Tales from Beyond the Spider Moon

Chapter Twelve: Hulk “There is a chamber at the end of this hall,” the Forged Woman said. “If it has not collapsed, it should provide safety so you can recover from your injuries.”      “We don’t understand you,” Ceru replied; but Tormund offered to translate. Her Dwarvish was halting, and of a dialect that was difficult for him to understand; but passable in those dark hallways. They made their way to the stone door and entered what appeared to be a stonemason’s workshop. Everywhere there were tools, mostly rotten with age; half-finished etchings and piles of hand-chiseled brick. The warforged lay Tormund on a stone workbench and sat beside him. The others gathered around, and with the door closed, they rested a moment.      “I am called Hulk,” Tormund translated for the warforged. “I was taught the dwarf tongue by the dwarves who found me and woke me in Avungar - the ruin of a city far to the east.”      “Would you be able to locate this Av...

  Chapter Eleven: Ruin Tormund was the first into the crevice, followed by a pair of genasi marines. The dwarf staked down ropes as he went, leading the way for Oquee, Ceru, and finally Adovar to descend into the darkness. The going was slow and treacherous. Ceru and each of the genasi wore small lanterns tied to their belts, while Oquee’s staff gave off an unnatural white brilliance. These played and competed with each other, causing long shadows that danced around them,  if the darkness itself was fighting for dominance, trying drive them back out.      They dropped through a hole in the roof of a squat, square chamber covered in dust. The walls were finely chiseled stone carved out of the hard rock and reinforced with brick and mortar. The room was barren, except for a single stone door on the south wall. All decoration and design was worn away by the harsh environment that had been allowed to creep into this dark place, scouring the room's every surface. ...

  Chapter Ten: Preparation No one needed to wake Ceru in the morning. The change in her sleep schedule kept her up for most of the night, but even so, the unrelenting heat of the morning sun and glare of the Pyre’s light on the pale and dusty ground was enough to shift her from her slumber. Even in the lee of the Black Ophelia , with the sun behind her and the long shadow of the ship to keep her cool, she and all her fellows were roused at first light.      She dressed for the heat, fetched a tin mug of coffee from the cook’s impromptu kitchen, and joined the others at the map table. The scouts had returned a little while before sunrise and were lounging in the sand nearby, eating breakfast in silence.      “The scouts put our target just beyond that outcropping,” Adovar said, pointing to a jagged trio of rocks in the distance. “We’ll find a small crevice leading to what is - apparently - a remarkably intact dungeon.” He indicated the spot on the map. ...

  We know Cerulean Crowe  hates them. We know they're probably all pirates or - at least - she thinks they are. But they don't appear in most D&D worlds, and they're not in any official supplement (yet - man, I'd love to put one on D&D Beyond, but I don't want to jump through the hoops to get it to work right). But I'm on a tangent. Sorry about that. The Shark Men haven't shown up in the story yet, but they've been mentioned - and they play a large role in Crowe's backstory, so I know they'll be coming up again, and you might not know who they are. The Praedaren were created by Anthony Vallozzi , and I first came across them back when this Spelljammer campaign was just going to be Pirates of the Dark Water, but D&D. I was looking for interesting things to populate my Aquatic campaign with, when I came across this post: [Race] Player Race: Praedaren (The GMBinder Link) It was great. Like that top comment said, it's Street Sharks; ...

  Chapter Nine: Desolation Descriptions of the barren world did it no justice. Ceru stared, and in every direction, she saw only ruin. Jagged rocks and dust, with the Pyre in the sky, not quite as large as Bob had made out; but massive, and brighter than anything Ceru had seen before.      All hands congregated on the weather deck and were given instructions. The Black Ophelia was secured, exactly as if it were moored to a dock back home, only it sat in the loose sand, which gave Ceru the uneasy feeling that the ship was scuttled. It was pointless, but a life at sea filled her with the inescapable dread that they were stranded. Anchor posts were driven into the ground at even intervals around the ship, and tents were erected over the anchor lines. Gear and equipment were hauled down from the hold and by nightfall the Black Ophelia resembled a small village.      As the Pyre sank slowly past the horizon, Ceru was eating with Mookee and some of the oth...

