Critical Role - C2E26 Found & Lost

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

The Mighty Nein wake up to missing members, meet a stranger who could possibly help them, and find that some plans... have a high cost (with guest Ashly Burch!).Watch Critical Role live Thursdays at 7pm PT on https://www.twitch.tv/criticalrole

Hello, spellcasters, sages, and spectators. I'm Ashley Johnson, and you're listening to the Critical Role Podcast Network. Tap into our magical narrative by watching Critical Role as it airs on Thursdays at 7 p.m. Pacific on twitch.tv slash criticalrole or youtube.com slash criticalrole. Twitch subscribers can watch the video on demand right away, or you can catch it the following Monday on YouTube. As always, Critical Role will be available right here in podcast form on Thursdays, a week after the initial broadcast. And now, let's scry into the story and see what mysteries it holds for us, shall we? Hello, everybody.

Welcome to tonight's episode of Critical Role, where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons. Now from our own studio. This is so weird. I know, a whole lot has changed at the moment. A few things, a few little bells and whistles here. But yeah, we're in our own place, which is crazy.

This is a crazy thing about us. I know. It's so cool. Look at it. Surrounded with people in white robes. Don't know why. You just keep saying Fidelio. Fidelio. Perfect.

So welcome, glad you guys can join us. I still love the clap thing too much. So, before we jump into tonight's game, let's go ahead and get to our announcements. First and foremost, our fantastic sponsor for this evening, and has been for quite some time, our friends at D&D Beyond. SAM and LAURA and SAMS, if you want to take that away. Yes. D&D Beyond wanted to announce that their 826LA donation campaign has officially come to an

end, and they've raised $11,400 for 826LA based on 114 natural ones rolled through the end of June. We are terrible, but our bad luck is the kids' good fortune. Fantastic. The main thing that people have been wondering and talking about on the Facebooks and stuff is the new baby. Travis and Laura aren't here, you guys might have noticed, and everyone's like, how was the birth? How did it all go down two Thursdays ago? I have taken a little license, but I have scripted a bit of a radio play that we're all going to participate in to show our viewers how it all went down two Thursdays ago and how the birth came to be.

Taliesin will be narrating, I will be playing the role of Travis, Marisha will be playing the role of Laura, Liam will be the doctor, and Matt will be a couple different roles, including Matt Mercer. We're just going to see what happens. This is a first performance of its kind. Take it away, Taliesin. Exactly two weeks ago, at the Willingham house. Babe, can you bring me some onion rings and Miller ice with lime?

The Cowboys game starts in like six weeks and I want to be ready! Darling, something magical is happening. Our boy, the magical light that will illuminate the universe, will join us soon. Huh, what, right now? But the cowboys! Travis, dear, your stallion is galloping to Earth.

Humanity must welcome him with loving arms. I'll get the stupid hospital bag. Later, in the hospital waiting room. Hey, Matt. Heads up, Laura's having that stupid baby. Oh, yeah, no problem. I'll just throw out the next three weeks of story I'd planned out and totally rework everything to accommodate this. I don't need to sleep ever. Cool, cool, bro. Hey, can you also tape the Dallas Cowboys game for me? Meanwhile, inside the delivery room.

Okay, Mrs. Willingham. It's Bailey. Oh, right. Sorry. Anyway, I have checked your charts and you should be in a lot of pain right now. I feel nothing but the sweet nectar of Mother Nature coursing through me. My love radiates like luminescent rainbows that will create a new life this day. Really? Well, you should get ready for a long labor. This one could take up to 36 hours. It is done. The mortal world has received its divine sheriff.

What? That's medically impossible. You didn't even push. Does one need push for the summer to shine down its radiance upon us? No, we merely bask in its glory. Lo, my baby is perfection. Yes, I am perfection. Mother, I bring news from the womb. The newly revamped digital character sheet

for D&D Beyond has released. What's been added? Improved desktop and tablet views. Better at-a-glance information. Additional ad-hoc customization, custom themes, shareable links, and an updated PDF export. To celebrate, D&D Beyond is giving away a complete legendary bundle to a random viewer. To enter to win, go to twitter.com slash D&D Beyond, N, not and, and ready to reply to the pinned tweet with a shareable link for one of your D&D Beyond characters. The giveaway ends this Sunday night at midnight PM. You are a miracle, baby. I love you. I love you, Mama Willingham. It's Bailey.

And scene. Thank you, guys, that was great. That was theater. That was strangely accurate. That was handed to us two minutes ago. You were fantastic as Laura Bailey. It was like Travis was here. Yeah.

My Travis is pretty good. Also, from D&D Beyond, next Wednesday, July 18th at 1 p.m. Pacific and beyond, a new weekly stream hosted by Adam Bradford and Todd Kenreck kicks off with super special guest Matthew Mercer! Did you know that? I did know that. Okay, cool. Each week, the show will cover not only D&D, but also the guests' other passions outside of D&D, like D&D.

Shenanigans will ensue. Maybe you shouldn't have started with me. Shenanigans will ensue, so don't miss it. Be sure to check it out at twitch.tv slash dndbeyond to watch. That's our sponsor shoutout. Boom! Well done, Sam. Laura and Travis, direct all that fury at Sam, please. Send your emails. All right, so thank you, Sam. A couple of the quick notes here. We are headed to San Diego Comic-Con next week for our Critical Role panel, and as we announced today, we're also going to

New York Comic-Con later this year. For details on either of those events, go to critrole.com for all the information. It's there for you. The Not the Best Detective Agency shirt is up in the store right now. Once again, head to shop.criticalrole.com to check it out. They're fantastic, terrible detectives. We'll see. Tonight. Yeah. Starting this week, the Wyrmwood giveaways are back for Critical Role Intermission. The giveaways will be hosted on the Critical Role Twitch channel, however, and moving forward. So when we come to the break, if you want to

jump over to the Critical Role, twitch.tv slash criticalrole, there you can enter the Wyrmwood giveaways. So keep an eye out for that, and we'll remind you before we jump to the break as well. You can watch our hosted stream and our Swift State Weave Sinks there at that location. And as a reminder, Talks Machina, our after discussion show about whatever transpires here at this table, is every Tuesday evening. The next episode will be next Tuesday at 7 p.m. Pacific time, hosted by our fantastic Brian W. Foster, if he can get away from Lancaster long enough. He'll be giving out prizes for Gift of the Week,, Fan Art of the Week, and all that kind of fun stuff, so check it out on Tuesday. Other than that,

let's go ahead and jump into tonight's episode of Critical Role. Win, win, win! Thank you. And welcome back. Come in, Harry. Oh no! And welcome back. Come in, Harry, come in. Oh. Oh no. Take off your robe. So. I'll be back.

So, welcome back. Oh shit. Last we left off, the Mighty Nein have been making their way north after making a deal with the gentleman in Zadash. They completed the first of two tasks for him, the second one requiring the 99 to make their way to the northern city of Shadycreek Run, outside of the Empire, to meet with a business

operative of his who had been busy with some other elements and needed some help to reconnect about what their business together was. Along this journey, you had made a stop in the gnomish city of Hubberdook, where you discovered the work hard, play hard gnomish society. Got all your money taken from you, got it returned to you as you found out the thieves were young children of a family, the parents of which have been arrested and have been in prison for a while.

You went to the prison, helped destroy one of their long haywire guardians, and paid off the rest of the fine for those parents to set them free, returning them to their children, and decided to leave your temporary companion for a while, Ciri, with them as a safer means of continuing her journey now with her new family. With that, you gather your things, find yourself a better crossbow, and begin heading back on the trail along the Crissvale Road and making your way northward.

There you would set up camp for the evening, about a day's travel outside of Hupperdook. During the night, while Yasha and Fjord were taking their watch, awakening Jester with their conversation, and the three of them deciding to step away from the camp as soon as they wake the rest of you, they were...

Well, they went missing. We don't know. And we begin today's story as morning slowly creeps over the distant mountains. The cold frosted dew on the tops of the nearby grasses glistening like tiny crystals as the bits of sunlight begin to just break past the ridge. The sky, previously clearer than before, showing the stars above, now is matted with cloud cover and small breaks that show the blue sky above, but the cold weather is definitely shaking you awake

as you all begin to come to, rubbing your eyes. Glancing about the cold atmosphere, you look under the hard dirt ground, a patch that you had cleared out for your evening's rest, your packs and tents ready to be reassembled, but it's just the four of you. There are packs and tents ready to be reassembled, but it's just the four of you. Jester, I need some pocket bacon for breakfast.

Jester? Jester, oh, she's probably taking a dump in the woods. I think I have some pocket bacon still. Oh, do I have some? Yeah. It's a little moldy. Oh, that's even better. Oh no. Fjord never came back after a wash last night. Stand up and scan the area.

Make perception check. What was that? That's a six plus something. Nine. Looking about, there is a faint mist that is still burning off that clouds your vision far enough to the point where you can't quite see some elements of the mountain range you had just come from,

but glancing about around you, there's no sign of your three companions. There's no visuals that guide you where they might be. Where's Yasha? She's gone, too. She does that sometimes. I'm sure it's nothing. Yeah, but. Fjord?

Jester? Jester! The Traveler's bullshit! He's playing with fire. I really would have fire. He's playing with fire right now. I'm going to check the tents. I want to check the tents to see if their stuff is still there. Okay. All right, so as you go about to their sleeping arrangement. Space is there. Everything except for whatever they had on them as they took their watch, still there. The haversack is left behind. Cool.

The rest of their goods lying on the ground where they were left. Personal belongings and stuff? Yep. Falchion, or his? The falchion's always with him. But his holster thingy. Right, any of his holster thingy. Right? Does he have a holster thing, or do I just imagine that because he's text-blade? He would have a belt with pouches and such, but no, that was on him at the time.

His spats and spurs? Those are not there, unfortunately. Oh, wow. But essentially, everything but the equipment they had on them. In fact, if you look, you can see Jester's shield is there currently. It's not, right? Yasha's stuff is still here?

Yasha doesn't have much on her. Whatever she does have, she generally keeps on her, so she hasn't left anything behind. There's nothing behind. Are there weapons here? You don't see any weapons. Yasha keeps her weapon on her at so she hasn't left anything behind. There's nothing behind. Are there weapons here? You don't see any weapons. Yasha keeps her weapon on her at all times. Fjord, from what you understand, weirdly,

never seems to have need. But Jester's weapon is left next to the shield as well, as you begin to rummage through. I'll take a swig to calm my morning nerves and start just searching around to see if there's any notes or any signs of anything. Make an investigation check. Okay. That's terrible.

That's unbelievable. That's an eight. All right then, as you begin to rummage around on the nearby grasses, tossing over the remains of their left behindbehind materials, even pushing through the fire just in case some of them may have fallen in. No sign.

I'm going to check the road for fresh tracks, see if anything looks like it was disturbed. Make an investigation check. Are there trees nearby? Not within the next mile or so. For fuck's sake. Same roll, two. Okay.

I am going to sit down and bring Frumpkin out and pull out my book and begin to do what's needed to turn, to cast it again, find familiar, but I'm going to turn Frumpkin into Peregrine Falcon. Okay. Okay. Whoa. Whoa. That was very specific for an uh to come before it.

