Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Vox Machina Ep. 32 - Against the Tide of Bone

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Vox Machina are exhausted, facing an undead army, and preparing to storm Whitestone Castle! Thankfully they’re about to get some help from an old friend…   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. Party of Oxmachina having traveled across Taldore to the city of Whitestone to seek a pair of seemingly vicious and evil individuals known as Lord and Lady Briarwood. Members of the past that Percy's family fell to also many years ago, leaving what he thought was the sole survivor to the Dorolo family. Upon coming to White Stone, finding its people

downtrodden and oppressed by the Briarwood rule, as well as the cutthroats and mercenaries that they had brought along with them when they took the city, now given lordship and plots of land and rule over this entire town, the word began to spread of possible new rebellion as you charged through the town leaving burned marks, burned houses, and very, very slaughtered people in the process, very bad people.

As these murmurs began to continue to roll and coalesce, you spoke to a number of individuals in the city that were involved in previous failed rebellions and seemed to build up what may be the last chance for Whitestone. As part of this information was revealed, that Percy's thought dead sister Cassandra still existed within the castle and had been what people thought the only living

Dorolo and Bastion of Hope in the city. Now there were two. Upon triggering the initiation of this, the party split. Scanlon Shorthaled running to one of the nobles, all the rest of the party went to the other to set a diversion at the same time. It may not have worked as intended, but it definitely worked as it worked as we had an epic Bard versus Goliath rainstorm rooftop showdown. And the rest of the party made their way into Kentelieri's home, destroyed his vampire itself, and got some information out of the guards before escaping into the town, which has

now gone into chaos. Many of the townsfolk have become the militia that they've been preparing to be. Armored with whatever they could find, they managed to take down a number of the large, revolking zombie giant guardians throughout the city. Many lives were lost in the process, and the battle is ongoing. As you rushed towards the center of the town to check in on the sun tree, finding all the previous bodies that resembled the members of Oxmachina cut from its bows, you saw swarming in towards the center of the city a large horde of skeletal undead clattering forth into the dark. As the sun has now set over the horizon, the rain beginning to pour heavily under the center of the town. There was efforts meant to keep the army at bay as you all rush towards the west to escape the immediate fray, and that was where we left off the last session.

Shit. We fucking run. Are we still running? Are we still running away? Or are we already? We just got to the tree line, right? You guys haven't got the treeline yet. No. We are getting out of town. There's a shitload of skeletons behind us. Are they like right behind us?

I'm still writing Trinket. Giants. At this time you are on Trinket, but we are on Trinket, but we are on Trinket, but we're still The rest of you are running through the muddy streets. Your feet are slick against the ground, and you have to catch yourself every now and then from not tumbling forward. Dust of trees, yes.

Are the skeletons still behind us? Can we see them? As you glance over, they're just now starting to pour from the town square itself. And it was hard to see the exact number, but it was, from your perspective, in the darkened, just post-sunset light, you didn't see the end of it.

Triple digits. Possible. Possibly, from what you can tell, in the middle of the chaos and rushing. There was a zombie giant behind you that did manage to finish off some of the villagers before coming after you. In your hasten escape, through the help of a few of you individuals, you managed to tear it down, slaughtering it as it gave chase through the city street. As you guys are now looking behind and seeing this undead horde pouring into the central road that you're traveling along, you hear a voice ring out from the other direction, towards where you guys are running.

For a second, it's hard to make out what it is, but the voice is suddenly readily familiar. It says, there, run, Ethan! And as you guys glance away from the army and back towards the path where you're traveling, you see what looks to be about 10 armed villagers, you know, various pieces of armor, some nicer than others, some have seen some, you know, use over time,

but nevertheless serviceable and functional. You see at the front of them, Brother Yennon, I'm sorry, Keeper Yenen is at the front of them armored up, shielded his side, holding a loft of the holy symbol of Verathis in his hand, and they're all just running towards you guys. We can't leave? No, can I feel the hard on Trinket and try to cast conjure barrage at the incoming skeleton? You can probably slow down to do that because you're good like 50, 60 feet away from them a little further. You guys are moving faster than them, so even the chase, they're not very quick entities.

So we're 50 or 60 feet away from the skeletons, and how far are we away from the villages? They're about 100 feet from you in closing. I would advise bringing them with us instead of stopping. But all the villagers that aren't in armor are still in town. Shit happens. Let's find out what happened.

I'm going back towards the skeletons. You're making it. I was carrying you. You're on Trinket with me, aren't you? Can he carry both of us? No, I was pulling about. Shut. I break from Vax's grass and start running back.

Uh, go ahead and make. This is Hempily breaking a grapple. This is hithmetz. I do want to trail back a little on Trinket and try to cast conjure barrage as we're running. Okay, so Trinkett against a turn around. You're fighting. It would be either acrobatics or athletics

versus your athletics. Athletics. Ooh, I've rolled 18. Five. With that, the slick rain across her forearms, she squeaks her arm out from your grasp, and with that moment, you feel her disappear as she rushes back towards this undetive line.

I never could keep a lady. I immediately pivot around and follow it. Ditto. I start conjuring up a fourth level flaming sphere. Okay, do you keep in mind, you still have call lightning coming. So you'd be losing the call lightning this time. Flaming sphere. Okay, so with that, the darkened clouds that had gathered

begin to slowly disperse as you begin to focus, running forward. As you are charging, using the momentum, the air around you begins to slowly grow and ignite before a ball of flame bursts into your peripheral and you can control it at will. Okay, how far away is the horde? At this point now, they're about 30 feet away. Since you went right back towards them, is supposed to running away. Am I in front of her or is she?

You're now just, you gave chase shortly after she ran off. So you guys are about tandem, you'll probably. Okay, here's my question. Are they like funneling down one main street? How wide is that street? About 20 feet. Okay, with kind of my flaming sphere hovering above me, I'm gonna throw up a wall of stone.

Cohn, wait, not before I shoot my conjure barrage, because I said I wanted to fucking do it before you get that. Did a contra barrage first. All right, so contra barrage, what will- Contra barrage first? Don't fucking block my arrows. What's the distance on conjure barrage? I think it's a 60-foot cone. Okay, then yeah, then you can definitely attempt that.

Yeah. Okay. So as you create the sphere and it's kind of rolling to your side, as you begin to concentrate, look over your shoulder and you see, Trink it, running up, just mud slung as each one of his claws against digging into the earth, pulling them forward. Mugr on its back, you see Vex pull out an arrow, pull back and concentrate. The arrow itself seems to split and shatter in her hand,

almost like the wood itself divides into five or six different shards. Awesome. As you release the arrow, it bursts into a funneling cloud of sharp wooden splinters that just fires out from the front of you. What's the DC on that spell? It would be 15. 15 DC, and is that dex?

Dexterity, yeah. Dexterity. All righty. He's just got a roll for a hundred scalet. I know, no problem. The ones that are in range would be about 12 at that point. Only 12. Okay, so given the average of rolls there,

the explosion of splinters just shoots outward, just completely disintegrating the first row of about five or six of them. About five or six past them, get a bunch of splintering their bone, the ribcage of shatter open, and they, Try and move forward before they collapse in on their own structure and scatter into the mud. Let's say you destroyed 10 of them. Okay.

You can still see about 50 or 60 slow pushing towards you at this point in time. Keelith. Okay, throw up a wall of stone. Am I near the sun tree again? You guys, we've left the sun tree. You guys left the sun tree. You've gone westward, from your perspective,

westward across the city towards the tree line. And now are doubling back. You're now doubling back. At this point, however, the Undead Hore has filtered into the town square, and it's currently between you and the sentry. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I want to conjure it from underneath me, so I'm kind of,

as I see them filtering up, I want to pop it up right from underneath me to where I'm on top of it. Okay, and the width of it's gonna cover the entire street. Street. Yeah. Okay. Shosh, the wallstone lifts you up, and it's maximum height. What's the maximum height of that spell? Keep that cast hand.

10 feet, 10 feet. The head went down, the spells went away. 10 foot by 10 by 10 panels. Can you feed that? It's a change. I lost on my spells on my apps. I'm gonna use this book here. So 10 feet?

10 feet. All right, so you lifted 10 feet up into the air. Okay. You can now see, about to crash into the wall, what looks about 70 or so skeletons just scraping into it. You guys can all of suddenly hear, through the rainfall in the distance, the scratching of metal, shields and blades and bones scraping at the stone wall.

I'm going to try and climb the wall. So I'm going to take the fire sphere and just start funneling it right down and start cleaning house. Okay. On the wall? Just yeah, right into the thick mess of them. Okay. So as the flaming sphere begins to move over the wall, you've done your action and you can push that forward because the sphere moving through you would get to about your space.

So the next term we'll get to that. You guys have caught up to the wall now. The rest of you have turned around with her. Yeah, I ran for a few more feet, and then I looked around and no one else was running with me. So I just turned around and we started running back with my little known legs. Okay, okay.

Percy. I'm climbing the wall. Climbing the wall. Okay, you guys get up on top of the wall. It's about four or five feet thick. It's a little precarious, not too much to be going to bother to you guys. You get to the top and you look over and you

just see this sea of the wall. of thrashing about skeletful entities, some looking fresher than others, and all intent on trying to find some way. And you start to see some of them are starting to climb up over each other to get to the height of the wall. I'm just going to hold, and anybody who gets too close,

I'm just gonna take a shot at anything that gets too close. Okay. Can you see any giants from up there? Can I see any giants from up there? Like tips from Jay. While he's doing that, I'm yelling at wrong. Grong. But are they all dead?

Throw me up over the wall. No. Or at least to the top, to the top, to the top. I rolled the perception of 10. Oh, Jesus. The rain falls too thick. Right now your vision is so obscured that even beyond 50, 60 feet, it starts getting a little hard to make out details.

Are you sure? We don't want to play angry birds. I think we do. Who are probably running up at this point and yell, Fire! Bring fire! You see keepers? Fire won't help, but I can.

I can. Oh. And so can she. As he looks over her shoulder, you can see the villagers are parting, and there is running behind them. This form of a small humanoid armored entity, but glowing. Her actual form is comprised of glowing radiant energy. Like an actual avatar of Sarenrein, the form of a tiny gnome cleric, who's charging through the rain. Each droplet of rain that hits her body just immediately evaporates on impact, and she comes charging towards I'm reaching down to help her up on the top of the wall. Oh my God. Keel thinks she died. Keeleth thinks she's dead. Okay. I'm grabbing Percy's arm and lowering him down lower because she's short.

All right. As you guys reshunning, she runs up, Kibriyan reaches up and grabs on the arm as well as she gets up and the two of them together lift up on top. As you grab her arm, it's strange. It's warm to the touch, warmer than an actual arm, and it doesn't have full physical essence to it. essence to it. It's almost like she's partially an apparition of her physical self. There is, there is purchase, there is an actual form to it, but it doesn't feel fully solid. She's lost weight. I don't know. You look so thin. All right.

With that you lift her up and she's lighter than you recall and almost like a gentle feather of herself, she lands on her toes on the top of the wall. She was light already. I know. Pike? Even in full-hundred. Hi! Pike, did we die? Why?

How did you get here? What are you doing here? How did you get here? Oh gosh, it's a long story. I don't know if we can talk about it right now. Do we need to fight anything right now? Yes. Lots of skeletons.

You look down before you and there is a horde of skeletons that are right now about to crush the wall. You see two right now that are lashing at one reaches for your leg. I'm taking a shot. Okay, go for it. Can I have Trinket lift me, like stand up on his hind- and up against the wall. So I'd climb up and stand up. I percy.

You broke the gun? No, I rolled 20. Oh! Come on. I percy. All right, go ahead and roll damage. That's a 20. Okay.

I've ever sent him that D20. I, man, it's waited. It must be. It's hollow. It's hollow. All right, the metal on the side is thicker than the other side. 15 points of damage.

With the rocketing sound, the pepper box fires and the skeleton in front you just explodes into splinters of bone, just being scattered amongst the crowd of skeletons behind it. However the moment that one is gone, another one seems to already be crawling into its place. Whatever you're gonna do, do it. I'm firing again.

Okay, fire again. At this point, the flaming sphere is over, was it 24? 24. 11 points of damage. 11 points of damage. Ship fires and blasts off most of the skull of a skeleton, and you see his jaw kind of hangs open,

but it's still, firing one more time at it. That hit 1527, 7 points of damage. Okay, that one you clearly destroy the top of its skull. The rest of it just kind of couples into the pile and disperses into amongst the chaos. The horde though is down as almost like a wave of, like there's so much of it that's pushing up against the wall and getting to swell up to reach the top of the 10th foot wall. The flaming sphere rolls over the top and slams down into the front of the group as it hits and impacts. Go ahead and roll the damage.

I cast it at fourth level, so it's doing 5D6 right now. All right, and what's the... They have to make dexterity saving throws. Really? Wow. 139.9.20. I'm doing general roles for this. It pushes through 10 of them.

Seven of them are destroyed. The bone cinders and burns and then crumbles into itself. A few of them manage to just push out of the way, kind of like, watching as it rolls past. You can hear this constant pattering of rain evaporating against the flaming sphere as it pushes through the mud boiling left in its weight. As that's happening, you get up to the top,

it pushes you up on the top. I want to shoot lightning arrow down into the core of it that I can see, just a big group of them. Okay. Go for it. Okay. I want to go up there. Pike's up there. 16?

16. 16 definitely hits, yeah. Okay. And then that's, sorry, 2D8. I can't add, 4D8, there we go. Okay. 19. 19 damage?

Yeah. Okay, so the first one just takes full damage. It explodes as the lightning arcs of the air, the arrow hitting the central skeleton. You see the light actually burst into the hip-up its skull causing these kind of bluish green glow to shoot out of its eyes and mouth as it explodes and detonate sides. Everything within 10 feet.

Exactly, which would 10 feet total, that would be, wow. 16. Yeah. General saves on this. Yeah, you are. All right. So with that, this shockwave blasts outward and you see skeletons being thrown pieces of skeletons. You know, arms and weapons and pieces of shield and armor being flung in the air.

So you see 12 of them immediately disintegrate and explode around it. In that moment, though, the Horde pushes again and fills that gap almost instantly. You do see the end of it now at this point. It looks to be probably a total of 65 left in this section. Roll perception check. Oh, that looked like it was going to be awesome. Wasn't it? 11.

11? Okay. Don't worry about it. I look at Scanlan and I say, go get it. And I grab Scanlan by the back and I throw him up onto the wall. All right. boost. It's easy enough for 10 foot wall,

and then for a gnome. So with that, Scanlon leaps up and you land next to Pike. Hi, baby. It's been so long. Man, you look good. Oh, man, I'm so distracted by your beauty. Hey, let's kick some ass together, shall we? Keep some ass, come on, let's go.

And with that, both Scanlan and Pike, what do you guys want to do? Ladies first. Am I allowed to jump off? Can I jump off of the wall? of the wall. Oh, you can, yeah. Or each of the group?

Yeah. You can, yeah. I can, okay. Yeah. I kind of want to try, I kind of want to see what happens if I try to cast turn undead. Turn or destroy undead. You have access to both, technically.

Oh, man, okay. It's a 30-foot radius. I kind of want to see it. I kind of want to see it. I kind of want to see what it does. All right, so you should go make athletics. Check to see how far you can jump, if you don't mind. Okay.

What was the what checklist? Athletics. This is gonna be so badass. Ooh. Be so badass? Don't jigs it, don't jing it. Where we roll, play, we get. All athletics.

A 20 and then add your athletics. I think you can see us so much. I rolled a seven. And what's your athletics? Can I pick her up by the armor and throw her? It's a little late for that, unfortunately. Oh, oh. What's your total?

Hold on. Okay. He's getting the swing of a fence. I'm so sorry, you guys. I roll a 20 or I rolled a 10. Hold on. It's all good. Now's a 20!

Oh! She accidentally rolled a 10. Oh! So she was re-rolling for a D-20. And she rolled a dash of 20. That's pretty fun. Thank you for the translation. Yes.

Oh, yay! Okay then. Given that circumstance, there's a feather. In this semi-radiant form, you just hear back and leap into the air for a split second, you see with a flash of light, almost like these momentary feather angel wings,

just burst out of the shoulder of Pike. Angel wings. Flap once and then disperse into sparkling feathers that vanish under the rain. As Pike leaps out, landing 35 feet in the center of this, on top of a skeleton, You slide down its body as a shield pushes you off to the ground and you land on your feet. And as far as you can tell from your eye line, all you see are chattering skulls and blades around you for all visual perspectives and a little bit of the skyline above you, a little bit of the clouded night sky.

So Pike, are you going to use your action to destroy undead? Okay. Wow. Come on, Pike. Oh my gosh. What's your spell? C.C. Then you spell page? It is 16. 16? Good to know.

It's wisdom. There minus one wisdom. There's like 80 skeletons he has to roll for us, so... He's rolling a gazillion times, Ashley. Roll. Roll. Little pumpkins. These are general say. I just take hearing a thud.

Yeah? Yeah. It's gonna be like a knife through butter. I can't believe he's rolling this many times. times. I know. Okay. Okay.

