(Penguin)^3

You are being sent to Draketooth Town, a remote island far out in the sea. The locals consider this place to be the edge of the world, and the last settled place; just beyond the town waves crash into spike-like cliffs, and beyond there is nothing but void. Draketooth Town is not the most hospitable place to live, and as such, it has only a small population, consisting of a few dozen fisherman and a garrison of military personnel which occupies a research station high above the town.

The research station in question is a secretive place which gathers information about possibility of worlds that exist out there beyond the world. For this purpose, they look for signals which can ocassionaly be spotted in the outer world, and analyze them. Signals are sparse, and as such, the researchers found a way to get the most out of each one they spot. They record this data in immensely information-rich data cubes, which are then later shipped elsewhere for further research.

No one is quite sure what happened, but about 15 minutes ago something went very wrong. The research station started producing an excessive amount of data cubes, in quantities so immense that they spill out and pollute the ocean below. The currents carry the data cubes towards the edge of the universe, not too far away from which a pod of Dracken’s Birds was last spotted, looking for prey. Their demise seems now imminent, either caused by the creeping pollution, or by falling off the edge of the universe in attempts to get away from it.

You are hired by Martha Amolo, and old fisherwoman with little to lose, determined to save the birds at all cost. You must save all 12 Dracken’s Birds and, if injured, physically or otherwise, you must stabilize their position to allow for eventual recovery.

(by Reece)

Morgan Darillium, an Illusionist, Antonio “Tony” Cavallo, a Charlatan, Penn Gwynn, a Thane, and Cordelia Maris Undine, an Oceanographer, arrive on a bleak, rainy, windswept island, containing just a handful of houses. The only other land in sight is a distant cluster of jagged outcroppings, beyond which lies nothing but an endless void. Atop a cliff on one side of the island stands a massive satellite dish—its surface encrusted with gleaming crystals—from the centre of which a cascade of tiny, rainbow‑coloured cubes pour down into the sea below. Lightning stikes the dish periodically, each bolt spawning another wave of cubes. A dense mass of them float in a broad patch of water between the island and the world’s edge.

