Session 10: Tuesday is Applesauce Day
Oliver is stunned by the intellect devourer's mind blast, and completely incapable of rational thought or action. Johnny and Ren quickly jump into action and eliminate the tiny creature, but it is joined by another antagonist: a formless blob covered in mouths filled with pointy teeth. The creature gibbers and blathers confusingly, sending the room into chaos as people's perceptions shift. Eventually, this foe, too, is defeated.
The crew then explores the hold, calling down Lily and Iese to come and cure Oliver. Most of the boxes are filled with cylindrical glass terraria of fascinating and fantastical life forms. Marto takes a tiny elephant on a flower and gives a musical rain terrarium to Lily as a gift. Ren gets a crochety insect living in a cactus, which she sends down to Laverne. Johnny hangs a tree of glowing caterpillars at his side. Other selections include coral covered in batfish and glitterblasting fungi. Marto names his elephant Donald. Aside from the terraria, they also uncover a hatch leading down a flexible tube toward the ocean floor.
Studying the terraria, Marto realizes that these life-forms weren't just taken from distant lands, but that these are actually the originals, the ancestors of their counterparts out in the world.
The crew brings Jorge to the hold, where the vines grab him and hold him in place. They then explore the lab, where they find ten scooters in glass cylinders. Johnny breaks open the first one, and out spills a seemingly animalistic scooter. Communication with this entity fails. They then open all of the jars, and find a continuum of apparent intelligence. The final version can communicate in Common and explains that he has no memories of life before or during the tube, but he has significant amounts of knowledge about the world. Johnny decides to name him Tenor. They task him with organizing and leading the nine other scooters an seeing if they can determine a goal for themselves.
Elswhere in the ship, the crew finds a few pearls and other odds-and-ends, such as healing potions and another potion of water breathing. They also find a chimera in the holding pens, which seems to be on the side of the Termite Folk. This is left where it is, locked up in a cage.
With the ship thoroughly explored, they head down the tube (with several handfuls of falafel). This returns them to a set of tunnels very similar to the ones they found earlier under the Isle of Grownde. However, these are equipped with a monorail system heading east and west, as well as an alchemy lab containing a variety of rare, but mundane ingredients. Heading east (away from Natalia, they come to the "First Golden Flame and Royal Court of Natalia Combined Center of Excellence for the Study of Social Law". Ren is nervous and sneaks along behind, but Marto is excited and steps into the fancy lobby, followed by the rest of the crew. Ren makes a beeline for the aviary, but Marto is distracted by the law library, and tries to start marking a case for Ren, but only learns that she is allowed to have representation and may be imprisoned for her crimes.
In the aviary are a few dozen owlin who apparently cannot speak and are more or less feral. In the hatchery, they find a single hatchling, which has miraculously survived. Oliver is able to communicate with the feral owlin, and learns that they've been there for generations and are unaware of the outside world. They are fed by magic, and their eggs are taken away automatically to the hatchery until they are old enough to return to the aviary. Finally, they visit the wind tunnel, where Ren's skill in flight is able to earn Marto a grant to further investigate the flight of large avians. The Bursar hologram that appears also notes that there was a conference 600 yeras ago where he is invited to present his findings. Instead, they head further east, and arrive at the door to the owlin territories...