Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Vox Machina Ep. 105 - The Fear of Isolation
Episode Date: January 10, 2022Vox Machina travel to the pools of Wittebak where they meet a lonely stranger residing in a strange old house... Guest starring Darin De Paul! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm.../adchoices
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Hello everyone and welcome to the night's episode of Critical Role for a bunch of us nerdy ads voice actors sit around.
and play Dungeons and Dragons.
I think we're recording, so my camera lights not on,
but nevertheless, welcome.
We're totally recording.
I'm pretty sure we are.
Anyway, guys, so welcome.
We have a fantastic guest who'll be joining us later this evening,
but before we get to that, we have announcements
to go up real fast.
First and foremost, tonight's episode is sponsored
by a new sponsor, a fantastic group called Quid.
Do you want to talk about that for us?
Hi, guys, vacation Sam here.
Quidd is our sponsor tonight, a fantastic news sticker,
app for your phone. You can check it out at
Bitley, that's v.it.l.ly
slash CR Quid.
That's CRQUIDD.
I didn't know
I didn't know much about the company,
but Quid sounded vaguely British.
So, little known facts about me,
I have access to the BBC archives
at home, so I did some snooping.
And sure enough, I found a
World War II newsreel
transcript that talked about
quid. Wow.
So I thought I would do a dramatic reading of it for you right now.
There we go.
You need seatbelt.
News from the front.
This is Nigel J. Cream Hutch reporting from Cicillum.
March 23, 1944 may be a turning point in World War II
as PM Churchill announces a new weapon in the fight against those devilish Nazis.
They're calling it quid.
A new app where you can collect stickers, cards, and funco figures on your telephone device.
Our lads on the front lines are already using it.
We spoke with Lieutenant Neville Bingham of the Royal Navy.
Right, yeah. Quids like this free app available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
And it's helping us drive Hitler back to Berlin.
But it's not just our tomies. The Reds have discovered quid as well. We spoke with Tank Commander Ivan Byshenko.
Wait quid, Russian army is strongest in world.
Oh God.
Or all better now with thousands of stickers to collect that can be used like emojis and messages to your friends.
Stalin dread will not fall with these huge stickers!
Why they're even using quit across the pond!
We spoke with American Sergeant John Smith, an American doughboy.
I'm John an American.
We American GIs love to collect stickers from brands like Rick and Morty,
Bob's Burgers, Family Guy, Breaking Bad, Star Trek,
and newly announced Game of Thrones.
Take that Emperor Hero Hito.
Well, there you have it, ladies and gents.
Your British Armed Forces and our allies
will defeat the Nazis and win the Second Great War
if you go to Bitley slash CR Quid and check out Quid.
Good night, good luck, and God save the Queen, Pip!
I'm so glad that's available on the BBC.
Yeah, it was a weird transcript.
I mean, I would have shown the newsreel, but it was just a transcript.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
Wow, good, thank you for the update on that.
And thank you, Quaid, for sponsoring tonight's episode.
Really appreciate it.
Did they win the war?
Find out next time.
All righty, let's see.
Do you have any merch updates at all over?
We pretty much.
There's stuff in the store.
There you go, perfect, good.
I like it, thank you.
All right, the Green Ronan campaign guide.
Pre-orders go up on Monday, guys.
Whoa!
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
Oh, my God.
Yes.
And if you get the book in the PDF, I think the PDF is available immediately.
So some of you will have access to actually read the book on Monday.
Oh, shit.
Are you so nervous, Matthew?
Oh, shit.
Actually, like, in real time, call us when we're wrong on our own stuff.
Oh, no.
What are you mean, finally?
That's true.
Finally.
Finally.
Although you are Talasyn Chap.
I know.
This is a level of pain I've only dreamed of.
I'm very excited.
Hey, hey, we're so proud of you.
Yeah.
We are.
Nice job with the words and stuff.
Hold on, though.
We haven't read it yet.
It's true.
It's terrible written by like a child.
We're a shame of you.
Crayon.
It's outwritten in marker.
We're disgusting.
You know how hard it is get crayon printed these days,
especially out of China?
Only if the writer's room drop the ball.
Of course.
We'll hope you guys enjoy it, so look forward to that.
The podcast is now episodes 11 through 20, right?
Uh-huh.
on the Apple Store.
So you can go ahead and download those, which are awesome.
Yep, Apple and Google plays.
Yes, and those are the ones.
Of course, we'll have Talks Machina,
I believe next Tuesday, 7 p.m.
about this episode tonight here on Twitch and Alpha,
7 p.m. Pacific with our finestic host, Brian Foster,
so you can check that out.
Wednesday Club next week.
Wednesday Club, we're talking about Comic-Con,
because Comic-Con is coming up,
and we're going to try and give you a first-timer's
guide to Comic-Con if you've never been to one,
kind of what to expect, what to do for fun,
and all sorts of things.
things that you could see or do in San Diego.
Other than us.
I know, thank you.
It was very proud of us.
We're not having a show next week.
We're not having a show next week.
We're going to be at Comic-Con.
Is that true?
Yeah, it is.
Week off.
So we'll miss you guys next week.
But we do have our critical role panel on Saturday at Comic-Con.
It's at 10.30 a.m.
Yeah.
And room 6.
B.C.
Something like that.
So it's a nice big room.
You guys should come.
We're going to have silly questions, Q&A,
conversation, stories, and all that funness.
Yay.
Some cool surprises.
Prizes.
Surprises.
Surprise.
Surprise.
Oh, yeah.
They're gonna get the shirt off your back.
You have some announcements.
Oh, that's right.
Oh.
So hopefully you guys can make it at San Diego Comic Con
if you're gonna be there.
We'd love to see.
So, and last and least, Saga's of Sundry Dread,
the third episode, when I'm today.
It's there.
It's getting real.
It's scary.
I'm gonna marry.
I'm gonna marry.
All righty.
See your life.
What's up?
See you all right.
And at JenCon next month.
We have our live show.
We mentioned it last week.
So tickets are still on sale for the general admission.
We're looking forward to having you guys there.
It's Friday evening.
Yeah, it's Friday evening, 7.30.
In fact, we got an even bigger theater this year.
The last theater had like 1,500 seats.
We're like, oh, we'll never get that many people.
And it went and filled up.
So we got a 2,500 seat theater.
It's massive.
It's a huge party.
If you didn't join us last year, you want to come to this mayhem.
It's so much fun.
You don't need passes to Gen Con, by the way.
You don't have to have a badge or anything for that.
It's a standalone thing.
There are definitely tickets still available.
It's going to be super pod.
I feel like the bad many people we should have, like, beach balls
in the audience.
We might.
They can do the wave.
Oh my dear.
You can playable D20s throughout there.
Blow up D20s.
Oh.
Oh.
You can get them.
They're on the geek, I think.
I think we don't.
This is a terrible idea.
This is a terrible idea.
It's a great idea.
Anyway.
Anyway, about further ado, I think that's not.
includes our announcements. And as such, let us dive into tonight's episode of Critical
Law.
Off last time. Vox Magina, having finally encountered the undying king, returned in physical form
on the shadow fell, did battle, and fled.
Quite un-upak away.
unquiet unprepared for that venture and gathered some tidbits of information about what
the vectness plans may be. Upon returning and discovering that your disintegrated Vax has returned
through some deal he made with his patron, the Raven Queen after disintegrating, you decided
to go ahead and try and gather more information about this and beseeched some of the higher powers
within Exandria. Pike talked to Sarah and Ray and was given the
invitation to come visit her in Elysium on the island of renewal.
And upon gathering your materials and causing a mess in Vasselheim, you got together
and went to meet this fantastic Everlight.
On her island you spoke with her, she gathered some information from you, as
Vecna seemed to be blocking at least the influence and vision from a lot of the deities,
and then gave her blessing on the pike, transferring you over to one of the other gods
that lives along the blessed fields of Elysium,
Pellor, the Donfather.
You then walked through the orchards
that led to the fortress of the sun, where he resides.
Spoke with some of the guardians there
and were led into the center of the citadel
where you met in the central throne room
under the Zenith Tower, Pellor himself.
Upon exchanging information,
you spoke of your need to gather
the favor of certain gods in the battles to come.
And we're given a challenge.
To step up to plate, Vexalia.
You accepted the challenge,
and racing to the top of the tower of the zenith
before the fires could be extinguished in the brazier that awaited you,
you threw yourself into the fire,
and upon the party,
speaking on what it was that made Vexalia
such an important member of not just your team, but your family,
and gave you strength,
she was imbued with a blessing.
of the Don Father himself.
After which we left off as you exited the front
of the fortress of the Sun stepped into the central glade
that marks the center of the seemingly endless orchards
that surround this region.
And Voxmachina, what would you like to do?
Eat all of the fruit.
No.
It was really good.
It was just fruit, by the way, like I said.
We're still in heaven right?
We're still in Elysium.
Elysium.
Not quite heaven.
Oh, no.
Are there any other gods here that we should, you know, curry favor with, four of?
We forgot to ask.
Did we?
I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't think I own is here.
We're just looking at trees at this point.
You're looking at a series of the Sun Tree Cousins, one of which you've met,
scattered amongst this glade surrounding the central citadel.
You're not quite a douche.
No other people, guards, nothing.
I mean, you have the guards behind you,
the large like planetar and diva entities that stand there
armored in their golden plate just kind of after ushering you out,
our standing guard.
Where we can ask them.
Sure, I'll go up to one and say,
Hello there, big fellow.
Standing a full 10 feet taller than you practically,
the wings just slightly bent.
The large planer entity kneels down.
down. Hello. Hello. Vacation Scanlan here. A couple questions. By the way, was he one of the ones who fought in there?
Uh, make a perception check. Do they all look like? 17 plus one. That's that speech. Hard to tell.
We didn't pay a lot of attention. Okay. Hey, just wondering a few questions.
A, how does one get out of here?
Is there like a door to another plane,
or do we just have to?
I imagine the same way you came in.
Hmm, a God brought us here.
All right, cool.
Number two, are there any other,
like your dawn father around here,
any other gods in the area?
Across Elysium, there are two deities.
They're called it.
the Dawn Father and the Everlight.
We covered our basis.
Yeah.
Out of curiosity, what are you called?
It looks very closely, and you get the sense
that part of its nature is kind of scanning through you.
It's getting a sense and a read of you as an individual and says,
No one you need to worry about.
Stans up and then takes two steps back into place and look straight ahead.
You should remember that line.
that line. That's a good one.
Yeah, I've already forgot it.
I'm too intimidated.
It's a little bit coming out.
Is it no one or something? I don't know.
No one you know.
Well, good speaking to you.
I was very intimidated.
It still looks out. It doesn't respond.
Hmm.
Well, how do we get out of here?
Can she take us out?
Yeah.
She does it on the daily.
I know, but I don't know if this has...
It's a...
It's a...
They talked about some sort of a gait
gate that keeps the gods out and the bad gods in.
That's it.
To remind you what happened last time,
there was talking about possibly,
or at least there was the trammel,
the prime trammels that were used previously
to seal the chain of oblivion, Thruzodun,
and that the orchestrator, the designer of those
who was Ayun, the knowing goddess.
Ayun, however, has been sealed herself away,
being a wounded god, long recovering.
and the only information that Pelor has
of where she hit herself.
The key, essentially,
and it's not an object, but a person.
You're seeking an individual
of which you were given
a kind of solar light map
of a single small home
in a forest ravine
not far from a place that you noticed
was near the Pools of Wittibok,
which is in the Cliff Keep Mountains.
Yeah, but there was also a mention
of some divine gate
that keeps people from...
Well, the divine gate is a known existing entity.
It's essentially a large gate that prevents the gods
from returning to the prime material plane.
But we can just go willy-nilly back and forth.
It's like a metaphysical screen door that keeps flies out.
So that gods can't get in and out.
Sure, sure.
Yeah, the prime tremble.
Yeah.
Which we now have to get...
We have to get near the cliff keep range,
near the pools of Wittibok.
This is where we need to go.
And the clip keep is not too far from White Zone?
Clipkeep Mountains kind of go across a lot of the northern side of Taldore,
from what you're familiar with.
Like we're talking of craghammer to Gat Shadow to the Jodun Village,
Joran Village.
There's a lot of things.
It's like a big horizontal mountain range that kind of a caps the top part of the continent.
Do I recognize the city that I can get us to this close?
For Daxia.
For Daxi or Crackhammer.
I've ever been to Craghammer for a while,
although Daxio might be worth a check.
What's closest?
To the.
Clivekeep?
To the pools of Pools.
Probably,
probably Tara or the pools of Wittebach.
Those are the two that are closest.
What is Tara?
My home.
Oh.
Tera's not your home.
That's-
Sorry.
Sorry.
The other Shari Village, yeah.
Sorry.
Tara is the.
Summer.
Or the Shari.
My other home.
The other home.
The home away from home.
Stolen things.
Yeah.
Can you also remind me where my Vectar made me feel Vecna when we were on the primaterial
plane?
Yes.
I knew all along.
Oh, where?
Yeah.
We talked about it, but I kind of heard of.
You did, yes.
It seemed to be hundreds of miles northwest of Vasselheim.
Of Vasselheim.
Okay.
A different kind of.
You didn't sense?
any movement, but you knew the general direction and distance.
That was yesterday.
Correct.
Right.
Teacher.
Yes, Laura.
I was excited the last game, and somehow it's misplaced my paler champion.
Piece of paper.
Oh, she doesn't get to have it now.
That's how that works.
I don't know how it happened.
It's not with my stuff.
That's okay.
I remember what it does.
You do?
And if you decide to use it.
You'll tell me.
Tell me.
Okay.
I won't tell you, you tell me you want to use it.
Oh, shit, okay.
I'm sorry.
It's okay.
I had it, and it's not here.
It's weird, how it's so nice, and it still feels like you're in so much.
And get my glass.
I am in a lot of trouble, you guys.
He's calm, but indifferent, like the Dawnfather.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right, so.
What would you like to do?
Yeah, what would we like to do?
Should we go to Tara?
Check in with them, I guess.
Seems prudent.
Talk to Patis.
Yeah.
We're ready to go?
I'm very ready to go.
This is lovely and everything that I've had my fill.
I will burn my eighth level spell slot to plane shift us to Terra.
To Terra, all righty.
Mind the gap.
What gap?
What are you?
Don't worry about it.
No, if you didn't have fruit.
No, you didn't send that.
I was like, are we going shopping at the moment?
At the moment.
Didn't remove a curse or anything?
No, you did nothing really caught you at speed.
Oh, speed.
Are we by those trees, the fruit trees again?
There are no fruit bearing trees directly near you.
The sun trees around you do, yes.
Okay.
All righty.
So I'm bringing up my notes on Tara.
So that's where you're going.
Yeah, I should probably...
When we go, if we...
I'm so confused about the order of things.
If we go to Ioun and we don't have everything we need for this prime
tremor. Are we fucked or I know we need godly power in order to
imbue them right or something? Either here or soon we need to sort of sit and
work this out. What do we need to bring into the trammel? Well, Palo gave me
this snap snap snap, snap. Is it this? Yeah, good. Good object, it's a stone and
it's supposed to be strong enough to make... power of the trammal. Part of
of it? Not all of it.
We need to collect more, though, right?
Yes.
We have to get like eight or something.
We got to toxic.
Wait, they said that?
You weren't given any indication as to how many you needed.
It did seem like this is not enough.
Oh, no, wait.
Ione was healing for eight centuries.
That's where I got that number.
I'm sorry.
I could do it, two.
Five.
It was two numbers.
Of power.
All right, so as you complete your spell, Keyleth,
you step through the base of the base of the,
nearest tree, possibly the same one you spoke with earlier if you want to be a dick about it.
Oh, yeah. Let's walk through that asshole. That sounds.
Let's walk through that asshole.
But fuck it.
He's got a fart on us as we walk.
You aggressively stampede through the center of this one tree and emerge on the other side of one of the...
Hey, yay, hey, hey.
Dick.
From one of the surrounding trees on the...
the Terra Village. There are a number of these pseudo-petrified or dried out large-trung trees
that seem to have slowly died off from the heavy tectonic shifts and small quakes that happened
in this area that have made a lot of the land unable to support large forms of plant life,
or at least the trees that used to exist here. So you step out and emerge from the exterior,
the village that kind of domes down into this small crater that you recall seeing before
where most of the village inhabits the central portion,
and the village is there before you.
What were the shard things called again?
The shard things?
The shard, the things we need to collect?
Shard.
I mean, there wasn't really a name for them more
than just their small pieces of essence of the deity.
There's a question.
So we need pieces of God.
Okay.
Little raptors.
The little seed of light given to my sister look
anything like the Little Seed we saw, Scanlan and Vax saw from riding the shadow creature
in the sky? No. I mean, in the sense that it's a small source of power of some kind,
but what you saw there was maybe about that large on the platform, what she has is bead size.
Is it like, is it like this size? Or is it like this size?
Comparable to each. So, do you stand outside of Tara?
What are you doing?
What time of day is it?
How tired are we?
Based on when you left,
because that much time is passed comparably,
it would still be Polly,
but you were over in Vasselheim,
which means it's getting dark, actually.
I'd say with the way the sun has passed to the sky now,
you've just gotten past dusk.
There's still light in the sky,
but it's going from oranges to purples
to dark blues on the horizon.
And you can see hints of
firelight, torchlight, and candlelight from within the actual city below.
Well, what are we going to need on this trip?
Maybe we should get whatever supplies we need.
Are we going to like, is it far? Do we need to, are we going to become gas?
Are we going underground?
Oh, to Terra?
No, we're in Terra.
We're there.
But I mean, to the next day, we're going to the...
Oh, to the pools.
Oh, do we want to stay the night here, though?
I can't miss us right now.
I'm tapped out.
One of them would probably need to camp here.
Max, can you sense Vecna?
Is he still the same place?
Can sense him.
You can sense him.
He is from your current location,
thousands of miles from you.
Oh, hard to tell, Ben.
He's still, he's really shitty, though.
Wherever he is.
Yeah, very heavy west-northwest direction from you currently.
Well, let's go out.
Well, we just sleep.
Do we need to get any intel on one?
on where these pools are? Do we need anything?
We should maybe talk to the people of terror.
It's not that late.
Yeah, we can, let's at least go.
They have a spare room for us.
Find some take out.
Aren't you like the leader of all the people?
Well, I'm the leader of the Areshaari.
I'm the voice of the tempest.
They have their own.
Is there yes or no?
You don't have to fucking brag or say.
No, no.
There's four of us.
No, cool.
Good deal.
One of four.
Do you know the one who lives here?
I do.
Let's go see him or her, or they.
Cages.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, we can just go, like I was saying, like I was saying,
like five minutes ago.
Let's just go.
All right.
So as you walk down into the village,
a number of the guardians step out quickly seeing
an approaching party, however, recognizing Keelith
in her station immediately, turn into an escort
that leads you to the center portion of the village.
I request Pettice.
And quickly enough, they go and retreat, Patis.
You see the elderly
form of the leader you've met before, step out, the graying hair, the weathered, dark skin tones,
the long kind of greens and brown leathers that kind of drape off, just showing hints of the knees
and the lower feet. The large walking staff that he carries at his side as he approaches
and the headdress seems to be a combination of thick twines and shale shards that have been
woven in, steps forward.
An unexpected visit, most definitely.
Kaitiaki.
Kaitiake.
Pitease, I am so sorry for the late intrusion.
We've just gotten back from the plane of Elysium,
so we're a little tired.
Yeah, we're kind of fighting a god right now.
Well, more like I did my god.
So have you heard of Vecna?
Sorry, I'm probably getting ahead of myself.
Do you have any food?
We have food.
We have food.
Yes. You are guests of terror, please.
Please, we will provide whatever you require.
Come.
Provide them a meal.
And he puts his hand out, and he kind of run off quickly
and begin setting up a.
I would give him his feed us.
Show up in this food.
You've been used to that your whole life.
Not at home.
