Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Part 5: Descent to Danger | Starter Kit - Advanced D&D

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Acting on newfound intelligence, the Inquisitors descend into the sewers below the Free City, and hatch an impromptu plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome back to your starter kit. I'm David Nett. I'm your dungeon master for this adventure. Sometimes in Dungeons and Dragons, combat is sprung upon you, and the party has no choice but to fight their way through. But sometimes, when you have time to plan, a clever party can avoid combat altogether.

So when we left after last episode, you were in an alleyway having been ambushed by a bunch of Rivers thugs. Once you had gathered your wits about you, you regrouped yourself and made your way back to the precinct and then ultimately the home to rest. But you were very careful to pick up two bodies on the way, one of them, the Rivers woman, the thief who led you into that trap, bringing her with you to identify her if possible. And then you brought one of the fallen creatures, in fact, one of the rats that you killed, you brought that body that had reverted back to human as you were resting, badly scarred, brutalized,

some of the skin peeled back. It looked weirdly burnt as well as the damage that you had done to that human. So you grab both of those bodies, brought them back to the precinct with instructions to your teams there to look at these two bodies, try to identify them while you retreated

to get some rest. Everyone went back to their respective homes. Ignius, you live in the catacombs below the oldest parts of the old city down by the southern tip of the city. Araviel, you live in the slum quarter. That sounds terrible. It's just the name of the area.

Most of it is bad to be the truth. But you have a reasonably nice apartments there, but you're very near the wharf gate, so you can lead the city quickly if need be, or a wood elf, so sometimes you just need more space than the city provides. Rent is cheaper. Rent is cheaper there.

Leona, you live in the Artisans Quarter near the University. It's good for your blacksmithing work. It also just keeps you close to work, so you can be there on call whenever you need to. Narlak, you live in the Foreign Quarter because... I am not from this world. Exactly. You live in the Foreign Quarter.

And Shyin, you live in Shack Town. right outside the walls of the city. Also cheap rent. Very cheap rent. It's actually there are some nice buildings and nice homes there. It's just a town that grew up along the walls outside of the great walls. There are bad parts and good parts just like everywhere else. But it's a good place for someone who's a little bit more of a loner to be able to separate themselves in the city.

I'm comfortable right on the outside. So you all get eight hours of rest. And so this long, the sleep brings your hit points back up to their normal maximum. Oh, that is lucky. Everybody gets your spells back. Good. You're gonna take a nice long rest to all the people back at the precinct. Precinct, look at the bodies that you brought up.

And I've got all my stuff back. You got all your stuff back, all of your powers come back after that long rest. Oh, your armor. For you, because you rolled two dice during your short rest, Ignius, you'll get both of those dice back as well. So you're back up to your full five. Hit dice. After your nice rest, you all get a nice solid eight hours, but no more than that, you're out of bed, close on, heading over to the precinct. So if you guys want to move yourselves over to the, to near where Leona is, that's near where the precinct is.

Help me, long arms. There you go. Thank you, Jay. So you all together, you come back to the precinct. And you had planned to meet up, so you actually meet each other outside. You feel much better. Your mind is still reeling from everything that's happened in the last two days. But now you've gotten some sleep, you feel like your brains are ready to attack this thing. You enter into the precinct and up to your floor where your desks and your offices are.

You're getting ready at your desk. You have a note from the medical examiner who looked at these bodies for you, asking you to come down to the morgue. So together you head down to the morgue look at these bodies. In the basement, there is where the medical examiners are. They're actually a branch of the Inquisitors. They, like you, have some magical powers and some extra knowledge. They're able to examine these bodies. And the woman's name is Tilel, who's running this shift down in the morgue.

And she summits you in, she's all business. And she says, these are some extremely interesting. This one, and she points to the body of the rogue that you had killed right out. She says, this one seems to be normal halfling, mid-20s. Looks like she's lived a rough life, a lot of scars, a little bit of malnutrition, exactly what you'd expect from a street thug. However, this one, and she points to the other body, and this is one of the rats that was a giant rat, and then reverted back to human form after Leona killed him.