Yeah. So as you are both losing yourselves amongst the nearby grasses and trying to look for any sign where they may have been, you are focusing on your spell. What are you doing, Beauregard? Can I see if I see any grass that's been laid down, like a direction that there might be people who have walked through.

Go ahead and make an investigation check. That's a natural one. Oh my god, we're not even going to know they're gone. What are we scared of? They're probably skinny dipping somewhere! They went for donuts. This is amazing. We got a two, a two, a one. What was your first roll?

I rolled a six, which turned into a nine. Six is our top roll. Knocking it out of the park, y'all. We are children lost in a Ross Dress for Less. We're never going to see our parents again. It's all over. I just rolled on the new studio. I know, it's really. Well, get them out now. In the time that you guys have begun to shout,

you're continuing to shout their names out and forge through the nearby grasses. Caleb, you complete your spell and Frumpkin's form suddenly slowly shifts and then with a puff of steam and smoke turns into the falcon. Lands on your shoulder. Yeah, I know I'm sorry. I will change you back as fast as I can.

I need you to look for the three that you do not see here. The green one, the blue one, and the goth one. Go. You watch as Frumpkin takes off into the sky and does a few loops. Go make a perception check from a bird's eye view, which makes it a little easier. Let's do it again.

Natural 20. Oh! Oh, we have animals. There you go. When humanity fails, bring in the Hawks. We know future's better and everything. With a quick singular pass overhead, you watch as Frumpkin sends you

an immediate bit of information. You focus through the eyes, and glancing down, you see what looks to be a clearing where a large portion of grass, maybe about 60 or so feet from where you guys are, has been pushed down and you see tracks and drag marks and grooves in the dirt. Oh.

Oh shit. There was a, this way. I come out of it so I don't trip on rocks. There's a struggle this way. I lead the group there. All right, you guys rush over and there you can see on the ground this patch of disturbed grass that has been pushed down,

along with the dirt that has been jammed and shoved up into small side piles and trenches that were dug in. There's definitely signs of a struggle here. At a quick glance, looking around, footprints and signs, it looks to be maybe somewhere between five to eight sets of footprints you can see from all different angles.

And you can see what looks to be three grooves being dragged through the dirt and to the grass towards the road a little bit northward. Can we follow those grooves? Yeah, you guys go ahead and follow these as best you can, eventually making your way to the outer side of the Crisp Ale Road, the path that you were on already, but a little ways north of where you were.

There you can see the grooves end, and a number of sets of heavy wagon wheels begin, or at least have previously pulled off the trail and then pushed themselves back onto the road. So it's impossible to tell if it's the same one. Can we see which direction those tracks, the wagon tracks went in? It's hard to tell which direction

wagon tracks go in, necessarily. Make a survival check. Survival. Oh no. Nine. Could be going north, could be going south. You're not entirely sure. That narrows it down, it's not east or west, guys.

Northeast or southwest. Goddamn it. That's still, you know, seeming more narrow. When it was going on the road, was it going towards It's still, you know, seeming more narrow. Did it, when it was going on the road, was it going towards the direction we were going, or? You're not entirely certain. It's just, okay. You just watched the tracks seem to have been traveling

either in the northeast direction that the road goes that you were traveling, or heading back towards Hupperdook. What you do notice, though, is that, and what kind of keys you into this this has something to do with this, is the tracks grind off the road by about five or ten feet, and that's where the grooves of these dragged, what you assume to be individuals or sacks, stop,

and then it pushes back onto the road. Here's what I'm wondering. Why we are still here. Yasha and Jester and Fjord, they didn't know each other before a month ago. Well, who was on watch? It was Fjord and Yasha, right? Yeah.

So they would have been awake, but what about Jester? She was asleep, right? She also has a big old crushy on Fjord. If they were taken, that means they came to our camp and took her. Possibly. And even if they did not, it's not like we were hiding. Why couldn't we hear anything? But maybe they weren't targeting anyone specific, just coming to grab folks, and those were the ones that were awake or closest to the road?

You take the three beefiest of a group of strangers? Well, they took the three ugliest ones. I mean, they left us. First, thank you. Second, they may have just taken the ones that were furthest away from the light. They just picked them off, maybe? You walk away from camp, that's what happens.

I mean, it's not the biggest or strongest, it's the... Wait. I'm going to examine the tracks for blood. Make another investigation check. Mm, it's an 11. It's better. In looking through near where these cart tracks begin, there's no signs of blood.

Going back and following the grooves through the dirt, you find a few small traces. Anything weird about the blood? Is it green blood, purple blood, blue blood? No, just standard, dark, dusted over blood at this point. Excessory video game blood. But that means that they weren't bleeding when they were dragged, which means that either

they were killed by vampires and all their blood was sucked out of them first, or they were still alive. And that blood was far away from our camp. Maybe they were just triggered by a sound that they heard and they went to go investigate it. I'm going to freak out. Is there any trash or anything on the road?

I'm just going to look for any. Make perception check. For a secret sign. That's better. 14. 14. As you look off and looking for any sign of change, there's the fog at the far peripheral of where you're watching. Nothing on the road except for a couple of tufts

of scrub brush catch your eyes until you see what looks to be a dark shape on the road to the south. Moving? Moving. Huh. Looks to be a shadowed outline of a person. I'm going to draw both swords and head towards it.

Seeing that, I will draw my new crossbow, turn it on, I imagine it's battery-powered. 4D batteries. Yeah. It's very obnoxious. They run out in half an hour. It's like a Game Gear. Do you want my nutcat to go look first?

I may already be moving that. I think Molly's already off. I'm moving in that direction. I'm following Molly. That would have been a great idea. As I follow Molly, I turn to Nott and Caleb, and I say, just stay back for a second. Back us up if we need it.

Sure. All right, so you've knocked your bolt into your crossbow for the first time. As it winds back, you crank it, and it slips into place, and you hear this faint spring tension, this. As you're preparing for this, Molly and Beau start rushing up.

Yeah, I'm going to be obvious. I'll flank. Okay, so you head off into the brush. Stealth. Make a stealth check. Send Frumpkin to do Lazy Circle. Okay. Man, this feels like last game. 12. 12, okay, good to know.

Molly, as you get closer, the shape takes more form. As the mist fades and your proximity grows closer, you see what looks to be a squat figure, wide and muscular, armored with a sack over the shoulder. Ashley, if you want to enter. What? That was fast. This is your life!

Yay! Ashley joins us at the table. This is weird. Hey, Ashley. Hey, girl. So Ashley, if you'd like to describe what Molly sees as he approaches. What Molly sees is

a dwarven woman with a five o'clock shadow, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, extremely battered, bloodied, rusted armor, full armor, and short, greasy hair. She has a big old axe in one hand and a big old hammer in the other. Ooh. Does she see these folk now? Roll a perception check for me. I don't have dice. Oh, we should give that to you. This is terrible. Here.

Your melee bladder was right here. Where'd it go? Do you want to pick a dice? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Here, have a thing. Oh, hey, thanks, guys. I'm part of the crew. Okay, so I'm rolling perception?

Yes, roll a d20, I do perception modifier. Okay. That is 16. So much better than us. Yeah, wow, that happened. It's 18. So you see one figure coming towards you, difficult to make out gender, of lavender skin,

curled horns filled with jewelry, big long coat of multi-colors, maroon, but then it goes into a rainbow pattern almost, with two glowing scimitars to each side staring you down. Behind that, you see two figures a little bit beyond your sight to make out all the details, but one seems to be tall, humanoid, the other seems to be much shorter and smaller, probably halfling gnome. Then off in the bushes, not hiding very well, you see another figure just keeping low to your left.

Ah, son of a dick. All right, let's get this over with. Then she holds up her battle axe and her war hammer. As I make eye contact, I'm like, ah shit, was it the blue, was I too tall? I mean, you guys have your weapons drawn. I'm assuming, are we going to do this or what? I would just like a little bit of feedback so I know how to perfect it later. Are you asking about your hiding?

Yeah. It's shit, man, you got to choose a new, this is, yeah. I saw you, you were, I thought you weren't trying to hide. You've got great eyesight. Not really. Complimenting you. What the fuck is going on? What's your name?

What's your fucking name? You guys got weapons out? What's going on? What's your fucking name? What's your fucking name? I put the wire away. What's going on up there? We don't know! Should I kill something? Probably.

Are you guys trying to kill? I've got a place to be, so if we can move this along, are we fighting or not? Molly asks her where we're at an impasse. I haven't really thought this through. Where did you come from? What are you doing in the bloody bushes by our campsite? I was walking up the road, man. I didn't expect to see a bunch of poorly hidden weirdos with fucking weapons drawn. Just make conversation.

How's your day? Weird now! Sorry. Happens sometimes. So you guys aren't... Wait, where are you guys from? Are you from the Run? What's the Run? No, really, what's the Run? That sounds kind of fascinating. So you're not from the Run. I think she means Shady Creek Run! Yeah, that.

Oh shit, we should have thought about that. I don't know your street lingo, your leaps speak. It's just a certain version of your name. God, I don't. I'm putting down one of the swords. We're having a very weird day. Just one? Just one. Still one glowing sword, but I'm having it.

Okay, I'll put away the hammer. The de-escalation has begun. We more or less got robbed last night, and you're the first living human being that we've seen, or not human being. Dwarf. Dwarf. And by robbed, he means half of our party got abducted. That's a very, robbed?

That's such a light way of putting it. Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. Your party got abducted when? Last night. Last night? Son of a bitch. Yeah, okay. We were actually heading to the run. It does sound pretty cool.

All right. I'm going to walk up next to Molly. Caleb, do not. You see this tiny figure hooded with wrappings and a creepy porcelain doll face that covers. All right, I pull the hammer back out. Should I kill her? Not yet, but keep it drawn. Or him?

So all you guys are trying to do right now is to try to get these people back that got got. They have great sentimental value. You can come up now, Caleb. No, I'm good. We're having a very bad morning. I apologize if we came off a little terse. Terse.

All right, fine. We were a little on edge. All right. Family, I mean, party members were abducted. All right, I got a question. Does anyone have booze? Oh no. Why?

Because I'm more partial to talking. I'm out. My flask is done. Oh, your flask runs out? Yes, weird creepy doll girl. Can anyone explain this shit to me? What the fuck is happening right now? It's complicated.

It's very hard to explain. Can you come out of the bush, please? He's very weak. Frumpkin lands on Nott's shoulder. He's trying to falcon, just lands. Please! Don't worry, it's a cat, usually. What?

Let's, I have an idea. They're pretty intellectual. I've had an idea, we've all had a bit of a morning. Let's sit down, have a drink, we can get you liquor, and we can talk about anything you've seen traveling on the road in the last day or two. What's your name? I like you. I'm Molly.

Pleasure. Is your name Pleasure, then? No. Oh, okay, that would have been very inconvenient. I was trying to be more polite. People say shit like that, I guess. Those weird parents do things. My name's Keg. As in powder or booze. Never mind, they're very weird parents.

Here, do you have a cup or something I can pour into? Yeah, I got a flask. Let's sit. I'm going to take out my flask and pour a good healthy half quantity. You have to drink it fast. It will disappear soon. What? Is that true?

Yes. What the fuck is with you people? All right, so Keg knocks it back. It's harsh, but functional. Okay. I know who took your friends. What? I am the greatest detective of all times!

