Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Vox Machina Ep. 91 - Vox Machina Go to Hell

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Vox Machina descend into the nine hells, take a walking tour of the city of Dis, and sample the local cuisine.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We are. Indeed, tonight we are suddenly down one Sam Rangel because apparently he has priorities. Where is he? I actually don't know. Watching his kids. Is it really? Is that where he's at?

I don't know where he is. That's weird. Man, I feel like he took us. What is his mother's name? What is his mother's name? Let's know where I know it. It's scared. You don't care about his mother.

What am I doing Thursday night? It's not that we don't remember, we just don't care. Yeah. Well, say I'm wherever you are, you're not watching, so you'll never hear this anymore. We love you. It's true. That's hilarious because it's true.

We have a boy in tonight's episode. Let's get through a few announcements here. First and foremost, tonight we have the delight of being sponsored by returning friends puzzle quest. Puzzle Quest. They're not pushing anything in particular, but we want to talk about a bit how they're just,

They're just, Marvel Puzzle Quest is awesome. I've been playing PuzzleQuest since it first came out. I remember spending many angry hours on Xbox Live getting my head kicked my people in PuzzleQuest when it first came there. Talosin, did you have anything like to say? It's a big anniversary for them. Yeah, it's Puzzle Quest's 10 year anniversary.

Wow, really? Yeah, yeah. And gosh, golly. Puzzle Quest, Marvel, Marvel puzzle quests. Marvel and Puzzle Quest. You're not Sam Riegel. I'm not Sam Riegel. I'm doing my best.

I was just given this. I thought he was going to be here. Everyone was talking like we brought his things out. I thought he was going to be here. And now I have this and I have to somehow. You know, okay, fine. Can you just play on his harmonica or something? I'm not touching that.

I know where it's been. It's a hard truth that only one of us is irreplaceable. That's so true. This is true. But I can say that I do love comic books. I love comic books. I love three jewel replacement games that I can play on airplanes.

and when I don't want to pretend to listen to my family over Christmas, it's great. You're killing it, man. I know, and I suddenly realize a couple of them watched the show, and now they know that I'm not really texting you guys. Tell them, it pulls out a curly blonde wig. Starts jamming candy bars in his mouth.

But Marvel PuzzleQuest is great, because it's all the fun of the three gym, bejeweled style games, but you want to also collect characters if you're a big nerd like I am, and they've got basics like Thor and Iron Man, and like new, like fun ones, like, you know, What about Black Widow? Do they have Black Widow?

They have Black Widow. Black Widow is actually one of the first ones I ever got. But they've also got like crazy ones. They've got Devil Dinosaur. That's nice. That's pretty, that's actually. Marvel Puzzle Quest, because. Do they have slapstick?

I'm just, I'm like even more embarrassed that I know you now. It was already bad and now, this is why you're never going to be on my show, Matt. Oh. Oh. You're never going to be on my show because you don't have time. I know.

But yeah, Marvel puzzle quest. Thank you guys. you can get to see it on Steam, Amazon App Store, Google Play, Apple Store, it's all over the place. Yay! Go ahead! Thanks, Marvel Puzzle Quest! Yay!

Next up! Do we have any merch updates? Are we just still kicking ass in the store? Hey, there's stuff in the store, you guys. You should go look in the store and see what is there. Perfect. Thank you, Laura. That was adorable. We have WonderCon coming out.

What we're excited about. If you guys were able to come to WonderCon in Anaheim, California, April 1, on Saturday. On Saturday, we are having our Talk Smokinna live panel from 2 to 3 p.m. in the arena. There's big room there. Come to Hanheim, 4,000 seats. Yeah, big seats. We're trying to fill the room, because if we manage to fill the room, we can use that as an example as to why we have good crowds,

and we can hopefully do more events and more places in the country or around the world. We have to see you guys in person. Oh, yeah. We want to see everyone within a reasonable driving or flying to. Also, Talison and I are going to fistfight till one of us is dead around. is dead or unconscious. You're going to break a pool queue. While drunk.

That's new. It's going to be epic. Okay, that's a thing. That's the thing. Just roll it. Yeah. Yeah, yes, Sam. Got a lot of pen-up aggression, Tal.

I'm ready. A lot of pen-up aggression, I'm ready. Perfect. I want to bruise right here. April 1st. I want to peruse. Our panel. Critical brawl.

Critical brawl. We just bare-fisted. Speaking of Taluson unconscious, Wednesday Club. Oh, God. That's right. Greg way. We had a great time this week with talking about Swamp Thing and horror comics.

Next week it's going to be, we're just going to be talking vaguely about DC Comics. Everything from Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, the whole set of them and all the weirdness. And kind of talking about 52, what it is, why people kind of seemed weird about it and why people are coming back to read it now. And it's kind of like a brief overlook on everything, DC Comics. It's going to be fun. It was weird. Yeah, it was a weird time. Yeah, it was a weird time.

It's getting cooler now. I feel like when people talk about DC Comics, they just only vaguely talk about DC Comics these days. We're gonna try and see how many euphemisms we can, like, we're gonna talk about it like, like the dog. I know that you think this is a new dog, but it's really the same dog, he's just better now. Yeah, we're working on it. And signal boosts. Our good friend of the show, David Nett, actually, his episode just went up today. David Nett, who is an amazing, uh, Dungeon Master.

You actually see him on Roundtable. The other new show just hopped up on Alpha. Yep. He's also our trainer who's been kicking our ass in the gym. He's our personal trainer, yeah? We did a Hamilton workout yesterday. Oh man, it was so cool. Four sets of course sets.

Four sets of course sets. Did you take your shots? Do you were not in a peggy? Well, I rised up when doing squats. And the end of Peggy, and we were all like just really not happy to be there. Yeah, perfect. And if you go to iTunes, you can get the signal

boostering tone for your phone, And it's pretty great. Also, we have another surprise coming next week that I'm pretty stoked about, but you have to wait. There you go. No one probably cares. Hey, waiting. But I care.

I'm so excited. So I'm so excited. Thanks, Laura. I'm so excited. I'm so scared. Best don't know. Those who don't know what that is, you're young. You're young.

You too bit. All right, then also today, what was it? the episode of Celebrity and D. Oh, yeah. With a, there's a preview on YouTube, and the full episodes up on Alpha right now. Hopefully we win it out down the road. But it's with Joe Magniello, who is legitimately a really awesome guy.

We got to know it pretty well through the process. And he's a huge, like, old school RPG, like GM'd GERPS and riffs for years in the late 80s at his little comic shop. I would never have guessed. We nerded out extremely hard. He's one of my new favorite people. He was pretty cool.

So check it out. We had all good time. And he had a cool hat. And he had a fun character. And he got to play with a younger Keelith and Percival in one shot that is technically in Alexandria Can. I was much happier. I was not.

No. No. You were, I was not. And of course, next Tuesday, you can come and see some of us as well as our fantastic host, Brian Foster, on Taks Machina, Tuesdays, 7 PM here on Twitch or Alpha. And don't forget, check that out. It'll be about this episode.

Now! Lest are you mistaken? I think we're done. But, and that means, no, no, no. It's time. No, hey, look at this cool, nice back I have, it's got a bear. Of critical role.

Damn it. Wow. Hello and welcome back everybody. Nice win, Laura. A rare. A real. Well done. So, bringing us in to tonight's episode,

last we left off, Vox Machina, after completing their assault, and destruction of the chroma conclave. They are tying up loose ends of various adventure, hooks, and dangers they left out in the open from earlier or during that whole adventure. After taking Keelith to Vesra to take her final trial of the Aramente, her long, many-year journey

to prove her ability to lead her people of the Areshari. You returned to Zepra, met her father, expressed that the trial was complete, and the ceremony took place in which Keyleth was given the mantle and officially titled as the voice of the Tempest, the now standing leader of the Areshari. Which, by the way. I'm supposed to give you this.

What, oh, is that the thing? That's the thing. That's you get another thing? I think this is my leadership thing. Yeah? Well, you have your leadership feet. That's your mantle. You gotta not get another thing?

It's nothing crazy, but it's fun. Wait, is it a cloak? Don't you already have a cloak on? It's not. I don't. I gave that cloak to care. Who wore it away. Ruff has jacked that cloak.

Yeah. Ruff is jacked that cloak. I'd like the thing there's a piece of paper like pinned to his wall right now where he just, yeah. He just has the stats up there as a rider. Is it framed? Please do that if you haven't already, perhaps. So, after the ceremony is completed. What?

Sorry, we're good. Carry on. Perfect topic. Rehearsal paid off. Go ahead. After the crowning, the ceremony coming to a close, the evening celebration kicks off, and as the setting sun begins to darken the sky,

the people of Zepra are now bringing out foods and treats and cakes, and they're putting up ribbons of blue and white and gold and some of the nearby trees and doorways, and the folks of the The Arashari tribe now are in the process of enjoying both the return of their people and the fact that there is now a clear head of leadership. And you guys are now surrounded kind of in the, you know, basking in the Afrobo of the event, as well as deciding with slow rising tension what you have as the next step in your journey. So what would you guys like to do? Charge headlong into danger with no lessons having been learned.

Like it's day one, day one box pocket and let's do this. Naked and running in full steam. Like right now. No vestiges, no nothing. That would be the best end of that ceremony. Peace. It's our save game plus. But can I go talk to Kedith actually?

Yes. I did want to ask you, are you allowed to leave? How does this work? work exactly. I mean, I'm the chief. I can do whatever I want, right? I don't know actually. Should we talk to your dad? I should maybe talk to dad. All right. Yeah. I go talk to dad. Okay. As you, you know, and wherever you walk now, because you have the mantle upon you and you have the kind of cascading autumn-colored leaf cloak that flows behind you, it still

seems very ceremonial in this kind of jovial party-based atmosphere. And as you kind of move, you still can't help and notice that all eyes are on you at any given point in time. People, so you'd be genuinely excited that you've returned and that you've taken up this position. Eventually, you make your way off where you can see there are a handful of kind of the older, the more elder members of the Zephyra tribe there around Corrin currently, who notices you approach, he kind of shushes them all for a moment, turns to you, Ah, Kielith, my daughter, how can I help you? Corinne, I was wondering if I could have a word with you for a minute.

Of course. You do realize that you can still call me father. I know you're the leader, but... Can I? Is that like a loud? I don't really know. He puts his hand up, and puts his arm on your shoulder, and kind of guides you off away from the chaos of the celebration. You hear the whistling of music and flutes and, you know, thin Tanner drums going off in the distance, and is it kind of fades, the further off you guys walk in the direction of the tree where the ceremony took place. Sorry. You should fire that guy. I will.

Shitty servants. It's very windy up here. Don't worry about it. Yeah, sorry, that's true. As you walk further away towards the tree, he kind of takes his arm off from your shoulders and says, now I understand you have many questions and we've prepared you as much as we've prepared you as much as we could leading up to this journey you've gone on, but now that you're here, I guess. Primarily, the people of Zephyr looked to you

for guidance when choices are hard, difficult. You are the acting head of law like I've been all this time. If there is conflict, if there is difficulty, if there is a challenge that presents itself that requires the will of a leader to step in. Right. That's when you're called upon.

So, I'm confused. Was the Aramente my training to be a leader? Is there like a, because if you apparently prepared me as best as you could before I left, I don't know how well you all did. So I'm just wondering if I am, I need to expect that again. Is this just me figuring this out again? Or do I have guidance?

The nature of the Aramente is fluid. I have not taken it as I am not the leader. It is tradition and it is both, as far as I understand, a series of challenges and lessons tailored to whatever a person seems to be seeking or what you can draw from that, but also to interface with the other tribe. with the other tribes and establish that connection between all the leaderships. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah.

Did that? You're right. You haven't taken it. That's been about 5% of my journey. All of the lessons that I've learned have been in the in-between. That is part of the Aramente itself. I know. I'm, I guess I'm, I don't know.

Just trying to figure out how to navigate this. Like the leader I'm expected to be. You know, Dad, you didn't tell me a lot about the world. And sometimes I think I get angry at you for that. You're not, you're not wrong to have these thoughts. Why didn't you tell me that the world could be so cruel? and mean. Why did you never tell me that?

We've tried. But you can only tell someone so much. Do you not think we spent days warning you of the dangers and difficulty? We didn't thrust you out in the world with the smile going, have fun. We told you it was challenging. We warned you of the

people you might interface with that you couldn't trust. And for the first legs of it, we had a few scouts. scouts keeping an eye. What? Just to make sure you were safe. Okay. But... It just kind of sounds like it was advice

coming from people who didn't really fully know. To be fair, when every parent has a child come of age, you can only coddle them so far. Every bird has to be kicked out of the nest for it to learn to fly. Not because we want to, but because that's how things are. I think you've met. I guess I'm just wondering what's next.

Now what? Now, as the leader of these people, you go and learn how best we can establish ourselves in this countryside. Where once we, Gwisar, Tadore, as the humans call it, all of our civilizations are merging. Isolation that we've relied upon is becoming less and less viable. I agree.

And so part of, I think, what you have already begun is finding a way to bring not just the Ashari, but Sepra as well, necessary friendships and allies. Our people need to be connected to the rest of the world that we've sworn to protect. I understand the need for our isolation, but I often wonder if we had a few close allies on alert, if the Thorac incident might have gone a little bit differently. I agree. I still need time with Vox Machina. We still have things we need to complete, and then I promise I will return.

All right. Come back. Do what you need to. You're not bound to this mountain. Just know that your heart is here. And we'll call for you if we need you. And when you're not needed beyond it, this is your home. This is kind of professional exterior falls away and he steps forward and kind of gives you a big, warm, foggely embrace and just holds you there. Okay, dad. Okay. I think, okay. So he writes his posture, shoulders back. I do the same. Adjust my mantle a little bit.

Another question. Do I have to wear this like all the time? It's a little unwieldy. It feels a little frou-y. Kind of ceremonial? It is. It's a little, I feel like I'm gonna trip on it. You don't have, you know, it's more just do what you like.

It's yours. It's going upstairs in it, like in the heel. It's a little, it's a little unwieldy. It's, I mean, it's beautiful. I'm gonna go get a drink. I'm, you probably should. Okay, yeah. Alright.

Okay. They were talking about. They were talking all about you, actually. You? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This whole conversation about you. You are full of shit. No, no, she was saying how much she admired you,

and he was saying, hmm, I don't think I feel it as much. And she was like, no, really, Dad, you just needed a chance to really talk to him. And he was like, no, the bleep. me I did talk to him and I don't feel that way. Yeah. And then she was like, never mind. I'm so glad I confide in you. I have you to lean on.

You are the rock in my life. What would I do? They actually said that as well. They were talking about how amazing I am. While she was talking to walk away, quietly as possible. I'm also like a pretty well. So as the ceremony dies down, the evening comes to rest, the night sky takes over, and you

can still hear the gentle whistling of the winds through the various cracks and crevices in the mountainside. You're brought to your respective temporary abodes of the evening to rest and to plan and plot what you wish to do going forward. So what do you want to do? Ves of Lee or literally go to hell, I imagine. Yeah, are we doing this? This is like tomorrow morning. We're like heading out to hell. Yeah, I mean, what are we going to do? First things, first.

Every time. First thing's best work, brother. Right. Squad leader. Yes, please. How do we get there? Oh, she's got plane shift, right? Very easily, actually. That's the easy part.

We don't take like a ship. No, sadly we can't. No, but we don't know exactly where we're going to land. Correct. Well, we know the city that we want to go to. I can get us somewhere within the city of Diss. I don't know if... Diss City.

Built this city. Oh, man, man. This is going to go great. It was too easy. I know. I mean, when we went to the city of brass, we did not shift into the city of brass. We dumped quite a ways away. Yeah, but on the outskirts. Yeah, so we have no control over that. We could pop into it, we could pop out of it.

Yeah. So whatever plan we come up with, one branch of the future is complete bullshit improvisation for, you know, if we fall into the the shit. So there's no planning for that. So if we don't fall into the shit and we learn somewhere relatively safe, what are we going to do? How are we going to play this? Well, hell. It is complicated and as hells go there could be worse hells. I've been reading. Shocking. And thank you. I've been looking into this and it seems that where we're going has a very, very structured hierarchy. There's there's It's very ordered, the society makes sense, and wherever we find this creature that we have to slay,

there will probably already be forces working against him that would be happy to ally with us to help that happen. They're vicious psychopathic creatures that are only functioned because they maintain these rules with each other about how they're supposed to act. They would be delighted for outsiders. I think it would be possible to find people who would be delighted for outsiders to come in and do their dirty work for them. However, scale bearer, big high guy, scale bearer, really important guy, said not to make a scene. He said, if we make a scene that that will go poorly. Yes. Says him.

There's no point for sex topplets. We can't do that. That's not going to work. They can see through things. It's going to be complicated as well. It's going to be complicated as well because we have value as well. Oh, I got it. We kidnap the president of hell and we assume his visage.

Was the president? Turing. His name is Esmodius. And no, we are not kidnapping Hesmodius of hell. What? I think he's probably kind of powerful. He's really heavy. Have you seen him?

I've seen sketches. I've seen sketches. You have? Well, I mean, I don't know how correct these are, but I'm... Morning. Morning has come. Oh, wow. Oh, God. We talked all night, and we squared it away, and we're going to hell. You talked all through the night. No rest was had. Very bright.

We're going to be off of things. There's going to be deals made. There's going to be... So we're talking negotiation or bullshitting our way, one of the other... It's going to be negotiating probably with someone who will give us cover if we do some dirty water. I mean, is it similar to the city of brass? It sounds so similar. They have a lot in common, yes. It's even more structured, though. There's quite a complex, I alone have identified 13 different case systems within their function. It's really...

There's imps, spine devils, barbed devils, chain devils, bone devils. There's all these different kinds of devil, and each devil has to answer to a different devil. devil. They answer specifically to the devils that have fealty over them, who in turn are in constant war with the devils who are guilty to other devils and archdevils and greater devils, who in turn all owe their fealty to his motive. But we are not devils, therefore weak and liable to be taken as slaves. We are not even slaves, we are consumables. We are... Then how do we ensure that we are not...

I feel like we've got an... bit of a reputation for ourselves. I'm sure that word has spread. We're not, you know. You would know this, Percy, through your research. It's not terribly uncommon for mortals to wander through the city of this specifically because it is where goods, gold, and largely souls

are traded to and from various structures or entities within the hells and beyond. And to just consumer, eat someone means nothing. The true worth of a soul is in corrupting it. And they do so through enticing, through corrupting their morals, through driving mortals, through bargains and pacts, to end up twisting into entities of order and evil as well,

and then claim the soul of that. And contracts are a big thing. Contracts are a big. And then turning that into a lima. Yeah, to a lemur or other forms of soul-based energy. But contracts are a very, very important part of the whole economy. So the person that we made a contract with was a devil that ended up being the one that killed Pike, right? That was a devil.