So as you see all the skeletons begin to reach for you and their blades come pulling down towards your armor, you curl into a ball, clutch your holy symbol of Sarenrae, and through the connection that has allowed you to be here in this moment, you feel this welling of radiant energy just burst out from you and this shock wave of glowing radiant force, just blasts out blast outward for that entire blast wave radius, which would be the entirety of this road leading back for about 60 feet. You end up turning to ash roughly 36 of these skeletons. Just the rain itself is disintegrated by the sudden wave of heat, and there's just a cloud of ash that turns to muddied. immediately against the rain and slams against the nearby buildings, slowly dripping down the sides. Pieces of metal armor just go slamming to the ground, rolling

to piles and piles of currently unused weapons. Our jaws are dusted. Yeah. As you look up, you can see the remainder of the horde, which you're looking at probably about at this point, 20 or so skeletons still pushing forward at this point, just mildly rushing towards the closest thing they can see, which is this glowing beacon of a gnome in the center of the street. Oh my gosh. All right, so that's, Scanlon, what do you want to do? By the way, can I just say, that's my girlfriend, you just did.

I have to go to her aid. How close are the skeletons that are approaching her right now? They're going to be acting after this, so they're about 30 feet away from her. So just outside of the radius of her spell. Okay. I'm going to, she jumped 30 feet. 55 feet out there? She did, yes.

Can I do that? If you want to try. She wrote the natural 20. Jesus, that was hot. She's going to natural 20 on my first roll. That is amazing. It's all happening, you guys. It won't happen for the rest of the game,

but that's okay. Yeah, I'm gonna try to jump to her. Okay. Go to limber up first. Stretch out the cast. It's gonna go so poorly. Ready. That's 20 for love.

Can watch. For love, yeah, four. Is this acrobatics or athletics? That's an eye. The wall itself is slick, and as you push down, you lose your traction in the front. It doesn't cause you to fall per se, but you manage to get 10 feet off the actual wall,

landing with a foot in the dirt, and Pike, Still 25 feet away from you. Okay. Do I still have a move, or is that my move? I'm gonna say that's gonna be your move. Okay. Shit. How many are in my line of sight? The 20 or so that are left are currently 55 feet from you and beyond.

And are they clumped together by any chance? They are, they're very clumped together. Oh, great. Friends are turned to ash, and they're now starting to climb over the armor to find their way towards the- Okay. Then I'm gonna get them. cast lightning bolt on them. Will I hit Pike? Is she in my line of fire? Not if you angle it towards the edge. I will angle it then.

All right, so. Oh, and also, lightning bolt comes from out of my body. Out of your body in a straight line. Can I, can it come from my cock region? What? If you would like to. I would like it to just spew forth out of my gonads just at that. That is, of course. Of course you do. I'm trying to impress Pike. I got a lightning. An arcane display of virility, if ever there was one. Scanlan does a singular classic ancient technique

of the arcane thrust. And with such a bolt of energy goes firing out, just barely arcing around Pike's form and slamming into a row of skeletons. Go ahead and roll your 8D6. And what's the DC on your spell? I'll say because you're doing the thrust, you do not get the cone on this one.

It's not a, it's 17. He just put the cone down in a lower place. No 1d6 for cube damage. Yeah. Not for skeleton. The cube. No, wait. 14, 16, 20.

22. 22. All right, so the bolt arched through and slams into seven of them. Even at, was the total damage there he said? I'm sorry? What's total damage was? 22. Okay, yeah, so two of them survive.

You see that they're kind of burnt, charred forms, and one of them's missing an arm now, and the armor itself is still kind of arching little bits of energy. Five of them, however, just explode into black, burning bone chips. Bones bone chips. At which point you can now see, like, bolts of lightning are coming down from the storm

in the distance, too, as this thunderstorm itself is reaching more of a further pace. The rain itself getting harder and harder on you guys. So, with that, you can see looking over your shoulder on the other side of this wall, another bit of skeletal horde is starting to come down one of the nearby intersections, and it's starting to pull on the other side of you guys. Oh, you're trapped. Oh, shock.

We should have to fucking run. You do see, however, the group of 10 villagers and Kiebriennan are currently rushing towards that group to hold them at bay, and Keebilt runs over his shoulder and says, You, don't worry. We've got this. You do what you must. It has begun. Finish it. Oh. It goes charging forward, holding the shield forward, rushing towards the group of skeletons. The skeletons, however, you have yet to do something at this point. I'm going to hold my turn. Okay. The remaining 13 or so skeletons use their full movement to get up, only three of which can actually get into combat range with pipes. Their speed is only 30.

That radius really messed them up, man. Why did you get naked tonight? Are they closing in on Pike? They are, yes. Oh, then I'm going to leap off the wall and move off the bike. Okay, so you get to simultaneously. You're doing your action simultaneously. So you run off the wall and make it up.

Not a problem at all. Speed. Pike, as you see, the rest of the skeletons zoning in on you, Vak suddenly just rushes to your side, daggers at the ready. Three skeletons are going to take swipes at Pike. That is a 17? Nope.

Oh, it's a seven. Oh, skeletons. And that is a 12. Yeah. Two of them try and swipe and you just knock you out of the way with your shield. The third one does hit you in the front of the chest, but the armor deflects it entirely.

And the blade actually sinks a little bit into your form, but the irradiate energy that holds your position there just pushes it off, and the blade itself seems almost dull from the impact. Up yours, Harry Housen. How many skeletons are in range right now? Well, the final seven that are currently there are, within range if you wish to attacking them. There are three that are currently in melee with her.

I'm going to take my blades and spin around, palm out, and I'm going to start punching. I have no idea to do anything. There is a symbol of sarin ray sewn into this glove right here. I'm just going to start, I don't have the boots of haste on, so I can just take two swings at... Punching? Yeah, two skeletons.

One skeleton, whatever skeleton is closest to pike. There's a skeleton right next to both you and Pike. Yeah, all right, he's getting it in the dusty jaw. Go for it. All right, I have no idea how to do this. I've never done anything without a dagger. That's no good. Greetings adventurers.

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What? I don't know. You still get naked tag if you're in the back. That's true, but I have to hit. So if you're just physically punching, this is strength-based. So roll in D20, add your strength modifier and your proficiency, although it's unarmed strikes. I don't know if you're proficient with that.

No, that's fine. So the first one misses entirely. Okay. And the second one. One is, oh, this is probably fine for skeleton. Is 12, 13, 14. What did you roll in the dice? Oh, 11.

Yeah, yeah, you hit. Okay, that's the right hand with the symbol. The symbol center, okay. Go ahead and roll 1D2 plus your strength modifier damage. 1D2? There's no 1D2. Yeah, roll a D4 and divide it by 2. Oh, it's a 1, so it's a 1.

What's your modifier for strength? Two, so it's a 3. So you do three points of, of, of back to the skull. She killed 36 of them. It hurts at impact and you feel like the bone kind of well-blable as the skull kind of back towards you.

This symbol does nothing for me. I'm here to soak up damage for you, Pike. Let him hit me in a face. It looks great. Very good craftsmanship. Well done. It was fun round. That's a test.

It's better now than against Silas Briarwood. Sure enough. Can I make it around the wall? If you want to make an athletics check to kind of leap up and use that to jump off, you, or sir, of Mr. Athletic movement in high speed? 19? 12 and 7. Also, you leap up on the wall, use that as kind of a stepping point and jump as far as you can.

You get 20 feet forward beyond the wall, land with your hammer to your side, flames flickering off the edge of it. You still have, I'd say I give you 20 more feet of movement at this point because you're crazy fast barbarian. Can I reach them? You'd be able to reach two of them right on the other side of Pike. Tea time. And I rush up with the more emmered swing. Okay, go for it. Tea time. Tea time. I was picturing tea. You promised I was called. I think it's called. I have you A fistful of crumpet.

A fistful of crumpet. Tick time. It's a 26. It's time for a teapot. We're going to Sunday's best. We'll roll for damage on the first one. Okay, a little. This is a couple minutes, I do declare. Get your doilies out.

Oh, man, I missed you. 12 damage? How much is the Warhammer of that? About the fire damage. Oh, just 11. 11? Okay. As you smack into it, you can see the bones themselves are brittle by nature, but the solid slamming force.

The climbing force of a thick piece of honed metal into the side of this bone brittle creature just sends shattering to the side. You get the feeling that these entities are particularly fragile against bludgeoning weapons. So your first strike just scatters one of the skeletons across the ground. You have one more in your reach if you want to go for your second attack. Yeah. Okay. Uh, 20. 20. 20. Go ahead and roll damage on that one.

Oh, that's next to me. 22. The second one just explodes up into the air. You can see one of its shields, it goes flying off and lands on one of the roofs. Almost like Walter White's pizza. I dodged his feet. It just stuck up there.

Um... I get a nodded air, high-five. You, um... As we have a Master, I believe if you kill something, you also can use a bonus action to get a third time. Yeah, Rock. That's true. Oh!

So, I mean, nothing's right now in melee range for you, but if you wanted to throw your hand on you, but if you want to throw your hand on you could. I'm also not really really. Correct. As I'm saying as part of the way of the master, you can not rage, kill something, and then get a free attack with your hands. Well, let's throw some shit then. So with the chain of returning attached to your hammer, you go ahead and V-W-W-F-F-F-F-F-F! Send it swinging towards one of the further skeletons.

Yeah. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. Oh. Did you roll it yet? 10. 14.

14. 14. Double to the bludgeoning vulnerability on the initial impact. initial impact. The hammer slams into its rib cage, causing it to cave inward its entire upper body just falls into itself as the hammer just not meeting any resistance. Go beyond and plashes into the mud. Go ahead and make your athletics check to try and pull the hammer back. Like you're attacking ribbon candy. Kind of technically. 13. 13. You just... 12.

You just pull it out with the singing sound, catch it in the air, the blood kind of dripping, the mud dripping off of it. But you see it burning away as the flames begin to push through the actual mud. Gross. Never know a place until you lick the mud. It gives you the nice. Burn some of the taste buds as the searing hot edge of the... Ah haemorrhage. All right.

Then is that round, there are now currently four skeletons on this side. We'll save for the sake of everybody, you guys manage to, in the next round or so, just destroy them. The flaming sphere itself can just... bash through them. So you're on two sides of the wall. The rain's pouring so heavily. There's a flash in the distance of lightning. I want everyone to roll perception. Oh, damn it. Okay. No, no, we're looking for. You have to have a conversation. Yeah.

You wouldn't have to have a conversation. Oh, fuck. 16. Two. Ben. 20. 17. 19. 19. 19.

So you got 20? You see in the flash of lightning in the distance, you can see just barely on the other side of the town square, what you're looks like the outline of a giant currently slamming into something. And you out of the point of your eye, you see a second one to the south side of the city. There are still a few of these giant sentinels out there. They don't look too terribly close, but there's still on the rampage. Should get out of it. Okay.

Or kill them. Or kill them. There's a lot of giants to take on while we're out of... It's two. We need to do, we need to go kill those giants right now. We have a holy gnome right now. I don't know how you came to a pike. That's true.

We need to go to them and then we need to go to the Briarwoods now. I'm out of spells. We can't go to the Briarwood now. I am out of spells. Granted, we're going to the Giants now. I don't know we have a choice. Giants, let's go get the Giants. Yannin, can you hold till morning?

As you're shouting this over, he is currently about 40 feet away, right now slamming into a front line of skeletons, grabbing his own holy symbol, and you see another similar burst of energy to the one that Pike got out earlier. Does that seem? Dull, bassy impact sound. You feel shutter in the ground beneath you as a series of more skeletons

are immediately disintegrated in his proximity. Looks over his shoulder. To morning, why wait till morning? We're fighting now. We'll do what we can. Hold that thought. I'm fucked. I'm fucked without-

Giants, yes. Like I can shoot an arrow. Giants, and we have to. Giants now, better than the Briarwoods plus giants. Let's go get those giants. right now. Are they, are the two giants together? Are they coming from opposite sides? No, there's one over there and there's one off in that direction. One to the east, one to the south. Let's put the party.

Split the party. I say we do it. Fuck it. Let's split the party. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, weight it more heavily to the group that does not have Pike. Yeah. Okay, who's taking who? Oh, I'm with Pike. We four can go and then you three can go. Spell caster should split up. I'll go without, what did you just say? I said, Percy, you, me, and Vax go on one,

and these three go on another. Good, go. I'll take the gnomes. On my shoulders. Give you a big hug. All right, so we have grog and the two and the rest of you. Hey, we started something.

We can't stop. Who's going in which direction? Just to catch me down. We're going to be tired. Is it south and west? Currently this south and east. Why are we splitting this? This is the stoop.

Oh, it's not the stupidest. Everything we've done in this fight is the stupidest. Let's go. Let's go. We're going south. We meet to the west. We'll go east. East, east, east.

We meet, we're going east, but we meet to the west when we're finished. Listen to your ears. Listen to your ears. Although remember, their signals a little weak. Once we get back to the west, the Western Wall, we'll be able to hear each other. All right.

Oh, God. All right, so Grog and Nums, you guys are going to the south. All right. As you guys dart off, making your way around the still very ominous and creepy sun tree to your left, you can see all the various muddy prints of all the scraping skeletons that came through here. And in the distance, you can still hear echoing shouts, combat shouts, commands being sent throughout. There's still very much an aggressive presence of the resistance in the city. You have no idea whether or not it's on the winning or losing side at this moment, but it is still active. You guys divide at this point. Starting with you guys, Grogh, holding both the gnomes, and you can feel

Pike is lighter than normal, and you know her way quite well, as you used to putting it up on your shoulders from growing up with her recent years, but there's also this strange kind of just a vibration to her body. Like it's not physically there, but yet it does feel like there is physical presence. As you're rushing through the rain, kind of acknowledging this, you make your way to the bottom of the square, charging through you almost slip at one point and catch yourself, head past one street, a second street, and to the left, as you glance off. You can see there is another patch of skeleton as there's currently about five or, where you can see five villagers that are just trying to tear through them. You see a couple of bodies

of villagers that have recently been killed. There's one that's actually still partially alive on the ground. It's like dragging itself through the mud in your direction. Like, rain pouring down. There's a big trail of mud and blood currently behind him, as he's kind of making his way towards you guys. Help. What are you doing, Rob? Pike, do you want to help him? What did you say it was? I'm sorry.

There was a person wounded pulling themselves to the mud saying, help me. I want to help somebody? I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, let's do it. Let's help him. All right, we stop. I let Pike down. Okay, so you rush up to this guy. As you get up to him, you see his face is half covered in blood. His side is very heavily wounded. It looks like he took some sort of a spear wound that didn't tour through his midsection. He has been bleeding out pretty heavily at this point. He probably doesn't have much longer to him. as you bring Pike down below.

And Pike, what are you going to do? Okay, I'll cure wounds. What level? I'll do third. Okay, so go ahead and roll properly that. She's the best. Look at her, Grog. She's helping an innocent bystand.

Does she even have to? She just... She just is a people person. She just is a people person. 3D8 plus five. 23. 23? 23?

23? 23? Okay, so as you reach forward, he looks up at you, like he just seeing an angel walk towards him and looks scared. He's like, no, no, no idea, no idea! As you reach forward and kind of touch the sides of his face with your smile of mercy and understanding, your warm hands touch the sides of his head, and the energy of Serran Ray's blessing pours through his body. You can see the inside of his armor begin to give the soft glow from where the wounds are as they close up. You can see the large gash in his side,

they can stitch itself up magically, and in that point he takes a deep deep, breath for a second and kind of turns over and is now sitting in a sitting position, breathing heavily, looking around himself confused. You're an angel. You're a bloody right angel. No, I'm not. I... He reaches out for you with his hand forward. Thank you. I help him up. He gets up and he still seems sore and bruised and he still wounds across his body, but he's no longer on the path to terminal loss of his life. He's still, he's stands up. Okay. Okay.

Now. Oh, I intend to, and he reaches over to the mud and finds his sword, wipes it off from the side. Turns around and rushes back into the rest of his allies. I like him. I pick Pike back up, put her on my shoulder, and we keep running. Okay, do you guys go charging back into the south side?

You go, oh, oh! We lost Pike! Oh no! It's okay. It's okay. It's again telling the story. Oh, God! Not only G. As you guys continue running forward, you go past two city streets. The whole city is dark now.

It's closed down in preparation for this evening what's going to entail. So you go past these two streets. To the left, immediately you hear the that familiar sound of a large heavy mass slamming into the ground. And as soon as you turn the corner, you can see there are three people left in this one resistance brigade. There is a pile of wounded and or killed the soldiers around its feet, and it looks like it's been nearly untouched. This one just apparently got the drop on, or at least they were not

fully prepared for their up against. And it's just swinging this giant club in the air around towards them. They're all kind of keeping their distance, not knowing if they should run or keep fighting. As you just turn around the corner, I want you guys to roll initiative. Initiative, Ashley, initiative. Okay, okay. Wait, I cut out right when you said, was that guy bad?

No, he was a good guy. You did good, kid. Okay, okay, okay, okay. You picked up a sword and went running back into battle. Back to the fight. Okay, good. The boss. 16 for me. Yes, me too.