I have to sing for dinner.
And you just say.
Have you tried not singing for dinner?
Maybe I'd get more food.
You might.
I mean, he did have one year-ish,
where you were kind of on the skids.
Skids, yeah.
I did a solidier change.
You did your Prince and the Pop a bit for a little bit.
It's a bit vague, but yes.
That's true.
I was on a boat for quite a while.
It's kind of like your acting career.
Oh my God, can we eat food?
And quick as that, you guys make your way down to,
it's a modest meal, but it's a meal nonetheless.
Mostly hunted creatures of the local mountainside,
some dried beets and root.
We always try to source locally.
Charmingly perfect.
Yeah.
Perhaps you should let your people know
that the world is in danger.
Yet, um, so the world's in danger, as she said.
As Patice has come and joined you guys to have this conversation.
Friends after time.
Yeah.
Oh, shit.
Oh, it just induced panic.
Honey, pack your back.
Yeah.
Petitse, who sat down with you,
just as quickly.
We have been made aware,
via the other Ashari,
that there is some danger possibly coming.
We are awaiting word of what to do
other than keep ourselves in a defensive position.
We have to guard the rift, of course.
But should there be a call to action,
we'll do what we can.
But I don't, I'm unfamiliar with this, Vecna.
But whatever you plan,
Please be careful.
More than anything, I think I would want you all to be relief with the surrounding area
and the surrounding villages, if anything disastrous were to happen.
I know you have to guard the rift, and that is insanely important, especially right now with
someone like Vecna who could potentially abuse that.
But if anything were to happen, I don't know if you could house extra people and
during a disaster.
We are quite good to assembling makeshift
and temporary lodging.
The Iraq is kind of our friend, if you will.
Yeah, that's more, I think, what we would need.
Of course, of course, not a worry.
Currently, Vecna is just north of Vasselheim,
close to Pira.
Have you asked Pira for aid as well?
They've also been put on alert, but we have
not personally been there yet since this has happened.
Well, good. They're closer.
But we're happy to help if we can.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Of course.
Of course.
We just happened here first.
Yeah.
Just thank you for housing.
We're happy to help.
Where are you off to?
The pools of Wittibok.
But what brings you towards the pools of Witterbock?
You know this place.
It is a series of poisoned wells and
Hulking stupid giants.
Hulking stupid giants?
Giants.
At the pools?
Yes.
I thought it was something about gnomes there.
It was once.
Oh no.
They grew.
Is that something you can do, Scanlon?
I don't know.
I think it is.
They're geothermal, large puddles across the mountains.
Dived, various minerals being lifted up
from the deep waters beneath the mountain.
Heated, bubbling, boiling, steaming.
But the giants moved in hundreds of years ago,
stomped around, and ended up kind of, well,
filling the entire subterranean,
nomish city of Witterbach with fumes and poison
and killed most of them, and the rest flooded crack,
ever?
Do you all ever broached the area, or do you just stay clear at that?
Best to avoid, we have our own business to deal with.
And it's 100 miles from here, it's not much of any.
And the pools are naturally poisonous.
Well, they're some are toxic, some or not, but since the giants moved in and ruptured some of it.
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natural formations, some of them have grown toxic or acid, I guess.
Do you know if people still try to live there?
We're looking for someone.
If they are, they're foolish.
Okay.
That's our kind of people.
Maybe the person we're looking for as a giant.
Maybe.
Do you know what type of giant?
We've seen a few types of giants.
Do you know they're make and model?
The dumbest.
The dumbest.
Mountain giants.
Mountain giants.
Hill, hill giants.
Yes.
Yeah.
Easy to out smart, difficult to outrun.
They'll eat anything.
Even small little nose.
Ooh.
Seems like they ate a lot of them.
I guess so.
Hi.
Pastie, I have a question.
Do you know anything about Aune?
I know of the name.
But not much.
Well, not the most devoted people.
I know.
I saw that.
I can't imagine I'd have any information you wouldn't.
Okay. Just checking.
My apologies.
This food is really good.
Yes. Enjoy your meal.
And he gets up and walks away.
Thank you.
He was so officious.
I thought we were walking into a fucking lake with gnomes living there.
I didn't realize we're going to fight giants.
It's got so much better all of the sudden.
If it were easy, it really wouldn't be us, would it?
So the question is, is there actually someone
of some minor intelligence living there that is this magical key,
or did that person get eaten by like a giant?
I'm... I cannot believe I'm about to say this.
I'm inclined to believe the God.
They're in the position where trying to trick us out of leaving
is not necessary, could have just told us to leave
and be done with it.
Bad information just wouldn't suit them, I don't think.
I'm not saying it's bad information.
I'm just wondering who the key is.
It's possible the key is now inside of a giant stomach.
Awesome.
We've got to go right into a child shit.
I mean, it still would be inside of someone.
Yeah.
Maybe they're still living inside.
Maybe it's like a Moby Dick situation.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Who's that?
You do recall the map that was shown to you
by the Don Father Pellor, it was adjacent to the pools,
not actually in the pools of Wada Bak,
was within a forest and was a home.
Oh, I remember it now.
It was a home inside.
Oh, I drew a little map of it.
Yep, that's it.
Look how adjacent it is to do.
Yeah, it's adjacent to the pools when there's a home in a forest.
Did you like it?
That was, that's what my map was.
It looks like the stock market, yes.
What can we theoretically just missed over every
I mean, and just kind of look out for a home in the forest.
Yeah.
We'll have to fly pretty low.
I'm assuming the home is going to be covered by tree top.
Oh, trees.
Then that too.
We never travel it traditionally anymore.
I'm just saying I miss the romantic aspects of, you know,
traveling the country.
So it's just like fast forward, immediate gratification
and fucking, no.
The dawn father said we must hurry or else the world will end.
And it's 100.
You don't know what 100 is.
It's very far away.
We could Misty step to the forest and then walk in the forest.
Why are you fucking talking to me like, I'm a child.
What was that?
No reason, darling.
Okay.
That would like that.
No.
Okay.
Once this is all done, Grog, you and I will go on a long track together.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Don't be dark and creepy and make it sound like you're being nice. I know you're being
dark and creepy right now. Hey, hey, hey, don't get after my camping partner like that, all right.
Shit. Chill. I can't predict this one. I know. No marshmallows for this witch, right?
It is a little weird to be making promises, though. Well, on that chipper and side note,
I think we should turn in for the evening on that.
Yes, do we have lodging?
Lodging has provided for you.
They have a number of various guest tents
and small buildings that can provide you with space.
Not the highest of quality places you've slept in, probably.
And if you wanted to provide your mansion instead, you're welcome to.
But you can't put food, quiet sleep.
It's comfortable evening's rest.
All right.
All right.
You all find yourselves through the evening.
As you sleep, and having this being the first time, many of you,
you've slipped in Terra, it takes you a while.
There is just a general low,
how more vibration to the ground that you sleep on.
You get the sense of probably proximity to the rift,
but there is just this slow, perpetual,
kind of weird low rumble, like a heavy bass sound
that never seems to dissipate,
that you haven't noticed until you were trying to quietly sleep.
But it's not off-putting, and within 10, 15 minutes,
it's actually almost helps slowly.
you to rest. You all come to in the morning, you gather your supplies and are preparing for you the next look of your journey. What do you wish to do?
Could I attune either before I go to sleep or when I wake up to the Dwarben Thrower instead of the blood axe?
You may? Thank you. All right. Any other attumments? Anyone wishes to...
I'll sit the Death Walker's ward to acid. All right, to acid, boom.
Before everyone else gets up, can I go find where Vax is sleeping?
You may.
This is a tent. What do I do? Do I knock?
Do I knock? Do I shake it?
I'm not sure. Scratch.
They're lodging made from large pieces of shale and rock
that have all been jammed into a so much triangular pattern
to form kind of an earth-yirt, if you will.
Owey. Are you naked?
Yes.
Put some crows on that then.
Jesus.
Keenan, sorry.
Keogh opens the shambled door first,
the little earth movement.
I'm dressed.
Oh.
Yeah.
I'm not like that.
That's what I'm, never mind.
You're just sleep naked?
I'm gonna go get coffee.
Okay.
Kayla darts off in the distance.
Two of your left and the tail.
Are you decent?
Yes.
I'm coming in.
I'm still naked.
Oh, come on.
So fucking weird.
I just turned my back to him and...
I stopped.
Putting on the rest of my armor.
Okay.
Can I ask you a question?
What I'm going to?
Of course you can, yeah.
Why?
Oh, down on my feet.
Why did you ever try to take these back?
They're going to be yours anyway.
You know, the only reason I do things is because I take great joy in irritating you.
If you don't show irritation,
it makes it not worth it.
Can I turn around now?
I'm turning around.
Good.
You're so calm and confident now.
It's weird.
I mean, I'm on bonus time.
Is he still cold?
His skin is colder
than a warm body is.
But I'm not Bobby Trey.
What's his heart be like?
Ow.
Jeez!
Way to hang up.
Yeah, but look.
Is there blood? Is there blood?
Yeah, it's on your arm.
It's a pretty open wound.
You watch as the wound kind of slowly seals itself up.
No fucking way!
I don't know I did that.
That's pretty cool.
Thank you.
Wow.
This is, this is, I don't know, this is the dumbest conversation, this is bonus time, I shouldn't be here.
There wasn't, it was, it was the long sleep or come back and help.
So she just, she just gave you the option and then you just came back and now you're like, what?
Super, super herfelfth.
Well, love, um, I mean, I'm just following through on a promise mate.
And we defeat Vecna and you're just done, you're gone.
That's it?
Instant?
Is it like we kill him and you're gone that second?
Or is it like we kill him and you're here for another week
or until the Raven Queen realizes that you're still here?
There isn't really a handbook.
She didn't tell you?
When Vecna is destroyed,
she will call me back to where I would be right now.
And I expect everyone.
I mean, Kiela and I have barely spoken.
I expect everyone to be sad,
but I wish you wouldn't be so sad.
Not exorbitantly so, because I...
Exorbitant? It's a good word.
I read.
Not as much as some, but I read.
This is the path that I've chosen for myself.
And I did it
based out of desperation.
at first. But everyone dies. I know. And I think, you know, I think our group has become a little
spoiled. We're not your ordinary group of idiots. We have blessings. We're blessed idiots.
Blessed idiots. Blessed idiots, yes. And I know that we've gotten used to feeling like we can
overcome losing anyone, but your average farmer or seamstress doesn't come back and everybody
dies. And all that matters is what you do with what you have and I have done a lot.
And I've taken great pride watching all that you have done. I have good friends and I have
fallen in love more than most I've had. Yeah. After you died, you stand by her side.
That I don't really know. I imagine she'll keep me close.
Do you like her now?
Yes.
That's good.
She's necessary.
And does, you know, she's of use.
And I like that.
She brought you back to us for a while.
Anyway, do you want the fucking boots back?
Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine, yeah.
I wanted to give them back, so there you go.
I'm glad you asked for them.
You asked for them.
I don't have a lot of time.
They really are my favorite thing.
I know, I know, I know.
Physical thing.
So make sure you write it down somewhere.
After you go back to the Raven Queen that, you know,
your sister is your favorite in the universe.
And she probably one.
Every stitch on my body is yours when I am gone.
I don't want every stitch.
None of it's worth you leaving.
I slide my feet into the shoes and I wiggle my toes
All righty.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I also have a confession to make.
What?
Um, I don't exactly have your shoes anymore.
What?
Uh, I think that I left them in the Faywild.
The Fay Wild?
Yeah, I think I dropped them in a bog.
They didn't fit me.
You are a motherfucker.
You couldn't have just put him in the bag of holding.
I'm still me.
Great.
I like being bare, four.
You have a very cute, small feet that fit in the boots
that you gave me that did not fit my feet.
It's great.
It's great.
They probably have shoes in it.
Probably.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
I pull out of shoes and I put them down.
Well, at least there's that.
All right.
Got your shoes back.
Keyless would turn with some coffee.
The rest of you come to consciousness
and the morning sun is now blaring down over the cliff keep.
It's a strangely clear sky.
for the North, and while a lot of it is relatively cold, usually,
you're used to seeing the snow cap mountaintops.
Oh, you found it. There you go.
It was with you the whole time.
I'm not in detention anymore.
Oh my gosh.
I put it in a safe place and I didn't realize it.
Well, there you go.
Thank you, Chad.
So.
Did they really know where I put it?
Yeah, they know where your shit is.
That's all weird.
That's all weird.
Seriously?
You put your stuff?
It's in the page in front of your blue divider.
No.
No.
A way.
Wow, thank you.
Thank you, guys.
How many fingers am I holding up?
So, bringing it back in guys.
Sorry, yes.
We have a guest.
Yes.
At some point.
So, what do you guys want to do?
Set off for the pools of Hetapa.
For the forest near the pools of...
The adjacent to the pools of...
We don't want to like bring any extra muscle with us, do we, from these peeps?
Oh wait, we've missed in a long whizway.
Never mind, sorry, forget it.
You are our extra muscle.
See, half of up top.
I'm not dead.
Yes.
His hands are cold.
All righty.
So you're traversing.
You're traversing via your windwalk, I am.
I guess, are we hoen walking there?
Hoon-Wing-Wing-Won-Won-Wing-Wing.
Hwinn-Wing-Wing-Wing.
Hey, before we leave, just real quick.
Kiki.
Yes.
Do you have, do you, can you send messages or anything?
No, man, we have been through this with our entire group so many times.
It's just so powerful.
All right.
Thank you.
Can't email.
Let's go.
What do you need?
I mean, I would send a letter, but it'll take like weeks, so forget it.
We'll be somewhere close to somewhere with magic soon, maybe.
And leave it in the hands of the Ashari and see if they can find somebody.
Do you trust these ones?
They're all right.
They're not the worst.
Not the worst.
All right, I'll scribble a little note and say, well, no, there's no way they can get it to it.
It's too far.
It's too far.
Tapbook the letter.
I was really excited to see their face
when you handed it to them.
I'm like, what are we supposed to do with this?
Here, I'll show you, Grog.
Write it out, bitch.
I write, uh, uh, a sphincter says what?
As, uh, as.
Good message.
That's a big word in the front.
You could have gotten the last one there.
Whoa.
Pike kind of taps in the shoulder.
It's like, I'll teach you that later.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Thank you from the Ashley Johnson simulator.
That was, it's always like.
Weirdly comfortable.
You blind spots.
Are we missed team?
Yeah, let's do it.
All right.
So as you all feel.
Do we eat a feast first, or should we save that?
Let's save that.
Okay, I don't know.
What we're going to find?
No. No.
Okay.
I don't want it.
So preparation's being done.
You've got your materials.
Kieleth completes the Wind Walks spell,
and you all feel yourselves grow slightly lighter
on your toes.
You concentrate, and over the minute transformation,
you turn into your missed forms
and take off in what direction?
Towards the falafel pools.
The full loa.
We wrote it down.
Flawful pool is actually really tasty.
Towards the, hang on.
Are we talking about the mountains?
Yeah, towards the mountain.
Well, he said which direction.
He did not say where are you going.
He said, which direction?
Yes.
We got to look at our map.
Google Maps is around everything.
We have a map.
We have a map.
Well, you have Terra locked down.
The pools of Wittebach would not be on your specific map
that you required earlier.
But you can ask around within Terra,
within a brief time and figure it out.
We ask for that before we go into wind.
Where we can go in and out?
Somewhere between 100 and 120 miles
and they points in the specific direction,
and you kind of mark with that.
The sun's traveling and where certain landmarks are.
That's east.
Can I quickly do the math of how fast I can travel
and be like, okay.
It is the kind of an eastward direction from where you are.
You did actually legitimately just point east too,
which makes that even better.
That's weird.
Yeah, that is weird.
It's like I've been putting points in my nature skill.
Oh, really?
Survival, I guess.
It's a better.
Survival.
Too many additions in my head.
So as you all take off into the morning sky,
You begin to just rock it over, and you're hitting jets of wind
that are beginning to find their way over the mountain ranges,
and you blow it a little off course,
but you maintain concentration best you can in that direction.
Who is leading this venture?
I've been there, or no, I knew of it, right?
You knew of it, yeah.
But I don't know exactly where.
I'll, after listening to, you know, everybody,
I'll lead the way.
And that way I can keep an eye out for the forest next to
and the house and all the things we're looking for.
we're looking for.
Because I got a good look at the map that Paloor held up in front of us as well.
Right. Okay. Cool. So I need you to go ahead and make a survival check.
I should... For this I'm going to say, yeah, because it would be sort of a tracking and
the wilderness of survival. Survival? Yeah.
Great. Great. That's any advantage on that?
Wilderness is your favorite terrain.
Since it is my favorite terrain.
Well, it's mountain, technically, so...
That's also my favorite.
And yeah, then roll again.
Because that was a one.
It was a whole much better.
Because you are tracking through mountains.
28.
Okay, that'll do it.
Wow.
So your speed is tremendous in this form, and so it would have been an extended trek on foot over a series of days.
It takes you in mere hours to eventually get to a point where you crest one heavy peak.
On the opposite side, you can see down the cliff side the edge reaches a slight precipice, and there you can see what looks to be.
for about a mile or so, a cluster of dozens and dozens of pools of water, of different sizes,
all kind of jammed together in a geothermal cluster where you can see bright greens that move
to a deep orange maroon at the edges from the various mineral deposits that have kind of collected
over hundreds and hundreds of years. You can see large columns of smoke and steam of different
chemical colors rising out of various large pools. And at a glance down, you can see a
number of shapes, a number of hulking humanoid shapes.
Some are they have like 40 to 50 or so scattered at different pools,
moving in small clusters or gangs that are, some of them are like
jumping in, cannonballing and swimming through the actual pools.
Some of them are just lounging around and lying and some of them
have been returning, dragging some things from the nearby forest
on the eastern side of the bank.
It's like vacation?
It's like, what's that water park nearby?
Wet and wild.
It's essentially, for a few hundred years,
you get the sense that the pools of wooded fog
have been a whole giant water park.
You can see these large mounds of what looks like mud
and scrapwood and things that have been built
in these large kind of hill giant domiciles
onto the side of the mountain, not far from the pool.
So it's become a definite hill giant wandering zone.
I'm like getting our hot springs at this.
That's awesome.
So do you guys continue over the pools down towards the nearby forest redge?
Forest ridge?
Yes, past the pools near the forest.
All righty. You come to the forest ridge and you can see it's not a thick forest.
The ravine that kind of comes down off of the top of the precipice where the pools are,
down the, you get a, let's say, a few hundred, I'd say, more than that, probably like
a thousand or more feet away from the edge of that precipice before plants even begin to grow.
It looks like whatever toxic chemicals have kind of burbled up in some of these pools has
made a lot of the ground, they're not able to give any sort of forest life, sustain any sort of large trees.
So as soon as the forest begins, it is a dense little pocket, maybe about a mile and a half, two miles across.
That's what you got. What do you guys want to do?
Can I, oh man, should try to track any kind of like footprints in there and see if there's something like around the edges maybe that lead back to shit.
I don't know.
Any signs of life?
It's only a couple miles, yeah, so.
Smoke plumes?
If you guys begin to do like a loop over,
who's doing a quick pass over the patch of forest?
All right, go and make a perception check.
You do the same.
That goes great every time.
It's the forest, do I get an advantage on that one?
Is that?
No, that goes great every time.
Oh, geez.
Oh no, right.
Perception, though.
Yes.
So that's, what is that, 21?
21.
12.
Okay.
Glancing over, you don't really see any major glades or clearing, so it doesn't appear to be any sign of any bastions of civilization or any sort of logging going on. There's no areas where trees have been cut or cleared. It's kind of a featureless forest top from what you can see.
Can we fly down lower to where we're like kind of in between the trees?
You can go and go down into the forest to be like. All right. Who's going into the forest then?
I'll go.
All of us. All of us?
All of us.
So with Pike as well, following suit.
You guys all swoop down through the boughs of the trees
and into the center of the actual forest itself.