It was a devil disguised as a demon? No, that was a demon disguised as a devil. Yeah, that was super confusing. That was the one that we wished our way out of the contract. Correct, yes. I was very proud of that anymore. Yeah, we don't have a wish. Okay, so we make no deals, no deals, no contracts.

No deals, no contracts, no shaking of hands, no signing of anything. No accepting of gifts. I feel like I'm gonna forget this. You are. Don't touch anything. Don't touch anything. Might have to make you special gloves

that don't have any fingers. I've got special gloves. Even special gloves. Like a moth. But we can wear over those gloves. Like a what? Like a hand muff. Like a, like a hand muff.

Like a, Tierra does. You don't make me a special hand muff? Terry does pipe-win, and he's like, Oh, but I'm such fine handwriting. If we need to sign anything, just let me know I'm happy to. No, Terry, no signing anything. I've signed a lot of contracts in my time.

My father used to do contracts. Oh, although I'm sure you're good at reading contracts as well. This is true. Yes. You can read them, but don't sign them. How about that? How about if I read them and I like it? No, no signing.

Agreed to disagree. And this is going to stay in hell and we come back here. Your current contract with us actually stipulate. that you can't have another contract enacted until you confer with all of us. Exclusivity. Yes. Goes through his bag and pulls up the contract.

I stand corrected. I'm very thorough. I don't even remember he signed a contract. Be more careful about exclusivity in future contracts. I don't think you were there. This might have been just him and me getting drunk at one point. Is there any worth to like a few people or one of two going in to like get a lay of the land once we get there instead of just moving in our

truffle-suffle normal formation. I feel like that could be very dangerous for one person to go in alone. Yes, I agree. I'll do it. No. Berries don't think. No. Last time you were alone-ish, you almost killed two guards. I will say it. What is the problem with that? In Baseline.

She's got away with it, Rod. Did we get caught? Did we get caught, Terry? No, we did. Did we get caught? No. I don't know. I still have, I only remember half of what happened. Terry is very excited about my plan.

It's affecting his memory of what happened. I think I blocked it out. But what I remember was interesting. You could always look in Doty's diary and find out exactly what happened. Peruse the last 90 pages for the last hour. Takes the book and starts thumbing through it all fast. You look a bit Doty, who still has like,

chunks and clusters of bits of red hair from the somewhat removed goatee. Fumanchu. Yeah. So Percy, we know a lot of things and people move through the nine hells. What's it say about Rock Shasses in there? Where do they fall in the cast? It doesn't actually say what Rock Chaucer's would fall in the cast. There wasn't a terrible lot of information. Not all the devils are in the same system.

There is a promotion demotion system in which devils advance and are demoted based on their elements there, but there are other fiends that exist in that space that aren't part of that system. Rockshasa are a little bit outside of that system. Suck you by, hink you buy, they're a little bit outside of that system. There are other fiendish creatures that actually traverse between both the abyss and the hells based on what their interests are. So that's predominantly the structure of the devils that are in this. that are built within the Hells as their primary domain. Percy, help me understand, since you've read so much about this.

So, whole page. Good on you. So if the Raven Queen escorts souls, if you're an absolute terrible ship of a person and the Raven Queen escorts you over to the other side, we're gonna be wandering amongst the souls of the, The damned, people die go to where we're going. If they're under contract, this is where they go.

And many who sometimes are under contract go there as well. Oh, really? And you would know this actually. The Raven Queen, as part of the laws of the cosmos to hold the various planes together, the Raven Queen does indeed escort good souls to the positive planes, the upper planes, and not so good souls to the... Actually, I know that from reading a lot about the Raven Queen.

I can answer that for you. You don't use a turn signal, if you have a vanity plate, you gotta have it. Yeah. Thank you. I know they get escorted to the other side. It just seems like an odd idea to be walking in a city full of the throne away.

I'm talking to the air. No, we're listening. I'm sorry, keep going. Keep going. It was the best thing you've never heard. It changed the game forever. I miss Scanlon short hearts so bad. Because he listened to you so much more?

Nah, he's just my buddy. Aww. Well, speaking of just our buddy. Let's we move on. Pike is another concern. I would feel far more comfortable making sure that she is definitely on board for this. Really?

Well, it's difficult. I know. Phone a friend. What do we do? I don't know. I've been thinking about that. The best way to... I mean, HOTUS, how long has it been, DM? How long's it been, DM? From since.

Since Pike wasted his sorry ass. It's been offhand couple months. Couple months. I mean, I don't think one more day is gonna kill us if we want to go get her. That's difficult. I know, I do bring it up though, that it is one of those things that we should talk about.

I mean, if the fates allow. I feel like we would have to find someone to send message as a message spell, maybe in the form of a text. Just blackmail the writer is a blind spot. Yeah, yeah. Because Ashley is in New York. We'd have to play care up. I thought I would just bring it up now

before we go running in that. Oh, I was trying to guilt them out into playing bike. I'm okay with that too. No, it's Ashley's character though. Bike, Terry. What else? Yeah, just throw all the NPCs. It's not the Thorac battle.

there's not 87 miniatures on the board. No, but I mean, it could be, we don't know. We don't have to see if, like, Ashley would be down us, like, you know, I thought I would bring it up. I just thought I bring it up. I just thought I bring it up, because it is one of those things that is pretty clutched down there.

Not prepared, but we never are. Nope. So we could not have the president. Definitely. That's from liking it more. I'm curious. If rock shawks aren't necessarily part of the system.

And this guy tends to come in and out and just make people's lives a living hell. Oh, hell. They're like that. Apparently puns are very big out there. It is hell. Then maybe no one would miss him. In fact, maybe people down there don't like him.

You know? The feeling I get reading, the more I read about this place, is no one likes anybody down there. So maybe it might not. If you can figure out a way to be convenient, convenient about it, you can disappear anybody. Also, didn't someone tell us that if they get trashed, they're treated like shit there?

He's probably not, we've trashed as I was twice. When we went to the studio brass, we were owned, right? That was what, let us move around so freely. They don't, we don't have to do that here. I mean, we thought it was getting us around. There's nothing that we'd need to think about like that. So we should just go down, act like we're evils, like our souls have been claimed by another devil.

already. Honestly, the more we just act like us and what people are going to try and tempt us into things. I could use alter self or try and change into something that's devil-e. Can't they see through that? They'll probably see through it. What is your truth? I have a question. Yes. Because that is an interesting question because... Illusions are different than actually physically changing yourself. Right, it's transmutation. Correct. Shape change is considered a transmutation spell. Whereas the seeming was an illusion spell. Seeming was an illusion. Illusions... And you actually become that thing. As far as, as far as you, as far as you, as

As you know, the pit fiend you encountered is the only creature that saw through an illusion. Okay. However, illusions and transmutation spells, things that actually physically alter your form, that's not considered an illusion. You are actually changing your physicality. So alter self would not be something that a creature with the true sight could see through. Could I alter self to a succubus? I mean, you could alter yourself to look more like one.

So if we're just like the bad kids on the block. Or like a teethling? You wouldn't be able to give yourself wings necessarily. Are teethlings a thing in city of? Are tea flings a thing in the city of diss? You don't know. Percy, are tea flings a thing in the city of dis? I don't know.

Actually? Would I know? You just think about it for a second. I know, I know. I gave you a basic structure. I'm filling in the gaps as we go. Sure, thank you. Yes, they're quite often found there.

That is specifically a city that a lot of the the social construct revolves around the cross-section between the mortal races and doubles. I wonder if they have guides. I wonder if I could be like a Teethling tour guide for you guys. Maybe you could be like a conduit, the person that brings us to. Yeah, like an ambassador, an escort.

Already have us under contract. Already have you under contract. Sure. Yeah. You feel up to this level of deception, I say with all seriousness. No, you know, it's not my strongest suit. And I recognize this.

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for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash critical role. Yeah. He can give me enhanceability, which means I would get advantage checks. That's better. You can do that too. Which I can do on myself as well.

Yeah. So, yeah, I can, I can give myself, you know, I can. But I can do it as well. And Terry can do it as well. I'll just talk into a mirror for a little bit, practice some, you know, some things what teethlings might say?

What are things teethlings say? Oh God, I'm a teafling. What happened? Why has this happened to me? Oh God, I'm a teafling, what happened? Why is this happening to me? It's perfect. It's uncanny.

It's exactly how I remember Lillith. We are so close to being able to semi-retire and take it easy. We cannot clock this up. We're going to hell. We've no plan. What if we went and were completely honest

and were ourselves and explained that we were here to remove the shittiest devil in the city? Seriously? I am being serious. Yeah, he does have a slight point. We tried that. We've tried that. I mean, maybe it'll work. You just run willy-nilly. That's what we do.

Maybe we do them a favor. It's not like we're saints. If a bunch of mortals, I'm of the opinion that a bunch of mortals show up in the city of Diss looking for Rakhasa. I think they're gonna be able to put two and two together. Why? Yeah, they're gonna know. I honestly don't think anyone's gonna have a problem with us killing this guy. It's just a matter of, do we wanna be full box machina

because it might paint a giant target on us or maybe have someone as a silent escort? I could try and not speak a whole lot. Yeah, I mean, you could, maybe I could be a mute escort. I mean, I just, I just feel like I'm certainly without Our chances of fooling anybody are lower than they've ever been. So maybe having you as a Teefling escort gives a little credibility to the dummies there.

There's lots of people who are not dummies though. And I kind of feel like we should just quietly negotiate our way through, because I don't think we can bullshit, not without scamman. I think that's very fair. All right? I agree. Okay. I got lost, but I agree. Did you ever do the response from Sam on those portions?

So, I didn't. Yeah. Six regular, three medium, one superstar. If you need gold, I've got loads. It's literally right there. Oh, I didn't know you wrote it down, Grog. What the fuck? You can't count.

Okay, we got to pass these potions out. Who wants the superior? I do. Oh, do you have those potions? Yeah. You do? Yeah, Terry gave them to me. Did you steal them from them?

me when I wasn't noticing? Because if you did, I would have perceived it. Sorry. Perceived it. Yeah, I would have, because I have really high perceiving. I thought that's why you wanted a gift wrapped. Yeah. So. I'll take any, I don't forget the sizes.

I don't you die again. Take the superior. Ooh, thank you. Is that all right with everyone? Yes, it's perfectly fine. I will say I did buy them if I could also. Really, Terry, because you have all those patches. I thought that's the reason you gave them to us.

Oh, but they hit third. There are measly trifles of healing. I could use something. Sorry, how tough is that armor? The best that money could buy. Right, but is it ceremonial or is it like shit kicker? Do you want two regular potions? How is that, Terry?

Is that good for you? In addition to your patches, or would you want one of the greatest that you bought for us? Greater. Wow, all right, sure, take it back. I'm so bad Sam couldn't be here for us. I'll take a greater as well. All right.

Sure you don't want to give me one, because I usually end up pouring it and I want to use. Good cause. Greater for Grog. That's a good idea. So that's all three greatest taking. I'll take two regular if you know. Two regulars for Percy.

Two regulars for Keyleth. Sure. And that's, well, that's two regulars left. Strapping a turkey baste to a tank. So maybe just keep those. Or give them to Grog maybe once again. Okay, so Grog, You have two regulars and one greater.

All right. Fred, Freddie, do we know what language is likely to be spoken there? Oh, good question. Is that say in your books? Did you just call Percy Freddy? I like it. He keeps calling in that. Infernal. It's his name, isn't it? Frederick. Infernal? They speak infernal.

Technically it would be a middle name, yes, Frederick. Do you speak infernal? Do not speak infernal. What name, is your name, is it? You have 37 of them. Am I allowed to use any of the ones in between the first and the last? I am struggling to find a reason why not, which is somewhat irritating. You know, we're years into being friends. What do you prefer? Percy is just perfectly reasonable. What about D-Row?

What about V. D-roll is pretty good. What about Musil? I was just about to agree on it. My God, you found the line and I've drawn it. D-roll's pretty good. Man, D-roll's great. D-roll is actually...

I'm suddenly extremely extremely challenging. I feel like I'm not necessarily ready to D-roll at that point. Oh man. Yeah, that's gonna haunt you, my friend. You're just gonna end up wings at some day, it's all. Wings. Wings. It's like B-roll. You don't wanna stop and get a wang.

Infernal, but they speak common, I'm assuming as well. Anybody. You don't know. Oh, shit. We didn't know anybody that speaks infernal, do you? Hey, Terry. Do you have any spells that help you, you know, be able to speak languages? Like, isn't there like a spell called language?

Not here. Not at the moment. However, if we have enough time, I'm sure we could go find a local class that teaches, maybe go to the Lyceum, and we can learn the basics a few weeks. Terry, do you want me to punch you in the face? No, I do not, please. I don't do that. Which, by the way, if we need any sort of healing, any kind of rummages through his pouch here and says,

I can muster a couple of short-term. term potions if it gets too bad? Why did you take one of the greatest if you can make healing potions on your own? Well, I could only really use one for myself and I wanted to back up. Right. So infernal is going to be a problem.

And we're taking Doty with us. Is that a plan? I don't see why we wouldn't. Why would we not want to bring him with us? I'm sure there's lots of robots in hell. Don't we speak Infernal? Dody doesn't speak. Can he write an infernal?

Is it a protocol droid? I am well first time. This is where it would be useful for Sam to send me his character sheet, so I would know language as he chose. But because Sam's not here, no, Doty does not know or speak infernal. Somewhere an area is going to move your creatures, I'm sure. Sam's stuff is right there, isn't it? Oh, yeah.

No, that's my stuff. I'm just, I'm spreading. Oh, he's not here. Understandable. Not really. Man spreading. I don't know what you're speaking. Can we like tear off your sleeve

and then you understand Inferno? No, no, you don't need to do that. We could drive. I would not recommend it. I speak disco, but not Inferno. No. No. I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. I'm not really that. You can't just off the cuff that. That was for the Aladdin earlier. I had to do something in retaliation. We're looking to see if anything. I speak abyssal, but that's the other one. If I wanted to use shape change,

you actually turn myself into a succubis. A succubis or a rachshasa, then I would speak infernal because I do get that with shape. We didn't really fully design. It never supposed to buy as you get . Because you get everything, but you just keep your intellect, wisdom. Do that.

You get a whole little language. Make yourself a SACI-Nus, can you keep your intellect? It's not like you learn what the creature would know. So probably not. But you learn their spells and abilities. You automatically get those. Are the spells in the brain though? Or in the boss.

It doesn't specify in the spell. It's kind of what you decide. It depends on what kind of spell. Like elemental spells. I really want to see what you look like as a Saki-Bis-Mis-Missing. I do too. This picture they have in the book is quite exciting. Yeah, she's got a whip.

If she does, any average another creature, one without class levels or the spell casting trait, so you don't get any spells. Turn into something that has spell casting, you don't get their spells. Oh. You can maintain your intellect. But I get their abilities.

You get their abilities, their physical abilities and things they can do. But that's different than knowing the language. Yeah, so I don't think you pick up a language. Yeah, you get to suck. Sorry. Well, we may have to actually hire a guide once we're in there then. No, we can't hire anyone?

Why can't we just hire a, like, a teetheflin? Did you have any, are there tea flings in your, In your tribe? Maybe, but I imagine they would be super rare. You've been gone a while. Do we have any? Maybe ask Daryl Dahl Dahl. We'll say for the purposes of, thank you for the text.

So checked on the languages that Doty knew. Oh, that's great. Infernal, it's not one. I'm sorry. So there are two teaflings that exist in the society. They're pretty rare when it comes to Ashari, just because a lot of teethlings tend to not feel comfortable in some natural elements sometimes.

Sure. One of them is about six years old. And the other predominantly works as a gardener in the vicinity. So it's not a guarantee that they knew in from necessarily? It's not a guarantee, I don't think. I could go ask, I mean, I could go and get a few buzzwords, you know. Just find that six-year-old. Hello, goodbye, please, thank you.

Left, right. No, thank you. Actually, most teetvelings do learn infernal as a language. Can I go, what time is it? You guys have been talking late into the evening. It's early, it's like maybe one or two in the morning. Oh, so go in the morning. Find out, if not, we'll just go there and hope that someone speaks common.

I, yeah. You've got to be able to be able to, yeah. Yeah, come and I feel like we'll be okay. Well, we can't sit here and wait for him and come back and we just gotta fucking do it, right? Yeah, unless I could try and talk to dad too and see if you guys anything that might help with languages, but I don't know.

I think we'll be okay. It'll be all right, right? It's just hell. No big deal. It's fine. Fine. Okay, so do we have a big plan? Should we sleep?

Sleep, talk to the gardener. But if we do this, we're done. we can take it easy. For a bit. So he says. To do what? What is left? The dragons are dead. All that's left is HOTUS.

What is left? The fucking deal that I made with your fucking goddess. Who knows if she'll call us out on it, but there's that. Going to run right back to the temple. Are you? Well, hell no. She creeps me up. Thank you.

I saw her face. It's fucking me. Yeah, I saw that. Wait, you guys all saw that. Right? Right, that happened. Yeah, because that feels like a fever dream. That happened.

You saw that. Did you know we saw that? Grog, you saw that, right? The giant white mask. Grog. Grog. Grog. Yeah.

Oh, Grog's getting more... Indignant? I feel like you're lying more now than you used to. That is not true. What do you want to do after this, Grog? Say we get back from hell. What's the next step for you? I mean, we're gonna party, that's a given,

but like, are you done with the herd? Oh, I don't know, I'd never look that far ahead. It like keeps disappointment low. No expectations, I like it. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's bad for goals, but yeah. Goals?

Like, high five, buddy. Hey! Hey! I don't have any plans to like do anything like it, normally it works out great. Yeah. Word. Yep.

There were words in there. I mean, you don't really need to see, like, all the way to the horizon, right? You just gotta see like right in front of your own little feet. Yeah. You'll get there. You remember that time a sword killed you? You do?

Yep. You do? Yeah. Doesn't always work out. Sometimes it gets cocked up, yeah? Not yet. Not yet. He's got a point.

It doesn't have a point. This is true. I mean, we're all here. Has he wanted to wonder why we're all still alive? All the time. Yeah, like by all likelihood, we shouldn't be. That's fun. That's the whole series of things from back.

Good times, good times. What about you, Vex? What are you doing after we take a... take a retirement. Oh wow, this is happening. Percy. Good one, Grong. I mean, yeah.

But that would, you know. I mean, we knew that. I'm gonna hopefully build up. You do have a small house. A small house. If you're feeling. Is it been built? No, no.

It needs to be. It needs to be. It's a, it's land. Twilby. Yeah, it will be. It's going to be lovely. It will be lovely. You're going to be like Mr. Bates,

on that matter. happy upwards. I don't know who that is. Considering your idea of small. It was very nice before it's caught fire. And this is the sweetest before we all died. This is. And the grey hunt itself is eventually going to be popping up. I would love to note that is. You keep saying what the grey hunt is. What is it? What's your plans, Kiki? Oh, see. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's because it's nothing.

It's not really terrible. It's not terrible. It's not terrible. Bust it out, they rolled. I wouldn't have, no, no, no. Well, I mean, there's some boring bits of it, obviously. Well, tell us the juicy bits of it.

