"It's time to do what fate brought us together to do."
And so the party of five prepared for the gathering storm... thankfully, Henry's arsenal of weapons and equipment had survived the crash, and these characters are powerful enough to be past Level 10 in a typical DND game.
There's no turning back at this point... every day that passes, the Imperium's influence on the DND multiverse becomes stronger, and the authoritarian regime becomes more and more of a threat. Will the evils of the Abyss, the Lower Planes and the Nine Hells notice the change of the status quo?
Meanwhile, other factions are waiting to make their move or sabotage their enemies, and the great game of conquest continues, played on countless boards against infinite opponents at once.
Next up on NECKBEARD WARS:
THE BATTLE FOR THE ROCK- PART 1