Dawn of Flame Gameplay

Zaxsha tilts her head. "Is it actually abandoned? Are we certain of that?"

With a closer look at the vessel during your approach, even battered and blackened by the assault, the ship remains a work of art. Curves and spines of gleaming brass combine with dark plating to give the ship a feel that’s half architectural and half insectile. Oblong domes are set in the top of the ship like eyes, opaque enough to hide their secrets. Along the bow of the ship, ignan characters spell it's name, unrecognized by most of the crew.

Aligning and docking with the port airlock is simple enough for Zaksha, allowing the crew access to the disabled ship. Despite the damage it suffered fleeing the whale, the various systems on the ship remain functional for the time being, giving it breathable air, normal gravity, and lighting, albeit flickering occasionally.

"Ship's called the Breath of Embers. Anyone know what that is?" Helena lets H3NR1 go first into the ship before her.

"Some sort of fire plane poetry?" Voca hazards, sweeping over the vista with her camcorder. "This ship is half art piece, huh?"

Through the door to the northeast, the crew enters a room that feels as if lifted from a temple, the walls in here made entirely of the basalt previously relegated to ornamentation and bearing brass sconces carrying flames to light the room. The floor is of yellow tiles, emblazoned with a red sunburst in the center, mirrored in the ceiling above. Brass vines with leaves of fire wind their way up a basalt plinth in the center of the room, which stands empty except for an odd reptilian creature hovering above.

Upon noticing the crew, it shouts excitedly "Welcome, welcome! You are welcome in my temple, and if you have any wish, you need only speak it and it shall be granted!"

Zaxsha moves through the room and to the nearest door, but then turns and asks the strange creature, "Who and what are you?"

”Good to meet you, Sl’Macru the Benevolent!” Voca responds, camcorder out. ”When you say you’re the patron of this temple, do you mean the whole ship? Or just this room?”

”Ants?” Voca echoes. ”Like bugs?”

They nod, "Bugs creep me out."

Zaxsha tries opening the door, but the reptilian creature quickly waves a hand and the door slides shut again.

Says the creature: "Oh, you shouldn't go that way, Angry Abs the Nudie Spirit lives there, and he doesn't like visitors at all"

Zaxsha just blinks several times, really having no response to that ... Common is her second language, but she's pretty sure some of those words were just nonsense

Cate, as confused as Zaxsha, looks between the doors and the reptilian creature. "So other than you, the giant ants and the... Nudie Spirit... does anything else inhabit this ship?" She asks.

The creature shrugs it's pairs of arms, "I dunno, I haven't been past the ants!"

Dr. Boros turns one of his heads toward the direction of the argument from another room. "I hear... tinny voices. Like some sort of terrible ventriloquist act of an argument."

The party decides to move towards the north door to investigate the argument they hear, but as they approach the door, the creature on the plinth becomes irate.

"Hey, hey! Where do you think you're going, I didn't say you could leave! I'm not done having fun yet!" it cries furiously, firing a thin ray of pale green energy that sizzles into the door above Zaxsha

Voca’s gun is aimed at the creature on the plinth at once, and she growls, ”do some math. Six of us? One of you? You’ll be riddled with gunfire before you take down one of us and trust me when I say that I’m sure Misha would love an excuse to use his gun there.”

[Intimidate: 23]

Voca's threat is ineffective and the creature attacks. Though crammed into a tight space, the group encircles the creature and quickly kills it. The 'ventriloquist act' stops when it dies.

"Well that was... unusual," says Zaxsha.

Proceeding to the north, the crew finds a roughly L shaped room, ornate carpets covering the floor of this chamber. Where metal doors don’t take the wall space, curtains of red material frame murals of brass starships flying in formation through fiery skies. Low, plush divans surround hologram projectors and lavish brass tables holding hookahs and VR headsets. Damage from fire and impact mars both of two double doors on the forward side of the room as well as one other door on the near east wall; with the trio of magma elementals pounding at them being the obvious cause, and the source of the earlier banging the crew heard as they boarded. The elementals turn to stare at the crew as the door slides open, dropping their tasks to deal with the more pressing matter of the intruders.

The elementals have a quick, brutal strike, immediately surrounding Zaxsha and bringing her down. H3NR1 falls in this attack as well. The rest of the crew responds in kind, a bevy of fire peppering elementals and forcing them back. They surge again. This time, their attacks find purchase against Misha, bringing him down after a searing blaze of fire, but they’re eventually brought down by a final shot from Helena.

Dr. Boros begins retrieving as many salvageable syringes as he can before turning to the unconscious people on the floor. He sighs and pulls out two serums of healing. He grabs some alcohol and a cotton ball from his med kit and souses the cotton in alcohol. After rubbing down an appropriate section on both teammates he injects them simultaneously.