Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Vox Machina Ep. 51 - Test of Pride

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Scanlan tries to plan a safe escape for his daughter Kaylie, while Grog makes his way to the center of Westrunn for his final confrontation with his uncle Kevdak. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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that wander the landscape of Caldore that Grog once belonged to had swooped and then taken Westroen after the Chroma Conclave Dragon attack across this countryside. The party had devised a plan to find their way into the town, or at least one of them would distract a cluster of these individuals, these Goliaths, many of which are, you know, half-giant Goliaths, pulling them out of the city into a large pit that had been hidden after being carved by the Druid Kieleth. Scanlan went in to be the distraction. Becoming invisible, leaping to the center of the main town square right in front of the Margrave's house, where apparently the leader of this clan, Kevdak, of which has a long

history with Grog resides. As part of this distraction, Scanlan released a thunderwave, and in doing so unknowingly, also revealed himself as the invisibility spell went away, had an entire cluster of very angry-looking individuals bear down on him, managed to escape things to Dimension Door twice and made your way into the partially ruined temple of Arathus, where you came face-to-face with a number of refugee Western villagers and Dr. Drenzel and Kaylee. And that is where he left off. So, after appearing and having a moment of realizing the scenario, you see a handful of people, most of them filthy, completely beleaguered and in need of not being in this circumstance as long as they possibly can.

And you can see Kaylee kind of holding them back defensively and drenzel having just noticed your appearance and calling out to you with a chuckle, realizing that you're here, and Kaylee rolling her eyes apparently unable to really escape through fate, though there is a look, a brief glance of appreciation that at least you're not burnt to a crisp somewhere outside of Eman. But Drenzel walks up to you and he's like, as hush as he can be.

Scandalin, oh, I'm so glad to see that you survived. What are you doing, you? Well, Doctor, there will be plenty of time for festive reunions and hopefully tearful hellos, but right now I'm afraid we have a bit of a problem. See, my friends are stationed outside the main gate, lying in wait for these Goliaths that are terrorizing the town. My mission was to come in here

and somehow convince the Goliaths to leave through the main gate, and my mission is not complete. And I'm afraid, well, I've roused them, and they are going to come in here and kill us all unless I get them out through the main gate. So we're in a bit of a time crunch. Hi. And Doctor, Doctor, you are such a long friend of mine

and a trusted companion, but I'm afraid, though I love you, you cannot help me. I need Kaylee's help in this. At which point, Drenzel, whose face has fallen into a look of absolute fear and despair, to confusion, to mild frustration, continue, still glaring in your face, because I guess some things don't change over time,

you son of a bitch. Okay, well, Kaylee, he looks over his shoulder and Kaylee kind of steps up now and bursts off her shoulder. All right. So what kind of business am I getting you out of now, Father? Well, not just getting me out of. I'm afraid we'll all die if you don't help. Great, great, that's fantastic.

I'm sorry. You've just finished all of these fine folks to their demise. No, no, I haven't. Not a few help. So listen, I've been thinking a lot about you, and it's so wonderful to see you, and I just need you to trust me in this,

and lend me your talents and your magic, if you can. Will you trust me today? Doesn't seem like I really have much of a choice, at which point you hear on the outside footfalls, heavy footfalls, going in the street on the outside of the temple, and you hear some shouting, muffled in the distance, This, oh, here's the car.

B, b, b, b, b, b, b, b, b. Everyone kind of stays really still and silent, and then you hear a few more footsteps. On the partially broken door of the temple, some heavy handfalls hit, and everyone just kind of ducks down, and the air leaves the room entirely. At which point, there's a moment of pause, and the door begins to push open against all the rocks

and this barricade that's been placed against the door, slides against the ground, it opens ever so slightly. Quiet still stands and you see these fingers come through and pull it in another voice say, Hey, give me your hand here. This one's barricaded. The door slides a couple more inches in it and you see an arm come through. Now, holding against the side of the room. Another arm comes out. Shit. Can I grab Kaylee and get everyone to, is there anywhere to hide in this room, any place in the back? Well, there's a partially collapsed, like,

half-ceiling area that's part of the temple in the second floor. There is an area beneath the spiral staircase that leads to the second floor that could fit most of the people there. Okay. I'm going to very quickly, and with her help, usher everybody back into this back stair. Okay. Turn around, blow my horn of fog to fill the room partially with smoke. Okay. And then I'm going to tell Kaylee, can you throw your voice. After the the room just fills with this heavy, heavy mist, obscuring the vision of most everyone in the room that isn't directly at your side. You hear the voices at the door go, hey, what's

that going on? And they're now fighting heavily against the door and it's slamming against the barricade. And Kelly, kind of getting a feel for what's happening. All right. What can I do? You can throw your voice. I've seen you do it once, right? I can, I can. Can you change your voice? I can.

Okay. Can you be the scariest fucking voice you've ever done in your entire life? I will tell you what to say. I'll whisper it to you. You just be the voice. I will be the visuals, all right? I'm gonna create an image

and you're going to talk out of it, all right? All right, all right. Let's go. Okay. So I will use just a little bit of you. a minor illusion to create the head of Stonejaw, Strongjaw. Yes! Ja-jaw?

Ja-jaw. Ja-jaw. Ja-ja. Okay, I like this. Oh, Lisa, sorry. I'm talking about my family now. Oh, no. All right, so.

I'm no fucking gungin. So, as the essence of minor illusion, it is a very, very simple illusion. For sure. As far as I know, it can't even really move. It can be an image. Yeah, that's fine. It's going to be floating amongst fog. Okay.

So within this fog, you see as they push through the door, the barricade clatters down, section of a table and a chair and a lot of the rubble that was kind of scooped up from the roof that had caved in, jammed against this door, gets skirted back, tumbles and clatters across the stonework. And you see one Goliath and one kind of rough-looking human with a ragged beard come rushing in, you know, dual hand axes drawn and looking about the fog as suddenly out of the middle of this space, a giant, semi-translucent, disembodied head of what you recall is a... Just a paint-in-all.

Stone-jaw strong job. He just stands there, gleaming forward at a large, though, you know. I will say initially, what is the DC on this? It's through the hand comb, so it's 20. Okay. Oh, wow. They both stop and just kind of go, Are you saying what I'm saying?

The human's like, and it's just a moment of pause there, and Katie's looking at you, like. Okay, really quick, here's your motivation. You're a dead Goliath, you were killed in combat by one of your own, and you probably sound really scary and fucked up, ready? Go. Okay, I tell her, I am Stonejaw, Strongjaw. She puts her hands together in class almost like the grass reeds

that you blow into, but she speaks into her hand, it sends out these, these, rippling, kind of, almost like a heat distortion that just kind of scatters out from her hand. And outside of this central illusion, you hear a voice, come moving for, I. Fuck yes. And stone jaw, strong jaw, return from the realm of the dead. Yes, yes, yes, that's good.

Turns to you. Keep going, keep going. You're doing great. I love you. Okay. Kevdak's son Zanroar killed me in dishonorable combat. Kavdak's son Zanroar killed me in dishonorable combat. I can't go to the other side until I have avenged my death. I cannot move on to the other side until I've avenged my death.

The Goliath goes, sorry, then. He steps out of the room, the guy with the scragled beard who, you gather, is a different type of a tribal background than the Goliath just kind of gleans an eye, and trustingly. Yeah, strong jaw, you say. How strong is that jaw you use? and throws an axe towards it. Just passes through and clatters behind. Okay. Quick, say, you idiot, I am but a projection. You idiot, I am but a projection.

You idiot, I am but a projection. The real stone jaw is currently outside the main gate, waiting for a battle of revenge against Zanroar. Send him now. That's a lot. I know. Sorry, Caleb. The real Zanroar stands outside the city gate, waiting for vengeance against Zanroar.

You're doing great! Bring him now, or you all shall suffer. That last part was improv. That was amazing, King. There was like a slight pause. Can I have my axe back? I motioned to Dr. Drah to throw it back to him. Runs over, feels for it, scanners around. Throw it hard.

I will throw it hard. No, no, don't say that part. Don't say that part. It's fine. You're doing great. At every point, he starts backing up towards the door. At every point, the axi's pliders past him and like, slams into the wood behind him. He reaches up without looking away. grabs it.

Thank you. The main gate. The main gate. The main gate. How? There's like four gates into the city. Which main gate? I don't know.

What, do I know what it looks like? The Western gate. The Western Gate. The Western Gate. Right, right. I'll let him know. He just leaves. It doesn't even touch the door and just bolts out the back.

Oh man, I love so much. Moment of quiet. Dr. Drenzel walks by. Oh. To say you two make quite the team. I would say that as well, yes, I would. Thank you, Kaylee. That was better than I could have ever done.

That's true. All right then, so we're getting people out of here. And all things have gone in a bit up. How are you going to get the rest of these folks out? And Drenzel thinks for a second, he goes, Well, we can't wait for the rest of the team. They're probably still on the way back from Kymal. I'm unfortunately mostly spent in my capabilities for the day. Scanlan, what do you got? To keep us all safe? Uh... No, to get the rest of these poor saps out.

Out of the city? Jesus. Uh... Well, you're gonna leave them here unguarded? Oh, no, of course. I'm not gonna leave them unguarded. I just... I mean, we can't... How many people are here? I look around the room. There's nine people. Uh, I can get me and Kaylee out. Uh, I think we should just hunker down. I can't get us out. I'm sorry. I, I mean, we could sneak. We could sneak. We could try to make a sneak for it. Are there sewers here?

Kaylee nods. There are sewers. Hey. Close by. Is there an entrance nearby? About two blocks that way, and she points to the south side of the city. Okay. So should we wait for your friends, or should we go ahead and take this route? We should wait and make sure that we hear Goliath footsteps leaving the city before we move, and then go. All right. Let's take a moment and make sure at least all the chaos is moving that way. Quiet takes over as the fogs slowly fades over the next few minutes, and you all stay out of sight.

Now the rest of you guys are currently waiting. are currently waiting on the outskirts of the western side of town. You hear the bells going off in the distance. You hear the sound of shouts as the guards that were at that post start stepping back inward and trying to figure out what's going on. At this distance, it's hard to make out exactly what conversation is happening, but the energy of the outside of the city has definitely climbed up a few paces, which leads you to believe, hopefully this means Scanlan's done his job. We shall find out. Is there any other preparation you guys want to go through right now, or you're just waiting to see any sign of movement? Are we all, like, together, or are we spread out across everything? We're birds. You're birds.

We're birds on a wall. We're standing together in, like, the tall grass. That's right, we were watching. Okay. I'm going to take a minute to anybody standing near me. I'm going to take a minute and use, where's my thing? I'm freaking out. Hide in plain sight. All righty.

And make it to where we can set a surprise attack on them. Okay. Okay. All right. So as part of that, have you guys both roll stealth checks? Sure. Do we, is the past without a tray still active from before? I think we cast it before you arrived or in the approach, so yeah.

Okay, so add ten to that. 35. 35. Oh, look at that. Probably that's enough. That's enough. It's like that. that scene in little.

All right. Since we're birds, I'd want to take just an occasional high, high level circle around. Okay, both of you guys were perception checks. 26. 26. 18? 26, 18? Okay. Yeah.

Oh, see, that's what we could do, Matt. We could have just sat you on the same side that's people's us. Yeah, you could have been behind us. Oh, that's true. Oh, well, too late now. All right, so. Too late. Any products you want me to hawk while the camera's on us?

Those shirts, man. These shirts? Not those shirts. T-shirts. How do you want to do this? The t-shirt. The t-shirt in stock, one more week. How do you want to do this?

T-shirts are now available for something. Also, pre-order for another week. Oh, no, man. Also, the necklaces and the keychains are stolen. The necklaces and keychains, but those are a fantastic birthday or Christmas gifts. They really are. What are the necklaces?

The necklaces, we still haven't gotten those. Arbor Day's like Memorial Day. Memorial Day. People give gifts on Memorial Day. I got gifts on Memorial Day. So underneath your Memorial Day tree this year. It's beautiful. It's like steel.

Oh my gosh. So. Yes, Pike. Can I cast Guardian of Faith near us where we are hiding at the gate? If you'd like to. Yes. On your location of the gate or somewhere else? Because we're all together by the hole that you dug.

Aren't we in the ground? You're in the grass down towards the front, kind of farther back from the gate. Where are you guys standing right now? Because the twins are by themselves, right? Yeah. Oh, so we're all apart. Yeah, you and Grog are kind of your own pod right now.

What are you guys doing? Hey. I just forgot you were. Just us chilling. Back to slit some skulls. You know what I'm going to. I'm gonna pause. I'm gonna hold off?

Yeah. Alright, so you guys, what are you doing? Ah! Jesus. Okay, okay. Okay, I'm on the wall, right? Mm-hmm. Um, I'm gonna kind of like scooch back a little bit, so I'm kind of hidden, I'm gonna drop my animal form.

Okay. I'm gonna go over our ear pieces. I'm flying near her just so I can hear, but I can't talk. Okay. It looks like there's about six coming our way. coming our way. I don't know how well Scanlan's distraction worked. It looks like they're doubling down and setting up a heavy defense in the center of the town. Is Scanlan listening to you right now? Scanlan, can you hear me?

Scanlan? There's no response. Shit. I think he's too far away, you guys. I don't know. Hopefully he wasn't captured. There's about six coming this way, so stay down. Hopefully the the trap works. I just thought of something. Hey, remember when we were like walking to the woods and fought those six Goliath and I stopped the fight. Remember? Yeah, that was Zenroar, right? Right.

So I think he knows that I'm not like back from the dead. Well shit, Grog. I just sort of it, you know, like the whole magic thing might not actually work. So the whole plan we made is stupid? No, no, no, I'm just saying, let's move forward cheerily. Your father is dead, right? Your father is dead, right? Your dad's dead?

Yes, yes. I don't know. Yes. He is, yes. He's dead. Yeah. Yeah, he's dead. Yeah, he's dead.

Okay, well, hopefully it works. I don't know how well this is working. Just a pro tip, Vax, what would you say is the number one thing to keep in mind when fighting someone like me? Don't. Keep your distance. Yeah, keep your distance.

