Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Vox Machina Ep. 3 - Strange Bedfellows

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Reeling from the loss of Grog's mind, Vox Machina gather their resources to restore 'intelligence' to their barbarian friend. Contining their journey deeper into the underdark, the group stumble upon Duergar and Illithids, finding danger...and potential allies...at every turn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You managed to survive a conflict with two Umberhulks, thanks to polymorphins and good tactics. However, Grogven charged headlong towards a light source trying to be a campfire across the way. He already walked into an ambush by a few Dura Gars, again shooting him with crossbow bolts and the inflective hour. I made him brain that you guys-

He's got nobody to blame but himself. Kind of, that's okay. Grog owns it, as you can see with his glasses. So, I love those. So we're beginning now as Grog has collapsed face down in the ground, rolling, the last of the Durgar have been blown off the cliff or destroyed, you all rush in and find Grog,

not moving, not responding, not anything. Somebody pretty could be C.V. Don't talk. Okay. Grog, can you hear us? I rush down and slas off the last few times. You slapped nothing. You slapped.

No response. No response. Someone quick. I also, I also wring down and slap them a few times. And then I say, I knew it wouldn't work. I just, damn it, grog. I'm going to actually try a crude medical examination to see if I can invite. Oh, investigation, Chuck?

Okay. Okay. And yes, this is nice. 19. On the medicine? On the medicine. You leap up prostate, a lot. I have a help take the region.

A thorough Goliaths, happy search later. Find some stray gold pieces. There's a lot of protein wings. This is a very deep belly button you have there. Oh, my God. Big Goliath. Physicality is a little difficult way. Found the troll dick.

Oh. Looking over him, there's very little physical damage, too. He shrugs it off pretty easily. There's no notable signer. anything like the fact that his eyes are not reacting to anything. It looks, he is catatonic. No bleeding from the ear, no bleeding from the nose. Nope. I'm going to go take a look at the remnants of the brain creature. All right, with bits of currently thawing chunks of it, blasted apart by Tiberius's

glacial blast, it appears to be tougher than normal, but very similar to great matter and appearance and texture, other than these strange kind of reddish-brown, beastial legs that were once attached to its midsection are now blown apart and cast to the ground. The whole texture seems very slimy and rubbery. And it's much larger than any natural brain should be. It's probably, when it was all one piece, it would have been roughly about the size of a small dog.

Do any of us know anything about magic that could heal him? Like, any spells, any... Do you? I mean... It's clear that when that brain thing hit Grog with his zapper thing, that it rendered him unconscious. I would assume that this is a magical creature, which is based on the attack alone.

Thank you, Tiberius. Excellent assessment. Thank you. He got zapped, and now he's unconscious. Maybe we should try, because if we have any healing, I know Pike isn't here, but I... Did you have a spell that might be able to help. I don't know it right now, though.

We'd have to take a break. I'd have to pull out my books and relearn it. How much time do you need? You need to sleep on it. As they talk, Grog slowly flageulates. It happens, it's natural. It's terrible. Oh, it's another, what is it an ask cloud?

Is that what it was? Lovely, yeah. How many, how many ways are enters where we are? Because it's like a center of the thing right? Yeah, you're currently basically on the precipice of a large cavern that has multiple layers as the river kind of cascades off in the multiple waterfalls. As far as you can see, which is important to it, because it's like a center of it. which isn't far into it because there's no other light source beyond you guys. The cavern just continues indefinitely for a good 60 feet and it just vanishes in the darkness.

Well, maybe we should sleep, try to camp for the time. Well, we'll need to form a perimeter and someone will have to stand guard. Currently, you're holding a barely alive Duragar hostage. Oh, why, I forgot about that. Oh, we got to interrogate. We got to interrogate him. Her, it. It's a female.

Female. And I speak it. It's language. You do. Hers. First thing you note, too, it is female. It takes a moment to register that because she is also bald on top. It's terrible.

Nasty pale, kind of sunken face. Eyes are completely clattered over in white, no pupils. Teeth are kind of yellow and gnarled and sharp. How close to death's door is she? What? What? Thank you. Oh, what?

Thank you, wonderful people. There's more coming. This is the vegan pizza. There's more coming. What? Wisdom. Thanks chat room. Thank you, chat room.

Thank you, chat room. Thanks guys. You're awesome. You know, I like amazing. Pekinia. Are you kidding? And donuts. Pizza vane.

And breath. Look at those chocolate cakes. All right, all right. This creature is very injured. I think we need to heal her just enough. Heal her. Not so fast. Not so fast.

We'll heal her after she tops. Why don't you make that bar? Why don't you make that bargain? I've got a dagger to her throat and I'm hooked. She's bald? Bald, yes. All right, so I got an arm around the top of her forehead. Help.

Don't kill her. She's not unconscious, Ralph. No. I go up. I call my sister over. I'll hold her. You talk. What did you do to our friend?

I didn't do anything. How is the brain twerk? What did the brain twerk do to our friend? Brain twerk. Took care of your friend. He's gone now. He's all taken sight. A poots.

What are you hair for? What should I fucking ask? I say that in our language. What should I ask? How do we fix it? How do we fix it? There you go. Burry your dead weight.

I pressed the blade a little tighter, dig in, maybe one hit point. Oh no, she's only got one hit point. She's only got one hit point. Don't do that. Is she bleeding? Is she bleeding? Profusely, from the shoulder. Oh, in that case, I'm gonna cauterize the room wounds.

There's more than one way to make someone talk. I'm gonna shoot my gun off, get it nice and hot right at the tip, and start cauterizing the room wounds. Okay, so, and the flash goes off, and the sound of the blast echoes throughout the entirety of the cavern. You hear, ch-d-d-d-ch-d-ch-d-cascade off. A little warning next time. He takes the barrel, slams into the shoulder with a sizzling sound,

and she reaches back in pain. Make an intimidation check. I'm not. 21. All right. She's now like breathing heavy. I'm using my mate hand to poke her in the face. She's trying to move her face out of the way,

but she can't seem to avoid the mystical arraigned finger pokes. Look, we haven't got all day. Who do you work for? And who do you work for? You fell, surface line. You've already fallen. You shall all be harvested for Kavar. Oh, is he a farmer?

You can't understand. You can't understand. Who is Kavan? Does anybody know? No, is that a thing? I don't know, I don't know. Who is Kavan? Who is Kavarn? Kavon is the one that rules these cabins.

The one who guides us to take the surface back. To take the surface back? 14 in history wouldn't do it. Is Kavan the one making creepy zombie monster? Where is Kavan located? Point the direction. It looks over her eye, over her shoulder, back towards

the darker part of the cavern. You guys haven't traversed. Deep. What is Kavana? What is Kavan? You'll see. No, you'll tell me now. I slap her across the face.

Lightly, not enough to use a hit point. I poke her more. I'm like a three stoochid is that My life is already far fit I'm just relishing your faces and they will be narrowed and twisted soon enough

Break her legs Leave her here He'll heal her Maybe we should heal her And then let her lay there Is that evil? That's pretty evil What's your own name is? My life is good

Wait, ask if they've seen Noglock Or have they seen Oh yes Or yeah, if they've seen our paladin turn. Our little... Lady Kimma. Before we end your life,

tell us, have you seen a small halfling? Don't tell us to give her much. At which point, there's like a moment of recognition in the female Duregard's face. There was a half of the guy. Come down here alone. She's dead now. Delicious.

I drag her to her feet. Walk her over to the edge of the cliff. where the water is and hold her knife still at her neck. Tell this one, now's her last chance to give us anything useful leader to her. Both, I guess. All right, it's your last chance. Give us something useful and we'll lend this painlessly.

Don't, and we'll make you suffer. Take an intimidation check. All right. I'm going to assist her by pulling out my other dagger and let it drip, poison down the blade. Intimidation. 14? Assist. Go ahead and roll. Nice. Me? You? To assist me?

19. Okay, go ahead and roll again. Oh. I'm giving you advantage of the roll because he is late. Cool. Okay, it was still 14. Still 14. I should have rolled my other one to see, just to see. She laughs. Your friend's dead. All is lost.

You came for nothing. Can I, uh, can I tell if she's lying? Is it- Make an inside check? Okay, can I see if she's lying? Let's make an inside check. All right, cool. I can't understand.

What about she's saying? What the hell she's saying? That's way better. Uh, 24. 24. Uh, she is definitively lying through her teeth, just to hurt you. Yes! We know you're lying.

What? Yes. I don't know what else to ask her, guys. I don't know what else to ask. What are goins afraid of? She's kind of like, super signals. Super Singers. Unless we have her. She's down below. And soon enough, she's alive.

Let's see what she'll become this affling. We'll rescue her. You're gonna kill your god. And then you have... I did it, I did it. I'm supposed to get her a spray comes across. That was the worst. The backward throat slitting, I never heard.

She was very fast. We're gonna kill your god. Wait. Fuck it, just go with that. As the body goes limp in your hands, you just kind of let it tumble over the water. Good times, good times, guys. Tonight guys are standing over Grog

in this kind of makeshift camp site, the embers of the fire going low. Well, she's researching. Oh, should we keep, I'm gonna keep watch with Trinket. Do we have any idea what's the fire? time it is? You're at this point. It just lies at some point in the evening.

All right. Let's rest. Let's set up a perimeter and take turns standing guard. I'm going to go to the next cavern over to where we killed those umber hulks. Take one of the umber hulk heads and put it on a stick right out front of where we're camping as sort of a warning to others. All right. I want to check our buddies. How many cavern entrances are there from where we're camping? When you are, there's an entrance to you came in through.

Right. Strange things at foot echoing, sounds. You're worried. This entrance you came in. Across the way, there appears to be another cavern that you can kind of see the entrance to. This is the only proper, like, openings into this giant chamber.

Otherwise, just the giant, like, overarching cave that you guys are just getting to push into. So. I'm gonna take the first watch. Oh, you are. Okay. I still have a lot of reading to do. And I can go ahead. I'm gonna go ahead and cast.

Make sure everybody's in. Everybody's in. Wait, wait, I wanna check the bodies of the anti- The other guys before, yeah. Okay. I shall make a thing from coming. Oh, great, well before you do that, hold on. 20.

Okay. That's about you pull roughly 125 gold pieces between the three corpses of the Duregar. With two corpses, one of them is gone. It washed down the stream. Right. She had a lot of good stuff on him. Yeah.

You do, however, find on one of them a gnarled implement of some kind. Whether it be scavenged or not, it's of a strange, like, almost bleached bone ivory that comes to a point on one end. Let's look at it. It is pretty. Ooh, let me see it. An artifact where you can you bring that to one? Can I take a look at it?

Give it to Tiberius, he'll try anything. He'll try anything. Any history or... Arcane, go ahead and roll Arcana. Arcona. Scamolum. Scamolum. It is a very pretty something.

24. 24. So... Oh! What is it? Wonderful. This is a wand of magic missiles. Of course.

It sends out magic missiles! This one has seven charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend one or more of its charges to cast a magic missile from it. For one charge, you cast the first level version of the spell. You can increase the spell slot by one for each level, charge you expend. The one regains 1 D6 plus 1, expended charges daily at Don. If you expand the one's last charge, roller D20 on a 1, the one crumpus of the disease. Very technical. Basically, it shoots out six missiles and then it...

Awesome. I'm glad he killed them before they use that on us. It's a pew-poo stick. It's a pew-poo stick. Yes. Cool. But anybody would like to ticker? I mean, well, I learned this when I was 12. No, you're not. No. No. No. hold on to it well yeah I think grog may have soiled himself a little we should probably take a nap so good maybe you can make sure everyone's in and close by okay if you need to study so we'll take you guys oh that's true you can't study and watch we watch I'm gonna cast anti-life shell that way everyone at least gets one good hour of

sleep oh good I like it all right you go ahead and you eventually find one of course is the end we're holding it takes you a good 25 minutes to eventually carve through It's relatively thick, high, shit in this exterior. You put the head on the makeshift spike, and it is now there on display. Yes, there's a warning to others. You feel accomplished. You head back.

Keelis, terrible taxidermy. As you're taking first watch, you notice that the campsite that the Durga were using where you guys are currently resting for the evening. It's been there for a while, and it looks at the Durgaar, I repurposed it. the fire, the stones that were set up around the actual fire pit at five been up for quite some time

that were set up very, even if only and very well placed. Right above you, on one of the stone walls, you see what appears to be strange, very well-carved symbol. It's hard to recognize it. Go ahead and make a religion check. Wish Pike were here. Yes, we wish Pike was here very much, yes.

Yes. We're sure. Um, I'm coming back. I don't know. It's just a really interesting carving on the wall just right about where you guys are currently dying. It's not quite catching attention, but it seems to have some significance. And it's fresh.