Within there, it's not a super thick canopy.
It's not as heavy as Fay Wilde or some of the recent forest
that kind of cluster around Baslehem.
So there are breaks in the canopy where you can see
the sunbeams come through from the morning,
sun that's rising up higher and higher in the sky as you've traveled.
The mist is burned away in this area.
So it's just a nice warm forest.
Glancing about there is a lot of life in here.
You can see signs of squirrels.
You rush by what looks like a family of wolverine-like creatures
that are kind of rustling by.
As soon as the wind scoots in and your mist forms
can rocketing past, they all scatter
and just run off into the shadows.
There's a lot of forest ground here to cover.
I'm going to say for you to really super track with advantage,
you'd have to go in human form.
I give you a regular role if you want to try and track
in your mist form.
Not so much tracking right now,
just a loose passover as we're going,
looking for any kind of like,
maybe hunting traps or, yeah,
trails, signs of life of things that have been traversed a lot.
I'd say make an investigation check.
27.
A double nine.
A double nine.
Bein coasting through tree after tree,
through small, tiny bits of clearing
that immediately come into large clusters of trunks
and knotted branches that all merge and cluster
at different intersections.
After about 20 or so minutes of this,
trying to do a large kind of spiral around the forest inward,
out of the corner of your eye, Vaxalia,
you glance over and see just a quick glimpse
of something that appears to be more structured.
You look back and rush over, and there you see,
amongst the trees, what appears to be a humble-looking,
two-story home.
You see a small balcony built on the second floor that kind of goes over, one of the larger rooms in the bottom floor.
It's not huge by any means, and is hidden by a lot of the local brush and trees there.
Can I get a lot more detail this distance, though.
Okay, we land, I land.
And kind of like behind a tree, you know, take form.
Take your form? Okay, so all of you land and follow vex?
Yeah.
All right.
You all take a minute to go back to your physical forms,
and you glance over, and there it is, standing before you.
It's very shaded in this part of the forest.
You can see a little bit of what looks to be interior light.
Very, very faint.
Like a normal person size dwelling?
I think perception check.
You've got it's normal.
Now, fruit twenty.
Yay!
Yay!
It would be a little small for you, Grog, but you could walk in it. Proportionally, it looks
maybe like it was built for a little bit of a smaller person.
Okay.
I want to start eyeballing the ground and the house for any kind of traps set out people.
Is that investigation, yeah? That is investigation.
18.
18. Okay. So you guys are going to slowly...
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we do. I mean, like,
There are no like,
there are no, like, random nudist giants
that have run over in this area, right?
Like, nobody sees us over here taking off.
You're worried about giant streaking us.
Well, I mean, not particularly, just like, you know.
It was very specific.
Well, yeah.
I mean, have you ever seen a giant naked?
You'll never forget it.
I might, I don't know, actually.
Are you suggesting you set up a perimeter?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's a tiny house.
I don't really want to go in there.
I like having exits, so I fit through.
Well, I don't want whoever it is to think that we threaten them in any way, but then if they threaten us, I wouldn't want them to attack us either.
Yeah, I'll just knock the house down from the outside.
Let's keep this structure standing for now.
I'll stay outside.
Are we knocking properly or are we just going to invisibility in and see who's in there?
I feel like maybe knock properly.
If you think long and hard about it, it's not like manners have failed us very much.
often.
All right.
But do keep an eye out for traps or anything weird on the way up.
I think we have failed at manners also.
We suck.
Yes.
So let's try to be nice.
Okay.
Let's see how this goes.
Try being nice.
I'll just stay out here.
I'll go knock on the door.
It seems like a small-ish door, right?
Yeah, I'll go with you.
Okay, so what's the March morning?
Oh.
I'll go first.
Nothing pricked up in my spidey sense.
Well, from this current glance, no.
You guys are behind a tree in the distance.
Okay.
No nude giants, right?
Currently, no.
But you keep in an eye out.
Walking with a smile, looking very friendly.
All right, who's leading the charge?
Make them answer the question.
I'll go to ask.
I'll walk behind Scanlan.
All right, so we have Scanlan.
Scanlan's dead.
And Vic Salient.
I'm going to go as well and continue to eyeball for traps.
And I'll be hanging back a bit as well.
I'll be comfortably back as well.
Just before we knock.
What were we told was in this thing?
Where's Pike going?
Pike's going to probably stay in the center
with you guys.
inside a person, inside a house.
It's possible the person is the key, I'm not sure.
Trinket within your necklace.
No, he's out.
Okay, Trinket is out alongside you.
Yeah, the non-intimited, nice and political.
He's a very friendly bear, look at him.
I'm outside the house.
Trinket, smile.
So as you get across the small walkway towards the front,
as you're walking with a big smile of Aixalia,
something catches your eye on the ground right before her,
and you watch her, she steps forward,
you reach out and grab her wrist
and hold her back before she steps down.
What is it?
There is a large, rusted iron bear trap
that is open that you almost stepped right into.
Oh, that would have been Dunskys.
I was being friendly, and it almost crushed me.
It's a bear trap. It could be full.
Trinket, be careful. This thing was made for you.
Trinkin kind of walked into it.
No, no, be careful.
Spit on it.
Can he spit? Can you spit?
Can you spit?
It's not very, it's more of like a...
It's a power drool, if you will.
A power drool.
Is it easy enough just to walk around?
Yeah, you can walk around that one, and you begin to see
what looks to be about seven other ones that are kind of
cluster around the outside of this house.
Probably a giant in federal forest.
You know, that's exactly why.
Bear traps are the biggest thing you can get for a giant.
Is a bad trap trap.
Sorry, Grog.
You begin to walk around.
Don't think too hard.
Nothing too hard.
Do you would actually.
As you step around one, you can see at the front door there is a welcome mat that says welcome.
Amazing.
And as you're approaching it, you can see the welcome mat.
There's just something a little off about it.
It's raised higher than the ground should be.
Welcome.
It's a trap.
Well, I could attempt to dicker with it, but we could just knock the door over it if we really are going on manners.
Double check to make sure the door isn't a problem either, I imagine, if the welcome matters.
I think the door's gonna blow if we knock on it. I mean, we don't have much luck with doors.
Do you grab like a stick and lift the edge of the mat up?
Oh, wow. Door really is.
Oh, just to do you want to do this?
So are you stopping her from doing this?
Yes, I am. Let me take on. Please.
So I've already determined this.
Yes.
I will attempt to disarm it with thieves tools, correct?
Yes.
That's fine. That is a 29.
Okay. You walk over and you look and you watch that there's a small cord that is kind of hidden amongst the brush
that runs from underneath the mat through a small ring that goes up from the house, then up it looks to be a branch or a vine.
So it's hidden amongst it. You can look straight up about 40 feet. You see a nice, solid, thick trunk that it's just like, eh.
Oh, that's some predator shit. Right above the door.
Motherfuckers, Ewacht.
This is fine.
I feel like there's a complicated story
that goes along with all of this.
I'm really excited about it.
Oh, my God.
It's just gonna be like an uncharted kind of adventure.
We have found the captain of McCulley Culkin.
What's right?
So knowing this, you walk over and grab the cord,
kind of looking to see what the leverage is.
You motion to grog to come over and hold it.
You find another piece of what looks to be heavy,
stone that by the wall to the side, with Grog's help, you snip it, bring it over, and tie it onto the edge of this piece of the stonework, like a small, kind of a pole that was placed in to the base of the house, and it holds the weight of the suspended trunk, and it no longer triggers based on step.
Thank you, Big Man, and Percy, I'm sorry. I know you like a good Rube Goldberg.
I was really excited by this thing. It's a shame to dismantle it.
But it's still there.
It's still there. Maybe when we leave, we can crash it down.
There's quite a bit to admire here.
Does the door look hinky at all?
Make an investigation check.
Does that door look kinky at all?
You just said kinky.
I said hinky.
Yeah, hinky.
18.
I believe I heard kinky.
It does not appear to be trapped, per se.
It does appear to be locked.
Yeah, well, I don't want to pick it.
I want to use the stick and, oh, here,
Scan, and you were going to knock.
Were you going to knock?
So that you don't have to touch the door in case it's magic.
Which has a note, the door at full height,
is about at the shoulders of most
you. You recognize this. This is definitely a homestead built on the scale for
probably halfling or a gnome. It's still pretty big for a gnomish home, meaning it's a little
more spacious. Headroom. You'd probably be able to stand in comfortably, except for you,
Grog. You're probably a little hunched. Oh, my God. So it's like an ostentatious
gnome door. Kind of. A little more than is needed.
Yeah.
How funny.
Yeah.
So I'll just wrap on the door with my knuckles.
Okay. There's an awkward pause. Hello, bidet. Derry. Darren, if you want to go ahead
into the stage. It's vacation Darren. I'm glad to get moot-luster.
You need this. Oh, you need this. Oh, you need this. Oh.
I've been gozed.
They give chaotic evil, necromancer, no. You weren't supposed to tell them. I didn't.
Sorry about this.
You hear amongst your business for the day,
out of nowhere,
on the door.
Katayake.
I open it.
You hear
what sounds like six or seven
different locks unlock on the door as it slowly swings open,
and before them what did they see?
A very small, elderly gnome, bald on top.
top with a long, long white beard and a bit of a distant look in his eyes.
And he looks at you and says, are you real?
I think so.
You're real.
Prove it.
Say that you're real to my invisible frog companion.
I will step forward and say, hello there.
I'm real.
Yes, you're real.
There's no invisible frog companion.
The voices in my head would not have spoken to that.
They know a little bit better than that.
But it doesn't matter.
I haven't had people here in over 35 years.
But you're here, and you're real.
Go away.
Dimitrick, show them out.
Dimitri.
Is that an invisible?
You watch as two tiny red claws curl around the corner as these tiny impish wings
going to unfurl, and you watch as a tiny imp releases from the edge of the door frame.
Oh my gosh.
Get out!
And slams the door.
And show yourself out, Demetric.
I don't need you here.
19 years of you is more than enough.
You hear muffling arguments of the doors.
The voice goes, I'll stay away.
Please, you gave me permission to stay.
If anyone's going to leave your going to leave.
I think you should go to Craghammer
and become a circus performer with a little tin cup
and a little hat and say, oh dear, I'm Dimitrich,
the magical imp.
That's where you belong, I tell you, I know.
That sounds like a lot more fun than having to deal with you
on a daily basis, you son of a.
Go language, imp.
The door creaks open once more.
Sorry.
The door creeps open again.
I'm sorry as well.
For him.
He's awful.
I stick my foot in.
Go!
Yes.
I'm really very sorry to bother you, although I'm delighted to make your acquaintance.
I'm having a very hard time not just smiling like an idiot.
Could we trouble you just for a few moments?
We mean no harm at all.
We do need to talk to you.
We've come a very long way.
As farts, that's gotta count for something.
We could give you some interesting conversation.
35 years is a very long time.
We've done a lot, we've seen a lot,
we could tell you all about it.
I play an old traditional gnome song
to try to sort of just kind of soften him a bit.
Make a performance check.
A performance check.
What is an old gnome song?
I don't know.
24.
It's been a lot of.
It's been a long time since you've heard music,
let alone one that kind of scratches an old memory of childhood.
That's nice.
Whatever strikes you fancy, to be fair.
Go into the show.
Do you see the imp in the back going,
Oh, stop that racket!
You don't even appreciate music.
What would an imp song sound like?
You can't say one, can you?
Because you don't have music where you're from.
I can, but it'll cause your ears to bleed.
It sounds like this.
Ah!
I find that very entertaining.
You're such a liar!
You know, Maitra.
The image just vanishes before you.
He's gone.
Don't worry about him.
He gets a little bit testy, if you will.
So, may we speak, may we have a moment of your time.
Well, you can come in if you like.
Be careful.
Illusions and the thing of my hoppers.
We have a, sorry, that's infectious.
We have a really big guy.
Will he, you're all right with him coming in?
Grogh, you're all right with coming in.
I was like, do I get in that damn door.
You've not crawled on all fours before.
Yeah. You should try it if you haven't.
It's quite delightful.
Are you lied?
No, for once.
No, I'm not.
Sure.
It's all the rage.
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-like.
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.
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I have never actually been quite so honest.
entire life. This is, I think you'll find it very therapeutic. I'm not kidding. How does it feel?
I'm waiting for it to kick in.
Crollo, you've forward back a bit. Stretch.
Yeah, you just to give it a chance before you feel the high. Downward dog. Stretch.
You watch has this large gray-skinned mountain of a man just kind of crawls his way in, and you could
You could duck walk through if you really wanted to.
This is worse than Gandalf and, you know, in Baghead.
I feel you can make.
I'm just like I'm putting the vote there.
Yeah.
All fours in.
All fours it is probably, that's probably the most comfortable means of transport
through the house.
But you walk in and immediately, one, you watch as your new,
no-mish friend is going around and quickly disabling small things,
like putting small keys and tying off strings and wires.
You saw that were set up around portions of the room.
I am going to try and map this in my head the crazy stuff I'm seeing right now.
You also, this place is, it's like a hoarder's dead.
You see just shelves and shells of books and papers and scrolls and stacks of them.
And you see on bits of furniture and chairs just more stacks of books and sacks and satchels and quills and inkwells.
Some spilt and left and dried long ago.
This place is very lived in, very chaotic, and very unique.
The first thing that I'd do is we come in to scan the room or rooms for more Macaulkin
shenanigans.
Make an investigation shenan.
I think we can just call them McCulkins now.
Yeah, but you don't know that he's going to disable them all.
No.
Zub, zub, zub, zub, zub, that is a 21.
Yeah.
Okay.
You do see there's one portion of the floor that he keeps avoiding, just instinctively.
that catches your attention.
You're like, why does it keep walking around that?
Okay.
What's your name, friend?
Oh, well, that was taken from me very long time ago.
I only have what they call me.
You know, names are an odd thing, aren't they?
Sometimes a name can stick to you like blood on a knife
or your fingers on a wallet that might not be your property.
And then who you were is not who you are, and yet,
yet, here we are.
That oddly made way too much sense.
What should we call?
What do they call you?
They called me Sprig.
There's more.
Sprigg.
Sprigg.
They called me Sprigg the obnoxious.
Sprig the obnoxious?
Yes, it's not my given name.
It was a name that was given to me when it was given to me.
Did you used to be obnoxious?
because I'm not picking that up off of you.
No, she's running in rather, charming.
We're rarely who we used to be.
Could we shorten it to Sprigg?
Is there mercury in those pools that were like...
Who?
Is that a friend of yours?
No, no.
I sometimes will talk to the fourth wall.
It's a thing.
Well, it's a domicile.
There has to be four walls.
If there weren't, it would be a yurt.
I don't live in a yurt, dear boy.
We just stayed in a yurt.
We did.
I sometimes live in a yurt.
They're quite nice.
I have nothing against yurts.
It is okay.
Like a stick that you would put in a yurt
so it would fall over.
I would want it to fall over.
Therefore, I would have nothing against yurt.
Dmitri.
That's actually, that's good.
That's tint humor.
Appears across the room and she goes, good one.
That was very, I am so sorry.
Pike.
Thank you, Dimitric.
Do you think maybe a greater restoration is in Othota?
Pike goes, why?
No reason.
I don't think you can restore 35 years of loneliness.
Could I just touch your hand for a second?
Is that okay?
Why? Why? Why?
Why?
Just to see if we can help your day.
Do you not?
think that I'm real.
Probably not.
I'm real, I'm here.
My companions are long gone.
They were like you, like you, like you, and you and you, and I'm all that is left.
You are, you are looking into a mirror of your future.
I'm going to look like you or you're going to look like me.
No, I know what he means.
Who are your companions?
Oh.
Memories.
They're all memories now.
I don't even remember their names.
I remember some of them, but we were heroes and now I am here.
Oh, no.
Were there no other known folk in your body?
No.
There was one like you.
It was a big one, a mighty one.
There was one like you, brave and kind.
That's just like me, that's exactly like me.
There was one like you, smart,
it's sad.
You as well.
Oh no.
Ah, and I was you.
Ah.
Please.
She grabs your hand and concentrates for a second.
You watch the holy symbol flares for a moment
and the warmth passes through her arms into your hand
and it feels nice.
It's like holding it.
a freshly heated cup of tea.
And as the spell completes
and she pulls back.
That's all. Thank you.
Thank you.
Very kind of you.
Don't ever do that again.
Right. Okay. That's okay.
Indeed.
Your companions.
Not to bring up sad times.
How long ago did they go away?
Perish.
57 years.
And how was it
a fight or against a powerful entity?
Against ignorance, against bravery that should never have been.
That's why I'm here and they're not because I won't be gone.
Well, listening to all that Vax,
Vax lit his hand into Keylet's and just quietly listened to the whole thing.
Oh well, perhaps we should talk of other things.
Should we?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
We want this to be a positive visit for you, so is there anything that we can tell you from
the world outside that you might be curious about?
The world outside!
Who needs the world outside?
I have everything here and what I need, dear boy.
I have taken from Greg Hammer, all these books, you see?
Those are mine.
They should have been mine to begin with, and I took them, and now they are mine.
I'm going to peruse some of these titles, quietly.
The books, you mean?
Yes, yes.
Well, you'd like to look at the books, would you?
I find it's the easiest way to learn quite a bit about a person's story.
Oh, you're very welcome to look at anything you like.
What will you give me, dear boy?
I require something.
And yet, what do I need living here?
Not much.
Huh. Intelligence. Secrets. Love. Sadness. Bravery. What do you have that you would give me?
Oh. I'll reach in a bag of holding. I'll take out Percy's glasses.
Uh, would you care for a pair of these testicles?
spectacles.
I seek power, dear boy.
Oh.
Not silliness.
If I wanted silliness, I would talk to a sun tree.
No one ever should talk to a sun tree.
They should only listen to a sun tree.
And so I shall say again, if you would like to peruse my book and perhaps find what
you are looking for, what will you give me that would bring power and redemption into my life?
What do you have, Dron?
In power?
You don't know.
I have, um...
But it's been a while since he says some of that.
It seems you have powerful items.
I do.
Yeah.
I have these braces of defense.
Ah, I require.
Well, I reach into my bag and start cleaning a small green shard of residuals.
Residium.
I'm polishing it.
Dimitrick, if you excuse me, for just, while you look, talk to my im, if you'll pardon us.
A word, Dimitrik.
Just one moment, watch.
The big one worries me.
I think we should have a code in case we have to jump him.
What calm would you wish?
How?
Goliath grab.
Okay.
But we need to remember that. We need to remember that.
Goliath grab. Good luck.
We need some sort of mnemonic device to remember Goliath grab.
G.
G. Goodness gracious. Grab that Goliath.
Oh.
Oh.
This is a long mnemonic.
I'll tell you what.
I've got your back.
I don't feel that at all. You're right in front of me. How could you have my back?
Go away. So, what do you have for me? You've had ample time to look in your bag of holding
to produce something very powerful.
Gross.
Well, I do have one thing that seems to be pretty powerful.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Don't do it, gross.
I'll pull out of the bag of holding a small leather case.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
My God.
I don't know if you have any interest in this, but my experience.
The experience with these items has been very extreme.
Strick.
Would you care to take a card?
Would you care to give them to me?
All or just one?
No, you could pick a card.
Make an arcana check.
Which would be?
Roll D20 and add your arcana skill modifier to it.
Oh.
I think this is a good man.
You are a madman.
This is right there.
I think it's powerful.
15.
It's a good idea.
You don't recognize what he's holding in his hands,
but you immediately see the leather casing around it
in just your essence being able to read certain elements of men.
It does appear to be a powerful enchantment, whatever he has procured from the back.
Indeed.
Perhaps one card?
For one book?
Oh, God.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, Percy, do you have a book?
I have a book that out of all a laser you want to read.
What are you looking for?
What do you seek? What knowledge?
You see I've got it all here.
We seek a key to find a very ancient goddess.
Oh, don't say Ayyne.