This one is very interesting. What you see is a scrawny male. She says, you know, human male, late teens. But what's interesting about this, and she, you know, looks at the body, she kind of motions you over, and she peels back some of the hanks of skin. Now, the skin on this guy is sort of like loose, and even over the places where his body's returned, it's like something bigger was inside of it recently.

The skin sort of loose, lost its elasticity. She peels back part of the skin, and the edges of it are a little bit burnt, even though no fire was applied to this guy. And as you can say, this is all very interesting. It looks like this is skin almost pasted over his original skin. And if you look in here, and she peels this skin back and kind of lifts up underneath

and brings up his liver. And she says, look right here, and you can peer close to the liver, and you see there are some marks, scar marks carved into his liver. Nope. It just looks like a little weird ruin, almost. Huh. Do any of this recognize the liver? Roll an arcana check for me.

So Arcana is your magical knowledge, and you, of course, as a sorcerer, might have some of that knowledge. Nine. Okay, so yeah, you don't recognize this ruin, but it's clearly magical writing. And the Tylo puts down the liver and peels back another piece of skin, and you can see written right on like the rib cage, another one of these runes, cracks the sternum open, and you can see on the lungs on the heart, there are all these ruins like burned into these parts of the body. And she says, but this, this is the most interesting thing.

And she, the butt flips the body over and goes to the back of the head. And you can see on the back of this person's skull, some of the hair is missing and there's a big V-shaped scar. She just right away peels that hair back. She says, and you can see there's a chunk of the skull that is missing. And she says, the chunk of the skull is missing. Also, a small bit of his brain is gone.

Oh. He says, I don't know what any of this means, but it is fascinating. Thank you for this body. So since she's never seen anything like this before, it's likely that we've never seen anything like this before? You've seen nothing like this before. I mean, Narlaq was unable to understand

what the runes mean, but there's a bunch of them all over the place written together. Ravio, perhaps you could your warlock ways. Oh, my demon might, I mean, yes, I might know. Yeah, so roll an Arcana check for me. Arcanic, come on. Come on, Chacha.

Ooh, 17. You actually do recognize this writing. So this isn't demonic writing or anything. Your Hexblade doesn't recognize it as native to her. However, she whispers to you, and you can see actually there's a series of like

potted plants over on the side of the room. You can see the leaves kind of wheeze around. You hear cha-cha-cha-cha. And you can see the leaves kind of weave around a little bit, giving you a message that you can read in those leaves. And it does tell you, in fact, that this is a language of one of the outer plains. Chacha is unsure which one, but it is an extra-planner language. You didn't recognize it as a language from Limbo.

I'm angry at myself. But there is something out there that, you know, a language out there that looks like it's written in. Well, Chacha was unable to. I mean, I can't identify it directly, but it is definitely not of this world. Yes, yes, of course. I must have been distracted. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So you take a couple more minutes talking with Pilo, and she gives you her report, a couple pieces of paper and shoes you out. You guys head back up to your offices. Okay. There's not anybody who can just, like, translate that that we can take them to.

Is there? You could try. I mean, you could maybe detect magic on the body, you could take this to a wizard or somebody, member of the Arcanum. In the Inquisitive Office right now, you guys are the most powerful magic users right now. So Narlak would be the closest thing to try to decipher this. And you can take some time if you want to just like pour over this, line them all together and try to see now that you've been told it's an outer plains language, you grab some books and try to take a look at that.

I'll definitely cast detect magic on it as well. Okay. Well, these things aren't magical. They've just been written down for you. Okay. But I can go back down to the body. You can certainly research the library. I'm going to write down every room. Sure, certainly. go into our precinct library. So we'll let you do a little work there, and we'll hold that role for you at the end. As you're working in the books there,

the door to Smiles office opens, and she steps out, looks around at you and says, I heard there was a bit of a kerfuffle earlier. I trust you are all all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're good. Good, good. I have good news. I think you should come into my office.

