Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Chapter Eight: The Horsemen | Sagas of Sundry: Madness

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

The tenants have one last task they must complete. This is why they were brought together. But will everyone survive what awaits them? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it, like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify Advertising. You're among fans. In your short time on this earth, have you looked into the face of fear?

Oh, my darlings, it is so much easier to face your fear when it has a face. Something that we can rationalize, something that we can make human, something that we can fight and win. But what if that fear has no face? How do you confront something that has no name, no identity, something that's a thing that you? seems to know you intimately and yet has no face. It is as if a great void is staring at you, wanting you, that void, that faceless horror from the shadows.

Oh, it has turned its attention to our tenants. The darkness, the void. It has no greater ambition and to feed. It can taste them, it desires them. It has no face, but it is hungry. These are the sagas of sundry. I am Mr. Wren, and there will be mad. You've managed to fight off the watchers influence,

Selena, and have put the fuse back where it once was. The same time the machine's not on. Maybe we should start checking out some of our rooms. The bathroom. The bathroom. You want to investigate which of your apartments first. Mine. Yours. Emmet, one of the most difficult things that has happened to you is going to be revisited by coming back into this space. What if you saw her again? When I see things that aren't real, I just repeat to myself the things that are real, and we're real, and we'll go there with you. Abigail, as you peel some of the old wallpaper, there doesn't seem to be stone back there. It feels more like

plaster. There's something glowing. He's down. A soft green light pierces into the bathroom. There's a whole other area that was never marked on the map. The relic is the last remaining token of his essence on this plane. Several of the Magi's writings point to a complete cleansing

of all the watchers' essence on the material plane to be rid of his machinations. I believe that the amulet can be destroyed on its own plane of existence. That's the relic. Jude, you open up the briefcase and you see large sets of old tubes. These are the representations

to turn the machine back on. So black and black and that one, clear. You have turned the machine on, you fiddled with switches, you put things together. You watch as one of the walls rip and peel open As stone begins to fall away, and you can see the barren wasteland all around you as the building begins to crumble.

You think you've won. All you have done is trapped yourself here with him. Welcome to the fold brothers and sisters. What dimension are we in? We're in the dimension where we can get rid of that thing. It's fucking shit up. Welcome madness. Have a confession.

You blew me away inside of that architect's tomb. Your capacity to put together something like an archaic machine from the 1930s, something that Malik Abdelamusin has spent six decades perfecting in order to close. the rift between two worlds. I didn't think four people could plow through it the way that you did. So much so. Well, I am a man of my word, and I do have these three blocks for you.

I will admit, I didn't think you were gonna make it that far, so I never made them. But here we are, and these three are for you. You can place them in the tower where and how and wherever you wish. I trust you. To begin our story anew. He's been staring down this tower, so.

Yeah, yeah, he's all it. I kind of wonder if we fill in. You don't want to place them, that's fine here. Hand them back to me. Yeah, I got, I got, I got, I got. I mean, I feel like it makes up for the three shots that I fired off into a unshootable cultist woman. Wasn't just the coattest woman.

Reinforce in the middle, perhaps. It's the avatar of the Watcher. It is the woman who has spent centuries learning every known language known to man. So that's her notebook. And has been guiding the great cult of the Watcher to this one pivotal moment. Nice work.

All right, are you happy with that, Emmett? I mean, it's all relative. It is. It is. When we last left our four adventures, they had torn down the wall in Emmett Markham's bathroom and had found an ancient tomb in which was an ancient device that required a little bit of handiwork to bring back into life.

And just as you turn the machine on, you felt a great rift tear across all of reality as the machine booted up and at the same time trapped you in this otherworldly dimension. You see what you may have suspected but didn't realize is that the watcher has already arrived for you see the watcher has been trying for centuries to consume this world because his had already been stripped barren, leaving only what you saw when you explored that vast wasteland.

But Malik Abdelamusin's machine stopped him. You all stopped him. But the watcher is not gone, and you were all trapped with him. What do you want to do? We have to make it to the immense tower. And we have to destroy this. Are we the four horsemen?

We are now. We killed the minions. We've made it this far. You bashed down walls. Yeah, you killed a guy today. Congratulations. We did. We all have accepted the fact that we're all going a little fucking mad. Well, you're joining me in going mad.

Whatever. Most important thing is we've all come together. I think we can kill this bastard. I think we have to. I think that's what we are here for. I think that's why we were brought together. Yeah, it feels good having a purpose. I could get used to that.

