Jasper Sanningskar had always been a practical sort of gnome. Or at least he thought he had been. Everything was muddled up now. Memories all scrambled together. He had been headed to “the city” (he couldn’t remember which city) searching for… someone? Something? And then there had been screaming. Running. Something huge overhead… and then nothing.
His first memory after that was hazy and disjointed. A hideous mind flayer holding… something… up to his face. Up to his eye. And then fear. Fear…and pain. And merciful blackness.
Upon waking again he found himself staring out of the cracked window of some form of… coffin? pod? Around him was an alien-looking room with a pool in the center. Things were burning and damaged. A dead Mind Flayer lay in a corner. And there were roars and screams coming from… somewhere. The whole room shook and debris fell from the ceiling. Wherever he was, this did *not* appear to be a good place to be.
He was bound by what seemed to be dead tentacles. And the pod he was in appeared to be poorly moored. He rocked back and forth until it crashed to the ground, and then crawled out into the strange chamber beyond.
In the center of the chamber was a tank full of a dark, viscuous liquid – with strange tadpole-like creatures swimming in it. Jasper felt an instant revulsion towards them – as if his mind was instinctively rejecting their presence.
Travelling on he found another chamber with a strange, runic table and a collection of small stones. And a recently dead… something… laying discarded as if refuse. He felt strangely drawn to the stones – though he could not decipher the language of the runes. He took the stones – feeling they might have further meaning. Touching them gave him jumbled impressions of long ago places and events. They had stories to tell, if he could figure out how to listen.
He scavenged the room for weapons from dead thralls, and then continued on.
He soon came upon a large gash torn in the wall, and what he saw through it shocked him to his core. A large dragon breathing fire and tearing at the side of…. whatever he was in. And beyond the dragon… looked even less promising. Hellish even.
Before he could even get his bearings, he sensed that he was being watched. He leapt back just as a tall, gaunt woman landed in front of him with sword drawn. A Githyanki. Baring her teeth, she accused him of being an Illithid thrall…
But they were both immediately overwhelmed by a sense of… connection… Like a short forced mind-meld. Whatever the Mind Flayers had done to them they were now connected in some way. They still didn’t trust each other – but they knew they were both in the same predicament.
The githyanki called herself Lae’zel, and said they needed to quickly get to the “bridge”. The “nautiloid ship” they were on was failing, and they did *not* want it to end its journey in the Abyss.
The immediate impediment was a group of scavenging imps in the corridor ahead. Lae’zel charged in head-first:
While Jasper took a more pragmatic approach.
Continuing past the imps, they found another room with pods similar to that in which Jasper had awoken. One of them contained a half-elven woman struggling to escape – but her pod was undamaged and she was unable to get out. Jasper examined the nearby panel as Lae’zel hissed about “wasted time” – but he could not make it respond. The woman pointed to another door, and Jasper immediately ran for it – with Lae’zel following while bitterly complaining.
Jasper found a number of odd panels inside, as well as half-transformed humanoids of various kinds. Finally he stumbled upon a “rune-stone” that “felt right”, and grabbed it and ran back to the trapped woman.
Using the stone Jasper found he could communicate mentally with the “control panel”, and directed it to release the woman. She quickly introduced herself as “Shadowheart”, and thanked him for releasing her – with a pointed glare at Lae’zel. They then experienced another moment of mind-meld.. Shadowheart too was bound with them. While they were recovering their bearings Shadowheart quickly retrieved… something… from a nearby panel, but merely shook her head when asked what it was. “There’s no time! We need to get to the bridge!” And Lae’zel agreed.
At the entrance to the bridge Lae’zel began laying out a plan, but Shadowheart immediately objected – saying she didn’t trust a Gith to lead them. As they began to argue over who couldn’t trust who, Jasper rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Let’s just go! I don’t intend to get stuck in Hell waiting for you two to agree on something!”
Unfortunately in the large command center they found a Mind Flayer engaged in mortal combat with a Demon Knight of some kind – both far out of their weight class. In addition, imps and demonic beasts were all over the bridge engaged with dying thralls. The two primary combatants were quite occupied with each other, but they all felt the Mind Flayer’s command to “regain control of the ship”. Conveniently, that was just what they had intended anyway.
Jasper led as many Imps astray as he could with an illusionary diversion. Fortunately imps were not terribly intelligent or perceptive, as he found it far more difficult than he remembered generating the illusion.
Lae’zel charged straight into combat with a hell-beast barring their way.
Meanwhile Shadowheart used this cover to make a run for the helm. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was doing, but she connected two “control tentacles” together hoping for the best. Just as a huge red dragon head burst into the room, the ship shifted dimensions one more time.
Mortally wounded, the Nautiloid ship flew crazily over the landscape below, shedding debris and passengers as it careened towards a hillside.
The dying Mind Flayer reached out mentally to Jasper, attempting to force him to come closer so that it could feed and survive. But Jasper summoned just enough will-power to leap backwards – taking his chances with fate instead.
He awoke battered, bruised… but alive on a sandy beach. He wasn’t sure where he was. He wasn’t quite certain who he was. He wasn’t sure what had been done to him on the Illithid ship. But he was alive, and he was free. That was a start.
Author’s Notes:
Rendering-wise, BG3 kind of starts off with a bang. Illithid planar raiding ships being attacked by githyanki riding red dragons as it flies through the Abyss?? It has definite parallels to Irenicus’ lab in BG2. Right down to the primary antagonist(s) being way-out-of-your-league at the time.
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