Now do you stay and keep studying the rooms? I would like to know what's going on. Okay, so you abandon your room to go out of the office. You guys walk into Smiles' office. And you can see, as soon as you step in the door, there's a form huddled up on her couch, blanket over the shoulders, and he looks up at you, and you see it's the young man that you encountered

at the mansion, a little bit of a beard, baby face, kind of shaking and scared. Liam! And he says, how do you know my name? We just met your boss. Your boss was looking for you too. And also, we should kill you. Liam slash CC.

We're going to call you CC. He says, I know they're looking for me. I didn't mean to do all those things that I did, but I can't go back there. Please don't make me go back there. And Smiles leans against her desk and says, I think young Liam here

has much to tell you. Yes. Yeah. Liam, start from the beginning. Tell us, please. He says, I'm so sorry that I hurt you. I'm so sorry that I hurt you. I didn't want to.

You tackled me and I was so scared. I didn't mean any of those things that I did. We'll wait on that till we hear the rest of your story. I didn't want to be able to change. I didn't want to be a changer. Sheeran told me I was special in that I would be the best of us, the best of the changers, and I believed her, but now I don't want this. How did this happen? How did you become a changer? She picked me. Sheeran picked me. She chose me because I was smart and fast, and she said Grontoc had a special transformation for me. Grontok. Who's Grontok?

Do we, do any of us know? You guys can all roll if you want an intelligence check to see if you've heard of Grontalk. Just add your intelligence bonus to the roll. 14. 15. 11. 8.

14. So you haven't heard, you don't know of a Grontok, but you've actually heard names. Like, that's a name that you recognize. Not of a person necessarily, but of your realm. Like, Grand Talk is a fairly common name among the creatures of Limbo. Hmm.

So he says, well, Grontok, he's, he's Sheeran's friend. He helps us. He helps us be strong. He helps us get stronger and take what belongs to us. Okay. He says, I was picked because I was fast and smart, but, and on our monthly ritual, Grantok made me into what I am. Monthly ritual. Does Grantok work with Sheeran? He said, Grantok's Sharon's friend. He helps us.

Might you all change or get friends? forms around the time of a certain sort of moon? He says, no, our changing happens. Some of us who are more used to it, our changing happens when we want it to. For some people like me, I'm not, I don't control mine very well yet. Sometimes it just happens to me when I'm scared or excited.

But eventually I'll learn to control it. And that's what happened in the Flagstaff House. Yes, I tried, I didn't, you know, we were there, we were supposed to take whatever the harpies had stolen. We were waiting for them to finish ransacking the house. We're supposed to take it, but they surprised, we didn't surprise them. They knew we were coming and they ambushed us. And when they started to attack us, I couldn't control it. It just happened. I'm so sorry. I didn't

mean to hurt anybody. I especially didn't mean I hurt my friends. And you remember one of the river's bodies was also torn. Yeah. So you tore the people up and then we showed up while you were hiding. I hid when I heard more people coming. But then when you, I heard somebody coming down the hall and I needed to get out of there. And so I ran. And then you tackled me and I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that to you. It's okay. Liam, when the change happens, are you saying you're no longer in control of your actions?

I barely remember. I can see flashes and images. I know that I hurt him. I know that I ran. I know that I went down into the sewers. But I don't remember much of when I'm like that. I don't like it. I wish it hadn't happened.

I wish Grontok had never changed me. I wish I hadn't listened to Shear and I wish it never had happened. Is that true for everyone who changes? I don't know. He says it's a special ceremony. It's an honor for us. When Sheeran chooses us because we're special,

they say they can control their changing. I don't know if they remember what they do when they change. I can't control it. Did she choose you from an orphanage? He says she found me at an orphanage, yes. About six months ago, yes. I was getting too old. I would have gone into the streets.

She took me in and she took care of me. How many of the rivers changed like this? He says, well, Grontok started performing the ritual just after I arrived, so, and the ritual only happens every month during the moon, and there's only a few of us each time. Maybe 20? I must study the rooms again immediately. I leave the room and go back and start studying.