I poured one drink and I solved the case! I know who took your friends. They're not nice people, as you may have gathered. And good thing you were heading to Shadycreek Run, because that's where they operate out of. How do you know? Who are they? How do you know? I know, okay?

I know, I'm looking for them, too. Did you lose someone? Yeah. Wait, I thought you were coming from Shadycreek Run. No, I ain't been there in a while. Ah, but you've been there. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah.

I know it. I know it pretty well. And it ain't a nice place. It's probably the least nice place that you could all possibly go to, so. It's named Shady. Shady. Well, we're not necessarily nice people,

so that'll work out fine. We are well-traveled. Okay. Are you tough? Because you don't look it. We're not. Is that supposed to be scary? I shouldn't take off the mask. It's more scary though. Okay, yeah.

Molly doesn't speak for me. I feel like I can hold my own pretty well. Yeah, she's all right. I might actually be the only tough one here. Shit. That's not great to hear. Okay, how much do these people mean to you? Well, they're the only people I've had in my life since my father, so.

Don't leave people behind, that's the deal. You don't seem that bad, then. All right, what are your names? Plus we had to go there anyway. So it's Molly. What's the creepy little one? Jeff. Nott. Thank you, Molly. It's Nott.

You're going to be a fucking piece of work. What's your name? Beau. Beau. And Bushman? Oh, I like that. All right, Bushman. Okay. My name is Caleb, but you could still call me Bushman. Do you prefer Bushman? Well, let's think about it.

And Bush. Why don't you come back to our camp? Can I ask you a camp? We are at the camp right now. No, aren't we on the road? Oh, we need to come back? Yeah. Walked over as you poured the drink.

Oh, okay, cool, cool, cool. I'm going to nervously pack while all of this is going on. All right. So here's the deal. Shady Creek Run is full of a bunch of shitty lowlifes. They're all murderers, they're all pieces of shit. The people that took your friends are the biggest pieces of shit in the entire place.

That's nice. Who are they? They're called the Iron Shepherds. Slavers, murderers, basic pieces of shit, and they're very, very good at what they do. They are the scariest, most powerful people that I've probably ever met, and I've met a lot of people. I grew up in Shadycreek Run. When you say powerful, are you talking about ability or connections or both?

Both. Shit. So, everybody knows in there. You said slavers. So, everybody knows in there. Who said it? Slavers. Yeah. Sorry to break it to you, but your pals just got taken into slavery.

But why are they operating this far from the run? And also, what kind of slaves are these? These are powerful people that they just kidnapped. Yeah, that's what they want. This is why maybe they took the beefy ones. They don't look for pit- they're not trying to find weaklings on the side of the road, which is why it seems like most of you probably got spared. They're looking for- Okay, you don't know us, so-

Hey, you bared your teeth in me like five times, little man. I gave you a little bourbon. I'm a lady. I gave you some booze. The least you could do is afford us the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, I'm not good at- She does have a fair point, though. I mean, we are a little squishy. I'm not really good at the people thing. We're in good company right now. Beau is terrible with relationships and social interactions. That's true.

That's why we clearly got off to a great start. Sorry. I'm not very good at it either, and you are an exile. I'm also trying to work on the manners thing. Cool, all right. Did the guy who actually got taken from us was helping me. We've lost the charm. Take the guy who actually got taken from us.

Was helping me. Yeah. You lost the charm. Yep. Do you know any of their names, the shepherds? Yeah, I know all of them. Who are they? Okay, before that, here's the deal. I have some beef, as you may have gathered with this crew. I'm not interested in just getting your friends and getting out. I want to fucking kill every single last one of them. So if you want any

more information from me, I'm going to need a little bit of buy-in. I just toss 20 gold and throw me a cigarette, please. 20 gold? that's expensive. Wait, so if you could rescue your friends, or friend, or whatever. There ain't nobody left to rescue, man. Are you sure? Yeah, I'm pretty fucking sure.

So it's revenge, then? Yeah. So if Shadycreek Run is full of a bunch of criminals and you said you lived there for a while, what were you doing there? It's not important. Well, that's pretty clear. No one there did anything nice, okay?

So just fucking imagine something shitty and I probably did it, okay? I'm not proud of it. I'm trying to turn a new leaf as it were. I just imagined some crazy shit. I feel like it's like a horror film. The more you leave it up to your imagination, the worse it is. Not one to interrogate someone's past. Information's information, we could use some help. So if you want my aid, I know that place

like the back of my hand. I need some kind of assurance that when we find these motherfuckers, you're not just going to grab your friends and run, because I'm going to need some backup if I'm going to take them out. How about equal assurance that you don't fuck us over? You can also hire us. Hire you? 20 gold.

You just gave me 20 gold. That's how I know you can afford us. 20 gold, all told? And we split whatever we find. And you don't fuck us and we don't fuck you. Unless, like, you know. All right. You can pay at the end of the deal.

Mm. All right, deal. It's been a while. So you're confident that you can lead us to these shepherds? I've been tracking them for a while. Yeah, you know, we are pretty, some of us are self-deprecating a lot. We have some skill between the four of us, but it would help a lot to know what kind of people, not just assholes,

we are assholes, what kind of assholes we are talking about. Sorcerers, barbarians, there's a little shit that's a rogue. How many of them are there? There's five. Okay, hey, we're five. Yeah, kind of. Probably a good three and a half, if we're being honest. Don't put yourself down like that. I'm sure you can hold your own. I'm talking about you mostly, Sweetchase. So there's five.

Are they part of a larger organization, or are they of themselves, it's just them? They work for someone. A family in Shadycreek Run. They're mobsters. Weird question, have I heard about this group considering my background? Make a history check.

Yeah. History. What did my history change? Should be something. Has its eyes on you? That's my second natural one in a roll. I'm going to get rid of this one. Where's Laura with the dice jail when you need it?

That's an 18 that I'm just rolling. You do, you have not heard of the Iron Shepherds before. You have some base knowledge of some families that might do business on the outside, but with the information that you've been given so far, the Iron Shepherds don't ring a bell. Okay. You know, when we were earlier in Zadash,

we heard someone, the town crier talking about kidnappings in Nagvarat. That's close to Shadycreek Run. Could that be the same people, do you think? Possibly. There's a lot of folks doing the same kind of work. These folk just happen to be the best at it. Do you know all of the members of this iron brigade? What's it called? Close. Iron Shepherds. Close enough. Iron Chef.

Iron Chef? That's my favorite traveling... Cuisine entertainment. I prefer Iron Femme Shepherd. Oh. For sure. One of them would happen to be you. This is my favorite D&D game on the 7-0. There it was. I was waiting for it. If someone else was going to get there, I was going to do it,

so thank you for taking it. One of them wouldn't happen to be named Ophelia Mardoon. No. That's the woman we have to find for the gentleman. That's part of the reason we're going. That's a bit fanciful for them. I try not to learn their names. I don't want to get attached. No. There is an aspect of that name that does ring a bell a little bit, though. The last name. I still learn their names, I don't want to get attached. No. There is an aspect of that name that does Does ring a bell? Ring a bell a little bit, though.

The last name. Oh shit, say that again. Mardune. Here, let me pour you some more booze. Thank you. I don't want to get in on that. Does that help? Yes, I suddenly remember that name.

I know the family. They've got connections there. In fact, the folks that the Iron Shepherds work for happen to hate that family. This is all connected! It's a mob gang! It's like a conspiracy, and we're in the middle of it. You being a detective, is that you just hear other people say information, and then you remark upon it, and then that's you saying that you're a great detective? Largely. Yes. The subject was confused as to what a detective is. I'm not writing anything. I know you're not.

I don't have a quill. I may not. It's just, it's something that me and one of our lost friends talked about a lot, and so I'm sorry. Sorry. Again, I'm not great with people. So do we have an arrangement here?

A deal. We'll kill these folks, or try to, anyway. I don't like that last part. What if one gets away? Are we going to hunt them down over our lifetime? Yes! Over lifetime. Well, I don't know. What if they go far away? Are we indebted to you forever now, or can we just put a 30-day cap on this? These three are of great value to us, and they are our friends, and we are better off with them, and it is worth the trouble. We cannot accomplish what we've come out here to do in the first place without them. What? Nothing. You sure sound like our new leader.

Wait, what about me? Don't panic about it, it's going to be fine. Oh, cool. You're cool, then. I mean, he's got the intelligence. You be the leader. You be the leader. But do we have a deal? Yeah, we have a deal. I'm all in for this.

All right. Well, let's get going, then. Yeah, we have to do it. I'm all in for this. Good for me. All right. Well, let's get going then. Are you just walking? Do you have any means of transportation? Do I look like I have? No. We have spare horses now. At which point you look over just past the camp where they are, and you can see there's a cart,

and there are a number of horses, actually, that are currently hitched to it at the moment. For a brief moment, you're like, oh, the thought of not having to travel on foot sounds fantastic. Let's do that. Let's please God do that. We're half-packed already. Yeah.

Okay, so as you guys pack up your goods, get the rest of your material packed up, a couple things to keep in mind. Looking at the map, if you want to pull it out and get an idea of the direction you're traveling. Oh, we have a map of some sort? Should we lay it out on the table and see if? Well, as long as you guys can see it

is really more the job here, but. Flurry of furlough, yeah. You can travel with your horse and. Wait, stand, I'll take one sec. I know. With your horse and cart, you can travel. Sponsored by Wyrmwood. Look at that.

Nice timing. That's how it's done. Thank you. Yep. There you go. So, you guys are currently right here. Yeah. So you just left Humberduke,

you're partway to the Crispvale, you're on the Crispvale roadway, making your way towards the Crispvale Thicket, which is the large forest there at the crossroads. You can travel about 24 miles per an eight-hour day at a normal pace with the horses and cart. You can go 30 miles at a fast pace, and you can force a march to go for another hour

or two or three afterward, but you start making constitution saving throws or take exhaustion points at that point. But you can get quite a good distance, depending on how fast you're going. The cart keeps you at a slower pace. If you were to leave the cart behind as an option, you could go faster.

But we have to ditch some gear, or do we have enough horses to carry everything, including shields and... We would have to ditch some gear. I think we ditched horses to carry everything, including shields and... We would have to ditch some stuff. Yeah, I think we ditched the cart. They have got hours on us. We need to make time. I agree.

How much can we carry? Can we carry all of our friends' stuff? On a horse? We have six horses, I think. You have six horses, between five of you, as long as one of you takes the horse out, you can have a pack horse, essentially. It's going to be hard to direct it,

unless someone keeps it, you know, hitched on the side that might slip. Having an additional horse right now, how are you going to get that come with you at a fast pace? Without a rider. We can't carry their stuff without... Well, you can probably carry a few things. You still have horses to help carry things, and most of your gear you can still put in yourself.

Are there any large things? You're not carrying a manticore head anymore. No. We need the shield. It's not a magical shield, it's not special. It's run of the mill. It's not special to her in any way. I open the haversack.

Insert the shield as much as I can in the haversack. What the fuck are you doing, Dad? I'm trying to just, Dwight, don't move. The main pack, I'd say you can, it's a little, I'm going to say the shield's not going to fully fit in, unfortunately, because it's a fairly wide shield and it won't quite fit. What about a tent? I'm going to shove a tent in here. The tent you can probably mangle and push in there and you manage to get the tent in.