All right, let's know. What's our plan B in case Zanroy never comes out? We go in and we kill everyone. Yeah, pretty much. Everyone. Well, except for the nice people. Oh. And we decide her the nice people.

I think I can confirm that Vox Machina has been a terrible influence on me. Just want to throw that out. All right, let's go. Where are there? Where are there? I also, I want to just see if I recognize, I'm just doing another little flippity-flop scan around. I just want to see if I recognize his brother as one of the people who's coming to the game or not. or not. I'll get down low for that. Not a brother per se.

My cousin? Your cousin, I mean. The one I recognize, because I, the only one I've met. Right. At this height, you get low? You get low? Okay. You don't see anybody coming towards that direction that resembles the individual you met that one time before. Okay, fine. I'm gonna go looking. However, what you do notice is, and you quickly duck out of the way, there are two giant eagles, that comes coasting over the city in the same direction. Giant eagles.

Okay, I'm going to go find a perch on the other side of the gate. And I'm going to find a nice little sniper's nest. I'm assuming you have some clan members who might be druids, do you know? You're speaking really smart right now when it's confusing me. Make sure you're hiding key, live. I'm on a stealth. I kind of want to hunker down against the wall and stealth. I'm staying bird until the last possible moment. 21.

21. Also, guys, if no one comes towards the gate in the next five, ten minutes, they're on their way, right? They're not going to come. Well, all right, I hope so, but if nobody's here in ten, I think we've got to go in. Is there anyone coming towards the western? At this point in time, you guys, on your side notice, and you as well, a cluster of about six individuals come rushing towards the gate, and the two guards that were to the side earlier, join

up with them, they stop for a second and they discuss at a distance. Then they all turn and rush towards the gate as a group of nine. Come on, trap. Work, trap, work, trap. Come on! As they're rushing forward, it's about three, two, and then a scattered like four-ish in the back. They go bolting through, eyes around, looking for any sort of sight of anyone waiting at the front of the gate. They're going to slow their pace a little bit, not seeing anybody immediately out there as they begin to go through the center of the archway.

Someone make a distraction. Quick. No, I step out from cover very slowly and walk out in the middle of the road. Oh shit. Okay, as you step out, they all immediately put their hands out and stop. And to the guards, shout out, You! Who goes there?

Two of them of that group start stepping backwards. Uh-uh. while two of the guards that were stationed at the gate the entire time just go, cutting down. And they go into a run through the rest of the 10, 15 foot area, around the center part of the gate, out into the main area out front. As they begin stepping, watching in the distance, you notice one foot crumbles through,

and all of a sudden the second foot, and the earth begins to just tumble out from underneath, two of them, three of them, four of them, five of them, all of them, all of a sudden, All begin, just the first line, the first two groups weren't even paying attention and focused on you as they charged through, and all begin to tumble inside. Yes! Of the last four, two of them managed to stop in time to kind of catch themselves. Of all the ones that fell, though, the ones in front who originally got caught to have no saving through, they just plummet screaming down into this.

How deep is this? How deep is this? A hundred and eighty feet. It's 180 feet. Is it a hundred and eighty feet? Two managed not to fall? Hold on. I think so.

Okay. To manage to avoid the entire crumbling portion of it, and there are three of them that are currently holding onto the edges and trying to pull themselves back up. Can I find, I want to find a good enough vantage point where I'm behind them and I can give them a push, like from a distance. Is a bird? You're a bird. I'm still bird.

I can drop as soon as he lands. I drop his polymorph as soon as he lands. Well, but I was hidden waiting for. Well, he's on the roof. I'm on the roof. He's on the wall. Well, first, I'm going to see how much damage they took. Okay.

All of it. We are the best of planning. That is... That is... You did that. 83 damage to them. 83! That's pretty good. And if I look at the sheet here...

And they're prone. You... We would be dead. That's me. You hear a horrible scream and a crunch sound as they all... Those that fell are unconscious or currently completely unable. Yes!

We did so much! Low moans of pain, barely echoing up from underneath as the other ones are like, oh, God, they grab the arms of the ones that are hanging over and start pulling up the clustered in yet. And you've come out of your form. I want to take two, I'm taking two, where's my English? I have it, trick shot, push shots.

Okay, go for it. Yeah. Go for it. Push shot number one. Pee-p-poo! That's, uh, that's, uh, With retort, I'm not using the big gun. 21. 21 hits.

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they don't even have a, they don't even have a save. Nope, it just pushes them. Okay, that's, and then that does, uh, uh, that's, 14 points of damage. Okay.

For the one. Which then that one gets pushed over the side. It does not make a save to try and catch the edge, plummets down, suffering, just because it's fun to check. 70 points of damage. damage. Just a sickening smack sound.

Landing on the other ones. It's awful. Looking down there would be terrible right now. That's paste. And the next one. That's 17, 27, 20, 30 to hit. That hit. Let's go ahead roll damage on that one.

That's 13 points of piercing damage, 13 points of piercing damage, plus the push. He gets pushed, falls off the edge, catches his arm on the side, and begins pulling himself up. Now there's four of them that are currently now about to start climbing up outside of this collapsed portion of Earth, but the Earth is still crumbling beneath them and they're trying to grab up. I cast a hail of thorns and shoot in the cluster of them. Okay. Go ahead and make the hail of thorns. It is...

Does that count as a kill? Do I get a grip point back for that or no? Yeah, I'll save for that. The next time I hit a creature with a ranged weapon, I rolled 27. That was really good time. Yeah, so right now you're aiming them all in the hole. Even from your perspective, they're going to have three-quarters cover. So that's going to be- I just need to hit the one that's closest to the top.

Right, what's your total roll on that? 27. 27? Yeah, even with the three-quarters cover that'll still hit. Okay, so go ahead and roll damage on that. Is there one still standing, by the way, who's not? No, both the ones that were standing got pushed into the gun blasts from behind, shoved into the large open chasm beneath them.

26 damage. 26 damage. Casting at what level? At level three. At level three? Nice. Nice. All right, each creature within five feet of it?

Okay, so at five feet, the holes a much bigger space, so it only hits two of them. Okay. I'll fling a dagger at the last one, which I'm done. Okay. So this is all happening simultaneously. Degars. So it blasts two of them. They both catch them. Oh wait, that was sneak attack.

Yes, so you would actually get to... Add another six? Six. Six. Wow. All right, that one's looking not too happy. And your turn? All right, I'm throwing one dagger.

Okay, and its advantage is I'm hiding. And it is 27 to hit. That hits, even with the three quarters cover. Go forward. And it's a sneak attack. And it's surprise. so it's a crit, right? Because I'm hidden underneath shit, because she hit us.

Hide in plain sight. Technically, yeah, I'll let that happen, because it's part of the surprise round. We'll say this is all happening simultaneously, as though if they fall in, grasp, barely catch them himself, and then the blade comes out of nowhere. So yeah, I'll let that happen.

No, all the dice. 34 is a 68 plus the bonus is 74. Seventy-seem. It's obscene. With that, the blade, Sinks into the top of the skull of the one Goliath's trying to pull himself out as it hits his arms just go limp and he falls backward and disappears beneath the earth. And just in case I'm using my bonus action, to hide him. Oh shit, I should have done that.

Go ahead and roll that. Nothing gother than thou. Not the gotter than thou. 25? 25? Okay, good enough. All right. Could I do the same thing because I forgot to hide up for my bonus action as well? Sure.

Okay. Both those are just, whew, pitty stuff. 30. Like so much as a vampire lurper. You had 10? All right. No, I didn't. Way high.

All right. So as it stands now, there are, I believe, two more in there that are currently holding on to try and find their way up. As this is happening, Keith, and you're paying attention, you hear this high pitch. Oh, should look at your shoulder, just in time to see a large giant eagle swoop down. Talon's extended towards you. you visible on the top of the wall.

There's no way I can use my third shot really quick. Is there? No, you're too focused on the thing in front of you. Let the eagle saw. It swoops down and strikes you with the talents pushing you forward. That is going to be a 20 to hit your AC. Yeah, that hits. All right.

You suffer nine points of piercing damage as its claws dig into you and attempt to throw you from the top of the wall. Okay. Bring it. Go ahead and make a dexterity savings order to try and grab the ledge before you plummet. Oh, great. 11. Unfortunately, you don't even know which way's up as the talents chuck you forth, and you plummet from the top of the wall.

You fall down a total of 45 feet. Can I go like, can I turn back into a raven as I fall? My other bonus, my other action, quick action? Yeah. I'll say go ahead and make it... Make a Constitution saving. as part of a concentration check, just to see if you're able to focus your mind in that quick period of time? Uh, 19.

19, yeah. As you're spiling backwards, seeing the eagle look behind you and see the ground, close your eyes and scoop upward into the form of a ray. Awesome! Great work, quick. Seale. Seale! All right. You guys watch us as the other two guys stand up, getting out of the whole.

Look about. You are now still standing out in the middle of thoroughfare. a thoroughfare, you're hiding off behind one of the little chunks of rubble and rock that permeate the outside of the wall in places. You guys are still hidden. Since I'm a, oh sorry, since I'm a raven now, can I do a loop back to the center of town and see what's going on? Yep. So you're heading back to the center of town. It's going to take you a little bit to get there. They get back up to the top and they spend most of their turn getting to that edge and taking a few steps away from it, getting their weapons out and kind of glaring each other and trying to figure out what the hell

they can do right now as you start looming towards them. I unarmed start walking towards them. And I say, where is Kavda? Make a deception check. Boy, not his strength. Come on, baby. Thirteen? Thirteen?

They're dummies. Plus. As you say that, one of the two individuals that's pulled the way out, humanoid kind of, you know, kind of a grizzled beard. His eyes kind of go wide, and he just stands still for a second. The other one is Goliath, who as he approaches, you get a familiarity with it. Remember this individual. A little younger than you, has a pretty, pretty heavy scar from the bottom of the chin that goes down about the sternum, named by the name of Suda, who just kind of steps forward, gives you a look over and goes, Stangor.

No, you're a grug stronger, that's what you are. Fool, though not who I am. I have not come through flame in death to deal with filth like you. He's a bleeding liar. Come on, you guys have been had. And he goes ahead and takes these two hand axes, throws him in the air, and kind of catches him, and just rushes in towards you. However, he's been able to make anything else this turn, except for a movement into base-to-base with Grog. We'll say for the purposes of this open space, Grog will be there.

And this one... Sudha. Not quite as... Sad blade there. He's pathetic. Look at that loser. Kill him Grog! Kill him Grog!

Except that Binkwoad. Anybody else do anything right now in this turn? We're just waiting to see what happens here. I'm observing. Okay. So as you're watching and you're heading off that direction, Grog comes forward in your face, what are you going to do? I'm going to reload, actually.

I would like to rage. Yes. All right. Take out the firebrand war hammer, and I'm going to tattoo his ass. Go for it. Go ahead and take you two attempts. To the opening credits.

16? 16. Mrs. Oh wow, I cast were God's blessing. As Pike steps out from the high grass and the section of the stuff. What up, motherfucker? You do that in the back of your head, and with that, the little bit of no more distraction to decide, turns his face, his eyes peeking out the corner of the eye sockets,

and that's just the little moment of opportunity you need to go ahead and double up and slam upward with the butt of the hammer. Go ahead and hold damage to that attack. Oh, God, it's been so long since I've used to... That's 17. 17 damage. Got it. Second attack? Second attack is 24. That hits, roll damage on that one as well.

Hey, where's the Grizzly guy go? The grizzly guy's just step back a little bit, or like he's like taking one step onto his back foot, not even approaching Grog. Where's the Eagles? The Eagles are too far from your side right now. And where's the pit? The pit is about 10 feet. is about 10 feet behind the guy who's standing. Actually, I should probably put him there right now.

I'd like to keep an eye for the Eagles as well. He's about there. Where's the chasm? Let me do this. He's putting it down. I'm putting it down. I'm doing this. I'm drawing up for you guys.

Come on, invent a battle map just like that, man. Come on. Pick your page. That's nice. That's a good. Yeah, I got dark. That's a really good chasm. That is a huge chasm.

We did that. We're watching his magic. His magic in real life. Where's all the dead bodies at the bottom of it? Yeah, can you draw detailed dead bodies? A little bit of dead. Can you just grade it a little bit? A little bit salshingy.

You don't mind? There you go. Do you like to draw or just sketch or doodle? Where are the twins right now? The twins would be back here, hidden. Heiding. Mike would be off to this side here. Way off the middle of all.

Percy's like, I'm gonna keep an eye for the Eagles too. So. That last a tag. Keep commenting if you see things. Where's the Eagles? The last attack was an 18 plus two points of the fire damage for 20. For 20, nice.

Second attack. Okay. So that ends your turn. He's going to go ahead and go for a round of retaliation against you. Using the action surge that is afforded by is going to make four attacks on you. Okay. That is a really, really shitty 16. Misses.

Misses. That is a 24. That is 25. Hits. And a 22. That also. Wow. So three hits on you.

He's strong. How does he get four hits? Is he a fighter? Action surge. Oh, action surge. Yeah. This is, he's blowing. 11 points of slashing damage reduced to six.

Okay. Or five, actually, for you. Five. That is 14 points slashing damage reduced to seven. Okay. And nine reduced to four. Okay. It just hacks in the...

Haas! Ha! And looks forward and sees you barely moved by this flurry. Oh, tiny dancer, you are fucked. Anyone else jumping out on this? Yeah, can I do a thing? I want to stealth and creep over to where Pike is. Okay.

You've been stealth, but yeah, you're speaking to the grass. And I would like to hold my action, and if the Glythe's body anything if he tries to help, if he tries to run, I'm still hidden, right? Yeah. So I'm going to fucking throw an eye at him if he does anything. Okay. I'm going to cast Hunter's mark on the guy behind. Okay, got you.

Keep one alive. I want to know where our two principals are. Keep one alive. Right. Hunter's mark on that fellow there. And keeping an eye on the hawks. Okay. Eagle. Go ahead and never there.

Grog, your round of retribution is up. That's right. anything? No, I'm gonna hold. Okay. Oh, it's my turn again. Yep. Yeah, more tattoos for Twiddlyfuk.

Suda. Wait. No, I want to bulrush Suda and drive him back towards the pit. Yes. Yes. That is the correct answer. We've been to bullrush in a while. Okay.