Don't say Ayyne.
We are not going to say Ayun.
You just did.
You said I.
Is there another name that you would like us to use, like a nickname,
Instead of Ayn.
She who will not be named?
We've broken goddess.
I know more than Ayone, please.
Ayn, oh, gods, what do they know?
We know more than they, for we exist.
We live.
We adventure.
They merely observe.
Am I right?
You have a point.
I mean, they don't do much for us in the day to day.
Are you saying you know more than Aune?
Well.
Of course, I know more than Aune.
Can you prove that you know more than Ayn?
Yes.
So if I ask you a question that is almost impossible to answer,
you could answer it before Ayn could answer it?
Could Ayn create a rock so heavy that even she couldn't lift it?
Oh, please, please, please, I'm far too clever to ask such a simple question.
That's easy.
I would have to ask something that was very difficult to answer.
I will give you your answer if you give me a card.
You know, I was just saying what a good idea I thought it was,
but I thought you were talking about the entire deck, Grog.
I think the entire deck is a fairer thing,
didn't have him pull a card,
because that seems unpredictable to me.
Yeah, that sounds perfect to me.
We're all in a small enclosed space together, Grog,
and I like this fellow.
Sprigg, it is quite powerful, yes,
but also maybe slightly.
A bit dangerous?
A bit dangerous.
To be fair.
I'm here alone.
Well, there's...
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Go peddle your papers somewhere where they'd like papers peddled.
You're not alone at the moment.
That's true.
This is very true.
Very true.
And I'd rather not put my life in the hands of you, not knowing you very well.
Well, some did. I'm here.
Yes.
They are not.
So something bad could happen and you'd run away and we'd be stuck here?
37 years. I ran away.
I've been here deciding how to live again.
How not to run away. That's what all this is about, isn't it?
You can't just hide from the world. I've done it.
I've done it. I've done it for a long, long time. Maybe you being here means that I should hide no longer. Or maybe I just have an invisible frog friend. I have nothing here and nothing here.
Whoever has devised these contraptions and created this safety for you is a genius. I'm not saying you necessarily...
So both of us.
I somehow don't think so.
What?
It's on me.
I have had my own demons to contend with in my life
to make me doubt my own intelligence.
I get the sense that you're a compatriot,
I hate to call it friend here.
I hate to call it friend, and yet I do.
Isn't that right?
Friend.
Fortunately.
What are you doing here?
No.
No.
No.
Is it?
No!
Why does he ask me?
Yes, be polite.
They're guests in our home.
Oh, that's not our home.
Nineteen years you've been here ever since your master died
trying to enter and got tricked into one of my traps.
And now you're here, does I answer your question?
Now why don't you tell him what I just said?
My master died trying to get in here on one of the traps.
And now I have called this my home.
Beautifully said, Bravo.
You should be a little performer in
Craghammer. You know what the reviews would be? Not very good.
H. H. H. H.
Shameful behavior. Abysmal behavior from the abyss itself.
Well, we don't have, I mean, many of the things that we carry are very dangerous.
Obviously, you have a great deal of genius here.
Perhaps I'm going to show him that elemental shot. I don't know if this would interest you, but it's, I consider it to be.
I consider it to be of great value.
As you were showing him the residual piece
of the last piece of residuals I have.
All right, so this is a, it's a sliver of,
looks like green glass.
It's finally polished about that thick, about that long.
And you've read about this, you've read that condensed
residual is very susceptible to enchantment
and or the focusing of short-term magic spells.
It's expensive, it's slaughtered, it's hard to find,
I will use that ring of telekinesis to lift it up
and take a better look at it.
Okay, as you watch it just kind of
darts out of your hand and wisps up maybe two feet ahead of him
and just kind of slowly rotates above him as he inspects it.
Impressive, but not as impressive as the giant log.
But is there power in this, dear boy?
Or are there only secrets for you?
A secrets.
He is power.
I may be secrets.
And that is of me, but I believe there is power in its secret.
People died for that. Many people.
People die every day, except me.
That's my punishment, child.
I live on. I live on with my shame and my intelligence and you.
What's your relationship to her?
What is I anyone's relationship to a god?
Good question.
Some of us are champions. Some of them don't like them. Some of them worship them but don't really get respect.
What's yours?
All of that and more.
So you're a champion? Are you a champion of Ayoun?
You're a champion of Ayun. Of course he's a champion of Ayun.
I wouldn't say that.
But we might, wouldn't we?
They're going to start calling me Ayoons Champion.
Only if it bothers you.
Ayoun's champion.
I like it.
Dret, eh? Dret!
You tell them what you know of Ayoon.
She's a heinous bitch who got what's coming to her eight hundred years ago.
It's a bit common, but that is his belief.
What is yours? What is your thought about Ayo? We know that she possesses knowledge that could help us in our quest to save the world. And therefore, no matter what her personality is, she is valuable to us.
And yet, is there value in saving the world? Or should you just let it go all go away?
I think we should say that.
We're pretty pro-world here.
Are you?
Hmm.
That is interesting.
Yeah.
Sprig, you're seeking power.
I seek redemption.
What is great power in redemption?
We offer you redemption.
Collaborating with us grants you the power to fell.
A would-be God.
Excuse me.
For one second.
Can I speak to you for just a second?
Tricky.
I think we should get a mnemonic device
on what we need to do if he becomes too tricky.
You should say,
Elf boy grabs.
E, E.
A, four E.
There's an elf boy.
We should grab him.
All right.
Let's grab that elf boy.
Right, all right.
F.
I think we can see all this.
For sooth I shall grab this elf boy.
Got him understood.
Not an elf.
Not an elf.
Not an elf.
Why do people like calling you elf boy and elf girl?
There's something we should reach.
We have vaguely pointed ears, not even fully pointed ears.
My mother was not an elf.
Excuse me.
He has a vague point.
Just a second.
Here me.
He's not an elf.
We'll stick with the device.
I've got your back.
I still don't feel it.
You will.
All right.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi, mirror man.
Yes.
Oh, my God.
Mirror Man.
Listen.
All right.
Let's cut to the chase here.
We need information from you.
Indeed.
You need something from us.
Yes.
I'll give him a card.
Whoa.
We'll give him a card.
We're dancing.
We're going around this. We need this man.
Is this a permanent?
He took the stone. Are you taking the stone?
Are you going to take the stone as a source of power?
He said it's too mysterious for him.
I thought we were talking about redemption.
If you'll allow me,
you have been very quiet.
Yes, I'm a little freaked out right now.
You're like my worst fear incarnate.
And I just, sorry, that seemed very rude.
My worst nightmare incarnate.
That didn't make it any better, dear child.
Shit.
Do go, go with you, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Go ahead.
Why am I your worst fear in a carnation?
Fairer as well.
I've seen you in my dreams.
You're.
Is that?
Mm-hmm.
Go get him, Tiger.
Ching the imp around.
They're, somehow.
They're up in the corner, like.
Turns imisible.
Oh, I guess you found that unbearable.
That was a good pun.
Thank you very much.
You hear the tiniest little demonic fart by your ear.
Somehow.
I'm also gently steering tinket away from the floorboard
in the middle of the room as he walked by.
Somehow everything you have said since the minute we walked into this building
has made 100% sense,
and I think that's what scares me the most,
as I understand everything you've said.
They should scare you the most.
I was one of you.
I know.
I did what you did.
I know.
37 years ago I did it.
And we fought, and we fought.
And they were right here.
They were right here.
Who is they?
My companions.
And who were we fighting against?
You, we.
God's?
It was silly.
It was hobgoblins.
It should never have happened.
It was a simple, simple, simple fight.
simple fight. And they died, and I ran. Even remember their name. Yes?
I'd like to be needed again. Maybe it's time to stop running.
What would I do?
We can grant you power in items, but I think all of us, I don't want to speak for all of us,
but I think all of us can speak a little bit to the fact that items don't grant you as much.
Watch inner powers you expect them to.
Unless they're boots and then they're amazing.
Unless they're very highly argued and debated upon boots.
Yeah.
In which case I still think the arguments.
Are we about to have a debate about boots?
I'm against them. Your turn.
I am for them usually.
Continue, Counselor, but watch yourself.
Have you any idea where the key to Aeons is?
In the boots?
Yes.
We're talking about boots, are we?
Yes.
Boots that hold a key to the I-owned location, specifically.
I think the key might be here, but I don't really know.
The world is on the brink right now.
It's worse than hub-goblins.
And we've come here in great need.
And the world is in great need.
And the power that I offer you.
He's making a difference.
Well, then, make being believe in Ayoon.
We'll make a difference together.
Make you believe, yes.
Of course he believes.
Believing's not the question.
Books everywhere, you see.
That's something you can hold.
That's something you can learn.
That's something that's tangible.
Aune is distant.
But she could be.
be tangible if you'd help us find her.
What if we have found her?
What if Sprigg is right?
What if all of the information that Ayyne knows
is here in Sprigg?
I really want to look at these books really quickly.
I'm having a moment.
There's thousands of records.
I just want to start looking at these titles.
What are these books?
Well, you go over and start walking towards the edge
of the Neer's bookcase.
And all of you at once, have one but Sprigg, actually,
suddenly hear a voice come through,
filling your mind, filling your consciousness,
filling your ears, sourceless,
delivered to your consciousness directly,
showing me.
And that's where we're gonna take a break.
We're right back here in a minute?
What a cop.
Oh my God, it's been in the troll dick all along.
It's always been the.
All right, we'll be in just a minute.
Damn it, we're back here in a few minutes, guys.
We have, for the Twitch giveaway, we have this awesome Peruvian walnut.
Oh God, dice tray.
Leather interior, it's very nice.
It's the same type that I have actually back here, which is nice.
Giving away for somebody in the Twitch chats run over and the code for the evening is Sprig.
S-P-R-I-G-G-G-G, yes.
S-P-R-I-G-G-G.
Spell-S-R-R-R-G-G.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to win that valuable prize.
So pay attention in the chat when it's time to go ahead and enter Sprig into the chat.
And one lucky winner will be announced when we get back here.
See you guys intercombe here.
Hello everyone and welcome back.
All right, so first and foremost, we have our winner for the dice tray from one wood.
That is our friend, Chaos Night, spelled in the way that you spell your Xbox Live name, K0S-N-1 G-G-HT.
Congratulations, you are the winner.
Chaos Nog!
Go and contact Donoba, and you'll get your address information.
We'll get that shipped out to you.
Bringing us back in.
Oh, that was fast.
Last we left off, shit was going ham.
You all, almost all of you, heard a singular familiar voice.
The low, gravelly, undead voice of the whispered one fills your mind saying, thank you for showing me wary.
That moment where you all pause and place,
you hear a series of simultaneous sounds
as a number of heavy crossbow bolts
from nearby windows all fire simultaneously at Sprigg.
Can I, do you want to have time for a reaction?
No, you do not.
This is a surprise round.
It's the sound of bolts, no.
It's right, you can't die, it's cool.
All right.
I think you can.
So that first one is a,
A 24, what's your armor class?
My armor class is 19.
Okay.
So you take.
Does your mother know what you're doing that?
23 points of piercing damage.
Okay.
Here's my behit ones, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, there we go.
That's 17, that misses you.
It strikes your shoulder and glances off.
One bolt sinks into your chest and you're like,
oh, you look down and see it.
It's this big, long, heavy metal,
heavy metal bolt and it's kind of jutting out from the side of where your shoulder
and the peck gets. Another one rushes by and just glances off your other shoulder. The third
one. Well, this is different.
That hits as a 25. That's a 23 points of piercing damage.
Okay. Oh, no. That one actually misses, a six and a one. It slams into one of the
nearby books right behind you, just barely moving past your cheek. Fifth one, that is a 19 exactly.
So you take 24 points of damage.
How many fucking bolts are there?
24.
They're all sneak attack.
And that is 20.
So another one?
Another one.
Okay.
And that, that one's gonna be a 26 points of piercing damage.
Except no, it's, once he's on the ground, then it becomes...
You guys watch as all these bolts...
Did he go unconscious?
And Sprigg's body and Sprigg just falls back, unconscious,
and bleeding into the room.
I'm gonna bring out a map now.
Oh, fly you fools.
No, Spritz!
No!
Darren, it was really great having you on.
It was great.
Thanks so much.
Whoa, cool.
Oh my.
This is a cute.
So, moving the top floor off.
There's an upstairs.
There's crates of apples.
That's so cool.
There's a sack of something in the corner.
Oh my god, how are you all gonna fit in there?
You've got LED lighting?
Sprigg.
It does have LED lighting.
It's currently unconscious in the ground there.
Yeah, Dwarven Forge.
Perciful was there talking.
Trinket is off to the side.
Trinket.
Where's the imp?
The imp is not currently visible.
Let's see.
Pike would be over in the side here.
Keel of Fax, where would you guys see yourselves right now?
Actually, tell me where you would be.
I think it's going to be.
I'm right next tequila because I was holding her hand.
Right, right.
That's true.
Chuck you went to the ground.
Ah!
It's all right, it's fine.
It's fine.
Yeah, it goes back in a day later.
Yep.
All right, so you're there holding that.
Scanlon, where would you be?
Near Sprigg-ish.
All right, so I'll put you out there next to the scroll on the ground.
And Matt, yes.
Could you touch on the map where the bad man touched you?
No, where the bad floorboard is?
Yes, actually.
I can do that.
None of you know this.
None of you know this, except for you.
which is actually why I'm not going to show you.
Okay.
You know how to avoid it, but nobody else knows where it is.
Oh shit.
Where's the front door?
Over there?
There.
The front door's right there.
Oh, boy.
It's a groggy right there.
These trees need to move.
I know.
These trees are gorgeous.
Burn them.
Shut your mouth.
Oh, no.
There's cloaked men everywhere.
And you watched his one that was up in the stairs.
Oh, oh, I fell down.
He's got to go. He's down.
He's got to go his down.
He's up top.
Oh, he actually made it upstairs.
Never get told.
He's up.
Fired and then just ducked down beneath.
I didn't get one in a little initiative.
Initiative.
Oh, jeeves.
Including you even though you're on the ground.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
It's fine.
Dilded just fine for me.
Gilded, all right.
I don't trust the guild.
I don't trust the guild.
I know we're rolled up days.
I never.
I have, but I got my mat,
Okay.
This is a media right.
I've got my standard.
25 to 20?
23.
20.
22.
Oh, wow.
Okay, so we have Percy rule.
Then we have Grog and Vax.
Okay.
20 to 15?
19.
So did somebody roll for Pike?
Yes, actually.
Okay, yeah, Pike.
You never roll high on his issue.
Also a 19.
Okay.
It's got a very low.
Initiative, bonus.
Hi.
That's all right.
All right.
Anybody else?
13.
All right.
12.
I don't know why I did, like, deuses.
Ducees.
12.
Peace out.
NKOTB.
12.
Yeah.
12 initiative.
All right.
Wootang out.
This is our next shirt.
And that is going to go to
Quid, Alan, quid.
Quid.
Quid.
Bittler slash C.R. All right, so top of the combat round,
if the surprise happens done, you watch Sprigg just fall to the ground,
bolts sticking out of the side of the neck, the shoulder, and the body, just unconscious,
now beginning to pool blood underneath where he's bleeding out. And you glance around and
you see a series of shaded figures in the windows that all dart out of the way.
Cows. Dicks.
Oh, they left.
They fight over everyone.
We're fine.
Percy, you're up first.
Okay, I'm going to, wow, this is just a lot that happened.
I'm going to click my boots.
All righty.
And I'm going to run up the wall and run upstairs.
All right.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Which for the purposes of this, I will place the upstairs over here.
Over here.
So, as you dart up, Percival, you run up the stairway there where the one guy you saw
was standing.
Is he right there?
Yeah, he just looked out of the way, and there's also one figure that you recognized
from the Shadowfell earlier.
Really?
You see one of the ghastly creatures that was darting through the ruins, leaping from rooftop
to rooftop.
You see it.
Its skin is grayish and long.
It's limbs lanky.
Lanky, its fingers curled in the claws,
and this long tongue dangling from its jaws.
It's like getting ready to run down the stairs
as you charge him and he goes,
Ah, madness, action surge.
Okay, then.
We're bad at manners until now.
All righty, so what's the saving throw on that one?
It's a DC20 strength chat.
Oh, no, I'm sorry, no, never mind.
It's a...
It's a...
Attack Rule.
Okay, so you have to...
Okay, so you have to see if you hit it.
...rength efficiency bonus.
Okay.
18.
Oh.
18?
Yeah, that definitely hits.
All right.
So it hits and he just, you watch as he pulled the sphere out and chuck it in the direction
in the creature, pulls his claws back.
It slams into its chest and then unravels.
And it falls to the ground, prone, unable to move right there in the middle of the floor.
And just making sure that I can do this.
So is that your action there doing that?
That was my action search.
I can only do one around.
One around, just see if I have anything in a bonus that I can do.
What, you spend your action?
My action activating my boots.
Right.
And then my second act, my action surge, activating that.
Right.
Do I have anything I can do with a bonus accent?
Not really.
I'm just going to turn to the other guy and pull the ripcord on the glove, just angrily.
Okay.
All right, so you loaded diplomacy.
Good, that's your turn, Percy.
Go, you're up.
Me?
Oh, can I?
Go into a rage!
Yes, you may.
And he fell where?
I fell right there.
On the ground, currently bleeding out.
Can I run over the sprig and shove a help a hell potion in there?
He's on.
I'll run upstairs to see where Percy away.
Dish, do you run just past Percival,
and you see there's one creature bound on the ground,
and there's another guy who's there who's there
with his crossbow, he's trying to reload,
who sees Percival and is like getting ready to pull it up
as you leap in front.
Smash him!
You mind?
Yeah, please.
Yeah.
B'bagga-ga-ga.
Go for it. Roll for double attack.
No, reckless, great.
No, great weapon, master.
Just two-handed.
Yeah, just two-handed.
Yeah, so do it.
Do it, do it, do it.
Come on, come on, big money.
30, no, minus.
No, there is no minus.
There is no minus, 32.
32 hits.
Yeah.
Second attack?
31.
Hits. So we're gonna roll damage for both.
That's a lot.
Okay, so they're not giants, so I just roll a D10.
It's a 10.
Rage damage.
25.
25 damage on the first hit?
On the first one.
All right.
Second one.
24.
Yeah.
Nice.
Wow.
All right, so with your hammer, two hands,
whack right across side of its head.
You see the jaw kind of unhinge from the side.
And as he pulls back, it's kind of hanging a little loosely there in the skin,
it's like,
And the second hit, you clock right in the side of the temple,
and it nearly goes unconscious and just kind of picks itself up again.
Gets its crossbow ready.
It's still holding.
It's not down yet, but it's hurt badly.
You can see now, up close, you can see these figures there.
They're dressed in very tight black leather as cloaks enshrouding their body.
The hood is still up, but you've knocked it back.
And there you see what looks to be a human male in his late 40s, early 50s.
The head just shaved, completely bald.
What looks to be attacked to have some sort of black tendrils around the left eye, the left
eye is missing from the socket.
Okay, cool.
That's my turn.
That's your turn.
All right, Grog's done.
Vax, you're up.
Okay, let's talk this out.
Click the boots of haste.
I think with 120 feet of movement, I can blur up the stairs to where Percy is in probably like 50 or 60 feet
feet and then finish that movement and go past the guy out the window with all of my movement.
You can.
In 120 feet or less.
Yes.
Okay, so I'm doing that.
There's also a window here, a window here, and a window here.
Just see you guys know.
here if you want to.
Definitely understand.
Wanna go up, blur up the stairs.
Shoot past Percy, shoot past that guy out the window.
All right, you're on the balcony now, looking right about here.
Do I already see those guys?
Make a perception check.
19 plus 14 is a hell of a lot.
Ninth plus 14? Yeah, you do see them.
And you glance down and you can see they're like hiding amongst bushes and they're specifically stealthed,
but you are just keen of eye enough to see where they're placed.