Yeah. Oh. Is it like paying your taxes where it's not a real thing, but you kind of have to do it because it's on paper? Do I get a jolly hat out of it? Who, where does she learn this stuff?

Beautiful John Trump? I learned it from you, Percy. Oh, my God. Learned it from you. No girl. Part of the gray hunt, and this happens not every season, but often on Winter's Christ Festivals. And again, it is an official title

and does actually carry with it some responsibilities beyond that, but they're very, very you. They'll be fine. Is, and I can't give too much of a way because part of the ritual is also. Oh, my God. Tell us something. You are going to have to go into the woods

and meet something. No, I'm really not. Meet something? You go into the woods. There are creatures that live in the woods that have been affected by the land that have gained some... You're gonna shroom your tits off.

Do you want to get really high? Is this the whole point of the great hand? Whitestone, there are things within the earth of white stone white stone that have certain power and certain energies and they have been seeped into the plants and the stones and the animals themselves and do I have to find the highest animal in the woods? More or less. I'm starting to regret that I asked what's the punchline? The punchline is you're going to go and you're going to actually have to bring back a

kill and it will be a very specific kill that is asked for. Oh wow. But part of that then gives you a practically divine right to manage and look after the creatures of the woods and are hunting and what is reasonable to be killed and otherwise. I think I'm covering most of the same reason. How do you mean divine? Like she can see things? If she kills the radioactive beast,

does that mean she gets a radioactive cow? Divine more in the sense of what reasonable people do to tell common that we're allowed to talk to. Yeah, yeah. It's less exciting. Do I go alone and do I get help? You do go alone, no, you do not get help. Oh, shit.

That's so cool. Cool. Sounds fun. I think you're going to do very well. Oh, you'll be fine. I look forward to her. She's killed tree beasts and dragon. She's fine.

She's fine. Three beasts or three beasts? Look, my light up 20 just lit up for no reason as we were talking about. It's a sign. It's a very well. It'll be a lovely Winter's Crest. We haven't had a master or mistress of the Greyhunt

in many, many, many years. So what are you gonna do when we take a break, Percy? I don't know. I think I'm going home. I'd say I think. I'm going home. There will be work to do there. Don't look at me.

And I have plans for my city. I have plans for the people. I want to make it great again. I want to make it shining, beautiful, comfortable for everyone. You know, I might need your help. I have a few ideas for the Ashari tribes as well. I think that that would be an excellent thing for Artis.

to communicate very regularly. I think they need to. I think they must. Can you help me build some sort of maybe like alarm system? That sounds very expensive. I'm not sure that that's possible. Yes, of course I can help you something like that. But with taxpayers' money, also something else you taught me.

It'll be a string on a bell. You're learning so well. Just two cups on a string. Can we get your beds? Yeah, let's do that. Are we all sleeping in this hut, or do we have separate huts? We're all sleeping in this hut.

aren't we? Welcome to your yurt. Is it all water outside still? Like a little bit of water on the ground? No, we're not there anymore. It's windy. It's windy. We're up on a cliff. It's so drunk. There's so much water outside. You guys do have, you have a separate places to stay. People clear out in cluster. You have your own locations. Why does this smell like mayo? Hmm. That's gross. It is mayo! Take that!

He's just been drinking mayo. That is vile! That's probably not kept well. That's so gross. Okay, all right. Good night, lovely people. You guys rest for the evening. The morning comes with your mayo hangover.

Yeah. It's so pure and never leave the hangover. Definitely casts the muscle. This morning comes around, you all come to consciousness. the village of Zephyra has already come to life. You can see the townspeople are up and about. They're handling their business. The guards are being tended to.

You can see the wind riders are already out, leaping from mountain peak to mountain peak, doing their perimeters in the vicinity. The children are up and being led to their various outdoor classes. The city is alive, and you guys, Your business is your own. I get information on that gardener and where to find him. Or them.

He's in a library. Or he or know who they are. It's easy you have to find. In this city in particular, a teafling sticks out like a sore thumb. You see a woman probably in her, it's hard to tell with a teafling. Demon don't crack. But she's a little older. She's in her 40s, probably.

dark purple skin, the horns kind of curl backward and come to almost a singular point behind. And the dark hair kind of shifts and streaks of gray, but she's in the middle of, looks to be, gloves on in the process of checking in and planting more seeds. Do I know her name? Did I get a name? Yeah, this is Whitney. Whitney? Whitney? Yeah. I've tagged you on, by the way.

Okay. Not her given name, but the name she chose when she joined the Zepra. Sure. Okay. You've interfaced here and there, but nothing to, I mean, you were very young and you were still kind of, you know, last year in the village were being pushed towards this place of greatness, so a lot of people didn't interact to you directly too much. Sure.

You've seen her around. When we were like, kitties? Oh no, but she's, she could be forever, yeah. Okay. As you approach, she kind of stops and kind of wipes the dust from her hands and turns, Ah, my lady Kilit, I'm sorry, and she kind of stands up and does like a small name. Don't do the bowing things. I've always been uncomfortable with it, don't. I didn't really know what to do.

No, it's fine. No, you're fine. You're great. Hi. Hi. Good to see you. You as well. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. I was just wondering if I could actually just ask you a few questions on behalf of everybody. Everybody. Certainly. What can I do to help?

Well, okay. I don't know if this is a sensitive subject or not. I know you've kind of been away from this for a little bit, but it seems me and my team are going to the nine hells. To the city of Diss. And yeah, no, I know. We all had the same reaction. Um, I just, I didn't know if you could actually actually. if you could actually help me with any infernal language or any knowledge that might help?

Or if you still know the language? I've not had to use it in a very long time. I don't know much about what you're talking about. I've lived in here and this are my whole life. So I don't know where else. I can offer, as far as, I mean, I can read a little infernal, and I can understand it if I hear it, I haven't really had to speak it in a while. What do you need? Well, we were thinking of going in under disguise as potentially a teetling, since they are more common there. So I didn't know if you could share any basics of your language. Well, why do you want to know?

Well, you know, hello, goodbye, thanks. Sorry. Left, right. All right. And she can't take a minute and has to scratch her head. You can see she's like, it's been a long time since she's ever had to exercise her infernal speaking muscle. Do you want to turn us over breakfast? I can, we'd be more than happy to buy your breakfast. I'm all right, I'm in the middle of my work here. Okay, for a greeting. I mean, as much as there is one, it's pretty abrupt.

And if you weren't keeping tabs on this, it's pronounced Kuthak. Kuthak. Kuthak. Kuthak. Kutthok. Kuthak. I'm all going to say that.

It's all going to say that. Kuthrush. Yeah, it does. It sounds like Klingach. Kutthok. Kuthok. Okay. Emphasis on thok. You're right.

Goodbye is very similar. Kuthrek. But is usually said in a very forceful manner. or goodbyes outside of, it's usually a very stern separation. Sure. What else did you? Excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm Lady Keelot's friend. And I don't like that out.

No, sorry, I just saw the hesitation and it was cute, keep going. All right. We. Don't, yeah. You grew up here, so I don't know if this means anything to you, But we are searching for a Rakhasa. Do you know what that is?

I'm afraid I do not. No. Look, it's all right, I understand. Many people just assume, because of the way I look, but I know a lot about that was indeed. No, no, no, no. But I really don't, I'm sorry. Oh, that's all right.

Sorry. It's okay. Yeah, we're kind of grasping its straw, so I hope we didn't offend. No, no offense taken. I wish I could be more out. I'm sorry. Any other phrases?

Maybe like a yes and a no? And then we'll totally leave you to your work because I feel like I've totally interrupted like your flow and I'm so sorry. So it's okay. You're allowed to. You're the voice of the tempest. For goodness sake, I'm.

Doesn't excuse me from human decency. Fair enough. Yes, yes or an acknowledgement is more of a yai. Yai. Yai. Is that right? 91 where we forced Matt to make up an entire language on the spot. Yeah, thanks guys.

This is so wonderfully Dr. Doolittle. Nice. Nice. And then, Nern. Wait for it. Ermagird. Sure, that's it now, guys. No! Damn it, Liam it, Liam, Liam!

No, no, no, no, no, I'm right down. No, he's not. No, come on, come on, really? No, he is not. Ermagard. Oh my God. I hate you. That's canon.

This is fair. Irma Gert. What's that Mr. Disco? Who do you hate? Oh, God, you're so... Thanks a lot, Liam. You and she have the so-called Tempest.

You're welcome. You're not gonna ask her any questions, but she's a fucking felon on the run from the hell. She's gonna go away. She's not a felon on the run. I've known her since I was a child. We're not here, so don't worry. You're not having a conversation. You're not here.

It's fine. She was a peaceful fucking garter for the past 20 years. For the past 20 years. Speaking of which, do you know, what's the word for peace? Is there a word for peace? Do you know? Not that I know of. All right.

Hmm. This is not very truthful. Is there a word for thank you? Do they thank people there? Do they feel like? It's similar to goodbye. Is it more or less forceful? About the same.

It can mean both. Can't be both. Like an inflection thing? Well, it's more like, you know, Aloha could be, hello, goodbye. Right, right. I feel like we've hassled us. Yeah, you know, I feel bad.

Whitney. A bit of a complicated phrase for someone who barely must say hi and bye. Thank you so much for us interrupting your morning. Is there anything you would like for me in return? Just to leave me to my daughter. Leave me to my gardening if that's okay. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. We can get more people to bury. Great to see you. It's great.

See you again. You as well. Man, so good to be home. Okay, let's go. Backs? As you start walking away, that kind of awkward quiet here, say over your shoulder.

Good luck. Thanks. I don't look back out of embarrassment. Okay. But, um... Voice of the tempest, motherfuckers! Thric! First act of being king! Cuthrek!

Cuthrek! It's Cuthrec! Cuthrec! I just said tangerine and ermigurd. It's, yeah. Cuthuck, Cuthret. Yai and ermigurd. Irmigurd. Oh, hello.

Hello. What is it? Urn McGurr. Urmigurr. Urmigurr. Mordor. Yeah, it's a round. Round and roundy.

It's roundy. Mordo. Morda. Oh. Pshh. We've all suffered to those pronunciations. Inside baseball. Make it the last word and four sentence line.

Mordto. Anyway, sorry. Yeah, Runditphe. Voice acting lamenting. So. Metamusel. Open your portal. That's a sixth level spell.

So what do you guys want to do? Regularness. I think it's. Are we gonna just do this? How did it go? Did you learn everything? You know, it went about as well as one could expect. I expected it to go pretty fucking well. Did you learn all of the language?

Uh-huh, I totally learned all the language in one 15-minute setting of annoying, poor gardener. Well, tell us what you learned, so we can speak it to. Hello. Hello. Kuthak. Koo-thuck. Kuthak.

Kuthak. Kthak. emphasis on Thak. Got it. Uh-huh. Goodbye. It's QSack. Close. Close.

Close. Ku-threk. Kuthrek. That's what he said. M. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yai.

Yai. Yai. Yai. Yeah. It's like yay only like kind of weird. Yeah. Yai. Yai, y.

And then. So excited for this. I'm not. I hate you. No. is Armagard. Armagard. Armagard.

Armagard. Armagard. Armigur. It's impressive that no is the most complicated one. How do you say do you speak common? Oh my God. I think probably do you speak common? Oh well that's fair.

Yeah. Yeah. That's it, that's all you got. It's remarkable. She didn't remember a whole lot. She's been living amongst us for a lot. quite a while, in fact, she never lived in the Nine Hells, because apparently that was maybe vaguely offensive.

Well, man. She killed her night. She's, yes, I've, I've known her for a while. What's her mother's name? What's her mother's name? No, no, I'm calling that one. She's coming with us, that love. She's a part of the Ashahe, so.

Leave us alone. She wasn't very good on phrasing. That works. It was just words. Just words. Yes. I will say yes, no, please and thank you can get you through an enormous amount of transactions.

Well, we don't have please and thank you because apparently they're- The nine fucking hell, so yes and no, nobody says please and thank you. Yeah, they're not really polite. If a horrible devil is bearing down on you to kill you, you just say, ermigga-em-em-go-em-gum-good, I'm-good, I'm going to go.

It's like the equivalent of the shyly-lobuff. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Check, no, no, no. So excited. We are stalling. This is going great. I know, I know.

We should probably go. How do we feel about kidnapping the nine-year-old tea-flict? You hear the tearing of paper behind you is Terrian takes a sheet from Dori's book and it's not, Ur-im-a-good. Uh-huh. Er-h-h-h-oh-h-h-I'm good. I'm practicing. Get it out of your system now, because when we get over there, you should probably keep it.

You've got to be like so cool. Yeah. You've got to be the coolest. means not talking, that's what it's gotta be, all right? Terry, do you remember how dangerous the Cracken was? Yes, but we still prevailed. This is like, what's a big number? Seven.

This is like seven times more dangerous. Easily. Yeah, everybody's a Cracken there, more or less. City of Crackens. Well, do we all have to go? Only if you want to become, you know, a full-fledged permanent into the history's member of Voxmokino. Is that on the table?

Then I accept. It is now. A wise choice. It's only like part of it. This is assuming that we're going to survive, to be fair. I know. We could all die. There's a lot of assumption. Oh, any of us. Any.

What? Nothing is going to be great. Let's do this. Do you have a will made up? How do you even know that? No, never mind. Don't worry about it. We'll get to that later. The multiverse is large and wide.

All right, what's the plan? Time is a flat circle. We built this city on rock. I will shake both of your heads. Thank you. I'm behind this plan, it's a good plan. Not in character. That was a bad song.

All right, are we going? Oh shit. Are we going? I mean, I was kind of joking, but sure, let's go. All right, what is this? What is this creepy? Who this? We got to hold hands and then.

Are you above me or below me? I'm above you. All right, and then. Good job. BAMF, city of dust. As you all hold hands and you complete the ritual, the incantations leaving your lips, your vision suddenly grows dark.

as the magics of the spell pluck you from your home plane and thrust you into the space between. Before you, a glow begins as you rocket towards an unexpected and incredible sight. An endless, permeable tapestry, a tangled lattice of burning divine fire appears before you, writhing and growing as you shoot towards it with incredible speed.

You instinctively wince and curl the promise of impact, triggering your need to defend yourself, the dread as you, the air begins to heat around you. Then you impact and pass through harmlessly. The heat fading. The glance over your shoulder to see it gone. Just passed through the divine gate. You glance over your shoulder to see it vanish,

but then another flash of red, The electrical power consumes your vision as your feet suddenly find hard ground. As the rush of powerful energies subside, the swirl of color and sudden thrust of movement coming to an abrupt halt, you find yourself standing within an extremely dark alleyway of some kind, framed by the exterior of dark stone buildings, climbing up above you for many, many stories. The cracked, thick cobblestones that mark the floor are littered with filth, slithered with filth, slithered. of cracked skulls and bones, as well as discarded refuse of some indeterminate origin. The air here is extremely hot. The walls and floors themselves around you, seemingly this source. As you look, you glance out past both sides of this alley wave you've somehow arrived in,

and the air distorts with intense heat as you smoke rises from the streets themselves around you, the occasional ash or ember drifting through the air in front. Now, the dense city that surrounds you is incredibly massive. The walls of the structures that clutter the immense black metropolis around you glow at the edges like heated glass. As you kind of peek past and look further out, you can see the city is a broken maze of metal ramparts. Built into miles of steep hillsides and shadowed towers, framing an endless labyrinth and twisting alleyways. Within these streets, your eyes dart around to see dozens of molten, slithering mists. masses of flesh, just shifting past the mouth of the alleyway, roiling, stepping with sick,

slapping sound. Their faces twisted into a grotesque look of ever-wetching horror. This sound escaping like a... ...wins with this underlying screech and scream. You see behind them cracking lashes over these masses of flesh. Two large humanoid devils with spinal like protrusions that come jutting out of the sides of ash-white skin pulled tight against a massive skeletal form. The backs of their bodies forming these gargantuan scorpion-like

tails that dangle looming dangerously in front of them. As they step forward, two more lashes go. You see these fleshy masses begin to clutter up again and move further past the exit to the alley as these bone devil-like creatures. slowly crawl past. One of them kind of stops for a second. It continues walking as you all hold your breath. A sudden, horrid stench of decay fills the air as they pass. They hear them crackling in the distance as they shove along their tortured charges. As you can glance up past that, you see the sky now.

Dozens of winged shadows seemingly glide through the air, across a greenish, cloudy, barely lit sky that flashes with far distant cracks of lightning. Occasionally brightening darker shapes, larger looming in the distance. But one that draws your eye like a terrible dream, unable to look away upon noticing it, is an impossibly colossal tower of black iron and lead, seemingly stretching for hundreds of miles into the sky before vanishing. into the dark clouded expanse above you. Blink and turn around to look at the other side of the horizon.

But there stands the exact same tower. You shift around, and no matter your view of that horrid horizon, there stands the Iron Tower, the throne of the Archdevil Dispader, standing ever vigilant over his Iron City of Dis. And that's where we're gonna take a break. Could I have to peece so bad? Wait, I have a question. I have a question.

We did a hero's piece last night, right? Nope. Nope. We didn't. I thought we were gonna do it. You gotta say you're gonna do it. Nobody said it. Didn't we say we were gonna do it?

You might have said it last game. I don't remember it in this game. We didn't say it. I thought we said it in the last game. But you have to then follow through. Shitballs, mother bitch, fuck, fuck. We're gonna find it in.

So we're gonna take a break here, guys, little fast. For the chat room, we do have We're giving away this break this really awesome. Oh, those are some of my favorite wood right there. It is the black and white. Is that the zebra wood? Dice tray.

It's fantastic. The word to use in the Twitch chat, so if you're an alpha move over Twitch chat, to make sure that you put this in there to be part of this giveaway. But the word of the night is Doty, D-O-T-Y. It should be Irmigurd, but whatever. We've already established it.

Next episode. So, I'm back here in a few minutes, and we'll pick up where we left off. So you guys are all. Welcome back. So first, before it begins, our winner of the chat room is going to win the awesome dice box from Wormwood is Thighen. T-H-A-I-G-N. Thigh-G-N. So congratulations. Tygir.

We'll get your information and get that sent to you. Well done. Fight! The box is really sweet, we just saw it. Yeah, we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so as you guys have just taken in as much of the scenery as you can here, within the some point place in an alley in the center of the city of Dis, where no matter where you look,

the creepy distant tower of iron seems to follow your vision, no matter where on the horizon you glance, ever watching, ever present. That's weird. What do you want to do? Send up a flare. While we can do that. Let's put our hoods and cloaks on.

Won't you going to make yourself look like a tea fling? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can do it right now. Is anyone watching? Can I see if anybody's watching right now? There's an omnipresent iron tower that's watching. Is there an iron tower? I mean iron tower.

