DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: Beneath an Endless Sky (5e quest!)

"Can you get at the rest of their security?" Danse asked, while you rubbed your knuckles against one another and tried to ignore the fact that the gelatenous cube's bulk had already flowed out to be underneath your office chair, despite having been killed like...four meters away. It was just slorping everywhere, wasn't it?

You sigh. "Let me try, but...most networks are partitioned." You start tapping away at the computer, then shake your head after following a few links and bumping against the walls of the programming. "Sorry, no, the cameras are controlled at administration."

Danse nodded. "Then I think that's where we go next."

The Handy Helper crawling along the floor seemed to be moving with more liveliness and happiness than before - you think it might just be happy to finally have some kind of orders to be followed. You want to pet it, but instead, focus on the corridor ahead of you. The walls are still the same faintly moldy, faintly damp walls as the rest of the lower interstitials, but then you come to a ladder leading to a hatch. Danse climbs the ladder, dogs the hatch, then nods. "All clear."

You enter into a little bubble between the lowest level and the highest level, with two secure hatches between the areas. When you swing the next hatch up, it leads into a room that is considerably more homey. The walls are beige paneled and there's a trio of flickering bulbs in a ceiling mount behind some softening plastic that wink to life as the hatch settles into the open position. Danse, Kels, Xan and you climb into the room as you nod to yourself. "This looooks like the connection between Admin and Crew Quarters."

"Yeah, I kinda get that feeling too," Xan says, looking from the hatchway labeled CREW QUARTERS to the hatchway labeled ADMIN by bright, friendly yellow letters spray-painted on the door.

Danse went to the Admin door, then leaned up to the plastic covering that worked as a window. "I can't see through it, someone's put a cover on the window, I can't see through."

"I wish I had mage hand," you muttered. "I could yank that the fuck down."

"Be ready, I'm going to open it a crack," Danse said as Xan drew her daggers, twirling them. Kels squares her shoulders. You stick your head between Danse's thighs to peek in eagerly as the door opens a crack. It rustles and cracks, an oddly organic sound, as you see vines dragging taut and then snapping away, and a shower of leaves scatters along the ground as you peer into...green. Green, green, green. The factory floor is covered with thick matted clumps of moss, reaching vines, dangling blooms of dark red and black flowers, all of it ensnaring the cubicals and computers that had once been used to administrate the place. The room had already been cramped, but now it was just...bonkers levels of cramped.

"What the hell?" Danse whispered.

"What do you see?" Kels hisses.

"A body," you say, quietly.

"Huh?" Danse and Kels ask.

You jerk your chin.

Among the greenery, laying near one of the cubicals, is a moss covered figure, but you can see the gleam of metal sticking from some of the brush, and a dessicated set of once green fingers. The gun itself looks like a brutal combat shotgun, left to lie, its owner completely covered in plantlife.

Danse eased the hatch shut. He turned back, his voice grim. "Well, we know what happened here," he said, quietly. "It's a Blight."

"Shit!" Xan hissed.

"Oh gods," Kels whispered, her hand making a ward against evil.

"B-...B...Blights...aren't...real, those are on TV shows about spooky space stations," you say, almost panicking just a tiny little bit.

"No, they're real," Danse said, quietly. "Rare in the first and second sphere - and most of the third sphere. But...some habs..." He shakes his head, slowly.

Blights. The word sends a shooting, crawling horror along your spine. Ecosystems were wonderful things, they took the necrotic energy of a sentient dying, and transformed it into new life through cycles of decay and regrowth. Every habitat had them for that exact reason. But...if an ecosystem got saturated with enough necrotic energy, with enough misery and pain and anguish...then it could bloom into a Blight. This factory would have had a threadbare, tiny little ecosystem once the heroin dealers got here, focused entirely on their poppies. But that plus whatever they were doing here had been enough. Small ecosystem, small amounts of anguish was enough to make this.

First hint would have been...an unusual uptick in oxygen. If they had realized the problem, if they had had an ecotech on hand, it could have been nipped in the bud right then and there. Either they hadn't or they didn't and so, the Blight had reached critical mass and...

And...

Everywhere not sealed off was now full of plants.

Hateful.

Blood drinking.

Ambulatory.

Plants.

"W-...W...W...W...Was that the...that...did...did the Blight send us a radio transmission!?" You hiss.

"They're not stupid," Danse whispered. "Legends say, the stake of that slew the vampire Galthius splintered into the core of the first blight. They have a vampire's cunning."

Your hands go to your face. You're going to remain calm. "Okay, we...we...we...we get back on the...the, the, uh, sub. And then we run. And we leave this place forever and ever and ever?"

"The oxygen generator is still here," Danse says, quietly. "The Chuul will die - economically, if not literally - without it."

"...I hate paladins," you whisper. "I have decided that I hate paladins."

"What's the game plan?" Xan asks.

"Well, we have to find the oxygen generator, and we have to get it to the submarine, and then we have to jet," Danse says. "The Blight is going to outnumber us and it will be smarter than us and it has control over a certain amount of the systems in this place. Likely thanks to Admin." He pointed. "So..."

---
What is your plan? You can combine as many of these as you want, in any order you want, or write in whatever you want! Go nuts!
[ ] Retreat, get to the pirate sub, then use it to crack the factory and hope the oxygen generator survives the resulting collapse. The Blight will drown in anoxic water just as much as any other plant.
[ ] Sneak into Admin, get that delicious shotty, then clear the room of any ambulator blight members. Then see about hacking the computers
[ ] Withdraw to Crew Quarters - if they were sealed off, they might provide an alternate route
[ ] Call out on your radio...maybe not even heroin dealer is dead. If any got to a safe spot, they might be allies of connivence.
[ ] Write In