Emmett, you don't seem so convinced. In fact, it seems like something is bearing down upon you. What are you thinking? Oh, no. We're all probably gonna die, but the alternative is a hell of a lot fucking worse. I've known for a long time that I wasn't really gonna make it past this age.

It's in my DNA. So if I can make it worth it, maybe for you, for the rest of you, for my soulmate, then it'll be worth it. You know, your DNA doesn't have to define you, even though it's a part of you. There's always time to change. Good mutations are healthy. Anyway, it's time to bet it all.

To the tower? To the tower. Before you can even get to the tower, you need to get out of this building. And there's still a lot of challenges awaiting you. is awaiting you, there is still the cult, the Watchers' minions, who will probably be none too pleased to have you walk out of here with the last remaining vestige, his amulata reculum. Well, some are all of them are about to have a really bad day. Come on. All right. I like it, Emmett.

I get not as seable. As you walk down these halls, it's hard not to take a moment to reflect on this walk that some of you have done for years. These familiar hallways, this place that you've called home for so long. So walking the steps down from the common room of the second floor to the first floor feels briefly as if you're just going to the corner, to the deli, maybe to pick up milk, eggs and sandwiches. There's nothing waiting for you down there. This has all been an elaborate, miserable dream. The walls are still here.

The walls are real. So what is it that is keeping you from not just walking out that door and living your rest of your life as you always have? June, make a pull. You've been the one who's been living here the longest. You're the man who has put as much effort into this building as anyone else. This has been your home for what? Five years?

It's a long time to just walk out the door to a barren wasteland of nothing. You were sleeping above the cold void of space contained only through the machinations. of a mad architect who was using it to counterbalance all of the energy that was compensating for a dimension that wanted to push itself into ours. That is a lot to swallow, Jude. Are you really sure there's a bunch of cultists downstairs waiting to kill you all before you have to cross a barren wasteland to a tower you barely even think exists? to crush what, some silver jewelry dangling

on the neck of a woman you had sex with once or twice? No, there's more to it than that. This is your reality. You walk down the stairs and you can see a group of cultists waiting. The woman who spoke to you in the architect's workshop lifts her head up and greets you with the most pleasant. of smiles and all of the patience that any one person might give to someone who's had centuries of work thwarted from her in one single span.

Ah, good. You're down here. Now we can talk about your options. One, I could kill you now and leave you here, and we will hope that your bodies will be something of a sacrifice for our Lord who has brought us this far and we have failed him, or you can give me the amulet, and we can all beg for the watcher's mercy. Or we could just kill you. Right, yes, that's not really an option, you stupid, arrogant oaf.

You do know we know everything about you, right? Yeah. I know everything through his... grace and you will give me what belongs to us and you will give me back what I have documented over these centuries so that I might pray for his forgiveness and start anew there's still a door on the other side and there's still a chance we know where the machine is now we can break it we can bring it together this is temporarily a setback all we have to do is take all of you

out and then go and bless the watcher to give us one last chance to enter your world and smash what that damn Arab has built so many years ago. You watch as she starts to lift her hand up and gaze deeply into your eyes, Abigail, and you watch as her tongue starts to lull out into a rolling proboscis as she begins to speak in a litany of tongue. that boggles your mind. All measure. It blends into Sanskrit, Hebrew, Coptic. All of the Latin languages together, every romance language,

and each one of them is saying the same thing, but in a different way. You can hear it. It is coming to you. It is saying, Look at me. I will waken the void of your mind into endless infinity. Fight it, fight it, because otherwise you will be handing this amulet straight into the hands of those

who can use it to open the door and try this again under his grace. There's not much time. You've done this, you've managed to stop it. You've trapped all of you here together, but there is one last key, Abigail, and it is around your neck. That has the power to bring everyone the cult and his great followers back into the other world in order to crush the machine, which you all help them find. But you resist. You don't even reveal its location as it dangles around your delicate white porcelain neck. I guess you don't know everything if you think you can get to our girl. Kill them.

Kill all of them. And you watch as all of them rush towards you with picks and daggers drawn high as six run towards you with their arms up. I've got three shots. I take a swing at the nearest one. Same. Pull, pull, pull.

