Swamped

Take off your shoe and squish the beetle

What happened to Ash is a lot like what happened to that wizard, though you don't know enough to say for sure if the gods are responsible.

But they probably sent this beetle. You've never even heard of them getting this large.

Well. Might as well try asking it questions. You don't really expect answers, but after encountering those lizards, you aren't comfortable just assuming that now.

"Did you do this to him?" you ask.

There's no response. It seems indifferent towards you in general.

Hells, this is frustrating. You almost want to give the thing a good swift kick or something, except that probably wouldn't end well if it is indeed a servant of the gods.

Maybe you should just leave. Ash doesn't seem in particular danger, if nothing else; the beetle seems to be keeping watch. You could grab Long's staff, give it to him and tell him what you saw, maybe go and find Rider...

Wait a minute. Long's staff. You don't see it; Ash doesn't have it, and you can't see it anywhere else in the room. Wonderful, as if you didn't have enough other things to worry about.

"What, did you eat the staff?" you ask the beetle, out of annoyance as much as anything else.

Much to your surprise, though, this time it turns its head towards you. It doesn't seem to be saying "yes" or "no", but it does seem to be expressing interest of some sort.

How about that. Does it know something about the staff, then? Or perhaps it's just hungry?

Well, either way you've got its attention. Maybe you can make use of that somehow.

Tell the beetle that if it fetches the stick for you, you'll give it a beetle snack. Use your friendliest, most enthusiastic voice.

You've only got one idea. You feel a little silly doing it, but then, if it fails all that's going to happen is a beetle will ignore you.

"Hey! Do you know where the staff is?" you ask the beetle. "If you bring it to me, I'll get you some food!"

You suppose there's a chance Ash can still hear you. Eh, doesn't matter - for all his faults, he's not the sort to tease.

At first, the beetle doesn't seem to react. Then it walks towards the door, and stops.

Maybe it's waiting for you? Probably not eager to leave you alone with Ash. You approach it, and it starts to leave. Well, may as well follow it.

The beetle takes you to another door. This one's closed, so you open it up and take a look inside.

You see Long's staff in there, all right. But that isn't all.

BEETLE SWARM

The beetles seem to be pouring out of a very conspicuous crevice in the ground...

There are quite a lot of beetles in here. Thankfully none of them are as large as the one that guided you here, but they probably have more collective mass.

You aren't sure if these are more divine servants or just a lot of beetles. They seem to be staying away from the staff, but they're all over everything else.

Oh, wait. They're crawling all over the walls and... forming letters? You really hope this isn't one of those paralyzing messages, because this is definitely not a place where you'd like to be paralyzed.

BEWARE

The moment you finish reading it, the beetles scramble themselves again. It's as if they know how fast you're reading, which is almost as unsettling as the sight of that many beetles rushing around.

THE, GODS, ARE, NOT, OF, ONE, MIND

Well. That's not exactly reassuring, but the beetles don't seem particularly inclined to clarify just what you're supposed to do about it.

Fortunately, they also don't seem inclined to get in your way. They scurry away from you as you approach, and let you grab the staff without further incident. The large beetle wanders off, presumably to keep other troublemakers away from Ash.

Your first thought is that you should probably pass this message along. Trying to work out the motives of the gods is well beyond you. But who should you talk to about it first?

Long, right? You have to bring back his staff anyway.

Maybe Ash has something to do with this. We should probably check up again, anyway.

You think it would be best to see Captain Long, since you'll be returning his staff anyway. The only thing is, you're not sure exactly where the grebling took him.

So you may as well check in on Ash before you go exploring. At least you know where he is.

Nothing seems to have changed since you were last here. You're a little thrown off at seeing the large beetle back here already, though. It didn't leave that long before you did, and yet you didn't see it on the way here at all.

That said, you did learn something since your last trip here. You know now that "the gods are not of one mind", so maybe whoever did this to Ash was acting on their own. Maybe the beetle was trying to keep you from reading the message and getting similarly trapped.

"Don't suppose you can tell me who sent him that message," you mutter at the beetle. It just ignores you.

Well, you can see the back of the message without getting closer. You didn't really pay attention to it before, because there were no words you could make out, but maybe there's something else that offers a clue as to its origins.

Should be fine. Pray and read the message.

It's woven from wool?

Well. You don't see any markings or anything, but you do notice something odd... that's not paper. It doesn't look like parchment, either.

It's hard to get a good look without getting too close, but you think that's... wool. That's an odd material to write a message on, but then, you're on a flying ship and there's an implausibly enormous beetle a few feet away, so it's not that strange by comparison. For that matter, it's a good deal more conventional than spelling your message out with a swarm of beetles.

You don't know what to make of it, but the priest might. And you're aiming to find Captain Long next anyhow. So you think you're done here. You head out into the hall and think about how to conduct your search.

You're most likely safe now, since the shaking's stopped. And with Shume paralzyed, not to mention Ash... well, the only person you have any worries about running into is Carma. But she probably won't be that hostile if the trial's taken care of - which you assume is the case, since the ship seems stable. So you can probably just go down the corridors systematically...

Unless, that is, you walk down one and find a rather large and angry ram. You notice that it's missing a small patch of wool.

