Okay, so we were walking in the wrong direction. Something about the north pole being flipped. Oddly, not something I’ve ever been interested in, and have not previously needed to worry about. Widget could have said something sooner. And maybe he did. Anyway, we lucked out. After attempting to blow up what turned out to be an ordinary vine crossing our path, we were hailed by a small group of a race called the telia, which look like tortoises. They called us, or at least me and the vesk, “Honored Skyknights” and were told by two small statues to search for us. I guess I-9 and Brock are okay! Better still, the telia took us to their village via raft (and singing), so no more slogging towards whichever north we thought we were headed towards.
When we got to the village, we were greeted by the village elder, and then rushed to see our little robots. We met Sprocket, a blind ysoki engineer with his little spider drone “Skitter.” We also learned that, while our ship had been parked safely, our comms had been a bit destroyed. By a black dragon. Oh, yeah, that is why there is only one survivor of the Vengeance now. They made Sprocket stay with the telia while the vesk of the Vengeance literally went out in a blaze of glory. Or acid, anyway. But that crew was victorious in slaying the black dragon. So, I guess they have a new one. And, more alarmingly, they want us to slay this latest one! And we’ll have to, if we ever want our ship to fly again.