It's more the omnipresent part that was really the point of that, but yes. I thought you said an eye on a tower and I was like, that's a different tower. That's copyrighted, I'm well aware. Percy's got a good point. We might want to try and get out of the street, get indoors, yeah. Well, can I perceive a, like anywhere that looks like a, like somewhere where travelers would?

Would stay? Make a perception check. I will do the same. Tie. 30. No, better than me. 24. Okay.

As you kind of come up to the edge and leaning against the wall, kind of looking over to the side, first, a moment passes, and as your shoulder hits the wall, you smell something burning as you glance back. Suddenly your shoulder, you can see the heat of the actual wall with just a brief contact to your body has begun to burn. and singe the outside of your cloak. Oh, crap. Patch your hair, patch your hair.

Wait, from just peeking around the corner? From just leaning and barely touching the wall. It's too soon. Safety tip. Yeah, and you immediately kind of noticed that the floor, the bottom, like elements of your shoes are kind of melting a little bit on the bottom with your steps.

Good thing, rubber doesn't exist here. The city itself is just this emanating source of perpetual heat. You're already sweating in the presence here. And as you kind of glance around the corner and look, these buildings that rise up. You can see the architecture is hooked at the corners, the monolithic kind of deep reds and blacks and grays that everything's built from. Nothing belies an exterior that would seem to be welcoming to a traveling path of people, at least not from your current standpoint. And remind us that it's dim or it's not super bright here, is it?

No, it's not super dark either. It's, imagine a very, very, very, very cloudy day around sunset. Well. That's dimish. I don't know what to do other than the... Does it look like there's anybody around us that can see us? Anybody watching? Are you trying to be stealthy?

I mean, I'm glancing subtly, trying to look like a badass, but also stealthy. Make a self-check. 18. Okay. As you kind of glance out to the day, the side you watch as two look to be humanoid, normal-sized humans, but deep red skin, black hair, horns curled at the front of them, forehead, and these folded leathery wings at their sides begin stepping off from one of the nearby roads. It seems to go further into the city,

and they walk past, and one just kind of glances over and sees you, and they both just keep walking. seemingly not affected or alerted by your presence. Okay. Looking about kind of each side of the road as you go, there is a lot of movement through these streets. There are a lot of creatures, all sorts of weird shapes. You see a lot of that weird fleshy mass that you saw stepping forward. There's clusters of them all over.

Many of them seem to be herded or pushed. Some seem to be, all over. almost chained together in places and being dragged around. Is it like that thing that we ran into in, was it craghammer? Where were we where that thing was like a mash of bones and stuff? Oh, in the field of bones. Oh, right, right.

Is it like that? No. Imagine a very, very rotund person that is perpetually melting out of clay and Let me just show you a picture. Is it like a fondu pot of nine people and one? This is a single face. Okay.

It's like a fucking shit sack, yeah? Kind of. But. Pizza the hut. Yeah. That right there. Oh, it's like, ew, you can't see legs. It's just these like, like a liquefied person that is just a somewhat shifting, burbling forth,

fleshy sack that occasionally you can see like the mouth. and what looks almost like a face that is ever screaming and riding. That seems awful. It seems great. Wait, I'm going to put my glasses on so I can see it again. Oh, you already closed it. I can bring it back up again, feel like. Right next to that beautiful picture of a...

Oh yeah, well, you've already seen the other creatures before. Oh my gosh. But that's a fun one there. That is so creepy. Okay. I bet they're being hurted around. You see smaller creatures. You see imps which you've encountered before.

tiny winged, leathery humanoid creatures that kind of flutter around and seem to be more keeping a peripheral view, an overhead view of the goings-on, of each one of these clusters of entities being pulled through the city. You see a handful kind of attending each of these move along, these humanoid devils that have long pole arms and from their dark, almost like bluish purple skin, what looks to be almost like a series of jagged pointed tendrils that jut from the bottom of their chin and almost like writhe and curl as they push forward, kind of occasionally shoving their weapon into the side of these things and kind of just getting them back on track as they wander off.

Do I see anything that looks like normal Exandrians? People that are just like up. At the very, at this moment, no. And you get the sense that at least, at least They're not super common. Almost everyone that's currently walking through the street in this particular intersection seems to be of some sort of devilish heritage. I kind of go back to a group and say, well, I was spotted for sure.

Nobody seemed to pay me very much mind, but there's nobody here that looks like us. I don't know if we happen to pop into a particular area of the city that is inhabited mostly by devils, but that's where we are. Do we know what layer were in? What layer of a word? This would be third?

This is two. Second. Oh, we got to find the open market, right? The open market? Yes. The market. Yep. Oh, right.

What? If we find the market, we'll find an inn. Find an in. We'll find a place to drink and get a room. Please don't make me be the one that remembered all the shit about this. I mean, I am the grand poobard, the doyke of all dis and that, so. Oh, that's true. You would know.

You would know. Y'all motherfuckers just come with me. Oh, no. I can already see that going on. I feel like we should put a hoods up and just generally act like we belong here. Just walk with purpose. Do you think if I do an alter self here that people will move this? Can you do it quickly?

I mean. Yeah, I can do it. We're in an alleyway. All right, let's all. Make the changing circle. Yeah, just shield me like, change. Just stand like the beach. Changing at the beach.

In front of Peles. Look casual. Don't touch the wall, you'll burn. Which actually you do immediately take four points of fire damage as you do so. Oh, buddy. Put some mayonnaise on it, you'll feel better. Yeah, it's true.

Okay. So are you changing your appearance? Yeah, I'm gonna kind of, um. Can you imagine how sour Gragma spell all the time? He just has mayonnaise on him. Curdled dairy at all times. Or how much I love it. Sam said he can cast alter self on himself plus three others.

Yes, I'm working on that. Oh, he can do it on others? Yeah. But people who can actually cast the spell, they can cast on the people. But you as an obduritability, you can only do it on yourself. Ah, copy. Cool.

I'm going to look like a kind of a vague cross between Whitney In Zara. Okay. As you do that, I'm tearing to me and he goes, oh, great idea. And he turns himself into, you know, kind of pulls out a small object and clicks it for a second as it does, his form shifts into an almost identical looking

female. No, a male. T-Fling. And then goes, who else, who else? Who else would like my blessing? You know, hold off on that. I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but maybe we should workshop it.

I want to be one. I knew you would, and he comes forward and pulls another one out and as he kind of breaks the small capsule in your direction. This burst of archa energy hits you, and all of a sudden your form shifts into an almost identical looking teethling, same color. No, no, no, no, no, switch it up. Terry!

Okay! No, it's... How many more times? Tries to finagle with it for the last second as the spell just about takes hold your shade goes slightly more, and he goes like, ah, blue! And you're a little more blue. How many more times? How many more times?

Hang on, hang on. Mr. We don't want to be too. No, I'm talking it out. You can do that to how many more of us? Two more. Two more. Yeah. Kidding.

He knew. I'll take one. Why not? I mean. Yeah, Grog can look like Grog. I feel like a handful of T-Flings in Grog is better than us as we are. I would agree.

Okay. He goes ahead and takes more of one. But make him more red. Hang on, hang on. How long does Alter When it's just a spell, because if we were going to try and eat some food and take a break, then maybe we should do that first? Are we still doing that? Are we just going head on into this? I feel like our plans already just all day. We need to have, we need to eat.

Yeah, we're in a back alley. We've got to walk through this town. Hang on. I can find it too, Matt. I'm looking at it up. Hold on. Alter self lasts for one hour. Correct. Concentration though, right? Will that a concentration? Yeah. Yeah. And so.

If we go into fight, it doesn't matter. Right. I'll take gray. Well, by all means, and he hands you the small capsule, it's almost like you chance the coins. You're actually casting the spells on yourself. So you are concentrating on the spell. Oh.

Okay. So I guess we will get through the city and eat a hero's feast when we get to our destination? Yes. Yeah, and then we'll just hold itself again. So I can do this on my own then. Yeah, by all means. Fucking all white.

White? You become an albino teafling of your own. Yeah. Totally blend in. Very, very unique. Do you think everybody here dresses like the Raven Queen's butler? I mean. You haven't encountered an albino teething before.

We have. Have we? Yeah. Smarty pants. Lilith was an albana? Lilith. That's why she was so, like, pale. She was so cute.

You can say you're sorry. I'm not. You're not. You should be. I'm not. You're wrong though. Right, let's find ourselves and marketplace in an inn. And at Rakhasa.

Let's go. I am going to step out into the street. Act like you belong here. Act tough and cool. With pomp and circumstance and purpose. I join Percy. Please don't write things down while I do that. Oh, no.

It's not nice. Act like you belong. People will buy it. We just walk looking straight ahead. Don't look around too much. Yep, yep. All right. 10% what you say? 90% how you say. I act like me. I think I'm gonna be fine. I act like Percy.

He's also gonna be fine. Yes. All right, so as you guys step out into the main road, and you can see that the cracked stones that make up the walkway here, like even just walking through here, though you feel kind of feel confident in your placement, the presence here you're still getting used to, and there's something about the air, or you feel just a little dizzy as you're still adjusting to the heat, to the placement, to the strange, ever so faintly non-Euclidean structure to the landscape around you.

And it's forcing you to consciously write your posture and page more attention near surroundings than you normally would. There's just something about the presence here that's unwelcoming. As you look and you can see there are a number of other streets that head in any direction. It's hard to tell which way is further into the city and which one's further out. It's so vast. Even the city of brass or Enkarel in their size, none of them seem to really scrape the surface of the sheer immensity of the city of this by comparison. It would be easy. I wouldn't know from reading anything.

I wouldn't have a vague idea where to go. I have a theory at the moment, but it's pretty light. From what you read, it was mostly about the structure of the society. There was no well-written, you know, cartographers experience in the city. I say we head to the tower. The tower is in every direction. So whichever direction it is, that's the way we'll head.

Wow. That's true that way. And also that way. Some people go over this. I feel like if I was going to build a giant tower that couldn't be ignored, I would have that be the center of anything anyway. So it may not even matter.

Take a stroll and see what the later land is. All right, pet tool to try. As we start taking a stroll, can I do a nature check to see if I can spot any native beasts, insects, et cetera? Native animals, birds. Making a check. Critters. Yeah, the usual.

Sure. There's more perception, actually. It's being perception. This is trying to pick up the details in the scenery. Perception check. Nature to understand if you knew of what they were. That's a shithole roll. 14.

14. Total. Yeah, how much pre- You do occasionally catch what looks to be some element of small flying, buzzing pests, but they're different than what you're used to. The brief glances you get of one that comes nearby, it seems to have eight sets of wings and some hoard-looking pincers in the front. looking pincers in the front and looks just like a nasty denizen of the scenery.

And immediately you're like, do. I lean over the vex and I say, or in an effort to blend in, should we just like kill a random person? I feel like only if it's cold for, yeah. I just thought of it, so I figured does that mean it's like cold for? Would that what you do here?

No, I probably not just yet. I mean. I might really like it here. I know, they could, but they also thrive on order. And I feel like that's a little out of order. Right, and I'm glad I asked you. Yeah, me too. Keep doing that.

Asking you? Yeah. Why is our life so much like the vaudeville? You do like the theater. That's true. What's, do you think a pass without a trace spell official here? I think why,

but it's concentration? Why try to be comfortable? It's complicated. Let's just own this. Let's own it. And take a walk. First of all, No fear.

Strut. Maybe we can just kind of drop a little bit of dust of trace and it's behind us though, so we'd like, you know. No? No, let's not make a scene. I'm going to look for signs to see if there's, I'm going to try and see if I can,

I can look for signs of the sorts of people who are walking around if there seems to be a flow of traffic, if people seem to be going in a direction. coming from a direction. Okay. Getting a sense of the city. While heading towards the tower? While heading towards the tower to make sure that I am doing, I'm trying to get a lay of the land

so that maybe I can see if we should veer off in the direction. And also looking for humans, or someone who might speak common. And are the stores, other businesses, are these all nondescript buildings, and does it all just look like the same shit? Or is it looking like this? They're varying, but there's nothing here

that looks like a welcoming shopfront. Like you, the structures are varied, but, and you, any of the signs or any of the scrollings that you see chiseled into the stonework and metal. So it's like a hellish financial district. There's just nothing. loosely, yeah. It's, it looks like Detroit on Halloween. Oh, yeah, it's, it's... Purge!

Love you, Detroit. Yeah, it's... It's a while. Yeah, man. That was nice, great. Long hours. Hell. Hell.

So yeah, you follow in as Doty's kind of behind Terry and who's kind of staying as close to the middle of all of you guys and kind of shielding himself between your barrier's bodies. You continue to follow Percival as you step through, paying attention. Go ahead and make an investigation check. I'm going to keep an eye out for anybody that looks like

noticing us too much, anything. Yeah, same. Of course. Natural snitch. Yes, of course. Natural snitch. You are. I have a problem.

You are. I may have to, I may have to, like this, I'm aware that there's a lifespan on this guy. We are in hell. If it's going to come out anywhere. You're going to roll one natural 20 if it's going to dissolve into gold dust and float away. Hens.

It's okay, one of these days your contract will come to quickly. Oh, I'm well aware. If you lift up Taloson's Mohawk, you can the little tiny little points. Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is fine. Or the maze. Yeah.

Hidden first mark. All right, so. You walk for about the next 10 or so minutes, and two things you notice, kind of just keeping, looking for patterns and elements of the city around. There does seem to be a general direction of Not individuals as such, but a lot of these fleshy masses, these, which you've read about in the book,

they're referred to as lemurs. Yes. They are, they are fallen damned souls that have been tortured into the specific form. Oh, how fitting. And are like the most lowest base level of devil that exists here. Just a fleshy mass, Liam.

I'm gonna go to bed. Flessy mass. But they all seem to be, not all of them seem to be going in a certain direction. It's difficult to maintain focus on the direction of the tower if you have to avert your eyes. However, if you're looking in a particular direction, it doesn't like follow your vision when you move. It's whenever you look away and change your perspective on the horizon, that's where it appears elsewhere.

So you assert yourself in a direction. Yeah, and maintain that way. After about, kind of, after about 10 and 15 minutes. Shitty clipping. There is no discernible gaining of distance on the tower. In that case, I'm going to find a lemur and inquire sternly of directions. Okay. Sternly.

As you're walking, you see there are three of them currently that are kind of chained together with two of these, like weird black, jagged, spite collar and midsection. bands that are jammer on their sides, and they're all joined, and the hooks in the... 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

And it's 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, Cross the world. Fighting for every clue they can fight. It's one heck of a tale, which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives.

Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? All will be revealed in. Sonic the Hedgehog presents The Chaotic's Case Fires. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. The products are on the case. The chains are screwed into the side of this building. They do not appear to be currently attended at the moment.

And as you approach one, it's they're kind of like, Fuck. Marketplace. That is fucking disgusting. There is no language. There, it looks like it can't really communicate. Oh, God. Wow.

That's really sad. It kind of is. Well, that's depressing. All right. What building are they currently chained to? It looks to be, this looks to be, it's about a three-story tall, long tower. It's long on one side, and then kind of half this has the other, and it just kind of just kind of just like a monolith that comes in these two hooks at the top. There's no...

signs or particular language on its exterior, but there does appear to be a doorway, a big black metal iron doorway that is closed, maybe a foot to the left of them. Because it looked like people are coming in and out of that. Building it all, or is it? If you wait a moment, you can find out. Maybe we can post up and see, or just walk on in.

I wouldn't recommend walking off on in. But we're walking and nothing's changing. We want to stay put for a while and see what happens. Well, our surroundings are changing. At this point, the door shifts open with a slam. There is kind of a burst of phosphorus-type clouded fume that just drifts out from the interior as curling down, looming from the inside.

Another one of those large, lanky, skeletal-looking devils with the giant scorpion tail kind of lurches out and sees all of you clustered over and then kind of and then begins to rush up quickly and grabs the side of where the hook is jammed into the wall and just breaks it out with its bare strength and yanks the lemurs closer to it.

You see its jaw almost seems to disconnect and unhinged for a moment as it gets impossibly long. Its tongue kind of it. And begins to just walk away from you. you guys down the road dragging these lemurs behind it from the chains. As soon as he opened the door, I wanted to get a look inside of where he came out. Perception check. Do it.

Silent Hill shit going on. It was almost a 20. It was almost a 20. But it was a 25. 25? Yeah. You got a very brief glance from the inside. Very dark red light.

It seems to kind of slightly light the interior. It looks almost like a short. shelf of some kind. That's as much of you have you got. It's just like some sort of shelf, a bit of furniture on the side there. Fuck. Hodus, Hodus, Hodes, what the fuck? There's a fire place. Have a stupid face. If we can get to a safe place, I can do a locate creature spell and see if I can find him.

Yeah. You can also still scry on him, but I just, I need to. You need something. something not in this back alley of a street. Did that devil who just left leave the door wide open? Did it shut out? The door like slammed open and then as it walked and went towards you guys, it slammed it shut behind.

Which way did the creature go? Loosely the same direction as where you're walking for the tower. Keep walking that direction. Keep walking that direction. See if I can gently catch up just to the vague periphery just so that I can see if I can see them, the great and if not.

Are you following this group? Is that what's going? From a gentle long distance. And not with great intent. Yeah, was he talking to the lemurs or was he talking to us? He was talking to us. To back the fuck off. You were clustered around apparently.

His troopers. He was saying get away from my gimp. Back and fuck off for my people. You don't speak pissed off because I... That was a chain devil? This is my toy. No, this was a bone devil. That was a bone devil.

All right. That schooled us? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Picture pages. Although in my mind, it's pretty good. Picture pages. Because this means I could theoretically, like, you know, turn into them

now that I've met them, right? Oh, technically, yeah. He-he-he-he. That won't go poorly. Nope. Get the fuck. Yeah. That looks way back.

Just put us in our place. Crepe. Yeah. Oh my god. We're all gonna down. You know, I almost, I, oh, don't you know. Oh, don't you know. Oh, don't you know.

Oh, I got my polo. We're looking for it. We're going to furf. Oh, hello. Oh, hello. And we all fall out. And we all die. Okay.

Too much far go later. It's just recent. 90 episodes previous. As you, as you deal this from a distance, you go to make a stealth check, possible. Don't curse that. 15. Okay.

I'm not like, you know, keeping me just... He's D-rolling. Okay. He's D-Rollin. So, um... Do they see me? No. They see D-Role.

I love Laura bailing so fast. So. You go to roll. As you guys are kind of following Percival's lead along the roads here, the heat still just starting to really crawl under your armor. Those of you that are wearing it, you're fine, drug. You watch as the lemurs are dragged off into an alley to the right. If they go to an alley, then I'm not going to go down the alley. I'm going to walk by and maybe look down the alley from across the street, but I'm not, I'm trying to stay on main roads.

You can a large arc around and glance over, and you can see them being just pulled down the alleyway, and then to the left around the corner. No, I think, well, that feels like a trap to me. That feels like the sort of thing I would do if I wanted to shake someone in an alley. Yeah. That's a... I've done that actually. Yeah.