I stealth.
Bonus action to hide.
Okay.
I'm going to use luck.
That's better.
Uh, 27.
27, no.
Okay.
You're not sure if they see you or not, but.
All right.
And then from this spot, if they're in range, I'm going to throw whisper at one of them.
Okay.
Well, right now you are currently, let's say, for instance, you are up here.
Yeah.
So you glance off and you can barely see one that's kind of over the edge of the roof right there.
That's the only one you can.
But I can see them and I can ignore three-quarter cover
because of sharpshooter, so I see one.
So you only see, you barely see the edge of one there.
A sharpshooter?
I'd say, yeah.
Because you have a sharpshooter, you can.
So you can hit both if you want.
So for the one that I can see hidden,
I will try to throw a whisper.
And I'm going to sneak attack him in, hopefully sneak attack him in
advance there.
OK.
OK.
So that is a 28.
28.
OK, yeah.
He does not see you.
OK.
So you have an advantage on that if you want to roll again.
Right. Natural 20.
Whoa!
Natural 20.
Turn them into paste.
Okay, then.
Okay, three, three, four, seven, ten, twelve, seventeen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-five, twenty-seven.
Oh yeah.
Typical Pike.
She's...
Well, no, but Sprigg is right after Scanlan.
He's before we are, so I'd rather get him up before we are.
him up before his turn.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I thought.
So on that one is 60 on that guy.
60 points of damage?
Yes, and I'd bamp there.
Okay.
Up the stick.
Ramage right as you chuck the dagger and it's like right towards where the center of the shoulder blades connect in the back,
and you watch the crossbow that he had kind of drops the ground and he crumbles over on top of it, but he's a little,
so it's getting to his feet out of the bushes.
He looks really, really hurt, but he's still standing.
Okay. So I did.
And you appear right next to him there.
So I did movement, I hid from my bonus.
I did, I have action action as a paladin and action.
We have attack attack attack as a paladin.
Attack attack as a paladin.
And then my bonus acts.
We'll say it was the first of attack attack attack attack.
So now I'll just do a regular attack, which is a 20.
Attack, attack.
And switch.
Attack attack.
He got those boots back.
I'm just so bad.
Because you really needed them.
30.
30 hits.
And that is a.
10 and I'm going to pump him full of poison.
He has to make a DC check on 15.
Break it down now, y'all.
That is a 7, no, 4 plus 3.
So he also gets,
so that was 10 plus 14 total, 20 total,
between the dagger and the poison.
So the second dagger, you shiv him the side
and he goes to spin with the heavy crossbow
and try and pull away, and as soon as the poison pulses through me,
And you see blood just vomit on the front of his chest as his eyes roll back and he twinges and falls to the ground
Yeah, first blood.
And there's another guy there who can see me, right?
Yeah, and he's hidden, but he's like, whisper.
Okay, yeah, he's like trying to make to see that you're not being seen.
Holy shit.
That is, uh, that is 20, uh, 20, that hits.
31, yeah, okay.
So that is two plus eight is 10 plus psychic damage.
18.
18.
I'm at BAMP there with Whisper.
Okay.
All right.
Got.
Got.
You know what I mean?
You stand there.
You're right in front of them now.
That ends your go.
As you appear over on the other side, you realize that over in the clearing there, there is another one of the robed figures.
This one, clutching what looks to be a long, black, smooth staff that crooks over in the front,
to look like a hand holding an eye.
What?
Oh, shit.
holding an eye.
Oh no.
There were more of them.
But you guys don't know that yet, just me.
You guys don't know that yet, just him.
All right, ending your turn backs.
I can't even say that yet.
All right, that guy on the ground is going to try and break free of the...
The guy you're against?
That is a...
I'm on the corner of the house, but you guys don't know this.
17? DC 20?
DC 20.
Yeah, it struggles on the ground and just can't seem to break free of the current magic manacles that hold it in place.
Norkin, yeah, he's stuck.
Yep.
Down.
On the bottom floor.
Long that we have floors.
Another one of these, darts through the window,
leaps across the way, right in front of Sprig,
and you being right there, Scanlan goes,
lashes out at you.
He's going for Sprig.
He's going for Sprig.
He's going for Scandland.
But because Scanlan's over Sprigg.
Oh, that's fair.
It makes two claw strikes at you.
First one is 16 to hit?
Yes.
All right.
You suffer eight points.
It's a slashing damage.
I need you to make a Constitution saving throw.
Oh, boy.
Do we still have our temporary eight?
No, we lost her time.
Great.
We slept.
That's right.
16.
16? Okay.
Is it magical?
No, it is not magical.
But you feel this kind of pulse of some sort of
necrotic disease type hit your system,
and you just managed to shrug it off.
Oh!
Yes.
The other claw comes towards you.
You have vacation, Scanlan.
That's a natural 20.
Natural 20.
That's true.
That is 30 points of slashing damage.
On the second hit, make another saving throw, please.
Fuck.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's 17.
17.
The second strike hits you, and you feel as the side of your torso gets torn out to the side,
and blood kind of splatters on a sprague, who's already kind of bloody, and it's another
known blood on known blood.
And as you reach for your side, however, it does not take effect, you manage to shrug off.
Oh, God.
Woo, knock down.
All righty, that ends.
Those are Constitution-savings?
Yeah, that ends the shadow gas turn.
Sprigg and Skrigg, I need you to make a death-saving throw, please.
Roll a D20.
Come on, Sprigg!
Come on, Spring!
Come on, come, come, come, come.
Arn't Spring.
Okay, so you're okay for now.
You're stabilizing.
You're not bleeding out yet.
So mark a success on your death saving throws there.
Scanlon, what are you doing?
I am going to bonus action down here.
Oh, there it is.
Success.
One.
Actually here, before you do that, what are you doing here?
Are you-
I'm going to heal him first.
Okay, so that role actually wouldn't matter because he may heal you before you come up.
Yes.
So yeah.
Don't worry about it.
I will-
I will sing to him.
I'll do a little line dance right in front of him and I'll say,
I'll heal your heart, your achy-breaky heart,
I just don't think you'll understand that if I heal your heart,
your achy-breaky heart, you gotta wakey-breaky heart, you gotta wake up.
I gotta wake up and kill a man.
Ooh!
If only you had used mage hands.
Oh, nice.
All right, so how much is he healed?
Thank you for joining me.
Oh, I got it.
Six.
13.
So you healed 30 endpoint.
So that all doesn't matter.
You hear this echoing song in the back of your heads.
You don't know, the second song today you've heard from your childhood.
And you come to consciousness, and you wake up and look around you, and you can see him singing to you as this
giant, horrible, necrotic creature is looming right in front of you. You have metal bolts sticking out of your chest and an old sensation. You haven't felt in a long time courses through your body, which is the need to survive.
So what are you going to do on your turn?
Wait, is my turn still.
It is. Both of you guys turn at the same time.
Okay. So I will hold my turn.
What are you going to do?
Dimension Door, but I'm holding until either Pike or Keeleth keels him more.
Okay.
And I will also say to him, old man, do you have some fight left in you?
I hope so.
Okay. Hold that thought for one second.
Holdings.
Okay. So what are you doing?
Now, there's a bookcase. Is there not?
There's bookcases here, bookcase there. There's just book strewn and clustered in these corners.
I'd like to, if I could, use the ring of telekinesis to pull a bookcase down upon an attacker.
Yes.
Okay. Currently, there are, we'll see, there's a bunch of books up here on a shelf.
You can pull them down and down.
him if you'd like. I would like to do that. Okay, so from the ground you and yank a bunch of heavy tomes off of this large shelf that goes flying towards this creature. I'm going to make this a dexterity saving throw for it.
A 10 is mightier than the...
All of Encyclopedia for 10.
What's the DC on the...
Do you telekinesis room?
Where was it?
Ring of telekinesis.
We'll pull it up here.
Looking up magical items real fast.
I don't have it.
It just says ring of...
Oh, it's for the spell telekinesis?
Yeah.
That's right.
What's your spell, do you see?
Next page.
The top there.
17.
Okay, no, that's a failure.
All right, so for this, go ahead and roll 3D6.
Okay.
He failed or the guy failed?
The guy failed.
He didn't dodge the way.
He's like, he.
He just gets pummeled from behind by a bunch of tombs, books,
and random, like, glass bobbles that were on the shelf
that shatter against the back of its head.
Take that away.
We have a six, we have a five, and we have a two.
All righty.
And then add your intelligence modifier.
intelligence modifier. My intelligence modifier is a four.
All right, so the total there would be 17. Nice. So 17 points of damage to that one.
As you slam it in the back of the head of the and it kind of doubles over and
it's long tongue kind of slashing around. You're still on the ground and it's over you. Is there anything else you want to do in your turn?
Dimitrick! You hear nothing.
Oh.
Oh.
Fucker.
Can I cast something, or is that?
That is an action to do that?
So if you have a bonus action spell, you could do that.
I believe that Tasha's hideous laughter?
I think you believe that's an action to cast, unfortunately.
That is an action casting?
I don't think we have any bonus action, so I'm just...
Oh, are there any healing potions?
I can use my telekinesis to get a healing potion to me.
You can do that next round right now.
I will, I'm...
The attack was you're on action.
You can stand on your feet if you'd like to.
No, I'm gonna stay right here.
Okay.
Got it.
That ends your turn.
Now, these guys go again.
No.
Well, that's good.
They're a disadvantage now to hit you.
We hope.
They are, because you're prone.
This guy's gonna move in.
Prome to failure at things.
This guy is still standing.
It's gonna go ahead and drop the crossbow and pull out his short sword.
Oh, God.
It's gonna go ahead and attack you, Grog, first.
That is...
13.
13.
This is.
I feel like he should get injured for you.
And a 27.
That does it.
All right, you take five.
That's four.
That's nine points of slashing damage, reduced to five, yeah.
Or round down, so it's four.
Four damage.
Oh, pretty nice.
So struck twice, missed both.
Both of these guys are going to fire at, one's going to fire at Sprig.
One's gonna fire it Sprigg on this end,
because that's their goal here.
With disadvantage, that is a 16.
What's your AC again?
My AC is 19.
19, so yeah, it just darts over you
and misses, it hits the side of the wall.
The other guy's gonna strike again with disadvantage.
That's it.
All right, that's a 14.
And you see the other guy pulling back with the crossbow
and fire you roll out of the way and shp-b-
into the wooden flooring right next to you.
These two.
Are there any traps that they hit?
No, no, no.
There's, yeah, that one back there is going to go ahead and attack you, Vax, because you're
right there in front of it.
That's going to be a 13 does not hit.
Second strike.
Another 13.
Both of it short, short, or attacks.
You just duck out of the way and dodge.
Moving around very quickly.
All righty.
Those two right there.
One of them is going to, because it's all that you got upscaling, they're both going to fire two bolts directly at you.
That is a 16 to hit.
That hits.
Okay.
And the second one is a 24.
Everything hits.
Alrighty.
With the love of peach dragon.
You are currently in base to base with one of their canyons, so they both get sneak attack on you.
It is 19 points of piercing damage from the first hit.
The second one is 24 points of piercing damage from the first.
the second hit. And then they both duck around the side here.
What was the second one? 24. Okay, got it.
Yeah. And they both will say they vanish from sight. You're not quite sure where they are right now.
Those two also duck out of sight. You're not quite sure where they are either.
That ends their go. Now, the guy in the back right there who noticed VACs show up,
is going to, if you slaughter, one of the guys and stab the other one,
It's going to angrily go ahead and use
a boy on you.
Can you go and make a constitution saving throw, please?
Oh, 20.
Hey!
Oh, shoo!
Oh, fucking did!
Netrow guy!
All righty.
That does half the damage, so...
Still a lot.
I feel like a natural 20 should ought to fail this,
but that's my...
I know, right?
Only a natural.
21 points of the crack damage to you.
All righty.
Wow.
And it's going to...
Four. Five.
Ha.
All righty.
That ends his turn.
Bex, you're up.
Weird.
I'm going to run over to the window that those guys just disappeared from.
Or this way or this way?
Right there, yeah.
Can I see that motherfucker?
Did I see him run past the window?
You know what?
Yes, because he was not stealthing.
So you watch as he darted by, and you would have a shot, yeah.
All right, then I'm going to shoot at him.
Go for it.
I am going to hunters mark him.
All right.
Alrighty, look at that.
Trinket doesn't have enough movement to get over by him, does he?
No, but Trin can attack whatever is in your area too.
Okay.
I'm going to attack him with my bramble shot.
Okay, go for it.
With the blazing bowstring.
Alrighty.
Ooh, yeah, that's a 31.
31, that hits.
Yes.
Okay. Oh, I don't get, do I get sneak attack on him? I don't, do I?
Uh, no. Damn. Well, at least I got Hunter's mark.
Um, okay.
Hey Matt, I realized something too. I never shot out the wings, so I shouldn't have had as much
uh, moving as I did. So I think we should take the damage back from my last attack.
Even if you walk it is 510, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 to get up to the top there.
Okay. So you need your double speed? All right.
at 60 through the dagger and through the dagger.
So you're fine.
It still works out.
Okay, 28 plus my 4D8 piercing damage.
Ah, that's balls.
You're on deck, Keel.
Just you know.
5, 7, 9 plus 9 is 37.
37 points of damage.
First arrow hits in the stomach,
kind of doubles forward and pulls back.
Now, kind of glancing over and saw you rush up
and couldn't get out in time,
and now I was gonna try and back up
as you're taking the second shot.
Does he roll a DC of over 17?
A strength save?
Actually rolls a natural 17, literally.
All right.
Strength save?
Strength save.
Minus one strength modifier.
Oh!
Oh, silly necromancer.
You and your strength of nine.
All right, so he is currently entangled with the brambles
the vines wrap around and kind of pull him in, almost near the tree, like, ugh, and you see
the stab is like pulled close to his chest.
Nice. Then I'm going to shoot him. Oh, wait, I didn't add my blazing bowstring damage.
Do it.
Eight more for the blazing bowstring.
Nice.
And then I'm going to shoot him again. I'm just asking, do you could sneak attack damage
if they're restrained?
You do, yeah.
Nice.
So you can do that.
You have advantage in the attack, remember, because he's restrained.
That's okay.
Eight plus 14 is what?
Yeah, that hits.
Okay, good.
Oh gosh, okay.
Okay.
10, 11, 12, 13, plus sneak attack.
Get it.
13.
What is that?
Oh, 10.
So 23, and then Hunter's mark.
All righty.
Plus one. 24.
24. Nice.
The second arrow, it starts getting the throat, and you can see it.
It doesn't anything vital, but you can see blood's already starting to pour out.
And one of the things where if you were to pull it out, it would probably be very bad.
But he's leaving it right now. He's looking pretty rough.
Okay.
The necromancer is?
Yeah.
All righty.
I'm going to step away from the window.
Okay.
I'm away from the window.
No, like against the wall.
Against the wall there?
Yeah.
You push the table back a bit.
Book almost falls at the top.
Trinket doing. Trinket is going to run over to Sprigg and Scanlan.
Up to Scanlan or to the guy who's there?
Just to the guy.
Okay.
Just try to growl at him and scare him, because he can't attack.
Right.
It's technically now engaged with the bear, so if he walks away from the bear, the bear gets in attack.
That's true. All right, that ends your turn.
Strink is right in front of the creature.
Keelew, what you doing?
Okay. In my weird emotional,
panic. Heathliff is going to just turn and look around and she sees Vex firing a bow and
spring down on the floor and she's upset and she's just going to scream at the top of her lungs
and do a firestorm around the building. Just, and then I'm just going to go,
where I think people might be in my rage. Okay. So around the building?
Around the building. Sorry Vax, I don't really know you're
there, but around here, and around here, and I see,
I'm sure I see Vax shooting at things, right?
I'm gonna try and-
Eight.
Where you're going?
So you have like right here.
Here.
Right, so you see-
Around and that way.
All right.
Okay, because you didn't see Vax outside.
No.
He is getting hit.
Right, you saw that one upstairs.
I just know there were people shooting through this window
and through this window.
And through this window.
So I'm doing the perimeter around.
Do it. Go sick.
Okay, so six. How many squares? Is it 10, right?
It's 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 by 10s.
Okay, these two here get caught in as well as Vax and that guy there.
What about the magician guy?
If she's doing a perimeter, no.
Did you know that I was shooting with somebody?
She doesn't see the, she doesn't know where it is.
No.
The magician.
Ten, ten.
The prestige.
The prestige.
10 2x2.
Which means if it's either half or nothing.
Yeah, 102 by 2.
Nothing at the speeds?
Yes.
What do I have to match?
Her DC, which is 21, right?
21.
So, dexterity savings.
That's good.
Oh, yeah, way higher than that.
Oh, you're good.
So you take no damage.
You just dug out of the firestorm just in time for death.
I have two more D-10s.
Yeah, dexterity save, man.
Area effect.
Smoky D-10 and spiky D-10.
Sure.
Ugh.
Oh, okay.
And I re-roll ones, none of these are ones, unfortunately.
But there's a 10.
It's a 16.
It's not succeed.
Or 10, 8, which is 18 plus 6.
So that brings me to 24, 26.
I just noticed the little lanterns glowing.
Bravo.
It's a dormer fore.
It's a dormit.
It's a dormer.
It's a door to .
It's true.
It's your house.
You have.
Six is 34 plus another.
What'd be energy conscious with those LEDs.
39.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
39 damage.
39 damage.
39 damage.
This guy is straight.
Do I do extra?
Wait, what do I do?
He just screams and burns.
He managed to dodge part way out, but even the partial damage just burns me.
You see him run off into the forest, like 10 or so steps on fire, like stuntman shot in a movie before you just
In the ground, it just smolders there in the distance.
Those two guys take it.
What was the amount against?
It was 30.
39.
And they're on fire.
It's hard to stealth when you're on fire.
All right, so they're both on fire.
So that was my action.
I'm going to do that out of my staff as I slam it down.
I'm going to look at Sprague and say, God's damn it,
Sprague.
And I'm just going to use that as my healing word.
And I'm going to cast Healing Word at second level.
All right.
Which is 2D4.
Pencil replacement.
To a green one.
Five plus six, so 11 points to you.
Alrighty.
And then I'm going to use my free action that I have to turn into a fire elemental.
You're free action.
Yeah, changing into stuff, it's on a bonus.
It's just a free action to change into my B-shaped that's Circle the Moon, bitch.
Did you just call your fiancé?
A bitch?
No.
I'm just saying, you know.
Because I feel like I can call you a bitch.
Combat Wald-shaped.
Circle the moon.
How about Wald-shape makes it a bonus action as opposed to an action.
Oh.
That's the difference.
Biaz.
So you did so.
I would like.
to retract my bitch.
All right, so I'm just Keylox.
So you're just Keelis still.
Keyleth and everything's on fire.
All right, is that any turn?
All right, so as Keelos' turn ends, it comes to Pikes.
The entire exterior perimeter of this part of the house is on fire.
Flames are now starting to catch it as dry wood.
The entire building is made from wood of the forest.
You know, wood.
So your home is now in flames.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no. I'm doing the perimeter.
What is the middle of? It's a magical fire.
I did think about this, which is why I didn't attack the guy in the house.
Oh, if you napalm the forest, the trees will probably catch fire.
With the trees, but not the...
That's a quick jump, though.
All right.
The house is...
In order to do the perimeter, that is on the outside of the house.
It's not like an blazing inferno, but it's starting to catch.
Like this like flames are starting to lick up the side.
And save it.
End it quick, we can save it.
Water element.
Firestorm is a dangerous spell.
Let's try to save those books before they all burn it.
Yeah, that's where it was thought about.
We were either going to kill him or burn his house down.
I know.
It's not long in his M.O., man.
It was always going to end this one.
The things who own end up owning you, really.
So glad I wore a jacket.
All right, so Pike is going to rush forward and is also going to attempt a healing word you.
at level two. It's just a heel fountain on you. That is six plus five. So it's 11
points you heal.