Yay! Fantastic. We'll go last. Look, he's got houses. Oh, wow. This one. This one is very, very rolling. But you get your initiative back.

I got six. Oh. She said six? Yeah. Oh. That's okay. That's okay. Fine.

Oh, look at it. They're burning. Whoa, he's huge. Groke is almost as big as him, almost. Whoa. As you can see, there are three of these. You ready for this grog? Actually, he's turned this way right now.

It's true you are. They're kind of keeping their distance at this point. All right, so initiatives. You can do this. Oh, man, I'm so excited. I'm horrified. Yeah, be it too, a little horrified. All right, so initiatives are, 16.

I'm six. All righty. I'm drinking. Where's Trinket? I'm writing Trinket. Oh, we're writing Trinkin. I'm writing Trinkin. Okay, we're cool.

All right. Grog and Scalien, you guys are up first. Would you like? I'll go first. I'm not going to do much. But I will take out my wand of magic missiles. Because I've got to use everything I got at this point. this point. And I will shoot. Fuck it. Six missile. I'll use six of the slots.

Okay, how many more? So it's three plus another five. Okay, and how many total did you have on there? Every day it recharges and I rolled and it's back up to seven. Okay, gotcha. Okay, so seven is the max. You can hold for that. Yes. And I'm using the last of yours for this. This is your last. I'm using six of the seven. Okay, gotcha. Okay, gotcha. Then go ahead and roll for that. Put the stake on this guy. What do I do? 11. What am I adding to this? Well, for magic missile, you'd be firing.

Oh. Oh, it just happens. Yeah, you don't have to roll. They all hit automatically. That's good thing about magic missiles. It just hits. All right, so you create three darts. So it's 3D4 plus 3.

And then if you're casting it at 6th level, you said? Yeah. All right, that'll be an additional five darts. So 8 d4 plus 8. Okay. 3, 5, 8, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17 plus 8, 25. 25 points of damage to the giant. As you jump off of Grog's shoulder, plot your wand,

it all of a sudden glows for a second, and from that point, like a swarming enemy missile storm, these unerring, unerringly hitting arcane missiles, slamming, djadjoof, into the sides of the giant. You see bits of its flesh kind of unfolding and spilling off the side, exposing some bone underneath, as all of a sudden its attention shifts. Looking over its shoulder at the three of you,

as it begins to right itself, preparing being flanked on each sides, a little bit of undead intelligence so that in its brain knowing how to defend itself. Uh... As my movement, I'm going to... I'm going to, where am I? You're right here on the set of Grog.

I'm gonna move, I just in that, Fis, the Behe, the Thing. Where's the Leithethe? Oh, the Thing? I don't know. I'm gonna move to my left into that little alcove there. Okay, so you're kind of hiding around the wall of one of the buildings now,

as you just dart off at the side, kind of glancing around the corner. And I'll sing a song of inspiration for Grog. Alrighty. Well, no, White Stone's got problems. And now I really can solve. unless we make really deep cuts. So maybe show me that Grog blood.

Take your D-10 inspiration. Grog, you're up. Hearing this, the beat in the back of your head is still stomping his footer to everybody. This is my jam! I go into a frenzied rage and I rush the stone giant from behind. And I take aim at his right.

These are almost in the same position. At his right, yeah. Like you're spooning. I aim at the back of his right knee. Go for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 17. That hits. So I roll the damage first, or all three?

There's no other current combat target, so you can roll all three. It's fine. Oh, yeah, that hits. 26. Hits. 24, sorry, that was 34. And 19. He's very slow moving and a very large target.

He's very easy to hit, thankfully. So as you rush up, First, what you got? 22 for the first one. 22, nice. 13 for the second one. Nice. 15 for the third one.

Nice. As you slam the hammer on the side of one on its calf, it buckles for a second, and you can see the muscle itself kind of snap and a piece of bones now jutting it out of the side of his leg. Now we got Crooks blood. With that, you swing the hammer out and slam it into the bone, actually jamming it deeper into its leg. deeper into its legs.

Yes! As you pull back, it still flames kind of burning the outside. You can see the flesh sizzling from the impact of the burning hammer. Swing it once in your hand, Wack onto the other side. This time, the actual leg kind of bursts out that side, and it kind of falls almost a little bit. It's sort of walking on the stump of a leg.

You've pretty much destroyed the bottom half of its middle of its calf to its foot. It's just slumping over. The toe's still kind of wiggling on its own. Now it's going half on, you know, on part of its leg. At this point, it kind of rotates in place towards you now, using one hand to get around as it brings its club up. Looking up into its face now,

as you haven't really had a close look upon this. It's strange to see, you see there are similar features. You've encountered few stone giants. This up close and this personal, you know, this is where your breath and your blood comes from. However, half of its face is torn off by some sort of large claw mark where there would be an eye. just this sunken socket, and there is just these streaks of kind of dried blood that

long before the rainstorm came of just smeared across the face. Part of its jaws broken open and you can see jagged broken teeth underneath and his tongue kind of lulls out the side and just reaches up with its club. Come on down. All right, so the first, it's going to come down and strike you with this giant club-like piece of heavy wood and metal. That's a natural point. His face as you said it. That's in 18 plus nine. It's, yeah.

27. Halfed. Well, no, this is the hit. Oh, the hit, gotcha. All right, so the first strike comes at you for 16 points of bludgeoning damage, halved to eight. The other one comes to you at 14 points of bludgeoning damage, half to seven. half to seven. Okay.

It looks very, very angry and very frustrated with the current circumstance, but you take each blow to the chest showing off that strength you normally would do to something of your kin and ilk, even though it's not really living, you know, held habits are hard to break. Finishing its turn, the three guards, or the three resistant members rush into its sides. It's now turned to face you with its broken leg. Rushing in, strike it. Hits, hits, hits. They're all on short swords out,

and they're just like stabbing it inside of its body, now they have this opening and this distraction at its current moment. Oh, wow, no, five, five. 21 points of slashing damage. Damn. From all three of them just stabbing it and blade on the side, that ends its turn.

Bring it at the top, Pike, you're up. Woo! Yeah. Now it's your turn. It's now it's your turn. It's all in my turn? Yep, everyone else when, it's your turn. Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna

I'm in a guiding bolt. Okay. Wait, is anybody Grog, where are you at? He's right there, but go ahead. Directly in between you and the other giant. Go ahead, Pike. All right. Light him up.

You got this. Friendly fire just turns Grog on. Yeah, I'm just getting a warm up right now. Go ahead and make a range spell attack. Just go and roll D20 to add your spell attack modifier. Most of his damage comes from behind. Okay. 17.

Are you casting it at first level or at a higher level? I'll cast it at a four. Okay, all right. And would you roll? 17 definitely hits. So go ahead and roll 76 radiant damage. Oh, what? Wait, what?

How did we not have bike with us this whole time? 76, raiding damage. Favis, this motherfucker. We're in Pike Town. Cross the street. screams! Oh no, grove, that means you're gonna get that much damage. I'm a good person.

Yeah, it's radiant. Sometimes. Are you? This actually, this is a single target spell. There's no radio for this. Single target. All right. What time is it?

What's your total damage? 24. 24 points of radiant damage. Yes. Good douche. Okay, so as you stand there for a second, you pull your holy symbol up, kind of putting your shield to the side, and as you release your hand out and

in front of you, this beam of divine energy streaks out, slamming into the zombie giant. As it hits, it continues to burn like a stream into its body, kind of searing the flesh in a path as it does. As it impacts, it leaves this kind of glowing, pulsing divine symbol across its chest of Sarenrae. The next attack against it has advantage. From Pike or from everyone?

No, the next person to attack it gets advantage. Did I take any damage? No, no. She was very precise with her impact on the giant. Do you want to move on your turn at all, Pike? You stay where you are? You want to move closer to it? Oh, can you not see.

You're kind of fine. I can't see very well. I'll stay. Okay, so you keep your distance from the leg, Grog. I'll do his thing. Okay, that brings to the top of the round. Grog, Scanlan, you guys are up again. Next tack has advantage.

I defer to you. I'll hold my role. Sweet. If he started to lean down, I want to take his head and turn it into a T-ball target. Don't forget about your weapon master thing. your thing. Yeah, but then he gets advantage. Yeah. The thing she means to minus five to hit plus ten of damage. Yeah, that one. That's what he's been doing, though. Oh, that's where you can do it. I had to do it on the last one. Okay.

Let's do it. Why not? Okay, we'll do great weapon master on this one. Plus I have it on that one. And then you get advantage. So you can... Oh, you have advantage, too. Yeah, you have advantage. Oh, that's even worse. There you go. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's better, that was better. Let's not use it, 16? 16 hits. Oh, good, okay.

That's again, it's a big target, not very hard to hit, just has a lot of hit points. 16 again. 16 also hits. That'll work, 26. All right, all three hit. Yay! Kill it with fire.

Kill it with fire. I'm sorry. Sorry, sorry. Ten, 11, 21. Plus another 10. 10. All right, I just did. Yeah, that was 11 plus 10.

Oh. Yeah. 15 to 25. 35 already. These actors do addition. I know. 10, 18, 23, 33. Pretty crazy.

Oh, shit. Nice. All right. So as you swing in the hammer, up, it hits along the side of its skull, and you can see its skull actually cave in and crack a little bit. The bone and flesh kind of scraped away where it cracks. You see a little bit of black, you see a little bit of black, brain mass begin to leak through.

Using that, you spin the hammer around and hit it again in the same place. Wack, finding the weak point this time, just the anger to smash through. This time, it caves inward, and you can see bits of bone kind of jam into its one, still semi-functioning eye. Its head now kind of loosely pushed in on one side. The jaw hangs a little bit loose. The third strike, you come down, whack, hit it from the other side. The jaw just dislodges and goes flying off.

Chips. Ah! Ha! But it's still standing. This thing's a bit of- Pike, look, he's holy. The jaw is dislodged. So it's just, the lower half of its jaw is missing.

It's just open part of his tongue kind of dangling loosely out of the bottom. Part of its head caved inward, it just, Yeah. Show my hand up your skull and work you like a sock puppet. Gross. You can stay where you are, Rog? Yeah. All right, Scanlon, you're up.

How far can I move? You can move 25 feet to five. 25, that's it. You're a little gnome, dude. Stubbing. Oh, little legs. Just a little bit. Can I get next to Grog?

Can I get near Grog? Can I get at an angle where I won't hit Grog with lightning? You can, but pretty much every angle you're going to hit somebody aside from you guys. Oh, I don't care about those guys. I guess I should. Pike's with me. I gotta do this right. Damn it.

If only you weren't here, Pike. Pike, don't look. Okay. You should be doing it. At an angle up at his head. Fuck. sky. All right. I will try to hit him with a lightning bolt but miss as many people as possible. I would say, you know, he's not yet. He's tall, he's kind of down a little bit because of the impact that Grog gave it, but in a higher angle, you could probably hit him without hitting the other guy.

Okay. I will angle up. This time I would like the lightning to come from my ass. Oh my god. You're William Wallsing it. Yes, yes. And I'll just lightening him at level 3, at the normal lightning. All right, so 8d6 damage. Does not make its reflex. How can you even aim like that, Scanlan? Oh, I have practice aiming things with my ass in this campaign. Yes, this is true.

Very true, sadly. 13, 18, 19, 20 back. Epic elder scroll music for this. 28. 28 points of damage, all right. The bolt of lightning shoots off into the sky, kind of arcing through its body. You can see where part of its neck muscle is torn.

It kind of fuses it to its shoulder. from the impact of the bolt and it almost falls over from the blast, however, it catches itself and gets right back into its form. It's looking pretty rough, but it's still keeping itself there. That's, I just farted lightning on him. That ends your turn? I'll inspire Pike. I'll turn to her and I'll say,

I wish they all could be cleric-nomian girls. All right, Puggen, a D-10 inspiration from Scanlan. A voice you've longed to hear for some time, as your friendship has been so far away. Take your one to ten. Yeah, that Scanlan friendship. Friendship. Oh, man.

All right. So on the zombie giants turn, it recovers from the bolt of lightning. Looking at this large target in front of it, it sees this tiny little morsel. And it turns like, you see it brings up its leg that's partially destroyed, just thump, blach, thimp, fink. Things to move forward to move forward. to jest there to get you within range of its morning, so it's going to move a little closer,

so it gets two attack of opportunity from the two guards behind it. Two? I was about to say. The guards did, against it, against it. That somehow actually misses with the two. That does hit that one. So then it takes, oh, nice. Eight points of slashing damage from one of the guards

as it runs by, just swings out and slashes across the thigh. As it comes up towards you, it's tongue dangling out, this horrible gurgling sound coming out of what, is now technically it's open throat as it brings its upward to the air. As my reaction, I bring up my sham, it's a horn, and I blow the note. The note is like dumb and dumber, the sound he makes. That most annoying sound,

just sort of mash all my fingers down. Okay. And is this your... This is my just trying to get cutting words. Cutting words? Okay. All right, well, it rolled a 21 to hit. So for cutting words, you get to roll a D 10, I believe, and to subtract that from the attack one, right? That is a 10. Big money, no whammies. One. Fuck.

Oh, 20, does that hit? That hits. All right, so. Oh, Political speaking sound. Oh, okay. Oh, my shi. You take 20 points of bludgeoning damage from the first strike,

and your shama's kind of bending. Not quite, you're probably gonna have to buy new one or get that repaired. Oh, no. You almost lost a tooth in the process, so as you're like, from the impact, you pull back and you could feel already, like the pulsing of the blood through the veins from the burst. It brings up its club one more time.

Oh, my God. And that is going to be a 13. That misses! This time, kind of ring its club up. You can see the arc and you... I'm ducking down to work on the shawl. Just swings completely out of your view. What's that?

All right, that ends its turn. The guards are going to rush forward now. Oh my gosh. They technically have advantage on these. They're flaking with you. So, two and a three. Guys, you're killing me. Four. And six, this is six actually stole hits. Six and a twenty. There we go. And a critical. So a miss and then a hit in a critical. Nice match for 20.

So it's seven points slashing damage from the first one and then the critical. Oh, nice. A little six on that one, so that's 12, 14 points of slashing damage from the other guy. So both the cards rush up. One of them just, misses entirely. One james the blade to the hilt in the middle of its body and pulls out. The last one actually kind of jumps up onto its back and takes the sword and slams it into its spine and drags it down. A really decent wound for anything not this big. On this size is just a little gash still, but it lets a nice sizable wound and it kind of opens up and you can, this horrible smell comes reeking out. The guy almost vomits as he backs up. Just ugh. The rot escaping from the wound. It ends there turn. Pike, you're up. Put some hurt on this undead bastard.

Where are you at, Scanlan? You mean physically or mentally? Because I'm in love with you. But I'm right next to Grog. Grog and I are... Looking to see what's happening around your home? Ring's battery doorbell helps you track packages and see who's at your door in real time.

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Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring and its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s.

And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. Dark. Right in front of the giant. Health-wise, where are you at? Oh, I'm fine. Don't worry about me, baby. Okay, okay. So I'm going to go up...

I'm going to go up to the giant where the open wound is, and that guy just broke it open. I have Sprinter's boots if I can't get all the way up to it. Yeah, you'll have to use those to get up to them, yeah. Okay, I'll use Sprinter's boots. All right. I'm going to use my mace.

Yeah. And I'm going to start ripping where that wound is. Actually, the open wound would be around here, But with Spinner's boots, you can get there just fine. Yeah. So you actually get around. All right, and you're technically flanking with Grogs, so you have advantage on these attacks.

Nice. So go for it. I roll... You roll an attack twice and take the higher of the two. I know you've been filming for a while. Roll the D20 twice? Two times. Take the higher of the two. So for each attack.

17. Okay. That's the higher of the two? That's the higher of the two. I hit a seven and a 17. Yeah. Okay. That definitely hits. Go ahead and roll for the second attack.

Because you can use your bonus action to strike, because you're a war cleric. Four cleric. Nine. A total of nine? Did you add it to anything? Wait, am I supposed to add something? Add to your attack bonus.

On your next to your weapon in your character sheet. Sorry, guys, sorry guys. It's okay, you're out of practice, girl. It's all good. You've been too busy being in someone's blind spots. You're busy being in the, you know. Oh, 17 again. 17 again, there you go.

Both hit, go ahead and roll the damage for the maze, plus if I recall, I think it's 1d6 plus 3 plus 7 if it's an attack hit. You got a disruptor. 1d6 plus 3, yep. You also have a mace of disruption, don't you? Disruption, I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think. So what was the effect on that one? Do you have the item with you?

I do. Oh shit, no, I don't have the papers. Looking it up. Stolen on the subway on the way home from work. No, someone took it from me. You also add an additional 1D8 damage to 2D6 radiant damage. There you go.

DC15 wisdom save. I was not going to make that. It didn't make that. It's now frightened of Pike until the end of her next time. Awesome. I'm always frightened. All right, so you're rolling 1D6 plus 3 plus another 1D8.

How much do you save for that? 2D6 radiant damage. Okay. Wow. So 3D6 plus 3 and then an additional 1D8. for each strike. Wait, what? Holy moly.