I've got to bullrush in a while. That was proper. Yeah, man, that's good. Don't even think about it. Sorry. Don't even think about it. It might be, I think it's like 30 feet or something that I can move on it. Or maybe it's 20, I can't remember it.

It's a little less than that, but we'll see. Oh, is it? We'll see. They're very pleased you've made it interesting. So shoving a creature, you can shove it. 9,700 feet, specifically. All of them. All the feet.

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's 15 feet, but he's 15 feet, but he's He doesn't know numbers, so. It's a strength that let us contested by his athletics or acrobatics. You push him five feet away from you or prone. Oh, five feet. Or prone, prone is good. And then you can drag him. Drag him.

Try and shove him in, sorry. Shut enough. Grapple and try and drag him with you if you want to do that. Okay. So go ahead and make an athlete. Athletics, yeah. Athletics, yeah. That's when I would roll the natural one.

That would be when I do it. That would be when I do it. Really. Of course. Because that was a 12. Okay. And with that, you bring the hammer back, like you're going to go ahead and slam into his face and instead reach down and grab him by underneath the ankle and just flip him onto his back. As he's there, slammed onto the ground, the hard, kind of packed dirt of the roadway that leads

into the western side of Western. Are you going to attempt to go for a grapple then? Yes. All righty. As he is on the ground, I will go ahead and allow advantage on this attempt. So for your second strike on this, roll another athletics check with an advantage, because he is on the ground. 27.

Yeah, no, you got him. Bye, bye. So you can drag him at half your movement speed. Okay, so 25 feet. Oh my God, yes. Oh my God, yes. Let's count. Let's count.

Let's count. 15, 20, 25. You can't kick him over there. Come on. You can let him stand before it happened. Just. He's like dragging him through. His, the problem.

I don't know. We're strong for him. The other guy next to him kind of along the hand axe is just watching you drag him up and just like, and unleashes. Oh, fucking asshole. No. Go, go, go.

I call it. I'm hidden. Advantage and all that shit. Oh. Oh. Oh. 28, 29. 29.

29 hits. Yep. Okay, go one. Oh my God, those are so many. 15, 15. I'm gonna cast sanctuary. 25. 25, doubled is 50.

56. 56. It's not a bonus action, though. It's a bonus action, though. It's a bonus action to hide. All right, maybe you use your bonus action. Okay, yeah. Usually, you hit your bonus action, you already use your turn to hold your action.

hold your action. Okay. In theory. Whatever you want. Whatever you are. You're not hidden right now, because usually it's you have to, the bonus action be used on your turn, and the holding your action is kind of, is that one thing that keeps over. Love it. But you got the, as he goes forward, the dagger sinks right into his sternum and he kind of,

and still using his momentum, goes forward as you're dragging it. It's going to go two strikes against you. 13 and 15. This is. Just both. Both axes do strike and hit you, but one of them hits the shoulder armor on the back of your shoulder,

kind of cracks part of the bone and just streaks off the metal. The other one comes down and it hits you in the back of the belt of Dwarbenkind. You feel a little sink of pain as it cuts through some of the leather, but even the belt itself deflects most of the attack. Look over and say, sit down, son,

before you hurt yourself. Make an intimidation check. That's a one. And he rolled 20, so yeah. You have a really winning comeback if he didn't have a dagger in his sternum at the moment. Yeah. He's a little distracted at the moment. All right, so, with that being said, the guy who's in the ground now.

I'm like, any guys want to do anything at this point? I'll shoot an arrow at the other guy standing there. Finish him off, man. Finish him off. Have I made into town yet? Not yet. So I missed six seconds. It's a while.

It's a while. 23. 23 hits. Full damage. With Hunter's Mark. With Hunter's Mark. And sneak attack. Yes, because he does not see you.

Unae of your presence. Dhabermaine. Efficient. Efficient. Efficient. 21. All ready. That's the first arrow.

All right. Oh, that was so close. 14. 14. It misses. It's okay, though. I was just going to let you roll the second way. The 21, the arrow strikes him right through the throat.

throat, and just grasped for a throat, gurgling before he falls to his knees and slumps into the ground, head to the side, kind of still clutching at it as he slowly, the life spills out of him. He died as he lived deeply unimpressed. The other guy gets up though, and he's going to use his action trying to attempt to break the grapple. That is going to be a... Come on grog. 16.

This is... It's contested with your athletics. And I throw it. I'd roll on athletics, sir? Yeah. You are raging, so technically you have advantage on it. I'll take the 18. Athletics 26. Yeah, he's still grappled. He can't do anything on that. That's regalind.

It's my turn? Yeah. I look to and I'll say, I'll let you fly from here if you answer this question. Is Kevdak Ozenro in the sea? when you're in the city. Make a persuasion check. No, this would be intimidation.

This is intimidation. What about persuasion? This is how Goliath's prom dance. Eight. Eight? Oh, yes. Oh. Okay, as you're holding him there, he goes,

huh. You'll find out, won't you? I take his neck and I smash my head into his nose. It just breaks and crumbles. His face that's partially cave, and you can see blood now, just running rapidly out of his nostrils or where they were once were. You won't be there to watch my discovery. Are they in the city? Yeah. We're waiting for you. Good. I'll let you fly now, and I kick him into the pit.

Wee. All right, I'll say as you use your movement to push forward, go and make your athletics check. 18. And with that, Fum, you poof. Reaching out, grasps, catches the very edge of the ledge behind him, and the rock just breaks and me. Banishes screaming into the pit below as you step forward and look over what little glint of daylight even makes the bottom area, even because it's far out of your range of dark vision, you just see enough of a movement on the bottom and then no movement whatsoever. He wildly coyote that guy.

Oh, that. Right, don't they? No answer. Yay! Yay! And see. You've made it. I'm looking for Scanlan too, by the way,

kind of keeping an eye out for Scanlan. Inside. 23. 23, okay. The second time. As you're glancing through you see no sign of Scanlan. You do see now that there are small groups. small groups of these clan individuals are now pulling out of homes, various denizens of

Western and pulling them towards the center of town. They're screaming and kicking, or some of them just aren't putting up a fight because they have no way to, and they're just pulling them almost like shields to the center of town. It seems like they have a plan. I don't know that. I'll ask back. Okay. Getting back. Do I see them? Do I see the group? We've cleared the area more or less, yeah.

I mean the area where they are, as you glance back, yeah. There doesn't appear to be any current set. Whoever was set to go to that side of the gate to check it out is not returned. Sure. Can I turn back to a crow or do you need to do that? I have to cast it on you. But it's a new casting. It's not just the same casting. Correct. I can't drop it in and now. I head back. Okay. Scanlan.

Oh, me. Yes. So, as some time has passed, you guys have waited it out. I'm looking for Scanlan on my way back, by the way. Keep in a night. You are currently hunkered down with Kaylee, Dr. Drenzel, and this cluster of nine survivors. You've managed to parry off one incursion of these. herd members within the temple. The barricaded door is still slightly ajar,

as closing it would make quite a bit of noise. What are you planning to do? I mean, I have to get these people out of the city, I guess. So they know the location of the entrance to the sewers, correct? Kaylee said that she knew, yeah. All right, well then I'm just going to... Do I know that the Goliaths were working with orcs at all, Was it just Goliaths?

Is it... Well, no, from what you've heard from when Grog was interrogating the first member of the herd that you guys found on your way south through Western, it was a largely Goliath herd that had been challenged by and then defeated another clan and then absorbed them. And the other clan involved a lot more varying races and specialities. There were half-works. half-works. There were some wild elves that were part of the crew and a lot of brigand humans. It was very much kind of like just defeated their leader, took in the others because their choice was to either die or join. And as such, it has grown

to this much more mammoth-sized roving herd. I don't remember the name of that herd or anything, right? No. Or what they looked like. But they were motley and they involved half-orks and things. There were a couple half-works. There were a few humans. I think you saw one wild elf, and and then mostly Goliaths based around the center of the Margraves estate. Okay.

All right. Well, I tell the people, there's nine people, right? Plus me, Kaylee, and Doctor. All right, well, I gather the people around and I say, we're going to be moving through the city rather fast. In case we are spotted, I need to hide you people or make you not a target.

So I'm going to disguise you all. as a band of irritable half-orks and grotesque humans and the like using seeming. And just look ornery and look mean. And if you are approached, just sort of spit and kick the dirt and look pissy. And we'll go. Make a performance check.

A performance. Performance. In showing them and guiding them on how to act as these. I can demonstrate it for them. Yes. Yes. acting abilities. Okay, I'm such a good performer.

I'm not even gonna look. Talison, what did I roll? Well, you do it okay. It's okay. With your performance bonus, that's a 20. Okay, good. Okay. You take a moment to show some guttural snarls,

teach a few odd, you know, curse words in Orkish that you learned through your travels. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just some vocal warm-ups, you know, when you want to get deep. Everyone trying. Ah, that's good, that's good, that's good. Work on that. We all gather up along with Franzel and Kaley,

who looks kind of suspicious at what you're attempting. What exactly are you trying to do here? I'm just trying to keep us safe and get these people to the sewers. You know the way out of the city, don't you? I can show you. All right, do you have weapons? Can you protect yourself? Are you okay? I can protect myself.

Don't worry, Scanman. I'm just worried, I have to worry about you. I will always be worried about you. I'm sorry. And you'll always be disappointed to find that I can take care of myself. No, I won't be disappointed at all. In fact, that makes me quite happy. Good. Can we be off then?

Well, all right. Okay, as long as you're happy, I'm happy. Right. Listen, I'm sorry. It's just... I never get to see you, and I know we're in a rush here and everything. You can't, listen, you can't hate away me being your father, all right? I will always be the guy. No matter how much you curse my name and wish I was not part of you. My blood is inside of you and I'm sorry, I'm sorry people, but you know, I care about you, all right? All right. It's not going to stop me from trying to hate you away, but I'll get what you're saying. Well, do your trick.

trick. Okay. So I cast seeming on the lot and I make a few orcs and a few humans. Any number of creatures within 30 feet of you. So all of these Western peasant folk, yourself, Dr. Drenzel and Kali, all of a sudden become, to varying size degrees. I can make people a foot taller. A foot taller, yeah. So they can be somewhat larger. You're still, you get it, you're still tiny little goblinoid half-orgs. Sure. But it gives a visual perspective based on what you've seen of this trip.

And everyone kind of looks themselves, looking at the back of their hands. There's just one kind of younger man in his, probably mid-teens. She's like, this is amazing. And now they're making the noises at each other. Like for a brief moment, all the fear subsides as they're, for a moment, giving into the play of acting like a half-work. And then they all get serious again and look to you and Kaylee. And Kelly goes, all right then. Follow me.

Slinks out the door, looks back and forth for a moment. Leans back in. Ghost is clear. And she nods. You see a troop of about, it would be 12. Half-ork-looking barbarians of varying aggressive stances, start pouring out of a broken temple and into the street. I swoop down a little closer.

They're heading on. And attack. Scouts' direction. I'm waiting to see. Tippy head drop. Earth elemental drops from the spot. Super! Kills them all.

Can I tell if it's Scanlan and crew? No, you have no idea. It's very believable. You just see this roving band of Half Forks now that are heading southward to the town in a cluster. They're jumping from one alley away to another, and they're heading kind of southwest. Do I, am I like, this is sporadic. sporadic for a group of orcs, or am I like crazy fucking group of orcs? Make an inside check.

All right. Yeah, I don't like that one. I'm taking it back. I'm taking it back. Ooh, that was better. That was better. I felt bad. She bails on her road.

I didn't trust everyone who was in the air, 26. 26. Something is off about this troop, but you're uncertain what it is. Okay. All right. All right, you guys continue to move. We're going to continue to move as fast as possible. You move southward past one sequence of alleys to the next street south,

and Kelly continues to usher you guys up to the edge of the alleyway. She looks back and forth, nods, and you guys walk into the street again. As you step into the street, a voice goes, Hey! And Katie stops and goes, ah! And whips around and looks in that direction. You could see a troop of things. three individuals led by one Goliath, and there is one kind of wild-looking elf who has

like face paints through across the front of their expression with this long, almost red-locked, light brown hair, and what looks to be an older human with like streaks of black and gray and this long, long beard that's tied off near the stomach, bare chested with like scars across the chest, and they all kind of loom up as the Goliath steps up or pointing out, We need you to the Westgate. He kind of steps up. Who's your washer? I step forward and say, He was killed by that gnome.

No. Where'd you see it? Right in the center of town, he was a scary, undead gnome, and he's roving about. Kevdak sent us to search for him. A conception check. Yeah, but. 19. Yeah.

That's true. That's so ugly. Center of town, right? Then you should probably come with us. See if we can swarm it. Follow. If I may, actually. Kevdak said to follow the gnome,

and he ran this way. I'm sorry, we have to follow Kevdak's orders. Pardon me. Pardon me, sorry. Please, please. Sorry, pardon me. Make another deception check with the disadvantage. Oh no.

Go to get there before they run out of cucumber sandwiches. Come on, come on. Well, same thing, 19. Yes. All right, we'll send a few more men your way. Oh, fuck. Stay on that trail. If I see you again, you ain't got a dead gnome

on your hands. I'm gonna cut that head from its shoulders. All right, you have my word, we're gonna do. Yeah, see you later. The strange one. And the two of them head back, as one of them just kind of keeps a distance behind you guys following you as you travel.

You dart into the next alley. And Katie's like, come on, come on. And as you guys duck into the shadows, everyone's pace quickens to the center of this alleyway where there is a, like, it seems like a large stack of partially emptied crates that contain it's like broken pieces of furniture. It's essentially a small dump in the area.

Nothing food or refuse-wise, but there's definitely, this is a graveyard for broken furniture. broken furniture, but in the center there was a small cylindrical stone protrusion and a grate on top. And Kay runs up and goes, quick, quick, how do we get this open? Doctor? Doctor? Yeah, Dr. Drenzel says before, goes, let me take care of this. Which is funny, he's under Drenzel looks just like himself, but just all covered and face paint.

You can't see his hat. He's kind of enjoying this persona for a moment. He goes, p. P. And strains as he pulls upward, straight. Natural 20. Yay! That was he strained. Everyone can beat doors but us. And don't you forget it. So, inside?