Streets of Brass on DeviantArt  

  Part Three: Dust and Embers Chapter Eight: Landfall On the evening of their arrival at Ashen, Ceru was woken midway through her evening slumber. It was Carver, with a hand on her shoulder, rousing her.      “All hands,” he said. “We’re here. I’m guessing Mook needs you up in the tops.”      Bleary-eyed, with a head full of cotton and half-finished dreams, Ceru nodded, reaching for her canteen. After a drink, and a handful of water splashed on her face, with a quick stretch to try willing herself awake, she made it to her feet. Carver was already gone, and all around her, the rest of her watch were also slapping, and stretching, and yawning themselves awake.      Ceru tended to sleep in her trousers and a blouse, so she fetched a vest from her pack and quickly laced it up before pulling on her boots and strapping her work knife to her belt. A handful of jokes about sleep deprivation and the curse of the dreamless were bandied about, but...

Chapter Seven: Sea Stories Ceru and Mookee were looking at the blazing sun in the distance, trying to spot the tiny world of Ashen, somewhere in its orbit when the bell rang and the halfling bid her good night. She climbed down from the rigging and stretched a little, turned her head to crack her neck and headed below deck. There she found Oquee, Bob, and the other regulars on her watch, lounging around, playing cards and shooting the breeze.     She fell in with the other humans, who dealt her into their game. After losing a fair bit of coin over the past few nights, she was ready to make it back tonight. Someone chuckled at that. Oquee sat in the corner, on his bedding, drawing on his pipe, snout stuck in one of the large tomes he often carried down from the great cabin. After a while, and into her second cup, someone asked about Ashen - the planet to which they were sailing.     “I know Ashen,” the half-orc Bob said. “The old sages called it Cindre, and it’s the...

Chapter Six: Under Way Life in the sky was similar enough to life at sea. Everything operated in shifts, and on something resembling a schedule, so that there was always at least a skeleton crew awake and rested enough to run things smoothly.      The Pyre burned in the void with no sea behind which to set, so there was no real daylight or night. Only the long shadows of the ship, when she turned her deck away from the sun; and the constant, dim, and twinkling stars. Ceru found herself sharing the midwatch with Mookee and the Forenoon; which meant she slept in the early evening and woke in time for the second dog watch.      Since Mookee practically lived in the rigging, her only job in the over-night was to assist the halfling with whatever he needed doing, and to be awake and alert if something went wrong. During the Forenoon watch, she ended up where she was when the Elf came looking for her - swabbing the deck.      She was dunking her m...

Part Two: The Void I Chapter Five: Spelljamming In the darkness of the crew quarters, below the galley, Ceru and Oquee were lounging on their palettes. A small chess board lay between them. Lost pieces were strewn about on either side of the board, but the white king - Ceru’s king - lay on its side.      The game, now largely forgotten, had been the foundation on which they had built a conversation, and even though that the game was over, the conversation continued.      “I like you, Oquee. I never had a chance to meet the wizards on my last voyage,” Ceru took a swig out of the bottle she'd swiped from the galley. “I have to admit, though, I don’t really understand how it all works.” She passed the bottle over.      “Oh,” Oquee said, his long neck stretching to its full length in an unsettling way. “Spelljamming, you mean?” She nodded. “Well, the basics are the same. You know that. The magic makes the function of just about everything onboard...

Oquee on DeviantArt "The great, green tortle stood on the deck of his ship. No hint of expression on his snapper-turtle face. "'Why is he just standing there,' the pirate captain bellowed. 'Kill him!' "In answer to this, the tortle furrowed his brow and cocked his head, then took a single step to the left. Just then, a crack of lightning from the ship's mage shot out across the deck, missing the captain but striking the mast behind him. "With a creaking grown, the fallen mast took out the captain and a half-dozen pirates, collapsing into the forecastle where the tortle had been standing. Calmly, he looked at the ruin wood. "'Hrm,' he grunted." Oquee Ocquee is a Diviniation Wizard from the village of Maluhia on the Snout of Ongmar, on the planet Quelya. He is young, for a PyreSpace Tortle, and is only about 20 years into his Odyssey - the extended journey every Tortle takes as a rite of passage into adulthood. After a b...