I knew you had. Do I see any kind of buildings that look like people are coming in and out of it rockously? Some sort of look. Not yet, not really not. Just walk for a while and look for that. Just keep walking. Just give it 10 minutes and then we'll figure it.

We'll take a left at the next main thoroughfare. Keep an eye out for anybody watching us. I'm gonna look for things like that. Okay. He's gonna keep an eye out for Anybody watching us? Perception check. While I'm looking for, you know, buildings.

27. Okay. You do hear the occasional screech in the air as you see these winged entities in the distance kind of, just kind of dive through and around the top of the city. What do we recognize what they are? Are they Wyverns? What are they?

No, they're, there are humanoid aspects of their bodies, but they're just beyond the kind of the general red glow of the city to make out a lot of their details. Can I, I'm going to try and start, Focusing on that for the next block, if one gets down close. I want to see if I can see what it is. Some of them look to be imps, armored imps. These tiny little things that kind of dive through.

Some appear to be larger. Some have long tails that draw behind them. They're giant leathery wings, and they just kind of glide through. You get a glance of one that seems to have a human torso and legs that are just kind of hanging at its sides as it kind of swoops through like a sentinel just watching over the city. And a lot of them seem to be doing arcs to and from the tower. I could fly up. I could fly up in the air and see if I can spot a mark it.

Yeah. Yeah, she could. She could. I mean, I could be shaped into something that's natural. That's better. Is it? Well, I mean, I don't like anybody going up. Ten more minutes of travel.

Persol, by the way. Still not anywhere near closer to the tower. Weird thought. What if we try to walk away from the tower? There's no walking away from the tower. This is stupid. What if I thought, what if I think about being in front of the tower? You just think about it? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. So you walk towards the tower but thinking about... Being there now. Being there. Okay. So you guys keep walking for a little bit. You get about two blocks before you see the next, a major road turns to the right. And there you can see this kind of kind of... kind of this road and this path you've been on, which seemed kind of sparse as far as the

denizens of the city of Diss. As soon as this big roadway opens to the right of you, the buildings seem to grow larger and taller and more, they seem to almost twist and collide the higher they get. There's almost a few of them almost seem to be, or they're all built and they're all constructed from metal and iron, but there's almost an organic natural curvature at times that seems warped, causing a few almost seem to collide and jut into each other at their peak. Many of them have these big black metal chains that dangle from the outside and giant, evil-looking hooks that are just mounted on the front of the building, some of which currently

hold lemurs that sit there and writhe on at some sort of punishment for something they did. In the roads themselves, a lot of them have just pikes jutting up, and it looks like sections of the road have cracked open, and there are natural rock spills. spikes and formations that have protruded out from the ancient construct of the city. But people just walk around them as they go. And you do see more people down this way. You see more of those devil-like creatures. You see a few teaflings in the distance. You see a few humans. You see a few fair-skinned folk wandering through. And you see, indeed, that same bone devil that earlier you saw emerged from the side alleyway about two blocks up.

still clutching those two other or the three other lemurs behind it by chain. It walks up to another bone double that seems to be almost sitting off to the side and is in the process of scratching the side of its horrible, bony chin and jaw. It kind of comes up to it and they both speak and snarl. You cannot read their lips because they don't really have lips and you don't know infernal. But they both kind of almost become a unit in walking side by side head further. down that path with the three chain leaers behind them. And glancing over, you do see, as you've been kind of focusing

on the ground and around, you look up, and the tower has shifted position now to the end of that roadway. You're thinking of it. Was that what did it? Hmm? No, I mean, it's still the same distance it ever has been. It's just in the process of, like, you're losing its sight from your peripheral due to other buildings, closing off your vision.

As soon as you lose sight, of it entirely and reassess where your vision is on the horizon, there the tower is once more. Does it always feel like it's dead ahead of us all the time? No, it's always up to the side, right? In the same place? It's always, as soon as you become aware of the horizon, or it's oriented wherever that awareness is. That's crazy. Can I keep an eye, how about I watch any of the people, the humanoids or anything like that, that are together?

Can I see them talking? Does it look like Any of them are speaking common if I'm trying to read their lips. There are quite a ways away from you. You're not able to make up a detail. You can begin to the direction. I'll walk in the direction and just kind of get in the area that they're in so I can try to read their lips. Once again, I'll want to just keep an eye out

because I had a shitty perception check for any birds, bats, beasts that I see flying. No birds, no bats, no beasts. There isn't a whole lot of indigenous wildlife within the hells it seems, or at least nothing that would considered a beast. Insects. Even the insect you saw earlier, or the insect like creature, it had kind of twisted fiendish qualities to it on a very micro scale. That was an ambassador. Yeah. It probably was. That's the thing. It probably was. I keep dropping my

pen out of nervousness. I'm going to trail my sister by like 10 feet. Okay. Watch it back. So you're moving closer to get a view of lip breeding. What's everyone else doing? is to ground as hot as the walls are. It is. And even as you're walking, you've grown somewhat accustomed to just the uncomfortable heat that your boots are currently mustering. Thankfully, you guys are wearing footwear that is designed to endure environmental hazards

or magical footwear for some of you. But you imagine if you were to stand still for too long in one place, it would probably end up damaging any sort of regular footwear worn. Jesus. It's like a parking lot in Texas. Venice in August. Beach, not.

Is there anything about the humans in particular? Are they wearing anything unusual? Do they have any company with them that might, you know, denote why they're allowed to just roam about? The two that you see ahead of you, it's a man and a woman, the man has stark white hair, hair that is almost wet and brushed or pushed very tight to the back of the skull, with a series of black and red markings or tattoos or some sort of scar that goes across one side

of his face, a very, very thick nose piercing that connects to a chain that links to the back of his ear, and is wearing layered black leather armor. The woman who's currently conversant on the other side, has long black hair with a shock of white that kind of curls through the front. She is, her skin is like a deep kind of reddish brown, tan color, and her armor is a dull gray, like a cloth, padded armor. But she seems to have her side a very, very wicked-looking scintar that is just kind of hanging at her belt, and she rests her arm on it casually. And you look just past them and you can see they have, it looks like, two sacks that are kind of resting on the ground as they're having this conversation. And a cage. Empty?

The cage is not empty. There's something inside, but you're not quite close enough to make out any details. You just see there's a cage and there's some shape inside. You make perception check. That's caught. 27. Seven. Okay. Trinket dice bag. Turn to seven.

Fourth. And I will say make a stealth check as well. This is to both get close enough to witness their conversation, but not be noticed as overtly trying to pay them. 17. Okay. That was bad. Okay. You kind of saddle up and instinctually go to lean on the wall.

They're like, ah, no. This is not conducive to your usual casual tactics. But you pay attention and you catch bits and pieces of the conversation. They're arguing about price. They're both talking about how much it's worth. Is it even worth bringing it here? We've come this far.

We already have the offer. Might as well go through with it. One of them talks about how they hate the fetters. The fetters? What were they called the fetters? And then when eventually says, well, let's get going. This place kind of makes me feel uncomfortable. I still can't see what they have in the cage?

You can glance just barely past and you see what looks to be a some sort of a humanoid. Naked, you can't make out much more detail. You can't tell it's male or female. appears to be medium to light skinned. You can't get much detail beyond that from this distance, unfortunately. How big is this cage? It's about maybe four foot by three foot.

A little tall in that actually, more like three foot by two foot, because it looks pretty cramped. I'm gonna walk up to them before they walk away. Okay, as they both start turning to walk and one of them. I'm gonna be casual as I do it. Just walk up. You can see there's actually,

there's a couple of chains affixed at the front of this cage, and there is a handle of some kind that the guy lifts, and there's small wheels. You can now see that are fixed out of the cage. It begins to kind of roll away with you, like, I don't even look at the cage at all, like I don't give a shit about it.

And I walk up and I say. The woman immediately turns and sees you, and her hand moves from resting on the palm of the blade, just like grasping the handle. Same. Oh, are you? Are you with me? I'm trying to be behind you.

I signaled at you to come over. All right. I don't want to look like I'm talking to the people yet. Okay. I'm just kind of walking in their direction and I lean over to my brother and I say, God, I hate this place, don't you? Uh-huh, yeah, pretty much. It's so hot.

I wish we were back home. The fucking looks the same. Right. I'm under script. I kind of make eye contact with the woman as I say it. Make a subtle deception check. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're intensely paranoid, it seems.

No, 20, 21. Okay. She stands there and just keeps watching you. The guy who was pulling the cage stops and turns around and looks. You can see his chain kind of swing and dangled for a second before coming to a stop. He just kind of glances back. his eye is iriseless, just dark pupils with white around them. And he just kind of, not a snarl,

but a very intense stare. He doesn't seem to be put at an ease, but he's definitely paying attention. Can I hope for? Can I help you? You too. I'm sorry what? You are staring at me, darling.

Unless I'm mistaken, approached our space. No, you had claimed it. Sorry, everything is claimed. She turns around and kind of gives him an expression of fucking shove off, and he just takes the chain and begins tugging it, and they both just walk away. He goes, when they're planned. I want to find a fucking Devon.

Do you just let them walk away? Yeah, but as they walk away, I want to look at the fucking cage and really get a good look at what they had. Okay. Glancing inside, it's, it's, you know, I'm not sure how old or how young, but there is a definitely beaten, wounded young man between the streaks of blood and visible gashes and lash marks. It appears that their skin seems pretty vibrant and clean.

This is not, this is a creature that was taken here. This person was taken here against their interest and his person was taken here against their interest and is being dragged in a direction. All right, before they walk off, I go, oi, you made a deal for that one yet? Turn back and look at you. Yeah? Where'd you go?

I have something I'd like to say as well. We don't share our clients. They're both to just keep walking back in the direction they were going. It's not working, I'm trying. No, it was such a good side. You're doing a great hard. Amazing.

Hey, man, what about an, uh, I want to get off the street. I'm tired of walking. We've been walking old. He's about 20 feet from you. We've been walking all day. He's not even turning around. They're just walking away.

Are you whispering? Yes, I am so much. Yeah. Find other people. I'm currently spitting on the ground and watching it evaporate. And it does. It's like, pz.

I mean, do I see a tavern around here? It seems like a busy, sorry street. You can keep walking, looking for some sort of a tabaract. Are there any other people around? I'm going to give a role. Sure. People, those are the only two humans that you had seen in the vicinity. You saw a

Teethlings? You saw a handful of teethlings a little even further down the road. And then there are a lot of, you see a few humanoid-like devils that are just covered in barbs and spines that kind of seem to walk in spurts, like the like steps, step, and then dash a few steps, and stop, and then glance around nervously, and then continue forward about roughly a little,

human size, maybe a little smaller. Is everyone here afraid that they're gonna be murdered at any corner? No, obviously not, just us. Let's try this proper. I'm just going to start walking and see if I can make eye contact with anything. You're gonna try and make eye contact with these people?

Are you guys following them, or are you staying back with your party? Well, I'm walking in their direction. Yeah, I thought we were like to them now, and Percival is apparently walking forward. Come on. Where are you going? Just trying to. Did you notice no one here makes eye contact with you?

It's really weird. Kind of follow in the general direction of those people that walked up. Yeah, I'm going to head towards the T-Flings, as one, which I think is the same direction anyway, so. Yeah, they tend to like, as you're following from a distance, these two humans. I'm not thinking about a pub.

The two teethlings that were conversing kind of split off, one walks across the way and vanishes into an alley. The other one kind of joins, not the humans, but it seems to be walking in the same direction if maybe about 20 or so feet ahead of them. As we walk a little bit, I just want to kind of covertly kind of heat at my hands, light them up a little bit,

and then touch the wall to see. If it burns me as well, a little bit. Just kind of grace my fingers along it. The flames that you create from your hand are magically produced and insulated from your body because you are the source of their magic for the blessing of the ember stone that you struck. It does not unfortunately protect you

from the searing heat of the building. As you reach out, immediately you take four points of fire damage. Even though my mantle of the tempest, I ignore extreme heat. Extreme heat. You do norm extreme heat from like a general air, like being on a desert. Okay, go to know.

It doesn't prevent you from touching a fire and burning your hands. That's what I was curious about. Fucking A. Stove, stove, stove, stove, stove. Oh, ah. Yeah. It's good, it's good, feels good.

Stove cat. Stove cat. Some of the rolling clouds, you hear a distant clap of thunder kind of roll through the vicinity the occasional flashes of blueish white light and the green ash clouds atop the view. Does humans are both gone outside?

No, they're still inside. You guys are slowly following them from a distance. And you said they split off? They split away from each other? Well, the humans kept going, but the teethlings that he was following. There was two of them that were kind of loosely stepping in, and they kind of split off one vanished in an alley

and the other, again walking in the same direction. Can't talk to this guy because I'm about to. We're fucking digging around here. I'm just going to ask somebody where to find a pub or an end. That's all. That's all. I'm not trying to be coy, not trying to be interesting. We can't pretend shit here. Come on. Let's just go talk to them. Wait, are we interesting?

Yes, we are interesting. Oh. You watch as three different flying in flight creatures suddenly just like dart off of nearby buildings and kind of dart past you. And you watch as the two humans kind of stop and drag themselves off to the side, the T-Fling that was kind of walking not far ahead of them, kind of taking takes a few steps back and waits patiently as you watch stepping through one of the adjacent

roadways, about three or four small devils that have these kind of barbed spines that kind of stick out of their body in all directions come walking through carrying these little spears. We step off to the side. I bring, I push everybody to the side and down. And kind of as a procession behind them, you see a familiar creature. You see a massive, rippling, red-muscled pit fiend. Come stepping through. Oh, no, oh no.

Not the one, not that one. Not the same one? I don't know. You said a familiar creature. I mean, the creature is familiar. You're not. That doesn't. Okay, okay.

The pit fiend. But you see it can just begin. lurching through the street, strolling like it's walking with purpose to whatever business destination it has, but it has an entourage around it of lesser demons that are all kind of clearing the street as it walks. You can see the respect that a creature of this strength has even within the center of this sphere of hell, and behind it you see a very, very large orb about 10 feet in diameter. It's like a glistening golden glass and on the inside it seems to have what looked to be

almost a hundred different screaming faces pressed against it from the inside that are just kind of merging and swirling and as it's being pulled by these lesser demons behind it the pit fiends walking like it's the middle of its workday crosses the path the demons and the cart continue past out of view and and eventually the various entities walking in the street before pick up their pace and continue on like nothing happened. I kind of like it here. I kind of subtly as he goes by studies and examines what he looks like, the pit-beam. Let's go have a check.

It's very similar in size and shape, design and musculature as the one that you battled in the city of brass. of brass. There are a couple of pretty quick to pick out marks and changes in like the bony crescent horns on its head and the coloration on its wings go to like a dark, deep purple as opposed to the bright vibrant red that the last one was, so it is a different entity than the one you battled. You continue walking and you're starting to notice as you followed these people forward, the further you walk in this path, and they're already the sides of the alleys in the street corners and such were pretty littered with broken refuse that were pushed into the corners, but the further you step into this, the more and more destitute and filthy the city

seems to become. You begin to see more and more lesser demons just kind of sitting off to the side, just lazily looking around for some sort of impulse to kick in and grab something that's dangling from the bottom of whatever food chain exists here. You see more lemurs that are in the process of being grabbed and fought over that have kind of just dwindled over time, like their fleshy, tortured soul mass has been just abused and slowly disintegrated and has been kind of left to be fought over by whatever exists in this area. The buildings themselves begin becoming less these large monolithic towers of black iron and more resembling sagging stone-like swamp structures that have like a blackish-purple moss

that seems to seep from the side. The air almost becomes more humid with the heat as you pass through. The streets are becoming far more dense. You are seeing more humanoids of different races. You're seeing more of the lesser devil's kind of coalescing in these center spaces. And you do see what appears to be some semblance of what you would call a devilish tavern. There is no music, there is no lively chatter, but you do see what looks to be chairs.

You look to see what seems to be a common area where some entities are sitting and partaking in food of some kind. As we move through the streets, I just kind of want to trail behind backs and take a look at if anyone's reacting to him unusually or taking notice of him. Okay. Make perception check. Don't fuck me, Jill. Okay, yeah, 24. Okay.

It's all right. It's all right. You, as you're kind of keeping an eye out, the gleaming bright albino teethling does seem to at least have caught the eye of a handful of humanoid. It looks like humans. You see they're trailing behind you by a good hundred or so feet. They are following us. But they appear to be following you. One appears to be a, it looks dwarish to how stout it is. but it's hard to tell at this distance. And the humanoid creature to the right of it is human size, but it is wrapped in a wreath of dark chains

that seem to cover most of the features of the face and the torso. You can see bits of skin and muscle peeking through, but it's just an entire robe of very tightly wound chains just amassed around its torso and legs and arms. This is like hell. Hell razor. Totally. Does he, be following slightly behind in step of the dwarvish, maybe creature?

They're kind of staying in step with each other, but you... Oh, it's a buddy movie. Yeah, buddy cop. But they're both very directly affixed and happened for a little while on the white tea fling that is just water. How far off is this tavern from us? When you notice it at this point is you're kind of walking naturally forward, it's about 30 feet off. I kind of come over the comms and I say, Hey, Vaxi Poo, I think we're being followed.

I kind of feel like they can smell you. Me specifically? Well, you are quite lovely, brother. Into the tavern? Into the tavern. Keep an eye out. It's like a kind of stout maybe dwarvish man and the humanoid creature covenant chains.

I glance back and see them. Thank you for the heads up. I'm gonna go in. Yeah. I stand outside the tavern with Grog and wait for everybody to get inside. I go, stepping inside the tavern. I slip inside as well.

Okay, as you guys and Tarian kind of follows suit. Yep. Doody, do whatever he does. Points to Grog. Doody, can I sit up next to you? What a setup. What a set up. Mm.

Inside, inside. As you guys enter, the low burning kind of orangish red glow of the interior shows you a slab slate floor across. You see tables that are carved from similar deep obsidian bedrock type material. material. The edges of them almost hook upward, and you can, within the inside, you can see a handful of these similar spine devils that you've seen as part of that procession earlier

with the Pitfiend are sitting and rabidously feasting on some nondescript purplish red meat. You can see the tables actually are almost like troughs, and the center of it seems to be almost a funnel of it where all the blood and gore that is sent out from the viscer that is, you know, slurps past their toothy maw. is gathered and then siphoned down below. Out of curiosity, these spined devils look like the thing we fought under Krieg's house. Was that Kriegshouse? Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just woke up, I'm just going to ask for rooms. I can show pictures of all these creatures. I'm going to stay downstairs to see if they try and come in. Is there a bar here? We're still out there. There is the There is the, I love a good spine.