But the shield someone will have to wear on their back or strap to a horse. Yeah, let's strap it to a horse. Are we going to try and pack horse this? Is that how we're going to go? We can go fast without a spell. I think the shield and... The big things we're leaving?

We put a tent in there if we want to attach another tent to the back. You said we could put the shield on the side of the horse? You can put the shield strapped to a horse, it's fine. It's just an additional thing that you're strapping onto it. That's up to you. It's just the additional horse is going to be a problem if you're going to travel at a fast pace. Well, then we shouldn't do that. We should go as fast as we can right now. So we're leaving behind a horse and a cart.

Or we take the horse and cart at reasonable speed. No, we shouldn't leave them. Is there a town coming up? Or someplace where we can quickly sell the horse and cart? Or stow it. No, there's the Crisp Vale thicket ahead, which is the crossroads, but there's no town there. Hupperdook behind you, or honestly,

Lugvarad or Shadycreek Rounds. We bring the horse to water, we force it to drink, we give it some food, hope it lives. Yeah, we set it free. Maybe come back and find it. It either lives free or somebody gets a new horse. We hang a sign on it, free horse. Why don't we kill it and take some meat?

Let's... All right, let's just leave it. I mean, not to put a damper on it, but if you leave a horse around here, it's probably going to get killed. There's a lot of shady folks around here. I mean, the horses are all named after... Poop. Poop.

So we can probably... So which one do you leave behind, then? I believe we're going to take WC, Lou, John, Crapper, and Toilet, but we're going to leave Loaf. So we're going to drop a loaf? We're going to drop a quick loaf and then go. It's always better to drop a loaf before you go. I'm starting to rethink my agreement to work with you guys.

Welcome to the Mighty Nein. So if he's going to die, we can leave a marker so we can come back and find where he's been interred. Oh, for sure. Yeah. It's not only a poop joke. All right, so as you say goodbyes to Loaf. Pinch him off.

You squeeze about as much as we can out of that one. You strap your materials to the horses you are taking with you. It's been a while. All right, so you're going at a fast pace. That's 30 miles. Yeah. You can travel in a day, which will get you to, that'll get you well within the Crisp Vale thicket.

So, as you guys are riding, who's guiding this trip? Who's keeping an eye on the road ahead of you as you go? Is one of us steering the journey, and can another one of us be looking for clues or things along the way? We can do that, yeah, sure. Yeah, I was going to say, Keg's been on this road before.

Yeah, could someone do me a favor? Does anyone have a piece of cloth or something they're not using? I have a giant dragon tapestry. Could I borrow that, maybe? Are you cold? It's the one thing you see strapped and laying over the back of his horse,

is this giant, rolled up, thick, blue and silver tapestry. Okay, I wrap my head around it, with it, I should say, so you can't really see my face. You now also have a cape, it's huge. Okay. So you take the full tapestry or just a piece of it? I take the full tap, just.

All right, so you go, yeah, you are just, yeah. Why are you hiding your face? I didn't leave with a lot of friends last time I was here, so I'm trying to keep a low profile. You are well disguised as a stoner's bedroom at the moment. Dragging on a sheet. Perfect. All right.

I'll fit right in. There you go. Yeah, so I guess I can move, since I know where I'm going. Okay, so you've traveled this path before, so it's well known. Who's keeping watch? I'll keep watch.

Okay, so go ahead and make a perception check for me, Beau. Hopefully there are no more ones hiding in there. Do you want to look at the thing, the orb? 18. Okay, you're good. Nice. Yeah, or the orb, we haven't. We could look at the orb at some point, too. Or hexagon.

Dexag, decahedron. Thank you. All right, so glancing out, as you're heading now down into the center part of the northern side of the Marrow Valley, keeping a look ahead, you can see, as you just crest over this one little embankment, the Crisfale Thicket ahead of you,

this beautiful cluster of dark green trees. The clouds have now completely taken the sky back, and it's just this low, gloomy gray as the air gets chilly, as the day progresses onward, getting closer and closer to dusk. You manage to get to the outskirts of the thicket itself. You can now see the trees growing thicker in the actual canopy of dark green pine trees

now starting to gather. You now have the opportunity, if you want to, you can travel into the crossroads and head north, or you can skirt around the forest off the path. Because you're basically having to go to the center and then back north, but you're on the road the whole time. Or if you wanted to skip past it,

you'll travel a little slower. You have basically a similar pace. So you won't encounter as many foes? Well, you don't know. Okay. It just depends on your... Are we trying to avoid people, or? I'm more than happy to kill something at this point. I've got some anger and aggression to work out.

What's the faster route? Make a survival check. 12. Looking about, you gather the faster route would probably be to skirt around the outside of the forest, because you don't have to switch back, even though the terrain isn't quite as well tread. However, you've left the cart behind,

which means the one factor that would have really come into that is no longer an issue. We're on horses, let's just cut through. Do we get a sense of where they headed? Do we see any sign of? At this point in the main road, there are a number of tracks, whether it be horse, foot, and cart, and wheels of all different sizes. You're not able to really tell what's the freshest

from a glance. If you want to get off your horse and inspect, you could try. I'll try. Would that be? Be a survival. I'm saying, how good is my survival? That's good. A natty one. Welcome to the team. I don't even know what horses are anymore. I'm saying, how good is my survival? That's good. A natty one. Welcome to the team. I don't even know what horses are anymore.

This is a donkey. Yeah, you glance down, from atop your horse, you look down and see the smattering of patterns, and as you get down closer, it just becomes dirt, and you have no idea how to discern what came when. I'm drunk, that was pointless, let's keep going. So, which path do you guys wish to choose? Caleb, you're in charge.

Which way are we going? Oh, for god's sake, which way are we going? I say through the woods, but you're the leader. I said you were the leader. I'm not a leader. Oh, for god's sakes, I'm going to start going through the woods. So you're going through the thicket, or around the outside of it? were the leader. I'm not a leader. Oh, for god's sakes, I'm going to start going through the woods. So you're going through the thicket

or around the outside of it? Around the shortcut. Okay, so you're skirting on the outside of the thicket. Yes. Okay. As you start cresting around the side of the forest, within the first mile or so, you see what looks to be an abandoned homestead, maybe 200 feet or so away from the forest, within the first mile or so, you see what looks to be an abandoned homestead,

maybe 200 feet or so away from the forest on the northern side. It may have been at one time a small farmhouse, but part of the roof is caved in. There once was a window that had some sort of pane glass that has since been shattered, and you can see jagged edges on the bottom side of its sill. What time is it?

Right now, I'd say it's probably close to four or five in the afternoon. You have a couple hours before dusk really starts hitting. We want to hit a couple hours or have this unbelievably safe place, where it looks like a very safe place, although, never mind, we're going to, terrible things are just going to happen.

I'm just accepting it. This is going to be a cursed trip. Do we want to stay in the haunted house? You want to send in Frumpkin, Bird Frumpkin, and see what he finds? Does it look like Frumpkin could make it through that window? Frumpkin could, yeah, and it's a one-story farmhouse.

It's a modest home. It's a single-story, maybe from first glance, three to four rooms, and the partially collapsed roof on one side shows you that it's been in disuse for some time. Who knows how weathered it may be on the interior. And what hour is it? About four or five in the afternoon. In the afternoon?

I don't see anything in there. I mean, do you want to raid an old house? We'll keep going. Sleep in it, is what we're thinking. You want to cut for the day? We want to keep going, don't we? As fast as we can. Well, here's the question is,

do we just go until we have to stop and then we camp wherever we're going to camp, or do we find something like this which is possibly a little safer, and then just wake up very early and run and go further? If you ask me to keep going, no place in this area is going to be any safer than any other. All right, let's keep going.

She's a local. Trust the local. All right, so you guys continue. As we go by it, we're heading that way, right? Was there anyone in that house? Oh, you didn't get close enough to inspect? Should we check it out and see if there's anything good? Well, that's what I was asking, is you described a window that was jagged glass, but if my smallish falcon went in there, is he going to get cut up?

You could certainly try. She won't get cut up. Yeah, Frumpkin's wingspan in this form is pretty wide, is wider than the window, so Frumpkin could have to land on the window and they could probably gingerly step in. Or you could go through the chimney. Or the collapsed roof. Or I can just go in. We have to.

Keg just goes to the door and kicks it open. You guys watch as the horse rides off to the edge. Keg leaps off the horse, stomps up, and just kicks the door open. The door's already partially ajar, so it's and it falls off the top end and leans against the back inside of the farmhouse. There's a brief moment where you feel a couple things settle, a slight creak and the fall of dust, and as you step inside, you can see the furniture is in disarray.

There is a layer of dust everywhere. There's a smell of old, rotten mildew. Glancing inside, you can see there's another window on the opposite side that's also been busted out. This place is pretty thrashed. There's nothing in here. Are there any books? I'm going to hop in there as well. Okay. I'll go take a look.

Books! I'll look for you. We always know to look. I'm not going to look for books! I'll look for you. You always know to look. I'm not going to look for books, oh god. Are you in check here? I will look inside. I also want to see if there's, does it look like people have been in here recently?

Well, you make an investigation check on that, and you make an investigation check to look for things. And then look for booze? Yeah. 18. Yeah, go for it. Nothing of value. Three. Oh. Sadly, for booze? Yeah, go for it. Nothing of value. Three. Oh.

Sadly, no booze. You, what'd you roll? Two. Yeah. Hard to tell in this space. A lot of the furniture looks damaged, some of it looks burned weirdly. As you look around on the inside, you're rummaging around for any possible books

or anything that could be useful. You don't find any books. You do manage to find what looks to be a bundle of unused torches, five. You have a handaxe that's a little old and rusted, but it's still functional. It's well-made, that was left under one of the shelves that had fallen over.

You find a mostly-filled oil lantern that, while the glass of the actual lantern is broken, it still is pretty filled with oil. If you wanted to, if you had a container, you could fill it and have a flask of oil. I have an extra flask. Then you can go ahead and fill that with oil. I will fill that with oil.

All right, so you now have a flask of oil, your disposal. Is there a crest on the fireplace or anything like that? Any markings of who might have lived here at one point? No crests. You glance and you do see what looks to be a small iron symbol that looks like a star or a sun. You recognize it to be the symbol of Pelor,

probably was a mantle of worship here, but looking at it, the metal looks scarred, strange. There's almost elements of, as you pick it up and glance at it, the pockmark scarring on it is strange, and the mantle around it, you can see a lot of the wood and stonework seems to have been smoothed over. Can I remove the piece?

Yeah. Snaps off. Well, this obviously brought luck to whoever was here. I have a Symbolic Handler. I'll just go around and ask, does anyone need any torches? I found a bunch. Take a couple torches.

We can each have one. And you get a torch, and you get a torch. And how about a handaxe, anyone? Uh... Nah. I'm good. You get a torch? And how about a handaxe, anyone? Uh. Nah. I'm good. Caleb, you want to do a little scan while we're here, see if anything tingles your fancy?