Okay. As soon as she does that, I grab him and we dimension door out the house.
Where do you dimension door? So the only place I know. Front of the house. Like
outside the front door, not right outside, but like towards the edge of the map there.
Over here? Yeah, yeah, just anywhere around there, like on approach to the house.
Or do you want to be more like over yonder?
Where's the front door to the house?
Front door is right there.
So, yeah, I'd be familiar with.
Like 20 feet, like the way we approached to the house.
So where you got it?
If that's the way we approached, that's the way we approached.
You guys approached in this direction when you came to it.
All right, you're there.
Make a reception check, Scanlon.
Okay.
No.
10.
Okay.
So you don't see the two hidden fellows over here.
Okay.
You do see something large and hulking moving through.
through the forest this direction.
Is it a quick glance?
Is it naked?
No.
Not a problem.
Okay.
Then we're gonna be okay.
It's similar.
All right.
So, but you guys have pulled out of that house,
and you're still on the ground,
and all of a sudden, your body physically shifts
and you're out amongst the, you're looking up at the trees,
and you glance around, and you can see the back of your house,
and you can now see the, here, the frantic fray going on,
you see the necromancer is currently covered in brambles and held in place.
You see a couple of guys over here on fire,
on the side, screaming on the side of the house,
and your house starting to catch fire.
All right, that's okay. Pike, on her turn, is going to...
It's better this way.
Keelph has anger issues, it's fine.
Because it's a single target?
Raw.
It's the This is Fine meme, except it's just Keylift.
I was kind of, yeah.
She's going to cast a level five guiding bolt because that's what Keyleth does.
So, Raines spell attack against that guy.
11 plus...
Yeah, that hits.
That's a 21.
So that is 46 plus 8D6 radiant damage.
No wonder she does it so much.
Nice.
Is she doing it to the magician?
No, this guy right there in the room.
He's an illusionist, Laura.
She's doing it against copperfield?
Is David Blaine with him?
Street magic.
We're all laughing in spring.
So after she heals spring and spring vanishes,
she grabs a holy symbol and goes,
chill out!
And it shoots this giant flashing beam of divine energy
that slams into it.
You can watch a lot of its flesh kind of burns away
from the impact, and it's still standing,
but it's like, ah, but it's a shining beacon.
The next attack against it has advantage.
Nice.
And then Pike's gonna go ahead and back up with you, Vex,
towards the back where the book stuff,
the bookcases, and goes,
You smell something?
Mm.
All right.
You now hear simultaneously and watch as the side wall and the back wall explode inward, a splinter of wood stone just
comes from this wall here.
Oh no, all of these.
Okay, well, I didn't destroy your house first.
Slaid.
Flames, less of a thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
From the side of the house.
Burning.
It's like inside of the house.
You want to set your house on fire in an earthquake,
so the fire insurance covers it.
It's two familiar hulking entities.
That's just coming from barreling into the chamber.
Are they?
No, they're giants.
Remember those giant things you saw walking through the shadow fell
that you barely avoided with the mask?
The sensor?
Who has the sensor?
No on you right now.
You don't just carry a fucking giant smoking sensor with you.
Oh, really?
I didn't realize there was that big.
I don't know.
At that point, I think we probably put it in the bag of holding.
Yeah, it's in the back of holding.
Okay.
But we did make a bunch of those herbs.
I do have the herbs.
And there's a shit ton of shit on fire.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I know how to make more of that.
Burst through.
Keelew might have already used them.
This big yell echoes through their metal masks.
It sounds like this horrible, this.
Critical Vame.
Imagine a giant vocal screen that's peaking on the audio level
against a tinny metallic speaker.
This one,
Leaps over and essentially,
this one is going to go ahead and make two swipes
at Trinket.
Are they putting in with the brinket, are they?
They actually, as they barrel through,
part of the roof kind of breaks,
and guys up top, Percy and Grog, you feel the ground
kind of buckle a little bit below you
and you drop about two or three inches
as the building is starting to lose its physical frame.
I go, Grub, what Tekeleth do?
Oh, come on.
You beeped by one second.
I felt me.
Yeah, you beat me by one second.
I'm well aware of my next later.
It's totally weird.
One is going to.
Hashtag thanks Keel.
Yep.
You're welcome.
That one's our druid.
That one's going to go ahead and do two slam attacks against Keelith.
Oh.
Yeah, I burned it.
Come on.
That's 23 to hit.
Yeah, it's.
And it's a 20.
It's a 20.
Nine to hit.
Yeah.
Maybe hits.
That might hit.
That's 20 points of bludging damage from the first hit.
Okay.
And the second one is 30 points of bludgeoning damage.
And it slams you, the second fist actually pins you up against the wall there.
And you feel like kind of ribs crack inside your chest.
And now like they're both down low and like this hulking just masses.
They're almost wider than they are any other dimension
with how they're kind of crashed down
in the thickness of their body.
They're taking up almost the entirety of the room right now.
The other one's at 30 points, right?
Yes, in the second one.
So I'm at 83 points.
Correct.
The other one's gonna go ahead and slam twice into Trinket.
That is just giant fists.
It's gonna be a 28.
28 hits.
And a 22.
22 hits.
That is five plus.
11 points of bludging damage to shrink it.
Halfed, half, correct.
And 22 points of bludging damage halved.
Okay, so 11 plus 6 is 27 points.
That ends their go, we're at the top of the round.
Percy, you're upstairs.
Okay, this all happened.
Yep.
That's awkward.
It's awkward.
That's okay, I know where I am.
I'm going to run out into the balcony.
Really quick.
There's room.
Over here.
That guy's still up there with us, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I figure you're going to handle it.
And I'm going to look.
What do I see outside of the balcony?
You see currently down below.
Make perception check.
All right.
Actually, you wouldn't even see them from your perspective.
You know what?
I just rolled a natural twining.
Right.
It's actually blocking vision from this side.
But you do see, you see Scanlan.
You see Sprigg, who is currently conscious.
You see this necromancer who is currently held with brambles.
And you see two streaking flames and here screams in the side of the building right there.
Weird question really quickly.
Where is that giant log trap that was connected to the
right there?
So how much swing does it have?
Like where is it, is it locked like all the way over here
or is it like it coming back like there?
It looks more like a drop.
Oh, so it's a drop on the door?
Yeah. Good to know.
All right, in the meantime then I'm going to run out
on the exterior of the wall like right over here.
Okay, that makes sense.
So you up to that side.
And that's gonna be my movement and I'm gonna just
take some fun happy pot shots at these bastards.
Okay.
Bostards.
At the necromanceres.
Let's start with that bound necromancer.
Let's start with that bound necromancer.
He's fun.
With the Vecna eye.
All right.
He's bound, so I have advantage to hit him.
Yes, you do.
All right, I'm going to use my animus gun so that I still have a hand open.
And I'm also going to burn a point of grit
so that I can get him to drop his staff.
Okay, go for it.
All right, here we go, with advantage.
Oh, darn it was so close.
28.
That hits.
All right, that's 8 plus 1 D6.
That's...
Fancy.
18 points of damage, four points of psychic damage,
and he has to make a throw, where is it?
Strength saving throw or drops his items?
Oh, don't worry, he drops the staff,
because there's not much less of his head.
not much less of his head.
When you hit the arm, he's like,
the staff's clutching up here, you slam it,
and it hits the side of the head
and just causes the right side of the face
to explode against the tree.
The bramble's still clutching as it falls limb
to the ground and they crush the body
into a small rock of flesh.
Oh, that'll do.
All right.
You get a grip point back, right?
You get a grip point back.
You get a grip point back.
You do.
You just barely see them.
They have three-quarters cover,
but you have a shrew-quartered.
Yeah.
What does that mean in the script?
in this crazy world.
I'm going to burn a grit for advantage and I'll shoot one of them.
The one right on the side of it?
Yeah, I'll start there.
Let's give him a shot.
I love advantage.
It's so wonderful.
32.
I really should have done extra damage.
So that's 1d10 plus 6.
That hits, obviously.
32 to hit.
Yeah, yeah, it hits.
That's a...
Goodbye, Necromance.
17 points of damage plus two points of psychic damage.
How much of that, sorry?
17 points of damage plus two points of psychic damage.
Okay.
All right, he's still standing.
The shot.
And then he starts looking up to see where the shot came from
as the giant bullet wound across the,
this is like through the torso and out of the back of the shoulder
was cleaned through.
You hear him breathing, gasping for breath.
I'm going to take another shot at him,
and I'm going to make this a sharp shooter shot,
and again with advantage, because that's fun.
And...
Here we go.
Oh, damn, almost a crit.
So close.
Yeah, that's a 20, 28, 29.
That hits.
That hits, yeah.
That's a little damage.
A little damage.
Six.
14 points of damage, I'm sorry, 24 points of damage plus two points of psychic damage.
He falls to the ground, face first, the second shot hits him in the chest, and he just goes down, crumples.
And there his body just kind of begins to smolder.
Okay, I use my bonus action to reload and stare at the nice person below me.
All righty. That ends Percival's turn. Grog, you're up.
You hear the downstairs. There's the guy in front of him. He was like, ah.
What are you going to do?
Can I smash my tartan stone knuckles together to cast it large of myself?
You can, and your head goes into the roof.
Well, it was...
You're real sorry about your house.
There's no books in the roof.
It wasn't a house. It was a prison.
Oh.
Yay.
And.
Well, then you're welcome.
Oh, ho.
Happy to re-deck me.
I'm kind of hoping the floor gets.
The floor gives out.
Okay, good.
You, as your head's in the ceiling,
it falls out from under you.
It falls out the floor.
You come falling down on top of this guy.
Oh, wow.
Yes.
Rubble falls around.
Kiel, I need to make a dexterity saving throw.
And you drink it to make a dexterity saving throw.
The other guy at ShadowGas is going to have me.
He fails.
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I'm 14. All righty. So Trinket, you, the shadow gas all take
22 points of bludgeoning damage as the roof caves in over on top, the larger the
The upper floor now falls and this guy stumbles and is now prone there. He also takes damage
and you take 22 points of bludgeoning damage from just like falling through the wreckage.
Trinkets his half. Trinkets his half of his, yes.
Ooh. Debris.
That kills him. That's what I thought. The shadow gas right here.
Yay!
Because he had barely any left. Yeah.
That's up.
He just like, he just rained on with rubble, broken, splintered wood and stone.
And the guy in Manners is still, he fell too.
No, he's still up there.
No, actually his part of the ceiling didn't fully collapse.
He's just out of the way.
He's kind of dangling off the edge right now, and as he shakes, it's kind of making its way towards the hole.
Yeah, the whole ceiling didn't collapse, just the area right below.
Beautiful.
All right, so.
Can I take Tweedle D right here to my right and make two reckless attacks against him?
They're not giants, right?
No, they're not giants.
They're considered undead.
They're considered undead.
They are, uh, 30.
to hit.
Mm-hmm.
And the second one.
Big targets.
Uh, 29.
Hits.
Okay.
So, 10.
24 points plus the enlarge.
25.
All right.
25 with the first hit.
The second one.
20.
Plus two.
22 with the second one.
22 damage and the second hit.
Whack!
Whack!
You're hitting it.
You watch, you land on its back,
it has these metal spites kind of jamming.
out of its flesh, and you can see what looks to be portions of other creatures that it had slain
that have been jammed on these spikes and rotted away on its armor.
So as you're hitting it, you're knocking away parts of partially decomposed creatures that
previously fell in battle to one of these creatures.
And as you're slamming into it, you can see it's just rippling, partially decayed muscle
that seems to be unnaturally strengthened by whatever necrotic energy keeps it stitched together
and alive.
It's a thick sack of hit points.
Wow.
Cool.
Good to know.
I, with my...
That's interesting.
Can I...
I'm gonna go into a frenzied rage with my bonus section.
Okay.
And that's your turn?
Vax, you're up.
Okay, I have enough movement without the wings.
Yeah, you heard all this go on,
and now the whole building is starting to catch fire.
I'm gonna bolt to that window.
Right there?
So I have no other way.
So I have a view of Keelah, the creature, and Grog.
I'm gonna throw whisper, I've got sharpshooter at that thing.
You go at that thing and bamph there.
I will say at proximity of the flames,
right there they're starting to catch.
You do take three points of fire damage.
Fine.
Okay, and-
And you through the dagger at the big guy?
Whisper goes through the window at that guy, yeah.
All right, go ahead and roll on attack.
And it's flanking, right, because of where Grog is or Keel?
It's not flanking, but you get it at stink attack modifier.
Okay.
Yeah, that's fine, that's 32.
Yeah, that is.
So you appear next to it.
Three.
Plus psychic damage is four, plus this junk.
10, 16, 18, 21, 24, 29, 33, double to 66,
plus psychic damage 66 is 74.
Bamped there.
And you appear next to it.
As the dagger sinks into its torso,
you watch as its chest muscles in the iron cage,
like armor around it.
seems to swallow the dagger.
As it goes inside, you watch some of the muscles
all of a sudden fall off of its body.
Like whatever energy is holding it together
is untethered, and this weird kind of fleshy,
stitch together creature is starting to fall apart.
It's looking pretty, pretty hurt.
Okay, so here's what I wanted to do.
So movement, and I have action, action, action, action,
action, action, bonus action, action, action,
action, action, action.
Guys, it's the rules of the book.
You can bust my balls all you want.
Well, that's your first attack.
So action action for my regular attack, right?
Attack attack, attack.
I know, I know.
Attack attack, attack, you use one of those attacks.
Hasted action, bonus action.
Yes.
So that was the first of my attack attack attack attack.
Yes.
And here's the second one.
Okay.
Attack attack.
That's your next shirt.
It's good because I'm up now.
We have dagger, dagger, now we have attack, attack, attack attack attack attack.
Is our next t-shirt.
So that is, that is, just bonus action.
Just dumping.
I'm dumping a level two smite into this against an undead.
Yes.
That's seven, ten.
11. Oh, that's a bummer.
Ooh, it's cocked. Roll again.
Yeah, yeah. Redo it.
17 for that hit.
17 with the additional.
With action, attack attack.
Right. Well, no, okay.
But you said you dumped Devine's might into that?
Into that one.
You did the additional damage for it being undead?
Yes.
Okay, so that was how much total?
Whatever I just said, it was like 16.
17. 17.
17.
Okay.
Next dagger, which I will dump.
17 will do it, actually.
Ah.
So as you rush in the second dagger, you jam up into the same space where it's
falling apart, and you hear this dull from the inside as the divine energy radiates from
the strike, and its body just kind of slaws off of the bones and around your arm. It just
kind of slowly falls around your arm like an old gelatin and sips into the ground covering
the floor around you.
Gross.
Okay. I'm going to do the old crouch. Just back up, not that she needs it, but crouch in
front of Kieleth, and then I have my hasted action for an attack and bonus action for an attack.
into the other one.
29.
And the second one is higher than 29.
So I'm gonna dump smite into the foot,
three. You're making me mess up the map, Laura.
It's psychic gamut.
It's not, I can get you track at the map.
Epic level, D&D.
Oh, 19, 25.
25 on that towards that guy with smite added.
Yeah. 25.
And then the last dagger with smite does, at level one,
does two, who plus is 10?
What the fuck you're talking about?
14. 19.
19.
I dumped a ton of smite into that.
Also.
You didn't add your modifier to the third strike, right?
I don't know.
So why don't you just minus six.
We'll call it.
That's a 19, we'll call 13.
Some people might have been cat calling me while I was trying to do math.
That's okay.
I know, no worries.
Action, action, actually.
All right.
So you hit the other final strikes, they blast into it.
You watch some of the armor gets thrown off its body.
It's fussy, fussy.
I know.
It takes a little hit, but the other creature looks like it's largely all right.
That finishes Vax's turn.
Let me enjoy my last two months of last.
So aghast.
What's the DC on the sphere again?
That's awful hopeful.
Is it 20?
19.
You can't escape from this freaking sphere.
The shadow gas is just up on the second floor going,
manners, man.
Manors, man.
All right.
Scanlan and Sprig, what do you guys want to do?
I have a question.
The gentleman who had an arrow in his throat, he's gone, right?
He's been blown apart.
Actually, make a perception check.
Okay, that's a 20.
Yep, D20 and then add your perception modifier.
Got it.
That's a 15 plus, that's a 17.
A 17, okay.
You glance over and you see two guys.
two guys who were hiding amongst the bushes in the side there.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, can I, oh, now it's too far away to cast a spell?
No, depending on the spell's range, depending on what you want to do.
Tasha's hideous laughter.
That we can do.
That's one like that's a good spell.
It's a fun one.
All righty-yty, so bringing up Tasha's here, looking at the range.
There we go.
So 30 feet range.
It's a 30 feet range, so you want to get up
and get a little closer probably.
I will do that if I could.
So it's half your movement, and you can move two more spaces,
and you can hit one guy.
So one guy you choose, one of these two you can select.
The first one.
That one there?
All right.
I think his name is Dave.
World perception?
No, I guess make a saving throw, wisdom save.
That is a 10 plus 0, a 10.
You're spelled DC since 17.
So you watch as the guy there who has this crossbow out
and sees you get up, spins around,
and has this giant, heavy crossbow,
the bolt, very recognizable,
because you still have three of them in your body,
aims it towards you, and then suddenly,
and just drops the crossbow to the ground
and doubles over a laughing, falling to the ground,
and is now kicking and laughing like a hyena right now,
unable to do anything.
Knock, knock.
Right.
Right.
All right. Is that your turn?
Yes, it is.
All right.
There's another guy over there.
Have I seen him yet?
You haven't actually.
You do see this guy who's on fire right now who's still around.
Oh, I see somebody.
Yeah, and you did see that hulking figure come running through and you heard the
P-F-T at the back of the building.
At the beginning of the round, I'll say, guys, I think large, giant's
Coming. Be aware.
I can't hear you. Speak clearly.
What do you? What can he be?
No cross chatter. No cross chatter.
Okay.
I'll approach the guy I can see burning on fire.
That's where the front door is, right?
Is he in front of the front door?
We can actually, we can stand up.
He's somewhat near it.
You're not quite sure where the trajectory will be if you were to try and
make something fall.
But I mean, like, is there a large log above?
There is like a thick, like, seven foot, eight foot wide log
that's like right up in this area.
Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah, that.
Okay.
So I'll take out my wand of magic missiles.
And I will just take down the rope.
One of those should take down the rope.
He watches like three missiles fire out of the wand
and slam into the bits of rope up top.
As they explode, it's enough of an impact
cause it's supposed to fall straight down.
Just kind of like, spin and fall.
I'm gonna go ahead and roll a dice to see
which direction it's gonna land from its front point.
So we'll say inward would be one, two, three, four, five, six.
That's a six.
So it plummets down, hits the ceiling,
scrapes off and slams down onto him.
He's gonna try and make a dexterity saving throw.
That is a seven plus four.
Nope, that's an 11.
Go ahead.
Go ahead and roll 48, please.
Wicked bitch.
4D8?
Is this Dr. Comedy who's writhing in laughter?
I think so.
Oh my goodness.
Oh, no, no, sorry, he's over here.
This guy's on fire from her earlier.
4D8.
Yeah.
Oh, that's a fire.
16.
What is missing the damage?
16.
16 points of damage to him?
That's not a lot.
You'll get 16 on 4D8?
It's not enough to kill him, but it slams on him
and then it falls over.
You see as both of his,
Flaming hands on the ground going,
he's currently restrained underneath it right there.
Oh, but.
And on fire.
Nice.
Knock, knock.
Right.
All right, you can stay where you are?
You want to move it all?
No, no, I'm going to move towards any entrance or window I see.
I can't really see over there, but.
There's window here, window here.
But this one has like flames in front of it.
This one's available.
I'll go towards that other one.
Okay.
Two, do, do, do, do.
Five, that's as far as you can move there.
You see the guy on the ground who's laughing in front of you.
Yeah, no thanks to him.