They're feasting at the one table there. Oh my God. Is there the hellish equivalent of a bar hair? You glance, that's one table there. There's another table where you can see what looks to be a deep red-skinned, very handsome-looking man who has black hair that kind of fades to a very faint gray at the tips. It's long. It's past the shoulders. He has horns that protrude up the front.

at the front. The rest of his body is swathed in dark black and gray cloak, and you can see wings kind of folded against his back, and he just sits there clutching a goblet at the table, usually staring into it as he occasionally sits, just kind of lost in his own thought. Beyond that, in the corner, you do see sitting a rather rotund, he's a greasy, oeuvre, he's a greasy, beast-looking fella who's been, he has a big matted brown beard. His hair is this kind of curl, and he has a whole series of scratch marks across his face, that just long, deep-set scars that kind of just leave this very marred visage, and he grins, this toothy grin as you enter. He can see it. He's just his chest hair that exposed under his white tunic.

and his leather apron that he has over the front of that. It's just a very, very disturbing grin when he smiles, actually as you enter. And he sits up from his stool and walks over and puts his hands down. As it puts his hands down, you can see them begin to burn his skin, but you can now see his calloused fingers. You can see he's been here for quite some time

and has had his own way of adjusting to the atmosphere and just kind of leans in. Who is dark? Who fuck? Common. Qutah. Rooms. You are from Aronier. Certainly not.

Oh my god. Urmigurd? Urmigurd. As you say that, the devilish entity that was sitting at the table that was sitting at the table that slowly turns its head of the table here. And has now taken

an interest of this group that has entered, sipping his wine. I look back at him and I light up my fingers and I give him the flaming fingers and the points. Super douchey. He gives a nod. Over-exaggerated nod. He's literally eating raw meat and blood.

No more eye contact. No, that's right. No eye contact. He just has a goblet. You don't know what's in. Do you have rooms available? We're here on a few days of business, and we were hoping to find a friendly place

to rest our heads. On occasion, maybe taking a meal of something, not necessarily a, organ, core base. Too conscious. And he kind of leans in and goes, I can provide that.

Don't worry. How are you paying? Will coins suffice? Suppose. If we get anything more exciting, we'll be sure to let you know. We just got here. He puts a bit thick, meaty finger that you can see.

It's kind of, it's been broken in two places and knock your price. Oh, stop it, Matt. Awesome. Oh, special meal for the large. Wow, vacation destination right here. I'm totally okay with that. Yeah, it's airport prices.

Yeah, totally. You, sir. Let's be honest, it doesn't really matter what we think about that price. Is that $2.50 a $2.50 for, for the total. Total for our stay. It gives you all really dark look. We'll savor. a few days, you said, right.

For that, 350, I think, I feel, though I want you to know just how grateful that we are. I'll put the extra 100 out of my personal pen. You can see, like, he's looking at you as he's saying this, and he's like, he's contemplating. You can see there's that there's that urge to like, to jack it up. But he keeps, like, glancing past you occasionally and just nods and accepts it. Do I notice this? As he's talking, I turn around and lean against the table that he's talking over and see who he's looking at. Okay.

Does that burn you? You take five points of fire damage. Well, yeah, but I'm going to act like I'm, I'm going to act totally calm about it. Yeah, you're cool. You glance kind of watching his eye line and you can see that same dark red-skinned, devilish-looking man who was paying attention to you all, is currently meeting his gaze directly and gives him a nod. Oh, no, no, no. This ain't no hostile situation. Oh, hell no. I think he might be the owner. That makes sense. But still, still, no, we're not going to go in here to be sold in the middle of the night. We're good. We're good. Are we cool? I think we're cool. Can we insight check the guy we're talking to?

Sure, go for it. Okay. Sure, why not? There we go. Yeah, that's good. 17? I mean, he's hard to read, but he seems to be a pretty fucking creepy guy who's giving you rooms to stay in, and this seems to be making eye contact and his reactions based on some sort of unspoken conversation with this other entity in the room with you. But he reaches down without breaking eye contact with the rest of you as well and puts a set

the three keys, under the table. They're all these kind of ragged looking black iron constructs that all are identical in some ways, but they're handcrafted visual style shows that they have different slight changes to their designs. He kind of shoves them forward towards you. Every meal. He reaches down, and you hear the clanking

of some sort of glass-like instruments, and he pulls up these small, almost dull gray-looking sponge-like stones that are about that large and kind of puts one out in front of each of you Takes the coins and goes and walks back to his store He walks away how long have you owned this place? Oh, I don't know. I just work here Who runs it then? Are you asking so many questions? Little girl. I'm curious big man. That's all Make persuasion, Shade.

18. She said with confidence. Yeah. So I need to no basis, sweet. Enjoy a meal. Goes and like, sweatily waddles over to his chair in the corner and sits down.

Is this rock tartar? Oh my god, we used to serve this all the time in the Ereashari. It was a delicacy in the earthashari. As you lift it and bring it towards you, it seems to have this very, very faint energy around it. Oh, I don't know if this is rock up to the room. Let's get up to the rooms.

Yeah. I want Terry to identify it once we get up to the rooms. I kind of, I kind of do like a. Don't, dump to that. No, not yet, Kedath. Uh, heelith, as you tap it, and bring it towards your mouth, you guys watch as it kind of glows with a faint, pale, yellow, green,

color and Keelith, you hear this, this faint, soft, kind of wailing sound as this slight drift of soul energy drifts off of the stone and is inhaled by Keelith. Oh! Don't play with you, Keeleith. You feel a sudden rush. An unexpected rush of energy. Your vision clarifies. Give it to Keelth.

She'll try everything. You ate a soul. That had a name. That had a life, that had a mortgage. Oh my God. You made some bad decisions, and now you're eating it. I gotta hear it. My son of energy. You just started in Ruff of energy.

It's so keyleth, yeah. Oh shit. So proud of you. You feel very awake. Your senses clarify. And like a boundless search. a boundless surge of energy in your body, like you could do anything.

Do we, are we resting right now? Let's go right now. Let's go up to the room. You okay over there? This is like the best rock tartar I think I've ever experienced. Terry, by the Likos. Terry, by the way goes. No, no, Terry.

Oh, no. It's like sucking hard on the stone, the transition, and you can watch like the hairs in the back of his neck kind of stand. And he goes, good sir. How much are each of these? Yeah, yeah. I'm quietly thinking about Scanlon watching this happen.

The guy who says, four, goes, for you, 30 gold apiece. Terry. Terry goes, I'll take 20. By the lot, Terry. By the lot, good man, and I like, beast man. I'll, like, shake him. Yeah.

Are you okay? I'm great. I feel great. Let's go upstairs. Let's go up, Sam. We've got one left, yeah. Let's take it up to stand. We've got, no, we've got one for each of us.

You said three of them. Three rooms. So Sam, work on six hundred gold. And wherever you are, Sam, mark down, it's 20 soul stone slivers. Welcome to Hollywood. They're soul stone slivers? Yes.

That's what they're fucking call? That's a man, you need to put a disclaimer on those. Let's get to the rings. This is going to go away. This is everything I wanted. Yeah, let's go to the rooms. All right. You guys make your way up to the chambers.

And to your surprise, the interior of these rooms are fairly well furnished. While the entrance chamber was seemed to be pretty brutal, the chambers that you were given, there aren't next to each other. They're a little scattered as far as the rooms. And there's only maybe 10 or so rooms, the whole establishment.

But each room has a very well-craft bed. There appear to be some well-made chairs of a similar stone material down of the downstairs set up there, all having this weird jagged styling to their construct. The chamber is still hot as fuck and it is an uncomfortable interior, but the bed itself does not appear bursting into flames. The material here is seemingly resistant to the heat in which it's in the proximity. It's just a bed in I open up the bag of colding and just like put my face next to it. Don't fall in.

No, I just want to breathe in the cold. Opening up the freezer. Yeah. Don't lick it either. Terror. Should we, wait, should we all go to one room then? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to like look all around the room

and see if anybody's like watching, if there's any kind of like holes in the walls. Investigation check. Any kind of bugs or any, or bugs. Investigations check. Bugs or bugs. Bugs or bugs. Hits or bugs.

Hit it, I cast black light. Bugs and bugs and bugs and bugs. I cast black light. Oh. Oh, no. 13? I'm on 18. It's kind of like daylight.

So you guys take a good 10 minutes or so. As you're looking over the room, everyone's alter selves except for Keyleth's fate. Yeah, we were close there. We were very close. You guys were very close. But you glance around the room and it seems safe. You don't see any sort of signs of any spying.

Terry. You look like yourself again. Oh, I'm about to feel a lot more like myself here in a second, and he starts watching through the... No. Not yet. Just hold on one second. Maybe I cast identify on those just before you eat another one.

Oh, yeah. Terry. There are beds. And Keelick goes and jumps up on a bed and just starts kind of jumping on him a little. Kind of leans into you and goes like, is she hitting on me? As Keelich jumps in the bed in the background. It's hard to tell you.

sometimes, just go with it, don't make any sudden movements and let it get it out of the system. Right, right. Mattresses are springy here. What's the D&D equivalent of a glow stick? Uh, it'd be a sunrock. That's actually true. That is actually true. I'm going to gently hop her in the ankle to see if I can get her just fall into the bed and stop hopping. like, Pursi just knocks your one to your ass. Okay, keep it.

By the way, the kind of buzz, if you will, the rush slowly begins to fade over the next minute or so. Terry and finished his identification goes, huh, apparently these are receptacles to contain a fragment of refined soul. What? That's cool. Yeah, these were once living people.

I'm gonna be sick. I start giving keel-pice. You just ate a person. You just ate people. I know. I go with Terry and to puke. Oh, never mind. He's going to give her a scout massage.

So just the identifications will actually tell you the name of the person that you're concealing. Okay. I was just curious. I didn't. I'm sure they were a terrible person. If they're here, they're probably a terrible person. They're probably terrible people.

How many souls did you just buy? I don't know. Well, it was fragments. So maybe it's only like five souls completely. Maybe. No, the logistics. Like a whole family in. I mean, you were really up though when you were, you know,

full of the trade off. But like, does it heal you? What are the fragments, dude? I mean, do the soul fragments just like get you? Yeah, what happened? What happened when that happened? Do you just feel better? Are you healed or are you just like not hungry?

It's sustained. It's sustained. It is, I mean, as far as you understand, and then from what you were experienced there, you know, what sort of any sort of hunger pains that would have existed there seem to have been staved off. And there was a, it's literally silent.

That's really messed up because now I'm hungry. It's very hollow Sussons. I'm really hungry now. Well, we're about to have a hero's feast. So, oh boy. Back to the plan. Back to the plan. My throat's a little tight.

You're gonna be fine after you, scry. Okay, let's cry on her it is. And then the feast? I'm gonna give her a shot of something just to calm down. Yeah, can you give me like a minute? Don't give her a shot of something. Okay. What are we doing?

We go back, scrying of feasting. Let's scry first. Okay. And then feast. It's certainly spirits at the earth. It's the soul and spirits. I shouldn't be finding this as funny as I am. Oh, it's very in character.

Keelah paces back and forth for about five minutes, and then goes, okay, I'm good. Let's settle. I'm great. All right. Okay. Grog, do you want to keep leaning against the door, maybe? I'm just afraid.

I feel really uncomfortable here. Are there? windows in the room at all? Nope. Okay. Can I touch the door with my pointy finger real quick? Yes you do. Is it buddy? It is. Maybe Doty can lean against the door. Stand in front of the...

Which by the way, as Crog does that, Doty goes, How's he doing? Into the door and Terry's like, oh, Doty, you can stop doing that. But do lean against the door. Does he take fire damage? Doesn't appear to be affecting him. Okay, good.

So over the next minute or so, you see parts of the back of his armor begin to glow of dull red to kind of match the coloration of the edges of the buildings. Oh shit. That's kind of cool. Don't touch doty. Don't touch doty.

It's my favorite board game. Don't touch doty. Don't touch doty. Waiting for it. Seems like a Catholic school game. I know. All right, so what are you doing? Oh my God.

Oh no. We're gonna scry on HOTUS. We're gonna scry on HOTUS. I'm gonna scry using my fifth level spell, not the scrying I, because I want to use my spell ability, and it's gonna be awesome. And I'm not gonna be high from a soul that I accidentally consumed. Now you're gonna bottoming out. Okay, hold on a second.

Man, let's add to Keyless Guilt a little bit more. It's okay, it was already dead, Keyleth. Oh, maybe it was like, The soul gems. Yep, that thing was still alive. Don't, oh. Don't, don't help. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sure it was somebody who murdered children. Yeah, it was probably a really bad person. You know, not. And now they're inside of you. Right now. What level is the, what level spell is described? Fifth.

As soon as you cast the spell and center your vision on the idea of HOTIS, the spell immediately fizzles and dissipates. Son of a... Son of a... And you begin to remember through your research of the Rakhasa up to a certain level of spells, six level of spells they're immune to it. Oh, damn it.

The nine or second layer of hell. All right. So cast it at a high. I'm going to try again. I am going to, we're in for the night, yeah? I think that's the plan, that's the intention. We're going to eat a hero's taste. We're all topped off at the moment, so whatever you do, we'll make up.

Do we know if the nine hells have day and night the same way that... I'm not tapped off, I need four headpoints. I touch Groh's shoulder and I give him four headpoints. Just like that. Ticklish. Yeah, it's a little bit. Does this place have day and night the same way? Yeah, it's black feathers.

We'll be eating a hero's feet, correct? Yeah, but are we going to scry first? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to... I'm gonna do an eighth level scry. An eighth level scry. Shit.

Okay. Boom. Show me what you're got. Show me what you've got. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it.

Oh God he is. This time you grate your teeth. The space is already prepared for the first ritual you did. I give it like a good 10 minutes, let him kind of get distracted and forget that he maybe just got scryed on. Okay. Okay. You close your eyes.

close your eyes and this time remembering both the original conflicts with him in the quad roads. The battle, which you recall, was at the base of a statue of Dispader, the archdevil of this sphere of hell. Oh, fuck. Way back then. Oh, no. You remember him falling off the top of a balcony with Vax. And then being stabbed or something.

And using these memories, you focus on the essence of HOTUS. Your vision suddenly pulls out of the top of this chamber that you're in to a brief glance, just a flash over the horizon of the city. And there you see the ominous dark tower for but a moment. Then there's a flash as your vision is pulled further in to this, this, cityscape of darkened, withering alleys, and the whole atmosphere as the core of this space that you guys were heading towards seems to be disheveled, ruined destitute, and filthy. Your vision is dragged in that direction to ground level, then below, and is brought suddenly thrust into chambers, dark bars, iron doors. a prison, a prison beneath the streets of the city. There's another flash. You see devils, dozens of them, walking guards, some larger than others. You see a flash of large red leathery

wings. You see something horned and dark grinning beyond a metal door. And then beyond that door, there's another flash. And in the inside, you see tendrils of red flesh extending from the ceilings and the walls, all merging to a center small core. There you see this fleshy egg-like structure about this large that is suspended by these strands of mussely sinew. And there you see writhing and twisting within the membrane of this, a small misshapen humanoid cat-like creature that is currently writhing on the inside. You can hear the faint squealing and screaming in pain as Hote's not yet fully formed, slowly torturing its way back to its full physical form, is just screaming

with hatred, awaiting the moments of vengeance once the torturous pain that currently consumes its existence fades. Nickon once more plot its return to the prime material plane. But it was like in a prison underground under the tower. In a Faberjeet. We're underneath this portion of the city or Littleways in. Suspended by Octopi. The fuck. This is gonna go great.

Holy shit. Anything else? Anything else? That's all you see around it. You just saw flashes kind of leading into this. Like you have no idea exactly where it is. All you saw were flashes of a prison under the city and Hote is still kind of incubating in this chamber. Goal.

I gotta get arrested. Or. Or become police officers. Yeah. Police Academy. That's the next episode. We're a cute. We'll get arrested.

No problem. Yeah, that's true. Just tell me to go do something in public. That's all you need. All right, so I am remembering it seems like HOTUS might serve, you know, the devil of this realm, the leader, the president, as you have said a few times, Grog.

Dispader. Mm-hmm, despater. Seems like he serves him and is in a prison. You know, it's fun. I feel like a lot of the things we were looking for this whole time are just all underground. It's like an underground city. Man, this is terrifying.

What if that means it's just as hot underground? Well, the good news is, once we find HOTUS, it'll be super easy. The bad news is, finding HOTUS super hard. Gotta find out, I assume you filled us all in on what you saw. Yeah, I'm assuming I, I train. So all we have to do is teleport through that tree.

That's underground. We can send him a small bonsai tree. Oh, I like it. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as soon as he wakes up. We have to find the prison. We have to find the prison.

Find out what it is. Who runs it? And then get in, get arrested. Infiltrate, perhaps. Call of favor. I have a weird feeling that this prison is run by with this Lord, Dispader himself.

James Spader? James Spader. Well, you said it wasn't fully formed, right? It's still like in its go phase. It is. The only one, it feels like this is an awful lot of trouble for something that's not a problem yet. The trouble is once it becomes a problem,

it continues to be a problem until you cut it off at the root. He only stops when you can him down here. Right, Grog, it's two. There's two different sets of problems. Here, he's a wee bab in a chocolate egg, but getting to him is difficult. If we wait, then he gets the jump on us

when we're sleeping in our beds. Not in a chocolate egg. Not in a chocolate egg. Then he looks like a guy in like a mascot suit at like a winter's crabbed. Something cereal. Or like Gilmore. Or like Kielith.

Or like Pike. Oh. I can't even imagine Hote's Disguises Pike. I know. What a dick move that big? So it's now or later, it's just a different set of problems. And now we know what we're doing, at least. At least.

Okay. So? I'm tempted to head downstairs to have a drink and start scoping out and see who might know what's what about that prison. I mean, we know fucking nobody in this city. No. And they all look like garbage, so why don't we just start with the garbage done? Small question, we checked in as you checked in as teaflings. Yeah. Yes. We have to re-alter ourselves before we go downstairs.

For bursts of an hour each time. Or we could just not talk about it. And just be normal. Just see if anyone actually noticed it. Just see if anyone's going to be rude about it. There's only like a few rooms in this place, right? I have a feeling. They keep a fairly close eye on their patrons. Oh, broken sausage finger may be sharper than we think. than we think. Hmm.

Yeah. I have a feeling there were more eyes on us here than we even realize. Oh, sure. Hey, I'm really hungry. Can we have that fucking feast now? Yeah. Yeah. And I make a hero's feast.

All right. You guys go ahead and muster the heroes feast. I mark off a thousand gold. Extra hit point. It's no fear. Yep. Lusterous hair. Shiny fingernail, shiny fingernail.

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and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our true crime

rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast. I feel like you ate a soul. Does that mean all of our heel our points are healed or are we just...

Well, if you guys take a full rest, you will. Oh. And what's the other? Oh, that's the question I wanted to ask you. Did we know if here, night and day is the same? You don't know that. No, that wasn't in any of his books. Make an intelligence check, actually.

Well, that's 12. I really have no idea. I mean, you know, there are beds, there are places to stay, and the point you can tell, there is traffic from creatures that travel from different planes probably requires sleep. So whether or not there is a day-night cycle based on any sort of improbable sun, there probably are expected days, you know, sleep cycles for creatures that need to sleep. They pump oxygen in, you can stay up as well as you want. Yeah, it's fine. No windows.