The news is it's maybe now 15. So you guys know, when he says the moon, you guys know that the full moon is actually tonight. That was gonna be, yes, so the full moon. And you know where they perform this ritual? In our home, in our lair by the sewers. Ah, can you take us there? He said, I don't wanna go back there.

Can you tell us exactly where to find it? Yes, I mean, I can draw you a map, sure. At this point, Shaiwin, one of the things that you guys may or may not know about her is that she joined the city watch because she, She is a champion for those who can't help themselves. And hearing that she's been taking advantage of these kids from orphanages incenses her. And she wants to go find Sharon and put her down.

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Yeah, I know. It's right across the river actually from Shacktown there. You know, when you walk in through the high gate every day, you actually pass over them. So your shack town is right there and sort of right by the West Wharf here, before you come in to the gate, there are two sewer pipes

that pour into the river right there. So you can picture it in your head now with these two sewer pipes sticking out, pouring sewage into the river because sanitation is so fantastic in this age. But when you think about the river's symbol, you think about those two dots above that river. The river.

That seems very much in here. your mind right now, like those sewers. He says that's where we come in, that's how we get to our home. He says, be careful because of the, he doesn't know the word. He says, the angry logs in the water with teeth. The crocodiles.

Okay, yes. They're right inside the sewer. Oh my gosh, David, when you said angry log the first time I thought you meant a poo. Well, there's lots of that as well. Took me, I was there too, but it took me a little bit Wade, angry log, uh, yes. He says the angry logs just heat the crocodiles live right there inside, so you have to be careful.

But I can draw your map, he says. To the layer. Draw us a map to her lat, to the layer. And then maybe we, no offense, should lock you up if you can't control your chair. And for protection. That's okay. If you will keep me safe, I, I've done terrible things. That's what I deserve.

We're going to lock you up. We're going to need to put you someplace very secure for your safety as well as the safety of others. Absolutely, I understand. I understand. I understand. I try to find a way to make this better for you. Thank you, thank you. Please, if you can take this curse away from me,

I would be, I would appreciate it greatly. And if not, I know that you want to hurt Shear, and I think that she's probably just a good person and doesn't understand this, but Gront talks who did this to me. I understand not being able to act of your own free will. He starts to cry a little bit as he's sitting there in the chair. Oh. Smiles walks over and puts a comforting hand on his back,

and she turns to you, and she says, well, it seems like there's more information that you have, this rivers headquarters, perhaps we want to attack it. And she turns something and she says, you said that the ritual is on the night of the moon. Is that the full moon? He nods. And she looks at all of you. It's tonight. That's tonight. What time? What time does it start? The ritual? Yeah. He says, once the moon is risen, the rivers will gather in the morning to greet the transformed special ones.

But tonight, when it was me, it's just us and Grandauk. They take us to his room, and then we went to sleep. I don't know what happens after that. All right. So when the moon, we've got to get to him before the moon has risen.

All right. Anything else you want to ask, Liam? No, he told us there are 20, so there's 15 of them waiting. Well, but how many rivers are there total? He looks at his hands. A few dozen, I don't know for sure. I've only seen not everybody comes down,

not everybody lives in the lair. Some of us are above, you know, doing our work on the streets. So a few dozen, maybe, maybe more, 50? I wanna look at the back of his head and just very gently, if you don't mind. He flinches away from your touch at first. Okay, it's okay. I don't wanna hurt you.

I just have reason, just give me one second. Does he have a V? He does have that same scar. It's sewed up, but he has that same scar on the back of his skull. Nice. Yeah. Have I discovered anything more? So you're looking at those rooms.

Now with this knowledge, hearing the name, Grontok, kind of looking at this more closely. There's still a little bit out of your grasp. This isn't a language that you speak, and it's not an arcane language that you're familiar with. But you do now, knowing what you know, you can see how some of the rooms would go together to indicate transformation.