Oh, I'm killing time, but yes, I do. I take the ten minutes to pull the book out of the holster and set it on the ground, and while everyone just sits there in the dust, I cast Detect Magic. Okay, so how long does it take for that? 10 minutes. 10 minutes, okay. Wait. Wait. Wait? As a ritual,

I believe it's 10 minutes, correct? Yeah. All right, so Caleb, you're having this moment where you're waiting as he's just pouring over this tome and drawing a circle on the ground and inscribing strange symbols in the air. It doesn't make any sense to you. You're like, ah, magic stuff.

Want another drink? Yes. Thank you. Everybody else roll a perception check, if you don't mind. Okay. 13. 17.

17, what'd you get? 19, actually, I'm sorry. 16. Beau and Keg, you guys hear some noises out back. The horses are getting a little restless and nervous. It's like. You see two of them are starting to

clomp back a bit away from the house, starting to pull at the reins that have been hitched off to the side of the home. Hey, you might want to finish your fairy shit. There's something going on outside. You've, at that point, trying to take in what is sending these horses into a weird tizzy, and you feel this faint vibration in the ground,

this very, very subtle quaking sensation. I'm still outside on my horse, so I'm going to ride around to the back of the house and see if I see anything. Okay. I'm going to run outside and see if I see anything. Okay. Still utilizing the same perception checks you have,

looking in both directions, nothing. You're maybe a little over 100 feet or so from the treeline, which is what you were staying close to, to not be out in the middle of the open field, but you don't see anything coming or going. Pull a single sword and guard Caleb. Okay. I'm going to jump off my horse

and get on the ground and feel the ground. Do I feel any vibrations? You do. It's this faint. It seems to be moving in shifts, or in these pulses of intensity, getting more intense, and some of them longer, some of them shorter. I, uh, where are you going to keep going?

No, that's what you're sensing. I say, get off the ground! All right. I run, and off the ground! All right. And I run and I'm going to try and parkour up onto the roof of this thing. I'm going to try and push Caleb awake and go for a tree. Yeah.

Okay. Well, let's go, let's go. And we're going to head for a tree. Okay, you guys are heading after the tree? Oh yeah, sure, just the spell. So spell's lost. Molly and Caleb start running out of the home to the treeline, and you're going up on the roof.

Is there a roof to be got upon? You're still on horseback, you jump off your horse. No, I jumped off my horse to feel the ground. Right, so you're leaving your horse there, and you're going, you can try and look up on the roof, part of it's collapsed, you don't know the state it's in, but you can try. I'll get on the horse and head to the treeline

with everybody else. Okay, you start heading back to the treeline, what are you guys doing? So we can't tell if this is a creature, or we just can feel that the ground's rumbling. You can, you haven't sensed anything, just everyone started getting nervous and rushing for the treeline.

You can hear the faint rumbling, and it is getting louder. I'm going to take, as I get closer to the treeline, how far away am I? You are about, say, 20 I get close to the treeline, how far away am I? You are about, say, 20 or so feet from the treeline. Okay, I'm going to take my horse, I'm going to whip it around the opposite way, going away from us, and I'm going to give it a good kick and jump off of it and head towards the treeline

with everybody else. I'm going to head away from us. Okay, so your horse begins to head in a southward direction. I'm staying where I am, and I'm just taking out my battleaxe and my warhammer. Okay. I'm going, come out, you piece of shit!

So you're staying by the house? Yeah. Okay. I'm staying in the house, and I'm going to cover myself up with some detrius of just different chairs and things near the window. I'm going to cover myself up with some detrius of different chairs and things near the window. I'm hiding. Make a stealth check. What are we running from? Caleb and Molly, as you guys are riding towards the treeline.

We're just getting some distance from whatever. First thing you notice is a splash of dirt to the south. You see what looks like a small detonation out of the earth in the direction of where your horse had been traveling off. You just see something emerge from the ground and your horse ride up and hoof down and begin to run back in your direction away from it.

It seemed to cut it off at the south. As it is running towards you, It's like, come on, WC, come on! You see something spray or splash in its direction as it turns, and it whinnies in horrible pain before it collapses onto the ground, spinning. Water closet!

It lies there on the ground, making this horrible sound. As you're watching, from what you can see distance, it's flesh burning. Is it dying? It looks in a really, really bad place. At this point in time, Molly and Caleb, you hear the vibration

as the ground bursts to the right and left of you. Let me go ahead and get the map, since that's where we're going now. Should we move this map? Yeah, we're going to move this map out of you. Let me go ahead and get the map, since that's where we're going now. Should we move this map? Yeah, we're going to move this map out of the way. Oh boy. Oh man. Ah.

Oh gosh. Ah, jeez. Ashley, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. It's been a while. I know, it's been a minute. Since your one-shot. Wherever, you know, wherever.

Yes, but that doesn't count. It doesn't count? Weren't you on the show show at some point? This is my first time on the show show. She did that goblin thing with that. I've done three one-shots with Pat. There were no show shots. That's terrible.

I mean, we're rectifying it right now. Oh, that's right. Goblin's the screwdriver and then the ass sailor. The ass, what was it called? The romantic cruise thing. Yeah. It's the screwdriver drop and then the ass sailor. What was it called? The romantic cruise thing. Yeah. The ass sailor?

Yeah, the ass sailor was the name of the bar. Oh, you were in the bar, the bar. The bar, the bar. The bar was, yes, the ass sailor. So, there is Caleb. I'm on Jerry Lewis telethon. There's Molly just on the outskirts of the forest this way.

Bursting to each side of you, you see these large insectoid creatures that just burst out of the dirt and ground. Beau, you are probably right over on this side as you left your horse on a southern direction there. Both Nott and Keg are about 100 feet in that direction. Oh, so, okay. Your horses are currently. Oh, so they went after them? Yeah. Oh. So you guys are over by the house, you watch as this is going on,

and there doesn't appear to be any action immediately near you, so you're quite a distance away. Can I rush forward now? You can, if your horse is still over by the house, you watch as this is going on and there doesn't appear to be any action immediately near you. You're quite a distance away. Can I rush forward now? You can, if your horse is still right by the table. Or your horse is rushed off towards the... Your horse is still there. I think my horse is still there. Your horse is still there, that's right.

You still have your horse there, you can jump on your horse and head that direction if you want to. Okay, I'm going to do that. All right, so you rush onto that. I need everybody to roll initiative, please, because we are now in combat. I think I spent all of my 20 juice on all these ones. But it's still a one!

All righty, so 25 to 20? 20. Wow. Beau's up first. 20 to 15? 16. Aw. That is something else.

15 to 10? 10. All right. That's the Yankee Snitch. Mega Snitch. Caleb, what'd you get? Three. All right.

Iron Snitch. Chins. And ooh, all right. It kind of makes sense, I'm writing in eight. You're also three? I'm three, yes. Yeah, not so great for a keg. That's all right.

All right, so top of the round. 50-20. Beau. This one's got veggie and you want it. Okay. So I have this one in front of me. Oh man. You have other options.

Oh my god. There's a third one down that way that's maybe about 30 feet away from you that is heading your direction. It's up to you if you want to pursue that or come help out your friends. No, I'm going to go for this one here. I should have enough speed to clear it.

Yeah, you should. Yeah, you can easily get there. Pop pop. Okay, so first attack. 15. 15 hits. Okay. Wow. I'm going to spend a ki point to stun this thing. All righty.

Hopefully it doesn't save again. That is a six, a five plus one. It does not save. It stunned! Finally! As you rush up to the side, you look for what you see now at a close look is this massive, almost eight to nine feet tall to its head, insect-like, almost large cockroach-type creature. Its chitinous armored body is segmented in places. You can see these large antenna and these massive pincers that come out of its mouth with its strange insectoid eyes. It's this gooey saliva that's dripping out of the center

of its mouth. Oh god. As it spins around towards you, you see a moment where between its plates and its body seems to be a soft muscle-like underbelly. You just jam your fist in there and attack and it seems to lock up its body for a moment. Go ahead and roll damage.

Oh, right. Good move. Yeah, damn. Oh god. So go ahead and roll damage. Oh, right. Good move. Yeah, damn. Oh god, I rolled a one in damage, so. That's plus four, five damage. Five points of damage. I'm so nervous. All right, so is your first strike?

Yeah, Pam, and then second strike. That's a natural 14, so I'm pretty sure that hits plus seven, so 20 to one, that hits. So you have one. And then, ooh, that's an eight! It's the total other end of the spectrum! I keep getting in the air. Sorry, my brain is all over the place. 12 damage. 12 points of damage, nice. The first strike ends up as just enough to cut past its defenses to stun it as it's reeling from the impact.

Your other blow crack with your staff to the side, hits it and part of its armor cracks inward, exposing more of its tender underbelly. Okay, and then I am going to spend another ki point and do Extract Aspects. Okay, you want to learn three things from it. What do you want to learn? Three things. Okay, what is its dexterity modifier?

Its dexterity saving throw? Dexterity saving throw is zero, plus zero. Okay, sorry. Dex, zero. What is its constitution saving throw? Plus one. And does it have any vulnerabilities?

No vulnerabilities. Okay. Just read it. Okay. All right. And then I still have a bonus attack, right? Still have a bonus attack. Oh wow, the suspense. 13.

13. Tenal key attacks have advantage while stunned, so you get to roll again. Oh, that's right! That's even worse. Does not hit. Even while stunned, you swing it back with your fist and your knuckles glide off of part of the armor that is still hardened and it hurts your knuckles and you pull back a second, but it's not immediately able to do anything back at you.

That's your turn, I believe? Yeah, and I just yell to everybody and be like, ah, these guys don't seem very quick and shifty. Okay. Not too dexy. For anything, you know. All righty. They seem clumsy as fuck.

Okay. All right, that ends your turn. Your shitty dexterity. Molly, you're up next. You're still talking? I'm trying to be fancy. So I'm just going to tap my new fancy sword and I'm just going to, like a pepper's ghost effect,

just fade out and disappear and move right into what would be, get some advantage on that one that Beau's been hitting. 30, so you're just out of range of it, but you can use your movement to move it. I always want movement to get right where I need to be. There you go. So I have advantage now. You do, you watch as Molly just fades out of range of it, but you can use your movement to move it. I always want movement to get right where I need to be. There you go. So I have advantage now.

You do, you watch as Molly just fades out of existence and then appears, Nightcrawler teleport style, right behind Caleb. They killed Molly! I'll take two attacks. Go for it. All right, first one. A natural one and an 18, yeah, so one hits. Yep. So that's...

Ooh! Natural one and an 18, yeah, so one hits. Yep. So that's... Ooh! That's 10 damage plus three... So 13 damage? Yeah, 13, 10 plus three. All righty. Next attack. That's 19. 19 hits.

That's nine plus 10, so that's 11. 11 points of damage. All right, that'll do it. With that, you teleport next to it and just carve it asunder. You watch its screams as you slice through it all three times and watch as you bisect it in the center of where its thorax begins. It falls to the ground and crumples into pieces, greenish blood spilling into the dirt and floor of the forest underbrush. Tick or stick. Yeah, we have a little clink. Perfect.

And turn and face the other one. All right, Enzo and Molly's turn, Nott, you're up. Actually, do I have any movement left? You do, you have, you're up. Actually, do I have any movement left? You do, you have 25 feet of movement. I'm going to pull back and I'm going to get 10 feet in front of Caleb, right between Caleb and the insect, not on the other side of that, yeah.