Okay, let's roll 2D10. All right. I'm so excited. Come on now. Money noamys, that's an eight for one and the other, not as good. 10 total. I don't know why I would vaguely walk in a bonus of 10. That's an average.

10 total. So 10 maximum hip-point increase to everybody. The next 24 hours. I also, at the end of dinner, say I would like to raise a toast to Vox Machina for going and being together all the way to hell and back. Well. We're just going to get ahead of ourselves.

All the way to hell and. Here. To hell. To hell. Thanks to the wonderful guidance of the voice of the tempest. Okay. Kila Bera Shari. And the, keep parting this down. And the majesty of the heroic and adventurous drive.

Yes. Yeah. Of Terry and Darington. Of Terry, everybody to Terry and Darrington. To me. And to you, and to you. With that, I do inspiring leader. My newest feat, since I'm a leader.

What voice is this? Mine. That's your leader voice. I'm a voice actor. So you cheer and talk for about 10 minutes. Cheers to Terry and Darington and his glistening armor and his flowing locks of golden hair and his, and I continue for 10 minutes about Terry and Darrington

and his glistening boots of shining upkeep and his, I want to throw up. The whole time in Tony's, rain it all down and then I give temporary hit points equal to my level, which is 17, plus my charisma modifier, which is nothing, so you get an extra 17 on that 10. That's temporary though. Why are we inspired?

Temporary. By hearing you talk all that shit about Terry. Well, I don't feel inspired. Because I would hope that with my, you know, Terry's golden locks of flowing hair and with my very impressive cape that I got, you know, for touring the world. It's like a frequent fly-up card.

We'll save for the purposes of this. Terrian got 17 temporary hit points. What? Oh. You know what, Max, I'm still practicing. You know what? It's getting there. Maybe next time share the compliments.

Make all of us feel cool. All this while, Max has been staring at Terry and imagining him with exactly half a beard. While Terran loses you staring intently, and she's giving this inspiring speech about how amazing Terry looks over to you and goes... His belt that's bejewled. She is hitting on me. And his very bedazzled puldrons and his...

I'm so over this, puffs. Very manicured cuticles. And I don't know what else to say for 10 minutes about Terry. Are we staying in? On the bus side, we're all very tired now. Yeah. So I've been inspired to go to bed. Don't ask me.

Please don't ask me. What are you doing? Are you resting? Yeah, I don't know. Should we rest? I don't even know what time it is here. You don't? It could be like early morning and we could rest

and then wake up in the middle of the night. We've only been traveling for like a few hours, right? But it could be a completely different time here. Yeah, but it's more about your internal clock and whatever. Yeah. It took us quite a while to find this place. I've also expended my six, it took an hour to find it.

It took an hour, a little over an hour since your arrival, since you guys did your transformations. Yeah, we went to bed, we got up in, what's that? Oh, that was a burp. I forgot, we were filmed in. You've had to be three hours since waking up, four hours since waking up in the morning. It's like nude in our internal part, probably.

I feel like we should just fucking try to do something. Yeah, so if we gotta find our way to some sort of prison, Two options, get arrested, or ask people where people go who get arrested, which seems really fishy and stupid. It seemed like it was underground, almost spanning this entire city. I could possibly try and find a back entrance. We need to talk to somebody. We just need to talk to somebody. We could walk around for another two hours and wait until somebody gets the hebi-jeebies from us and fucks us up, or we can talk to somebody. I'm gonna talk to somebody. Well, there's the owner downstairs. I'm already left the room.

Oh, Jesus. I follow. I follow. Wait, we're not altered. No, you're not. No, he already went down. Backs, backs, backs, backs, backs, backs, backs, you're not altered, you're not altered.

Hey, hey, hey, hey. I do a quick U-turn. Okay. All right, we grab him, drag him back. Oh, God. Which, as you kind of, as Terry says, all, Doty, let him through as you leave, though he moves away from the door.

from the door and kind of lets you by, and as he bends forward with like the kind of the tot gesture of bowing as you pass by, you see his entire back is glowing, bright red. Terry, can he heat up to the point that it doesn't work anymore? I hope not. Probably not.

I'm gonna say not. Spit on that. You made him after all. You go. Fine. It's fine. He looks over to Percival. Right?

He's gonna be fine. Maybe flip sides. Just keep flicking the sides. Doty, chest against the wall. Doty just kind of pancakes against the door a second time. I wish I had some bacon right now. Terry, can you alter self again on us? Let's see, that's four.

I'm gonna check the character sheet that I got said. Oh God, you can do anything. We might be screwed, we might have to be as. You may have to. I will say... Well, you can cast alter self. We're taking that. I can technically do it one more time.

But you'll be out of other things you can do. I will be out of all my things of the big things. Man I still can. I mean you're gonna jostles this satchel he has in the side that you hear a bunch of glass and things clicking. He says, I still have my accoutrement. But as far as my devices, to help you guys out,

I'm kind of spent at that point. but I... You know, I still look the way I did when I checked in. You can let me go do all the recon. I can do ultra-self at will, I'm just not the best person to talk to people. Why don't we let the two of them go? Oh, gosh. Um, I'm gonna...

Are you, is that Grog and Keelis? Yes. Is that a grog and Keelis? Haven't done it for a while. Crog and Minxie. Are you and a tiger? Yeah, I'm not saying I'd be a tiger. I'm just talking to our old team up.

I mean, I haven't stepped in love in a while. It doesn't mean it's something that I should do right now. You know, it's what we call back. Don't worry about it. It's, you know, what's, no, I don't want to say what's the worst that can happen. What's the best that can happen? What's the best outcome here?

I feel like with Scanlan gone, Let's... Our best talker is this one. Yes. Probably the two of us, possibly. Where are you pointing over here? Yes. I can see. You know, what did you point? Grog and I can be very intimidating, right, Grog?

Yeah, but... Yeah, you know what? He might do great here. I haven't been doing so hard. I feel like in, you know, in so many situations, we just like, We say, what happens if we push this button? Let's just see what happens. Let's just send Grog down. But that's not what I'm saying.

I'm actually arguing the opposite of that. I'm saying for once, maybe, I mean, you're a very good talker. Why don't we send the person who's good at talking down instead of unalark in sending down the brute to talk? Yeah, but everything I've tried hasn't worked so far. Maybe they're immune to persuasion down here. Maybe all they need is a little bit. A little jostle. Maybe you haven't been lucky.

Maybe you need to give it another shot. I think your average is a little bit better than big man. You know, we could go back to old school days and I could always go Minksey. A little intimidation check. Let's not go Mimsy. We did not walk in all the time. Put you in a cave.

I'm perfectly content to just go down there. If anyone asks, we change it, something more comfortable. One of you two. Let's just fucking go. Let's go. Both of you and both, he can only do one person. Yeah. Are you going to change into something?

are you just gonna be totally oblivious that you're definitely not the people who walked in upstairs. I'm gonna be totally okay. He's got enough for everyone still. It's just, no, no. He can do it again to all of us. I can do it to one person.

One person. Oh. Yeah, and I go down as just back up. It's up to you. And I can do it at will. You go. I don't think I, do you think with the capsule or without I'm perfectly dependent on?

She, with. With. With. Someone pick who goes down and talks. I just did. I feel like Grog. Percival, you're going. It's hell, this is your game now.

With Grog. You're going with Grog. Sure, it's back up. Be my guess. Percy and Grog, go, go, go, go, go. As you take it and he should, you know, he takes the coin and you kind of focus on it, your form shifts back into the previous T-Fling appearance.

Come back, get it up. I suck it down. Have fun streaming the castle. Let's do this. He did a rail a soul, huh? Okay. Sweet. Shh.

We head down. Did he really? Did you have a song? He's so careful and it was like, Yeah. Let's do this. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

and as the rush hits you, you take a step and pause for a moment, because the rush is strong and familiar. It's similar to the sensation and the rush you had when you took a life with the pepper box, when Orthax was still holding sway. Oh no.

That same passage of some sort of a soul energy. And as the rush hits, that familiarity itches you on the inside, and you're a little cut off guard and made uncomfortable by it. Steady she goes, Percival. Mm. Too much? Too much.

Little much? Little much? Little much. Little overwhelming? Yes, a little bit. Okay. I'm going to be meditating upon that a little bit later. Let's head downstairs.

Come back, please. My hands on Grog's shoulder and Percival's shoulder and cast bless as they walk out the door. Okay. You guys head out into the hallway. I smack both their asses. You dive in front of me to do that? Yeah.

And Taryn goes, It's weirdly uncomfortable. All right, so you guys head back downstairs. The two devils that were there feasting earlier appear to have left, and the room is mostly quite empty now, except for the same rough-looking bartender in the corner, and there at the same table is the red-skinned, devilish, handsome gentleman. As you walk down, you see what appears to be a small, impish creature that's on his shoulder. He's currently conversing with it quietly.

And then as you guys will step down, he kind of, to it, and it flies up. and skitters off into the distance outside of the door. Turns to you and reaches over and takes a bottle off the table and fills the goblet. What comes out of the bottle? It appears to be some deep red liquid. Bluh. Marlow.

Oh. Yum. He's watching you, but he's not expecting any interface. I walk over. Could I possibly entertain you with some company? Would be a change of pace that is quite Welcome. Take a seat. Both of you. Okay.

The seats, as they're heavy and they're not quite as, you know, they're heated at the base. They're warm to the touch, but they're not burning you. You both can pull them up and they grind against the slate stone floor, the interior as you plop down and sit. Should I also fetch you a drink? That sounds lovely. What is actually there? available at this establishment. Available the establishment, not this kind of drink. My personal reserve that I can offer.

I would be curious, A, I would hate to be indebted to you at this point, but I would be very curious to try whatever it is that you consider to be your personal snatch. I would prefer you indebted to me. And you kind of lifts a finger and the gentleman at the far edge of the bar kind of stirs, sits up and kind of Chris Farley is his point of a big. Comes over with two similar goblets

and places him on the table and steps back to the corner. The gentleman takes the bottle and fills them, both kind of finishing off the last-bitty hat and grog's chalice and sets it to the side. What may I call you? They call me Yipkish. What may I call you? Ah.

Freddy will do for now. Freddy. Greg. Freddie and Greg. Freddie and Greg. Broke the DM. Ten points. Boom!

Boom! Fuck souls, that's a rush. Two points for Gryffindor. Oh, man. Buddy cop, go. So what? So what brings you to my fine establishment? What is the chalice smell like?

It smells like a strong, alcoholic wine of some kind. Take a big old sip. It's good. It's very good. You're not a big fan of wine generally, because you're more of a liquor and ale person, but as far as the wines you've had, it's pretty good. Your pancreas melts.

This, I'm sure you know, is really good. It better be. So, well... What is your business? Honestly, cards on the table. We're in town because a friend of ours got him badly with a rakshasa. This is not an unfamiliar tale.

We figured not. And we're definitely out of place, a bit out of sorts, and definitely out of our depths. But thank you for the rooms. I assume this is your establishment, is it? not? Ironiced at the, how do I say, a partnership with my betters. I think I understand. You know what a sip? Well, regardless of betters or otherwise, I'm grateful for the sanctuary. All of us are. So we, I assume, are not the first people you've met coming into town looking for a rock, Sharser.

I have not met them, but stories do swirl and find my years. It does all of us well here to know what's going on. Well, I will admit we have some questions. Well, perhaps I have some answers. We've heard of a, would you call it a prison, an underground series of cells beneath the tower, Beneath the tower. Beneath the city. That's where we think we might find our boy.

There is a prison here, yes. I know it well. You know it well, I would hope not from personal experience. No, no. It imprisons many things. It would be blunt with you as well. We live here under the interest of business, yes? I understand.

Information is a resource. Very, very great one. There is a prison underground. People go there. Perhaps this is an easy question to ask that will flow freely. What is this? Why do people get sent to that prison? What do you have to offer for my information?

What are you in the market for? I have dull things, but I get the distinct impression. impression you're not necessarily somebody who's going to be interested in coin. I prefer not to doll out small tidbits. I prefer to bundle in larger packages. I understand. How do I know that what you have to offer is worthwhile? I can... I have a proposal. Hmm. Temt me. Obviously we're interested in the prison. We're interested in somehow getting into the prison or possibly getting our problem out of the prison. I'm not saying that we're looking for some sort of grand mastermind or otherwise, but if you feel that you're the sort of person that would have enough information in this direction of how one might get access to the prison or otherwise and get out with their skin intact, at least most of it, or the sorts of people who would be interested in helping such an adventure go forward, that would be worth our while and interesting.

It brings up a hand and snaps his finger. As it does, the entire room around both of you goes dark. Ooh. Jet black. You still see the table before you, the drinks in your hand and the gentleman across the way, but everything else around you just goes, complete, lightless, umbra expanse.

I had too much of this one. I don't think I've had enough. If we're to speak freely, it's best that we speak in a place that is safe to speak. Thank you. Oh my god. He fucking teleported you guys away somewhere. My cost for my information is high,

but I can both give you what you seek and the means of achieving what you want, but I want to favor and trade. And I hope, if you're willing, that if we decline your offer, I hope you will take no offense. I will take no offense. But those that listen might. listen, might. That is fair. What I'm trying to say is it behooves you to make this

contract. So what you seek is the Mentiri. Mentiri is the prison beneath the city. I can tell you more. I can get you there. I could probably even find out who there knows or is involved with this Rakhasa. And this favor I ask, Be due to this path. He means four off taking a big sip of his wine, finishing the last of it and setting it aside with a heavy on the table. Utugash. One of the prominent owners and taskmasters involved in moving souls and soul goods throughout the city of dis... His lovenly. He is lazy. He is powerful. He needs to fall. Is he a pit feet? At one time maybe, this time his laziness has left him the useless sack of dinsh.

And I have bent under his fist and brow for far too long. I have friends now in other places. His business were to crumble. All he left behind could elevate me and my compatriots. Of course. Now I have friends in this prison. the offense of travelers tearing down someone of prominence and yourselves being still within your very mortal coils. Why, that's what this prison is designed for. For those that break

the laws of the land but haven't yet passed to be ripened until they do, once the corruption has set them for the rest of our factory. So you slay this crepe this crepe, you slay this I can see that you are safely arrested and placed with allies on the inside that can move you around. Very close to this ex-chaisee seek is my offer. It is a fair offer. I will quietly, without naming names, of any kind, confer with my compatriots. and we will give you a yes or no without naming names of any kind. Before we leave, just as a personal favor. I've been touched by a demon before, by a creature.

Does it show here? Can you see? He gives you a strong look. I'm just going to pull hex up on myself. Which point you see is expression change in any of your back, he goes, Hmm. It doesn't show, but the blood war leaves its scar on many who exist. here. Your essence is not of the abyssal. I would not worry, but do be careful in the flashing

such power. I'm thankful. My last question is this taskmaster of yours? The name you gave me is it his true name. True names. Now that is an expensive trade. One would hope it would have made our job much easier. And mine long ago. Fair. We will meditate upon it. I will say Beware the whispers. The golden arbut flyers, the watchers of the arch, devil himself. His paranoia seeks to know everything that goes on. And should such treasurer that we talk of be revealed, well that would be a very unfitting end to me, my compatriots, and every one of your friends. I will not speak your name in public. I will not speak your name in private, to be honest.

You will just be our friend downstairs for now. Avoid your whisper us. He snaps again, and the sphere of darkness fades, and you're back in the tavern, unmoved. You're looking at it strange? No, the one person in the room there, the rather bulky fell in the corner, just seems to be half asleep almost.

You finish our drinks? Keep an eye on the door, see if that strange dwarf-like creature shows up. Okay. You finish your drinks over the next couple minutes or so. It wasn't a heavy port. The Ipkesh just kind of intensely, the slight smile, just looks you both over as you all quietly assess your positions in the discussion. No sign of that individual you saw earlier.

Oh, made of my mind. Well, the rest have to do them. No, no, it's you and me down here. Now we're going up. If you want your glasses back, we decided here. That's fair. Let's head upstairs. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Nice. We head up. How'd it go? Well, a friend downstairs says, be careful about what you talk about out loud. It's pretty standard. Yeah. Apparently people are listening to everything,

like, to everything, maybe. Probably in here. Oh. So no names, no specifics. God, it's good to be so cool. Uh, well. It's pretty typical. Doty is running down and Demy goes,

don't, don't write that down. How many empty soulstones did she have while we were going? I had none. This place is just so hot. So we switched back to Little Elf Boy and Little Elf Girl, Antlers. Yeah. Greg. I definitely would recommend everybody not use their real names.

That's something I should have pointed out earlier. Nothing here is using its real name. Did you ask him if you don't look like a teetepening if people are going to notice? I didn't. Oh. But I asked them some other things. I don't think it matters, though. What did you find out?

Well, there is a prison underneath. underneath the city. Yes. Knew that. Our friend says that he could probably, very likely get us in there and get us close enough to deal with our problem. I believe him.

What's the catch? We've got to kill someone. It's the typical catch. We have to do him a favor. And then get arrested for it. Or he'll arrange for us to be arrested. I understood that we kill him, and then when we go to the prison, he knows people in the prison and will make sure we find our way to the right places. But that's the shitty part.

Who do we kill? The person who just spoke to. No. Someone else whose name I will not say out loud for now. Okay. But you know it? Yes. All right. All right. How would we do that? Well, how do we have to do anything? And why does he want there's certain someone killed? I'm sure it's a lot of politics. Sure. All right.

Business. It's just evil versus evil here. Yeah, it's really actually quite convenient that there's no such thing as the right thing to do. It's just sort of takes so many things off the table here. You're not going to throw a rock and an innocent person in this city. No, the rock is probably the most innocent person that you're going to throw. What if somebody threw a rock is at us? We're quite innocent.

Right. Right, right. It would be a contract. We would be. What Terry is? A contract. Everything here is a contract. But Terry is exclusive.

He can't sign any more contracts. That's true, you told me that. He would not be sign me the contract. Don't say his name. I mean, Barry, Barry is exclusive. Barry Barrington. Barry Barrington. I don't like this at all.

She not Barry. Barry Barrington. Yes. Better than... Don't write that either. Perry Paddington. Berenstim Bear. Barry Paddington has actually, it's got a nice room.

I forgot your code name. We call you... Freddy. I wouldn't know that. And Greg. Is that, I mean, it kind of is your name, is that all right? Not really, it's a bit of it. I still like D-Rol, but whatever.

B-roll's good. D-Role is fine. Just don't use any real first and last names. Nothing you would sign to a piece of parchment. Freddy, how do you feel about it? this plan? I feel good about it. I feel like it's a terrible idea. Right, but do you have any amendments to it? Would you change it somehow? I would just confirm with someone of reason that what's to do this and get arrested for it or what to do this and otherwise.

Oh my God, how wonderful would it be if Scanlan could just dimension door, oh I shouldn't have said his name. Could just dimension door down to that thing, to the room, and just slice up the little egg. He was to see where he's going. Bamp out. Mm-hmm. Oh, we can't, can we? Probably not.