Yes, go, go, go. And they all start climbing in, uh, Drenzel and Kinnell. The war is over and both sides lost. 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 at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story

that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.

See what everybody's talking about, and join us in the dark. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not-so-dark, Not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotic's detective agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high-flying action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every quill they can fight. It's one heck of a tale, which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save there.

Lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? All will be revealed in. Sonic the Hedgehog presents the Chaotics Case Fires. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. When the Chaotics are on the case. You're helping get the peasant side inside first,

at which point the one that was following you guys, turns the corner in the alleyway and starts approaching from behind. This is the guy with the long. kind of black and gray beard. Here, where are you going? That gnome again. One of us saw him go down this sewer. We're following.

I'm gonna have to go back and report this. I don't trust. Hold on one second and I'm gonna cast hold person on him. Okay. Get it, get it, Scanlan, get it. Natural 20 on his saving pool. Oh no. As he turns around and stops for a second,

Silver shoulder. Oh, you gotta be kidding, maybe we go. At which point, Kaylee reaches out with her hand. Oof. And see if this works or not. So many ties. And as he turns around and goes to walk away, he goes to walk away, he

full face first, asleep on the ground, on the outside of the alleyway. Just halfway in the sun of the main thoroughfare. Kelly runs up, fast, and grabs his ankles and drags him in the chair. I go to help. Go, go, go, go. I don't know the ways through the sewers. You have to go lead them. Not me. She drops the leg there. I start dragging him. All right. You guys drag him off to the side, and you guys quickly go, dart in. As you all jump inside,

a Drenzel grabs the great top. Get some behind and... Right before he closes it, I step out. I step out and I say, take them to safety, bring them outside the city, hide. Stay safe. All right. Same goes for you, Scallon. Well, I'll do my best. Yeah, you will. And he pulls it down, screws it into place, where it feels kind of taught,

and you are now on your own outside of this area with a sleeping individual. His snoring slowly subsides, and he starts rousing from his slumber about a minute later, rubbing his chin. What are you doing? While he was still asleep, I'm just booking it towards the Western Gate. away from him.

Self-check. Okay. 18. 18. Okay. All right, so the rest of you guys, at this point in time, what's your plan? Guys, I'm heading in towards the city.

Do we have a report yet? I'm getting nervous about Scan. Can I hear him? Am I by close enough yet? I'd say by now you've returned in Raven form, you can hear in over the earpiece. And it's been how long since we've seen him, Since the wind in?

Since the Scalindland went in, I'd say it's... Since the bells, it's been about, oh man, about 10 minutes. We've got to go in. We should have seen it by now. I come down and I land on Percy's shoulder. Not that again. And then I... Scamlin fell down a well?

I come out of Raven form. Not on my shoulder. Not on this. Well, maybe I kind of like slide. Sorry, sorry. Sorry. What did you see? Report. Report. Okay, they are ripping all of the townspeople out of their houses.

It looks like they have their own counter plan for a situation like this. There was also a band of very strange orcs heading this direction. They were acting strangely. I don't trust it. We can either get out ahead of them or try and wait and see if... Would they headed this way? They were headed this way. We should probably move then. Did you see Scanlan?

I did not see Scanlan. His head towards the center of town. They might have him held prisoner. They might have him held prisoner. Why didn't we give him a gate stone? We should always give the name a gate stone. We're fucking morons. I didn't know he was going that far.

I thought he was going to the gate. Every time, that's the thing, okay? Gatestone to the scaffold. I promise when this is over, I will surgically implant it in him. Yeah, we can, uh, Scanlan, can you hear us at all? Hello? Anything. We just got a going.

I'm going to start. I'm going to start making my way on the rooftops towards the center of the town. I'm like, I'm heading in, I'm keeping to the roof. If I'm going to take any shots, I'll try and take them. I fly up and I go along the roof line with him. The room? I fly up on the broom and then I land on the rooftop and still. Okay. It's at this point in time you see the two giant eagles, the one that took Keelith off earlier.

As you come up on your broom, it kind of sees you. Oh, I've been watching those things. Right. As you're having this discussion, they notice her float up and kind of see you guys begin moving in towards the city. One of them just turns around and heads back to the center of town. The other one's taking a cheap shot at you. Whoops. Towards you, roll initiative. Everybody who's going to have anything to do with this right now.

Oh, I'm getting in on this shit too, then. How far away from our group? 24. Oh. They're probably a good. Way up high in sky at this point. We're looking about 100 to 150 feet up comparatively. Are we trying to get this eagle? Is it urge me?

Yeah. He's trying to kill me. 19. I get in on that as well? Yeah, well, initiative. All right, so. 24. Jesus.

Yeah. And 19? 19. 18. All right. Nice. Yeah, man. What did you get?

18. 18, all right. So we have 13. 17. 17. 12 for Keelis. 13 for Vax. All right.

All right. Vex. As the eagle swoops in, you have a brief moment where it's coming at you. You can go ahead and make your shots at it, whatever you want to do this round. What do you want to do? If I land on the ground and shoot at it, will it be in range? At the speed it's going, you're not going to be able to get back to the ground this round unless you spend your whole round getting there.

Then I shoot at it from the air. Okay, so two shots at the disadvantage. 25 on the first. Okay. Five on the first, already, that hits. Okay. 17 on the first hit. 17 damage?

Yes. All right. And 24 on the second hit. That hits, go ahead and roll down. Hey, you're flying. Uh, 13 on the second hit. Okay. As you, this is with the disadvantage, right?

Yeah. As you release the first arrow, wings are up, giant sharp beak extended its claws in the air. The air sinks into its body, but it still kind of just shakes it off, continuing going into a further dive towards you. Its wings outward. Look back to the second arrow, the second arrow strikes it in the side of the face, kind of scrapes across, and embeds in part of its wing's shoulder. At which point, its form goes, swoop. into what you see to be a female elven form,

that then just drops straight down for 100 feet. Into the pit? No, this is more inside of the city. But she was 250 feet up. That's 200 feet up. That still sounds pretty bad. Still, really bad. It's a...

I don't want to drop from 100. It's like softball, and I'm just waiting. Between that. You guys watch this, she just goes, Poooo! Like there's a little... There's a little, it was up. Oh no, a little elf puddle?

She flew off. Other ones still booking. Is she out of bad news range? No, still within bad news range. Take a couple shots. Do it, Brousy! I'm gonna, not only am I gonna take a shot, you're gonna take a wing shot.

You take a wing shot. Keeleth runs towards the girl who fell. Good job, good job. Thanks. All right. So you start heading that direction. Yeah. I'm gonna do a ring shot. Let's see what happens.

If you miss remove. Oh yeah. That's 28. 28 hits. This is gonna suck for her. There we go. Really loud. Loud echoing blasts out of the body.

They knew we were coming already. They're already gathering people in the center of town. A little late now. We killed a bunch of the, oh, God, that's awful. Yeah, that's pretty bad. 13 points of piercing damage. Okay. And she also has to make a strength saving throw.

That is gonna be a... 19? Not going to beat that. It says she's knocked or get knocked prone, so I don't know what you want to call that for something flying, but... That's... She's falling now. Yeah. Yep, and so she's falling. You hit her one of the wings and just against plummeting downward, not able to gather air at the moment underneath the wings. You're taking your second shot? Sure, I'll just take... And for this one, I'm going to be an asshole and take a sharpshooter shot.

Okay. I'll use the big die. Go for it. I'm going to trade up. That's, uh... I'll say before you calculate it, I'll say this has disadvantage because it went from flying at a smooth pace to plummeting and you have to quickly... I had to reload in the middle, so like, yeah, I'm just... I'm plugged skeet shooting here.

Yeah. Ugh. That's a... I'm gonna miss. That's negative five to hit, so that's a... That's 12. 12 just hits. Giant Eagle AC is not that great, man.

That's so sad. Oh, God, I feel bad now. It's really sad. It's really sad. Giant Eagle doesn't have a crazy AC. Oh, man. It's more of a travel form. It's not meant for main fighting.

The one that was going for you, because you were the one that was nearest to it, wasn't expecting a hail of arrows in its face. 29 points of damage. And with that, you see it falls an eagle and then into a person that could need to fall. I got a grip point back. And disappear behind the skyline of the buildings of Westruen

that block your view of the center of town. Well, they don't know who's coming, at least. Are we close enough to loot that first body? Sure, you guys. Well, I was headed that way. You go ahead that way. You guys then moving around the chasm that you created, you head inside the Western of Western at this point.

Hang on, wait, well, oh, I'm heading to the body still. It's inside the gate. Yeah. It fell inside the gate of the city. You approach, and it's a rough scene. It fell on like the head and the shoulder, and the rest of the body is kind of accordioned in. Oh. Like the body does it appear to be any druid related to the Ashari?

Looking at over, make an investigation check. Figure out which end is out first. Oh, that's a really good check. My investigation's not great. It's your dad. Oh. 20. 20.

You take a quick glance over, checking where any ceremonial markings of the Ashari are, none. This individual appears to be more of a primal-based druidic talent. There are tattoos. tattoos, pretty basic, various animal totems that are inscribed on the body. You're familiar with this form of droidic magic. It's a less refined version of what the Ashari people learn and teach. Gotcha.

But yes, there's no inclination. This is a member of the Ashari. Okay. Is there anything good on her? There is a soaked set of hide, or not hide, of leather armor. Soaked in what? Non-magical point you can gather. Pea. Pea. Pea. Pee.

And what looks to be a shattered quarter staff that may have been landed on. Oh. Beyond that, you're going to have to get, sifting through the remains are not going to be a fun experience for what little you may gather. You're going to start harvesting? I'll let it go. Start harvesting? She made her choice. I'm going to start roof-topping towards the center. If I see anything interesting going on in the city, I want to stop and investigate.

Ditto. If I can, can I do a bit of roof? Can I do a little park-or? I want to do a little park- Can I use acrobatics? You, this is more of a, this is acrobatics, it's more of a jump, because there are large, large city street gaps that are like 25 to 30. But if I park-or and I can find, I want to be able to, can I- I want to try and be smart about it and find any way I can make it to stay a little. Make an acrobatics check. An acrobatics check?

Thank you. Amateur Spider-Man. Can I join him? I was just joining up there. Do you want us to get off your broom and do that? That was the thing, yeah, I was going to fly up on the broom, land on the roofs, and then scy-crossed the roof. So you go ahead and you get up with him and you can go, two of you can start, like, boring off the rooftops.

Look, it's a mechanical engineer on the road. Oh, f-thirty. 23. 23? Oh! You guys make it a couple of streets before you reach a point where this block does, because the main street intersects with another main street that goes southward. and the gap is about 30 feet to jump across, and you know from experience that you couldn't do that

with a regular jump. I've got an idea. If you got on the broom, I'll just hold on. You can plant me down if we see anything. Just keep low and by the roof. Can't you just sit on the broom with me? What is going on? A Grog and Pike and I'm supposed to just stand out by the gate.

I don't have a plan. I thought we were going in. We're heading into the city because of this time. I mean, we had a plan and then we didn't have a plan. We should go into seven different directions. You look up as you see suddenly glance of her head at a shadow from one rooftop to another. Make a perception check.

18. 18. It's Batman. 18. You glance up and you see the dangling, kicking feet of Percy underneath a broom that just whoof across the top. All right. They're still, they're traveling.

Yeah, they're traveling back inward to the city. All right. Well, that's good. I probably can't catch up with that. I'm just going to keep poking with it. Open the ear. Oh wait, I can hear, I can do, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, thank you.

I forgot about that. Yeah, hey, oi, oh, guys, oi, oh. Scanlan. Scenna. Pull me down. Pull me down. How's it? Did my plan work?

I don't know, did your plan work? What was your plan? My plan was to send all the Goliaths, all of them out through the main gate. Did they all come through the main gate? No, no, definitely not. It was only six, it worked. Oh, okay.

Scanlan, it appears they are doubling down in the center of the town. Do you have any idea on why they would be doing this? Well, I don't know, they're very perceptive. I may have alerted all of them to our presence. Oh, fantastic. It was a distraction.

Sure. And in a sense, that was my mission. A distraction from what? You know what? We killed nine of them. A distraction from their terrible, terrible lives. Good job, Scaling, mission accomplished. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, Scanlon, I'm glad you're okay. Oh, oh, thanks. Is that Pike? Yeah. Oh, hi, Pike. Hi. How's it going? out there. Oh, it's good, it's good. Can we do?

Yeah, let's not. Okay, okay, what should I do? Where should I go? Where? Who should I kill? Stay put and let us come to you. What do you see around you? Yeah, where are you?

Idiots on broomsticks flying around. Oh, shit. That's us. All right. Can we all convene in an alley? You do. You convene in an alley. Within the next couple minutes, a little bit of a confusing

telephone bit going back and forth, but you do eventually gather. As at this time, you guys do hear what sounds like some voices shouting about a block and a half up the way. What's up? Are we all together now? Yeah. Okay. By the way, hi, hi, this is me now.

Oh my God, you don't even look like yourself. I look pretty cool. So good to see you. We should get inside for a moment. Yes. We should. Is there like a wine cellar or a door or something like can feed in? There are windows. There are windows.

You don't see a wine cellar in the immediate vicinity of this alley. We jump in the window. Get it open quietly. I'm not going to break anything. Can I look in the window first? Yeah, you go ahead and glance and make perception check. I see nothing. It's a too. It is. It's very dark. There's no light inside. What about our dark vision? Can we see anything in the window?

No. Even with your dark vision, and you guys see as well, there's nothing inside. The building appears to be vacant. Is it locked? The window is locked. Very minor lock. Well, I just rolled a natural 20, so. You wasted in on a window. Well, that was the most deft, t-clicking you've ever done. You sneezed on it.

We pop in the window. Great. You all crawl inside of the room and looking inside, you do notice that some of the furniture is kind of tipped over the front door, actually, that leads out to the main road, the south facing road. The knob is broken off. Like someone just kicked the door in. It looks like there was signs of a minor struggle, but there's no bloodshed from what you can see. Most of the door, you know, most of the door. If any belongings that had any value been taken, the place looked stripped of anything metallic, it looks like it's been pretty heavily ransacked inside here. All right, Grog. Yeah. They were dragging everyone out of every available door and dragging them to the center of the city. Why?