Are you doing it? I'm gonna just hold back and wait. All right. First one comes at you with a single sigiled dagger. You can see the slitted eye of a bow. being right above you as he lifts his dagger up to plunge it into Selena. Take a bash at him, throw him out, mark him, and show him just exactly how vicious a tiny girl who has been sitting inside of her room can be, but yet has every capacity to smash

a man's face in. Just like she did a wall. Have you managed to discover more about yourself, Selena? muscles that you didn't even know existed, this mental hold that you had over yourself as you were able to push the washer outside of your brain, I will fill your mind with endless infinity, is all you hear as this glorious robed figure continues to chant her hymn to all of the followers around her. Watch us his fate, Selena. Tell me, What did you do to him?

With a cry, I swing in the mallet around. I smash it into his face. The mask goes flying. It's full of gore. He falls down, slumping down to the ground, but one is right next to him, just barely beside him. Jude, another dagger lifts up, and it's reaching for you. But Emmett coming in, taking his crowbar,

swings, hoping to see him. save his friend, one who has carried him through. He only met him simply a few hours ago, and yet he is taking time to preserve him who he thinks and calls friends. Emmett, who listens and tells stories of others, and yet is writing his own story now as he takes his weapon of choice.

Careful, careful, careful. And does what, Emmett? He was the crowbar straight to the guy's eye. He watches the mat, crumples around him as you see the indent of his skull pursed into his face and the skin over his eyes bleed. And he plunges forward right into the broken concrete in front of you.

And Jude, sweet Jude, who was raising his dagger up in order to plunge it into the one next to him before Emmett found the target and did it as There's one before the next three come on you. Fight them off. Take him out. Jude, who has only cared for a few things in life, the simple pleasures, his cigarettes,

the women that he finds on the occasional hour, and most of all, just the desire to be alone. Why did you go up to this party, Jude? Was it really to go and find someone to come? someone to call friend, or were you just hoping to get away from something that was strangling you and holding your independence away? It's coming to find my truth. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us.

That's why L'Oreal Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands, championing diversity. With 25,000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide and 54% of leading positions held by women, diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal Group create the best beauty products for all people. Visit laurel.com to learn more. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an armies scattered like bones in the dust.

Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken. and world praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.

This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. And you turn to your right to see this cult is coming upon you into your blind sight. Tell me his fate. I take him and I grab him by the tongue. Between his eyes. You plunge...

Quiet, you in here. As you carve the tooth down, pulling the mask and fragmenting it everywhere, you watches the deeply serrated and sharp d-hole tooth splits him, and he screams as he clutches his face and falls down, writhing in agony. Abigail, there's still three more. One of them is the leader.

You've already put three inside of her, but there's still two coming out. after your friends. Are you going to pull to save them, or are you going to fire the rest of your rounds? The bullets don't hurt the. They don't hurt her. They don't hurt her.

I'm going to wait. I'm going to go up. I'm going to shoot the first one. You crack it as you watch as the body. As it flies down and spasticly starts to convulse onto the floor. The other one still coming close is taking its jeweled dagger as it's attempting to slight right towards Emmett. As he runs up.

I'm gonna take the gun and flip it around and just bash them with the blunt hint. Make a pull. Oh, good. As you reverse the pistol, you come around and crack it over the side of the head. Little Abigail, or really as her friends now know her, Kathy, she... What about this, hafer? Who has already done many terrible things in her time, is now trying to find hope. Hope in that there are people who can accept her,

but the chanting continues. Geros, barosh, verish, Nick-Dus. I... This whole thing is so fucked. We'll be watching you when you gasp your last dying. Oh, Abigail.

Breath. Gaelish, valosh, barosh, Nick-Dus. Look at me. Look at me, I will awaken the void of your mind. I see an eye pierces inside of your mind and you can feel the amulets pulsating inside of your chest as it desires for the watcher who in this world he is the most powerful.

He wants you to take that gun and put it on to yourself. He wants you to lift it and save those two final bullets for you. But instead you take the back of that gun and you do what? As he's running towards me and I'm just trying to keep the insanity out of my mind. I just wait till he thinks that he has me and just clutching him right in the temple. You watch as his body flings in pirouettes in the air as he falls down to the floor still as a silent, rippiless pond falling down and you can see the woman standing still chanting.