Wait, so one more time? She's so goddamn powerful. Undead, man. She's fucking awesome. So 3D6? 3D6 plus 3 plus an additional 1D8 radiant damage. For every roll. For both attacks, yeah.

For both attacks. Her attack. This is the best. Undead. We need to talk from the get-go. Matt, while she's rolling, can you just describe her hair at this moment? Is it whipping around? Is it in her face?

Is it covering her eyes in sort of a sexy sweaty way? Mad it with jam? Can I? He's ignoring you. Can I use my 10, an additional 10, from Scanlan, for the inspiration, or that's that? Not for damage. That was just a hit. So yeah, I can't use that one.

Save it, save it, save it. 23. 23 on the first hit? Oh, shit. Oh, I forgot the second hit. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, sorry.

It's been a while. It's been a while. No apologies. No apologies. Sorry, sorry. In the Holy Retribution. They'll understand. Oh, I've missed Pike so much.

Oh, I missed you too. I like your headphones too, by the way. Kill, kill, kill. 21. All right, 44. All right. The Mesa deception actually has a different effect. It's not about the frightened thing.

Oh. If it has 25 hit points or fewer after taking this damage, taking this damage, it has to make a DC-15 wisdom-saving throw, which it fails. Yes. Which means? So as you rush up on the side of it, your Sprintry's carrying you of this blur of divine gnomish energy you see through her somewhat shimmering radiant form, the hair itself glistens against the rain. It almost doesn't even touch. Somehow immaculate in the middle of combat. You find it slow motion in your head, and for that brief moment you remember how much it hurt to see her go and how happy

you are to have her here. However, you in the middle of your battle trance, Pike, rush up. Shield ahead. You take the mace and seeing the open wound, slam the mace in there once. Wham! As you hit, the actual undead flesh burns away from the impact, leaving this kind of ashy swath of missing flesh in its body. A creature gives out this weird, gurgly bellows, as missing jog goes, using that moment as it rears back, how do you want to do this? She's gone. She's gone. She took her bow and did a laugh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, man.

The magical power of this is essentially destroying the creature, so describe this however you want to in your radiant cleric form. Okay, I want him to sort of just explode with a radiant glow. Okay. So as he reaches back, you kind of see this foothole on its knee as it's kind of trying to keep itself a lot. You leap up using your sprinter spruits onto one of its knees. Jump in the air, dropping your shield and two hands on your mace.

You leap in the air, slam it downward as the mace impacts on the front of its chest. There's this brief moment of pause as it cracks into its flesh. Its head looks down at you, and there's a burst of divine energy as this entire torso just rips open. What would be organs within side exposed, however, are all also turned to ashes. The whole body just dissipates and disintegrates. falling into a puddle of liquid, messy, muddy ash, and bits and pieces of remaining giant there. As Pike lands on the ground, three-point landing,

Mason one hand, walks over, picks up her shield again, and kind of looks over her shoulder at Grog and Scanlan. Can I faint? Yeah. He's always doing that. Welcome back, Pike. Sush. Oh, boy. What the heck? What the heck?

The three soldiers who are now looking dumbfounded at this moment kind of step forward and, you know, you look like fighters except you have this glowing divine entity amongst the three of you. This is forward. If I'm not ask, who are you? And how did you do that? With the deliverers of this town, go, spread the word. It all comes down tonight.

You're with the Dirolos. No, tonight. Tonight, tomorrow, live. You're not there. Whatever. He's there. I'm just waking up. Wait, what, tonight? What's going on?

It goes down to the next 24 hours. If you're hours, he. Don't put a time load on these things. It takes a little time. So you're with the Deroleot? And let it be done. Thank you for the save. We're going to gather our wounded

and prepare for the next tack. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. Wait for a signal. Wait for our signal. Spread for the word.

All right, all right. Men. Come! And three of them rush off. They gather up a few of their friends who are further down the road, all kind of groaning and wounded, getting up and kind of putting their arms over their friend's necks and gathering the dead and kind of pulling them off the middle of the road. And you notice as they're pulling them off the road, each one of their dead friends, they're actually pulling out torches and lighting fire to their corpses. Yeah, I don't come back. Should we loot them first? No, okay. That would be in port-tace. Take the money for secrets.

Do we want to stare or do we head back towards the other three? We should start heading back. We probably won't get there in time. Oh wait, Percy said to meet in the west. That's right. We should head to the west to the wall. At the time we, yes. We'll head west to our appointed reason. Okay. Wild, wild west.

As we go, I'm looking at clotheslines for any sort of beret type of a hat. Roll perception. Or a... Can we roll hit dice any time during the day? Only during a short rest. 13. 13. Not in this weather, not in this city. Yamaka, anything?

No. Whitestone, not really a bray kind of people. I'm a little thing. I have a little head. Maybe it could be just a shoulder pad. Like a sock. There's also no laundry left out during the middle of a rainstorm. They're terribly irresponsible.

It could be. Unfortunately, at this moment, no. You're unable to see any sort of a beret type in or can be fashioned to a bray type clothing. All right, fine. No dust of tracelessness this time. Oh, Grog's getting bold. It looks good. We're getting bold. We're getting bold. Fancy. All right, so as you guys go rushing towards the western side of the city, you need to address the group,

the rest of you, rushing past the center of the town square. You go running through the rain onto the far side. You can now see the form that you originally saw Vaxe is actually one of these giants, has been pushed back. As you get all the way to the eastern side, you're actually outside of the city now. You're pushing into the forest, just in the outskirts, the raised hill amongst this part. this part of the town, just outside of the wall, there is the temple of Pellor in the center of the large graveyard. You can see that this zombie giant has been pushed back. You can

just barely see the crest of them currently slamming some sort of large metallic weapon around right over the tree line as you approach the outside gate of the graveyard itself. I'm going stealth. I hunter's mark him. Okay. What's the range of hunters mark? That's a good question. It doesn't say, wait. 90 feet.

90 feet. You probably have to get a little bit closer. Okay, I hundreds mark him as soon as I can. Okay, good enough. You guys all going stealth in right now? You're just rushing in. I just don't rush in. Yeah, let's run.

All right. I'm just running. Keel is running. Okay. The gates are slammed open. Part of the metals kind of bent inward, like whatever was pushing the giant back at this point. It slammed through the gate. Hey, facts.

I'm gone, man. Oh, you're going. No, I rolled a 23. Am I stealth? You feel pretty stealthy. You have an earring, though. Shit, he broke. If he's on his ass, you have a better chance of hitting him, correct. Yeah, that sounds good enough.

All right. So, as you guys all rush into the center here, looking about, you can see this hefty graveyard, right, that you visited the two days ago. All of the graves are open. All of them are just. excavated and open. And you get the feeling, you're starting to see where they're pulling a lot of these undead from.

That's just rude. That's true. That's right. It's right. It's funny. It's not. It was in a direct transition. They were probably then pulled from here and given weapons elsewhere. But that's the first thought that catches your attention is you rush in here. Rain pouring down the clapping of thunder in the distance. You can see there are six, six would be remaining at this point, of these soldiers that are now currently hacking away at this one giant that's being pushed up towards the edge of the temple right now. It looks like it's cornered, but it's kind of

flashing out like a wild animal. It's full initiative, folks. Initiative, initiative. Yeah. Damn it. It's the second one of rolled in the row. I am a monster. I'm a monster.

I'm a monster. We know. You've got a retired. You've got a ton of money. No, it's not a bunch of money. I have really high initiative. Wow. Did I already hunters mark him though?

You can now, yes. Oh, damn. And Matt, as we ran, I wanted to split off from the group and go along the side. On the side this way? Okay, so you'll be over here. I leap off of Trinket as we get close. All righty.

All right, so 20 to kill it. Oh. All right, so 2025, or, yep, 225, anybody? 20 to 15? Oh, I'm sorry, 26. Oh, I'm sorry, 26. I was reading. I was reading a book, sorry.

Alrighty. Come on shadow turd. This is gonna be hilarious. I'm gonna do something I've never done before. All right, that brings us to Akilth, would you get? Oh no. 10. Yeah, I was distracted. All right.

The image of this whole thing on it, even though it looks like it's It's currently surrounded. It's giant form, barely damaged at this point. It's still a very ominous thing that strikes a bit of fear in your heart, causing you to currently hold back on your initial assault. And also worrying about not knowing how the rest of your party is doing. Percy, you start this off right now.

Pull out bad news. OK. I'm going to take aim. And I'm going to wait for it to raise its clubbed hand up. It's holding a club. It's actually, at this view, you can see, It's actually a very, very large morning star. It's a very, very large morning star?

Yeah. Drop that. All right. I'm gonna have him drop the morning star. And shot. All right. Come on, Percy roll, Percy roll. Thankfully, I've got shitty AC.

I've got shitty AC, so 16. 16 does hit. Drop it. All right, so as you get down to the ground and the echoing explosive, a shot, fire from the bad news slams up as it lifts its morning star in the air. to its fingers get blown off of its hand, and the Morning Star just tumbles on the ground,

nearly crushing one of the guards nearby. He just barely manages to the side step as it, lands on its side, when outside of the Temple Appellar. Well done. Next shot, I'm taking a sharpshooter shot. I'm reloading. Yep, reload with your second attack. Taking a sharpshooter shot.

All right. 15. 15 hits. And this is also an aim shot. So sorry, I've just spent another. I'm sorry for not saying that. I'll do my damage and then tell you what the, it was an aim shot to the legs.

So that's, oh my god, 16, 16, 26. 32 points of damage. And it needs to make a constitution saving throw. Okay. What's the DC on it? Oh my god, this is insane. DC equals 8 plus your proficiency, modifier plus your dexterity modifier. Yep.

Proficiency modifier is four, dexterity modifier is. So 18. Yeah, 18. All right. Ah. It rolled a 16 and has a plus four modifier in the Constitution, so it makes the safe. Damn it.

Oh. All right. Sorry, but not sorry. That's okay. I still did a ton of damage. But yeah, so the blasts the little chunk of its physical form, just slatters against the side of the temple. That ending your turn, now having no hand

disposal, it kind of glances over with the slow turning head, reaches over and grabs a big piece of the stone rubble that is destroyed from the corner of the temple, picks it up over its head, and lobs it at you across the way. That's a hard shot. That's going to be a 21 to hit. Oh, that hits. That hits. That hits.

Take 28 points of bludgeoning damage. and have to make a strength-saving throw. Just strength-saving throw? Yep. No, I rolled a one. Oh, no. So it slams into you and knocks you off your feet prone from the sheer impact.

It actually kind of rests on part of your arm, and you have to like, work hard to push it off. But that will end its turn. How much damage did it do to me? 28. 28. 28 points of bludgeon damage. That ends It's go. Vax, you're up.

I'm watching everything unfold. I see my sister roll up, I hold. Okay. Yeah. Vexx. I say, brother, you remember that giant a few years back? I remember that giant. You're up, and I shoot two arrows for my two attacks.

One and two is thigh, and then one in two is breast right here. Okay, go for it. Wolf's two attacks. Ooh. They both get hit. They're both 24s. Both 24s. Identical.

Both hit, yeah. Go to all damage from breach. All right. Same thing. Yeah. 26. 26, 27, 38. 30 plus hunters mark for both.

Yeah. 36 on top of that. 33, 37 points of damage. 37 points of damage. damage. Swif! Swah! It slams into the knee itself, kind of pushing out the kneecap a little bit from the side of its

softened flesh. The other one sticks and just disappears into its torso. You don't even see the impact. It pushes through the flesh and then vanishes into its very, very large. The whole arrow goes in or I wanted to leave some of it out? Okay. We'll say for the piece of impact here, it is. Okay. Roll a strength check. I believe in you. Okay, okay, okay, okay. This is control over your strength on this one, Ed.

Oh, ha ha. Uh, 21. 21, what'd you roll? 19. What's your strength? Oh, that saving throw. Wait, yeah. Oh, damn it, 17.

17. Because you're minus two, strength, I know that. Right, sorry. It's okay, that's still enough. So gauging, pulling back on a little bit of, you know, focus you have as far as restraining, you're good at aim, restraining is the thing you have a difficulty with, but release the arrow hitting at a very, very defined mark,

shattering part of its rid there in the front, and the arrow still sticking out by about a good six inches or so. Nice. I start running. Am I within 30 feet? It's hard to tell from here. You are not. All right, so I hit one ankle against the other on my boots,

and everything slows down around me a little bit, and I double my speed and run towards it. Did you use your boots of pace again the last session? I don't know. What did we find? I don't know. It's been a long day. We've had like three sessions. I feel like you use it.

If you went into the doubt, then I can't do it. All right, I still run at it and start throwing. You could use a bonus action to dash, don't forget, as a row. Yeah. That's what I do. Yeah. He's surrounded by people, right? Okay. So I'm going to run up to him and I'm going to start swinging up the arrows on his chest and get up to his head. Okay. So you run up, planting a foot on its thigh, leaping the air. grab onto the arrow that Vex left in its chest kind of whip upward,

and while you're in the air towards its face, go ahead and make your attack. Yeah. Okay. You only get one attack because you use your bonus action to dash. Yeah, I just thought it should make me. Never mind. Nine is a 20.

You do have advantage on this if you wish to roll, because you technically have him flank the other guy. That's a 26. That hits, definitely. Yeah, because he's surrounded. Correct. All right, so I'm up on his shoulders at this point. One plus seven is Oop, plus 11, 16.

20, 1, 23. 23 points of damage? Yeah, with flame time. All right. So as you leap in the air, you bring the blade slam into the center of its face, like kind of over one of the eyebrows, it slams into the skull, and using your weight,

you tear down, dragging the blade across its face. The bone is brittle underneath its flesh, and it actually just hacks part of its face open, open, the bone and teeth to make it become visible. Its jaw clenches and actually clamps onto your blade as it reaches the bottom of its face. Catch yourself there for a second. The horrible scent of its rotting flesh, hitting your body. You manage to take your foot up, push off, pulling the blade out from under its toothy grasp, and you, dash it land on the ground right beside it. Big old, jagged gash in the side of its face.

Right. Cool. That ends your... That's it. All right. Now the rest of the guards are going to go. Guards. A hit. Guards, I say, other than natural 20. Yes! These are the resistance members, it's a cock. I haven't had natural one. Hit. Hit.

Another national 20, all right. Would you like to borrow my dye and see if it does anything? Do you keep your ruling in Zai? Keep your cheated die all for yourself there. Every full time. 21 points of damage for the non-criticals, and the two are. What is he doing? What's happening over there?

So all the guards now seeing this opening and these sudden heroes rush into attack it, use this opening to grab some of have shorts, some of have spears, and they just start jamming it in its size, just getting to take chunks out of it and basically scraping away its form and its mass that it's keeping itself a lot through this necromanic enchained. It's their turn. Keelith, you're up. Okay, so you're on him. I'm not, I'm right. landed beside him now after he pulled the blade out of his face. Right, I thought he was undead dinger. But there's a ton of people surrounding him.

Correct. So light him up. Okay, I'm gonna kill everybody if I do if I start bringing down bolts of lightning. So I'm gonna kind of just move up a little bit to where I'm within 30 feet of him. Okay. Wherever I can be, kind of maybe over here or something.

About that'll put you just at 30 feet. Can I see Vax? Yeah, you can barely see Vax. Vaxx is hard to see in period, but you can barely see Vax at this point. It's night, he's in black. So kind of looking at the giant and realizing that if I bring lightning down, I'll just start electrocuting everybody around, I just kind of meditate for a second and go super calm and start casting heat metal, and I start meditating on Vax's daggers.

Okay. So your daggers are going to do an extra 2D8 damage. Ooh. Whoa. against a wall, correct? He's currently up against the edge of the temple, yes. Okay, I'm going to use my bonus. Um, learning fucking low on spells.

Fuck, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do my bonus action to cast grasping fun. Just so you're aware, heat metal does 2D8 damage to him for holding on to it. It's not it doesn't do additional damage. I said we move forward. Okay, so. You're gonna just take it. It's done.

It's done. It's done. for future reference. Okay. So, uh. It's because at work that way in Pathfinder, I used to do that with Grog's Axe all the time. Stupid Pathfinder. But you also had to touch his eyes in order for it down.

So, uh, go into five. So match, you really take two to eight points of fire damage, one roll, key lift. Yes, sir. Um, and you have to make a Constitution saving throw versus her DC, or you drop both your daggers. Oh. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. It's fun, okay. It's fun.

Thanks, Sam. Go on. And I'm doing, what am I doing? What am I doing? It'll be great, it'll be great. It'll be great. It's supposed to DC in the start. My spell save DC?

18. Haka, that's on. Both daggers just drop in the ground and they both slam into the mud. I look over at Kayla and go, and I'm like, yeah. What the fuck? It hurt this motherfucker so bad. She's just finds and trading on it.

And then with your bonus action? Bonus action? Bonus action, I'm gonna wrap them up with a grasping bind. I'm trying to restrain him. Okay, so you open your eyes and go ahead and go frag- And I'm like, man, I'm such a fucking badass right now. What am I doing? Okay, so you're going to restrain me the grassman vine.

Yeah, I think he has to save it. He's sick. Yeah, make a dexterity saving throw or be pulled. It doesn't restrain, it just pulls them towards the vine. Since it's already against the wall, you can pull them away or toward. Nothing you do does what you want it to do. What's failed. What's right?