Oh, the people shields. Meat shields. Meat shields. Yeah. Right. Okay. So like we go to them and if we get too close, they slit all their throats. It's like basic Goliath logic. Lovely. So it's maybe the one-on-one combat are only option at the moment? Do we have any other option?

How many were there, we don't know how many? Probably 30 to 40 now. Okay. Probably down to 20 or 30. Well, whether there's 30 or 40 to start and we killed nine of them? Remember he said we were down to like 50, we killed like nine-ish. Oh, so 40-ish. Two married years.

So two left. Six left, Groves? six? Yeah, it's like a thousand. Let's... Okay. All right. I've got a plan.

I go to the center of town. I create a distraction. Perfect. Seriously. That's pretty much all my plans have always. What time is it? Right now you're pushing it early afternoon. It's probably, I'd say the equivalent of about 1, 1.30s.

I know. Perfect. Last question I have. Do we know where Will Hands' residents used to be? You do. You would know very well, because you spent a lot of your time. Outside or inside it? It's inside the town, but it's a little bit northwest of the center area. So it's closer to where a lot of the temples and the worship areas are. And there is a small park there that was across the way.

It may be something useful. It's a red brick building. It stands out against a lot of it because it was built specifically to kind of be this small, nomish hovel that was built by his own hands. So when attacking, right, once you're going to be a small, giving up your position, it loses its worth. So my suggestion would be we move to approach from another vantage point, or we can just kick this thing off and I walk in. I'm fine on the way. All right, well, are we nearby a sewer system? Scanlon, do you know? Oh, I happen

to know exactly where a sewer system is. We can try and sewer across town, or we can just walk right in. Where are we trying to get? So the center of town. We thought about seeing if maybe we could get to Wilhatt's house. Oh. And where is that and why would we be there? Well, let's Park's grandfather. Sure, I know, but does that provide us some strategic advantage?

No, but we might be able to see if he's all right. They've probably dragged him to the center of town by now. How can we get through this? Go ahead, Mike. We could go to the center of town and check to see if he's there. And maybe take care of business. Hopefully he's not there and I mean he could provide a lot of help. He's... So maybe we go to his house first.

It's your grandfather. We go to center of town. It's all going down. Yes. Yeah. How do we get out of this with the most, or sorry, with the least civilian casualty scrab? Not really thinking that far ahead. Sure. Where's, there was, we were supposed to also pick something up.

Yes. A two-story, well, wait, the thing might help us. Who knows? It was a red brick two-story home with dark wood. Near the fountain crossroads. What? Do you know this house? Why life wasn't there for that? Doesn't that sound like the house?

It's Wilhans House. Well, Hylhan's House in the Temple District stands out because it's the small little like red brick area. But when he's talking about it's more of a classic kind of dark wood with red brick outside. The way he described it was it's very colonial style, but like with a, a brick base built around it. Is that not the leader of the guy that runs the Western? That was Master Kual's house. Mr. Kual was just the master.

He's his own little independent. No. The Margraib's house is the one that's in the town square. And that's where Kevdak apparently has taken as his homestead. Right. And that's not the description of that. So we either start this now or we prepare, there are pluses and minuses to both thoughts. They have a bunch of innocent people who they may just start killing. Here's my question. If we wait, will they ever theoretically let them go, or is it easier to just slit throats?

No. Then we shouldn't wait. We shouldn't wait. We shouldn't wait. Then we just do it. Those of us with distance, we find positions around the square. The second we start attacking, they will start killing. He, if he walks in on his own, challenges Cavdak to a duel.

Yeah, look. On your own. So it'll go like this. Everybody get high vantage points. I'll walk in, I'm pretty sure if I call them out, they'll step aside, and we'll do this thing. If it starts going poorly, I'll leave it to your discretion. Or if other people stop getting ify with the civilians, we can start taking shots. I know I can drop a few before they do anything. I've burned both of my wild shaping ability for right now, unless we wanted to take a brief rest

to regain our thoughts. This is sort of a brief rest. Is it like a short rest? No, a short rest is like a half an hour or an hour of like intentional. We could afford, we could take that. A half hour. It's the middle of, it's the middle of day.

They won't do it for no reason. They don't even know where we are. Yeah, 30 minutes is nothing in the hostage situation. Take a short rest if you want to. Take a short rest and we'll finish flushing out this plan. Okay. Does anyone else need to heal up? I'm good.

Yeah. I'm going to burn a hit dice. I am too. I can, I can. Yeah, but I don't want you to wait for these spells. I can use a hit day. Yeah, we've, yeah. The Margrave house, when they were flying over in this form,

there was something that looked like it was red and smeared on the outside of the walls. Is that the Margrave house? Yeah. Are we close to the edge of town? Mm, about like a five to six minute walk. It's not, or like, brusque jog, I guess I should say. It's close, but like right outside.

Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. That would say was my plan. If you feel like walking in the... Many hit guys do you want to spend? Oh, really? Yeah. We can point guard you from a distance and make sure if anyone tries to attack that we take them out. Well, we should try and probably have a few people on civilian duty as well, kind of like we did before.

Yes. That would be perfect if you're willing to... Now, that's a canon. You don't still have the house that you can summon, do you? Of course I do. Can we put that door somewhere and start sending people if we liberate them to it? if we liberate them to it? Of course we can. However, it would have to be somewhere close

to where the hostages are. They would definitely see their hostages jumping into a magical hole. We could put your magical hole inside of a building and send people into the building so that it's got like double cover. And if anyone finds your magical hole, they can jump in it?

Or do they have to have permit? By the way, so many jokes. So many jokes. Resisting. You're being very good. Very firm. Very firm on this one. What happens if you lure Goliath and Orp into the magical hole?

Mm-hmm. They get stuck in there. I imagine they'll have a lovely chicken dinner. Yeah, because after 24 hours they get pooped out. They can leave when they want. They can come and go to 10 trees. So it's not like a Roche Motel. No.

No. Yeah, it's not like an ear song. Vex can capture one of them in her. I can. Pocobole. It's good to know. Yeah. If we know the city this well, how far would you say is Wilhands' place from where we are now?

I'd say it's about... A mile and a half. Yeah, it's about a 20, 25-minute walk north from where you are right now. It's a little ways west of Noja's old store. Wow. It's about 20,000 years. Would you luck to go first to see if he's there? Choosing between the people in town are...

You don't have to. Well, you can send a couple of us to go check in. I grab the stone. Go check. Wait. I'm sorry, but we need Pike with us. She can go check and she can be back in 60 seconds. She has to get there.

She's the worst at stealth. That's very fair. But we can send someone and have them right back. I mean, it's not. What if we go there and we find him? And then what, you can pop back, but he's alone? You can't pop two people back with a stone. I'll go.

I can pop us back. We can send him back, and then I can get back on my own. You don't know where you're going. Pike, can you tell me how to get there? Yes. I've walked city streets that I've never been in before. We can start getting into oppositions, and then when you're done, you can join one of us. What's going to be the benefit of finding him before the fight as opposed to after?

That's fair. Unless they're holding him. Unless they're holding him. But they wouldn't be holding him, because they don't know it's us that's coming. Well, then he's going to be. safe in his house or he's in the middle of the town square, either of which. I'm good, I'm right. We're okay. Also, if we cut off the head of the snake, there's no...

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Let's do it. Let's go towards the center of town. And he is a very powerful cleric if we do find him. So it'd be nice to have some extra help. He may already be there. And if he's... I feel like we should go to town because that's a lot more people than one person.

Is his house near where we're going? It's a little wide arc, so you have to go up and over to get to the center of town. The center of town's like right center. It's kind of like north center. I mean, I could miss there, and I can do something to get there faster. We're going to need that much. We need your spells. Yeah, don't waste your spells before I'll find something huge. Look, let's just face this. Wish each other good luck, and we meet in the middle.

Are we going to flank the entire city center? We're going to make this. It's a town square. if I recall. There's like a, they've got a barricade. Correct me if I'm wrong. They've got a section of the city, of the town barricaded off. Well, it's such much a barricade more than they have short little barricades built in for like anti-calvary and for any large like siege attempts or... So we can slowly, we can start to surround it. We can be selfie and singular. We can keep in contact. I can use Earth Elemental to glide and literally pop out right in the center of the town and avoid everything. But you don't want them to

walk right in. I would be underground. Yeah, no, I just plan to walk right in. And Grog, when you fight this person if he agrees to this one-on-one combat, is it going to be fists or swords? I have no idea. Grog, I guess my one concern is what's stopping them from slitting all of these people's throats at any drop of a second? A warrior's honor. A warrior's honor?

That's weirdly wouldn't look good enough for me. And you think you can evoke that? I guarantee it. Mends warehouse. Guarantee. Sponsor of the moor. You're gonna like the way you'll put it. I guarantee.

I'll get it. I'll get you by men's warehouse. Okay. Um, okay. I'll leave it up to your artistic influences on where you go from here. Don't be afraid to call your friends if you need help. If I'm Earth Elemental, I won't be able to speak, so I'll be relying on you. You'll be here.

I'll be here. I'm going to go. I'm going to stay with Grog. Okay. Are you guys beelining it, like straight through? Are you going, are you arcing past like Nogh's place? Are you going by the Pobalt Reserve? What's your plan?

Are we going for the element of surprise? Would it be better for me to Earth Elemental and bust out in the middle? Or would it be better for me to flink with the rest of you? It's going to go south if Kevdak sees any of us pop out of the windows. So think that Grog's right. He needs to go in alone. We need to be hidden. Stay back in hot.

He'll be back, be him. Okay. And if shit goes south, then we go in. Okay. Is there anything we can give Grog to help him? Can't you bless him or something? Yeah. I do have a question.

Yeah? I can enhance his ability. No, never mind. Are you attuned out, baby? What were you going to say? Yeah, I was going to see if I should switch out the gauntlets of over strength for these braces of defense that give a plus to my AC, but if I'll wear that, then it takes out my natural, no. Armor.

What about? Yeah, no. No, it's not considered armor. Not actually wearing armor. It's designed for somebody who does not, so. That's good. Grog. What if I lend you my boots?

Which when you click the heels together will also help your armor out a bit, or help your chances of being hit. It helps me attack faster. You give them back to me tomorrow. And I can give you enhanced constitution. No. No. No. I've learned that my strength is with my friends, and my friends have their own strengths to each their own. Don't want you all handicapped for me. I would like to change out

the braces of defense to get a plus two to my EC for the gunlands of Obey strength. Okay. So your strength is under 17, and you hit the plus two the armor class. My AC goes to 21. Correct. Because it goes to 17, my modifier is plus three. Absolutely. Yeah. Would you like some extra strength for your? Yes. Remember, Grog, that mine and Scanlan's strengths are in helping the rest of our friends and

our fellow allies so we can grant you enhanced abilities. Do you have to do it now? I would much rather you just did it on your own and maybe not tell me about it. Well, I could do it ahead of time and... Just do it for a while. Just give them a big... I don't know right now. I just hug him.

Just hug him. Just hug him. Just hug him. I push her towards him. Give him a hug for good luck. Grog. Oh shit. What is he?

We believe in you. Yep. And I can't, I cast enhanced ability. And I give him enhanced some husband string checks or I could give him like, I'm going to give him like, I'm going to give him Bears Endurance, which gives him advantage on Constitution checks, and he gains an additional 2D6 temporary hit points.

Okay. Good roll 2D6? Me? Yep. Big money, no whammy's. That's not great. Six. You have six temporary hit points, and you have advantage on Constitution checks.

Okay, advantage on... Not saving throws. Constitution checks. Checks, okay. There are no skills that are constitution-based, they can really... Would have been better to do strength? When he rages, he gets advantage on strength anyway. Oh, he already gets advantage on strength. Yeah, that's good.

Okay. It'll be okay. But, you know, if it comes up. Well, now that would be an old touchy-feely, whatever the hell that was. Well, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, sorry. It's just, I found this old joke book. I thought you might want to hear this joke.

And I pull out my bull strength scroll. scroll. Oh, thank God. And I'm going to read him the bull's strength scroll. Can I affect him with the plus five strength? Well, the bull strength as an ability just gives him advantage on the strength. Oh, I thought it was a plus five to strength, no? You must have pulled those stats out of the old Pathfinder game.

Oh, I have had this for a long time. Well then in that case, I'll just, I'll sing you a rousing song to put you on your way. The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the beard of strong jaws. Take your D-10. I'm going to cast Aide. At what level? I'm going to do fourth level. Okay.

And I'm going to cast it. I can cast it on three. Three people for plus 15. Plus do you choose? choose? So I will choose. Vex. Scanlon, how many hit points are you? How many hit points do you have two? I'm okay. One of these two. Never worry about me. Does it stack with frogs? No, you can't do it. Never worry about me. You can do it multiple times. Scanlan? Yes, my love. I would like to age you as well. I really, I don't need, I don't need any help. I'm fine. Just shut up and

Is there some sort of... Too late, you're doing it. Is there some sort of ritual that we need to do together to make this happen? It just happens so fast. Like that, it's over. As she says that there's a blast of warm light across your chest that fades as she has already turned around. However, Vex, Grog, and Scanlan, your maximum hit points are increased by 15. And you get those 15 extra hit points for the next eight hours.

Nice. Not concentration. Anything else you want to cast? No. No? I tap Greg on the shoulder and I flash him. Oh! Soldiers!

Wait, wait, wait. Don't you dare die happy. Wait, didn't we just talk about this? What? Give him the fucking rock. The rock that he can bamfada there with. It takes a minute. So, it's something. A minute's a long time.

All right, forget it. I'll reach into my back. of holding and I pull out my trusty salt lick rock and I kneel down to park I say hey hold this for me all right okay yeah just keep it safe I don't like getting blood on it but listen I can't lose you twice in one day okay oh no I'm not going anywhere we're just going to meet some really bad folks and we're gonna set them straight That was the cutest thing. I woke out.

Oh, God. Are you guys following behind or is letting him do his thing? We stalled. We stalled. We watched him leave. Okay. I cast him as well to trace on all of that. Any other last minute things you're going to help Grog with before we're done? We're good.