Kerush, Varus, Perush, Nictus. No. No. Ah! You watch as her eyes begin to bulge as seemingless formingless clouds envelop the great sky that you can see through the front windows of the main building and you watch as a great tentacle reaching its hand down you can see it coming from the sky

but as perspective gives you a greater view you see 10 20 30 a hundred feet of great purple writhing flesh Just pull itself down onto the building, and at the end of this languid forming tentacle, you see a mouth open. Why? You have done nothing. And a tongue lips out inside of this great mouth

and wraps itself around the cold. pulling her into the mouth which pulls back into the great blob void that is so much in the sky in space. You watch as the endless cloud begins to envelop and come together coalescing into a form that can only be described as a writhing mass of flesh, mouths, eyes all screaming, their lidless pupils staring everywhere, and no way. all at one point. And they all look at you. There is a tower.

There is a tower. You can see it. You can look upon the great horizon and see. And you know it, Salina. You know it, because you've read the journal. It is the Tower of Babel. It is the one that speaks a thousand tongues. It is the place of infinite knowledge.

It is the gate. keeping house of the watcher, and it is there, and it is staring back at you. It's time to make your journey. How are we supposed to do this? How are we supposed to fight that? You can't fight that, Abigail. You can only hope that one of you makes it

to the tower in time to do what needs to be done. And to represent that, I have a challenge for you. Here's what's going to happen. I'm bringing out something that you will have to push, physically push, from one end of the room to the other. This item is not light. In fact, it is quite heavy,

and it will represent the pure endurance and will and dexterity that you will have to show to cross the wasteland and avoid the watcher and his multi-tongued flagellations. Are you ready? The stage is set for the final challenge. You must all run across the desert wasteland and then climb the great tower of Babel

while avoiding the watcher's many eyes, many mouths, with tongues licking and lapping as you can hear the many languages that it speaks from its thousands of. thousands of mouths all at the same time. You are simply four people, one with an amulet that will crush and end its plane on this existence. And yet, you cannot beat a god.

You can only run from it. So, run! Who is going first? I'm going. I'm gonna try to draw as much of its attention as I can. Fucking run. Okay. You have 19 seconds to clear.

Run. Run. Come on, Emmett. Three, two, one. Go. Emmett, you've run across the Great Desert, and you have felt as tongue-lashing after tongue-lashing after tongue-lashing attempt to grab you in every single place,

but you've managed to dip around every single little piece coming up and trying to grab a hold of you, and you make your way up to the tower. Who is next? I'll go. Selina. Let's go, Selina. You have Emmett following a path alongside you.

You have one chance across this desert to join the man who has given so much to make you feel like a human being. Three, two, one, go! Let's go, Celina! Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Come on, go, go. Run, run, run, run. Go, go. Go.

Go, go. Four, three, two, one. No. Selena, make a pull. The tongues are out there, the mouths are ever watching. They are singing the song that will end the world, and you need to tell them that they cannot listen. He can't touch me.

That they can't touch you. There is more to this. than what is always there. The walls are real, Selena. There's no walls here. There is only a black and endless void with something that you can't even begin to describe this mass of great mouths and eyes

as it sings its song across the desert wastes. and the tongues, the lapping, tongues as it caresses each part of your body. I won't let it end like this. It. Right in the middle. Will it, Selena? It won't. You manage to make it across the Great Desert Waste, and you join Emmett at the Tower of Babel.

Who's next? I'm going. Jude Marley. The stage is set for you to run, the great run that will end your struggle, your great, great journey. Three, two, one, go. Jude, can you make it? Can you get there? Can you be a part of this?

You can. Madness! You can join them at the tower. Go. All right. Make the run. I want to meet you on the other side. Oh, fuck me.

Abigail. I'm an indoor girl. Kathy, you are not a runner, Kathy, you are not a runner, and you've watched your friends cross this wasteland, and as you run with them, you can see the lapping tongues of madness bearing down on you. You can hear the song.

It sings deeply in your brain. deeply in your brain and you wear the amulets. You carry him with you. Three, two, one. No, Abby! Abigail! To the tower of battle together and you raise up the many levels

and see a stone dais laid out before you. Three-tiered. one with a runic size of great power on each end. And there is the amulet. Take it, Abigail. Take it and put it on the dais. This is the last key, the last thing that will end the way.

Watchers' time on your plane of existence. We, do I do it? Give it back? Give it back. What do we destroy it? Abigail, take the amulets and send it back to the endless void. Someone else want to do the honors? Please. Okay, cutie.