And for a bonus,
I guess I will inspire Darren DePaul, or rather,
Sprig. Sprigg.
Why not both?
Trigg.
Why not both, yeah.
I will sing to him,
You had a bad day, you get knocked down.
I'll sing you a song just to turn it around.
You say you don't know, but please don't die.
I'll sing you this song and maybe you'll go for a ride
and have a bad day.
I don't know, I don't sound yet.
That's really good.
So you get an inspiration die.
You get a D12 that you can just use on any sort of skill.
You don't have to use right now.
But whenever you use a skill check or an ability check,
you can add that to it if you want to.
There you go.
Thank you.
You know, I had a bad day.
You had a bad day.
All right, so now it's the assassin's turn.
Keeleif, how much fire does it?
Damage does it do when they're on fires.
Is it D10?
It does.
Oh, geez.
Oh, geez.
Firestorm.
It's okay.
Yeah, no D-10.
D-10, thought so.
All right, he takes eight fire damage.
Yay!
Under a log.
Under a log.
He's going to try and break free from restrain.
Nope. That is a 14.
He cannot move that giant tree that's currently crushing him on the ground.
He tries to reach out for his crossbow and aim
out towards Brigg with one hand because it's still loaded,
but he has super disadvantage in the strike.
Super.
Super.
It is now.
It just sounds like.
It's a new campaign guy.
Super disadvantage.
All right, that's eight,
12.
Sure, I'll do a three.
All right.
812, 12, 12.
I made him roll super disadvantage.
So you see him like, like this is,
ah, what funk?
What does it remind me of?
It's like a terrible old sci-fi movie
with the bad guys like on the ground with the gun trying to like,
at the hero, this final shot,
and the hero just kind of walked up in steps in the gun.
You just kind of side-step the bolt as it fires.
Nothing on you.
Of course.
The crossbow drops.
Knock, knock.
On fire.
All righty, that ends his turn.
Comedy comes in three.
This guy back here is gonna go ahead
and since you're the one who has his friend writhing on the ground,
going to go ahead and try and shoot you with his crossbow. You do see him. Though he's
unaware of that, so he thinks it's a sneak attack shot. That is a 14.
You gotta get better cul-this man. I know, seriously. They come in large numbers, but
so yeah, this one just spoof is the tree to your left. His aims off.
His death's perception sucks. Exactly. Really, if you want better crossbow,
and he goes ahead and darts behind this building there. Just let them keep the eye.
Did I see the bolt or any indication that he says? You do. He reveals himself when he fired. So you watch him come out of the bushes
and fire and then duck around the side of the building.
The guy in the ground is gonna try and save against your spell.
That is a 13 plus zero.
Nope, he's still laughing.
He's just out, like tears in his eyes now.
Yeah, I love that spell.
That's the end of the assassin's turn.
Necro's dead. Vex, you're up.
I'm going to Hunter's Mark the big undead monster in the room.
And then I'm gonna shoot him with a blazing bowstring.
Please, like a little swing.
Chichow.
Oh, but I'm going to use the sharpshooter thing where I take minus five and do an
image, okay.
Which I don't know if I should have done that on this particular one.
It was 17.
17?
17 is exactly his armor class.
Oh!
Nice.
Hello, queen.
Okay.
And then, okay.
I love that.
Five plus eight is
13.
13, 13 plus sneak.
sneak attack because he's got trinkinging next to it.
Yep.
13.
23.
23, sorry.
23, and then lightning damage.
24.
25, 26.
And then blazing bowstring.
God, dang.
27.
Okay, so it's your first strike.
Yeah.
First one just, it's in the sides of the bolt of energy arc out,
and the flames kind of burn up the arrow.
By the way, the wall, behind you is.
starting to get really warm.
I'm gonna move forward.
Okay.
I'm gonna actually move toward the corner where Keyleth is.
Okay, so you kind of dart.
There's a guy in the ground there.
Oh, there is?
Yeah, so you're gonna step over him.
Yeah, I'm gonna step on him as I.
Okay, as you move past, he does get a swing
with a short sort at you.
Okay.
That, wow, he actually, that's a 25.
Oh, wow, he hits me.
Probably because I stepped on him.
I think so.
So you take five, four, you take nine points
of slashing damage.
Okay.
Just like, ugh,
and you're walking past.
I'm gonna, he's on the, oh shit.
Okay, I'm gonna hit the Big Hulkking thing again.
I realize he had a disadvantage,
but I'll roll another 18, so it's fine.
Oh, okay, well, yeah.
Way to burn those, man, thank you.
Okay, I'm gonna do the same thing
with the big hulking guy.
Okay.
25 to hit, yeah.
And then, okay, oh, I didn't add plus 10
to the previous one.
Because of the time shooter, all right.
It says 30, 39.
39 last time, so go ahead and get this one again.
Thanks.
12, 13, 14.
You're up next, Caleb.
14 plus 6 is 22, no, 20.
How you're going to ruin
Darren's life more.
I know.
22.
32.
How do we, I'm a big old home record.
I think that's just starting
too, because I don't get big attacks again.
All right, the second arrow slams into him, still holding firm.
It's taking the hits, and you see it, like, parts of its body are starting to spill kind of black liquid out of the wounds.
It's just, like, its red eyes still, you know, beaming out from behind the metal mask in front of its face.
Its arm kind of swings back and tears some of the ceiling kind of beams out with it.
It's looking pretty rickety right now.
Is that your turn?
I guess so.
All right, Keelth, you're up.
Is it even fireproof safe?
No?
Okay.
Keelith, you're up.
All right, so I have this big asshole in front of me.
Yes.
Yeah?
The house is catching on fire, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nope, she'd still be really upset and really angry.
So continuing what I was saying before, she's going to rage a little bit more and go into her fire elemental self.
Okay.
I'm able to contain her frustration.
This is a good plan.
Yeah.
You technically entered the space of the guy who's in the ground becoming a fire elemental,
which lights him on fire.
Okay.
Ah!
Ah!
Nice.
Even more upset, and then I'm going to move right in the space of this guy.
So, like, occupying his space from this side.
I'm going to do my multi-attack.
She can catch you guys on fire.
I don't think she...
I'll double-check that real fast.
I mean, I'm magical.
Sparkle fire.
You're a legit.
Sparkle fire.
Also, we can kind of take it.
Yeah, it's fire.
Not to be a dick, Matt.
You know what?
Can move through a space as narrows one inch wide,
so I'll say yes, you can maneuver through.
Only if you want to.
Can you set things on fire?
Okay.
If you want to burn us, you can.
I'm gonna go into this guy's space engulf in flames
and do my multi-attack two slam touch attacks.
Cuckoo.
Go for it.
Cuckoo.
Okay.
So he is now in flames.
Number one, that's cocked.
Ooh, that's good, that's good.
21.
21, yeah.
And 16.
16 chest misses.
Fucking balls.
OK.
No, no, no.
Plus 6 to 11.
That's 17.
17.
That hits.
That's what you needed.
So both of those hit 2D6 plus 3.
First one is three, five, eight plus
plus say five, seven, ten.
So 18 fire damage.
18 points of fire damage.
And then I'm gonna stay in this guy's space.
He is now on fire.
As you slamming hands and claw across his body,
where the flame hits, you see it like singes through the flesh
and drag the kind of charred remains of where the muscle once was,
where you dragged your claws through, the body's starting to shake
as it's holding its form together, but yeah.
That's all my God, I think.
That's it.
No, no, no, you have action, action, action, action.
Action, action.
Foen is action.
Hasted action.
Lay on hands.
Action, action, action.
Reaction.
Reaction.
Mike Merles and Chris Perkins at Wizards of the Coast.
Has anyone stepped on the trap on the floor?
As Vax.
Actually, you know what?
Vax would have avoided it,
because Vax is in the spot where it was,
but Vax knew it would.
it was, so Vax would have probably gone over it.
So cool.
You're just like, you know, whore?
You're doing the little splits over it.
Yeah, totally van damning it.
You wouldn't have, because when you threw the dagger,
let's do it.
It's not a big deal.
Thank you for pointing that out.
But your boots are gone.
She stole him again?
How did you do it?
You guys, glance upward, as you hear a swoop.
And up above you in the hole in the ceiling,
ceiling where there once was, nothing but air.
You are lying.
You see hovering above you a giant beholder just appear.
All of its eye stock's kind of curling around it.
What you mean it's not a big deal?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
What?
Thank you for that.
So that finishes your turn.
What?
Keelith, Pike's turn. Pike is going to go ahead.
Pike sees this.
If we're retconning that in, I'm retconning.
I'm retconning.
All right.
Don't get gargamel angry.
Yeah, does that mean that Keylet would have seen the beholder
beforehand?
Oh, geez, okay.
You know what?
Don't worry about it.
You were so angry.
Took a second.
It's in the hole above.
You don't quite see what that hole was at the moment.
You backed away and, you know.
Man, so much blind rage.
It's so much blind rage.
Look, guys.
What did we do?
What are we doing?
All right. So, anyway, Pike,
does actually make an insight check and says,
it's not real, don't worry about it.
Ficked.
Fixed.
It's not a big deal, you guys.
Not a big deal.
So that pike, however, is going to go ahead
and make another guiding bolt at the large guy there.
That's going to be 20 that hits.
It's going to be 40.
Forty-six.
14 points of radiant damage, which will do it.
So you watch as Pike blasts it in the face
with the guiding bolt and hits the mask,
it gets thrown off and where the head was beneath it,
you see this just empty black void
with two red burning coals for eyes that just blink out
as soon as the mask is removed,
and the whole body just crumbles to the ground
and turns into a horrible, thick, black, purple, icker.
I'm gonna have nightmares by that.
For sure.
The beholder is still upstairs, staying in place going, ha.
Ha!
Ha!
Ha!
Ha!
Ha!
Ha!
Ha!
Yeah.
That kind of thing.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
All righty.
That end Spike's turn.
They're both dead.
So it brings us back, Percival, it's your turn.
There's the one guy in the ground there, one's laughing.
I'll say for the purposes of this, for the time.
for the time. Most everything there is not much of a threat at this point.
So systematically, the guy in the ground who's hidden by the tree, you can just...
I'm ignoring him. I'm not even going to deal. I'm just hopping in the window. I'm going to grab my little guy there.
I'm going to bring him out to the balcony, and I'm going to unceremoniously toss him out of the house.
Devenousy!
Chevenger Street!
You throw him, he lands not far.
And then I'm just going to jump, and I'm going to crawl down the rest of my way and join him outside the house and avoid the fire and try and jump around the fire.
I'm dragging him away from the fire.
Make an athletics check.
Okay.
So acrobatics.
Acrobatics?
Bless you for an acrobatic check.
Eh, I'm re-rolling that.
Can I do a save?
It's not a saving throw.
You can't do that.
It's not saving throw.
Oh, that's fine.
That's 16.
I'll save for the purposes of this.
I had the Spider Climb boots.
Right, I know.
But Spider Climb boots only helps you if you keep on the surface.
So as you leap, you manage to land on your feet,
but the flames do catch you a bit.
So you take.
Damn it, that's a nice coat.
Take six points of fire damage as you start to burn.
Gives a character.
Actually, so for the purposes of time on this one,
the guy who's currently under the log
just burns to death there under the log pin.
He's trying to reach for his crossbow,
but he's only fired the one bolt that was loaded in it.
The guy in the ground is still laughing as you approach him.
Are there any rocks about?
Yeah, there's quite a few heavier rocks on the ground.
Yes. Well, I look at him and I say it,
It was a prison, but it was my prison.
And I used the telekinesis ring to lift a rock and drop it on his head.
The horrible sickening cracks on it slams into the head.
He lifted up.
The laughing is stopped, but he's still like, moving.
And you can see the face is kind of broken, the nose is smashed to the side, and it's
just blood, and he's starting to try and get back up.
Oh, God.
Well, Etherid Broken Branch sends his regard.
Ethrid Broken Branch.
Do you let him get up?
Yes.
He gets up, and then runs off to the woods.
Okay, we'll save for the purposes of this.
He runs off in the distance, and just falls to the ground, no longer moving.
Death by lightning.
Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
So.
Can I kill the guy on the floor, just be mine, please?
Can I please smash him, the guy that's lying on the floor in the house, please?
Just sit on him.
You just sit on him.
I haven't Gallaghered anybody in a while.
Yeah, he's on the ground.
like on fire now from the fire.
Patting out the fire.
Put him out.
He spends his action kind of putting the fire out now.
And he's like,
He takes a few steps back to,
in kind of motions as a fire elemental.
I skip in the above.
Oh, I got.
Just smashed on the ground.
Red watermelon.
Fires out.
I'm assuming.
I dropped my fire form,
turn, see my anger destruction,
immediately guilty and then do a tidal wave to kind of, you know, call the flames.
Okay. So the building has...
Flood damage.
Pretty...
It's standing mostly. The whole front of it is blackened. The flames are gone. Most of the interior is destroyed. You have two giant holes in the back. Most of the upper ceiling is ruined. The house is in shambles.
What about the books?
A lot of them have been destroyed. Some of them have been destroyed. Some of the
The ones in the back wall have been burned. Some of them have been burned by people in flames or made of flame or just general black hair that spilled out the house is pretty...
Can I go over to them and see if I can find some books I think Percy would like?
Make an investigation check.
I'm running over to see that staff with an eye in it.
Okay.
27.
27.
Okay, you start glancing through. You find some history books.
You find some that relate to local history.
You see some books that relate to various types of creatures,
some animals and beasts.
Many of their encyclopedias of various rivers.
And it's kind of scattered everywhere.
It's just a universal knowledge of pretty much anything
you can get his hands on.
So some of it seems less useful than others,
but you handpick a few out that you think Percy would like.
I don't mean that's the obvious question,
but how did he know we were here?
No, that's not an obvious question.
I have no idea.
They have multiple eyes.
But how, was he watching us?
Is he scrying on us?
Must have.
Maybe he's scrying on us.
Maybe he can feel you the way you can feel him.
You get this sense that's not how this works.
I did.
I was going to be.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I know.
He had another eye.
Does that thing have an eye in it?
The staff you see, it's a carved eye.
It's just made of wood and painted.
It's ornamental. It's mainly used as a focus.
It technically acts as a plus one staff.
What, the necromancers?
I just had a marble. I'll take you.
You said this place was a prison.
Did you mean that?
Of course I meant it, boy.
I've been there for years.
Could you leave if you wanted?
Of course I can.
Prison was more.
up here, been in there.
Oh, sorry about the prison, then.
Why would you be sorry?
I asked you for power and redemption.
Don't you feel you gave me that?
We lived, child.
We all lived.
Yep.
Yes.
That is indeed what I was hoping.
Cool.
I need out the window.
Hey, Sprigg!
Hello!
Hi.
Hi!
How are you?
I'm well.
I have some arrows in me at the moment.
You like arrows, don't you?
I do. Come in here. I'll take them off your hands.
Okay, question. If you do that, I'd probably die again.
I'll cure you, darling. Don't worry.
We've got to cover.
She called me, darling.
She's the cute.
He's the cutest.
Mmm.
Brr-r-r-r-l.
I go in.
All right, you walk into your destroyed abode,
managing to sidestep all the bear traps along the way.
You've walked the path many times,
and you know it, and I'm actually surprised
none of you walked into it.
Oh, wow.
I mean, you knew where most of them were,
but on the side, none of you guys wandered out far enough
out far enough into the open to do that.
But yeah, they're all inside.
You can see your giant friend, of course,
that you were talking to as you walked in
is twice the size he was earlier.
And previously where you had to hunch,
you're now like having to almost belly crawl inside the house.
But what?
There's no like separation between the first and the second floor.
This is true.
So if you stand in that space, you're fine.
I'm in more space.
I'm gonna prop our idiot up in the
window so I can go in and like keep an eye on him even while I'm inside.
Okay.
We have a prisoner?
Yeah, I kept one.
Oh, but he's one of those creepy ghouls that probably doesn't speak.
And in the last minute or so has not been able to break free, but he's still trying.
He automatically fails until 24 hours has elapsed.
After the first failed save?
That's what it says.
Okay, then yeah.
If you fail, any further attempts, may the creature automatically fail until 24 hours have elapsed.
There you go, never mind.
He ain't going nowhere.
That thing is the fucking bomb.
It's mean, man.
Okay.
Me and Pike can heal him as I take the arrows out.
Okay.
Last you've seen the point of me, eh?
Sprigg, anything valuable in here that you want to save before we get you out of here?
My organs!
Got you.
Oh, I would like to save those.
Yes, yes, yes.
All right.
No, there's nothing.
It's all here.
No keys to Ayn.
You know where she is?
I might.
I hope I do.
All right.
I hope that I can give you the answers you seek.
I hope so, too.
I cast cure wounds.
Pike casts cure wounds on you as well, and you heal 18.
Do I know her name yet?
No.
You do not.
Clare.
Pike.
Yes.
Etherid.
Oh, Spring.
Whichever you like.
You can call me Spring.
Can you help me pray to Ayoon?
We need answers.
And I think together we might find them.
I can certainly try.
Do you have any items of her iconography?
Anything?
Do I?
Do I?
It took me a sound.
Yeah, actually.
You just reach over and find one of the undamaged books.
You healed 19, by the way, from me.
Thank you.
Use this.
You talk to her where I can't.
At least not yet.
I don't know if I can talk to her.
I'm not, but I can help you pray.
I don't know if it'll be enough.
Let's give it a go.
There's a first time for everything.
Um, Grog.
Yeah.
Can you help me clear some of the floor, please?
No problem.
Yagra gajah, gill catch, huh?
Oh, blah.
Floorboards in your face.
I thought you're on fire.
I'm really sorry.
Brick in the head.
Pike takes you over to the center of the room and tells you,
Neil, with me.
No, take this book and close your eyes.
and apologize.
For what?
For everything you said about I.U.
All right.
Well, look the other way.
Find some things that have value.
Look for a...
I think it sits down next to him and just stares.
I'm gonna pick up a little.
But I'll turn around.
If you're listening, I own.
It's been many, many, many years
since I've actually spoken to a god.
I'd like to express.
my deepest sorrow.
You see, this home didn't mean as much to me as life.
And I think these people gave that to me.
If you could give us any little hint,
it would be greatly appreciated
and I would be a warrior in your name forevermore.
Is that okay?
Yeah, that you,
It's the side of your face.
No, I'm not crying. You're crying there.
You sit there and silence, your eyes closed, kind of concentrating, holding the book before you and in answer.
Just silence in the darkness.
Everyone still looking at him, still turned away.
No, I'm...
I'm...
Keelkelet is definitely staring but pretending not to stare, like...
I'm watching through the book.
Right.
I'm leaning against the wall and just staring at him.
Okay.
He was using the pocket mirror.
Nothing...
Aww.
All that to the smiles.
As you have your eyes closed, you hear this soft chuckle in the far corner of the room.
Really praying, are you?
Yes. Can you help?
Do I love that kind of guy that would help?
I've known you for 19 years.
And I think anybody's capable of anything.
So, why don't you do something?
Nothing unexpected.
I think you're right.
It's no longer your prison.
It's not mine either.
That's true.
Flies out the window.
Oh shit.
Craghammer has another performer,
and not a very good one.
While you've been talking, by the way,
the silence has been kind of sad and kind of,
you know, like taking in the kind of slight emotional cut
that not getting a response and putting yourself in that limb means nothing.
The rest of you noticed his torso is glowing bright blue.
What?
Is it really?
Yeah.
Oh.
Um.
Hmm?
Your stomach is glowing.
Oh, you don't just say it out.
Well, I didn't need anything.
How could my stomach be growing?
You're blueballing.
Well.
A waa?
What?
Pike looks at you and takes your hands and kind of opens your arms
and motions to your chest.
And as the book in your hand, you kind of pull aside,
you glance down and you can see there's this like,
soft, bluish glow that's just emanating from your torso.
It's strange.
I didn't have to believe in Ayun.
I found my religion.
I'm bluish.
Oh, man.
Oh, man.
Oh, man.