In this particular one, you see a couple of runes together that you think might be indicative of vermin or a rat. So I mean, you think that this is almost like these runes might almost be placed in the body to tell the body what to change into and how. Like if I cut Liam open, there'd be a carrying crawler. It may be the case, yeah. Really, don't do that.

I'm not going to cut. Okay, yet, yet. Yeah. So, do you guys, is you going to infiltrate the river's layer? What are you going to do now? What time of day is it? So it's like midday right now. So, you know, like one o'clock, two o'clock in the afternoon.

You've got a good long, a bit of day ahead of you before the moon would rise in the sky. I wonder if, yeah, I'll ask Liam, are they there all the time or your rivers? Sheeran and Groton. There's somebody there all the time. Sheeran's often there. Lots of us live there, not everybody, but lots of us do.

Does Grontock live there? I think so. His rooms are in the back. I know he's there during the ritual. I don't know where he is otherwise. I've never actually seen him. Because if we go too early, then we might scare them off. Right.

Obviously. We want it. But if we go early and there are less of them, we can kill them and lay in wait. Yeah, we might do our own ambushing. But if Grontock only comes at night, yeah, we don't want to tip our house. If we get there, we could get there, secure the area when Grontok arrives. We could then ambush him. Yeah, let's get down there and get the lay of the land before.

Yeah, I like that. Before it's dark. I do have to say here, as much as we didn't know what the rivers were, we should have, and they needed to do a little bit better job of picking a name. Yeah, right. This was pretty easy to figure out, right. It was so on the nose and we looked right over it. Come on guys. Sometimes that's the best way to hide. Before we walk out, I go to Liam. Is Smile, like Captain Smile going to take care of locking him up? Should we lock him up first? Smile says that, you know, no, I'll take care of. I'll make sure that he's comfortable,

but also very secure. Okay. Be careful, Captain. I will be. Thank you. And I go up to Liam and I say, have faith, young one. That's nice.

He nods and smiles a little bit. Thank you. Thank you for helping me. Thank you. You guys leave the office? We leave. We go out of the office. Smiles follows you and closes the door behind you

and says, be careful. This is a day you are, my best, squad. You're strong, powerful. But this is dangerous, so have care. And she goes back into the office. Do you guys, now this time you're going out, you're not going into skies, I imagine. No, we're taking all the stuff.

All the weapons, all the armor. Okay. I mean, they already know what we look like anyway. That's true. They've found us, many people have found. They should know by now we're coming. That coyote we let run off was able to probably describe. Yeah.

Just so we're aware, you know, before we're gonna go do some but before we go in tonight, I do want to take advantage of that pass without a trace. Absolutely, so if you guys are gonna sneak somewhere, that's gonna be your most powerful ally there, right? Okay. So you guys head across the city, out the gates, down to the wharf, to that point where the sewage

does spill into the river. And you can see it now, there are two sewer grates, very like this, pouring sewage into the river. Oh my gosh, how did I not see that? What? Wow. I just saw it a little while ago, too. I was like, yeah.

Well done. So as you approach, you can see that there are two of these right below sort of the wharf line. There's a walkway above it. It wouldn't be hard to get down there. Now it's a bustling day on the wharf. People are around. So if you're trying to hide going into there, you may need to be a little bit extra sneaky. But you can certainly get down to those grates easily.

And as with this one here, you can see that on one of them, the bars are bent just enough to squeeze a person through. If anyone does look at us suspiciously, I use message to them, and I see. say official inquisitive business. You are wearing your clothes. You are wearing your clothes. They hear it in their head. Sure, sure. How many times can I, do I have to rest before I cast this again?

Now if you look at your spell sheet, you can see, so what level spell is that? Pass with true, two, yeah. Okay, so if you look at your spell sheet there, there should be a number that tells you how many second level spells you have. So the first one's, you have two second level spells? Okay, great.

So you can cast that twice before you have to have a long rest to get it back. Okay, should we do that now? So nobody sees us going in? to recon the place and then do it again later? Well, Narlake has a solution about, you know, you being the police if you wanna use that. If you don't want anybody to see you, however,

yeah. Right, because what if somebody sees us from afar that he doesn't talk to and is like, hey, we're not doing anything. How long does this pass without a trace last? An hour. And for all of us? You can do it for all of us.