The information's right there. You're pulling. him towards you? You can't you? You can't you? And then he like goes, oh. Yeah, can I pull him towards the center of the earth? Because of his, sure. That's a no. All right. He fails in the DC. That's a total of 10.

We'll say for the time being he is considered grappled. Okay. Nice. You did something. Thanks, man. You're welcome. Man, I'm so cool right now. Oh, it's concentrating so hard. You finished concentrating, you release. You release the grasping vine.

It pulls a little hard to the ground. You see it's form go, and it doesn't look very happy. And you see Vax's going, and he's like these little cylinders of steam rising up from the ground, where his daggers are currently shh, what, deal with it? It's gonna be awesome.

That ends your turn, we're back to the top of the round, Percy, you're up. I'm unpinned and annoyed. I'm shooting him in the face. You get this. From the ground? From the ground. You're prone.

Am I prone? You're prone. The bold or not too prone. Okay, can I use my movement to get up? Are you used to? You can, yeah, you get, I've used half your movements. I get up, shake it off, pull up for another shot, shooting at his face.

Okay, so reloading, shooting at his face. Reloading and then shoot. Bad news or? Bad news. With the same, doing the same thing I was doing before. So that's eight plus seven, 15 hit. 15 hits. 15 hits.

So that's, that's, that's, 20 points of damage. Already. And now he's has disadvantage on his attacks for the next round. Okay, so just a headshot? Yeah. Okay. And just because I'm feeling like a jerk, I'm burning an action surge.

Forget it. Reloading. I've already used your action search for the day. No, it's a short rest. Oh, it is short rest. Oh, it's a short rest. Yeah. Go for it.

I checked. I'm being good. That's 11 that hits. I'm out of grit points. Kill something. 32 points of damage. Reloed, fire again. That's also hits.

AC's 8, by the way. Good God. Forget it, I'm always. It's a big, big heaping pile of hit points. It's not going to hit. Right. A pile of . You attacked it enough to the point to gather.

It's pretty easy to hit. That's kind of a six. That was like a 12. And I was like, 14. 30 points of damage. Wow. And now I'm gonna use my bonus action to heal. Holy crap.

Alrighty, go for it. I'm healing myself. I'm using my, and that's 17, that's 19 points healed. Okay. All right, now the giant pieces of missing of its body looks around and is going to, it reaches down and grabs.

Yeah, it's going to use when it's taxonomy showing, grab the Morning Star. And with a second, it's going to swing over towards your back, so just slammed into his face of the dagger. Disavantage? Yes. And he's grappled. And 11 and a 1. Gravel just prevents movement. Okay.

But yeah, it goes and swings wide, and you just, duck out of the way, dodge off at the side, and it slams and get stuck in the mud for a second. Horrible sucking, sucking sound is it just to pull it out. out of the ground with all of its might. That ends its turn. This is chance in a bad place. You're up. What position is it in?

It's currently like kind of kneeled forward, just pulling its Morning Star out of the mud. Okay. I go. I reach down and I grab the Skollinghot daggers again and I lift them up. Okay. And lunge and sink into his roots.

Okay. Come on. Okay. So you take 2D8 points of fire damage. You want to roll? He goes. So does he right? Okay, because that's kind of badass.

Where's my fucking eights? Seven points of damage. Okay, I'll save it. Oh, you rolled it? Uh, I think it's seven or eight, yeah. So you think it's seven or eight, yeah. Kind of feeling through, you take the damage, lifting them up to go in for the attack,

go ahead and roll a few attack. Okay, the first one hits, that's a 30. And the second one is 17, And he's still surrounded, so the first one is going to sneak attack his ass. Two, plus three, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, sixteen, seventeen, seventeen. That one, seventeen, and the second attack, the flame tongue gets seven.

Seven, okay. All right. Oh, plus two d eight for fire damage. Does he also get the fire damage? Yeah, he has to do right. Yeah, if I got burned, he gets burned. If I get burned, he gets burned, right? I'll allow it.

That's not usually how the spell works. But I'll allow it for the circumstance. Since you're taking the damage to do the attack, I'll let it happen. All right, 14. Okay. Okay, so as you, holding the daggers, the searing pain, you reach up, slash both daggers down into the front of its body,

and you drag across. You can see its chest kind of breaks open, and it kind of stumbles backward, The air expiring from its throat. It pushes up and against it, holding on to that shred of undethed that it currently has in its body, not falling to your measly blows.

That ends your turn. I didn't move. Can I use bonus action at this point? You use bonus action for your second attack. Second attack, okay. Yes, you're not hasted. All right, go for it, Vex. Okay, I'm gonna shoot him two times

through my blazing bowstring, which I still have one left up. Alright, so the first one, first try can be the blazing blowstream? Yeah. Okay. Uh, that hits. Second one hits too. Alright. Okay. Okay.

Let's losing blestring! One D10, okay. Although I do have a lot of little papers. Okay. She has more all the stuff. Plus seven is 13, 14, 15, plus fire damage. 21 plus 100s mark, 22 for the first hit. It's all right.

How do you want to do this? Thank God. As he's bent over, I want to. You're wearing the shirt even. I know I'm wearing the shirt. As he's bent over and I just saw my brother attack him with fire, I hit him with fire again straight through the eyeball that's remaining through the bag of his head.

Okay, so as you release the arrow itself, you can feel the warmth kind of looking the side of your face as the arrow heats up and release it. It shoots the air like a tracer dart just the giant which currently reaching back has a hand to palm out like it's gonna go ahead and try and palm Vax after the attack as it reaches up. It just into the back of the eye

and as it sinks instead of its head, there's this dull thud sound like the fire bursts on the inside of its head. Its other eye just plumps out and hangs As fire, like, starts out from his eye. As fire, darts out from that open socket, its jaw kind of goes slack, and it just gets to lurch forward towards you and the guy next to it. Both of you guys can to step back out of the way as it,

bruh, pf, pf, on the muddy ground in front of you. Everyone kind of takes a breath for a second. I start sticking my hands in a puddle on the around. I run up with Trinket to the guards. I go up to the, um, to start, start seeing if I can salvage anything from this giant. Like my hands? Do I see Vax on with his hands?

Yes, you see him currently like, putting out of his hands. What, what, what, what? Could you fix these. Oh, oh. Fix him, though? I'm sorry. Yeah, it worked, it's good, but they kind of sting a little bit.

Okay, okay, I just put my hands in his hands and cast cure wounds. Okay. I'm gonna use it in my ring, from my ring, my spell spot ring. What level? I'll do level two. Level two.

Okay, so 2D8 plus six. Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. Four, six, uh, 12. So you heal 12 hit points. I also just kind of hold the hands for a second. I walk through and bust through their hands. There you go. To talk to the guards.

The guards who currently are just checking to make sure it's dead, like stabbing its body as, you know, putting the guns away and walking over the guards as well. Okay. The rest of the guy, and they're, you notice, like, they look like guards at first glance just because the armor they're wearing is the same type of armor that the guards you've encountered here wear, but they're all underneath the armor wearing, you know, rag farmers' clothing,

whatever's available. There's still uniform armor and weapon design to anyone who's worked in my side. Are any of those parades? You don't know, because you're right there. Are they unsullied? No. No. I put my hands on one of their shoulders and say, You showed great bravery here.

Thank you. Thank you for coming and helping. I got a little hairy there for a minute. We didn't lose any of our men, thankfully, and that's thanks to you. I think, and he kind of reaches up for a second and wipes this kind of bit of black blood kind of stuck to its chin from the fight.

So, what's next? Now we rest up. You heal and you get ready to attack tomorrow. All right. What time? Tomorrow at dawn we take the counter. All right. All right. Yes.

Men. Spread the word. Don. Don. It is. Sheathes this weapon. Other men kind of stand up, and one of the makes one final stabs into the body of the zombie.

Like, yeah, take that. They begin to walk back towards town. Before he runs off, I tell him, tell everyone to look for the sign of Pallor in the sky. And one of them goes, Pallor. A Doroa rest. And three of them run back to the doorway of the temple, and they all stop for a second and give a little silent prayer to themselves, and then join the rest of their crews.

They'd go walking back towards the city. What time is it right now? Right now, it's hard to tell. Wild till dawn. It's about two hours past sunset. Oh, good. We got time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's pull out my flame time dagger and just look in two or three graves. I don't know if there's anything in there. You're trying to grave robber? Grave rob right now? He's trying to loop right now. Make an investigation. Yeah. They're empty, man.

Oh, that's a 15. Literally going to steal from my great-grandfather. I'm just looking. All right. Glancing about, you notice that the coffins are still there at the bottom, but they're all open. The lids are off, and they're empty entirely. Like, whatever body is gone.

Best you glance about, you see that the most that you can find, most of the most of you can find, fine. Most of them were just laid to rest. One of them seemed to be laid rest with what looks to be like a nice ornamental dagger of some kind that's just left to their side. Fucky do it. You'd be cursory. Do whatever you want. I'm not here. I give you permission. Giving me morality list. I'm not even here. I'm going to check my family grave, the

family crypt very quickly. There actually is an undercroft in your castle. That's right. I want to drop down. I'm going to take a look at that, yeah. You're going to go get the dagger? I'm going to look at it. That ornamental dagger, I'm sure. So you leap down into the grave. No, no. Tell me more about that, I guess.

From what you can see from up there, it just looks like a fairly nice dagger that has a little of like gold sheen to it, and it looks like those gems encrusted in it from this distance. Oh, right, go get it. That looks shiny. Really. So you leap down into the grape, your feet hitting against the wooden bottom of the coffin. Yeah. Smells musty and like, you know.

And it's been rained in heavily, so it's not as bad as it could be. Do you feel like it? It looks to be a pretty dagger. Reach it and you pick it up and kind of look at it. It's lightweight, it's ornamental. It's not actually more of a functional. I want to make an archana check. Oh, Jesus.

It's ornamental. I just want to make an archa check. It's a 20. Go for it. Natural 20? Yeah, no. Okay. Take a look at it.

There doesn't appear to be enough of a ruin structure even on this dagger. Give it a formal enchant. I lay it down. It looks ritualistic and ornamental. It's probably worth a pretty penny, but, um, But it is not a comment. I put it down and I pat it. Aww.

I knock up out of the grave. He doesn't know. Who's a good grave robber? Can I salvage anything from the Stone Giant? Tourist. Go ahead and make a wisdom check. Just roll D20, add your six to it. Just a wisdom check?

Yep. 12 total. 12. Looking over the body, this entity, anything that would be functional of a Stone Giant's body is far-rodded and, you know, necrosis is. taken hold in a lot of the body parts, nothing here would be of use any way to perform.

Plus, stone giants don't really have any magical components to their body. They're just larger humanoids. Sure. What small trophies you could take from it, you know, sell here and there for a little bit of change are also rotted and corroded by its undead form that it wouldn't be worth it. Their teeth are good for 1D8s, though. That's true. All right, so what's the plan? We should head west, head west, meet up. All right, so you guys.

I take the little bit of dust-lop tracelessness that we had taken from Grog, and I try to sprinkle it on our tracks as we go and cover up, what was that? Cover up our tracks as we did. As you pulled the dust out of your pouch, you look at it and it's turned to just a sand. Ah, shit. It seems that the dust of tracelessness is effective when only pulled and used directly out of its pouch. By its designated flower girl. If taken out remotely and left on its own for a while, it becomes magically inert.

Well, then I use my range of skills to try to make it look like our tracks are hidden as we can. I know the city well enough to take us through a relatively... Yes, this is one of those few circumstances where Percy is almost more helpful than you are as far as making your way through. The two of you together, very helpful. There we are. Okay, you guys be making your way through the city, making westward to meet up with the rest of the party against the wall on the westward side of White Stone. And with that, we're going to go ahead and take a quick bathroom break for instance. So hang tight guys, we'll be back here in just a minute.

I love you, Pike! We'll be back. Picking up where we left off, eventually the longest traveling will be the one that went all the way to the zenith, the Temple of Pelor. Eventually, the rain still heavily coming down, you guys keeping warm and out of the way to the far, far western wall, kind of keeping behind a bush. The rest of the party arrives. The gnomes and Goliath barbarian waiting for you as you approach. Taking your feet right now. So the rest of you guys gather, what are you doing? What's your plan? We get into the wall. Should we stay in the tree logs?

We need to hide. How is everyone? Did you defeat your giant? Totally did. You know who defeated ours? Pike, because she's the fucking bomb. Pike, we've missed you so much. Mike, come here and give me a hug. I give her a hug. What happens?

Okay. You go and hug her, and it's one of those things where you're actually kind of, because they're form, it feels like you're grabbing almost like a, almost like a warm, energetic gelatin in a way. Like her form isn't purely physical. It's just how I remember you. Warm gelatin. And there is kind of this kind of hot wind that kind of just wraps around her

and her hair is kind of drifting a little bit. Her physical form is very strange here. How did you get here, Pike? How did you know? Well, as you guys know, I've been working at the temple, and it's been very hard work. And I just, I think about you all constantly. And every day I felt a heaviness.

And I've, I've had these visions of terrible things. And I felt a disturbance in the force. But, you know, today it became too much. And I, I, you'd actually, you'd received a letter from Alura, from Imam. If you recall what that was about. I received a letter. I received a letter from Alura, and I felt that you guys are,

are you guys making a decision or something here in White Stone? Well, many decisions, but we have, We've decided to take down this horrible foe, and Percy's been grappling with a lot of decisions as we've gone. Pike, maybe you can help him. Can you actually take a look at him, Pike? I believe it's out of my realm of understanding, but...

Actually, Percy's just fine. Maybe she looks at him after the Briwins. Well, there was a long pause. That was no pause. Percy, how are you feeling? Honestly, if Pike weren't here, I'd say fine, but... How do you think I am, Pike? Most of my heaviness and visions were about you.

Sort of a deep prayer and meditation, and I knew you guys were in a very dark place. I just prayed that Sarah and Ray would send me to you. And so here I am sort of as an avatar. car, but I'm here and I want to help in any way that I can. I just know something's off, and I don't quite know what that is yet. Her form shimmers for a second, almost like the energy that keeps her corporeal in this location for a moment kind of flickers, and then she is restored to her form. You get the sense that she's not actually physically here. This projection, this divine projection is a channeling of Sarenrae's power keeping her here for the

moment. Damn, Sarenrae is really freaking powerful. Yeah, she's, I have a feeling she's probably using a lot of energy to do this, too. Pike, do you know how much longer you can stay in this form that you can stay with us? I don't, I don't know. I don't know. This is the first time that I've ever done this before, so I'm hoping that it will last a long time, at least to see you through.

Oh, us too. Oh, us too, us too. Hey, do you want to take Percy's temperature? Should we find a place to hide first? Yeah, should we find a... Let's... There's a secret passage. There's a secret entrance to the castle,

to the west, in the woods. I think perhaps if we made our way there, we could... Can I get inside? Camp out, perhaps. All right, let's make a way down. We'd be a roof over our heads if we got there and we could take care of it. He's thinking very clearly. He's fine.

He's rubbing his eyes a lot. He's had this weird cough for like a couple days. He's allergic to cats or something. Pike has a wonderful. He has a black smoke coming out of his body all the time. I have lightning coming out of my ass. Yeah, well, you choose to do that. Let's make our way to somewhat quiet.

We'll have her look at you there. I kind of do a gust to kind of do like that air umbrella. thing around all of us. Yeah, they're really terrible one. Yeah, they're really terrible one. I'm doing that to kind of help keep us shielded from the rain. Okay. Are you guys coasting within the city's walls? Are you moving outside of the city's walls?

Outside there's too. Yeah, outside. So you find your way a little bit southward. Stealthing. Stealthing to make your way outside of the city into the forest surrounding the outskirts of white stone. Go ahead and make stealth check guys. Without the plus 10 bonus, because you don't have any more spells. I don't.

Yeah. Oh. Oh, wait. Yeah, like a plus two to stealth. Wrong? 18. Ooh, 20. 23.

12. 17. 15 with disadvantage. Okay. And Pike? Pike, what did you roll for stealth? You shot. She's an apparition.

I rolled a 10. A little 10? 10. Okay. Clang, clang, clang, clang. All right. So, as you guys move into the forest, the boughs of the trees do help offset

some of the rain, but there is still, you know, somewhere making it through and there is a heavy drip through the parts of the leaves you start pushing through. You make your way out, let's say a good five minutes to the west of the city before you start heading northward. Both Percy and Vex taking lead on this, you being the natural stalker, you knowing these lands quite well. As Percy presses along, coughing and keeping his eyes peeled,

you press on for about 30, minutes to the north, the rain begins to subside a little bit and you can hear the occasional kind of sound to be strange, kind of growling cat-like noises. You know there's some of the indigenous creatures of this year. Do I know what this sound is? You've heard this before. It's something terribly dangerous. They're just natural cat-like creatures that live into the trees, Ocelot-like, they're indigenous to this region. That's in communicating. And it's initially offsetting, but you keep pushing forward.

I would have both of you guys make survival checks. Survival checks. I don't think I've ever rolled that before. Come on, city boy. Oh, advantage. It's true. And you would have advantage actually because you know this area. Really?