You know what, watcher? You feel it person to your brain. You lift the hammer to strike it with a great... I... Waste watching. I am darkness. You... This one's for Jordan, motherfucker.

As you feel the amulet shatter, it comes and a wave of sonic energy. Bush. Vail Danu Belus. You can see below you is a great skyline and above you the purple clouds are starting to disperse but not before the tower begins to rumble and break and fall apart.

You gaze over the side and you can see the worlds are falling apart. You could run and dive into it. into each one of the splinters of reality, or you could fall hoping to catch one of the small tears that will lead you back to the world that you know. And you can watch as each one of the spurs brightens and widens and then fades again. They are opening and closing at a speed

in which it is almost incomprehensible to notice. You must make one last, Last pull, but, but, but... If the tower falls, anyone who hasn't made a pull after this will be lost in this world with you. The first one to pull will be the one who has the first chance to get out. Who is it going to be? It should be you.

It should be you. It should be you. You're the person out of us that can actually be worth a damn. You have a future. But what if all that remains back there for me is insanity and forgetting? What if I forget all of you? You won't. We're in your DNA, remember?

Go on. Change the world, Selena. You can do this. We're right behind you. The world is waiting, Selena. All it takes is one pull. As you hear the chanting coming around you, it seems to purse your brain.

And yet at this time, it sounds almost accepting. Gala, melluk, de olos, vintos, Toulos, Cain, Mettos, Ventalos. Everyone is waiting, Selena. Will you be trapped in this world together, all of you? Or will you be the one to make it out?

Say it won't hold, it won't hold. You have to place the blocks, Selena, or else? Or else your pull is forfeit. It's been an honor, you guys. And you will die. What happens if I knock it over? If you knock it over, it will be a heroic sacrifice, and everyone can leave except for you.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Selena, don't do with us. Come on, come, come, you got this, you got this. You got it, just is yours. Come on, shut your fucking mouth. Selena, you crash to the bottom of the stairs and you slide looking back at Emmett in that one last look

before you dive underneath and you may join us over here on this side of reality. You're up. There are still three more left who need to come. You're up. No, you need to go be with her. She needs you.

Emmett, it didn't feel like you had much to gain when you first started on this adventure. You barely understood what even human interaction was. Now you feel like there's something to fight for. There's something that is worthy of going to. And yet, you're finding it hard to believe that you're to believe that you even deserve happiness. Are you able to as the flickering void of reality begins to fade? You watch as Selena sliding under the last bit

of the flickering last pieces of this world in the next. You watch as the rift closes between all three of you, and you gaze up into an endless sky with stars that are not yours and a world you don't belong in. This is the end of our story. If went in, one came out. But did dear Selena truly escape? There is talk that she is still in that old. building, alone, searching for another door.

A door that will lead her back to her friends, and so I ask you, is friendship eternal? Or is it a machine that you must work at constantly in order to feel whole, to feel loved, to feel safe? Selina keeps up her lonely vigil, working the machine. She has to keep the machine on, you see. It is her only friend now. These are the sagas of sundry. I am Mr. Wren and you have lived through.

Look, we all know there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one Happy, Sad, Confused. I'm Josh Harrowitzin. Yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly Happy, Say, Confused is the place for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. From Andrew Garfield and Scarlett Johansson to Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino for over 10 years and over 700 episodes, Happy, Say I Confused, has broken movie and TV news

every single week. That's because I ask all the questions I want to know, and more importantly, you want to know. Casting what-ifs, backstage stories, acting pet peeves, and much more. So whether you're into superheroes, prestige TV, or just the coolest actors and directors alive, you're going to learn something in every episode. Listen to Happy Say I Confused on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter,

some lighter music here? Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jumped started all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime can't be TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry, you'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top True Crime. headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast. The world is ending. You just don't know it yet, but you feel it deep down in your bones, don't you? Some call it

the great undoing as it seeps in at the edges of forgotten places where crumbling abandoned ruins slowly fade away and in their fading. These places where, where, where, places where, where, thin the fabric of reality. They're wrought creeping outward. It calls to you and to the others. Edge of the Forgotten is a supernatural horror hybrid podcast, with season one totaling 13 narrated episodes and 10 full-cast audio drama episodes. The show premieres July 7th on the Realm Network and all popular podcast platforms.

The first three episodes arrive on launch day, with new episodes every Tuesday through the end of November, welcome to the undoing. Welcome to Edge of the Forgotten.