Episode 51 - The Beginning of the End

Intro
Jason: Hello, and welcome to Celestial Expanse, a real play D&D podcast set in the Celestial Expanse universe. My name is Jason, and I'll be playing everyone's favorite heretic elf, Theran. Tonight, you will witness much chicanery, tomfoolery, and if you're lucky, perhaps some ballyhoo and monkeyshines, but now, I wanna introduce you to the Prime Minister of Sinister, the Foreman of Fornicating Skyward, the Numero Uno of rolling numero uno, and the 18th most hated GM in podcast history, our friendly neighborhood GM, Matthew. How you doing tonight Matthew? Matt: I feel like I'm going lower in the ranks each time you do this. Natalia: You are. Jason: It's just the numbers, pal. Can't help. Matt: Mm. Somethin tells me by the end of the night it's gonna go up one rank or two. Jason: We have Ben, playing Rell, what's cloppin G? Ben: Uh, hi. Jason: Rebecca, who is playing the friendly and fun-loving Martle. Bore us with bunny facts Rebecca. Rebecca: Excuse you! Um, so the difference between lagomorphs and rodents, which I was unsure about last time, there are two major difference. One is that lagomorphs have four incisors in the upper jaw, instead of two, like rodents, and lagomorphs are also strictly herbivores, and unlike rodents, which will eat meat and vegetable matter. Natalia: Interesting. Rebecca: Yeh. Jason: Natalia, playing Z. What ho, Natalia. Natalia: Ewo! Jason: Lastly, Mitch playing Z-rial. Was geht. Mitch: Was geht! I don't know what that means, but okay, hello. Natalia: What's good, I think. Jason: You don't - you don't speak German? Mitch: Man, I wish I speak German. Jason: It's just what's up. Natalia: Wa- yeah, was gut. Jason: Back to you, Matt.

Episode Description
The Crew are on a mission and face many trials and tribulations to complete it, if they succeed this will be a great success for everyone, but what's that blip on the edge of everyone's radar?

Summary
The episode begins with a cold open. Lilith, in the guise of Ashley, is visited by Athena in a time-stopped Parliament cafe. Athena reports that the Allforge she took was a fake. Furious, Lilith starts to strangle Athena, but is interrupted by a male gnome in jewel-encrusted multicolored clothes, named Barnabas. He laughs at Lilith and tells her his mortals stole the real Allforge from the mortals as soon as they found it. He is excited for the war between him and Lilith. He also mentions giving Lilith her current form. Lilith shreds his body, and his incorporeal voice laughs, anticipating destroying the galaxy with the war between their respective pawns. He reminds her that the more death she gives him, the more his army grows, whereas her army just decays. The remains of his body are made of crystal. Lilith tells Athena she has one more chance to find the Allforge. Time unfreezes, and Lilith asks the waiter for a to go cup, saying a lot of things are going to change around here.

Demia's fleet starts firing on the Inquisition, and Demia tells Martle to take the Torog through the blockade. Zarial is on cybersuite (hacking), Theran is piloting, Rell is on guns, and Z is engineer. They speed through the blockade, losing their shield to enemy fire. Rell fires at some smaller ships, destroying one. Zarial hacks the heavy cruiser between them and the moon and crashes it into two others. Z repairs the shield just in time to defend from more enemy fire. A large swathe of the pirate fleet has already been destroyed, and Demia tells them to hurry up. Martle tells Spalexa to go to the other side of the moon, then loop back to their starting position, avoiding the blockade. She thanks Spalexa and tells her she'll ask Space Dad to make her a body. The crew get into the havoc pods, and Spalexa launches them. The havoc pods autopilot, and Rell gets drugged when he starts panicking. As they go down, they see the Torog explode, along with Z's antlers and the wine from Theran and Martle's home. Zarial plays a Mentaru salute to Spalexa.

They land on the base and are met with Inquisition troops. They take some heavy hits: Martle starts bleeding heavily, Z gets stunned, and part of Theran's arm gets blown off. They are victorious, however, and after another prompt from Demia and a bit of magical healing they head towards engineering. They manage to avoid contact with more Inquisitors and reach the door, which is code locked. Zarial fails to hack it, so Martle Misty Steps to the other side and opens it.

Inside they find a Talon, a more advanced version of BAT. They hear a voice from its speakers say, "Ah, so you're the intruders. I was hoping you guys would show up here. I get to show off my new toy that I found in the ruins recently." Zarial fires at it, and Theran runs around it to put the explosives they were given on the power source. The crew defeats the Talon, Martle stabbing the pilot inside, and leave so they can trigger the explosion. Eric leads the way to the hangar bay and they find a ship the size of the Torog, with better weapons. They fly out and Martle triggers the explosion to destroy the base. As they go, they can see parts of the moon collapsing. Almost the entire Inquisition armada is destroyed, and about 30% of the pirate fleet is still intact

Zarial sees several large blips on the edge of their sensor radius, coming towards the battlefield. They don't register as a known ship classification, and as he watches he sees there are over a hundred. Communications cut out. The blips come into visual range, and they see several hundred thousand crystalline craft of various shapes, all firing shards of crystal at everything in the vicinity. One shard pierces the ship, and atmosphere starts leaking. A stabilizing wing gets sheared off and they spin out of control. Demia's ship comes and links up with them and the crew evacuates to the main ship. A shard shoots through the airlock as they go, leaving Martle and Eric without air. He tries to shove his helmet on Martle, but she struggles until he points to his chest, where the shard is sticking through him. Martle Misty Steps to safety as Eric's body turns to crystal and breaks apart. Demia calls for everyone to head back to the terminal. The episode ends as everyone hears Lilith's voice.

New Information

 * Spalexa can pilot in a straight line, but not do combat maneuvers.
 * The BAT they saw in Parliament was another Talon known as the Witness.

Memorable Quotes
Ben: We made some poor decisions, and volunteered for bad ideas.

Mitch: I think I got the highest body count now. Matt: Considering that I put in that heavy cruisers have a population of... let's see, 215- Rebecca: Noooo, don't fill his ego!

Matt: Need to fix Eric's token real quick, cause I forgot it's still set at generic. Natalia: Haha, gen-eric. Mitch: Gen-eric. Matt: That's rude and you know it. Natalia: Lol. Ben: I mean that's what his name was if he ever became a general.

Matt: Their weapons are shit, but they still sometimes hit.

Ben: I go find the guns on the ship. And there are other ships in this hangar, right? Matt: Yes. Ben: Not anymore.

Trivia

 * Rebecca rolled a natural 19 for Martle's captain's initiative and added 0 for her wisdom.
 * As captain, each turn Martle could give an order to one crewmate, who would get expertise on their skill check that round.
 * Theran's first piloting move was to go fast, so Matt allowed him to triple the Torog's speed. This covered the entire distance they needed to travel.
 * When the shield takes enough damage, it goes down, and damage does not carry over (unlike polymorph).
 * Zarial took out approximately 645,000 people when he crashed three heavy cruisers together, but Matt said it counts as one (reflected in stats).
 * RIP Spalexa and the Torog.
 * Matt rolled three nat 20s and a nat 1 in six rolls.
 * Ben really wanted to take the Talon, but it was too damaged and too big.
 * Lauren played Lilith and Stephanie played Athena in the beginning scene (both cast members on Tabletop Champions).
 * Ryan, who plays Master Ryu, played Barnabas in the beginning scene.
 * This is the first episode with Barnabas.