Did that just happen? She rolled two threes in a row. This, I got to retire it. It's so beautiful. And I keep trying. It's certainly the die, and not you in any way. It's just been punishing me as a late. 14.

10. The two of you working together on this, it takes you about an hour or so before you eventually get further enough north and out of the outskirts of White Stone, where you begin to see the rising platform, the small Central Forest Mesa that the castle White Stone is built upon. And you can see kind of the heavy cloud cover, what little bit of torchlight is visible. Torchlight is visible from some of the castle interior in the distance. It is just in this ominous dark shape outlined against the cloud cover above you. On that walk while they're leading the way, I quietly walk alongside Pike and fill her in on everything that I have seen happen with Percival.

The smoke coming out of him, the darker turn in his personality, the way that he branded that man, everything that I'm worried about. Bikoff everything. Okay. So she's filled in on his darker turn. Okay. Did you get that, Ashley? Okay. Okay. So, pressing on, eventually catching the edge of that mountain.

That, to you is the inclination. You know this area very well, spending most of your time living around this castle. You gesture for the rest of the group to follow you up towards the edge of this central mountain platform that the castle is upon, eventually coasting along the side. I want you to go ahead and make an investigation check. investigation check, Percy? 16? 16, okay.

Pushing forward, you eventually, you spend a good 20 minutes kind of walking back and forth. You're pretty sure that this is where the entrance is. And looking along this area, you make your way up to the northern side of this mountain, no entrance seems to be appearing to you. There's no opening. This is where it should be, person. It was just, it was a cavern exit that was loosely hidden by a, a, see, of bushes that were clustered around it.

It should be around here. Can I start taking a look around and see if I see anything that would be different? All of us, yeah. We should be very careful. These two are good at using their brain muscles. This would be an ambush. That's way better than mine of 17. Okay.

About 10 minutes of you guys searching as you travel southward among this. Okay. Okay. You guys watch it on the wall and nothing seems to be catching your eye. You notice that there's a portion of the mountainside that is looser rock. Everything here is solid, long, you know, eroded through weather and time. There is one section that appears to have more of a crumbly, loose rock that forms the lower portion of the wall. Big guy, come here. This is new. These haven't been here long.

I'm not very strong. You want to start hucking rocks? What are you saying that again? I'm extremely fast and nimble and... But I can't lift that much, including door jams. Could you help me move these rocks? I suppose. I go and I start moving the rocks. You look very handsome and that weird.

Go on to make an athletics shirt. Oh shit. Never forget. Never forget. 18. 18. Okay. You go over and start pulling the rocks away.

A lot of the ones at the very surface are pretty small, and you're just kind of pushing them with the side and rolling off. Eventually you start getting to the base of this area, and you can see now there are a cluster of bushes that have long died and are crushed under these rocks. Does this look familiar to me? This would be similar to the placement of where the bushes were that originally obscured the crawl space that led into this tunnel. I think this might be it. Well, what happened here?

Did they blow it? Does it look like a cave in like somebody did it on purpose? Yeah, I was just saying, can I do a nature check to see if this is natural or man done? Sure. Man done. Oh, that's like a cox. I think that's like a 21. 21?

Yeah, inspecting this, the pattern in which it fell was very localized. Which leads you to believe that this... I think this was blasted down. Yeah, this was blasted or was intentionally done to demolish this exit as opposed to a natural fall. At this point in time, you've pulled through a few of the larger rocks and you roll over and you do reveal a small tunnel. Oh. Hey, look, I found a hole. About 15 minutes of pushing this stuff out of the way before you eventually find it.

It's probably a good 10 feet inward, but it is... Can we get in it or is it still... It's tight, but you can start moving in there. Scanlan squishing there. Well, we have two gnomes with us, but I'll be the... She'll light up the hole. I hope so. I will...

Take your pick. I will shimmy in. I'll shimmy in just to see what's down there. Okay. You make your way into this lower tunnel. I'm not rested. Hitchark in there. It's just like, you know, black as night.

No light source. The ground itself is very dry, which is a nice, change from the rather wet exterior waiting you outside. It generally just smells musty and seen disuse, and very dark. That's the best thing. Does it look like somewhere we can rest for the night? Oye, I can't see anything. You got a torch up there or something?

I flip my flame tongue dagger over backwards and hand it to him through this little old. So you take the dagger. This thing feels so cool. It's like a short sword for me. And with the flickering light along the blade, it lights up the area. The tunnel widens up to about roughly 8 to 10 feet wide and just seems to curl forward before disappearing around a gradual edge about 50 feet ahead of you. It's about 6 feet tall, so the taller of you folk are going to have to crouch in,

but it's about 6 feet tall, about 8 to 10 feet wide, and that continues to curl deeper in towards you. deeper in towards the mountain. All right, no one down here, but I don't know how far this thing goes, and I don't know how well it's guarded. Are there trees around us? Yeah, no more than maybe five feet off of this mountain line. The forest just grows immediately dense. If they've blasted in the entrance, I have a feeling.

I don't think they're expecting anybody. They're not expecting people. This is taken care of in their minds. I say we squeeze grog and trink it in here. And camp in the tunnel? Yeah, I'll go ahead a bit and take a quick peeky-pooh. Quick peeky-pooh. You don't think they'll patrol?

I'm not sure without patrol. Does it seem like there's cobwebs? I mean, just seem dusty and disused. I think this is taking care of. If you crawl inside the look. You'll be inside. That's all crawling. As you guys all make yourself inside, glancing about,

go ahead and make an investigation. I go ahead and light up my hands. I put Max's dagger in my back pocket, so I'll cover it up with my shirt. Make a slide of hand check. 20. Okay. Yeah, there's no footsteps in here for quite some time.

This has definitely been disused. I think it's disused. Is that a good word? Abandoned. Abandoned is a better word. As she's saying this, you look over in Scanlan almost looks at you. I think it was like, grabs your wrists and stops it. I use the other hand and I tweak his nose as hard as I can.

Come on, lot in front of pike. And I pull it. Dagger's retreat. All right, fine. Pike, can you take a look at this cough before we take a rest? Yeah, take a look at it, Pike. Are we in the tunnel? We're in the tunnel right now.

I grab some of the boulders and cover up the way we came in. Or just like a boulder and kind of like move it to the mouth of it, or is it too? You can move a few. There's no boulders quite large. You have to fully close it off because it was a bit... I mean, you can do it. I'll take a little bit of time, but you can do it. Yeah, just to kind of cover it up.

Okay. Are there two openings, the one that we came in, and then there's like the rest of the tunnel? the rest of the tunnel. The tunnel continues and curves out of sight, about 50 feet in. But we just kind of blocked up the one we came through. Okay, can you like make a fucking bush grow in front of this thing? Or can you like put up a wall to where we don't have to like worry? So if whoever was going by with those dogs while we were up in the trees, the first night we got here comes by and sees a hole in the wall?

Um, okay. How many spells do you have left? It's kind of the question. It depends on if we're going on the side to, uh... I think we should take a rest. We have to rest, yes. Let's let me, I'll think about it. Okay. Okay.

But I put a guardian of faith above us wherever we make our. Of course, you can't. Let's see how long that lasts. A what? A what? This is it. Yeah, that lasts for eight hours.

We came to a land of plentbell without. Yes, you can. I can't think we came without Pike ever. Let's figure out if we're going to sleep. I'm sorry. Pike, stay with us forever. Yeah. Or at least through next week.

All right. So as you guys are having this conversation, Pike grabs her holy symbol for a second, closes her eyes and focuses, and the energy around her, that kind of slightly drifting, ethereal, divine energy seems to shift away from her for a second and coalesce into a, looks like a floating, ghostly armored entity that just kind of apparates

in the air beside her. Her form, once again, becomes and she looks towards it and gives it a nod, and the armored entity seems to acknowledge with a strange head nod, and then turns towards the inner side of the tunnel and again just sitting and patrolling a small section of the tunnel on its own.

Well, there you go. Okay. I think to myself, oh, that is badass. I kind of smack her on a little gelatin back and say, good work, Mike. Is I go over to Percy? Mm-hmm. Percy, how are you?

I don't know. I've had a cough, and I'm... complicated. I did a check on him, Pike. It doesn't... his cough doesn't seem to be anything natural or disease related. So it's nothing like a fever, not a real... Not a real one, anyway. Can I do any extra check on him?

Yep, drop your pads. You can go ahead and make, you can make a medicine check on him. Getting the radiant digit. Did you already do a medicine check or? Not by you. You haven't made one. All right, I'll give it a go. Come on, Pike.

17? Okay. You take a moment to inspect Percy looking at his features, kind of checking his pulse, and generally just getting a sense of his, his, his life force in general. His eyes are sunken, his jowls are shadowed. From what you recall of Percy, who was always, you know,

a seemingly healthy, if on the thin, pale side individual, doubly more than you've ever seen him. There is an unrest to his energy, and there is no physical, natural illness or discernible disease, but there is something unsettling about his presence that you'd never sense before. Well, I guess something like lesser restoration, would that do anything in this?

What about greater restoration? Trey. Lesser or greater restoration? Might be functional things. You have a greater restoration, Pike. I don't have it on me. Try it. Can I try it?

Yeah, if you want to. Okay. So what are you casting? Lesser or greater restoration? I'll do greater. Do you mind Percy? No. No.

Okay, so as Pike reaches up, reaches up, you kind of grab his face again and you close your eyes and concentrate. Her hands begin to glow with an extremely bright vibrance, even more so than her kind of gently luminescent form right now. It's almost like there's a blow torch of radiant energy right around his jaw. The rest of her form almost seems to put so much energy into it that her legs begin to dissipate and vanish, almost like she's putting all of her energy into this moment. The rest of her body kind of fading in towards the grasp. You feel this warmth kind of washed through your entire body, and for a brief moment, for the first time, a number of weeks, there's a

moment of serenity to you. Your eyes instinctually closed, and for a second, you feel like you're standing next to Pike in a void of darkness. As that warmth hits, Pike, you sense something there, you sense a seed of darkness. There's something in him that you can almost reach out and grasp, and in that imaginative space, you do. You thrust your hand out and grab onto it, and it's taught and it's fighting, but you pull and rest it forth, and as you do, you feel it burn and dissipate. At which point both of you guys open your eyes,

kind of breathe in succession with each other. The energy fades from your hands and your form goes back to its full radiant physicality. You can remove a corruption point from yourself. Yay! A corruption point? Yes. I had two.

Okay. He's still looking at you. a little sickly, but definitely improved over. Like, heel as well? No, you just, corruption points out. So does that get rid of one of his weird ailments? He still coughs. I do feel better.

The cop is still there, but there is a... I watched all of that, and when I saw him lean back into the earthen wall, I quietly back up, and I'm going to go down the tunnel and just quietly make, like 50 feet and see... Okay, that's true. Pike, that was incredible. 23? I, I, what is a corruption point? You have no idea what a corruption point is,

but you remove some point of corruption in his body. Maybe you do me next. My neck has been hurting for weeks. Like, do that. How's that feel? How's that feel, big guy? That's much better. Almost like a small seed of sentient tumor of some kind.

Which corruption point be random? What's that? Should I randomize which corruption point vanishes? Well, it's a compounding thing. Oh, it's compounding. Yeah, they're not specifically. All right. How many do you have?

Or we can't. You don't know. Yeah, that's. Ugh. You have no idea. That's not. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm asking too many questions.

Yeah, how dare you? No, it's fine. How do you feel, Percy? I feel better. Feel more like myself. But he's still coughing. But I'm still coughing. But I'm still coughing.

But I feel much. Better. Thank you. What did you just do to him, Pike? I just tried to find out what this is. Is there, this is going to sound like a very weird question? But does part of you want to hold on to some of this? It could be. I'm not quite finished yet.

We'll see where we are tomorrow. While this is happening, Vax has vanished ahead into the tunnel on his own. You guys look around and realize that he's just nowhere to be there to be. that he's just nowhere to be seen. Fuck him, I go to sleep. Okay, Vax pushing ahead. Thankfully, even in the darkness, you have a little bit of vision, though, limited as it is.

Blowing, no. Go ahead and make a perception check. As you turn around the corner, you lose the light source, so. 20. Okay. You continue around the edge, and the tunnel evens out for a bit, and then goes straight, and then curves again to the left, following that, It curves again to the right.

You can keep going or you can head back. You've traversed about 60, 70 feet of this tunnel forward. Six or 70 feet. I'm going to go another 60 or 70. Yeah. Where the fuck are you? You keep pushing towards the tunnel and turn to the right. You travel a bit further forward,

and as the tunnel makes another sharp right turn, you see all of a sudden where the dirt stops and there is solid, smooth stonework, a broken portion of what looks like the backside of a wall of some kind. You see nothing beyond it. It looks like there's a piece of stone, something pressed against it, and looks like some other things are stacked, basically covering this entrance. I would like to just sit down on the ground and close my eyes and listen for a full minute. All right.

Exception check. 21. 21. You take a minute, close your eyes, and just take an all sound audio you can. Stillness, quiet, nothing. I felt pretty good. I quietly walk all the way back. I walk behind the group and I go, gooosh, look at it. I swear to pay, Lord, if you would have gotten us killed.

Where'd you go to him? I was just like 10 feet around the corner. He was right here the whole time, right? Yeah. We're going to take care of a little business outside and then we'll Excuse me? What? What are you doing outside? I'm going to charge the diplomacy glove. It's already sealed. Grog already sealed it?

Grog already sealed it? Yeah, he pulled rocks into it and closed the exit. I glare at Vax and I lay down to go to sleep. I suppose we do it here? We can't do it in here because it makes too much noise. This room won't fit my storm cloud. Wait, does Pike, do you have any sort of cone of silence or anything? Do you have a cone of silence of any sort?

What? He's going to make noise. No, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. I pick up two small. small, roundish oval-shaped stones on the ground, and I slide them into Grog's nostrils, plugging them up. Make a slide a hand check.

Grog? Grog, make a, make a, no, what's your perception? Your passive perception. Is that even a thing? Okay. Where's passive perception? It's under all your other action. 14.

Okay. It's not that good. As you step away, there's a, As your nostrils are stopped up now and the airflow is impeded partially to what you're used to, you begin breathing heavily through the mouth and react to that. I wake up to the terrible. What is that? Gross.

And I cough and the stone shoot out of my nose back in back. With a high velocity. I'm removing one hit point from my... Yeah. No, one means you in the side of the temple. Covered in grog, bog. I'm sleeping. And the guardian that Pike conjured is guarding us?

Is they're just keeping ever vigil for the next eight hours? Let's fucking rest. We're still awake. Be careful when you go to sleep. Shit falls in your nose. You guys taking shifts, or are you leaving it to the guardian? Leave it to the guardian. The guardian's got this.

I look at Vax before we go to sleep, I say. I'm not gonna pull any more jingam months, are you? No, no I'm not. You sure? She just kind of did that little secret walk around then. We notice when you sneak off, you do know that, right? Yeah. No, my rolls are too high, you really don't.

That's true. But I'm not going anywhere. Hey. Hey. Hey. It was the only one who didn't give you shit for him. who didn't give you shit for that. Just keep that mind.

Oh, Dad, you can fuck off and get yourself killed. You're asleep. I'm gonna go sit down by Percy. What I'd like to do is watch everybody nod off, and in 20 minutes nudge him, awake. Okay. Yes. I want you to get some sleep, but I want to talk for a minute.

I don't know if I can do both. Both of things, but okay. That's right. We can separate them. This thing. This thing. Yes. What do you really know about it?

How do we know that this thing isn't whispering in Silas' ear? What do you really know about this thing? I don't know anything about this thing, except that this last time, this last time was different than the first time. This last time didn't. This last time I felt more like me and less like I was being drawn somewhere. I wasn't entirely me, but I was more... It's hard to describe.

I felt like I had contained it a bit. I feel like maybe, maybe I can keep it under check. I don't know. I want to tell you something. You're almost like family now, and I have seen you do many great things. And you have earned my trust that if you hurt my sister, if you hurt anyone else in this group inadvertently. I would expect no less.

Vax? I'm hoping. Well, um, hold on to that. I shall. A little sleep fart. Aww. Can I borrow just a pinch of your black powder? No, I'm running really low, no.

Just like a little finger down. Just... No. Oh, God, yes. Yes. Yes. I lick my pinky and I put it in. And I just slowly draw a big ball sack on Grog's forehead. All set a hand check? Sure. I'm going to sleep before this happens. That's 23.

Grog, roll a perception check. Just for the hell of it. Come on. Look, there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, sad, confused. I'm Josh Horowitz, and yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly HappySad Confused is the place for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. From Andrew Garfield and Scarleth Johansson to Christopher Nolan, casting what ifs, backstage stories, and much more. Listen to Happy Say I Confused on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood.

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covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime can't be TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon.

And every Monday you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast. 18? Definitely blended in with the tattoos, unless those who are aware, there are a strange new series of smeared markings across Grog's face that you may not notice for quite a...

I did do little hairs on them as well. Oh, that's just disgusting. Yes, well, it grows here, so it grows there. You know? You don't know. I don't know. Why? I don't know.