It's not like an ancient symbol that's been there. It's maybe could have been there for more than. I go ahead and I take a piece of paper from my spellbook and I take a piece of charcoal and I just scroll over top of it. Okay. of it. Okay, it's very big. It's like four feet by three feet. I take a few pieces of paper. Okay. And I kind of put them together and then I get a really big one and then I roll it up. All right. All right you guys begin to set up with a nice watch. After the first hour. I have my anti-lishell then.

Yeah. Anhyl eventually fades. First hour without any sort of impact or issue. You're sitting next watch. Oh, we are. Yeah, okay. Next few hours go by without incident. That's nice. Can I look around and see... I mean, no, like in our area.

I'm not going to wander off. But just to see if I see any kind of anything interesting. I mean, if this is a really old area that I've noticed, it's old. Can I see anything cool and old around us? Well, there's a lot of mineral deposits. This place in particular, it's definitely,

because of the heavy river flow for a long time, a lot of the area near the river itself, very smooth stone and a lot of accumulated deposits of various elements. You also catch the strange carved symbol right atop your guy's camp. Okay, so I tap my brother and go, look at this. Do you anything about religion? Well, let me see.

Let me see. I seem to know fuck all about it. Oh, me too. I know shit about it. It's a very fancy symbol. It's a really pretty symbol. Cool. You guys finish your watch? Pikes.

Just the party is. Where was that symbol? Where was that symbol? It's up over. It's like on one of the large, like, cave surfaces near where you guys are keeping. I don't see any like cool sparkly things in the mineral deposits. None of that?

Nothing catches your attention at the moment, no, unfortunately. I am. about the massacre. You finish your watch for that issue. Next up watch, and this is the last third and final watch. You guys are not going through. Oh, I'll cut with Tiberius as well. Okay.

Yeah, we'll all go on. Okay. Okay. You guys keep watch after they're napping. Teaching I have to adjust grog because you're not sure if he's still breathing. I'll roll for the, what? Not sure if he's still breathing.

We're doing intelligence, right? What? The intelligence. The way. 20. Oh my God, what if you could die while. Right now, you're sure. Well, 18 plus two.

Okay. What's that? You are familiar with the symbol, specifically because of your background. That is the symbol of Baham. That is the symbol of the Platinum dragon. Oh. And you ascertained it was probably like this. Yes.

Oh, interesting. And it was probably used as part of some sort of a protection ritual. I tell everybody. Kv. Kv. Kv. It seems that this is a protection. of symbol of sorts, but it's a barhamut, which is a good thing.

That's a good thing. Bahamut is essentially nice a deity of the two between him and Timot, which is a total asshole. Well, that must be why Lady Kima came down here. Right. So she must have camped here, put the symbol up for protection. As you're having this discussion, you feel a slight rumble in the ground. Oh, d'all.

Shaking the sensation. Some of the rocks nearby, the loose pebbles begin to migrate and move around. Oh, God's probably farting again. No, I don't think we should have alert the others. All right. We're waking up. How far are we from a break? We're just like, you guys are all clustered at small.

Oh, let's quietly wake them. And I will go peer into the darkness and see if I can see anything. I don't think we have the rumbling is never good, Scablin. Something's rumbling? You still have your light source up, or are you just the campfire?

We're just the campfire. Yeah. You're outside of just maybe 15, 20 feet. Let's wake everybody up and then you We'll get to work. We'll get to work on grog and go see what that is. I'm not okay. Is the Rumbling continuous or is it just one little rumbling?

A few moments pass. Rumbling is excited. Oh, okay. Oh, stop. So we're awake. Let's heal this guy. Can you heal him? Are we awake?

I do press visitation and wake everybody up. Oh, wait. With a little spurt of water in the face. Okay, I'll wake up. Everyone, get up. Why would you do that? Why could you just touch me? Because it's a good nut.

Because a huge lizard. Ah. I think Rob started again. I'm sorry. It's off. Something terrible is brewing. No. How is everyone feeling?

Do we need to heal? We need to heal this guy. No, what about us? We're fine. We're fine. Are we okay? You've all slept for the evening and for the points of your unused.

Grog, just wait a little bit longer. Yeah. Okay, let's, do we want to stay here? Do we want to do this here? Yes, you're here. There was a rumble. Can we? We need to get proper than...

How long will this take, Keyleth? Tiberius, I don't know, but I want us to be as safe as we can. Tiberias, can you, like, lift us up on your pillars or, like, encase us in or something, make us, like a room? I was just about to do that. Make us a room? Yes. Yes. But everybody hates me.

Are you going to cast a spell now? We're going to do this. Okay, I'd like to give her a little inspirational song. Yes, if you could. Scanlan give me, like, um, some... Nice meditation some like some like your mood yoga music yes yes Drinkey gives her a massage beforehand I go on you know I go ahead and I light some incense and I am Scanlan do you still have that that deity that little idol of Pike

I do have my idol of Pike yes can we just have that out just so I have her energy Oh, of course. I take out the idol of Pike that I keep always close to my loins and I hold it tightly and warmly. Okay. I'll caress it a little. It's really distracting,

but eventually you face it up. All right, so as you guys are together. Did you want my hand of the statue, right? You take a bit of earth from a pouch that you keep of your home tribe where you grew up. You scatter some of it around Grog, who is now laid on his back with his arms and legs, all equally stretched out.

Naked. No, you still can. There's no. There's no No, there's no as you, as this is the first time you've attempted a magic of this type, you close your eyes and take in the

Earth's essence as a druid being connected to nature is where you draw your divine energy. You kind of almost take from the vibration of the nearby caverns that you felt and come in tune with the way the Earth, the planet itself, shifts and moves. You got this feeling. You can do this.

You can't do this. You can't do this. You use that to give constitutional strength to the physical form of Grog in hopes of restoring him. Okay, I just kind of lay my hands on his forehead. Oh my gosh. You know what, I know Grog very well, and he might enjoy or be inspired by a kiss of a female. I'm just saying, just the gentle kiss of a female lips on his might rouse him. I've seen it many times.

That's a plant one on him. one on him. Vex, get in there, get in there. As Vex awkwardly fumbles over the, I think it helped. The overtly sized Goliath, mom. Sabit.

I'm not old dead. Go ahead and, uh. Just upstairs. Do I get an inspiration that I remember? You do yes. Okay. What am I rolling? What do I do?

Do I get to assistance? I gave him a kiss. No assistance on this. This only effects the DC. Oh god. Let's do this man. Save grog, save grog. Save grog.

For the chat room. Yeah. Nauseous. Did you roll? Where'd you roll? Where is it? Where is it? You get advantage on that?

It's a D-8, right? Do I get advantage on this since I'm taking time? Yes. Do I get advantage? Yeah, you have advantage on it. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Keylet, Keylet, Keylet. Oh!

Oh, that's better. Okay, I'm gonna do the inspiration dice, just in casey's. Okay, that's good. That's good. Okay, so 17 plus 12, which is, where I split plus six, plus six is my wisdom modifier. My heart is pounding.

So that's 30? No, 29. 29. That should be a minute. Oh, yeah. So, in this circumstance, you complete the ritual, there's a brief glow of all the dirt you scattered around the Rog,

and you can see his form kind of taken a deeper breath, his chest expands, and as it does, his eyes, which currently stare off into space, begin to clarify and crystallize, and his brow quivers for a second. And you see a little bit of life returned to his face. Tickets. Uh, nachos.

Rob, your sight focuses as the party has gathered around you, looking down upon your currently stretched out physical form in a cavern. Welcome back, big guy. I thought I was in algebra class again for a second there. Crog! You're alive!

Why are you all chilling? Good job, Kilg! Why did you run out and destroy nothing? Look what you did. You all give me crap about the light thing. Don't ever do that again. Sorry, but who woke me up from my sleeve?

Oh, Siri. There's a good preference, really, but Keelith, did an amazing time. Keyleth, I run over and I do Keyleth, I'll bed old bear hug, squeezing me. I think he shit himself while he was unconscious, so that's got to smell very wonderful. I've smelled better than I ever had before.

Please. I'm really glad you're awake. I reach into the bag of holding and I get the cask of ale and my goblet and I pour a little goblet of ale when I give it to kick it. Aw. To grog.

To grog. To me. As a note, too to see you guys are aware, 20 is the stat cap for normal physical stats however magical items can then bump that up higher. Just answering chat room questions.

Right. I don't even know what that means. The question or the answer. Don't worry about it. Hey, how is he doing? How is he feeling? Crog, how are you feeling? How is he feeling? My intelligence is... Where is it now? It's... It's back in a normal. It's six, so...

Right where it should. I feel right. It's right. What are we killing? Brains. How many fingers is this? Three. Perfect. Good.

He's back, you guys. Blue. No, hold on. Good. Square. I sought over to Kielath. That was mighty impressive. Oh, thank you.

That was amazing. I had pike in mind. I channeled her energy. It's true. It was quite astounding. I have a little chub on. Oh. That's just written.

I do I. So do I. You want. That's a bit of a side effects. It must be the morning. That's part of the greater restoration. A few things get restored. God bless you.

Do you remember anything about a kiss in your dreams while you're asleep? My cheeks are sort of sore for some reason as if they've been slapped repeatedly by a bunch of twats. And then I've got this one little wet mark right here when I got a kiss and it smells like half-elbush spit. Oh, that was Trinket. Trinket helped with the spell. Oh, I didn't. I just... queue up. I'm several sucks. I always point you look over and Trinket is there off of the side

notably excited that you're moving again. Oh, nozzles up against you for a moment. Oh, Trinket, you big old fobo. Trinket noogie. Can we go kill something? Yes. I guess we should. I think we all have. You guys all yield overnight.

Did he feel well? Is that hill be a baller? You did not have an opportunity to use any of your stuff. You're currently still at the hit points you were. Plus you naturally heal just for the evening's rest. Do I do it? Four hit points. Let's heal.

Let's do some Grog healing. Do you have your healing dice, right? I do. I'm going to sing a song of rest for you, so that'll add 1D6 to your healing rolls. 1D6. Awesome. Great.

How many D12s do you get to roll? You can roll four of them if you need to. That's one D12 plus one. Yeah, you can roll up to nine. You can roll up to nine dice. Whatever your level is, that's the number of hits you can use. Nipple towels, that's way better. But that's for the day.

Okay. Once you've used those nine hit dyes to heal yourself naturally, you are maxed out outside of magical healing or potion. Got it. I used two. Okay. Shall we carry on, everyone? Yes, I have the feeling these tunnels are going to suck majorly,

but we've gone where to go, but down, so. So we know which tunnels she pointed towards. Well, she pointed towards the rest of the cavern. The dark. Great. She doesn't just destined. Can I use tracking and see if I can not only see where the majority of tracks lead to,

but see if I can spot like the halfling Keima's tracks. Lady Kima. Go ahead and make a survival check. Survival. Which you have advantage on simply for tracking. Oh, I do. Depending on what you're tracking. Okay.

What are your favorite enemies? My favorite enemies are dragons and demons. So you would not have advantage in this. Well, screw that. That's okay. Would you roll? Oh, but I do. Wait. My favorite terrain

is the under dark. Are we in the Underdark? Okay. All right. You know what? For that, I'll go ahead and give you an event of that. This is technically considered the crest of the Underdark. It doesn't count as it rolls onto a phone. That's the rule. I think that's in this book. Yeah, yeah. I guess Chapter 4. 19 is what I rolled with.

19. Okay. As you guys begin to move, and you can find, like, there is the waterfall, which there are, you can hear already in the distance. There are a number of cascading, crashing water sounds. You imagine there's probably in multiple layers. This is this cavern descends down into the darkness. What are you guys using as a light source, by the way? Tiberius, hit us. What's happening?

Light. Light. Staphynes alive, bright beam, yeah. Not for a while, bro. Yeah, brook, so delicious. Using that, you take a while and you begin to just keep tabs on the surface area of this cavern as you begin to move further down. You find some portions that you can climb down into the lower levels.

The first thing you notice is there are definitive signs of struggle or intense running. towards the direction that you came from, meaning things were seemingly either fleeing or heading in that direction very quickly. Some of them appear to have been more recent than others. You also begin to see a few partially decomposed corpses of various goblinoid creatures. You find two goblins that are just slain,

just cut open and off of the side, You can see some of the skin is pulled tight against the bone, and a lot of it's just kind of slowly rotting within the cave itself. Not a very great smell. But there have been small pockets of struggle the more you progress down this way. You also find some drag marks that are similar

to what you saw back in the mines. And as you begin to move forward, and the light source begins to open up, you can see small pockets of that red stone that's used to light a bunch of craghammer. You can start seeing elements of it embedded in the walls of the cavern ahead, and just faintly giving this reddish below in the outline of some shapes. You begin to step into the outskirts, about 60 feet ahead of what looks like a series of huts. Small stone structures, cobbled together with small stones stacked in each other.

Simple driftwood and broken pieces of scavenged material put into small buildings. It's a very, very kind of ramshackle village underground. Let's burn it down. I'm stealth. I'm stealthing. Oh, okay, I want to stealth too. Natural 20. Uh, natural 20.