Like, right there. Just to make a wall there. Perfect, there you go. All right, the finishing your go. Nott, you are way off that way. Yeah, I'm looking through the window of the house, the homestead, and I'm 100 feet away. You're about 100 feet away, yeah. There's nothing I can do. I'll start walking towards the fight.

All right, so that's 30 feet. You could dash as a bonus action if you wanted to. Yeah, that'll take me 60 feet. It does seem to lose your stealth, unfortunately. Sure. You could be low in the brush, but you're not moving quite carefully. I'm going fast. We'll say at that point that'll get you about to the edge of the board there. Hey, you might be able to burn your machine, though.

Where is Keg? Did I just run past Keg? I'm on a horse. Keg is going to be catching past Keg? I'm on a horse. Keg is going to be catching up to you at this point. Can I hold my action until Keg gets in range? You're on a horse? Yeah, I jumped on a horse before we rolled initiative.

Roll fast like. I'll hold my action until someone gets within melee range of the thing, and then I will fire a crossbow. Okay. Gotcha. That ends Nott's turn. It's now their turn. As one of them,

that previously killed Beau's horse. Rest in peace, Water Claws. To that side there. Another one bursts from the ground. Oh, come on! This is not fair. On this side. It skitters over this direction. This one's going to move up to there. Let's see if your horse is going to be there. Can't quite move into that space, which is frustrating it. That's fine, it'll pull back a bit then and stay there. Actually no, because you killed the fourth one,

so it's not present. As they all turn around and watching its one friend get cut down, they begin to line up. All three of them pull back and its pincers open as it releases this splashing stream of some sort of deep green-like liquid that sprays out in front of it. For 30 feet, five foot wide.

Whoa, what? I don't suppose I can, this is not anything I can use. I can try and give them disadvantage on it. Nope, this is a saving throw scenario. I need Molly and Caleb to make dexterity. 30, actually for this one it's just Molly and the horse, because it doesn't quite get to Caleb on that one. Oh, my natural 20.

Dexterity saving throw? Yep. Yay, that's a 22. 22, okay, so you take half damage. There you go. You take seven points of acid damage as it streaks across your body. Your horse does not make the saving throw. Oh no.

Your horse gets sprayed on the side and makes a horrible, pained, neighing sound as it falls to the ground, its body now acidically burning away. No! No! It's not surviving this. Oh no.

Nasty on the loo. Oh man. Now we're down to John Crapper in toilet. This one right here is going to spray you as well, Nallie. Another dexterity saving throw, please. I really hope Toilet makes it. Ah, 11. 11 does not succeed.

You suffered 14 points of acid damage as another stream blasts into your back and shoulder, burning through your flesh and the side of your face, begins to pull away and smoke. Ow. Back here, this one is going to shoot in a stream that hits Beau, Caleb, and the horse. I need you to... That's my natural 20 now. Dex save?

Dex save, yes. That time it's a three. It's a natural one. Your horse made it, though. Hey! Crumper! Your horse made it, though. Yay, Crapper! All right. That is going to be 14 points of acid damage to both of you. The horse takes seven. It's still surviving. That's going to end their go. It's now the horse's turn. The horse's turn?

Yeah. I got worse initiative than the horse? This one's running, yep. I got worse initiative than the horse? This one's running, yep. I'm just going to run off the battlefield there. Run, Crapper, run! He's dead. Run like the wind!

All righty. That's going to end their go. Caleb and Keg, you guys are up. Oh, guests first. Thank you. So how far can I go on this horse? On horseback? Yes. That's a fairly good distance speed of 60 feet. That'll get you up to, we'll say, right there, pretty much right to the edge of where that is there.

So I can't get up on any of these boys? I'll say, because the horse doesn't get an attack on, and it would normally get an action, I'll let the horse dash. That's nice. That'll get you right up next to this one. I'll say, because the horse doesn't get an attack on, and it would normally get an action, I'll let the horse dash. Hey! That's nice. That'll get you right up next to this one. Okay, so can I leap off the horse and come down with the axe?

Yes! Yeah. Just for the hell of it, make an acrobatics check for me. Yay! Why not? What could possibly go wrong? Natural 20! Yay! That's like Cirque de Salation. So as the horse is galloping, you watch, you watch as Keg gets up on top holding the reins,

pulls the warhammer out, and then at the right moment just leaps off while pulling the battle axe out, doing a flip in the air, landing, and coming down with both weapons. Go ahead and make your attacks on the opposite side of it. 17. 17 hits. Then the other attack is an 18, naturally. Yeah, that hits. So go ahead and roll both those damage.

So that's six, and then help me do my 12. Six and 12? Yeah. Nice. You still have your bonus action. So I can attack again, right? Yeah, yeah, because you're dual wielding, so you attack, attack, and then attack. Ha ha! Eight plus seven, does that hit?

15, still hits. Hey! Yep, armor class of? Nine. Nine points of damage. As you come down, both weapons, whack, clamming onto it, you hear the armor crack from underneath, and you watch as its light green blood begin to seep through the wounds you left. As it turns around, this weird clicking, sucking sound out of its face.

You laugh. Shut up. Whack and slam it in the side of the face with your war hammer. It pulls back and it's not bleeding out of its jaws. It looks pretty hurt. Nice. I will release my bolt at disadvantage because it's more than 30 feet away.

It is, yes. Ooh, that's only a 12. 12 misses, unfortunately. The bolt streaks off. It actually hits the side of Keg's armor, shearing off. Sorry, sorry, that's on me. Who are you waiting for? Not you! You're telling me to talk!

I'm sorry, I'm just drunk. I'm day drunk. This is your perfect opportunity for a new crossbow. Who is this? Oh yeah, a new crossbow. All right, Caleb, you're up. I go rummaging through my pack really quick and I pull out a licorice root and stick it in my mouth and bite down to it and I start muttering to myself

and I say, pick up the paste and I cast Haste on Beauregard. Oh, I hate licorice. Why is that taste in my mouth? That's weird. And then I will move as far as I can towardsorice. Why is that taste in my mouth? That's weird. Then I will move as far as I can towards Nott. All right, so you are hasted there. You're going to move as far as you can to Nott. Towards Nott, yeah.

There you go. Okay. That finishes your turn. Top of the round, Beau, you're up and hasted. I'm going to turn into this guy and I'm going to lay into him. You're going to step around the trunk of the tree. That means do I get three base attacks? You get three base attacks, correct. Woo!

Haste! First one! Advantage on dex saves, too. Advantage on dex saves. 15. That hits. That is nine damage. Nine. Second one. Ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's 16. All righty. And that is 11 damage.

Nice. Third strike. That's a natural 14. Yep, that'll hit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, seven damage. Seven points of damage on that, fantastic. And you stub your bonus. Yep, and I'm going to spend a ki point again

to do Flurry of Blows and get two more attacks. Two more attacks. Hasted monks. Just full-on Wing Chun over here. One's a natural 19, the other's a two. You do get one more hit, so roll damage for that. Yeah! 11 damage. No, 10 damage. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

That's okay. That'll do it. You just spin around, the adrenaline pumping through your veins from Caleb's spell, Sorry, sorry, sorry. That's okay. That'll do it. Is he dead? Yeah! Oh my god! You spin around, the adrenaline pumping through your veins from Caleb's spell instilling you with unnatural speed. You rush forward and just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,

and just do this, the fastest full-on combo you watch. She basically pummels this giant nine-foot insect creature into submission. It's like a chain. It falls to the ground as you're just pummeling its face until eventually it collapses and sputters out the remaining breath before it stopped moving. Street fighter combo move.

Epic combo. Fantastic. You still have 75 feet of movement. Oh wow. Half. Because you're hasted. Oh my god. It was a fresh one. I am going to make my way behind this guy, if I can.

Oh, yeah. You go around the tree and then tap it on the shoulder. Circle the tree a couple times, holding onto it. Just to be a dick. Singing in the rain. Great. That finish your turn, Beau? Yes. All right, Molly, you're up next. I'm going to run and get in a flanking position with this one over here.

All right. Thumpity-thumpity-thumpity. Move over and push into the space? Yeah. Because it's an ally, I'll let you move into the horse's space. I used to. Good toilet. Now we're going to take a slice of this one. And that's, that'll do it.

25 to hit. That'll hit. Let's do six, seven, eight, nine, 10, plus four, 14. 14 points of damage, nice. And again. 19 and a one. 19, that'll hit. I love advantage. Advantage is nice.

That's 14 points of damage. All right. It's got to be dead by now, right? No, it's still alive. How is that the one that, really? That one hadn't taken any damage. It had. Oh, no, no. Oh, sorry. I was writing that the one that? Really? That one hadn't taken any damage. It had. Oh, no, no.

Oh, sorry. I was writing that down under the wrong one. And it's alive! My apologies. Yes, it is dead. I was writing it under the wrong one. So as you dart off behind, the first two strikes you unleash carve it into two pieces.

You watch as the creature, as it's turning around to hiss in rear back, its pincers about to carve into your face, you watch as the head rolls off of its body and there behind you see Molly standing there with the blades out. I needed this, and I'm going to hide behind the tree trunk from the other one. Okay, right there? Last of my movement, yeah. Okay. That finishes your go, Molly? N of my movement, yeah. Okay.

That finishes your go, Moe? Nott, you're up. I'll move within range, crossbow bolt range. You know what? The inner range is what? It's 30. 30, it's just out of your 30 range. No, you know what, I'll stay put, and I will cast Silent Image in a flanking position to Beau and I will create a second Beau

just standing there in front of the creature and try to help Beau. So mysteriously. It's a different color palette? Yeah, it's Street Fighter style. Beau and Ken. Yeah. Ken. Perfect, all right, so as the image of Beau appears

before just standing there quietly, shifting, holding a space. And bonus action, can I hide just behind that little? How did you know? You can use a room to go behind and then hide if you want to. Sure, great. All right, so go ahead and roll a stealth check. Salmon and lavender. Salmon and lavender.

Salmon and lavender. Natural 20. Oh! Oh! This is cool. You teleport through campaigns. You're somehow in campaign one. Great.

Ooh! All right, that finishes Nott's turn. It's not as emotionally deep as this one. Give it time, give it time. Nice Patronus, by the way. Yep. So it's now that guy's turn. Currently surrounded by bows.

Too many bows. Too many bows. Too many bows. It's going to go ahead and see if it can gather which one is the real threat. Rolls a national 19. So even with its low intelligence, it can discern the nature of which

That palette swap's terrible. Really puce. It's going to make a bite attack towards you, Beau. That is going to be a 12 to hit. Miss. Yeah, it reaches out with its pincers. You manage to duck out of the sight and slam your bow into it, causing it to completely miss you. It rears back. Does not regain its acid spray, and that's its turn.

Wow, that's great. Both horses just go running off. Shit. Off the board into the fray, or off away from the fray. Sorry there, Matt. We have oats, they'll come back. Maybe.

Maybe. All right, that brings us to Keg. Can I get there with a 25 feet speed? Five, 10, 15, 20, you can. De-lightful. I'm going to smack him. Nope. I won't smack him. I'll try to get to smack him. I will smack him, and then I'm going to do nine damage to that boy. Nine damage to that one, all righty.