As long as you stay close to her, you all get the advantages of it. What if we go inside a building close by? Yeah. You cast it on us and then we walk out. Okay, hello. No one sees us. Are we gonna do this to go into the

Because we want to do a little recon work right during the day. And they probably have people. We'll have an hour to walk around. Yeah. All over the place. Let's do it. So you duck into just a little shack nearby. There's tons of little buildings and actually behind some crates and stuff.

It's the wharf so they're offloading equipment. You stand close and you cast your pass without trace. And as Shywin cast this sort of this dark fog like emerges from her fingers and sort of swallows her in almost like a 30-foot radius. At first it's very dark and very visible. And then it sort of fades. And it's almost like she's blending into the background all of the time. You know where she is because you saw her castness and she's still there. She's visible.

But like a casual glance might not see her at all. And as you get closer, you can see as you step into this haze, you all have these same effects. A veil of shadows and silence radiating for me, masking me and my companions from detection. For the duration, each creature you choose within 30 feet, including you, has a plus 10 bonus to dexterity, checks, and can't be tracked except by magical means. Yeah, it's just dexterity stealth check, so it's not like acro-adics. Right, dexterity, self, it's stuff.

A creature that receives this bonus leaves behind no tracks or other traces of its passage. So again, if people are looking straight at you, they might see you, but you'll get a massive plus 10 bonus to your stealth. So you guys move out of the building, and because you're moving slowly here, there's no duress or anything,

you kind of move slowly and cautiously across down by the pipes. Because you're moving so slowly, I'm not gonna make your roll here. You move through the crowd, nobody sees you. You keep out of the way, you don't bump people. You're very quiet, even inside,

like the sounds of your own feet and stuff are muffled as you move with this pass without trace. And so you're able to get down by the sewer grates, climb over the planking and down to where the sewer opening is. And do you slip inside? Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay. When you slip inside, you come to a large sort of pool. This is a sewer water pouring out of these grates into the river, but then there's a pool where it is sitting and festering while it sort of settles the detritus in it.

settles to the bottom before the water pours out. They're trying to keep the river a little cleaner. And along this room, there's a big pool here, and along the sides, there's a little three foot wide walkway that moves around the whole sides of it, and at the far end, lift about three feet above, there's another hole leading off into the sewers. And you can see a little trickle of sewage pouring

out of that hole as well. It smells really bad down here. The way that it smells in that juncture that you found below, actually it smells like here, it is pungent and powerful. The pool is relatively still, there's some stuff floating in. in it and then there's walkways around the sides

that look very slimy. Do we see anything here, anybody? Roll a perception check for me. So this is where you're just trying to spot what's going on here. Three plus five, it's eight. Okay, so just the smell is overwhelming. There's the sound of the pouring water.

You actually don't hear anything out of place or anything here. Does anybody else want to check? Yeah, okay. Everybody kind of looks around. 12. Ooh, 24. Yes. Oh, where was that?

15. perception 20. Okay. So the two of you, so everybody else, you kind of look around and you hear the pouring water, you smell the stench, you can see the walkway, here the sound of the wharf outside, but the two of you are kind of looking out into the water. You can see several

floating almost log-like shapes on top of the water. You kind of quick count them between the two of you, count eight of them. And you can tell Igneus just because of your knowledge of the place and you've been down in the sewers and you've seen them before, they're definitely crocodiles floating in the water. Got it.

Croc's floating in the water. So you'll want to not fall in the water. We'll want to not fall in the water. Can I converse with them? Can you make friends? Totally, you can try. Uh, let's see. Now, conversing with them is one thing.

You can always talk to them, just your regular conversation. You can try to call them too to have a conversation. Their disposition is be different from the rats, so we'll see if you're successful. But you also have a speak with animals' spell. Yes. Doesn't mean you make friends with them when you speak with them, but you can actually just directly talk to them. So they understand you normally, but you can use that spell if you want to.