Oh, that really didn't count. Just roll it on your phone a couple times and then off the side. They all suck, so fuck it. And you said that the red crystals in the wall are glowing somewhat? Yeah, it's a certain of a crystal that this mountain range seems to naturally produce.

that just inherently hovered. Enough to give the half-elves vision in low light? It seems in such, yeah. Or to the point where you're close to it. Currently, Slack uses light source to see most anything. This village doesn't have any, but near the walls and the edges of the cavern. You can see the gentle outline of this whole size of it.

It is immense. Does it seem that there are signs of life? From this view, you don't see any movement. Well, I'm starting to creep along the ground towards the nearest building. I'm gonna press it against the wall, see if I can, I'm just gonna listen. All right, other rest are you staying back?

I rolled a 16, is that enough to actually spell? That's up to you. Oh, no. I'm gonna let the twins stoop ahead. Yeah, so you guys think back. You guys, stop the head. No. So the two of you kind of follow each other,

you get to the outskirts, and you can now see in the center of this, a number of the buildings and huts have been smashed or destroyed. You can see more and more of these goblin corpse that's strewn across the ground. You can see some of these tents, to have rags or something stuffed into one

that's not too far ahead of you. There's two gobbels near you, apparently slashed open, similar to similar wounds. This is just from the first glance stepping forward. None of them alive. We don't tell. We can't see any movement anywhere? Not from this perspective.

You guys move ahead and you barely have any light source of your own. You're having to deal with just the outskirts of his life. And none of that red light is lighting any of this? Not in the center of the village. There's only towards the outside walls of the camera. So we're in the dark. Can I go up and see if I can get one of those little red rocks?

You'd walk off to the side. So you take a few minutes to walk off to the very edge of the cavern. The rock is less of an actual stone that you can pull more than it's a cluster of, like almost like a vein of the stones in the actual wall. It would take a while for you to actually hack it out of the side. It can be done, but it'll take you a while. Me. I'll go on a wasted time.

Okay. What do you think? Should I do it? No. Okay, cool. No. No. But we're in pitch black here.

I can't really see what's going on. I think we need... Alantan. There's some case. Tiberius. Wait, hold on. Tiberius. Will you bring the party up?

Does anybody know? Oh, okay. What you know? What is? Okay, so as you guys are aware, one of the magical items that was designed by Tiberius earlier in the campaign are essentially these gemmed enchanted earrings that that activate as a message spell between a few party members. He made a few of them. It was five total.

Why don't we nail down who that is? It's the twins. We both have one. You have one. He has one. He's pretty sneaky. All right. And we can send and receive messages or just receive to us.

It's essentially whispering in each other's tears. It's like a walkie-talkie. But it only works in a certain range. Is it like a Madonna microphone? Straight up, yeah. I think it's 500 feet. Yeah, 500 feet is the light. They add maximum like.

So you guys approach slowly. The light source opens up and you see now multitude of goblin bodies strewn about the open area of this village. You can see there are actually piles of horses stuffed into some of these huts on the sides that aren't goblin. You can see it looks like a few small dwarven bodies pile up on the side. As you kind of glance over you look, some of them are partially eaten like they've been stripped from eating. What?

Oh. Make an investigation check. 24. 22. Okay. Check out of building. You got, as if this is a building, you just that strip for meat. There's piles of bone, sinew, and metal at this point. The dwarven bodies have mostly been composed entirely what rememitants have not been pulled off them and stripped for food.

Anything useful in the pile? I don't know. Bodies? As far as what you guys can tell, you discover two things. One, one of the dwarves has a set of very, very finely crafted other armor. Ooh. That to pull it off the corpse is going to destroy it and be probably a not very inch, interesting affair. But it does look to have survived the horrible conditions under here.

You also note specifically Vex that not the Dwarven corpses, but a number of the goblin corpses come across, some of them have a uniform wound. A number of these goblin corpses have this terrible puncture wound in the skull in the forehead there. Um, just an opening wound about that big around. You didn't notice that. That's how unperceptive you are. Um, my sister. Greetings adventurers.

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for as much flesh as on these goblins, it doesn't appear to be anything inside. It sucked their brains out, whatever it was. It's very possible. I know a dive-frey was like. Oh, brinkers. No. Are we with you?

No, we're not. You're still hanging out. You put your finger in the hole. I'm something up because you something. I don't know. My finger in the hole. You guys stayed in the darkness? Your finger goes inside.

to reach around. There are elements of brain matter within there, but even that has become very gelatinous and partially decomposed in its own right, almost like a slime. But sure enough, the inside of the cranium itself is mostly vacant. Lovely, Trinke.

No, he's not with us. That Trinke is back to the party. So we can only assume that, what was his name? Should we rejoin our fellows? Yeah, I guess it seems like it's safe enough, right? Around here right? We come running up. No.

We do. Traipsen. He trapes up. Skipping. As silently as possible, you can run it up. What's going on, guys? Brain suckers. Something that sucks brains.

As long as they're sucking it out of goblins, I'm good with that. My sister doesn't remember, but one of our instructors in Singorn used to tell us of a creature. I'm not sure what they're called. I don't think I was in that class, actually. A creature that steals its victim's minds

and digests them, reaches right in and takes them out. I'm assuming it's going to be a much more mutated version of our brain on legs. I think it's much worse. Much worse. Much worse. I think the brain was a scout or some sort of pet. Well, we also have this corme who is experimenting on all those creatures,

so we can't even attest for any of this. That's true. I take a few steps back. Could just be parts of one. It could be parts of one. It could be... A hodgepodge of... Goblin, drain.

What if Kavore is a dragon? What if it's... Oh wait, I don't know anything about that. What was that symbol anyway, Tiberius? That was a symbol of Bahamara. And there's a protection thing that I'm sure she could have to... Okay, so it was a good symbol. It was, yes. Okay.

You recall that Lady Kimo was specifically a paladin of Baham. Oh, so she probably did that. I can't seem to have been hers while she was traipsing through the time of the time. I understand. I just think we should proceed with caution. Our teacher spoke about this thing, said that it was a being of the mind. I think our trouble with Grog could just be the beginning. We need to proceed very carefully.

Oh, no. I have two potions of fox's cutting. Could I drink one of those since there's a giant brain bitch wandering around? You can make you all smarter? But it doesn't last very long. Fox's culling would give you benefit, I believe. It would be enhanceability. It would be enhanceability for

I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I think it's wisdom. No, no, no, no, it's intelligence. It's intelligence for fun. Because I think it's like owl's wisdom for wisdom. Right, no, you're correct, yeah. So essentially it would be an enhanceability for intelligence, yes.

How long does it last? For the potions of the, that would be, more than four to eight hours, you're not quite sure. Maybe you should wait until we come across something. All right, but it's too late. Yeah, you would have advantage. You can't go running off into the dark again. Intelligence.

Yeah, let us lead the way. So it wouldn't necessarily... It wouldn't make my intelligence higher. It wouldn't make your intelligence higher and it would necessarily help with your vulnerability. I never mind. Never mind. Be smart.

All right. Who's our smartest person? Who has the highest intelligence here? What are these scores you keep talking about? I don't know what anyone's talking about. It's okay, Max. I don't know what a lot of people are talking to talk to me. I'm whoever's the smartest should be in the front.

It's true. I'm sitting at 16. 14. 16. Well, it's about having, like, high, it's not necessarily having being smart. It's about having resistance. But if they take your down, if they take down your intelligence, then whoever has higher intelligence. No one's going to take down our intelligence.

I don't want another catatonic. And we know what we're going into. All right. This music sounds very fighty. Hang on. More festive. Oh, no. Okay.

So here's my question. So we've already fought two things where we can't look. at them and they mess with our heads. Yes. So is there something we can do going forward to like boost our willpower or something? Or like like like um. You want Magneto's helmet. What you want is Magneto's helmet? Or even if we like, have a bunch of mirrors or like where we can look through things with reflections. I have we do have a big dressing mirror. That's more for um. I don't know that's going to help.

Yes, I have them, of course. I could make a mirror. We have one mirror in the bag of golden. That's good. Kind of like the magicist's gay thing, you know? That's a gorgon. That's talking about the gaze. Right.

We're talking about the mind. Yeah. I have a whip. And a forgery kit. It would just be about making us less vulnerable to the minds. Could you forge some professor hats for us all? So what, our option is to keep moving forward then, right? Just be cautious, that's all we can do.

All right? Very, as quietly as possible, to keep moving forward. And on the lookout for anything in this ramshackled town. I mean, I can't cast me head to building. So you leave behind the piling dwarfed corpses with the ones of the surface. And if I may, I suggest Tiberius you work your light spell and Vexali and I, Vixali and I scout ahead about 60 or 70 feet so that we can see in the dim light. Yes.

There's anything coming using your magic. And I light up the hood of lantern we have in the bag of pulling. Okay. She pulled up the hood of the lantern. I like that up. Very good. I leave him the leather armor behind. Oh, well, I thought you said it would get ruined if we took it.

And it was nasty pulling it off a corpse. Oh, well, then fuck it. Let's pull it off. Or is armor also shrink in a class? It's magical. It's nice. It's fine. I cast presentation and clean it all of them.

I take it. Okay, so you shake off the element, the removing elements of the Dwarven course, which kind of falls off, sloths outside of the armor. It's kind of shake it to have it all eventually escape in the back. Oh, thank you. It's like full pork. Mmm. Does that mend me? What is it?

Life. Um, 20. All right. It appears to be a simple but powerful enchantment. It is a pair of stutter armor with a plus two enchantment. Plus two in a champion. Plus two, what? If I try to pull on the sleeve, does it come up to my elbow or does it stretch out and fit?

It comes up to your elbow and then give it a moment it fits to your... Oh, that's nice. Go take that studded leather, ral-la-la-la-la-la-la-l. Thank you. I go into the smelly corpse hut and start to change my... What is that? Yes, it's considered... It works instead of other armor.

Nice. Oh, we could do a piece of turn. Wow, that's huge. Dungeon Master. Yes. asking you as the dungeon master? I'll take it. If I cast Owls wisdom on people,

it gives people advantage on wisdom checks. Would that count on saving throws against Wilburne? No. Would it help anything? I mean, would any advantage to, would some under-dance ability? Some of these, I remember we roll charisma saving throws though for the, umbers.

Do with charisma. Right. And for the brains of questions of will be. Well, the DM looks this up. Everyone, subscribe to the geek and sundry Twitch. Yes. Subscribe.

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It's true. Yeah, so unfortunately it helps the ability checks those are not considered same for us. All right. I don't know if I have anything. We'll be all right. Once you get the tool, it goes up. All right. I want to reach this.

It's a little matter. All right, shall we keep on, keep on keeping on. Let's go. Let's go. Let's keep on moving. No. You have to keep pushing for it. Oh.

All right. All right, as you get impressed through the Goblin Ghost Town. Yeah, you're getting closer to that. And I'm still tracking, looking for anything interesting. Which you do. You catch off in the distance another faint, moving light source. Oh shit.

Hey, everybody's, calm down. Oh, so there's something moving in the distance. Everyone rolls stealth check. Oh, shit. Stealth check. Yes. Oh, God, rolls stealth check. Dill, ill, ill, little, little, little.

No, no, 20. Nice. Nice. 30. 15. 12. Okay. So as you guys all,

buckle down as quiet as you can. You roll the six. You begin to see. Go, I'm going to say. No, no, no. It's okay. It's a group check in which case people offset each other as difficulty. Yay, broker.

So you seem to be comfortable in the stillness of the moment. Best you can see in the distance. You see figures shifting moving away from you. Many figures. A fairly large group would seem to be humanoid figures moving steadily away from you. Can we scout ahead? We're both really super-stuff.

Can we like quickly dash out? Using your same stealth roles, you guys push forward. Humanoid figures, you said. Yes. Best a good town. As you guys start reaching the outskirts of the opposite side of this small goblin village that has been completely sundered,

You see a cliff, but a large cliff. The actual surface here comes to a very direct end and seems to just disappear into a darker abyss. There is a singular 10 foot wide rope bridge that is bolted into the side of this cliff and stretches out across this giant crevasse for what, you can't see the other side. This feels like the descent.

I don't like this, you guys. It very much has that kind of a feel. It just goes on for a good 60, 70 feet and then darkness. And you can see, what looks to be a cluster of about 12 to 13 Duregar, making their way in lines of two across this bridge. Amongst them, they have chained up three dwarf miners that they are also dragging across the bridge.

We have to save those. What do the miners look like? Are they completely, are they docile? Or do they seem to be fighting back? They don't look at much of a fight in their current circumstances. How wide is the bridge? 10 feet, 10 feet. That means two people.

Fragg goes by himself. Yes. But if we go out there, it's going to be close combat. We have a flying carpet. You can't get to the ones at the back. I mean, how many are there? Like 10 you said? 12, I count.