Also, I'm not trying to prevent us from following this plan, but we were warned not to make any deals with any creature or be- We definitely made a deal between ourselves before we came down here. No contracts, no deals. So. I didn't agree for that. I didn't agree for that.

Make a contract. Well, look at where we are, to be fair. I sort of knew we would have to do. But do we need help getting arrested? I'm kind of with Grog. All I have to do is walk out into the square and open my mouth and then I'll get arrested. Yeah, but then you can be arrested.

Or do we want to actually end up where we need to be? So my thought, right, is it, I think we have to be arrested. Breaking into a prison seems real tough. At least with this guy's plan, if he's lying, the worst we get is just straight up arrested, which I would assume means all our toys get confiscated, right? Probably.

So not all of us go on the killing. So a couple of us go and get arrested. Yeah, and if he's a man of his word, then those people that are in get led along to this magic place where you can go smash chicken little. And the rest of us can follow. lie in piece of shit like I'm sure everyone else is. We're gonna need someone on the outside.

I get this distinct impression that most people here are painstakingly honest, which is kind of the horrifying thing about a place like this. I think that it's a lot of lying by omission. I have a thing. It might be helpful while we're here. Which is it? It's a little vial of oil.

The oil can cover someone my size, and maybe Scanlon's size. and it lets you, no. It's not here, so. You walk through the ethereal plane for an hour so you can sort of bypass where you are. A little bit. Like you walk through walls?

I mean you're walking on a whole parallel. The way it was explained to me from this piece of paper is that you are parallel to where you are. I will say having. Can't pick anything up, I don't think. Having true sight, if anything has true sight, like the arch devils, I'm pretty sure they can see into the ethereal plane with true sight.

But that's only the arch devils who might have it. But it is illusory magic, I'm pretty sure. What does it say on the item? Well, it's the effect of the etherealness spell for one hour. Oh, right. And so for that, give some specifics on that. It's trying to sprinkle fairy dust on it, but let's just go to the rules, shall we?

That's being it. It's like anything with truth I can see until the ethereal plane. A flank. A flank. Kind of loose. You remain in the border of the year off of the duration, until you use your action, dismiss the spell. During this time, you can move in any direction.

You can see in here, the plane you originated from. But everything there looks gray. So yeah, it's kind of like the one ring, but you can shift in any direction. Is it considered losery magic? It's a illusory magic. It's a trusory magic. It is transmutation. While on the entrial plane, you can only affect and be affected by other creatures in that plane,

creatures that aren't in the field that can't perceive you, can interact with you unless a special ability or magic is given the ability to do so. You ignore all objects and effects that aren't on the ethereal plane, allowing you to move through objects you perceive on the plane you originated from. God, I'm really wishing we have the stones with us now. Yeah. But this is a slow moving one-way ticket. Yes.

Yeah, but I mean, you could find your way down there. Right. Or if we get trapped, one of us could lather up and get out. I mean, I don't know what. We don't really know what we're dealing with yet, but it's just good to know that we have it in our back pocket. Well, I mean, with shape change, I can change down to one of these little weird eight-winged insects

we've seen flying around. And do what? Get in. Then change into something bigger. squish the egg. Yeah. I don't think they won't notice that you're an imp that doesn't belong to anybody. You're not an imp, it's an insect.

The little insects that have been seeing the fly around. That might be little tiny, very tiny, I don't know. I mean, it's not a bad idea. A lot of variables, but it is pretty good idea. Do you shape change? You maintain the hit points, whatever... Of what I ever I change into. So if I get down there and I get caught...

You'll banff into yourself. I'll banff into myself. So the way shape change change, change works is whatever I assume first. Let me clarify this later, not now, because it's like whatever you had before is what you have. So do you just have one HP the whole time based on whatever you changed into first?

Yes. So if you turn into like a dragon with 300 hit points, and that's great. The next thing you turn into cannot have more than 300 hit points. Right, but if it goes down. If it gets damaged down to like say 10 hit points, and then you turn into a different kind of dragon,

that dragon will still have 10 hit points. Sure. Or if you turn it into a fly that has one hit point max, and then back into a dragon, it'll be a dragon with one hit point. You cannot regain hit points by changing points. Oh, wow. Mm-hmm.

But it's whatever I had before. So I can't change into something awesome and change into something less awesome. And then back into something awesome. And still have those hit points. But whenever you like squeeze through to the tiny hit points, those carry over into the big hit point. So you're saying you don't bring your 300 dragon hit points down into the fly body.

Right. Unless it's the last resort or you have a way out. I think we go perform the hit and then we leave Terry, I mean Barry to get arrested. Oh boy. Right? Just, well no, we're gonna do that all of this, right? Super secret spot, now this is a very privileged role. Really?

Yep. Big time, macho man stuff. Are you gonna get me out of the prison? Yeah. Prison break style. I just don't think we should do that to bury. It's not gonna be one of us in the prison. He's ready for more responsibility, right? I really don't feel like he is.

No, Sherry can't handle that. I think she might be right in this instance, but if we're going together, then you guys stay around me. We're a team, right? That's what teams do. We do with things as a team. Fox-Mocking wall. Yeah, I mean... Say on me.

Don't whisper ever. Rock's docking, duh. Mm-hmm. Stop running it down, Tony. Box cocky enough. Really? So do we say yes to this? I'm...

Oh dear Lord. To doing the hit and then going to prison. Well, what else are we going to do? Right. No, I'm doing... I say yes. Yeah, me too. And also always...

All right, wait, what did we just agree to? To killing an archdevil. Devil. We're taking the squat, not an arch devil. Wait a second, wait a second. No. When you peaked at Haudits. A greater devil, there's a big devil is the pope.

Oh, a greater though. I'm asking Kieleth, but you might need to come in here with detail. When you peeked in at Hodes, what, like how much security was around him, what was around? Didn't really see. Didn't see. Just saw, like, flashes of interior and like, boom, and then all of a sudden. Definitely something big with big red flashing wings. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, might be arch double or no. Could be like a fit fiend or something. I mean, I'm kind of getting the idea that maybe HOTUS serves Dispator, dispater. Dispator, yeah, kind of think he serves him.

So we're kind of maybe going in to kill one of his little secret spies. I think it's kind of what's going on. Yep. Yeah, that's what we're doing. Yeah. So kill a thing, get arrested, possible bug keeler, possible ethereal keeler,

as ways to get in and out, possibly. I mean, it can always be shaped there and then have shape change later. You know, I can do the whole, be a flying squirrel in someone's pocket like we've done before type of thing. I mean, we're diving, once we kill this thing, which we will, we're diving in the unknown.

Do we all wanna kill the thing? Once we kill this thing, we plane ship out of here fast that you can say, oh, we're talking about, no, not HOTUS. The contract to get to Hodus. That will confirm with our friend. That will confirm with our person. And it seems like I don't want to use that term too loosely.

We'll see what would be most advantageous for getting what we want out of this situation. All right, so he gets what he wants, and then we see if we get what we want. How easy is it going to be to kill this? It won't be easy. Let's be honest. This is going to suck.

Yeah, I mean, we had a fucking nanny who used to tell us nightmare stories about this. It's way worse than she described it. Pit fiendish. So wait, wait, wait, wait. We're expecting two of you to kill something pit fiendish level and then the rest, and then, all of us.

All of us. What is happening? All of us. Yeah. We're going to kill this thing. So we all kill the thing, and then two of you get arrested, and then the rest of us follow you. All of us get arrested.

We're all getting arrested now. Yeah. What happened to like two of us get arrested? That's much better. That's much better. Explain to me about the contract. So like in the contract, if he doesn't hold up his into the bargain, like he explodes or something, right?

It's a magic contract. It will quite possibly be a magic contract. You're not going to have to sign anything. Because if we get arrested and they take all our goodies and we're in a cell, I'm going to kill all of you with my bare hands. We're going to ask him this downstairs. I just want to take it to you and see if everyone thinks that we're going this direction. We'll make the most comfortable.

deal we can, but honestly, I'm very curious if anybody has any better ideas. We've already gone to hell. Let's also go to prison. I could also, we could try and just straight up espionage, stealthist, prison assault, and I could do a low-k creature, and we could just figure out where HOTUS is and try and completely, yeah, prison break this. We do it. without signing any contracts. Full frontal assault on a demon prison

in the basement of? I'm not saying full frontal. I'm saying, walk us through it again. Walk me through it again. Well, look, we're stealthy motherfuckers, right? We don't know where the prison is. Some of us are. But I could.

Terry kind of raises his hand slowly and don't he put your hand up. These are the least stealthy people I think I've ever seen and we know Pike. I mean, no offense, big guy. But, uh, Yeah. What?

Nothing. He's quiet. He's really quiet. His boots are made of fur. I know, they're beautiful. Did you make this? They're very quiet. No.

But you two, Carrie, are very loud. White is what you're saying. Yeah. Carrie. I am. I get nervous. Barry, is there any way that you can like, uh, condense, dody, put them in your pot?

No. I mean, reality is two of us are stealthy. Everybody else is mediocre, always. I'm really good, okay? I'm really good. I know you're talking about you and your sister, but I'm really good too. Just want to point that out.

Fuck off, Percy. Fuck off. Wow. That had nothing to do with stealth, that had straight only to do with dexterity, which is not my strong suit. Hey, B, kiss, you just said his real name. Freddy.

So, hey, Freddy, look, how long do you? Do you think the guy downstairs will give us to decide? I figure, well, if we're going to do this, I think we should do it quickly. Oh my God. No, they're not. I'm getting- Not supposed to make any deals.

We could just try and do it on our own. The deal might put us in a position where we're totally fucked. It might. We don't even know where the prison is. What we could find out. You think. Can you cast locate creature right now? Yes, I can.

Just cast it. Let's see it. Let's do it. fucking cast Locke creature. Okay. You know, part of our problem is sometimes, sometimes, always we grab the first opportunity in front of our fucking faces. So let's explore this opportunity.

What level are you casting a look at Cruiser at? 27. Well, it's a level two, level four spell. We're gonna work on here? Can you? You cannot cast at a higher level. I can't cast at a higher level, but there's no effect. Okay.

I was curious if he has, he's blinded, He's a blinds costume. All right, so you take a moment, you finish casting a low-k creature, you concentrate once again on HOTUS, keeping a very clear image of what you saw in the Skry spell. As you complete the spell,

Otis. Nothing. What? Because it's level five and four. Well, it has to, the creature has to be within 1,000 feet. Oh. But it lasts for an hour. It's a concentration spell.

It is. Just take off running around the city, man. Boom, Marathon Woman. Go get it. I can fly. I can look and fly. Dieselmaniac, man, always down there. I can go right now and fly around while it last one hour.

Do I let do it a quick scow. How do you fly? With fucking B shape by being like a beastie. Can you do that and concentrate at the same time? Yeah, that's at will. Yeah, sure, I'll fly off by yourself. Nobody cares. I'll go with her.

How do you go? You're not in, you know, well, it doesn't rather. I'm not what? What am I not? A teetling anymore. Yeah. I know, but she's a big fucking bird. I mean...

I couldn't... I don't have to be a big fucking bird. I can be literally a tiny fucking bird or a succubus. If I am a succubus, though, burning my ninth level spell, and we're done for the night. You get captured, you're eating out there. We're done for the night anyway. That's fair. Hell is tearing this team apart.

What were the weird imp things that I saw flying around? Those are the golden armor things. The golden armor imps. There are impish creatures with the golden armor. that you saw to distance in the sky above. Was there anything else flying other than them? There were other creatures flying, but they were too far away to really make up many decent.

And some of them were just imps, just the tiny little devils that fly around, and there were some that seemed a little larger with humanoid bodies and giant leathery wings that were just coasting through. And you said this is like the biggest city we've ever seen. There are things that fly here. There are many things that fly.

The first thing you saw when you looked up in the sky was at least a dozen or so winged creatures all over in the clouds. I can go. Go into the window. There's no window. There's no window. There's no windows.

There's no windows. Anyone's stopping me as I old herself and- This is your game, go for it. Head towards the door? No. No. No? All right, I'm gonna go do a quick pass.

Be careful. Have that backup character ready. She becomes leader of the Ashari and dies. She gets the hell. Come on, go get it. Go get it. One day. Momentum.

All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. All right. I'm gonna shape change. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership. I'm Mick Hunt, your host, and I'm here to challenge your why and fuel your because. This is where leaders, entrepreneurs, and go-getters come to level up. Each week, I bring you unfiltered conversations, game-changing strategies, and the kind of motivation that transforms lives and legacies. I've learned from legends like Les Brown, Damon John, and Robert Irvine. And now,

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I'm Josh Harrowitzin. Yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly happy, say, confused is the place. for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. From Andrew Garfield and Scarlett Johansson to Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino. For over 10 years and over 700 episodes, Happy Say I Confused has broken movie and TV news every single week. That's because I ask all the questions I want to know, and more importantly, you want to know. Casting What Ifs, backstage stories, acting pet peeves, and much more. So whether you're into superheroes, prestige TV, or just the coolest actors and directors alive,

you're going to learn something in every episode. Listen to HappySank Infused on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're casting shape change. All right. All right. What are you turning into? Um, I'm going to do a succubus. I know.

I've got a good look at them. Wait, are succubes? Are succubes is devils down here, or are they demons? They're devils. Those are devils, and we sell on the other. They're feet. They're kind of rogue agents. They're fine.

They're winged. I'm hoping no one questions this. So you have succubis? Oh, shit. Okay. Just quick loop. Armagird. Yeah, Armagarde.

I just kind of, as the Tiefling, walk out of the tavern, just very intent on my direction. As I walk out of the building, I take a left, hang down an alleyway. wait for a check over my shoulder, make sure no one's watching, and then went to a succubis and take off. Can make a stealth check all fast. Oh God. Fucking hell is right.

Highway to the danger zone. Dengger zone. Just a straight, oh, that's good, that's good. 20 total. No, no, 21 total. Okay. I forgot my proficiency as well up. As you exit the building and turn right and head into the alleyway, being careful not to be seen

in your teafling form, begin to cast the spell as you see two shadows, step into the entranceway, the alleyway. Nope, I stop it. You stop it? Yep, and I just kind of keep walking. You just keep walking? Mm-hmm.

Okay, you just don't even look back? You just keep walking? Yeah. Okay. You keep walking, you're going to hear footsteps behind you. I start blocking around. Okay. As you go blocking around, the footsteps seem to be keeping pace with you. There's two sets of them.

Peek over my shoulder. Do I get a glimpse on who they are? You see what appears to be a squat, kind of tan-skinned dwarf-like. The dwarf again. The feature is, like you expect to see like a dwarf. It appears to be a female dwarf of some kind, but there's some sort of physical alterations taken place. They look like they've been either very injured and healed wrong or some sort of corruption has taken place. But it's kind of like walking forward with this kind of hobbling gate and to the left you see the other entity that is just wrapped in chains and they're about 30 feet behind you. There's you 30 feet behind you?

About 30 feet behind you yeah. Are we alone? It's just you and the two of them right now. You're in the small hallway away off in the building that's immediately adjacent to the structure where you're staying. I kind of, I'm still, I imagine within range of the tavern. Yeah. Just gonna say, I'm being followed, so be on alert, same dwarf and Cheney figure. Should we come out?

Need us out there? No, just wait a second, I'll say, Jingga if need be. Oh, right. Stretching. I stop about face and light up my hands and keep the hood up. And just say, I know,

Well, you're there. What do you want? And who are you? Keep the hood up and, yeah. Hands down? Yeah. The footsteps slow and they get about 20 feet from you. And they stop, you keep your head down. The dwarf figure kind of brings what's one kind of weird, swollen, twisted arm in front of and then the other kind of crosses it. The chain figure, you hear all the, they, you know, like jangling, shifting. And as you get a better glance over your shoulder towards it,

you can see the chains that dangle, don't just dangle. They're all kind of slowly shifting and spinning around it, like hundreds of small snakes that are just readjusting and moving across the body. You can see its eyes and part of its nose through as the chains kind of pull across and hide most of its features. The skin itself, like a deep, deep pinkish red, like a person, like a normal body that's been constricted so much that all the blood is rushed

to the surface. Off the cuff, do they seem familiar? Any idea on who they might be? Nope. But there is kind of a heavy breathing from the female dwarf figure that just kind of glanced at each other. And you want to tell me, you want to tell me who you are? Because I don't have a lot of time to deal with this. The one, the chain one says, Tim to walk with a white one. Who's asking? I am asking. I could be referred to many people, including myself.

So I am asking. Silence. You will bring us the white one, or you will be tribute yourself. What do you want with him? No response? I don't think you want me as tribute, so you'd best bet tell me.

what you want with him because maybe we could strike a deal. The white one caught the attention of a creature. I wish to see pleased. Well, is this creature willing to make a deal because the white one belongs to me? I've ownership of the white one. Of course. Make a deception check. Do it.

Do it. It's not really wrong. Is that really important? Not great. No. Six total. Oh. Wow.

It's not entirely wrong though. You have a chance kind of intensify with the rattling and clanking. Perhaps you should walk with us. Where are we going? To the one who wishes to now know of your ownership. And if I decline? I'll be able to stop us. I'm sorry.

I didn't catch your name. You do not need our name. And that's where we're gonna leave tonight. Oh, what? Yeah. I love hells, man. Hells are great. 11 a.m. or 11 p.m.

And that's a fun, fun place to pick up next week. Oh my gosh. Oh no. Well, that's okay. You're gonna be sold anyway. I could be many people. It could offer science. Oh.

Or that. I'm done. I'm done. I'm sorry. You know, like, what can I? Is this the royal eye? The royal we? It's change.

Oh my gosh. Now you forced me to bring even more minis to the team. Just in case. We can leave them. I'm doing that. I stopped it. I didn't burn the spell. I stopped it.

Right? Because I was like, cancel, cancel, cancel, cance, come out. My vibe is a spell. it didn't burn. I thought I didn't burn either. I will say, just for the sake of this, for the sake of, does this role determine this?

Roll, what's your passive perception actually? My passive perception? Pretty good. You gotta do something about that. This is becoming a problem. Shut up. It's like watching. Shut up.

21? I'll say you canceled, that you didn't manage to just catch the movement out of the corner of your eye just as you entered the alleyway. And just as you were about to begin spell you're up. Yay. That's the only because they can roll very high

stealth themselves. Well cool. Fucking hell. Fucking hell. Fucking hell. Literally. Fucking hells. Little.

Things aren't going very well here. I think they're going great. This is fun. We're not slaves yet. Hey, bonus. You guys just scrape the surface. All right, so we'll be back here next week on Thursday. We'll also be supposed to be here.

on Tuesday for Talks Machina at 7. We'll talk about this chaos. We'll be at WonderCon April 1st, 2 to 3 p.m. for our critical panel, please come and see us. Thank you again for PuzzleQuest for being our sponsor for now. We'll check out Marvel puzzle quest. And until next week, guys, is it Thursday.

Good night. We're all right.