Either way, it doesn't guarantee you. doesn't guarantee they'll come talk to you or that there'll be your friends. You'd have to coerce them to you somehow. Hmm. There's no other apparent doors in this room. There is that pipe on the far side. That's the pipe. I'm going to try to speak with animals because I do have the plus six animal handling.

So what does it say there? So this gained the ability to comprehend and verbally communicate with beasts for the duration. The knowledge and awareness of many beasts is limited by their intelligence. They can give me information about nearby locations and monsters, whatever they can perceive. You may be able to persuade a beast to do a small favor for you. Okay, so that's the, you know, this is very similar to the innate power that you have. So it's not the spell shot, let's just use your power speaking with creatures. So the circle, circle, shepherd's shepherd's circle power.

Yep. So you're going to try to coerce them to you using animal handling? What are you going to try to bait him to you? What are you going to try to do? Let's see. So the spell doesn't allow you to bring them closer to you. It would be animal-handles. Right, I was going to try to use my animal friendship.

Oh, you have that. That maybe seems like a better deal. Yeah, let me use animal friendship, because this spell lets me convince a beast, I mean it no harm. Choose a beast they can see within range. It must see and hear me. If the beast's intelligence is for or higher, the spell fails. It's not. It's a crocodile. It's okay. It might be a smart crocodile. Otherwise, the beast must succeed on a wisdom-saving throw or be churned by you for the spell's duration. If you or one of your companions harms it, the spell ends. So this seems more useful than to speak with animals, because... because this is a creature that wouldn't normally be friendly to you. Right.

Now, the crocodile can't, well, might not be able to see you right now because of your past without trace spells. You'll have to move away from the rest of your group in order to expose yourself. Can I get back to that? Oh, sure, certainly. Okay, good. As long as I can go back and disappear. You can walk and kind of step out so you become more visible.

Yeah. I'll step out and become more visible to the crocodile. So mark down the spell for me. Where do I mark it down? So you've got a spell, you just went past. Yep. You can use, it tells you how many of each spell level you can use. use per day? So it's a first level spell? First level spell. So you get four of those per day.

You get three, you've got three left. Three left. Cool. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken 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.

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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 campy 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. All right, and you cast the spell. As soon as you step out of the concealment, several of the crocodiles start to move toward you, but one of them does take a lead, sort of a curious lead moving toward you. So you cast the spell on that dude.

Okay, you try to charm him. And he continues to move toward you, but slows a little bit and rises a little bit in the water. Kind of a curious look toward you. Comes up to the edge, and he opens his mouth, and you guys hear, But what you actually are because you speak with them is, how can I help? Oh, good.

We're looking for people. People like us who live down here. People are delicious. They are. You don't have to tell me. But in this particular instance, I'm just trying to figure out where, how have they get in and out of this room? Where do they go? He says, they walk on the edge, very frustrating.

Oh, yes. And then where do they go once they walk? And he kind of moves his, points his nozzle in the hole. They go through the hole. That's the only way out of here. Climb up. Sometimes they fall, though. Delicious.

Oh, I can imagine. It must be really... We share. Oh, that's nice. That's nice that you guys share. That's good. So we've got to go through the hall. Great.

Have you seen anyone come by recently? Kind of cocked his head. Recent isn't a concept that you know they have a very strong sense of. He says, people come, people go. Anyone come? Well, they don't have it today, do they? Not really.

Not really. Sewer. I think this is a very. about as much I'm gonna get out of this guy. I'm like, thank you. Hold on, I want to see about asking him for a favor. Let's see. Can we get snow white over here.

The favor was something you could ask him if you speak with animal, but the charmed animal is kind of gonna do you a favor if you ask him. He's charmed. So as long as it's not against his nature. Yeah, I'm gonna ask you if other humans come in here behind us, attack them. Oh yes.

Should we wait until they fall in the water? No, no. You can come up out of the water. Oh, really? Yeah. That sounds fabulous. Yeah. I'll tell my friends we will do that. Yeah.