Look's about 12-ish. And they have a light source with them so we can definitely see them. They do. It's a very faint. And actually, you look at it, it's like a small cluster of the red stone within mine and put into a spherical element.

And it's currently hanging from a chain like a lantern. We have two options. We can fight them. We can fight now or just follow them. Follow. I think we follow them. Do I see any, are there any, like, bats? Uh, make a position check.

Ooh, cool. If we follow them on that bridge, won't they feel it bouncing? We gotta wait till they cross it, Scanlan. You can't see the end of it. I grab my ear in Keeleth, I heard you through Tiberius's ear and why don't you just become a bat and follow it on? She's trying to do that, but she's got to see one. I was like, I've never seen a bat in the woods. Best you can tell, uh, and from your knowledge of bats in their existence, that generally live in

that have very readily available openings to the outside world that can do the non-turnal hunting. This is a very, very deep cavern that does not have any easy access to the surface. That's probably not getting into this cavern. I've got an idea. I run back to Grog, stealthed. Again, our flying carpet. And I run back... He added, suddenly mysteriously reaches in...

Oh, shh! Give me the carpet. What? Just you? You're gonna go on the carpet alone? And him. We can both go on the carpet. What if something happened? We just got to see where they're going.

We'll come back and get you. All right, Scamly. I can't go to the carpet, but I also tie the endless road bread. Oh, yeah. Okay, so we have an endless row with us. All right. We're now a kite. All right.

We called the carpet, you lay it out. At this point in time, they're a little over halfway across the ridge. Okay, so we. Which you can see it kind of swaying in a very... Scalman, you better be stealth. Uncomfortable way. You hear the stretching of rope that... Oh, you can hear the rope.

As you hear the rope, just tense as the bridge is slowly swaying. All right, so you guys, you lay out the carpet. The two of you get on? Yes. And Stanlin. By the scruff of his neck. The three of you guys hop on it.

It's about big enough for the three of you. It's shut up the right side. The carpet begins to lift off and you kind of will it towards the, are you going straight over the bridge? Or you're taking the side around. We're going next to the bridge, right? And kind of, I think we should go down below

If you're on a bridge, you're looking down at your feet. Let's go above them. I think about it. All right, fine, fuck it. Go above. Okay, so you guys, you take up over. First off, three of you guys make it stealth check. I know, we were still stout.

The maneuvering on flying carpet is a different type of locomotion. We have a flying carpet, by the way. That's another thing. Yeah. That was a great. 13, 29. 17. Okay.

You guys trying to stealth? Yeah. Okay. Oh, do, oh, do. So you, um. Oh, no. You carry up. As soon as you reach the edge of the crevasse,

immediately the air itself is warmer. And there's actually kind of a bit of a strange breeze blowing up from underneath this giant crevasse. And you look down and you can see faintly light sources, long, thin, trickling streams of what looks like molten rock. Shit, long level. Way down below. Way down below.

I say way down. It's at least, at least a thousand feet down there. We don't want to fall. Don't pop. It's very bad. The hair itself is a very sulfurous smell. There's a lot of various strange chemical sense that's a bit pungent to the nose and have you. There's a lot of chemical reactions just causing this atmosphere.

It's a little difficult to take in the air first. You have to get adjusted. But it is a very, very deep cavern below. You can look behind, you can see the river that's been cascading through this cavern. It goes rocketing off the edge and just disappears into the darkness. into the darkness below. Oh, shit. You guys, are you keeping a good distance?

Yeah, no, we're keeping a good distance. Distance, distance, because they have a light source, so we can just follow that. Yeah, so we need to stay kind of out of it, but see it. Okay. You guys push forward, keeping them in a safe distance. You eventually follow them across the crevasse, and you can see now them entering what looks like

a shanty town of tents in small stone structures. better built than the goblin village that was previously there, but he looks almost like a temporary or pseudo-temporary series of homes for the Durigar in this section. There's a bunch of military tents and cloth-put tents that are put up in sections. You can see some easy to construct, you know, one or two-day constructions of stone buildings, very square, very rigid and dwarven in their design. more for utility than any sort of visual presentation or beauty. This is a temporary war camp.

It is. There are also a series of these redstone... Yes. Of these redstone... Yeah. It's legit guys. A series of these redstone torches that they were holding on these lanterns are hung up all throughout the village on these giant poles that have been placed in areas to give a little bit of an occasional light source of this entire camp.

I was just thinking. How many people does it look like? I mean, how big is this camp? How big the camp? At first glance, you can only check out elements of it from your distance. You're only making up shapes from how far back you guys are without actually getting inside. You gather you've probably seen throughout just this portion that you've come into, anywhere from 30 to 40 Duragar moving through, as well as a few larger shapes.

You swear you catch one or two other very large humanoid hulking figures just... just, Oh no. Stepping to the camp. Wow. How are we, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? The view up here is beautiful.

Hey, what are you guys? What do you guys see? Okay, so. Is the range, how are, the range is getting a little broken. Okay. The words are coming through. You're cutting out.

I think, well, one of us, let's put down. Put down. In the volcano. No, no, no. How, are we like at a place where we can land the carpet and, like, stand around, or should we go back?

were past the chasm at this point? You just now crested the crevassed the other side. And you're feeling uncomfortable pushing further forward because you're now starting to get a lot more eyes. Okay, are there any, does it look like, do we see any cavern openings in the vicinity? Does it look like there's any? Looking around, there are no side caverns.

This is actually a pretty smooth cavern that kind of circles around where this camp is built. There is one large tunnel entrance on the opposite side. Yes. That continues past. But they're blocking it? You can't see anything beyond the fact that the tunnel, the wall is kind of convenient.

You can see a little bit of a tunnel opening and just darkness beyond that. So bridge to land and then a tunnel. It's on the other side and where the land starts is a giant portion of the cabin that continues and then closes off kind of pinches to entrance. How far away is the camp from that? The camp's completely filling this side of the cross. It's blocking. Oh, so we can't get to that.

Not without going through or over the city. What about... Bridge, town, tunnel. Tunnel. Do we see any like closer under the bridge? Are there any openings underneath the bridge that look like? Do you want to swoop down and check? Yes.

Yeah. Okay. You swoop down and the rock, the warm air is still kind of bothering you in general. Excuse me. You find yourself kind of taking your cloak and putting it over your mouth just to kind of get the scent out. The side of the rock surface is warm through the... what looks like maybe a possible river that also came from the other side that has since dried out. So you can see there is, while no water on this side of the crevasse,

a lot of the stone has been smoothed just through rapid water running for thousands of years possibly. But there are no visible openings or other additional caverns on this rock surface. Okay. Are there still? Listen, leave me behind. I'll follow the party with the hostages. I'll see where they go. Don't worry, I'll be invisible. Go back, tell our fellows, get them across the bridge and won't meet here and about him out. Skellet.

I like it. What? I'm super brave and hung. Come on, let's do it. All right, I'm down. Should we do it? We drop him off. I turn invisible and I'm gonna just hang behind the party that's got the hostage dwarves and just kind of see where they go. Do you activate hung at the same time? We can't go invisible, we can't be as like.

It's a racial bonus. He's sneaky. We can't be as invisible as him. visible as him. All right. Yeah, but I might make, I might snap. Last question, where are the people that, the figures we're following? Are they, they finish the bridge at this point? A little bit. They're long past the bridge. They're inside the city proper at this point. Okay. Okay, so then I'll stay by the edge of the bridge. You go back. You go back. Scanlon, go ahead. I'll wait for you here. If there's trouble. Got it. All right. I go back. You're shit. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. You're sending me back. I go back. Go get the others. Skindler. As you, go ahead, make your way in towards the city, go ahead and make a stealth check advantage.

Come on, right. 18. 18, okay. You push kind of falling behind the main group, and they're heading towards this kind of more or less a loose thoroughfare in the center of this town. You can see a few Durgaar coming out and coming in a second as they enter, and speaking in a language you don't understand, asking questions. Some of them are coming out and they slap in the dwarf captives as they go across, are spinning on them. The dwarfs are very broken and unhappy with the circumstance.

Brimming with anger, you see a couple of them are, like, true dwarfs. They haven't given into it. They're just looking for an option or a moment to get some vengeance. They're shipped of all armored weaponry. They're brought through some of the alleys and wrote kind of paths between these pup tents and these stone structures. You can see there are some of the halting figures. There are two trolls wandering amongst these, Duregar.

Yes. Now, you've encountered trolls before, but these trolls also have a similar pupil-less clouded over white eye appearance. Slave trolls. As you begin following them further in, you manage to see two ogres that are currently stationed across this main kind of open center location in this campsite. And both of these ogres also have the same pupil as white glazed over looked at their eyes. And they're both just kind of glancing about.

The rest of Dürbar are in the process of constructing other tents. Some of them look like they're actually in the process of forging weaponry. It feels like it's a war camp. It's definitely preparing for something. However, in the center of this main area, you do see the center of this main area, you do see the there is a wooden platform about 20 foot by 20 foot that is raised up and you see a group of about six Duraigar that are all wearing very intricate black iron plate armor and they're all just sitting on the outskirts of this platform. White eyes? All the Dura Gars seem to have this seem to have that natural look to the

rise as well. As the party you've been following enters the center this vicinity, making it out of self-check, and they managed? Yeah. 90. Oh. You kind of step off at the side. Duregard steps out of one of the tents near you,

and you just barely manage to pull out of the way without making these to a squeaker noise. It was by. Oh, God. The war is over, and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors clawed.

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

Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark, not so stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotic's detective agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high-flying action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every clue they can fight. It's one heck of a tale, which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you.

Wait, what? All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog presents The Chaotics case files Listen now, wherever you get your podcast When the Chaotics are on the case Careful Bilbo And Megan is stepping out

Looking intently for something But right past you by inches You look over again to the game You can now see towards the very back end of this open midsection by this platform, there is one large stone construct. Looks like a makeshift barracks has been placed there. The double stone doors that are currently open,

and you can see two figures stepping out of the stairs of leaving these barracks heading towards the main platform. They step out onto the platform, one of which is a very, very well-decorated Durigar, who's wearing similar black in plate armor as the other kind of elite guard that you saw starting this platform. but with gold and silver scrolling on it, a long, tattered, dark, dark purple cape,

and has a nasty scar across the sheet that leads into this gnarled gray beard. As it steps forward, you can see sheath off to its back in a large scabbard, a gargantuan for a dwarf, especially, a two-handed sword that should be unwieldy for a creature of its size, but nevertheless looks dangerous. A creature next to it is not so small, not dwarf.

Actually, very tall, lanky, long kind of black in purple robes, hood obscuring its features, stepping roughly two feet behind it as they both step onto the platform to address the rest of the guard and the approaching party of Duragard-Dwarfs. You can see some conversation happening, but you're too far away. Make out anything being said. Did you move closer? Do I speak their language?

Do you speak under, common? Nope. Then you, it all sounds gibberish to you? No, thank you. Okay. You see some conversation happening. This seemingly officious Duregar, this general steps out and command the attention in the room,

makes a few gestures, shouts out to amongst the other nearby. Not quite sure, but you get the idea is getting orders or directions. The war party then begins to pull the slaves back away. The captives? The captives. The captives. It begins pulling them away back towards another section on the side. As it does, the tall, inky figure,

which you now get in the essence, it's not really walking, it's just kind of drifting. Holds its hand out, this long, long-finger and lanky hand. And as it does, every single Durgaar in the vicinity, whatever it was doing, stops in place and all turn and look at it as one. At which point, this creature brings its fingers in a beckoning gesture loosely in your direction.

I'm wearing my ring of mind shielding, by the way. For a short second, you feel your heart hit your throat and the entire back of your body stands on pins and needles as one of the Duragar carrying one of the captives begins to pull one of the Dwarmen captains back towards the platform. As it does, the dwarf who's giving kind of a fight and looks nervous,

looks over at the figure. It just kind of his arms go into itself. Oh, do. And it begins to walk on its own volition, taking two, three steps up on the platform. It approaches this tall, lanky figure with its hood that's long ropes behind it. As it does, its hand reaches out and caresses the side of this dwarf's face. This dwarf seems to give them all sense of fight or any sort of conflict just stares up into this darkened hood.

As the tall, leaky creature reaches out with both hands and pulls the dothed creature. door forward, you see these terrible purple tentacles come right out of the front of the hood, wrapping around the head of the dwarf, pulling it into it. As the hood falls back, you see this horrible, smooth, purplish blue, hairless head, these sunken yellowish green eyes as the tentacles wrap around the dwarf's head, pulls it into its mouth.

And then there's a brief struggle, and then the dwarf's arms fall linked to its side. At which point, the tentacles unraveled from the back of the dwarf's head. The creature pulls back a bit of thicker dwarf blood dripping from what looks like a lamprey's two feet, maw, and then thrusts the body to the ground. The thud as it falls lifeless to the ground.

