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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SelcSilverhand" data-source="post: 6363314" data-attributes="member: 30016">The metal halls are quiet as you back track through the ship to the room Henrick was using as a hiding place. There are no signs of the mutated crewmen or the animals that have taken over the ship. The only sounds you hear are the tread of your boots on steel floors. Even the hiss and banging of steam pipes are slowly fading as the pressure in the lines drop now that the shard has been removed. The shard itself hums occasionally, each time marked by a flare of light as some of the runes glow in thick animated bands around its surface, before going dormant again. The sight reminds you of chains binding the crystal. Henrick mutters about the creature being restless and testing its bonds. The shard continues to drip water but seems stable enough. The “flare ups” don’t seem to have a pattern to them and aren’t accelerating as far as you can tell. Before long you have reached the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?314626-The-Wayfinders-The-Wreck-of-the-Archon&p=6164019&viewfull=1#post6164019" target="_blank">Cooler</a> once again. Midian lowers the crystal gently to the ground in the back corner. It seems safe enough here for now and you take the time to break for a meal. Henrick eats a little before moving off a bit to fiddle with his broken wand. A few moments later you hear an exclamation of surprise. Henrick holds up his broken wand incredulously. It is no longer spitting sparks but instead drips water from the damaged section. The red tip now shows an icy blue. He then points at your feet and indicates the small puddles near where you were sitting. A quick check of your equipment reveals that your magical weapons have all begun to drip water. Drawing them sends a splatter of water droplets and they appear wet as if freshly drawn from a pool of water. The strange water is icy cold to the touch. Whisper studies the effect, drawing on her extensive mystical training, and after some experimentation determines that some of your equipment has become imbued with elemental energy. She theorizes it might be due to your exposure to the intense magical field of the shard. Though she is unsure whether or not the effects are permanent; it does not show any signs of ebbing. OOC:[SBLOCK]You can choose how you would like the effect to manifest, once you decide the choice is permanent. A +1 weapon in your possession gains the Icy property (1d6 cold), a +1 armor gains Energy Resistance 5/Cold, or a wand/staff/scroll changes its energy type to cold damage. Midian and Whisper can choose to have the effect manifest when they shapeshift into a water elemental instead of the weapon effect. Your slam attacks would gain the extra cold damage.[/SBLOCK]After your short rest you turn to Henrick to lead you to the surface. You seal the Cooler door behind you as you leave and scatter trash behind you to hide your tracks. Henrick takes the lead, moving slowly and hesitantly. He stops numerous times along the route to ponder branching passageways. He seems to avoid the open passages and instead looks for ones partially blocked by debris. Some passages are marked by signs of violence. Blood, scorch marks, and destroyed equipment are seen most often at these sites. You never see any bodies though, the creatures must be quite efficient at recycling the dead. The strange effects of the Mourning keep the blood from decaying making it hard to tell how recent any of it is. At one intersection you stop to study unusual markings. The walls, floors, and ceilings are covered in thousands of bloody eye drawings. The effect is unnerving and calls to mind the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?314626-The-Wayfinders-The-Wreck-of-the-Archon&p=6204424&viewfull=1#post6204424" target="_blank">words written in the stairwell</a> when you first descended into the belly of the ship. For a moment you think you hear… whispers. They slowly rise in your mind like a tide, growing louder and louder. The sibilant words come from a great multitude and it is impossible to sort out individual refrains. Being seasoned adventurers you are able to shake off the effects and they slowly fade away into the background again. Henrick suffers a bit of a nervous breakdown at this point. He shakes and grabs his head, turning to look down various hallways as if seeking an escape route. Each hall has the red eyes though and you can see the panic rising. Kraken strides forward to him and gives him a few good slaps to bring him around. Shakily, the man leads you farther down a tunnel until you reach a maintenance tube. The confines are narrow but the shaft contains a ladder leading upwards. You shift and shimmy your way upwards at least two levels before reaching a blockage where the tube was partially crushed by a girder. Exiting you find yourself in a hallway blocked except for a door at the far end. Doral sets about checking it for signs of life on the far side and for any traps that may be lying untriggered. Finding nothing amiss he motions you forward again. The door opens onto a steel platform high above a darkened space. You quickly extinguish your lights so as to not give away your position. After a few minutes your eyes adjust. A faint phosphorescence comes from shapes far below you. It looks like some kind of mold growing on stacks of crates. The platform you are on is part of a catwalk spanning the ceiling here. On the wall near you however is something unusual. It looks like several tumor growths joined by a thin webbing of slowly pulsing veins. You see more on the walls and ceiling all joined together be a webwork of circulatory systems. Henrick shakes his head when you look at him to indicate he doesn’t know what they are. Each one is not large, about the size of your head and don’t seem to have anything with which to grab, bite, or claw at you. You keep a wary eye on them as you slowly make your way out onto the catwalk. Halfway across you hear a noise far below. Some shapes are moving slowly around the warehouse floor. You can hear slow dragging footsteps, wet sounding “schlup” noises, and the muttering multi-tonal voices of the infested crewmen. Lowlight or Darkvision[SBLOCK]You can see humanoid figures dragging body parts across the warehouse floor towards something below the far end of the catwalk. It looks to be a thick protrubrance, like a vast toothless maw, that has burst up through the floor of the ship. The crewmen are throwing the body parts into the maw as if feeding it.[/SBLOCK] The creatures don’t seem to notice you in the darkness that high above them. The catwalk continues through the darkness towards an outer wall. Henrick’s face has gone pale and he is starting to breathe rapidly.</blockquote>

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