Okay. Everyone's good? He's pretty stacked. Okay. We can stay close to him though, right? I like that we manage to make solving problems with violence into an ABC afternoon special. It's really. Kind of, yeah. Remarkable.

Uh, okay. I cast past letter trace on us so we can stealth. All right, so the rest of you go ahead and make your stealth check. Which direction you traveling, Rock, by the way? I guess just towards the heart of town. So just be lining it straight to the center? Not stealthy. Okay.

All righty. So, stealth? Oh my God. What's it? What's it? Plus the plus ten. Oh, then 24. Then 24.

Oh, thank you. 29. 39. 33. 34, 21. All right. Grog is not going stealthy, or are you just walking through? Just walking through.

All right. Bound-b-b-bomb-b-bomb. As you guys follow suit, dodging from alley to alley, Grog, you step into the main roadway. Okay. You're on the rooftop? You're on the rooftop? Percy, are you going to the rooftop? All right, both of you guys will ask about extracts.

We'll just take as a continuation of this. Natural wine. No, that was a seven. Was it? Yeah. No, I think it was a lead. That thing was so far out. It might have been a seven, but I thought it was a one. Well, regardless, you guys get but 30 feet before

...buff, poof, puff, uh, very... Thanks, you see four eight points of damage as you plummet off come on the second story buildings and land. I have a room to get up to the top, you know. I know. And unfortunately, your foot found one of those loose shingles, and you lost grip of the

broom, tumbled, landed, at which your broom then, about two feet from you on the ground. I caught it. I didn't want to do. You are the shadow that stalks the guilty. So you kind of look over your shoulder for a second. Keep marching forward. You get about four blocks before you see a group. you see a group of four individuals, no Goliaths among them. It appears to be two humans, one male, one female, and one elf and one halfling. They're all smeared in muddy streaks across the face. The halfling has the head completely shaved off and has these two kind of

lined scars over the top of the face to the back of the head. They all turn the corner and look over greet you, take a moment to kind of look for any sort of recognition, look at each other, begin to walk forward drawing their weapons, not even approach. Oh, lads, lads, no need for that. Trevor, quite a long way. See, I'm part of a ranging party for Kevdak. It's very important that I see him. You see, we're family. Now you can either take me to him, or I can drag you to him. The elf has kind of stepped forward and pushed the others away, draws these two thin, short swords from the sides, look kind of jagged and chipped like they've seen quite a few

battles, leans forward and kind of puts one eye on you leaning at the side as he approaches. Kevdak, you say. Family, you say. I've not seen your face in all the travels we've had with the herd, but you say family, make a persuasion check. Patrol 20. The others behind draw their weapons. One of them pulls out this long, nasty double-headed great axe and kind of lets it down to the side and begins to step forward. The halfling draws this gnarled, spike-tipped whip that kind of cracks it on the ground.

I mean, stepping forward, the female to the left of the elf goes ahead and draws this long, thin rapier that almost comes like a curve to it, and begins to point it forward as the elf takes the two blades and puts it out and stops the rest of them and goes, All right, family here for Kevdak. If you're lying, it'd be fun to watch his scream as he tears the head from you. Walk to the front. Either way. Walk to the front. Now walk past them, to the front. All right, and the four of them flank behind you, blades still drawn and just slowly walk about ten feet to your...

Can I ask you? As I was approaching this city, I saw a dragon fly over. Picked up wonder look just like me and flew away. What's it like being the bitch of a dragon? There's long pauses to keep walking. And eventually the same elven voice pipes up and goes, Well, I imagine the gnashing teeth of such a beast would be comparably painful as the gnashing tips of these blades if you don't shut your mouth. South, Goliath scum. You'll be feeling the tips at o's before I feel the tips of any teeth of dragons. Oh, there's many a teeth waiting for you where you walk, friend.

Keep going. Your insolence amuses me. As you guys are kind of keeping back, I need everyone to make another stealth check. That guy tortures small animals, by the way. I'm still a little plus 10. Natural 20. Yes. Oh, 21.

24. 39. 12. Plus 10? Yeah. Ooh! That's our girl! 37.

All right. As you guys are just talking behind, there's a moment where you all duck into one of the alleyways, and as Pike spins into the alleyway the edge of her shoulder armor, being wider than her actual form, catches the edge of the building, causing this large clinging-c-cring sound, the sound of bending metal, clinging against itself, at which point, the troop behind the Grog immediately spin around.

Did you hear that? Is anyone following us? And as you've kind of kept walking forward, you feel the point of a blade just kind of gently press into your lower back. Good Lord, you're awful jumpy. You see, when I was last with this herd, The mates that I ran around with want so quick to jump and hide behind their mother's skirts.

Keep your attention focused on me, son. We've got important dealings to meet with. Keep welcome. Blade pulls back. As you continue to step forward, you hear a little whisper behind you, and you kind of glance over and look as the halfling and the female with the kind of hooked rapier, break off and begin heading back towards the alleyway. Perfect. No problem. So as you continue to step forward, you guys have now knocking the alley kind of pulled off into the shadow.

Listening you here, very, very light footsteps beginning to find their way in your direction. Can we wait until they come around the corner? I'm going to continue with following grog just so that someone is because I'm going to wait and jump them or do you want me to stop them? You guys are all, have you guys divided in two different groups? You guys divided into two different groups? No, we're all together.

You're on a roof. No, I'm not on a roof. I fell off the roof. I'm on a roof. Yeah, Percy's up on the roof. I'm letting them know what's, I've been, I didn't want to interrupt that because it was fabulous, but I've been trying to keep everybody informed

of what I've been seeing and just like two are splitting off. They're heading towards there. I'm going to continue with Grodd. I think we should lie and wait until they come around the corner and then do you try. I'll count them down when they turn around. Okay. I'll wait to shoot an arrow until they come around the corner.

Okay. Two of them. Two of them, taking a turn, and I've described them. I've pre-a-hold person spell. So ready for when they turn the corner? One. All right. At this point, you now see the half-ling kind of darts around, kind of whip out in the side as the elf turns on the corner, rapier, at the band with their hand in front of her.

What are you guys doing? I want to grab the elf instead of throat. I'm shooting at the halfling. Two arrows at the halfling. I'm going to go for you say you're taking the elf. I'm going to go for the elf and cast whole person. Okay. We'll say for the sake of you, too, so you're at the same target. We'll go both for all initiative.

14. 14. Okay. You go ahead and make your attack first. Hi. It is a surprise round. You don't expect to see you there. You dart out of the side of the shadows. They're facing downward into the alley. Advantage. Okay. I'm going to use luck. My last luck of the day. Okay. Oh, this attack, 16.

16, then. Yeah, her load, that would be... No, that's... Attack, that's a 21, do you? 21, thanks. Okay, hit the other way. Go for it. All right.

I don't want to be heard. 30, 66. Jesus. You grab her, pull it back, draw the blade across the throat, with a slight muffling sound, she begins to bleed out. to bleed out. Still fighting and tensing against your body. Seeing that, I'll switch my spell to the halfling.

Not necessary. I'm not any elf anymore. Do I still have a bonus action left to hit a second? I'd say second. Yeah, I want to shove that in a chest. Okay. Geez. That is 27.

That hits. And that is eight. Eight damage? Plus I'll add poison to it. DC-15. The seven, no. Okay, so she takes an additional beautiful.

12 points of poison damage. With that, the blade pulses, as the poison filters into the bloodstream through the sternum with the blade pierced, as you quietly hold her in place, she goes still and goes, yeah, goes completely limp in your arms. You, however, at this point, I've turned, cast hold person on the halfling. The halfling sees you jump out and just whisk her out of the alleyway, turns in that direction, and before it has a chance to react,

it's pulled back with the whip to go in that direction, and just stays there frozen in place. That's when I release my air. Go for it. Go for it. Have advantage in these shots because the entity currently cannot. No, 28 for the first hit. 28 for the first hit? Are you going right up against it, or is this from a distance? This is from a distance.

Okay. That hits? 29 for the second hit. Both those hit. And I want a hunter's mark. Can I hunter's mark? Too late? Can I hunter's mark it? I'll say sure. There was a countdown. Two.

18. You made... 24 for the first hit. No, 22 for the first hit. Okay. God, I can't add. 18 for the second hit. Okay. So, both, you know, just the beat of impact, the body tenses in place, and you see a bit of red beginning trickle out of the corner of the mouth. Look, there are a lot of the mouth. Look, there are a lot.

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with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast. The Halfling, however, still kind of eyes darting around wildly trying to figure out what the hell is happening. Scanlan, Pike, anything? Can I run up and grab the whip out of her hand? His hand? Yes, you can.

Oh, his hand. His hand, so sorry. The female's been by, it's hard to see. Halfling with that much mud. You go over and just quickly wedge the whip out of the halfling's hand, no issue. Okay. Scalind, anything? And, oh, that's probably I can do right.

It's pretty quick, it's pretty easy. It would be like an action. What do you want to do? I'd like to use my mace. Chill out, because he's not defending anything, it's pretty much just like a bonus action pull out. Go for it. Give advantage on the attack.

16. 16 hits. Right, all right, all right. Because it is a melee against a currently paralyzed individual. Is this a kudagra? It is considered a critical hit. Nice. Nice.

Double the dice. So double the dice. So double the dice. And then add the bonus on top of it. 20 plus. 23. 23. Nice.

So as you pull the whip out with one hand, you whack and crack the mace right into the face of the halfling. To the point where you hit and you have to kind of like get the elbow lift to pull it free. See if the face is kind of caved in a little bit and a little bit. and just scroll style and was kind of like twitching. Still conscious. No, that's awful. Make it unconscious. No, not yet.

You have to sit through that. Not yet. Sorry. Oops. Cannot make any of these saves for the life of itself. Can I attack? You can now, yes. I will use the myth carver.

Oh, wow. Has this happened before? No, I don't use swords. I don't even know what, I'm going to need help. Okay, I'll let me help you. Let me help you. This is why we're here. Okay.

Roll an attack. Okay. You got this. I don't know how to use. Use a diet. Okay, I'm gonna hold the sword, kind of fumble with it, pulled it up again, and then close my eyes and just kind of go like this. Okay. So the attack gives you advantage, but the blindness gives you disadvantage.

It's just roll an attack. Plus 8. It's 12 plus 8? 20. That hits. Go ahead and roll damage, and it's a critical hit. 1D8, so it's 2D8 plus... It's a meth farmer.

It's a good way to break you. It's a . There's 1d6 sonic damage which is also double. Do I roll twice or do I just double this? You roll twice. Twice, you roll 2D8. No, double. Wait.

You roll 1 and then roll a D8 and a D6, double that number, add your bonus. It's just that easy. Roll a D8 and a D6. That's a six. That's a six. Okay, so that's nine. I double that. 18.

Plus three. Plus three is 21. 21 points of damage. As you fumbled the blade, you cover your eyes, as you pull back the blade, A slight humming sound, kind of, the blade actually kind of vibrates in place. And as you thrust forward, it goes through like butter with a heated blade. The blade, you think you missed. Then you open and peek through your eyes and see that you went straight through his face.

Oh, shit. Like you hit nothing. The face, the skull. Nothing. I didn't mean to. Oh, this is, oh, jeez. It's still kind of vibrating a little bit. There is no blood on the blade. The actual, like the sonic vibrations of the weapon

managed to shake free any possibility of any of the gore sticking to the weapon. Oh, that's sick. It's so bad ass. That's pretty cool. At which point, the spell fades as the life force of this halfling no longer holds sway and the body just crumbles into a pile. Wow. Clear. Clear. All right. Wow.

Onward with our murdering spree. Wait, wait. Are they going to know that their two people are gone? Eventually. Eventually. We'll just hope that they don't notice we have. All right. Can we loot the body?

Of course you say that. Before we move forward? You can if you want to. I'll check the elf. It'll take a while. I just want to make sure that there's nothing super valuable just sitting on them. I'm just going to keep... The investigation trip.

I'm going to keep talking to them to make sure they know what's up. Just talking in the air. That's going on, Percy. Walking. 27. At a cursory glance, it'll take you a couple minutes, which will put you guys a little behind Grogs. Grog's procession to do this. But she managed to find, on the two bodies, about 125 gold pieces, two relatively dirty sets of leather armor. One's more of a hide, actually, for the woman

who had the rapier. It's a hide armor. And that's it. All right. How about on the thing I killed? Anything. But you have the whip. The whip will do the whip as she pulled off and leather, yeah. And I keep the whip? If you want to. Yeah. Okay, you take the whip and wrap it up real fast

and kind of just attach to the side of your belt. Kinky. You guys continue to press in four and I have it want to make another stealth check? Still pass by the other trace. 22. Yeah. 30.

34. No, passout of the trace is gone. You used 100's mark. Oh. Then 24. Then 24. Oh, it burned you. You got burned.

Oh, 21. Oh. 11. Okay. Because the 10, the extra 10's going, nope, it's all right. All right. You guys move on a little bit further towards a T portion of the street where you can now see there's a cart in the center and what looks to be a number of other Goliaths are currently

pulling a few individuals, two individuals out of their homes and kind of starting to drag them back towards the top of the team. intersection where you guys are passing from. As you get to that point, there's a little bit of noise coming that way, you hear another clank in a sh from behind you at an alley just around the way, and the elf behind you has been walking quietly, stops and goes, All right, something not right is going on at this moment. Turns around, you hold here Goliath. No, no, I don't think I will. But I tell you what, you make a choice. Walk me to do. Kevdak, I'll go check out your little spook fest. Looks over to the other companion.

Go ahead and gather those men, have them followed you into the alley. And the other individual walks towards the alley, starts talking to the other Goliaths. They go ahead and take some of the people that they're holding by the arms, lift them up over their shoulder. And you now have roughly six individuals, four of which are Goliath, now joining up for a total of seven, and they're all heading back towards the alleyway. where the noise came from, as the help you to walk forward with you at his back. Just running hard. Do we run?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We disappear. We hide. Okay. Guys begin to vanish. Make one more stealth check to see if you're leaving any tracks behind or any followable trace. I'm not with them.

Yes. Do you get? Fight? I got a two. Oh no. Back. Oh my gosh, she's the worst. I hate my armor.