Poor son of a bitch. A horrible bored of his forehead. Oh no. The creature then draws its hood back up, releases its hand in a discursory fashion, all the Dura grow, went back around and continued emotions they would be usually going towards us. The two dwarven captives that now remain.

look completely stunned. Their faces white with fear as they're being dragged off in this state. The tall-in figure kind of gives a nod to the Dura-Gar General. Gives it a nod as well. The two turn around and on the back into the zone. Oh, God. Worst show ever. Uh, okay. But that was one of the captives.

Do I see where the other captives were taken? The other captives, you follow them? then. They both are pulled to a, essentially a western side. If you're looking overhead from the entrance point, this is where the Barrett building is up here. This is where you guys entered and this is the main center area. They're pulled off to a western side here. Same, safe. They're taken to a large tent and as they're pulled in, you can stay close it behind and you can hear some muffles and some growling on the inside of this tent. Okay.

bad things are happening in there. I don't need to see it, right? I think I'll just kind of, is there anything? You speak Gorman? No, oh, no. Who do I speak? What does it say? Shit.

Just me in the lower left hand with your player sheet. Did you choose languages? I play a shawm. No, I just speak common and no. Okay. So you hear what sounds like guttural dwarish being shouted angrily cursing from the interior.

And a few other voices, Dwarpen voices, also joining it. Ah. More than two. Ah. And then you hear some horrible sick thuds and some impacts and some cries and pain. And then eventually the group of five Duraigart, the dragon the captives walk out, carrying these cuddles with their side, still dripping in fresh blood. And they kind of go amongst their own business from there.

Okay. I think I'll go back to my fellows. There's nothing I can see. That door doesn't lock, does it lock by any chance? It's just an opening tent. Opening tent. There's no, nothing lying around, none of that black armor lying around or anything, any extra. Not on the street.

Okay, okay. I think I'll just make back from my friends. Okay, make yourself. Oh, God. With advantage? With advantage. 21. You maneuver your way out, back the way you came,

best you can't remembering, which is you get disoriented in general, trying to find your way out, go ahead and make a survival check as well. Oh no. Survival check. Hmm. So plus zero. 17. 17. That's a good goal, yo.

You take a moment, orient yourself looking about the cavern. This is a very confusing network in the passages you've gone. You pay more attention to what's happening. Kind of, yeah. You nearly get lost twice, but eventually find your way back to the southern portion of this war camp, you can just see the crevasse and you start getting that familiar scent of that sulfurous wind that was doubling out from underneath.

You step out a few more feet and you can see the edge of the bridge where the rest of you have finally come to converge on the other side of the crevops. Whoa, I'm gonna tell you everything that just happened in detail in real time. All right, so as we left off, the party I just reconvene on the other side of this gargantuan crevasse in the under dark after a scam.

Kremlin had stealthed into the Duregar War camp, witnessed a number of dwarven captives being taken somewhere. However, one which was devoured by some strange creature, left brainless and dead on a platform in the center, outside of a giant barracks-type building. You've just reconvened, you've expressed all this information to the party. And that's when I came back to see you guys.

Wow. What are we going to do? A wonderfully detailed. I just give Scanlan some water. some water from my water skin. Yes. You are a brave little fellow. Oh, thank you. Has anyone come across these creatures before?

The weird tentacle brain guy? Would this be a name? Is this the thing you were talking about? Yeah, we'd make a check to this. It sounds like it could be a mind flare of sorts. What did you call it? A mind flare? A mind slayer.

A mind slayer. I'm not quite sure. What is that? I'm pretty sure it plays your mind. I've never been countered with myself, so I have no idea. or let me check my books. You have books? Intelligence.

14? Yeah. You probably call the mind flay. It says right here minefire, but the rest is all inked up. I got water on it. How big was this mob flare? Was he like 20 feet tall, Skatling? He was tall. I mean, everyone looks 20 feet tall to me. I'm a gnome. Was he bigger to me?

bigger to me? He was bigger than you by a little? What? No, roughly a little shorter than him, but... He carried himself big. Let's go Frankie. Let's go fucking out. What?

You wouldn't... Do you want to be unconscious again? Yes. We have to be careful here. It was rather restful, but... How many doors did it sound like they were locked in that prison set? Several? Did you see Lady Kima?

No sign of Lady Kima. Lady Kima at all, just a bunch of dwarves being held against their will, and then one by one being their brain sucked by Mr. Lachian. And there's two big, Percy, could you take a look at this? Two big trolls. And there's ogres, there's ogres too. There are over? Yes, there are two big ogres as well.

And Derogar, a plenty, maybe four dozen or so, three dozen. Spread throughout the city, throughout this little camp, scampland. Wandering, yes. Would it be a nature check to actually think if I never learned about this in school? This is one of the first. Also, you learned about it, kind of you should check too. We should use the volcano

as part of our strategy, like Moses. There's a volcano? I'm an idiot. Wait, no, the, the lava down there. Oh, there's a shit loaded. We can direct it into the now. What? Can I meditate to see if I know anything about this?

This seems to match up with this. with the tales that my instructor master Therendriel told me about back in Singorn. I wonder if I remember something, if only I had a small polyhedron to row or wow. Holy, you guys. Shed cakes. Stack my pie. You've become a stack of pizzas.

Why are you guys swats? Do they know the address here? It's kind of creepy. Oh, it was once in some iced teas. It's a bomb. Hidden in pizzas. Thank you. Thank you, Chairroom.

Thanks, Chabroo. Thanks, Chabroo. Thanks, guys. Thank you, long list. Thank you, long list. Thank you, guys. May your list be ever long with your list. Thanks, long list.

So, best you can ascertain, you've never heard the term mind flare, but in your people, you've heard stories and tales growing up about something referred to as an illithid. A what? An illifet? A nasty entity from beyond. beyond. Illithid with a D or E?

Wididid. Like, okay. Ilfid. Like Iliid, but illiid. Kind of it. Thank you. As far as you know and all that you've heard is they are, they were considered ghost stories as a kid, things that keep it from wandering into dark caves and spaces. They would take your mind. And you thought this whole time that was just, just a fable, it was just the tale. But you do know that, uh, it was just the tale. Um, but you do know that, uh, and they normally aren't solitary.

They usually shite. Keep company of a colony. But I've never heard it called a mine flare, but I guess it could be called a mine flare. But we called them illipids. Yeah. I didn't know they were real, though. What are you?

Okay. Listen, when my herd used to wander through the trees and we came upon a force, it was great, in our own. We use the landscape to our advantage. So why don't we provoke an attack and then retreat over the bridge? Oh. And have them all jump over the edge of the cliff. You said they were all gray-od, right?

At least they'd have to go one at a time or two at a time across the beach. But Scanlan, didn't you also say they were like levitating? What? Two of the... The one-lengthy creature. The one lengthy creature was levitating. Well, I mean, can he fly or? can he levitate?

Well, yes. What Grog is talking about is the bulk of the fighting force, getting them to follow us over the bridge and then cutting the bridge. Yes. Yes. Which was a great puppet show I saw.

Yes. Where they used... Oh, Grubb, I heard that. Where they used 300 puppets. It's amazing. Okay. What if all but a couple of us snuck into one of these buildings

and waited and a couple of us made a stink and got a significant number of them to chase across the bridge. That's a good idea. And then how could we cut the bridge behind? We have a flying carpet so we can go back and forth, but we could drop a significant number of them

down into the lava. Can we have Tiberius standing there to just fire bolted? Yes. Just catch it on fire. Wait a minute. What's the bridge made of? Do you want to rope? We want to bait them, is that what we're talking about? Or? No, we want to drop the bridge and have them fall to the gates. Scandlin? Yes. Or what if you let off a stink

bomb in the middle of the camp? Well, they would, they would run. Some of them would try to leave across the bridge. But remember, there's a tunnel on the other side of camp. They could run that way as well. It's also huge, and your stink clouds only, you know, 20 feet or 30 feet across. Only.

How long is the bridge? The bridge, now that you've traversed it, it's 10 feet wide and runs about a little over 200 feet, 250 feet in life. We could get a lot of them on that bridge and then cut it. Makes the numbers count for nothing. I think I might. I've heard that puppet show.

I think I might have a solution. I like that idea. Yes, Tiberius. What's yours? I think it's about time I use these. Oh, shit. For not combat things. I think we should create a diversion, but let me do it.

I can use my deck of illusions to generate any kind of number of sorts of creatures or whatever that I can control. I can simply toss one out, I believe, 50 feet ahead of me, and control it and get their attention. I can draw them back through the bridge. using the illusions, taunting them along the way. They, of course, will give chase because they are idiots. And as soon as we get enough, we can all, you can hack away at the bridge all you like, Rog. We can both burn it. We can hack and burn and whatever.

What kind of creatures can you make? Well, that's all up to the deck. Oh, oh. It's up to the deck or it's up to you? It's up to the deck. Well, what if it's a scary thing that scares them away? If I, if I generate something such as exquisite as a... a red dragon say. I'm sure

somebody like the minefellers, if they do flee, then the cap will be empty and we can search it and free the the slaves. If not, they will give chase and they will come and bait it. Either way it works in our favor. Can I just something real quick, if I pull out the magic carpet or I take it back from whoever the

fuck had it, and I stand on it, does it hold me up or do I sink? You get on top of the carpet and you will it to begin the shift and the carpet around you lifts, but you are anchoring it to the ground. So this is a big problem. But he's got featherfall.

You've got featherfall. Which just slows my fall. It doesn't take me across. I do have featherfall. Or levitate or something, but we can tie a rope to you and it can, it makes you really late. We can just drag you behind us. Yeah, that's work.

Why do we need to float, Grog? It can't destroy the bridge. Oh. Oh, don't worry about that, Grog. I'll just cut fly on me because I can fly. Duna is fly me. Yes, we can both fly. Okay.

And you can fly Trinquet too. Of course. I'm down for doing the... Let's do it! Fly! This is a way of touch. Okay, let's have a fail safe in case a few get across the bridge. Let's also recap which plan we're going with.

One of us creating aversion and running away or these mystical magical, weird dragon creatures. What if they scare them the other way? It would have to be pretty scary and then, hey, that works. I just said, the... Can we clear. Scareing them or are we luring them? Are we luring them? them. Also, might I remind

you... We're luring them. And also, might I remind you all that they're being mind controlled by this the illithil... Davy Jones? I feel like we should drive to the illithid. And if the illithid recognizes that your things are false,

then he's not going to send his men off to the chase. Or he may send them to kill whoever is creating the illusion. However, if we were... Either way, they're coming for us. Maybe we could create a distraction and bring away from the tunnel's entrance and we can just sneak around them. No? No.

I mean, did you see a way to do that? What? To sneak through the village to the tunnel? No. Not all seven of us. And a bear? Are you crazy? Come on. Oh no, he's trying to kill us. All right. I'll stay on this side of the bridge. Who wants to go be a distraction? Who wants to be the bait? Who's real fast? Well, wait. Are we doing his bait? Or are we doing his bait? Or are we doing?

doing a real thing I don't want to try both what if you cast something big and they turn us against this that could suck oh it's fake it's just it's not it's an hologram that eye control well how about we throw one of those and since yeah about 50 50 50 one one one of us one of the cards okay somebody be gambit we really just need somebody to keep them from running through that tunnel we need some way to keep them from coming can you send a card that looks like a dragon on the others in the tunnel and then they run towards us oh wait wait what's wrong with them running away from us I actually have a spell while I was reading through my book last night catching up on the spells that I kind of forgot about.

I learned something called hallucinatory terrain where I can make the entire terrain look like whatever I want. Are there terrain or an animal? Are there terrain? They're mind control. So what I can do is... You can make the chasm look like it's solid ground. Can you make the chasm look like it's solid ground? I can make the chasm look like a solid ground.

I can make the tunnel across the way it look like it's cased in. Make the big chasm look solid ground. They'll fall off the end. That's a great idea. I'll throw the illusion on the fake land. Let's stack the deck, all right. I'm still going to be live bait because I have an inkling that that thing, whatever it is, is going to see through it.

So if we've got one real half elf in the mix, he'll focus on me. So I'll take the flying carpet and tie it around my back. Are you good with hauling ass? Okay, as long as you can haul ass. So I take the rug from Grong and I roll it up and I tie it. I have a rope to tie it on my back. It's a big rug on your back. Saddle up, let's do it.

It's a very big rug. What's your strength? It is... It's a big ass rug. It'd be like carrying a room of rug. Okay, it won't be cumbersome necessarily. Before Leam, before Vax leaves. Wait, might I interject, I'm so sorry.

Go ahead. You got you and you, And you will be hauling ass away from the charging floor. No, no, I'm staying on our side of the bridge. On our side. But he's got a rug. He's got the flying carpet. So we're going to make them hallucinate.