All right, so you guys go to sleep? Feed the check, right. He goes to sleep. I'm going to do my duty with the Kila. All right. No, Kila's not to sleep. I thought we both too. Look back over at Kila through Jesus to sleep.

All right, I'll watch everybody. You're to sleep at all. I'll stay up for two hours. Okay. You stay up for the two hours. This doesn't seem to be much incident whatsoever. There's that gentle little draft coming through from just some of the cracks in the stones

that were set up to block the entryway. It was not a perfect hole, of course, just enough to, you know, not arouse suspicion, but there is cold air seeping through. You can hear the rain muffled through the distance and there's a little bit of a leak coming through from where the stones were set up to block the entrance. Eventually, sleep comes to you.

It is a kind of strange, lowling sound. and everyone sleeps relatively comfortably from being the middle of a stone tunnel. You have dreams again. Dreams, images, flashes, flashes of your family hanging from the sun tree. Never happen, but your mind creates the image for you. You see flashes of your sister screaming out to you

as the arrows take her in the chest. You see the flash of it looks like a skull, a skull face. The skull brings itself to where you focus on one of its ocular sockets, and blood just begins to pour from the socket. Flash to black, the familiar voice once rings out again. Do not forget our deal. Cold morning air comes to you as you all slowly come to consciousness. Uncomfortable, kinks in your back.

It's not the best place to sleep, but the bare, The bare minimum of long rest is achieved throughout the evening, as you all eventually come to and check and make sure everyone's okay. You awake a little unearthed. I look around for Pike. Is she still here? Pike is she's waking up. She's still there. Her image you can see in her sleeping state is diminished. When she comes to consciousness, it almost flares up again. Her presence here is purely a force of will, and that connection is a very tenuous one. I would like everyone to make a Constitution check.

Constitution. Not a motion, man. Yeah, you're right. I'm going to go Sparkle Stone. Mediari. Saving two, yeah. A natural 20. Son of a fuck. Saving throw or just constantly?

Natural one. Oh. My third of the evening. Five. Five? 17. 16. 20.

22. All righty. You rolled a one, Keyleth. Had bad dreams. The DC on this has thought us high. Everyone, but Keyleth passed. Kieleth, as you wake up, there's a general cold sensation within your body, and you feel like there's really no way to keep warm.

How hard you try and bundle up. You even kind of use a bit of druid craft to create a bit of sparkling warm fire that you use to keep your hands set in the cold, it seems like away. Kind of keep my hands lightly, like a flame, and just kind of... blame and just kind of. Your hands are shaking naturally and there is just a general chatter to your teeth. You have disadvantage on any dexterity ability checks. Wow, I don't use a bow.

Skill checks. It wouldn't affect attacks. I will say it doesn't really affect initiative per se, but if you were to try to do anything delicate handwork, you'd have disadvantage. Should we, before we get this shit going, we should have a feast? A big fucking feast. We should have a feast.

That sounds good, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And while we feast... We still have a couple feasts left. I will say, if we choose to feast, I will not be able to sunbeam. Well, that is the problem. Should we have feasted last night? I couldn't. I burned my sunbeam.

Shit. I could have done it, either way. I can't help in any way. I don't know if Pike. I don't have that ability. Does she have access to six level spells? No. We haven't leveled Pike up in a while.

I don't know if I've... You gain a modicum of experience while you're away from the party just at a slower rate. So you are at a lower level than the rest of the party. Not by a terrible amount, but you'd be level 11 by now, probably, or pretty close to it. So she would have a six level spell. She says feast. Does she? It depends on if clerics have it.

Clerics do have access to heroes' feast. Let me check. But that would also mean Pike burning her sixth level spell slot. Yeah. Yeah. So you would have one sixth level spell. If you wanted to, you could prepare that as your prepared sixth level spell for the day. That is your choice, Pike.

We get saves on all wisdom throws which might come in handy when we're fighting against things that control our minds. Oh, dang. I haven't even looked through these yet. Uh, While the fancy people are talking, I walk over to grog and say, Big Man, you got mud or something on your face, come here. And I take my hand and I wipe it across his forehead

and smear out what I did. Don't fucking touch me. Okay, sorry. All cuddly in the morning and shit, God, get it together. Sorry. I'll lean open and vex and I go, how do I look? You look lovely, dear. Damn right.

I have questions for us while Pike is looking up with spells. First question is, how on earth are we going to, are we supposed to send a signal to the rest of the town when we're in a tunnel? We can open it up. From where? From here. Once we're inside, the castle will be able to, we'll be able to. I don't- I can sky-write again, but I just need-

Sky-write like right now as soon as we decide it's not moving. We just need to move the rocks again. Yeah, open the rocks again. up, people start attacking the castle. We come from the other side from within. And is that our plan? We're going to say, rebels go, wait a while, and then attack? Not even wait a while, we'll go in.

Go in at the same time. We throw the signal to the sky and go up this tunnel. Shouldn't we wait a little? Wait like five minutes to let them rabble up and start running. It was supposed to create a diversion. Yeah, but then took down a whole house. Well, we had a grope. I was amazing.

But maybe we should incite the rebellion wait a half hour and then go. This happened really fast. Five minutes. Let's see if we can keep half hours of them. A half hour is so. Civilian casualties to reasonably small. They're super powerful.

We're most capable of people in this town right now. Well, that's another question. We are. Does one of us need to go out there and lead the rebels? No. No. They're fine. They mean no.

They've got Yennon. He's awesome. He was a badass person. If he survived the night. If he survived the night. What if they don't take the rebels seriously because we're not with them? Maybe one of us should go.

Maybe Pike should. I think it's going to take all of us to defeat the BriwraW. I think we all need to go together. Once the Briwolds are gone, I think a lot of this will get a lot easier. We could meet in the middle. I'm just saying if Pike is fading on us, might be best to send her out to leave the rebels.

No, she's not fading on us, you dick. She's coming with us. Scanlon, we're gonna make a leap of faith that Pike can stay. And if, in the horribly unfortunate scenario where she can't, Pike, can you leave us anything? A hero's fucking feast.

A potion, a spell, a prayer, a symbol, a sigil, anything. That's a sigil. Oh, oh, a sigil. Is that a good one. Is that it wrong? I prepare to be a gift, Ma'ser. Yeah.

There's some amazing. Just side note, there's one called Heal that can heal a person's 70 hit points. True. Just like that. It's crazy. You've got to pick one. Heroes Feast raises all of our hit points higher.

Way to humble brag fight. And it makes us more badass. Let's do, yeah, let's do the hero's fees then. All right, so. Eat up and go out. All right, so mark off your other thousand gold chalice that you had purchased beforehand. I think you're out now, aren't you?

Yes, I believe we need to go shopping. You needed one more. You had one more, I thought. She has one more, it's you can use right now. She'd purchased two before you left. Oh, thank. Pike, you wouldn't happen to have a thousand gold dollar worth chalice on you, would you?

Only astrali. Never mind. Yeah. I would think probably not. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. You hand over the chalice to Pike. You take the chalice and you set it down before you.

You mark a symbol in the dirt in the center of this tunnel in the shape of a giant rectangular table. You take your holy symbol, remove it from your neck, and thrust it into the ground at the head of the table. With that dust kicks up as it seemingly out of nowhere, this giant table's feast just huge rises. Oh my God, is it a holy feast? Do we all? Do wholly damage now? No, but it's, holy shit, it's delicious. Holy shit, it's delicious.

It is. Very good. So you guys. Best line of the night. Benches around and available. You all sit around it and dig into the most delightful mid-tunnel, cold sub-castle breakfast you've ever had. Ice cream.

Give me that pencil. So you guys all, for the next 24 hours, have advantage on wisdom saving throws. and I believe it's 2D6, is that what it was? 2D10 or 2D8? I'll look at it right here. It's an advantage? 2D12.

Nope, 2D12. Nope, 2D10. Woo! Everyone roll 2D10 and add that temporary hit points to your HP value. That includes you, too, Pike. So just roll 2D10, and that's temporary hit points on top of your regular hit points.

Nice. Meaning once those go away, they cannot be healed back. So not cracking 100. Nice. 1.05. An advantage on wisdom, saving throw. You are you, I mean to fear. Yep.

And- And poison, I think. Yep, you're immune to poison. Immune to poison and mere into one else. You just get a bonus and advantage on all the wisdom saving throws. Heroespeas, motherfucker. Yeah, yeah, I just did it.

It's immune to fear and what was it? Oh, yeah. Fearing to fear and poison. Oh, it's such a good spell. Very expensive. Damn, it hasn't been clutch. All right. Okay, so I'm gonna just kind of move out some rocks

just up to where I can peek out. Are we ready to go? I'm ready to rock. What? Do like, do this. I'm just gonna start this, we can tuck. We're gonna start. You gotta go outside first.

I'm going outside. Okay, we gotta move a rock. I'm going outside and I'm going to start in the, is it still rainy? It is not raining currently, and the sky's still cloudy and dark. So cloudy? Yeah. Okay, so I take the clouds and I kind of darken them,

and do a giant DeRolo crest that expands over the whole city. Okay. So with Grogosep, we move some of the rocks out of the way, get a visual of the sky, you kind of lean out. Focus, cast your skyright spell, so mark that spell off, and as you coalesce the clouds to be extremely dark and deformed the de rollo crest symbol in the sky, as that happens, you begin to see about two minutes later, little beacon lights begin to ignite across the city, lanterns and torches being lit, and it looks. looks like, as it is probably an hour past dawn,

that the surviving remainder of the White Stone Rebellion is rearing itself to attack. We should have sang one day more. Well, we still can. But yes, before we do this, I love you all. And I wish us all the best of luck today. I especially love Pike, and I'm so happy she's with us for this. But if some of us don't return, I think that the glory of what we're doing today and the justice of what we're doing today has been worth it.

And Percy, I hope you get some sort of redemption of all of this. To the Dorolo's. To the Dorolos. To White Stone. To white stone. To Vox Machina. To Vox Machina. May raise your glass and drink if you'd like, Ashley.

Hey, there we go. Should I've been in Jerry's pint. As you guys finish your drink, the Heroes Feast slowly sinks back into the dirt, leaving the empty tunnel before you. The slight, cold sound of drifting wind through the now freshly barricaded rock exit of the secret passageway begins to reach your ears. What do you wish to do? Get the fuck ready to go forward. Do we want to check the wall? Yeah, I'm taking point. I want to check out that way. wall that I sat right in front of. I'll go down the tunnel on.

Yeah, come on around. I kind of light up my hands for light. Very quietly down the time. Using the veritable torchlight from Keeloth's burning hands, you guys press down the hallway, Vax taking point. Eventually you get to the end of the hallway, and it is indeed this tunnel, there's a portion of the stone wall that has been chiseled out. It's not very smooth.

It's kind of rough in the way it was constructed, but there is definitely about a foot-thick wall that would go to the right and left you within the dirt that has been chiseled and broken through to reveal this passageway you guys are traversing. Immediately on the other side of this opening, now that you have a better look at it, it looks to be some sort of stone sculpture or a statue of some kind. You see what looks to be the back, you see what looks to be the backside of some armored soldier, but it's all carved from some sort of marble. At a closer look to, per se it's carved from the white stone that is actually mined in this.

Why recognize this part of the passage? You do. This statue is essentially one of the large things used to hide this exit. It's just normally showed it out of the way. There are a few other boxes immediately adjacent to it, and from a little bit you can glance past it looks like this section is used for storage of some kind and he's just filled with whatever random crates and whatever needed to be placed down here to keep it out of the way.

And someone check to make sure it's just a statue. Can I do like, um, magic Narcana check to see? Sure. It's a magical, magic trap. I'm gonna perception. Natural 20 on perception. Natural 20. Ha ha ha.

Making up for those fucking ones. There you go. As you step up and kind of inspect the back of the statue, um, you know, the stonework is very well done. And there is just a very, very, very faint magical essence to this statue. It's so minuscule, and the only reason you're able to pick it up is you're so fine-tuned to seeking out that presence. It doesn't have any specific form. It doesn't have a specific school of magic applied to it. It just has a general, very, very faint magical aura.

Is it carved out of the rock? It's carved out of the white stone. Gotcha. But it's not like magically trapped. Correct. It does not appear to have any sort of strong magical presence for a specific aura. We're not going to be possessed with some. You don't think so. I don't think so. I silently signal everyone.

And I slowly stealth around the statue to check out the room. OK. It's all pressed against the wall. The widest gap is about that wide. You're going to have to push or shove things out of the way. All the crates of stuff are pushed up against it, kind of blocking the whole exit.

It's too big for you. Do you need maybe something stronger? I reached out. Pass my sister and pat him on the shoulder. Yes? I think you're up. Where? Oh, where?

I think you need to move the fucking statue. Oh. Skupt. Quietly. Gently. Start to push the statue out of the way. Make a strength turn. Oh, no. Really?

That's the one. Natural one. I'm sorry. Grog, you, Grog, cracks his fingers and kind of grins, stepping up, goes to to push the statue and then pop, something in your lower back just gives. Pee-cock a little more for us. The air escapes your lungs, and it's been a long time since this injury has crept up, but he threw your back out a little. I slide down and go, you know, I'm so tired of taking all the glory.

Why don't you guys? Trinket, Trinket tries to like, mm-hmm. Trinket, who at this point in time, by the way, takes up a large portion of this tunnel. Yeah. He wants to get the... the fuck addict. Pushes past you guys and turns around and puts his rump against it and starts to just backing up into it. Go ahead and roll D20. Pikes defeat this door.

Fucking doors. Fakes, frogs back. Doors of white stone. Doors of fucking white stone. Oh, God. Add two to the roll. Can I get one of those massages, pipe? I don't add his full strength.

It doesn't fucking matter because I rolled a three. Doors. Perpetually defeating five. Guys, curse you doors! Yes, I've got this guys. But before we- Oh no. Listen, this could potentially be humiliating for all of us, but before we expend any of our arcane abilities,

please let us all at least try and fail. Can we try it? Can we all push together? Let's all push together. Push as much as we can. Wait, why are we pushing us? Let's do the three. Let's do the one and a half elf push, shall we, you, you, me, yeah.

I'll join. All right. All the average shaped people. I'm rolling my giant foam dice. All right, everyone but Grog can help in this. Grog, you're out for this one. Stay out for this one. I'm helping.

He's helping. I am not helping. Oh, I roll 19. One, eight. Eleven. Wait, this is just a strength check? Yeah, adding your strength. Strength.

One. 21. 12. 12. Okay. As good solid try, the force of you guys combined, there is just a lot of weight pressed up against the statue that crates on the other side.

This storage room is very full. And you find Vox Machina for all of its journeys, battles, victories, and celebratory events bested by a room of clutter. I am very impressed with Pike, did you want to give a shot? I've got this. I turn around, I'm still pushing. Wait, wait, Pike's going to do this?

Okay, Pike, go ahead and make us roll D20. Add your strength modifier. Come on, Pike. Come on. Charge at it. This is like the lid of a jar, like everybody's loosened it. How good Pike's gonna. What?

19. Plus your strength modifier? I rolled an 18, and my strength modifier is one. All right. As you guys all take a moment, I have this discussion, Pike just kind of steps forward her, kind of drifting a little bit behind her, like it's just buoyant in the air. Somebody draw it. She steps up and centers herself.

Sets her shield to the side. She'll the side, puts her mace down, closes her eyes, puts her hands on the statue, and just begins to shove and push. As she does, you guys hear. Seriously? Why could have done that? And the crates begin to push and move out of the way, and she pushes the statue a good six feet ahead, pushing some of it out of the way, leaving a little bit of opening, and a visual walkway into this basement area. Miss. It must be nice of this space.

You save the day again. Mrs. Shortholz, you are. You are. Amazing. Well, fine. Trinquet gives up. Pike, will you carry me over the threshold? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. I fist bump Pike, pop my hood up,

and then quietly go into the room. Yeah, I'm the best person to do this. Can I have Trinquet step on my lower back, please? Trink is really good at that. Trinik is really good to massage. Tricket begins going to be stepping on. You can hear the . So I'm going to have you roll stealth check with disadvantage.

Disadvantage. Because of Grog's moaning the massage. That's fine. That balances out, and my first roll was a 29 total. Okay. All right. So you just appear in. It's very dark in here. There's one sconce that appears to be giving a bit of flickering light across the way. as you step out of this chamber into what looks to be two paths that go to the right and the left, and then curve and disappear, right across from you, it appears to be almost like a central room or space. You can make a little bit of visual around you, but the rest you can see is there are a series of bars, like cells, arranged across some of the walls here.

You appear to have stumbled upon the subterranean white stone dungeon or prison. Can you help me understand the makeup of it again? You said two passages, one to the left, one to the right, and a chamber? Directly ahead. Between them? Correct. I know we got two paths, but he said there's a room as well. This will be a good respect for you. I just don't happen to have a room draw. That's where you guys came through. Yeah. And you're just, see this back here? Here. And there, you see cells on this side.