I love it in battle. There's a set you never quite picked up from Gilmore. Fuck. What? That's all. You had commissioned an armor that would be silent, but never got kicked up. What?

Ages ago, yeah, we commissioned. Yeah, I was wondering what happened to that. I thought we had it already. It was buried in Rubbleman. No, maybe. I totally forgot about that. Maybe when he was dying, he took it with him. He got it on under his arm.

Maybe he has some magic vault. It might be fine. It's in a pile of... You don't know if that's a real thing, but you might have a magic box. I do not remember that. I don't remember that either. Damn it. Well, the hot-thought hits you immediately, the memory of like, oh, that's right, as you tumble through a sequence of small boxes.

Your distraction caught you off guard, and you weren't even paying attention to where you were walking briefly before you just fall face first into kind of a mushy mud puddle and kind of stand up and look. You want to do anything about this? Of course I do. I'm gonna run up to her and just hold her by the hand. Do they see us at this point? They are right around the corner. You see Shadow as we're going to approach across the road. Open the mansion in a stall.

He can do whatever he wants. Don't tell him what to do. They're gonna see us if they round the corner. Are you in your... I hold her by both hands and I dimension door us to the rooftop. Okay. You've used Dimension Door twice now today. That's the third. That's your third and final. final fourth level?

Yes, correct. All righty. Open the door, do the top one, do the bottom lock. Do the top lock with the bottom lock. Yes. Stay on the Arkin, Jay. Yes. What?

As you guys are bickering. No. On the corner, the group steps into the alleyway as this little of purple energy and smoke quickly dissipates and they all spin, look into the way, glance about, step in and begin to inspect. begin to inspect, spend a few moments. One of them goes up to where the barrels had fallen over, kind of pokes, looks into the mud and see some depressions in the mud. There's something following us. Come on. And they all begin to swarm into the alleyway, all seven of them. You guys, are you backing up further into the alley? Are you trying? What are

you doing? I'm going to, I'm going to try to park off the ceiling again up to the rooftops. Icobatics? I'm just going to go backwards. Go backwards? Away from them. Okay, so heading backwards to the alley. Can I see this happening?

No, you two have just on the roof and you're kind of like, you glance over and look on the side if you want to. But this will be like with the next thing you see after they make the course. I'm just splitting my attention, trying to figure out what to deal with. I go air elemental form and into a doorway, into a crack. Okay. So I'm going to form, you're now kind of this little cluster of wind just underneath the doorway. As they all step in and look about. I've 34 it up to the...

34 it up? All right, you back around the way. They step in and begin to kind of split up a little bit. You guys manage to make it right. You come back around and you can head back to the thoroughfare. Continue to follow or find them up on the roof. What are you going to do? I'm going to follow so I can try to see Grohlk but stay hidden. Okay. So you're going to head back onto the road and kind of duck between alleyways on your own? Okay. So you can do that way kind of essentially tracking back around as they had entered

and passed them as they're spreading out into the alleyways. Most of you guys are up on the roof now. And Kielith, you just kind of watch them as they move past and eventually just kind of behind them. Do you want to, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Hiding. Yeah. They move past and everyone, all of your companions are currently gone. You're by yourself, hiding, this big underneath the doorway in your elemental form, what do you want to do?

They're gone, though. They've moved past you. Yeah, they did not notice. We've moved on, Keely. Then I try and find them still in my form, but misting about. So you've got a little burst of wind that comes up to the rooftop. And as you get up there, you can see a couple roofs over, a couple of dots of the rest of your companions that are slowly making their way along the road. Okay, I follow them.

Okay. You guys make your way. You love so far. You know, I think I saw something running hard in that pile of horseshit over there if you're Silence. I'm actually, since I'm already elemental form, I'm going to go ahead and start parting off from the rest of the crowd. I'm going to flank around to the other side. I'm going to start flanking.

Okay. So you've gathered the other side now. The bells have now fully subsided, all the various morning bells that would go off every few minutes, just kind of keeping the state of awareness going. have begun to just dissipate and stop. The elf behind you is kind of glancing back and forth of her shoulders but still keeps blade foot forward. You go past that T intersection, continuing onward, into the open central square on the north portion of the road.

There's the main central road that you guys have been walking, and it opens up into brick and cobblestone upward with a slight square road interface in the center. A series of shops and tents. And on the left side, you recall is where Nogia's shop once was. Abturb Snoja, who had saved you at the first Winter's Vale. Not that you guys see this at the moment, but you see this kind of glancing off the side. Itself, the doors kind of half open. It looks like the window is broken, and the inside has probably been ransacked as well. As you step in, you can see, there are a number of tents that are half fallen over, carts that are tipped over with fruit and vegetables that have

scattered across the floor and have just been left there to rot. There are barrels containing it looks like rainwater that is gathered over time, and section after section of these wedged barricades of just pieces of wood that have been jammed into piles with giant spikes and pull arms that have been jammed in there as a defensive place, and just to be an ominous position for anyone who attempts to walk into this vicinity. And you see about every five or six of these there is a head adorning it that has been just kind of wedged on and pushed as a warning. Recognize any of those heads? Make perception check.

Oh, God. I don't want to know the answer. No. Well, I recognized a couple earlier. Yeah, you did. I was thinking of shoulder ship. Yeah. You glance about a little bit.

Nothing catches your eye. You're too focused on the goal at hand as you step through each barricade. As you go through the first set, already you can see the cluster of Goliaths and other individuals that step forward. You're like, hey, who you bring in here? And the off behind you says, Apparently, a blood relative of Kevdak's. Is this true? And if you're the Goliath, stepped forward and saying,

I only doubt that. And one of the sides says, Vald relatives. The only one's up inside and then steps forward. And you see the next Goliath that you recognize. This is one of the older seers who has one eye that is completely clattered over white and is this kind of swollen, pus-filled socket

that has been kind of perpetually infected over time. He steps forward with this kind of thick, almost like a moss-like crust that just kind of has gathered under his neck. And he was called Greenbeard because this weird kind of, and whatever infection or element he had caused this kind of moss-type material to grow across his neck and chest area. And he kind of comes forward using this one.

walking stick, this kind of gnarled branch that he uses. Is it really you, Strungar? I see your eyes still serves you well. You know, he's anewort told us that he came across you home north. We beat this shit out of him for being a liar. No, you should have beat the shit out of him for being a coward. He begged me to let him go. Really?

Well, seems we know at least has caused all the commotion recently. Dead man walk in redown by himself into the belly of the beast. So, men, take his head. He steps back as about seven other Goliaths from up behind and two longbow individuals in the far end go ahead and draw arrows and begin to notch. I take a... I take a... No. Well, it would be such a... It seems all of you will be missing out on the greatest show of your life.

You see, in this bag, I carried a very thing that will topple the mighty Kevdak. You know what I remember. I remember a herd that nations used to part four. I remember a herd that towns used to quake and run from. I remember a herd that was so proud and dangerous. They would never hold up in a herd. never hole up in a shit-stink city like this. But what do I see when I come here?

Kevdak prancing up in a place like this. And what? Bending the knee to a dragon? How far you have fallen. Now, if you have any honor in you at all, you'll take me to Kevdak, and you will see what I have for him. And then maybe, just maybe. Just maybe. You can call yourselves warriors again instead of piss pot squatters.

There's a moment of pause as all the Goliath that are approaching have stopped on their tracks. You can see their neck muscles tensing us. They're kind of wringing their fingers across the handles of their various weapons. At this point, Greenbeard kind of takes a moment. You sound like your cousin, Zanro. The two of you enjoy your not drinking in the hole. But sure, you want to go ahead and talk to the big man. See you say that to his face before he crushes it. Call him out! Thunderlord!

You've a visitor! At which point there's all the Goliath step back and some turn their blades or weapons. around and start slamming them on the ground in a rhythmic tone over and over again and sometimes start going into this low chants. And as this happens louder and louder, the clattering echoes through the center of this marketplace, this now desolate space. Some of them that were clutching people, just kind of throw them to the sides and some of the peasants begin to like scramble up against a wall, not knowing where to go or seemingly knowing that if they were to

try to flee, it would be the very end of their existence and are just frozen in fear. As this is happening, you see You see at the Margrave's home, the multi-tiered homestead, this beautiful mansion which is now smeared with gore that is dried, dark brown and brittle. The flickering glow of interior candlelight catches your attention until across the top floor you see a balcony that looks over the entirety of this open area. And there, the dark form of Kevdak steps out. A towering Goliath in his own right. As he comes forward, puts his hands on the railing, the rhythmic slamming of the weapons growing aloud like this cacophonous rhythm. His fingers slowly tense in the wood splinters in his grasp, as you can see before you indeed the Titanstone gotlets themselves, almost

cartoonish in size even against his large frame. He looks down with his gleaming red eyes. smooth bald head, no tattoo adorning it, but the most of his entire body nearly black with scrawlings of ink for every single life he's taken as he's led this herd. E-book's down. Into the center of this area, down to you, with a joyous smile almost, and says, says. Never have expected this. Not in a very, very long time.

I've got to say, I've got to give credit to my boy for not being quite the fable maker that I thought he was. Trying to appease me with the ideas of finishing a thread that apparently was left hanging. So, you come here, cast away of the herd of storms. You have my attention. Nah, what words do you bring my ears before I tear them from your skull, boy? Hello, uncle. A piece of shit you wiped off your boot has come home.

When last we saw each other, you saw it fitting to beat down a mere child. I remember another child that got a beating. Seems like he came from your nut sack. And my, what an easy task that was. Sometimes the easiest to us are the most enjoyable if you let them string out for a long, long time. A regular chip off the old block. If he's anything like his father, that is.

So I'll tell you why I've come back. Please do. See, I've grown, I've learned, I've also watched as dragons, took the mighty Cavdak, wielder of the Titanstone knuckles, and made him bend the knee. I was wondering, do you also squat when you piss now? There are a few chuckles for immediately silence. At the realization. Kevdak, seemingly unflinched by this, puts one hand on the railing, and leaps over.

Landing on the stone platform that makes the roof of the initial walkway and foyer of this mansion. He steps out to the edge of it and crosses his arms and goes, See, that's your folly, Groby, as it was your fathers. He showed sighted it. Survival isn't just chew and meat your farns and kill him or getting your way. If you pick a fight that you can't win, history won't remember a blood smear on anyone's boot. The dragon was a stage. I've not bent the knee like you think I have. I've merely let it coexist for the time being.

But let's just say that dragon's days are number. But it's a shame that you won't be around to see it. Oh, fancy words for what I hear is surrender. But that's all right. I've always believed the world is what we make of it. And you've shown me exactly who you are. You've shown this herd exactly who you are. And what they can expect to live a nice domesticated life.

where the booty runs dry, where the women are scarce, and where I'm sure there are plans this very minute to unseat you from your highholes. But I've come to do them favor. They're not gonna get that chance. You and me, I challenge you to single combat for the pride of this herd. At this moment, there is a long,

A long silence as just a breeze kind of finds its way spiraling through the center of this town. Kevdak lays motionless at the top of the mansion precipice. Everyone else looks up to him from you. Their face is aghast at what just transpired and staring up to him atop the mansion. He looks down. One side of his mouth curls into a wicked smirk. He puts his hand up like. this, and you see as the rows of archers that were along the rooftops and nearby buildings lessen their grip on the bow and put the arrows away. He crosses his arms again. We reserve the right of single combat. Two members of the herd of stones. You haven't been in number within our mists for years since you've decided to to lie there in bleed like a goat. But I can't see I'm not amused by your gull. So, for the purposes of this bout,

let it be known that Grog Strongjar is a temporary member of the herd. But the moment his lifeless corpse hits this stone, he will be stripped of any honor and fed to the wolves. And he leaps off and lands cracking the stone beneath his feet. As he stands again, Assemble the ring!

And you watch as all of the Goliath start grabbing and moving the barricades, scooting them into a circular pattern around the center of this area. Go ahead and fetch the town square if you could. Oh, gee! Fetch the town square. Fetch the town square. Well, if you please. Oh, my God.

Oh, look. You really did it, you son of a bitch. You weren't kidding. Three days ago, you like go out of the, we had dinner and he left the sushi bar with a big handful of toothpicks going, I have plans for these. That's true.

I was like, did you steal toothpicks? He did. All righty. Oh my god. It's beautiful, and it's all made out of cake. This is just around. I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Fuck that house.

Look at that house. The spice are baking. Why don't we live there? Yes, they are. I don't live here. Oh, it's so tight. Oh, God, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight. Are we around? Can we see any of this?

You guys are watching this happen. Yeah, where are we? We're flanking. Slowly but surely. Stealthily. Very stealthily. I'm finding perch on a rooftop so that I can deal with this shit. I'm a puff of clouds. I'm holding Pike's hand. You're holding a, yeah. For comfort.

I'm feeling guilty for getting in a fight with my brother right before I got up on the rooftop. Ready? This is a great idea. This is the part where Matt plays dolls. Yep, pretty much. All right. So where are you guys right now? You're watching this happen from a distant rooftop right at the edge. Is it possible to move the camera to get the house?

I was flanking. Right, so you are currently in elemental form. Can I kind of attempt to actually get on the roof? Can I get on the roof? On the roof. I get kind of on this balcony area. Over there? Yeah.

If you want to, this is going to be... In a mist form? This isn't a mist form, this is your heir elemental form. Or yeah, air elementa form. But I can move through things. You can. So you can... Super, super thin.

Right, so you want to just glide into a part of the stonework over here? Right, yeah. All righty. So, at this time, as everyone assembles, all the spikes inward in this circle position, and you stand in the place, Kevdak walks into the center of the ring. He takes the gauntlets, puts a hand out, and one of the Goliaths comes up and takes a weapon that you haven't seen in a while. This dark red, rust-colored axe is placed into his one hand

as the gauntlet grips around it, taking the blood axe in his hand. He closes his other fist and slams him together, and as he slams him together with a gunnet grips with a gunnet, he's the sound of metal, his form warps and grows. And was once already Kevdak, who held a good four to five inches on your height, swells to about 12 feet tall. Wait, Kevdak just grew? Yes. Kevdak just grew.