That's canon.
It did.
He is so many falls over there.
With the restarts are just a second,
it'll be fine.
The little imp is going.
So, apparently, the key is me.
Is you?
God.
It is you.
Is in you or is you?
It is him. I've known it from the minute that I laid eyes upon him.
It's him.
You did. You did that the moment.
You didn't upset it.
You know, I mean, I had a hunch.
I had a feeling deep out on side.
I can't say it if I say it out loud and then if it's not true,
then I'm an asshole.
To be fair, we've got to say it.
I've only been here 12 minutes.
Yes.
House gone, imp gone, Bernie, Bernie, sad,
pray, nothing happened.
Now I'm blue.
Yeah.
That's a day for you, isn't it?
So do you glow brighter the closer we get?
What's the deal here?
I've never glowed before, child.
I think it's glown.
I've never glowed.
If you're the key, where's the lock?
Where do we take you?
Where do we come so far?
I'm cracking perfect strangers in English.
I see you.
Well, I have been gone for many, many years,
so English may have changed.
To be fair, to be fair.
I don't know.
This is all new to me.
I would have thought it would be in one of those tolls.
I'm going to pick up the book that he was holding
when he was praying.
I'm going to just try and read it.
Okay.
You glance through it.
The book is a simple book talking about the construction
of barricades and it looks like it was less
with the contents of the book and more just the image of the book itself.
I'm going to hand him a book again and just sort of see.
Maybe that's focused to be found.
Maybe this is.
Okay.
Time to think upon her.
Okay.
And make a perception check.
Let's call that a 28?
Yeah.
When you took the book from him and handed him another book, there was a very faint vibration
to his body as you pulled it from him and gave it back to him.
I'm...
Which you haven't noticed, but there's just like a physical vibration to him.
I'm, if it's all, with your permission, I'm going to take his hands.
Okay. You feel them and you feel like this very faint vibration to his body.
Percy.
Yes.
Just continue holding his hands.
I pull out the tome of quick move, move.
Hold while I find the paper. Hold.
What if he's like a tuning fork?
Shh.
God, where is it? Where is it?
Where is it? I have a lot of things.
Divining.
Oh yes.
A divining rod.
A rod to the divine.
Perhaps I am a divining rod.
That's what I mean.
Well said, child.
Can we...
I pull out the fork that we got to get to Elysium.
Is it similar?
Well, you pull out the fork and...
And you hold it.
You know, there is, you recall that whenever you'd cast the spell plane shift, there was a faint vibration to the specific fork when you cast the spell.
He's the tuning.
Oh, no.
What, no, this is good.
No, it is good.
It's good.
It's just, oh, Sprigg.
What's wrong?
No, it's fine, it's good.
I'm just, I don't know.
Everything in my life seems to have this imperman.
impermanence factor about it.
So I hope he's not something that can be used and discarded.
I haven't been used in 37 years.
Sprigg.
It's all right.
At least I wasn't discarded all that time.
I'm sure it's fine. I just...
Look, look at me.
Just remember.
Whatever happened, just remember.
remember me. That's all that's important. We have. My friends are gone and I don't even remember
their names. I don't remember Theta Pax or Zephyr or the guy with the nose. He was my favorite.
Dusty in here, isn't it? I remember. So whatever happens, keep me there.
I guess I have to start getting used to losing things.
Or you can be hidden away in a prison for 37 years.
And that's not life, child.
That's hiding.
I've already built my own prison.
Break free.
They don't know if I'm already there.
Just take the first step.
Then you take another one.
And then you take another one.
And I grab his hand, and with that,
I cast plane shift to wherever he is leading to go.
All right, the rest of you have gathered hands for this.
I guess so.
All right.
Is there enough of us?
Drink it in the necklace.
Wait, wait, wait.
My invisible frog companion.
Is he real?
Yes.
There is a sudden
a shuddering of power energy around you
as you feel the vibration out of Spriggs's hand
emanate throughout the entire loop you guys have created
throughout your grasp.
The familiar bright light flashes before you,
and you feel your body being pulled through
at incredible speeds through darkness there.
The familiar racing of the divine gate.
As you pass through one of its many portholes,
then adrift.
By now you've, the times you've passed through the gate,
you passed through a handful of times since now.
Still holding hands, but the circle's beginning
to turn to an oval.
You can all glance around and see each other,
And it's, did you miss your destination?
Did you overshoot?
What's next?
Another white flash.
And suddenly you're at a destination.
You glance around and you're standing
within a small chamber.
It resembles like a decadent bath house,
but with no water nor occupants.
It's empty.
There are marble pillars stretching to a domed ceiling
about 60 feet above you while silk draped cloths
drift and hang at odd angles throughout the ceiling.
Glowing points of magical light latched with an iron cages,
dangle at the edges of these pillars,
about 15 feet up that give the faint glow
to an otherwise darkened room.
There are walls on each side of this chamber,
about 30 or 40 feet from you,
and one arched hallway across from you
that leads to the only other chamber you've seen.
I immediately turned and looked as he
at Sprague still holding my hand.
Sprigg is still holding her hand.
See, all that fucking shit was for nothing.
He's still alive.
Are you the same Sprigg as before?
I hope so.
Let's ask my invisible frog companion.
Well, I guess we'd better go find what we are looking for.
Glad you're with us, Sprigg.
Yes, it is.
Remember there.
As you guys walk forward towards the singular hallway,
you go through the domed arch.
And the hallway extends on featureless, smooth, gray marble,
like a just solid punch that seemed to have carved out
whatever this material was.
It extends for 100 feet, 150 feet.
And even though there's very, very faint light,
and many of you can see through dark vision,
there is like a darkness about 60 feet from you
that seems to consume what you can see.
You can only see so far beyond that radius.
You don't quite sure where that oppressive
kind of shadows coming from.
The air is chilled, but not uncomfortably so.
You can hear the distant sound of pinched winds
winding through small spaces.
A familiar sound for the many times you've spent underground
through caverns that had some
openings that allowed air to streak through to the surface.
A few steps more, and suddenly the hallway opens
into a second chamber, into a library, if you could even call it that,
bookshelves that stretch upward for seemingly hundreds of feet
before flickering lights fell from your vision.
You do not see where they stop.
These columns of just tomes and cases.
and scroll, parchment stackings,
and tablets, and any form of recorded information
seem to just be infinite in front of you
to two sides of this row and upward.
They seem to stretch in almost every direction.
The walls to the side of you.
You see columns ahead of you,
and they tend to wind and curl like a labyrinth
made of bookcases to no end.
It's very Escher-esque in how the further up you look,
they tend to curve and shift and bend around
each other. Your eyes now attuned to the realms beyond mortality, you catch
glimpses of shifting wind, gathering books and turning pages, spirits of the
library, though sparse as they may be from this entry point. Organizing,
reading and learning from whatever words are within. They begin to almost get
vertigo just trying to contemplate the strange and overwhelming construction of
such a wondrous place, an endless sea of stories. Spectral custodians
keeping the tales of each other
in the history of Exandria past, present,
and binding the pages to tell what will eventually be
the present, currently the future.
Matt's brain.
This is immortality.
This is our future.
This is everything.
I may never leave.
We can glide over to Vex and hold her close.
This is stunning.
My God, I think they may have
actually forgotten all the things I said yesterday.
Oh, yeah, I may have.
Feels pretty good, doesn't it?
I think they've, I think they've completely forgotten.
I'm sorry.
May have panicked.
I give him a case.
I'll be right back.
I'm gonna run towards one of those stacks.
Like a child.
Okay.
Bein to take the first.
I'm doing a title run.
I want to figure out the organizational system
before I touch a book.
There are no words on any of the spines.
I pick one.
Okay. You pick it?
Just pictures.
I pick it up.
I look around to see if anybody has a problem.
And I turn to the title page.
It's ironic, you do this, because the book is in Celestial.
I read Celestial.
You do, it's ironic that you did that.
Glancing through
It appears to be describing a birth,
describing a tunnel, then a light, then a cry.
Skip to the end.
The last page.
It seems to be an older man surrounded by his family
and a small.
Looks to be the black-send assistant shop.
I put it down, I pick up another one.
You glance through this book and
First page.
Begins very similarly to the last one.
Last page.
This one actually ends with what appears to be a horseback riding accident.
Oh, God, they're so...
115 pages in.
You get to a page that seems to talk about the sorrow of a lost romance
and trying to deal coping at a young adult age.
I put it back and I turn...
What is it?
The native people.
Wait, what? It's...
It's in books?
It's...
And I'm just gonna...
I'm gonna find an interesting, like the most...
most interesting spine. And it's just, I'm going to turn to the first, birth, death.
I can't read that, yeah. Birth, death, sex. Birth, death. Some disappointment.
I am just gone. I'm running back and forth, finding whatever interesting fine I can. Are they all in Celestial?
They are currently, all the ones you picked up are in Celestial. Oh my God. Okay, this is great. All right.
I'm prevention probably going to pass out from mild hyperventilation and have to sit down.
We should maybe find Ayn, don't you think?
If we must. Just as an experiment, I'm going to think about Vesper and try and touch a book. I don't expect this to work, but I'm going to close my eyes and think about and pick it up and flip through it.
Your religion check.
Mm-hmm.
Nope.
Oh.
You grab a time and pull it forth,
and as you read the story, it's an unfamiliar one.
There's a system.
I'm going to keep running around like a kid.
What the rest of you guys doing while personal is running on your kid?
I'm not interested in the fucking books.
Distracted by Percy Keyletcher scans.
Does anything in primordial stick out?
Make perception check.
Oh, that's good.
That's good.
At 29.
Glancing about, I mean, none of the spines
have anything written on them.
So you have to kind of start pulling a few books out
and opening them and they're.
I'll kind of like hold my hand over and pull.
Okay.
Feel froggy.
Open it up.
It's no language you don't understand.
Yeah, put it back and get frustrated.
I've stopped.
I'm good.
Watched it the whole time and quietly.
Just walk behind and give it.
or a hug from behind and don't say anything.
Are there any doors leading forward or out?
There's, there, it's a labyrinth bookshelf.
So there's a, like there's a path forward between,
like two or three ahead of you, but then it comes to an end
where it splits off in two directions.
And, like I said, they travel up infinitely,
so you're not quite sure which way it leads where.
Is Sprigg still glowing?
A sprig is, actually, there is a very, very faint blue glow
in him that never really faded since your arrival.
I wonder if we could follow the glow.
Warmer?
Warmer?
Yeah.
What was that information?
Stend over there.
All right.
I run to where she's pointing.
Is there any change in the glow?
No noticeable change.
Sprigg, stand over there.
I just was shot with a bunch of arrows, so give me a second.
I run over there, stop halfway, and go, ow.
And then I continue.
Any change in the glow?
Make perception check.
Okay.
Great thing.
Oh, that's a one.
Oh.
We're watching him too.
No discernible difference.
You're inspired if you want to use.
Oh, it's a natural one.
Well, damn arrows.
I'm not sure.
Is there a card cataloged?
The spirits, I'm going to maybe interrupt this.
Is there a central area info desk?
You can make an investigation check to begin to wander around and try and find your way.
Oh, that's a national to Tony.
So, Scalon seems to walk with purpose into one of the
the random rows.
I'm clutching my ion stone.
Okay.
Trier.
Hey.
Yeah.
All right.
Anyone else doing anything?
He seems to have purpose.
I'm giddly following behind with it.
Okay.
Percy's following Scanlon.
Oh, and Trinkets out.
Okay.
Trigot.
Looks confusing, like just looking up and...
I know.
I know, dear.
Falls under his back.
Are Vex and Percy walking with me?
Yes.
I just whip out my flute and I just start going,
do do do do do do.
Oh, he may have heard.
I thought you were going to die.
I may have panicked.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
We were asked to plead for your life,
and I may have panicked.
Who did you tell?
Who did you tell?
Some, do you do.
Look at your shirt.
Tell her, tell her.
Everyone.
I panicked.
I panicked.
There was a giant glowing sun, and I may have panicked.
I didn't tell them, well, I was a bit vague, but I was not.
A bit vague?
A bit vague?
Scanam, what did he say?
Well.
Oh, no.
You know, first comes love.
Don't come, don't be.
Then comes marriage.
I may have hinted that we might have a lot.
You may have hinted.
It may have hinted.
Wait, you're married?
I may have hinted.
Wait, no, you said you were betrothed.
To be married.
Wait, you're married?
Oh, wow, you just filled it.
Silence, going to silence.
All of a sudden, you're married.
You're married.
You're trying to yell, and it's making no sound.
It is just absolute quiet.
What are the rest of you guys doing?
I run in a corner to see if I go again.
Keelich and Vax heard the do-do-do-do, so we had a very different silence scene over in our spot.
Yeah, Keelik was quietly sobbing in
backs his arms and then her do, do to do to do and went,
whir-uh.
Why is that bad?
Why was that angry?
Because we don't get that.
Oh.
Yeah.
So you're gonna ruin everyone else's joy.
One of those couples.
I'm just, I'm just,
thank you, Vacation Scanlan.
Vakation Scanlan.
Vakation Scanlan is best.
Worst double date Sangria partners,
that's ass.
You're back, ladies and gentlemen.
He's back and taking no prisoners.
Are you guys going on vacation?
We got a divorce.
You can get him cheap in comma.
Grog, what are you doing?
Just as uncomfortable as I could possibly be.
This is the worst case scenario of my entire life.
I'm just not moving and hoping this is all over soon.
I love that.
It's just endless books beyond what you can see.
Are they like chairs?
I feel like Pike would have confronted.
They're not just, yeah. Pike comes over.
No, chairs?
No, there aren't.
Oh.
And she was, do you want to go with everyone else for?
I don't know. Do you?
It's okay. Yeah, they're walking.
I want to leave like fast.
The faster we follow them, then the faster we can go.
Okay. Let's go.
I bet you could read some of these books.
some of these books.
No, but not.
There's really told books.
Come on, she grabs your hand,
and begins kind of tugging you behind her.
What are you guys doing?
Me and him?
Yeah.
Leaning into each other.
Sobbing?
Sobing.
You're going back in front.
I don't know.
I'm going anywhere.
You run around for about a good minute and a half
and you're not seeing any sort of change.
Nothing?
Can I go forward into the bookcases
and look right and left?
right and left to see where they lead.
Okay, yeah, you turn around the corner and just see them disappear on the edge.
I'll continue.
Okay, so you follow them.
Yeah.
As you guys are having this.
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Silent argument.
Sprigg catches up to you.
Oh, hi, Sprigg.
But you hear nothing Sprigg as they're all going.
I just turned it off.
Oh, you turned off, okay.
I got everyone to agree.
Okay.
Hi.
Oh, hi, how's it going?
Glowing.
Yes, you are.
You are too.
What's going on with that?
Wait, you are?
Yeah, you seem to be blushing.
It's so hot in here.
It's very hot in here.
Oh, really that hot.
Mike and Grog ketchup around the corner.
Oh my God.
What's you find?
Nothing.
The way out. Exit?
Seems like it could be this way.
We'll have to bond together and go forward.
Really?
Yes.
Where did you get the sunglasses from?
What the fuck?
It's glowing in here.
The I-M Stone actually is giving a faint glow similar to the glow
that you see emanating close Briggs or so.
Is it glowing any more than?
Make perception.
Oh, okay.
Oh, see.
Yeah, that's a, that's a eight.
Maybe 11.
I don't know.
Do I add shackball trades?
You do, yeah, if you're not, uh.
I really want to know.
I will inspire myself and I'll add a D12.
Yes, sir.
That makes it 16.
Okay.
You start getting the sense that the further you walk,
both your stone and Sprigg are beginning
to emanate a slightly stronger goal.
slightly stronger glow.
And so you guys begin to realize that this could be used
as a path to something, you're not quite sure.
Let's keep going.
Okay, so everyone's going on, you guys are.
Just an imagination clarification,
because a silence effect went off there.
Did Vax and Kuleth hear, you're married?
Or was that all covered by the side?
No, he clutched that in the silence.
So we heard the song, but that's it.
Yeah. Good to know.
Yeah.
Everyone else has gone ahead and vanished into the library.
Asked by a giant thing to plead for your worthiness.
To silently tug keel.
And I felt that honesty was important at that moment.
No, no, it very much is.
I'm very glad.
I'm just surprised he didn't say anything.
I spoke with him.
He was acting nobly.
I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to.
Not your, well, we had to tell him eventually.
As you're following the stone, you hear some footfalls.
some footfalls as Vax and Keyless catch up to you guys.
We already know it's fine.
You're engaged, you don't want to turn around it.
Yeah, well, it's, well, well.
I'm sorry I didn't tell you about that.
Engagement.
Well, what?
You know.
You fucking liars.
You fucking liars.
Just tell us.
We know.
We got married.
We got married.
We may have just got married.
Yeah.
Oh, surprise!
We, it was, it was, it was, always going to be.
Celebration.
We didn't want to make it a thing.
We wanted it to just be.
I think it's great.
Thank you, Skagit.
It's wonderful when two people can fall in love and have each other forever and down.
Well, it's nice.
You're such a dick.
No, I mean it. You're such a dick.
You guys are great. You're super cute together. You'll make White Stone, you'll be celebrities there.
No.
Do they have to get you, guess?
No.
No, they eloped, so we're clear.
Very specifically, no.
Sweet, buddy.
But this place.
Yeah, it's amazing.
And Keel's like lights up her flame hands as she walks off in a fury.
Do you not know what this place means?
Am I the only one who understands what this place means?
I would love to know.
It all matters.
None of us have gotten.
No, I mean, really.
It all matters.
So much and is not going to go away.
Nothing goes away.
No, it only gets filed away in some library
where no one else can experience it,
except for what one, maybe two people ever.
One and two people are all that it takes to experience some.
to experience something.
An echoing voice billows out from the right side of your troop.
The creaky, warm, matronly voice that surrounds
and almost welcomes you with the intonation of a grandmother.
Nothing is forever, Percival.
And you glance off at the right, and you can see there's a break
in the bookcase.
And to your right, you see the shelves have stopped
ahead in this direction to reveal a sort of a sort of
circular common area within the library where the ground domes downward into a 80-foot-wide
concave pit of cushions and tables, all standing at odd angles alongside this pit, but never sliding.
Gravity seems to shift depending on where the dome stands. These tables hold teacups and
writing implements and various other decor and things that involve binding and writing.
None of them slipping, all of them just affixed to the table as the dome slowly comes to a central rest.
Long, spiraling streams of silver, blue, and gray silk descend from the supposed ceiling
that's beyond your sight, and they just kind of come down, like drifting silks that can push past.
as you enter the area, sitting 40 feet from you
in the center of the dome, no larger than a normal person,
is an older woman of long, wavy silver hair.
Her olive skin is somewhat weathered and wrinkled
around her almond eyes.
But the warmth of her smile and her vibrant purple irises
put you at ease immediately.
Her blue and white robes tumble out from her form in tendrils of parchment that snake through the pillows like roots.
She smiles as you turn and see her.
I felt that you would find me.
And that's Roy in tonight session.
Wow, Darren.
Darren.
How time is it?
Can everybody watching still at home just give a round of applause for Darren?
To.
Derry!
Seriously.
Nice job.
If you're available, you may want to, if you can, come and join us for the first half, maybe.
Not next week, but the week after Comic-Con, if you're interesting.
Of course.
Because I kind of want to role play out you meeting Ayun.
Of course.
That would be awesome.
It would be an honor.
Awesome.
How important this is to me.
Great.
I'll look forward to having you back in a couple weeks then.
Good, good, good.
And I will see you next weekend as well.
Yes, indeed.
Oh, Comic-Con.
Oh, my God.
Guys, thank you so much.
Great game.
Good, good, good, good.
Breaking stuff, apparently.
We have, once again, we have an episode next week.
This will be at Comic-Con, but we have our panel on Saturday for a critical role.
Love you guys. Hope you have a wonderful night.
And is it Thursday yet?
Good night.
Good night.