So when you get all the way to the other side of the bridge, then we're going to chop it. No. No, we're going to chop it when they start coming across the bridge. We're hoping that they're going to just fall off the edge instead. Right off the edge. Which side are we going to chop it on? Our side or they set? One C gets back to our side.

Okay. And what's the bridge made of them? Is it just rope and wood? From what it looks like it is rope and stone platforms. Like slats of stone, then the rope is tied around. It's a very, very thick, hefty twine. So Tiberius and Vax are going over. All right.

Before Bax leaves, I just put my hands on his shoulders and I cast enhanceability on him and give me a dexterity boost. Okay. I'm also going to sing a little song for both of them. So what's the boost? To inspire them. You have the advantage on all decks rolls. On all decks rolls, all that's good.

That's great, because that's how I attack. Well, advantage on the deck's ability checks. Like acrobatics. All right. Is Caitlin singing. Oh yes, I'll sing an inspiration song for both of them. Okay, so. Hey baby, hey baby.

But we need to... Dwarf say, Dwarf say, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Hey, hey, hey, hey, baby, run to the bridge and fall down. All right. So, Inspiration dice to Vax and who else?

This works. Vax and who else? It's inspiration days. Oh, I'm sorry. These two, Grog and Vax. Okay, so both you guys have a D-8 of inspiration. Go to? Yeah, no, Grog isn't going.

Tiberius is going. I'm sorry, Tiberius and Vax. You could already, too. But Tiberius, walk on a bit behind me. Now I'm going to walk up to the edge of town. And I'm going to shout. Oh, my God. So before this happens, where is it on place?

You guys are across the bridge. Yes. And where's the rest of you? I'm going to set up across. I'm going to set up on our side of the bridge. I'm going to set up the bad news gun and get ready to train it on whatever might train. Are there any big rock formations that I can sort of use

as a shelter and kind of stay behind that, but also come around? About 20 feet off from the edge on the goblin side. There is one outcropping of like a large stalagmite you could probably get behind. Oh, on the gun. Goblin side. The goblin side. Do you want to be on their side?

I'm going to be on our side. Your side, meaning the side that the war camp is on. No, I thought we were all on the other side of the bridge. We're going to stay on the side that doesn't have all the bad guys. Right. There's the goblin side. This is the first where you guys first went through. There's the bridge.

And then there's the war camp side. Goblin side. All right. So you're on the goblin side for you, gobland side for Grog. Goblin side for Percy sitting against the bad news. You're crazy. Oh, yeah. It's going to be great.

I don't run that, but you guys are going to be. I'm going to be, um, safer, so. Yeah. I'm going to be, can I be like halfway in between on the bridge? Is that a bad idea? You can do that.

Go for it, you can fly. Can she fly? Turn in bird. I can turn to a bird. Oh, you can turn to a bird. How long is your spell cast? I mean, your spell last. My, which one?

Your illusions. Oh. It's a concentration thing, so as long as I can keep it up. So maybe you should do that. Oh, for up to 3rd. for up to 24 hours actually. It's not a concentration spell. So how far does it reach?

300 feet. Okay. 150 square feet. Right, okay. And it looks, sounds, smells like some other sort of natural terrain. So what are you going to make the terrain look like? What is your alteration?

So what I'm doing, whenever we, can I make it look like there's a cave-in happening through the tunnel? Wait, no, make it front. Keeleth, what if you fudged it so the click looked like it went 30 feet for around? Yeah, what I'm gonna do. I just want the terrain to look on my side.

Close to what they're used to. Exactly like what it is, but I just want to stretch it out a little bit. So it looks like they've got like an extra running space. Okay, so I get additional 40 or so feet out from the eye. Yes, of actual, yes, like the bridge is an extra 40 feet away. The actual ceiling is maybe about 120 feet up, so it might be a little hard to do that and cause a cave in type of.

Okay. Then I'll do that. Then I'm going to just, you know what, I'm going to stay on the opposite side of the bridge and I'm going to focus on making that illusion. Okay, cool. So you go ahead and you cast hallucinary terrain. Yep. You now see an additional 40 feet of the cliff stretches out. It looks very realistic. And you can actually see the bridge looks attached to it. It's a very, very convincing illusion.

I kind of have to remind yourself that it's an illusion just so you don't fall for it either. Please be careful. All right, so you're kind of chilling in the middle of the bridge. All right, the rest of you are on the other side. Outside of the bridge. I'm with them. Okay, so you're off the bridge now? Yeah.

All right, so now Tiberius, Vax, you guys walk across the bridge, keeping grip on the both side rails, feeling it rock to and fro from the continuous warm bellowing of wind up from the cavern beneath you. Eventually you bring your way across, you, what looks like you should be stepping on the terrain is still the bridge, and it takes you a minute once again to adjust the fact that you're still going across the bridge, but it looks like rocky terrain. Eventually you make, to the other side, you grab birches on stone, looking ahead of you can see about 60 feet ahead of you

the outskirts of the war camp. Okay. Tiberius, you wait here, ready to run. I take Tiberius by the arm like this. Voxmachina. Voxmachna. Okay, so I stealthily walk up the clothing's clothing, closing distance to the edge of town. I stand there, I click my boots of haste together.

As he runs off, I cast, Greater invisibility on myself. I cast fly on myself and I hover. Both of those are concentration cells. One of those up at any given point in time. I'll cast fly then. Okay. So you know, floating up.

Okay. And I'm at enough edge to where her illusions are. Okay. But over bridge's case, I fall. Okay. All right, so you're now just kind of hovering above the bridge now. I just click the boots. you feel the sudden surge of magical energy

through your body like adrenaline just pumping into your system. And I cry out full voice, listen up, you walking prawn. Doom has come for you today. Step four off, you slimy bastard! As he does that, I toss out three carts. All right. Oh, gosh.

Oh, God. Your trolls can't save you. Okay. Right at the rim of what the illusion... I will find... It is by now. How long? How long?

All right. All right. And then, of course, behind him. You shuffled these, right? Did you call this a real job? All right, this will be very, very interesting. Oh, Jesus, Lord. Oh, God.

This is a good plan. You've got your dice. Sure. Are you convincing you're up? Use your dice. This is a good plan. We're on the safe side, man. Oh, these are five.

Yes. Yeah, I'm with you guys. Hmm. No, we're fine. So, currently. One of the cards bursts and you can see rising up from its energy. What is it? This awful-looking humanoid skeletal undead creature with long golden red robes with this like

gnarled gold crown, these glowing blue eyes of just pure arcane energy with this horribly gnarled skeletal face. There stands this hideous-looking lich cackling to itself with the natural energy swirling about it. Two of trades, change, damn it. I'm looking at Pathfinder right now. Ace to the two. Too much, Spade. Tiberius, can we hit it and quit it?

All right. What are the other ones? The other one, poof, and you see it before you, I kind of... Flip them over, they have good graphics on the comments. Oh, good. This is nice, the... You see what looks like some sort of a human,

kind of long long, long, long fighting warrior, grizzled, ready to fight, has a big old long sword out, armoured up and scale mail. One eye is kind of wound, and he just kind of sits there and growls with his blade ready. The third card, from the smoke appears, a red-skinned the dragon board with long blue robes. Yes.

A staff with a glowing beam of light on it. You see a joker. You see an exact duplicate of Tiberius now. That's the three illusions there. That's perfect. These cards are now spent, correct? No, they exist until I dispel them. Right, I mean like the actual cards don't go back

to the deck. Yes, they do. They do? Okay, guess. All right, I see that mind. Okay. The other day. As you, the shout out, the card illusion appears. You see about five or six Durgar

kind of look out from a nearby tent and go, start running towards the center of the town. About, about 20 seconds pass. And then you start hearing this, it sounds like a drum beat. Cut the rope. Cut the rope? No.

What are you going? Leave back there. Let's go! At this point, you now see about 16 Duregar come running out from the center of town, armored weapons drawn, a few with crossbows, two trolls and an ogre charging out. You see the ogre's holding this giant, looks like a stone slab for one of its cubs, and the two trolls come with the claws open, rushing right towards you and the illusion. I start flipping...

I command the litch to start doing one of his glowing spells and like... Through him, I go, come for us, your death awaits! And I flip the double birds and start walking back. Just watch your step. I command the straight back. As you're stepping back, for the Dereghar immediately, take, using their inertia, pull and release javelins in your direction. Yes.

Oh God! All right, what's your AC? Oh gosh. My AC is 19. All right, you take two javelins. I'm going to use uncanny dodge. For anything I can see, I can dodge for half damage if I need two. All right, good to know.

The first one strikes you in the torso for a total of 11 damage. Okay. The other one hits you for a total of eight damage. Is that the halved or? No, we can choose to have one. except to you. You choose a 12. So it was 11? Yeah, so it would be six. Okay, six and eight. Okay, 14.

14 points of damage. If these job was just hit you're like, oh, that's right. They have range. Right. You can immediately see one of the trolls goes. You know that feeling when you hear one interesting thing, and suddenly you want to know more. Well, that's the idea behind my podcast, something you should know. Every episode starts with a question you've probably never thought to ask,

like why people do or don't like. you, why certain habits stick, or what everyday advice is actually wrong. I'm Mike Herruthers, and I talk with scientists, authors, and experts, and I keep it practical, surprising, and fun to listen to. If you've got a curious brain, come try one episode of something you should know on the podcast app you're listening to right now. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter? Some lighter music here. Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries?

The show that jumped started all of our love of true crime. I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics?

New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast. Lunge is forward and slashes the litch passing through its form. He lunges at the lich? Yeah. Sweet! Lunge us through and kind of loses its footing for a second, stops and kind of looks, anger turns around and starts slashing at it again.

I'm not like any on the fake ground? Yes. Yeah, he's like red at the edge because I can't throw the cards on the background. Yeah. So the troll kind of steps forward and he's right there. The troll turns around and starts slashing. The other one goes right for the veteran and goes running right off the edge. Was that a troll?

That was a troll. Yes! The ogre goes running forward towards you. Yes. And they're just the speed. They're the first ones to get their dead. Duragard, tiny legs. Where's the role for initiative, man?

You're already back, you're at the bridge, you're the same, what are you doing? This is your reactionary point. We're just taking this, this isn't a battle. Yeah, now I'm backing it up, I'm running, man. All right, so you go charging back onto the bridge. As you go running, all right, the, both trolls and the ogre had just gone off the side.

Grimbing as they tumble into the darkness. I'm laughing as I run. Okay, didn't occur to me. About four Duragar also goes spilling over the side, screaming, as they tumble into the darkness. The rest of them stop and kind of look around. As that's happening, I start to pull back and float away, and I'm commanding all of my guys to come through the bridge,

because I can command them within 30 feet. So now they're all within 30 feet of me, retreating as well. OK. As this is happening, you can now see some of the members of the Dura Guard that are now at the edge are some of the elite guard with the black and army you saw. They both kind of step forward and put their foot out, feeling for purchase.

You have a nod, pull out their swords, and start hacking at the bridge immediately. Oh, shit. All right, taking a shot. Can we, does our aim reach, our range attacks? Do they reach? He's got it. Huh? Do we want to be a serious penalty?

I'm not. You don't, because you... I'm taking that shot because I can shoot forever. Go for it. I'm on tying the carpet quickly. Um, oh, for the love of God and all that is holy. Oh, no. Miss fire, I got it.

I can just try, right? Go ahead and roll. As you, you're disadvantaged. Yeah, it's so hard. So, Eric, she's up. You, and there's a slight delay, and you wonder, why isn't it working, and this horrible explosion sound bursts out as you can now see black and red smoke pouring out

the front of the barrel of bad news, and it burns your hands for a second. You're like, ah, shit, take a second. All right, so I gotta stop and clean. Yeah, however, because you were unable to halt that, Both of those Duregard take shots of the bridge. Both hit with their swords. Are you on the carpet back?

Good on. As you're running and pulling the carpet out, the bridge cut clean against the fall out from under you. Okay. You go pulling out the bridge. Appomatics check? You're doing dex saves. This is going to go ahead and be a dex check now.

You've got advantage. You do. Good, because the first roll was a one. The second one was a 19 plus. Plus plus nine is 28. Oh my god. All right. You pull out the carpet.

As you're going to set it down, as you feel the bridge we're getting to give out from under you, you feel this creepy sensation pushing towards the back of your head. You guys looking across, you can see now a familiar cloaked figure has emerged. Clean your gun! Clean your gun! Go ahead and make a willpower saving set. I survived a free fall and you hit me with that right after.

Yeah, will save? Willpower save. So that's, what is it? I've never done that. That's... I said the top of your sheet above your stats or the right of your stats. Oh, it's your wisdom, sorry. Oh, wisdom, okay. Wisdom. Oh, shit. Not very good. Seven. Seven. Oh no. As you are running and get the carpet out, you leap onto it.

and your whole sense and awareness of your surroundings just fades from you. You feel your entire body, go numb for a second, and you just feel yourself falling. Holy! Oh, falling. Falling back. I go get it.