What now?

Apologize for all the mutton you've consumed, and if that doesn't work, run like hell in the other direction.

You don't know the entire story here, but you don't think you need to.

After all, you can tell that there's a large, powerful, angry animal that's looking right at you. Not that uncommon an experience in the swamp.

So you'll treat it just like you would a rampaging swamp creature: by running away and hoping it can't run faster than you.

You flee back into the main corridor, and you hear a loud crash behind you not long after. A quick glance reveals that the ram can move quite fast; however, it's not so good at stopping. It's struck the wall, which is not looking to be in very good shape afterwards, but the ram is still getting its bearings.

In that case, you don't want to leave open space between you and it. You rush down a side passage. Maybe the ram will rush right past...

...no, that collision you just heard sounded very close. Hells. You'd better get out of here, then.

Wait. There's a ladder leading downward. Maybe you can lose the ram there. You climb down quickly, and soon find yourself surrounded by machinery.

Hmm. If the ram were to come down here, it could do a lot of damage. And since you aren't entirely sure what it wants, you don't know if that would discourage it.

So what do you do now?

Look at the machinery and see if you can make sense of any of it, or if there are any parts you could pull out and use

You can't really grasp what any of this machinery does. You can see a lot of moving parts - gears and belts and pistons - but you don't know what they connect to or how any of it relates to this ship's functions.

What does strike you is that it's mostly made of metal, and some of it's quite sharp. Could be more useful than the mudpike if you have to fight, especially since you've got Marshall's throwing glove. You spot a few gears that aren't actually moving, and decide it's probably safe to grab them. If they're supposed to be doing something, they aren't doing it right now anyways.

You recall that the priest mentioned Rider was down with the machinery, keeping an eye on something. Maybe you can find him. It would be good to touch base, and if the ram does try something, well, you'll be in much better shape having his help.

You're just about to call out when you hear a loud thump behind you. You glance over and see the ram at the bottom of a ladder. There's a fair amount of machinery between you and it, though, so it might not notice you... but not if you go hollering for Rider.

How should you handle this?

Throw something (how heavy is that gear?) away from you, in a direction it's not looking, and hope that the noise draws it off while you slip away in the other direction.

Well, if making noise is what you're worried about, maybe it would be best to make some far away from you. You've got the throwing glove, after all.

Of course, the machinery's pretty loud on its own, so you'll need to make sure you hit something that stands out even amongst all of this racket. A gear striking a piston might just do the trick, and probably won't do too much damage.

You toss one of the gears at the furthest piston you can see. It bounces off with a loud clang, and just as you hoped, the ram turns in that direction. You've bought yourself some time, if nothing else.

Now your main question is how to find Rider. He could be anywhere down here for all you know. Maybe it would even be better to go back up - a ram is going to have a hard time with a ladder, after all.

Then again, it must have gotten on this ship somehow, so maybe you shouldn't make too many assumptions about where it can or can't go. And while you're confident Rider can handle one sheep on his own, even if it's one that serves a god... well, you'd feel better if you at least warned him.

You've given yourself an opening, now it's time to figure out how to best make use of it.

Climb up on some machinery to get away from that baa-llistic beast. You can't warn or protect Rider if you're ram batter.

You think you might want some high ground. A fair amount of this machinery looks possible to climb, though it'd be safest if you stuck to the stuff that's moving slowest. If you have a high vantage point, even if the ram turns out to be a better climber than you're giving it credit for, at least you should be able to see it coming.

After climbing some spokes holding gears in place, you reach the top of a piston. It's hard to see much amidst all of the mechanisms, but Rider should stick out - first off, he's pretty tall, and second, there's not a lot of purple around here.

But you can't see him. He must be somewhere further off, or behind something particularly big. Maybe there's even a wall in the way, you're having trouble grasping the overall layout here.

On the other hand, you think you just spotted something else. Something very interesting.

Smoke!

An off switch!

Something down here is producing a lot of smoke. At first you worry it might have to do with those unmoving gears you grabbed, but it's nowhere near them. If that is what caused the mess, this machinery is far too complex for its own good.

But as you hop down to investigate, you see that the answer is a lot more mundane. Something's stuck between two gears. You can't quite follow all the connections to see how that makes smoke, but the object very clearly doesn't belong there, so you pull it out.

It's a lever. Seems to be broken off. So someone tried to sabotage two parts of this machinery at once? Who, though? And for that matter, why?

And are they still down here? As if you didn't have enough problems.

The smoke starts clearing, and it suddenly strikes you that might alert the ram. You'd better get moving. You opt to keep up high for the moment, and climb over some machinery. You're not even worrying about Rider for the moment, you're just aiming to put some distance between you and the smoke.

Then, suddenly, it feels like the ship is making a sharp turn. You get flung around, and as you try to pick yourself up, you spot the ram struggling to maintain its footing.

The hells was that? Is there no way to alert the crew when the ship's going to turn?

Wait... who's even steering it?

You think you might want to look into that, but you've already got quite a few other problems going on. For instance, what if that sharp turn knocked Long out of bed? The grebling priest might have trouble getting him back in on his own.

What should you do?

Take advantage now to get around the ram!