Then as a bonus action, I'll smack him again, and I will smack him, and then I'll smack him one more time, and that's going to be seven damage. Seven points of damage, all righty. The first one swings wide, no impact. The second one slams its back hand into its armor, causing it to crack. Using that opening, you pull back with your battleaxe and jam it into the wound, carving in deeper. It's looking pretty hurt, but it's still standing. Anything else you want to do in your turn? No, I'm just going to hang.

You're going to hang back? I'm going to hang. You're just going to keg stand there? I'm just going to keg stand there. Oh. All righty. I'm proud of you, Staple. That's what happens when you get Emmy Award winners

at the table. You get that. That's the hype that we can accomplish, though. You've peaked at this point, we're done after this. It's all downhill. There's horses around, there might be a pony keg at some point, I don't know. We're going to work on it.

We'll work on it. All right, that ends your go, keg. Caleb, you're up. Yeah, okay, I feel the wind and then shoot three magic missiles out of my hand at the thing. So as you finish your attacks, you glance over your shoulder as you hear this sound and you look in the distance,

you see Caleb, who at this point has been just this dirty hobo in the background, all of a sudden fire these three mystical arcane missiles that glow and arc off anime missile style through the woods, avoiding trees, and all three slamming into the sides of this creature. Go ahead and roll damage. Yeah, okay. What is that? That's a four, and also a six. I'm going to get to, I got to change these dice. That is a ten total.

Ten total. All righty. It sits there for a second after the impact, leaving these large craters in the sides of its chitinous armor where you see it's cracked and bits of liquid are spilling out of it. It looks heavily wounded, but it's still alive. Passes loose. Going to stay where you put? I will go crouch by a knot.

All right, revealing her position. Hey, get away from me! Make any noises! Sit down. It's all good. All right, that finishes Kelb's go. Beau, you're up. Okay, first attack. 14.

That hits, that just hits. Okay. Wait, no, no, no, 13, sorry. My math is wonky today. That doesn't hit, does it? 13 does not hit. There's no advantage because of my silent image. Unfortunately, no.

It's not flanking yet. Nothing is actually flanking it. Second attack. Okay, that hits. That's 18. 18 hits. And that is, did I roll that one? I forgot. I don't know what it was. Sorry, 15 damage. 15 points of damage in the first hit?

Yes. Beau, how do you want to do this? As you and Keg are both there clamoring on two sides of it, image of yourself on the opposite end, what do you want to do? As I see Keg bash it in a little bit of its insect armor, I take my staff and I get up under its exoskeleton and I just start prying it off and I punch it to death. That sounds cool. As you crowbar off a large part of its exterior insectoid armor skeleton, it exposes this horrible yellowish sinewy muscle interior

as all the striations are pulling off of the armor. As it's exposed, it tries to go in to protect itself, but you're too quick, and you zero in and plunge your fist into its body as it falls to the ground with a horrible, sucking, guttural, slimy death and pull it out. If you squeeze and twist, you can make it stand up again. You can make the arms move.

Technically. Oh, baby! You guys nasty. I like it. Does anyone have a wet nap? I'm going to take off running after the horses to see if I can catch up with them. Okay.

Please check on Water Closet. Can I save? Is this a dead horse or can it be revived? You can go ahead and make a medicine check if you want to. I'll take a medicine check for my horse. Does it have Jester's Shield on it? That one.

Did we leave the shield? No, the shield was strapped to one of the horses. My medicine check is nine. You're not sure, but it looks dire. Can I check? Sure, if you want to go ahead and step up to the horse. Make a medicine check. 13?

13, unless this horse gets some serious treatment, it's done. It's suffering, put it down. I take my axe and I slam it down on its neck. Instantly, mercy killed. Yay. Nott, you do manage to catch up to the other horses. They didn't go full sprint into infinity.

They slowed down once they got a safe distance from the action, managed to recover two of them. There's still your horse by the house. You still have three horses. Check water closet. John Crapper and Toilet. Ooh, check water closet. I think we're dead. Water closet's dead.

Oh, it's very dead. Well, then go check. Water closet is possibly new pocket jerky at this point. All right, we can go check the water closet, I guess. Make a medicine check as you approach. That would be a three. Water closet looks not ready, or not long for this world.

Going to try to cut out the tongue. Maybe that's something I could eat later. Okay. Water closet is something I could eat later. Okay. Water Closet is still technically holding onto life. Yeah. I don't know that. No? So Water Closet's final horrible moment is all of its riders cutting its tongue out.

Why do you hang out with this guy, lady? He came with us when they were a package deal. Why do you hang out with her? She is extremely useful. At cutting out horse tongues? Among other things, yeah. That's the most fucked up shit I've ever seen, and I grew up in Shadycreek Run. So we have three horses, and there's five of us. Correct. grew up in Shady Creek Run.

So we have three horses and there's five of us. Correct. Can we double up? It's possible. Nott doubles up with Caleb. Well, maybe the two smalls should be. I'm not going on a horse with her. What, I've bonded with its essence. I'm not going on a horse with her.

Make a ride with me, this is not a problem. If you want. Yeah, that's fine. I'm not going on a horse with her. Make the ride with me, this is not a problem. If you want. Yeah, that's fine. I've got the booze. You know, for the first time in my life, I'm willing to sacrifice booze. Scared straight.

Scared straight. You should take that to the road. You're already taking a good hard look at your decisions, this is good. As you guys begin to try and work out your arrangements on the horses, unfortunately, due to the heavy nature of your armor and the broad form and heavy body of Keg,

it looks like you won't be able to fit Keg and one other individual on a horse. But there are other combinations that might work. Nott, team up with Caleb. I'll ride with you, then. You've got your own horse. Hey. Can me and Molly team up?

You and Molly can do it, yeah. Okay. Leather armor. Wait, we have three swords? Yeah, okay. Keg's about as dense as two of you, so. That's fair. So I noticed back there that you were using

your hands and weapons to fight things, so you're not like a healer. You cracked the case, my man. Truly nothing escapes your stupid observation. You don't have any potions of healing or anything that could maybe heal someone if anyone needing healing? Who needs healing? No one now, but in the future. Well, I mean.

It's a frequent occurrence for us. I'm going to go back to that cabin and take a short rest for a minute. Do any of us have any potions? I have a potion. I have a potion. I start to look to see what Jester's got inside the haversack, other than the dodecahedron and autent. Unless I am mistaken. She had a greater healing potion, however,

I don't know if she had that on her or kept it in the sack. She has a feast in there, I think. I'm going to go ahead and check one element of this, because it will. I think we have her notebook in the locker. Do you want me to go look at the locker? Her notebook might even be. No, I felt around.

Oh, it might be in the locker. What time is it now? On the break. After all the bug battling? The battle was pretty quick. You still have probably another hour and a half, two hours before sundown. Oh, daylight?

Is there anything to harvest from those bugs? Well, you want to go ahead and take a shot of trying? Did the light just change in here? Yeah. It was in battle mode, did you notice? Ooh! Look at the fancy. Whoa, the light is moving.

New toys. New toys. Aw. Aw. I've wanted to have a setup like that since high school. And now I can. 12. 12? I've wanted to have a setup like that since high school. And now I can. 12. 12? Yeah.

You've never encountered these creatures, you don't have really much of an understanding of their anatomy beyond the experience you had of extracting the aspects from them, which actually would probably give you a little better idea of their physicality in some places. You know that, because you looked at their constitution and dexterity, I'll say that you know that the tendons

and some of the muscle sinew that they use on the inside of their body is very strong and very tight. It can be used as cording. It can be used for anything that would involve a very, very strong piece of cord or rope. What about their acidic venom situation? Like their venom sacs. Yeah, Caleb comes up behind.

I mean, that could possibly be harvested. It's a dangerous process, you can certainly try. Oh, like I might die trying? Well, I don't know, you can certainly try. It's trying to carefully remove a giant sac of natural acid from a creature's body. So, want to roll the dice? You feeling lucky?

Yeah. Punk. Hold on. Here. Just the dodecahedron. Okay. All right. So you have to pull it out. You have to remove it.

I did. So you watch as they pull this pack out, and Beau, reaching in, pulls out this strange 12-sided construction. It looks like it's an opaque crystal, almost, I want to say like a marble-type color. It's grayish and it's undulating with some sort of slight pulsing light,

like a faint heartbeat, with these golden handles affixed to it. As she pulls it out and begins to focus on it, there's this moment of distant meditation before she comes back with a breath and places it back in. It's a strange sight. Yelar doesn't freak as shit.

Made by gnomes. Okay. So I want you to, do you have a blade to harvest? I'm going to, huh? You have a blade to harvest? Uh. I have a dagger. I do have a dagger.

And I should have the globules of light to float around the corpse. And I put my goggles on, safety first. That's very bright. Super bright. Super bright right now. Pull up the hood and I buckle myself up and take my scar from around my waist

and tie it around me for a face mask. You can do this, and I walk 20 feet back. Okay. I will say, because of your understanding of its body, from extracting the aspects of it, do you wish to utilize nature or medicine for this roll?

Giving you the choice. Medicine. All right, so. It's higher. Oh my god. Medicine. Let's go ahead and make a check. Just a straight check. Just a straight check. Skill check with medicine bonus, whatever that may be.

Natural 20. Whoa! Finally. Yeah, yeah. I'm back! You've seen Beau be pretty precise in combat and pinpointing the weak elements of an opponent's body. This is almost poetry, the surgical precision in which Beauregard

takes the dagger and cuts, pulls, rips, pulls and lifts, tucks, finds, cuts, cuts, cuts, removes, and within a matter of about a minute, minute and a half, there is a sack about the size of a basketball. The ends have been tied off and it feels like a water balloon. Keg is aroused. All right. Got the sack. Now what? Do you have any more flasks or anything to put it in? I have a couple of empty vials, but they're small. I've worked with chemicals before I could try to put this acid in the vials and but they're small. I've worked with chemicals before I could try to put this acid in the vials and stopper them.

If we poke a little tube or something, a straw, a bamboo straw, spit it in there? Sure. Go down? I don't know. Would three vials of acid be useful to us? I think it would be useful to you, for sure. Sure, sure. All right, well, I'll try to make a little needle prick in the bladder and try to pour them into these vials that I got from the gentleman.

Can I help with my natural 20? Make a dexterity check, just a straight dexterity check. Okay. Okay. That's 16. That's good. You do not just puncture a balloon while looking directly at it. So you manage to find one of the areas that taper within this oregon, whatever it is that was

removed, and manage to siphon it off in a way where you can fill the rest of your vials, however many empty vials you have. Three from the gentleman. Yeah. So you have three vials of acid now. Okay. Great, would you like one? I mean, you did this. I think they're better to be used on your bolts

and things like that. I don't know how I would put it on there. Can't he, like? Chuck it a full thing? It's more of a tossed weapon or used to dissolve things. All right, I'll take one. Molly, do you want some acid? Do you want to drop some acid? I feel like if you give it to me, I'm just going to end up dropping it, and it's not really going to be that useful.

Caleb, do you want? You are far more dexterous than I am. I'll give you two and I'll keep one, since I already have one that I made. You didn't ask me if I wanted some acid. Are you dexterous? Yeah. Show us. I already have one that I made. You didn't ask me if I wanted some acid. Are you dexterous? Yeah. Show us.