29, deck save. Okay, you go and swoop down, fly. You manage to. Is he conscious? He's just staring up at this moment. Very good. Go, I go just to touch him. I'm not trying to pull him up.

Good? No. What? Try to grab him. Fly. He's like super. Cast flying on him? All right. He's, oh, fly, damn it.

He is still just kind of standing there, not doing anything. As you finish casting the fly spell, your fly spell dissipates because it's a concentration spell, you might have one at a given time. Wait, you're unconscious? I don't know what I'm not. Yeah, he's just been thinking. He's like, gotta-a-tile. Okay, well then I don't do that because you can't fly yourself. So I do grab it instead.

Okay. You grab him as his whole weight goes on to you. What's your strength? Oh my God. It's been nice to know you lazy. 12. No, no, no, no. Go ahead and make an athletics check.

Come on Tiberius. Can we see all this happening off to the side? Tasset. Teal it. Tapping really fast. Oh, yeah, you saw that. Oh, shit, could I use... Oh!

That's 21. 21. You rush down, diving, you grab the back of his armor. As you yank up on him, managed to just pull him across and get to the other edge. The flying carpet, however, has plummeted down. Oh, you unconscious, bastard! However, Tiberius swoops up.

You guys just see them both plummet into darkness, and then flying up at the edge of the cross on your side. Tiberius clutching your brother, currently just staring off into space. Drop him down to the ground of the dull side. The bridge slaps onto the side of the cavern. I run over to Bax, and I am trying to figure out what's wrong. The magic carpet is done.

It just disappeared into the darkness below. Oh, don't. I have to erase it. But that was on, that was like to get across the castle. Yeah, it was spiked. I loved that carpet. Damn it. About a minute passes or so,

and you come back your senses. Oh, good. I gotta, I gotta go get the carpet. Thank you. Have I cleaned my gun? Slapping with my age. What happened? What happened?

I mean, do we leave? No. They're still across there, aren't they? What you can see, across the way, there's a bunch of them just kind of standing at the edge. I want to take a shot at the... At the... Noodle face. Okay, go for it. Oh man.

Right in the noggin. He can control you. He can be careful the eye, man. Not from that distance, I would think. Who knows? His sniper rifle goes about it. That's a 23. Okay. Go ahead and roll damage. That's from across the way. You're just resounding.

Uh, yeah. That don't suck. 20 points of damage. 20 points of damage. Nice. You just see this blast of red and flame across the way, and the figures just knocked off its feet. About 10 feet back.

Can you shoot him again? Yes. It's just a carnival game for Percy at this point. At this point in time, you can now see all the rest of the dirt are looking about, and they're all backing away from the cliffside. We come to the bridge is just dangling off the side now. But we're all on the goblin side and that's- You're all the goblin side and the bridge is just dangling down into

Matrix-Argent. Who wants to have a picnic? So how many are over there? You only saw the one. And how many Dorgan are left? How many? Yes, how much left after all? After all that and you saw a few more kind of filter out from the town like that, there was

probably about 25 visible at that moment that have all... I'm gonna hang on him visually, and I'm gonna wait to take another shot until he tries to stand up again. Okay. So if he tries to stand up again, I wanna shoot him again. Okay.

But wait, you can shoot him while he's on the ground, can't you? It's so much more fun to wait. You can shoot him, but it's disadvantage. You should something. Is he on the ground? Yeah. Technically got covered.

It'll be fun at this point. The moment passes and he kind of drifts back up. Take another shot. Taking another shot. Come on for a scene. Like such an asshole. Fish in a barrel. Come on, Bon Rollo.

15. 15. Unfortunately does not get it. Oh. At that distance, with the darkness, it's very hard to make a beat arm at that point. So you just fires off. You can now see it drift away, and all the rest of the dirt are now retreating into the city. And...

Maybe we can, can we walk up and see if we can find another bridge? Well, I'm figuring it out. So you walk over to the edge and you kind of look across the sides, make it be a bit of perception check. I'll assist. Oh, 20. No, no, no, assistant scene. Yeah.

Never. Natural 20. Yeah. Plus. Plus my perception? My perception is six. You glance over the side and looking down, you can see the bridge is just kind of like drifting from the air that's flowing and you can just see the, and it's not like the whole bottom floor

is all lava. There's just streaks of it pouring down from whatever the interior of this lower chasm is. You see at the edge of the rope bridge, which goes down for a good 150, 200,000, feet or so, dangling, and there's a tiny little flicker of material wrapped up in the ropes of the rope ridge. Oh, my God. It's the carpet. It's the carpet.

We have an infinite rope. We have infinite rope. Wait. I'm going to tie it to myself. Wait, hold on. Is it still, it's just at the end of the, all the way down there? So I fly down there and go good. Yeah, that makes sense.

It's still in the facts. Okay, watch out for that warm air or whatever that was. So, ooh, you're right. I take up, I took away from me. I take on an empty bottle. While I do this, we're right. You glide down along the base of the cut rope bridge, and there, just barely hanging on by just haphazardly falling

and tangling itself in the ropes as the flying carpet. As you float down, you now get a little bit of a better view as your staff is lit. You can see about another 150 feet down below you, a little bit of reflection of your light. currently just kind of rippling and shifting. It's water down there? It appears to be some sort of water surface below you,

about 50 feet down. I thought there was a lot. There are street from lava pouring, like the ceiling and portions of the wall, but it's all just kind of pouring down it and pulling at the edges and then cooling. So there's a river, I've got another here. And you can see the waterfall, it's cascading over the side,

is currently rushing past you about 30 feet to your right, and it seems to be a river. splashing into this pool below. Oh, look. I retrieves the magic carpet. You grab the magic carpet, roll it up, make the way back up. Here you are.

By the way, cool stuff down there. It's actually not lava. It's water, believe it or not. Water, how far down from the bridge? It's about 150 feet from the bridge, but it's about 1,000 feet down all the way. We could traverse down somehow, and I I think it would be a nice place to go explore.

Um, place to go explore. Especially because we have nothing else to do. Well, you go to the camp and go kick some, I don't know. We can't get over there. We have a carpet now. Oh, that's right. Yeah, but we go over one at a time.

Fly me down with you. The thing is, like, the three of us can fly now. The thing is, we know that deeper down is where they've gone. Yes, that's true. So probably it'd be best to go down. We could have avoided all of this bullshit if we could. I don't want to fight.

I don't want to fight that guy. If there's more than one of them, of these though he's gone to his friends right now I mean if we can it'd be good to put this guy in the ground I'm all for going going okay there's a town back there but have that I protect take Percy would you love to come oh all right I I have to ride the carpet down to the bottom with Percy and Tiberius well I whoever's going down should be on the carpet because I can still fly so I don't need it all right so the two you got on the carpet you drift down you're going to

make your way down this giant clavos. As you get down, the air gets warmer and warmer, and you begin to see as you come down a good 600 feet now at this point into this much larger space in the one that you guys are currently above. It's like a giant triangular open cavern down here. It kind of funnels up into where the bridge was. Do I see any, like, tunnels or areas that look like it leads

some place of interest? As you look down, there is definitely a large pool of water that leads off into a few other underground rivers that spill off into the mountain sides itself. There are sections of the wall where lava is pouring out where there seems to be some sort of a vent or some sort of an opening into some magma reserve and there are about three of them that are pouring out and kind of drifting down. One of them is pooling and cooling as it hits the water and it's just kind of this perpetually growing mass of slow growing rock. There also appears to be one that is just continuing a flow that leads kind of back in the direction where you guys came, but I'm just a very much

underneath. There's one big lava pool that is spilling, and then giving a little bit of light to the inside of a tunnel that continues further down at a decline. The opposite side. Lava tunnels? What are you crazy? I'm sorry.

Keep going. On the opposite side, you can see there's a small outcropping and a smaller waterfall that is pouring out of the side of the mountain. Like another sea is now meeting the river underneath, and that it's just kind of cascading out from the side of the rock, dropping about 30 or 40 feet, hitting the edge of the rock pool.

On Cthulhu side, you're talking? On Cthulhu side, yeah. I take, I think we should do that. I say, Tiberius, give me some light. And I take and I cast control water, and I just take the water in the bottom of the pool, and I bend it and I part the pool, and I take it, and I cascade it all the way

out following the lava flows. Okay, just so you're aware, the pool is about 600 feet across. I can like part C's with this. Right, so you can part elements out of it, but like it is a large, large, large body of water. Okay, well I'm taking, okay, I don't necessarily part it, but I take the water and I draw it up,

cascading along the edges, following all the lava streams, going into the tunnels. Okay, the thing you notice is there are two trolls in Nova currently trying to stay afloat as one of them just pulled under the water. Gets pulled under? Yes. You begin moving the water to the sides,

and you begin to cool some of the lava flows. You can see the glowing red magma begin to cool to a dark black and become solid. As it does, you can see parts of it crack as the magma is still pushing out, but you're definitely staunching the flow. I'm going to kind of push it. There you said there was a tunnel kind of going up

into the Cthuloo side? There is a tunnel that seemed, or the opening leads to the back, and there's a waterfall that is pouring out from that side. Waterfall. There's a waterfall. There's a waterfall. The waterfall. It's not a lava flow.

flow is going down the opposite direction. But there's like a tunnel kind of carving out that way? Yeah, like a large opening that continues further down. Okay, I take all of the water and I really just concentrate and I gather just a big tube and I push it down that tunnel. Okay, so the best, the water that you gather from this, you force into a quick geyser in that direction as it sprays across the front. You can see it begins to cool some of the magma. It's a pretty hefty flow. You manage to slow it and you do cool parts of it, but it's going to be dead.

It's going to be difficult and take you a while if you're just constantly pushing water on it to give the flow any sort of serious stop. You don't notice the lava flow doesn't coat the entire floor of the tunnel. Just aside of it. It's almost like there's some portion of it is walkable adjacent to the lava. We can also not go in the not lava cave, Keeleth. I'm sorry that lava cave just looks important. I know because of the lava. Yeah.

Let's go to the others. What's the fountain is just a lava cave. I fly back up. Guys, blah, blah, blah. So here's my thoughts. The other troll pulled beneath the other. Yeah, so I don't want to go down there where there's something eating trolls.

Yeah, let's not go down there where there's things eating trolls. Why don't we just... In the water? Is that something? Yeah. In the giant water pool. Wait, but we're going to have to go down eventually. Maybe.

Why? No. Okay. Why do we have to go to them? There's nothing that we need down there. But across is the way it is a 25-man battle with a huge Nazi boss. Well, everybody keeps saying that everything is deeper and deeper, so I think we're going to have to go deep down.

I agree with Vex on this one. Well, hold on. All those arseals are still standing on the edge across there. Do we have, we've flown out of a falling tower before. We were all able to do it. Can we just fly up and over those shitheads and go towards the tunnel? Not with the eye of that mine, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. What do you? Can we go? 150 feet in the air and I think you were at least 150 feet across that bridge. It can grab us from there. We can try. I was on the bridge

when that happened fell down. I wasn't way above. But the bridge was like 250 feet across, right? Right. You were about loosely 80 feet across when it got you. When it got me and you said it's 150-ish feet in here though? To the ceiling? To the ceiling it's about 150 feet. Yeah. I go whoop. Whoop. But the tunnel

They have range weapons as well. I think we should go down. But what is down there? Can we go find out? Kima! You can drop me like a dead dog. But there's no sign of anything intelligent down there other than something that's eating trolls underwater.

It could be just giant whales down there. We have no idea. There's no sign of humans at all. It's lava and death animals. Maybe, okay, can I go down there and look in one of the tunnels? Oh, I'll go deeper. Can I look in one of the tunnels and see if I find tracks? If I do, can we go over?

that way. I've got a flying carpet. There's tunnels that don't have lava. And I can control water for at least an hour. So down there, there's a big cool water. A tall going towards the My Player's side with no lava. Exactly. And then there's another cave with lava.

There is a tunnel that we can walk in. Let's go away from it. Let's see if there's anything resembling tracks. I'll go back. That a way I can cool lava as we go. Please, Camden. Let me look for tracks. Please. Tracks in a river.

Tracks in a tunnel. It's not a tunnel. It is. There's water flowing in it. There is on, in a giant cavern, there is, towards the side of where you guys kind of entered, underneath where you first came in. There is a descending large tunnel,

of which there are a series of lava flows that kind of pool into one river of lava that covers half of that path of that. In the direction of Goblin town. Correct. Towards the other side, the cavern ends, and there is a waterfall pouring out of the side of the wall. Can't go in there.

That just kind of flows down. So there's a cavern opening? Well, there is essentially a hole where water is pouring out of it. Can't go in there? We can go in there? There's water pouring out of it. I can make that stop happening. What would we find in a tunnel with water pouring out of it?