Oh my god. I just, holy shit. Ashley, our pike. So, we're about to you guys at this moment. Just give me some inclination. So Kieluth is over there, keeping relatively hidden as an air elemental. Need you to make a stealth check as part of that

to see if you're noticed. Natural 20. Yes. Okay. Yeah, girl. That I like. Figuring out where you're hiding. Are we coming from behind there or from this side?

I'll take the- This, you guys would be coming from this direction here. I'll take the three o'clock. The house is 12. I'll take the three o'clock. So you'll be kind of up in this visit? Over there. Over here?

Okay, so we'll say Percy is up in the roof area. Six o'clock, nine o'clock, twelve o'clock. Okay, you need you to go ahead and roll stealth check as well as you move up there to make sure you're not seen. Where are the rest of you? Natural 20. Oh! Guys!

Is there all grow in this area? There is. Off of the side there. If you'd like to maneuver in this area as well, those don't want to be on this side. Who wants to be up there with Vex? Should we dimension door up there? Well, we've been, we don't need to dimension.

We've been following Bessie Kendiary to this area. We've been following wherever. Do you guys want to be over there with Vex? We probably went up with Vex, probably, yeah. We don't know what we're doing. Vax, were you? I guess I'm maybe off by that fountain in the corner of your map. Over there?

Yeah. This is an open area over here? That's all open. This is all open. This is the center of the town square. Then I would be at the bottom of the building that Vex is in. Okay, so you're kind of close down, like kind of looking through the window out into the main thoroughfare. Okay, good to know. So, Grog, with this, I want you

to roll initiative. Can I take Trinket out of the... I'd like to, yeah. Do you want it? Your call. Trinckit's gonna make some noise. Initiative? 17. 17. 17. Be able to debar and... As you guys begin this fray, what are you guys? No, Trinket? Yes, drink it. What are you doing?

Yeah. Okay, Trinket's stinging in the necklace. All right. You, as Caledda takes in a large form, the blood acts swelling with his size, gets into a combat position, she says. Show me what you've learned, Strong John. You're going first. You beat him on initiative. Go for it. Jesus. No, I'm so sick. I would like to rage the rage of my raiding life. And I would like to use intimidating presence on Kepdak. Okay.

That's a risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so that's your action on that. Okay. So what's the DC on that one? 18. 18 and what's the save? Oh, I mean that's the... 17 is the wisdom saving throw.

wisdom saving throw. Okay. For that one, sure remember if that one is a... Within 30 feet frighten till end of Dexteran, wisdom saving throw. 10.5 meters. Yeah, okay. So, as you glare out the, how do you go about this glare? What do you do to intimidate him? I go into a rage, and with my flaming war hammer, I grab the end of the hammer and let it cook my flesh for a minute.

And then I smack myself on the chest and rip out the biggest belly I have. As you do, Kevdak, who goes to take a step forward, takes the single step, hesitates. It seems to just hold this ground, eyeing you down, and kind of seemingly not expecting this ferocity. It never works. All righty. That's your action and your bonus. You're going to move and you stay where you are. There are no openings in the ring, right? Nope.

Wait, you had inspiration, by the way. Would that have helped to lie? No. I mean, there are side openings, like areas here where you can step out, but you get the sense that as people are gathering around, they're kind of actually, they would be plugging elements of this exit to prevent you from posing the gap. Oh, God, there's some... With my bonus action, I yell, coward! And that's it. Okay.

Technically the rage is the bonus action, but you can shout that for free. It's fine. All right, so for Kevdak's turn, Kevdak, kind of realizing that he can't, he's not able to really move closer at this moment. It kind of steps to the side here. Oh, really? Oh, really? Shit. Kind of waiting.

And yeah, he's going to go ahead and take a bonus action to go into his own rage. I've just had to try and make it work at least once. at least once. Yeah, it worked. And it did. Yeah. I'm not going to do. At least I can say I didn't die without at once.

Don't, don't. Not going to die, Rob. No one said that. So Kevadat goes into his own rage. As Kevado goes into a rage, screaming out, the ground shakes and little stones and rocks tend to kind of scatter across the work from the vibration of it. And you see some of those tattoos, the black ink that goes across his chest,

you see what looks like a bear that is. like a bear that is hidden within the tattoo that flares up with a flash of kind of dark, deep red crimson energy and then fades back into the chest. What? This is like, 1984. You're up, Grog. Raging. They're, yeah, he used body hair for power.

I go into a frenzy rage. Okay. And I charge headlong into Kevdak with my firebrand Warhammer. All right. Actually, he backed up against the ring, right? Oh. He's backed up against the edge of one of the openings, yeah. But if you want to go from here, these...

But there's lots of pointies behind him, right? In one angle, yeah. I'd like to drive my head right into his chest with the end of my... Can I move into him hard and see if I can push him back against one of the spot of the pikes? I'll say sure. I still have... If I'm frenzying, would I still have two attacks after that? That would be your action?

to do that, so you'll have your bonus action if you want. No, no, I'll just run up to him and hit him three times. Okay, go for it. The first two, just normal. Okay. 27. That hits. 24.

Hits. 16. Misses. More God's blessing? You have inspiration. What's the range on that? And inspiration. Oh, and you have inspiration.

Yeah, this may not be the moment, though. Yeah, not yet. It's a moment. I've got more. It's early. It's my thing. This is my thing. No, it's right in front of me.

I'm sorry. Unfortunately, inspiration fades in 10 minutes. 30 feet, so. 30 feet. Yeah, it's too far away if you had affected the War God's blessing. So the first two strikes, go ahead and roll for damage. Okay. As they do hit.

15, 23, oh, 23 plus five to 28 with the fire damage on the first one. Okay. And the second one. Three, eight, six. 16. 17. 17. Okay, as you slam, whack, whack with the Flaming Warhammer twice into the oversized Kevdhack's chest. Each hit hits, but Kevadavadha's just barely pushed back by each, and the damage, even the fire damage, seems to be taken down by his raging capabilities. The impacts aren't doing as much damage as you hope they would.

Give it. But I believe that ends your turn unless you want to move. Nope. No, no moving. All right. Kevin Dax's turn. Kevdak's going to go ahead and strafe around this way. And is going to go ahead and reckless attack on you. Okay. So that's an advantage on each strike.

Is going to take both of these as weapon master, fear weapon master. Fear of Master. That is a 28 to hit. I'm sorry, minus 5, 23. Hits. Second one. 28 to hit again, actually. 28 to hit with a minus 5. I mean hits, sorry. All right. You suffer, let's see, four.

As both of the axe swings come through you, you suffer a total of the axe swings come through you, you suffer a total of. of 54 points of slashing damage. Reduced by half. That brings it to 27, plus an additional 10 points of necrotic damage that you do not reduce. While all the attention is focused on them, can I stealth down to the ground for something? Make stealth check.

How you getting down? You're climbing down via acrobatics? So make a stealth in an acrobatics. 29 for stealth. Okay. And 25 for acrobatics. Okay. You've managed to make it to the ground. Kind of jumping off the side, parkoring down, grabbing the next ledge, leaping down. That's your turn. Oh. Okay. Okay. Anybody else doing anything until we come back on the next round? I mean, uh-uh. Do you do anything right now? Not until it...

It says so. It gets sad. I just want to duck. Can I just duck in the building at least? Is that part of the self? Sure, yeah. You come to the door and the door itself is not locked. You're kind of just pushing the side and dark off. Everyone's attention is so focused on the center. Yep, let them go.

All right. So that brings it to the top of the round. Grog, you're up. Feeling the impact of those hits and remembering our first encounter. I dropped the Firebrand Warhammer. I rush Kebdak and I want to try and rip away. the blood axe. Oh.

Okay. You rush up and drop the hammer, grab, and my face-to-face is right at your feet. You reach up and grab with your fingers, which barely wrap around this axes shaft right now at the size that it's swollen. And you pull against them. I want you to go ahead and make a strength check.

Looks like it's advantage on. Yep, versus his strength, which she gets advantage on. I think she gets advantage on. 17. Ooh, natural 20. Oh, come on! As you pull, Kebdak actually lifts you up, off the ground, holding the axe up to his face.

And just goes, like father like son, and shakes you off and, well, doesn't even shake you off, just butts you off of the axe, and you skid to the ground. Take one point of bludgeoning damage, no big deal. Land on the ground. You don't fall prone, but you're there and you can probably grab your Warhammer and pick it back up as the rest of your round if you want to. Yeah. Okay. Oh my God. Oh my God. That ends your turn at this point now. Kevdak, who's kind of laughing to himself. He's consulting the book.

When he does that. I know. Why? What could that possibly mean? It's probably looking up the price of a mace. Yeah, yeah. All right. Just interested.

Who is the... What's an adventures can run for? Who did this illustration again? Oh yeah. I don't know. I want you to make an athletics check. Did you get advantage on that? Yes, you do, because the rage, as is he.

Uh, 19. 19. Well, 22. He puts the axe to one hand, reaches down with his large mitt, MET grabs you and lifts you up and pushes you onto one of the spears behind you and just kind of shifts through your, you can feel it, actually pierce out the thumb back your chest, about six inches. And you're, so your feet are still on the ground and you can feel yourself there, but there is an element of being pinned there. You take 12 points

of piercing damage, reduced to six. This is nothing to a barbarian, simple piercing, whatever. However, you are technically considered, this would be grappled. You're unable to move until you manage to break this. You can still attack from this position if you wanted to, but you have to be able to try and spin an action to get free. So that's going to be the one attack, and then as you're pinned, he's going to come up with the Blood Axe and swing down. That's going to be a 23 against you. Blood Axe comes down and slams right into your front of your chest, the sternum area. Even with the weight of it, you bring your hands up and grab the edge of it and manage to stop some of the force,

but it still digs into the front of your chest. You take 19. 17 points of slashing damage, reduced to nine. Oh, okay, okay. I release Trinket inside the house that I'm in. Plus an additional six and a crook. That does not get reduced. So nine and then 15. 15, yeah.

What are you doing? I release Trinket quietly inside the house and tell him to just keep quiet. Okay, anyone else on anything else? No, I'm just trying to keep an eye on, I'm trying to keep, it's aware of everything as possible. We're gonna just, Pike and I are gonna just, forward on the roof top to get just a little closer.

Yeah, can I do the same in my elemental form? Like, kind of just, I'm gonna mist kind of down around, kind of right behind this asshole. Okay. What's up? I'm a spooky mist. Take some time to get, like, behind that fountain. That's in the middle of the...

Oh, it's in the open. Oh, it's in the open. Yeah. This is one quarter of the square. All right. Crog, it's your turn. You said I can attack from having a... pole shoved through my shoulder.

Yeah. Would that be a disadvantage? No, not at this distance. You're just your grappled so you can't move. You're essentially stuck there until you use an action to get off of it, otherwise you can't go anywhere. Yeah, I gotta get off of it. I'm gonna get off of it. Okay, so using an action and bring free?

Make an athletics check. With advantage because you're raging. Uh, 23. 23? There's not a lot of ground to pull yourself off of it, the weight, so instead, with your feet on the ground, you reach forward and grab the front of his blood axe again and pull forward as you do. You feel the back of this wooden spear snap off and it's still just embedded in your chest, poking out the front, but you are now free.

Still have your bonus action. I would like to use great weapon master, and I have advantage on this because he used reckless Yep. And I'll use his inspiration. Come on his... You don't have an inspiration. It faded. It only lasts for 10 minutes.

Oh, there you go. Yeah. 23. That hits. Go to roll damage. 19. No, 29. Oh.

29 with the plus 10, right? Okay, that brings it to 14 damage, reduced by his rage effect as well. As the hammer slams once again into his abdomen, you can see it leaving a char mark and actually kind of obscuring one of the tattoos, and you kind of, Stupid boy. You can move around him if you wanted to. You still have a movement.

Yeah, I'll move. I would like to move to his flank away from the nearest pointy thing. You shift around that way. Okay. With his turn now, he spins around to face you. He's going to go ahead and attempt his first attack on you as a disarming attack. with advantage on that because of these,

just going with this attack every round. That's going to be a 30? Yeah, that'll hit. Okay. Not great with a master. That's 30, so we're going to do an additional superiority die of damage on top of this. Oh my God.

So you take, all right. 17 points of slashing. 15 points of slashing damage. It's just to 9. So 8. 8, plus 2 necrotic. So 10 total. And I need you to go ahead and make a strength saving throw.

Oh, no. No, what? No. No, with rage, is it strength ability checks and saving throws? Advantage on strength check and strength saving. Yeah. So yeah, so the advantage on this. 13.

13. No, no. 16. 16. Okay. So as he slams into your side, you pull up the flaming war hammer to guard the blow. It takes some of it, but then he hooks the bottom of the axe underneath the head and actually like flings it out of your hand, and you lose the grip on the war hammer, which then clatters the ground at your feet. He's then going to turn around and going to go ahead and do a pushing

attack. What's the other superior die? This is going to be, this is going to be a with great weapon master that brings it to a 21. That's Macy. Alrighty. So you take from the actual blow, 21 points of slashing damage, reduced to 10. Okay. And five, necrotic.

I'm gonna use my stone's endurance. Go for it. How do we take you down to what stone's endurance? That's just a D12 plus my, which is a 12, Pustinac. Constitution, so that's 17. So as the blow comes, you just take it right to the center of the chest. As it hits, it barely cuts in before you go ahead and grab it and deflect it with your hand, doing no damage to you whatsoever.

However, the impact of it, though, make a strength saving throw? The advantage again. 18. 18. However, the sheer force of trying to deflect it does push you back 15 feet. Right on the edge there, we'll say you're right there. there, that's fine. And you stop right at the edge of another edge of the spikes, and there are two Goliaths that are there with their weapons out, just kind of forcing you back into the ring if you decide to back up any further. And with that, Kevdak's going to go ahead

and move forward and kind of push you into that corner. That's going to end his turn. You're up. Look at Kevdak and drop my arms to my side. It's already all on your side, actually. He disarm them. No, no, no, not my arms. Oh, your arms, okay. Straight down. And I'm gonna say clearly, I've been a fool. You are truly a foe to be reckoned with, and I will slowly drop to my knee. Oh!

No, no, Grog. And I will shout out. out, Vox Machina. Two shots. Fuck shit. Oh! Two shots. Ready.

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