Right. Does there look like, is there anything good in the room, the kind of storage room? No or not. Oh, you're in the storage room? Yeah. I make an investigation check. Yeah, I'd start opening up crates. Okay. That's not great. Um, uh, eight. Okay. There's a lot of broken building materials. 18. 18? Okay. Looking around, you see, there's work materials. There's, there's pickaxes, there's crowbars, there's things that are used to in various tool-based means throughout the uses of a castle. Most of them are for grounds repair and things like that. Nothing particularly interest to you. There are a few crates that have residual white stone in them, but it appears that most of it's been

just used or taken elsewhere. Like white stone dust? Like dust and small rocks here and there. Can I gather some up in a bag? Sure. A little Yeah. Yeah, I pick up a few pieces too. Okay. I never know. You, seeing both those pads? So both paths and there's a room closer to me, right?

Yeah, around the way to your left, you see that's the source of the little bit of scots torchlight. All right. Into my little earring. And I move quietly into the closer chamber. Okay. As you're moving forward, you hear behind you the sound of crates shifting, lids moving. Because searching through a room of large clutter and crates makes noise. You take a few steps and that happens and you're like, ah.

And you hear echoing from around the corner a voice go, Hello? Is someone there? It's really crackly dry, voice. I start moving entirely and I just wait. Hello? Silence. And can I hear anything besides that?

There's nothing else I have besides that in this room. Point you can tell, no. And there's no dim light or anything? The only dim light is coming from around that corner, from the source over that sound seemed to come. I should be able to see then if there's dim light up to 60 feet. Right. Nothing immediately in your visual perspective.

If you go all the way to the edge, you can look past the corner if you want. Okay. I slowly back up away from that and creep up the hall and stop the corner before it turns, And I'll just lean my head out and I'll listen. Okay. Acception check? 27. Okay.

Listening for a second, you hear what sounds like some shifting, like a body shifting over some sort of low crumpling. Sounds almost like grasses or hay or some sort of soft bedding is being shifted a little bit. Okay. You hear a clink of metal of some kind. You're not sure quite what the... the sources, and a couple of other small, like, shifting, grinding sounds of metal, comes to a halt. Got it. So I tiptoe all the way back to everybody and say, listen. Stop doing that.

Oh, give me that. Stop. Stop. Stop. There's two passageways up the way. I think we're in some sort of dungeon. I could probably confound. There is a little old man or little old woman. Very much so. This is where you woke up or Cassandra pulled you out of it. This is absolutely the dungeon. I had surmised as much.

There's possibly an old person in one, and then sounds of something. So both of the chambers are occupied. I came back here to confer with you instead of going off on my own because it gets me in trouble. That's all you got. Let's go talk to one time only. Let's go talk to the old prisoner. What do you want to do? I'm sure they're prisoners. Do you want to talk to the possibly old person?

Shouldn't we ask the crazy eyes thing? Percy what he was? Well, I don't like seeing on myself. You right now are kind of staring off in this space because you recall the last time you were here, you woke up in a cell next to a cell that contained a pile of bodies of previously related members of your family before Cassandra. I would like to start making my way in that direction.

Okay. So as you guys have this conversation, Percy just starts walking. It looks like, we're going. Percy, you might have to take out one of those contraptions of yours. Before he goes, I cast pass a trace on everyone. Okay. Everyone who wishes to be stealthy can be stealthy?

I'm rolling along with first. Sure. I'm being stealthy. Okay, everyone roll stealthy. Me too, I'm super stealthy. We'll keep, all right, we'll keep with your consistent roll currently. Is still? No.

15. Okay, with plus 10? That's with it. It's 30 this time. All right. Be stealthy, roll. 21. At least try.

Add 10 because it gets best than a trace. Oh, 40 this time. Yeah. Only with her. only be like, who did you get Grog? 26. Okay. You guys all move as a group forward.

Pike, what did you get? They rolls, roll you stealth girl. Plus 10 to it. I have three. Plus 10 is 13. 13, okay. Could I give a seven of mine? Okay.

You guys push down the left hallway? The right one. Which I'm heading towards whichever the prisoner cell had been mine. The cell that had been yours would be It's kind of on the opposite side of the room from you. Be on the other side, the fastest way would be taking the left path towards the light. The left path.

Okay. So you guys hit that direction, kind of following percy. That's not the direction of the voice. It is. Yes, it is. You move towards the light. You guys turn on the corner and look, not in the cell that you're in, but across the way. There's like six cells, three on each side of the hallway facing each other. And on the far cell, on the outside wall side of it,

wall side of it. You see there's a torch sconce that is lit and kind of just slowly crackling. It's almost like almost each ember period, like it's about to be changed out probably. And inside you see sitting, just squat in the ground in a cell by herself, this woman kind of facing away back up against the bars. And that's all you can see. Drawing a blade just in case. As approach, I put my finger over my mouth and look at her. Does she see us? She's looking away.

She's facing away from you guys. Her backs up against the bars, so she's kind of... Oi. Hello. Shh. Turns her head and looks over and you see, the person you see your face. Much older woman, probably in her early 70s or so, but 70s living, you know, in a not very... 70 years in a hard life.

So very, very deep sunken wrinkles. The skin is very weathered. Her hair is mostly whitish gray with a little bit of you can see remaining reds and browns in it at some point. She might have had a much brighter color hair. Her clothing is pretty ragged, and she leans over and looks to you guys, kind of squinting her eyes in the darkness. If you want to get out of here, don't speak loudly. Who is this? Who are you?

We're here to help. She's still kind of looking out into the darkness. She can't see you guys. She just hears your voices. Who are you? She's being very guarded right now and very spooked. In the darkness, I hand stupidly my Flamethrong dagger to Scanlon again and push him forward with it. I hold it up to my face. I grin a big grin to her and I say,

Hello, my friends. We're here to bust you out of this place. Can you tell us who you are? I'm Gloria. Gloria sin. Gloria sin? Gloria sin? How'd you find your aim? How'd you find your aim?

in here? We are ninjas. She looks very confused at you. Are you friend or foe? Do you work with the Briar Woods? No, we are against the Briar Woods and all they stand for. We're here to save you, the prisoners, the village, everyone we can. And all of you step forward at this point?

Is it just you? Just him. Mr. High Carismore. I am not alone. I have friends with me. with me, some of whom look quite scary, so don't be alarmed if a bear stands right behind me. A bear.

It's a good bear. It's the best kind of bear. He's the cutest. Who's that? That's my friend. Vex, Vex, come forward. As I kind of walk up a little bit behind Scanlan and I insight checker to see what the fuck is going on. Okay, well inside. I don't know, they've all been betraying me.

Don't you? Wow, pretty up. Oh, that's good, that's good. 24. 24, okay. Lady Byron went. I mean, she's in a cell in a dungeon and looks to be fairly spooked but also guarded. Not much to read beyond the fact that she's an old woman in a dungeon.

Why did the... No? I mean, you know, she's definitely like staying guarded in the circumstance, but you're not picking up any sort of strange animosity. Why? Why have you been locked up? And you just know these voices are coming out of the darkness. She's like, I came up from Drina to ask why the waters are growing brackish.

Fish float downstream dead and taste of ash these days. Delilah laughed and threw me in here saying I'd fare a better offering than a fisherman. That's the last I know. I've been here for not but a week. I can say it's almost safer for her down here for now. down here for now. Yeah, so here's the thing. We're great with old people.

There's a... They don't take prisoners. There's a lot of violence that's gonna happen. We should unlock her. No. We should keep her in here from now. They don't take prisoners. Why is she fucking dead?

She can run out the tunnel that we came in. Why don't we can unlock her? We just let a book for it. Wait, if we destroy the Briarwoods, it will be no trouble to come down here and let anyone out who's down here. here. If she's who she says she is, we don't know. We know. We can't trust anyone right now. Good madam. When you were brought into the castle, can you tell us anything about where you were brought? Were you brought before the queen? She's the queen, right? The lady. The lady. Were you brought before the lady? If so, in what room? Where was it? How big was it? How many gods were in there?

They brought me. They brought me into the main... The main grand throne chamber to speak with the Lord and Lady. They ushered me through the horse, and we waited for about an hour for them to arrive. Apparently they were busy elsewhere. There was a brief discussion. They laughed in me and threw me in here. You have beautiful eyes. Did those eyes see anything in that grand throne room?

Entrances and exits, large windows. I know all of them. Oh, yeah, I will say. Fuck. They brought you down. Never mind, man. Were there any guards? Many gods. Lots of guards.

There were many guards. I'd heard of dark things happening in this castle, but when I was escorted through, I saw things in the courtyard, shambling things, things that should not be alive. 10s, dozens. I did not feel right at that moment,

and then my fate was brought into this terrible cell. She kind of looks about... Has anybody been coming down and feeding you? Every now and then. Not in a regular basis. Every day or so they bring enough to subsist on. As I, as she's talking, I'm going to just see if there's any sort of Arcano,

or magical incantation on her, or any sort of possession? Is that something I can check for? Do you have a detect magic spell? Magic or something? No, but can I just do an arcana check? Or is that not? I mean, what are you?

I don't know. Arcana is more like inspecting, like, a close area to see if there is the nature of an arcane enchantment or something on it. You don't actually, like, sense it. All right. Then I do nothing. I sing a little song to her.

What are you doing? Kill? Alarms is there. Nothing. Nothing. detect magic? I can dispel magic. Try it. No, because then that's a spell. It's a spell. It's a third little spell.

All right, anybody's fine. Let's leave her. Is she? I can do it. Why is she not dead? Why is she not? Because they're going to feed her as an offering. Yeah, you're going to eat her. Let's feed her to trick it and go away. I have, they're not much, but I have rations and water's skin, and I toss them through the bars of her cell.

She takes grabs them as soon as they come to the cell and kind of grasping to herself. We'll be back. Very kind. Do you know if anyone else is in the dungeon down here with you? I've not seen or hurt anyone else. Occasional wails, soft, mournful moans and I stay quiet. I stay very still. Hide in the corner. Stay quiet. Do you please let me out? No, you're fucking staying in that cell. If things go bad upstairs, it won't matter if you're in there or not. If you please.

There are things upstairs that we can't protect you from that we are going to deal with first. And there are creatures on the road and in the woods, and quite frankly, you're safer right now. If we do what we have come here to do, we will come back for you. There is war outside right now. Don't you worry? If there is war, then that's the time to leave when there is distraction. Can you raise a blade? Can you fight? I can run. I made it up here north, didn't I?

I've lived in these lands for quite some time. I know how to serve. As a decoy? We can come back for a river. Please, please don't leave me. I don't know what's going on. This is awful. Is it Lieber? Fax, you're the only one who can pick the lock.

Man, put it all on him. You must trust me what I say. You don't have keys. I'm assuming she's locked in there, right? Uh, you can check this elder. Let's leave her. Let's leave her. To please, please do not.

You must believe me when you say you are much safer here than about. Her fate is intertwined with our. If she leaves, she's a very good chance of being killed. If we go forward and succeed, we come back and she lives. If we go forward and she dies, she's where she is. This is the best place for her. Let me take the fate into my own hands. I don't mean any wrong here, but I have no reason to really trust you either. How can I show my trust? How can I? I do not leave me here to waste and die. What if you don't succeed? What if you fall and whatever folly you're making away into this castle? and I waste away down here myself. Please. I'm just giving you food and water. We'll be back within 24 hours. Come on. We're going. We're going.

Oh, darn. Please. Ma'am, ma'am, here. I'm giving you a magical whip. It will protect you against anyone who comes down here. Just hold it up and it will chase away any demons. You're coming out of the... You're the only one is out of the light now? Yeah, I'm right. The first one on the line. Hmm? It was the first one.

Right, but everyone else is still in the shadow. voice is coming out. She can kind of see me because I kind of went down towards Canada. Okay. She kind of steps a little closer to you as you hold the whip out and she kind of grabs your hand with her with her left hand and kind of pulls it. Please don't leave me here. I can favor my own.

Just don't leave me here. I go terrible about this. I step forward now behind Scanlan. Super fucking intimidating. If things go away, If things go well upstairs, we'll be back. If when we leave, you make a peep, you won't ever again. Make intimidation check.

Damn, grog, triple intimidation. 14. She shrinks back. She just doesn't think of it from you, and she just kind of looks at you for a second, and sits down, frustrated in the bottom of the cell, and just kind of, then go, leave me. Eat that lambas bread.

I take them. Was it a magical whip or just a piece of rope? It was some toilet paper. Just check the other side. There's got on the other side, I think. No, no, no, no, there's something I don't know what I could make out what I was hearing. It sounded like hay or grass or something moving, so I don't think... Someone sleeping.

I think it was the straw on the bottom of herself, right? No. That was her passage. There's another passage to presumably another set of cells. set of cells, so I will skip along quietly 20 feet ahead of you all. Okay. And try to see. Old people love us.

You're going to go. You go. You go and make a perception check. 21. Looking about the cells, they all appear to be empty. You do catch a couple of rats, skittering through. Some of the brush. Nothing really is the source of that scraping metal sound.

This is the second room. You go around the way and there's another set of cells. Yeah. Nobody else in the other cells. But this is where I heard something before. You heard it kind of echoing around the other hallway, so it could be amorphously from the same source that she came from or near the cells.

So. And my perception, thanks come up here. I sneak up. We don't see anything, but I feel like something's here. Can we sense anything? How long, by the way, how long has this all taken? Since you left the symbol up there.

The tunnel left the tunnel. Since we've incited the rebellion. 20 minutes. Jesus. You gotta start cooking, guys. Pike, Pike, do you, is there anything here? Do you sense anything in this room? No, I just, I feel weird about this old woman.

Yeah, me too. All right, so there was dungeon and dungeon. Set of cells, set of cells, but you said. There is, master cells a... Yay, Matt. I'm not getting to see it yet. I'm not going through this whole thing. There's you can see now.

Let's memorize where we're all going to do. Come, she's in this cell over here. Okay. You've come around here and you can see there are two cells this way, a cell this way, and then these sets of cells. Which one was the old lady? That's up. Which one was the old lady? She was right.

This one right there. I think we should let her out. Did you got her something to eat? Yeah, we gave her food and water. I gave her food and water. Did she eat it? She's scrabbled at it. She brought it to her, but she didn't eat it immediately now.

That's weird. Because she's not hungry because she hasn't been there for a while. Do you eat it? Do you see anyone else in any of the cells? No. At this point, I grabbed my sister. Come on, we're gonna check the cells and we look at every single one.

Okay, you go through every cell. There's nobody living in them. You do see a few of the cells have long decomposed corpses. Piles of bones, mostly picked clean by the rats or whatever creatures live in here. But from your best knowledge of decomposition through your experiences, nothing fresher than the past year, maybe.

I walk back up to the old woman. Why did you roll? Not hungry or thirsty, I take it. I'm gonna go to grog. Okay. Just. I was fed now but this morning, I have to make this last. Keep you well fed here, do they?

No. But if you eat it all at once, you'll have nothing to keep you over to the next time. Yeah, have a little nibble. She gives you a strange look. Have a little nibble. Take some of the rations and breaks it off. It's good. It's not the finest of...

He's only fish, but it'll do. Cooking with Gron! Old people love us. We're just the worst to all. Why are you so spanked, old giant man? Because I don't trust you, old woman. Can I quietly prick a little

hole into my palm just so I can start bleeding a little bit? It was very tiny. Can I ask what for? Oh, that's a great idea. What? What I asked what for? That's a great idea.

Are you just pretty, unfortunately your form here is incorporeal. There is no blood flow from your current body. That's a great thing. Back in Basselheim, there is. Back in Baselheim is, yes. Gras. Grom, do you... What was that?

What was that? I'm sorry. I'm watching her do that? I just, I'll fucking bite into the meat of my hand, because I see what she's trying to do. Okay. What's wrong with you? A little.

Oh no, some nice type A-B right here, on tap. She turns her head curiously and disgusted and disturbed by this display. Very confused. A clean blood. Hear yourself tent. I know not which madness is taking you. We're making asses of ourselves. We're making asses of ourselves.

Please. Please. I am. I'm just open these gates. Let me fair for my own fate. Yes, the answer to that is no. I think we should. We'll be back. I'm going to go creep up the stairs.

You, you please. I mean, I can try. I'm moving towards those stairs. I'm moving the stairs. Okay, Vax walks towards the stairs, the rest of you guys. Doors and old people. Quiet, please. I'm gonna act like I'm trying to pick the lock

to help her, but I'm really gonna not try very much. It's I'm putting on a show for her. Okay, as... This is a really difficult lock. As you're going to lock, she kind of rush up and helps you with it and is like holding it. It's like, yes, yes, please, just like that, all right. And then, and then what?

You turn it this way. You don't even have proper tools for this. I snapped the thing into the lock. Oh no. I knew I should be like a good. Foolish girl. I just don't know what I'm doing. But I will be back.

Back with someone who does. Make a perception check. Perception? Oh shit, because she's going to turn into something. Oh, that's really good. It's good. Okay, quick, quick, quick. 26.

When she went up and grabbed the lock with you, you only, her hands grabbed the lock. You only felt one hand. Oh, oh, oh my God, it's Ripley. Oh my God, it's Ripley. Sorry. What? You're not there.

I'm saying that as Barisha. Not as Kilip. Caleb saying that is a person. The worst. I'm sorry. But anyway. Wow. Shush.

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