It's not like anything lives up there. I would much rather face random beasts who are just random beasts than mine fliers who can suck my brain out. There would be no random beasts. Yes, but Kima did not fall prey to random beasts. She felt prey to these. All right, fine. Let's do whatever you guys want to do.

I think, I don't think of boss battle. I don't think we can fight this guy in bed. Vote. Vote for fuck sake, vote. Put it to it, boat. Yes. All right, all in favor of going to the Duregar village and facing the giant fucker.

Up and over, up and over. Or up and over, or at least getting past it. That direction, that's four of us. All in favor of going into the lava flows. Waterholes. Waterholes. Waterholes. Tiberius you haven't voted

A joconian Does not vote It's not vote It's four against us anyway We had to go that way I don't hope I don't believe in our system Anyway that's none of your business Are you a communist?

Okay Now Tiberius can fly Kieleth is an eagle who can carry a gnome And maybe my sister And that leaves Percy and Grog and I On the flying carpet Can I hold our weight

Let's keep on the train It's going to the tunnel. No, they're nothing to be very hand. Can't wait, wait, wait. Why can't, why can't Vax and I just at least go check it out before we do this? You lost the vote, you lost the vote.

I think we should go. Let's do it. Let's do it. We're going. All right. So, wait, you guys, you ladies hop on the flying carpet? Yes.

As you guys are discussing this. Wait, you're stealing a flying carpet? We're just checking it out. We're coming back. We're coming back. They're coming back. Just wait and hit goddamn minutes. They shout as they disappear into the darkness below the cavern.

The mind flier isn't on pause. Wait, I have a lantern. Okay. Yeah, because I have an engineering. Oh, cool. All right, so you put your lantern as the two-go going down towards the water. The rest you're going to stand at the edge of the river. Jesus.

I take the water flow. I take the river flow, the water's flow is coming out. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the mineflayer said, I haven't done all day. All right. So as you guys float down, the two trolls that were missing, the ogres is not anywhere to be seen.

There's just a slight ripple. We don't want to land. We just want to go to the tunnel. As you staunch the water supply of this waterfall, it just kind of holds it in place. Enough of the force of the water coming out is being balanced by the force

you're putting back on it. It's just kind of holding it there. Can you lower the water? However, as the water vanishes beneath where the waterfall was, you can see an actual small tunnel that's carved into the mouth rot. Fuck, oh, no.

Oh, bitches. Oh, my god, have there. We don't know anything yet. We don't know. Let's go into the tunnel. Let's go into the tunnel. Meanwhile back up top, I'm saying, they're not going to find anything. Yeah.

I'm going to find it. And I'm agreeing with Scanlan and I am mooning. And I'm, so I'm stelfing. Let's stealth. Let's be very quiet. Hold on. You turn into an animal? Oh, I can.

I go into a Black Panther farm. Scanlan, remember when we have women in this past. And I stealth. Both of you guys roll stealth. Panthers have like advantage of the stealth check. 16, 13, so 16 plus whatever. 15. The decks of the panther is.

Plus, no, it's whatever the deck does. It's gonna be like, it's gonna be like 20 or something like that. All right, you guys, you guys move, are you staying on the carpet? No, we're like hopping down at the carpet and I just want to look around the tracks. I take the carpet. Okay, and then I bring it up while I tell them all that stuff. Okay, so you go back down. You took our carpet?

Because they needed to get down here as well. Oh, we're going, okay, you guys are joining us, aren't. I was following. We were scouting. I'm just looking for tracks right now, Tiberius. Yeah, and I followed you, saw what was going on, took your carpet, and I'm giving it back to you. So as you guys are-

You can't take our carpet, we're on the carpet. Oh, you guys just stepped off the carpet, she said. And you transformed and began stealthing in. Oh, that's right, you do transform. You turn around and see Tiberius has rolled up the carpet and is currently taking it away. You gotta fuck. So you guys are now at the bottom of this crevasse,

Tiberius disappears into the darkness. Okay, we'll go ahead and roll. This would be survival for tracking. Just kind of get an idea of things or anything around you see. 16. 16. You do see some scratches into the mud off the surface there that lead into the tunnel.

You see drag marks. You see some footprints, and that's the best you can make out at this point in time. But the footprints appear to be a dwarven or dwarf size in nature. Can I do a nature check to see what the scratch marks look like? They look like any type of beast? The scratch marks are across the ground, and it looks like just like fingers being pulled through.

Any type of residue, any type of slime. No, you can tell, no. Can we see where the tunnel leads? From where you can see, there's no light source in there. Oh, we have the light. So you take the lantern, you put it inside. The tunnel goes back about 25 feet and then stops. It's just a little alcove.

You see within the tunnel, a series of skeletons or bodies that are partially decomposed. Oh, God. And you see what looks like a pile of rags in the corner. Oh. So we could either run or loot. No, go check it out, ladies. Meanwhile, I know.

Be thorough. No, no. They're not going to find it. They're not going to find it. They're telling us not to be stupid because we don't have support. Should we be stupid? Brog says yes. Okay, here's the thing.

I remember another situation very similar to this. It was terrible. And it was the layer of one of those umber hulks. Right, why don't we just go back maybe to the entrance of the tunnel? No, no, no, no. No, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. I think we found the layer of an umberhubhawk.

Are you sure? It's very, like the actual tunnel is maybe about five to eight feet across. It would not be able to fit an umber hulk if it was still. Oh, really? Can I, like, go along with a little? the walls very stealthily and see if I can find any opening, anything else? As you step inside, you put your hands across the walls. Oh, no.

What you do notice is the walls are solid, disappears to have been carved out over time, and as you move in, you begin to see the rags and the pile of rags, there's less a pile of rags and more some sort of humanoid curled up on the inside, unconscious, asleep or dead, not moving. What do they look like? What do they look like? You can't tell from here. It's just like kind of go in there.

I'm not there. Can I save against muddness? I'm holding my ear. I feel away with the mugged. We don't have one, dude. I think you might. What do we do? It's not saving.

You don't have a guy. I think you should turn into an eagle. Can she turn into something big enough that can carry me? Uh, she can. Yeah. A giant eagle, I believe you can. Yeah. What if you turn into something big enough that it can carry me?

I hop on your back, and then we throw something at it, and then fly away. Why you guys are having this conversation, because you're talking to each other. We were talking really quietly. The thing in the corner kind of rouses and then shoots up out of sudden fear movement looking about. You see, dressed in rags, you guys are seeing this for the first time, but it's familiar. Smooth head, purplish and blue in color, a series of tentacles in its mouth, a giant scar drawn across one of its eyes,

and it looks filthy, and it looks desperate. And it just, and looks at the two of you. And you hear a sudden voice in your minds. Oh, fuck. No movement. This conversation say, Oh, you. It's a real.

I dropped to my knees and I look at him, and I just say, It's okay, we're friends. It puts up a hand like this and you see there's a flicker of arcane energy and a barrier appears between you and this creature and just looks... I take my druid craft and I just make a little flower. A nice pretty little tulip. And I...

Oh, it's frozen. I lay it at the edge of the barrier. Make a persuasion check. With disadvantage. With disadvantage, okay. Um, nine. Okay, Naito. Do you have not a...

No, I'm not a very charismatic person. It just holds its place, and the voice once again hits your mind and says, Did you find me? What is your purpose here? I fly back down. No, no, no, no, no, no. We don't mean to disturb you. of you, great Sire.

You will die if you try anything. We're not going to... I will not fall here. I will not die here. We mean to help you. We mean to find our way out and find our friend. We don't want to die either. Please.

Who did this to you? We can help you. Let's not die together. You can see, as you get better look at it, it definitely has a large scar across part of its face. part of its face. And it looks to be wearing reminence of a robe similar to what Scanlon was describing. However, it is tattered, it is dirtied, sullied by the elements and God knows where other liquids.

It also has this strange kind of metallic skull cap that's currently placed around its head. And it's just, it's not to slay you where you stand. Against your brethren, who did this to you? There's a slight change in movement. you just feel, make a persuasion check. Roll the shit out of that near diet. Come on, facts. The barrier flickers, anticipates.

It reaches over and grabs a, looks like a gnarled stick and pulls itself up onto its legs. Now, it looked like a small, miniscule creature is now, even in this terrible hunch that its form is, is standing extremely tall, like scraping the top of this maybe eight foot tall ceiling at this tunnel. takes a step forward and says. Found the right motley crew.

Would you like to come with us like to leave this cavern, meet our friends? We have friends. It kind of gives you both a look and you hear this there's a slight lurching to it as it gives this horrible guttural. A long time I take to heart but agnol Understand. Take me to you. Tiberius?

Yes. Maybe you could sing that fucking carpet back down. I'll be right there. I was trying to get the rest of the pot of here, but everyone's being buttholes. And I fly back down with the carpet. We take him down with the carpet. At the edge of this opening, you see Keelith,

you see Vex both emerge with a horrible tentacle face in all the being with the staff coming out, coming out with them. Hello? Um, Tiberius. Oh, did you make a friend? What's it? See, friends.

Um, this is, what's your name? It looks about to you. Mr. Tiberius and says, ignoring your question. A persuasion to the arcane? Yes, I'm a sorcerer. I do all kinds of fun things with the arcane. Oh, very good. I'm always willing to learn.

Seems you are very powerful. My name. Can we call you clans? parents for sure No No Clor Spanish

Please Join us on the carpet Can he fit He's very thin She can fly I'll fly He can fly He can fly

It carefully Steps on with the carpet Once again like its tentacles Of I keep a bad distance Moving around its mouth and its eyes are constantly darting It looks extremely nervous and almost like a cornered animal that's just barely being coaxed on to this journey.

And you see with each step it takes, there's a slight flicker of archa of energy at the tip of its fingers, like it's just prepared for anything to go terribly wrong. Steps onto the carpet and goes, Oh yes, wonderful eyes. You could even maybe call them friends, even. Not just yet. It crosses its legs, sits in the carpet, holding its staff to its chest, on the far corner staring at all of you and says,

Go, now. Hold on tight. You guys make your way up to the top. Eventually, you see the carpet over the edge of the cross, come down to a rest as your party has now brought with you the stuff of nightmares. That's the thing that I saw in the village.

Turn it's laid off at this point, hovering about and you can see like this crackle of fire in its hand and it goes, No, no. I sat in between them, like, it's crazy. I'm like, it's great. These are the allies we speak up.

Please, friends. We are ourselves. We are not controlled. Don't use a whip, scandin. Sing a friendly song because he is our friend. Ally. To the guy. Ally. He's in a bit of a spot of trouble and we are going to help him get

revenge or something of the sort. Is a friend? Help. All right. Ally. Ally. Ally. Allie.

Yes. What's on your names? It kind of gives you this keen look of, the least person I expected to ask a question. It kind of hobbles forward its gnarled staff and says, I was cast out from my hive. I was cursed with the mark of the arcane.

We'll see that as an ill omen Has come to escape its mental grasp And it reaches up and taps the metal on its head Oh Tinto helmet This is the guy we've needed this whole time But my people So if we find this creature we might be able to free your hive as well

Nice, nice, good. I might free my people. Sense motive. Oh, yeah. Can we sense motive on me? You definitely can. Oh gosh. I would do it, but... We should also have him help us in your...

I'll put this at a group sense motive right now. Yeah. All right. I don't roll. I roll 14. What do we add to it? Uh, whatever... Well, tens motive in this would be your insight.

Inside. 24. 18? 16. 14. Natural one. Four. Four. 16. 16. Okay. You're a people person. Through your intense grasping of this creature's disposition best you can

as alien and unfamiliar as its mannerisms and speech and interests may be, you get the feeling that it's speaking out of desperation and it's speaking out of genuine interest. You peaked it with the hint of revenge. You've peaked it with the idea of alliance as opposed to being alone. You get the feeling that it speaks the truth. It genuinely is asking for your help

in freeing its people from whatever is influencing their current actions. Clorota. What's his name? Clorota. Can we just call him Clarence? Clarets! Clarech!

Clarech! We are very much interested in being allies with you. might we have your word that upon defeating this creature we will be safe and as a symbol of our dedication to you

I'd love to play you just a little bit of a song that might heal some of those wounds and scrapes that you seem to have all over your body it gives you the dirtiest look you've ever received it was because of the arcane it's a pretty good song Make a persuasion check.

Come on, Bert Reynolds. Oh, 17. It takes a sudden step forward towards you. It's tentacles... It better be good. When I get that feeling, I want Clarota healing. Clara.

Healing is something that's good for you. Oh, ooh, ooh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh. Mega persuasion. No, no, this is right. A performance check. A performance check.

18. Oh, shit. We all got to move. In spite of itself, it stands there still glaring at you. But at the corner of your eye, you swear you see its toe tapping. It then kind of His tentacles Withdraw

And in such a way that gets you Kind of off put And the song comes to a halt And is I've not heard a song There's many more where that came And that's where we're going to go ahead We all know

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