The cubes’ danger isn’t immediately obvious, so the agents split up to gather intelligence, with Tony & Morgan entering the town, while Penn heads to the docks to meet with the squad’s client, and Cordelia sets off up a path to the research station atop the cliff. Tony & Morgan encounter a pair of guards wearing masks and long, black raincoats, one of whom Tony immediately diagnoses with a serious heart condition, causing the guard to begin exhibiting such symptoms. Morgan assists with a performance in which he claims to have been a patient of Dr Tony prior to becoming his assistant, and insisting that his medical treatments are the real deal. He then pretends to suffer his own heart problems which are miraculously alleviated when Tony sprinkles a pinch of spices over him.
Despite how shady this all seems, when Morgan suddenly breaks out into song, the little jingle he sings is sufficiently convincing that the ailing guard is willing to drink the spiced, glowing water that Tony offers him, before appearing to be miraculously cured of all his ails. With the guard’s enthusiastic praise—and his authorisation to go out to sea—the villagers heap praise onto Tony, with many of them competing to offer to take him out on their boats. Not wanting to show favouritism, he points to one ship at random, which turns out to belong to the only guy in town who hadn’t been offering. Tony doesn’t back down, though, and soon enough the man’s neighbours peer pressure him into volunteering his assistance.
Meanwhile, Penn Gwynn meets Martha, the fisherwoman who hired the Enclave. They talk about the situation and he explains that he considers all penguins to be his people, despite having started out his life as a human before being transformed. Martha doesn’t seem sure how to react to this, but explains that some of the birds—which she never actually calls “penguins”—have eaten cubes and fallen ill as a result, but after realising that the cubes are bad, the pod has tried to avoid them… only, the cube spill has kept growing, and the birds are now pinned against the edge of the world, with no way past the mass of cubes.
Deciding to test her theory that the cubes are bad in the most scientific of manners, Penn immediately dives into the water, retrieves a cube, sniffs it, then swallows it whole. Almost immediately, his heart starts racing, his muscles spasm, and his mind is flooded with alien memories and visions. He returns to the boat babbling about how the cubes are like birthday cake laced with ecstasy. Martha advises him not to admit to anyone that he’s eaten one, and not long after, a single-person, helicopter-like vehicle approaches the ship, piloted by one of the masked guards, who fires a warning shot with a laser cannon and orders Penn & Martha back to shore. However, Penn refuses, declaring himself an Enclave agent and protector of seabirds, then raises an icy barrier between himself and the helicopter. The guard opens fire, their lasers swiftly melting through the frozen wall, only for Penn to step forwards with an ice-sword drawn and start deflecting lasers like he belongs to some kinda mystical order of [space knights](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Knight).
When it becomes clear that one helicopter isn’t sufficient to best him, that one backs away, though this respite is short-lived, as soon more of them appear in the distance, rising from the island to approach. In response, Penn conjures an ice-launching bazooka each for himself and Martha, and the pair of them open fire on their assailants. They’re not the only ones with magical defences, but the guards’ barriers prove insufficient to hold out for long against Penn’s icy missiles, and soon one of their vehicles plummets from the sky, splashing down into the sea. Despite this, the helicopter pilots show no sign of giving up. At least, not before something monstrous emerges from beneath the waves to change their minds…
After being stopped from visiting the research station by another masked guard, Cordelia summoned her crab-like mecha and rode it up the isle’s vertical cliffs, before having the machine leap off, plunging into the sea far below, her magic expanding the waters even as she sank through them, until eventually she reached the ocean’s new floor, whereupon she began gathering some magical cubes which had sunk that far down, swiftly incorporating them into her submecha until the machine resembled a cube-coated, crystalline crab. She also briefly occupied herself with testing the cubes’ properties on a captive krill, finding them to be catalysts of metamorphosis when the unfortunate critter transformed into a shape-shifting, colour-changing centipede. Then she surfaced amidst the densest concentration of cubes on the water’s surface.
Quickly taking in the events unfolding around her, Cordelia employs an on-board loudspeaker and voice synthesiser to imitate some sort of eldritch god, declaring herself the owner of all the cubes before unleashing her mutant krill, which swiftly multiplies into a swarm that begins devouring the arcane devices. She expects this to attract the ire of the helicopter pilots, hoping to save the ship they’re assailing, but the deception proves so successful that the guards don’t even test her defences with their laser cannons, simply retreating back to the island instead. 
This leaves the agents free to focus on the penguins, though as they lay eyes upon them, it becomes clear that these birds look nothing like the penguins more common in many other parts of Manifold, with their silhouettes more closely resembling [giant squid](https://i.ibb.co/vxDXyrJQ/Penguinsquid.jpg); their heads and bodies fused into a single mass; huge, bulging eyes on their sides; and enormous, jagged beaks taking up at least half their volume. Despite this, the agents don’t hesitate to assist the horrifying creatures, with Morgan & Tony using their boat to corral the disoriented birds, while Penn conjures a bridge of ice in the water, with the intent that the penguins can slide across it rather than swim through cube-infested waters.
Cordelia’s mecha swims closer, intentionally making waves which buoy the penguins along, helping the ungainly beasts onto Penn’s bridge. Morgan then casts a powerful, physical illusion on the cubic crab, seemingly transforming it into some sort of crystalline squid-penguin god. Unfortunately, with her mind and body being steadily warped by the cubes infused into her submecha, Cordelia herself is just as fooled by his illusion as the penguins are. On the bright side, the birds are far more comfortable around her mecha in this form, so don’t panic when she rams into the bridge, shoving it forwards to get them closer to shore.
Tony spots another bird which has somehow managed to clamber up onto a small cliffside at the world’s edge and looks like it could topple into the void at any moment, so sails over there and quickly climbs up to join it, administering an antidote to the cubic contamination via nasal spray, then using ropes affixed to the ship to haul the penguin back into the water and lead it to shore, following in the floating bridge’s wake to avoid any drifting cubes. One final obstacle appears to block their path, though: a ship crewed by more masked guards, who presumably feel that with this sturdier vessel, they can safely face down the monster that has risen up from the depths to claim their treasure.
Turns out they’re wrong about that. Cordelia rams them, snapping her penguin-beak closed on their ship and dragging it down with her into the deep ocean. The others reach the shore moments later, and Morgan starts building a penguin sculpture from sand—having fallen into delirium himself due to the astronomical essence expenditure that was required of him to conjure an artificial god.
The agents’ badges ping, but seeing that Morgan is too far gone to notice this, Tony pings out his partner-in-crime before departing himself, while Penn runs around hugging the squid-penguins in celebration, before accidentally hitting his badge and vanishing. Lastly, Cordelia (who still thinks she’s a penguin) coughs up a mouthful of blood before mumbling a barely comprehensible speech about returning to seek vengeance if the humans harm her kin again, before she too pings out, trusting that the surviving guards aboard the magical ship will have some way to get back to shore and spread word of her threat.

• Morgan Darillium

• Cordelia Maris Undine unregistered
• Penn Guin unregistered
• Tony Cavallo unregistered