Into the Gray

Session Summary

We spend an hour diving down in the underwater New Dawn warehouse in Nitas. Elzara and Wash work together to break open many of the doors. Inside, we collect 11 boxes from podiums, a chest with Afra Rusudan’s journal inside, and orb fragments. On our way up we hear what Twinkletoes can confirm is in fact a kraken screaming. However, those are extremely loud creatures so hearing it doesn’t mean it’s extremely nearby.

Log

We board Timmy for our 48 hour rental.

By 9am we are in position ready to dive. Arachne describes how she squeezed through a lot of cracks as an octopus.

Hour 1 Spells as Reef Shark:

• Pharèl → Twin Polymorph on self and Star
• Arachne → Polymorph self
• Twinkletoes → Polymorph self

The others are using their helmets as we pull them down to the New Dawn sunken facility in Nitas.

The entrance is locked but Elzara helps Wash crowbar it open successfully. They have broken the hinges. Inside it is dark.

Inside is a familiar setup to the New Dawn buildings we’ve seen before, only without a second floor. There’s a door leading further into the building, we assume that’ll lead back and down into the sublayer where they pretend to do real work, followed by the further nefarious areas.

The door in the back is also locked. I bump against it until Wash starts trying to open it. Nat20 as Wash perceives the door. The hinges are corroded. It looks like somebody welded this door shut. Wash and Elzara try again. Unfortunately, they can’t pry it open.

Star swims around and tries some doors. He gets stuck in a door… but he manages to wriggle free.

He finds a dining and visitor area. He tries to open drawers. He slaps open up some. There is disintegrated paperwork, empty ink bottles, glassware in the cabinets.

Elzira casts Enhance Ability on Elzara and she’s just able to pry it open, it swings open the opposite way as expected.

Before… this door led down a hallway that had 6 doors and each door was an office. This time, on the left side is one door, and on the right there is one door. At the end of the hall leads to a left with a stairway.

We’ve spent about 20 minutes so far, 40 minutes until we need to return to the top.

We go to crack open the doors. The door to the right is locked. They start prying off hinges. There is a blue rug. This office is a bit larger than what we’ve seen before. Arachne would recognize this room. There is a locked chest in the back corner. They crack it open too. In the box are some electronics parts we’d recognize, they remind us of our very own life-saving orbs. Some pieces seem not corroded, mostly it looks in progress. In the desk, empty ink containers and the like. In the bottom drawer is a safe. Elzara picks it up to bring with.

It’s been 30 minutes.

To the room on the left! In this one…

This one reminds everyone of the fourth basement of the original one, where there were podiums with energy readings as if for batteries. In this case, it looks like all are for prototypes of the devices on our persons. There are different ones, all the ones on the left are corroded, on the right there’s a part in the middle-right where they begin to stop being corroded. Some look as if they’ve been intentionally damaged, stabbed, crushed, etc. All are in glass coverings. The glass does not seem to be watertight. Each has a drawer under them, unlocked. Most have disintegrated papers. In the last three, however, are sealed boxes. They go in the bag. Wash looks back through and finds 11 total boxes.

So far collected:

• Uncorroded prototype pieces
• 10lb chest
• 11 boxes

I swim down the hall to scout ahead around the corner. There’s another hallway, which leads into a few more rooms, which have closed doors. One door looks different from every other door so far.

It’s been 45 total minutes.

Wash asks if I saw anything interesting. I show them down the hall and boop the different looking door.

Before we head back up, they start trying to pry open the normal doors and do so quickly and easily.

It’s been 50 minutes and we head up.

As we start to swim out… Arachne at 9:52am hears a familiar screaming noise underwater (much like the noise she heard before). It feels like it’s coming from everywhere.

We all swim out at top speed. As we’re swimming out, we do see a lone shark. It looks like Me! Me looks fine to us, perhaps a little faster than usual, a little more down.

Once we’re up, Arachne tells us that was the same sound she heard. Twinkletoes has in fact had the pleasure of hearing a kraken before, and that is most definitely the kraken. Something may be disturbing the kraken.

Star manages to lockpick the safe. It is a very good safe as there is no sign of significant water damage inside. There is a book, this is Afra’s journal! He talks about visiting some of the other places (we’re familiar with) that no longer exist as well as meeting locations. At the end, it sounds like the country of Conqel had two plans that Afra thought were quite absurd and thought were foolish and dangerous to put into action. He does not specify what these plans were. The writing does not match the star chart I have.

We crack open the 11 boxes. They are very well sealed. One might say water tightly sealed, even using magic to keep the water out. There are basic read-outs, they’ve been doing tests to check out to get the orbs to teleport if too much physical stress is put on them. They’re concerned about the orbs not being able to be destroyed. The orb under stress should remove itself that can trigger or it can survive being under the scenario. They seemed weirdly obsessively concerned with the orbs being indestructible.

There is a portal somewhere about a half mile down where we were.