Of other people, after I have left and my friends have left, go for them. We will. All right, great. Thanks. That'll be useful. He says, be careful. Don't fall into the water. Yeah, we'll make sure. I won't hurt you, but my friends were very hungry. Yes. All right. We won't fall in the water.

Nobody fall in the water. Okay. All right. So then I come back to the group. So he kind of swims around. You come back into the fog of the... You guys heard him, like, kind of grunting and hissing at this thing. You know? Parcel tongue.

Yeah. And so, apparently we've got to go through this hole here. Walk around, we'd be very careful. Don't fall in the water. The crocodiles will eat you if you fall in the water. And they're also going to eat anyone who comes in after us. So that should cover our flank for a while. Sweet.

I don't know. Be careful getting out of here. Yes. And be careful now. Like, if you fall in the water, it's not going to be good. You guys are going to inch along the sides? kind of keeping your backs of the wall trying to move. The rock is very slippery.

So I am going to need everybody to make a check for me to move around here to avoid falling in the water. So hold on first. This is going to be a dexterity check. So you're trying to keep your feet while you're moving around the walls. Are you guys taking any extra precautions that I should know about before you do this? Should we have the most dexterous one go ahead and then tie a rope and throw it back to us to prevent us from falling? We have a rope.

You can definitely try that. It's okay if you don't have anything you want to do. I just wanted to see if you were gonna hold hands or tie rope to you or. I can make one of us fly, but. How are our leader, as leader. It would be wise for us all to hold on to each other so that we can pull anyone out of the water.

Yes. So you guys move along, move along the wall. So we're just gonna go around and have everybody make your role. So, Leona, you take the lead and you make a dexterity check for me. And this is a, if you, you're not gonna use acrobatics. So let's just make a pure dexterity check to keep your feet. Can I use athletics? You cannot use athletics, unfortunately.

There's nothing to hold onto it. You can use your strength for. This is dexterity. I just have a lot of that. Yeah, you do. So you roll and add your dexterity to that? 14. Yeah, you are able to make it by.

It's only, you're trying to hit a 10. So we're just trying to hit a 10. So you're able to keep your feet as you go around, but you're holding onto Igneus. So igneus, why don't you roll? Dexterity roll, trying to hit a 10 or better? 12. So you're able to keep your feet, which is good.

I don't think you have a bonus to your dexterity. I do. I do, I do. Oh, 13. 18, so you're able to keep your feet, shy win. Your dexterity is crazy high, so 19 plus 5. So 24, so you sort of dance along the edge of it. And then last, you're holding Narlax hand.

Long, lengthy, weird alien guy. Yes, 12. All right, so you're all able to make them from the edge. As we get there, Leon, you're very strong. You can boost everybody into that sewer pipe, and you boost them up into the sewers, and you find yourself. Just a human, huh? Just strong, pushing them all up there, and you find yourself.

back in the sewers. This is like the rest of the sewers. It's about 20 feet wide. There's a channel running down the middle, murky water running down it, dripping water from the ceiling. The ceiling's about nine feet high. And you've got the map that Liam drew for you. You know that there is a crack in the sewers. About a mile from here, by the way, winding through the sewers, that leads to the river's lair. So you begin to move through here. You have good confidence you won't get lost because you've got a ranger with you that never gets lost. You've got igneous and his rat friends down here should anything go awry and you begin to move through the sewers into the darkness does anybody cast any light or anything before we go I will cast light upon my staff right you norlock holds his staff a light bangs it on the ground and is the top of it the light shrouded in the spell as well so yeah you guys the spell is still the spell so you're still going to have that bonus as you move so you can see but it will still be hard for people to see you so as you guys move forward still hold into the sewers toward the river's layer.

And that's where we're going to end for this time. If you want to find out what happens as our party reaches the river's lair, you can join us next time on Starter Kit. Next time on Starter Kit. The sun will be down in moments and he'll begin his ceremony. The thing turns and sees you. Your people escaped us a century ago. How fitting that you should bring yourself to me now.

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