15. I do a backflip. All right. That's not a bad extra, fuck it. I'd say she earned one, yeah? All right, here you go. Thank you. Are we friends again? Were we ever?

All right, so. I'm very happy. So you guys have taken a short time, it's taken about a half an hour or so for you to go through this process of extracting that and carefully filling these vials and discussing amongst yourselves who would get what. You have about an hour until dusk hits. I say we just camp at the house at this point. I need rest, and we have not going to get

much further. You guys fine with that? Short rest, you said? I say we just wake up early. It's going to be dusk in less than an hour. That house feels a little exposed to me. Plus all the weird buggy guys were around there. If there were more, they would come back. I'm sorry, did we get any horses? Just enough to fit us all on condensed? And what time is this, sorry?

About an hour till dusk. Oh, well we could make some more headway on the road and then go at full dark. We could camp at full dark. Wherever we happen to find ourselves. Are we within the forest, like within range of the forest? Yes, this area about here is where the forest begins, and that was where you began your confrontation.

So you're right on the edge of the forest. I think we should continue to make time as well. Okay. Can I climb a tree a little bit, and do I see anything on the horizon and where we're going, like another tree clearing that looks like it might be up ahead? Go ahead and make an athletics check.

Athletics? Yes. 24. Jesus. Rolled an 18. Like a monkey that was raised in the jungle, you watch Beauregard just leap from branch to bough, effortlessly diving through this forest. Peg is aroused. Yeah, whatever you cast on me, Caleb,

it's just like, I feel so good. It's gone. That's gone. But it's lingering effects, you know? I'm in the afterglow. The afterglow of haste. It was just tea, we just gave you tea to smoke, it wasn't really... Herbal tea, man, it's chamomile tea.

So relaxed. So you make it up into the canopy, make a perception check. Yeah. 17. 17. Even at the tallest tree, most around you, all you can see are other trees of varying heights. Looking in the northeast direction, beyond where you just came from, you can see the house. You can see bits of natural rock that maybe had just either been left by some long ago volcanic detonation in the distance or were pushed up through the ground

by some sort of tectonic movement, you're not sure. But you see elements of stone that have broken through bits of the grass and open fields, just part of the natural fields here. You haven't actually traveled this far north, so it's unfamiliar topography to you. You only heard about it, but it's just interesting to see that the further north you get, the more rocky the terrain

seems to get in the direction you're traveling. You do see far in the distance what looks to be, it could possibly be the road that you're eventually getting to, but it just weighs off to get to that direction. So. I climb back down. I see we gather some branches, some scrap wood for firewood, because this might be the only forest we come across in a while. See as far as we can get, maybe we can hide under a

rock for shelter or something. I still got my tent, so sure. Shovel in the haversack, too. All right. You guys continue for the next hour or so, skirting along the forest. Gathered some stuff. As they leave, Caleb scooches Frumpkin on the head and says, you know, she always forgets about you.

But I do not. Such a quiet bird. I'm used to very loud birds. You gather some kindling, get back to your three horses and your comparatively uncomfortable riding arrangement, and continue on for another hour on the outside of the forest before the sun does eventually vanish. The graying sky is getting darker and darker.

The faint bits of orange that you see poke through. It's not a beautiful sunset. You only catch the very faint hues that manage to push through the gloom, but the sky grows dark enough to the point where you think you should set up camp. Are you setting up camp on the edge of the forest, on the inside of the forest, on the outside of the forest? What's your preference?

Off inside, I think. I think inside as well. Okay. You guys go ahead and set up camp. Who's keeping first watch? I will. I'll also do first watch, and I will begin it by putting out the silver thread around the group. Do you guys want to both individually roll perception, or one aid the other? thread around the group. Do you guys want to both individually roll perception or one aid the other with a help action? Help action!

Individual. Individual. Because I can't decide. Go for it. Natural 20. Better than my 16. Plus? Oh, plus three, 23. All righty.

Everyone's settling in, begins to find their initial portions of rest. You guys have your small fire there on the edge. Molly, you glance off deeper into the forest, and your eyes, even at this distance, catch what looks to be a faint glimmer of matching flame. You see a faint bit of firelight sparkling maybe about 200 feet deeper into the forest.

There's another campfire. How far away? 200 feet, give or take. Do you want to send a bird, maybe? I would send one of two things. One is a little friend here, or... She's sleeping. Or I lose the peregrine and go back to something else,

a little less noticeable. I'd say go ahead. I figure if they were meaning us any harm, they wouldn't set a fire. And it's dark out now, yeah? It is dark, yeah. It's probably pushing 10 o'clock, 1030. I would know if an owl, owls can see in the dark.

Owls are nocturnal, yes. You would know that. Yeah, okay. Okay. Owls can see in the dark? Owls are nocturnal, yes. You would know that. Yeah, okay. Okay, I'm going to change Frumpkin again out of Peregrine into an owl. I will mark that off in my supplies. I've got one more after this that I can do.

Okay. Can we get a long rest? And no, I mean, I need incense, but anyway. Do you want to be on long rests? Yeah, so don't mark that yet. Yeah. I send Frumpkin tree to tree in that direction, and maybe 20 feet and wait a moment, and then another 20 feet.

Okay, so as Frumpkin begins to crawl through the forest in the direction of the fire, we're going to go and take a break. Oh, wait, no, what? Oh, oh. Yeah, it's almost nine o'clock, so we're going to take a break. Okay.

So we'll be back here in a few minutes. Thank you for coming along with us for this bit so far. We'll be back to continue from where we left off there. We do have our first giveaway at our first break in the new studio. Yay! There are some changes and such, so reminding you guys that moving forward,

we'll be doing the Wyrmwood giveaway at the Critical Role Twitch chat, so you need to head to twitch.tv slash Critical Role for the break to enter. If you're watching on alpha or Geek & Sundry, just switch over and you can head on back over when you're done. Right now, the offer, once again, only stands for people in the U.S. and Canada, excluding Quebec,

because of weird giveaway rules and laws. However, tonight's prize is a Wyrmwood Cherry Dice Tower with this fantastic cartography burned in of maps designed by our fantastic Devon Rue, who you may recognize who's done the map of the Gwendolyn Empire that we have here, as well as other amazing bits, and also designed the compass rose on our map.

She's amazing, her work's amazing, and while this isn't available with Wyrmwood yet, keep an eye out because cool stuff like this might be showing up more often. This will be given away to some lucky person at the break. Need to go into the Critical Role Twitch chat and enter the, only one time, enter the key phrase, keg stand.

LAURA and SAM and LAURA, AABRIA, and SAM, So enter it once. Magnets, it's magic. So enter it once, more than once, you'll be disqualified, and we'll announce the winner here at the end of the break. So we'll see you here in a few minutes. That's cute. Wait, which chat? Critical Role. Okay, cool. You said that, right?

I did, like, twice. All righty. Break time, guys. Let's go. We interrupt this Critical Role Podcast Network broadcast to bring you news of dangerous treasures that lie sealed within the Critical Role shops. Only the heartiest of adventurers should dare seek them out. In all seriousness, though, I'm Matthew Mercer, and we've made some very cool things that we really like and hope you will, too. If you'd like to support the show,

please consider visiting any of our Critical Role online shops through the shop tab at critrole.com and see if anything catches your eye. Okay, back to the show. Welcome back, everybody. So, we have our winner of our giveaway for this fantastic Devon Rue map-etched dice tower by Wyrmwood. It is Gotta Be KD-18. It is Gotta Be KD-18.

Congratulations, Gotta Be KD-18. You are the winner. The noble will get your contact information and we'll get this sent out to you ASAP. But well done! You've won the first giveaway in the new studio. Excited for you to try it out. It's quite delightful.

All righty. So, bringing us back into where we left off, Frumpkin wanders off through the darkened forest at night. Oh my god, he's an owl now! One, two, three! Mr. Owl was a dick. It was a dick move. Yeah, it really was. One, two, three, fuck you.

As Frumpkin begins to use his What the fuck was that, Matt? Not the birch. There was an owl that just hooted on the soundtrack. Yeah. We're in a forest in that guy. So as Frumpkin makes his way through the dark tree bottoms, eventually coming upon,

I'm sure this would be a more creepy setting for this, I think. That's better. Frumpkin slowly comes upon the warmth of this distant fire, closer and closer until coming around the corner, seeing what looks to be a small fire heating a cauldron of some kind,

some metal bowl, at which a bit of steam is rising off of whatever liquid is in the interior. You see a small, I'll say a small and elderly woman, it looks like, in darker, tattered clothing that drapes off of the body, hunched, but tall, very tall, like six and a half feet tall at a hunch. Make a perception check for Frumpkin, please.

At this distance, with disadvantage. With disadvantage? Yes. Okay, a perception, you said? 14. Okay. You see the skin of this woman is a faint gray color, almost like a gray-blue tint. The hair is this matted mess of tangled white and gray

that is pulled back and tied behind the head where it cascades over the shoulders. The ears are long and pointed out to the sides a bit. The nose is a bit wide and pressed up into the face. You see as she is going back and forth from this little hovel that's on the opposite side that's built between two trees, a large, thick one or another

that seems to have fallen and come to rest at an angle next to it. In that small cranny between the two trees, you can see this little hut built of thatch and sticks and rope to construct this little hut built of thatch and sticks and rope to construct this little home. It's almost like an arch that's holding it up. Near the ground of this cauldron, you see what looks to be a child of some kind

that is sitting on the ground, holding knees to its chest. Looks to be a boy. Knees to chest? Yes. Okay. And she's paying him a mind at the moment? At the moment, no. It looks like she's going to and from this little homestead

and putting things into this cauldron. Okay, so I've just whispered in fragments what I saw through Frumpkin's eyes the whole time. But I'm still looking and I can't hear anybody. Hey. fragments, what I saw through Frumpkin's eyes the whole time. But I'm still looking, and I can't hear anybody. Do you have any awake? I think that... Just that. Oh, right, yes, I would have been holding on to Molly.

This is reminding me of stories that my mother told me when I was very young. Not good ones, things to scare me into following the rules. I come out of it. There are... Like a child? And a woman, or not. It does have a vibration, doesn't it?

I'm not at my best right now. And if they're human, even if they're friendly, I'm not the first face you'd want to see. Yeah, yeah. Quickly, to think here, because everyone else is sleeping, and that did not look good for that little boy, but then it doesn't really help us with what we're doing, but then the child, what to do?

You have a friendly owl. What to do? That's what I was just, I go back into Frumpkin to see what's going on. Okay. You watch now as the woman takes what looks to be a small clay cup and dips it into this cauldron

and pulls out this steaming mass of liquid that she's contained within it, turns to the child and walks over and kneels down beside, places long fingers, long shoulder, and hands the cup to the child. The child takes it, looking at her, and slowly sips from it, burns the mouth a little bit. I swat at Molly and say,

Wake the others, wake the others. I start quietly waking. Stop slapping me. What? I somehow woke everyone at the exact same time. It's just one of my many powers. You're all spooning. Like, left hand, right hand, tail,

all working at once. We've got a bit of a situation outside. Wait, wait, shit. It's going to require some delicacy. Is Caleb gone? Caleb's dead, it's all over. Oh! You're looking at him. delicacy. Is Caleb gone? Caleb's dead. It's all over. No! You're looking at him.

Okay, I didn't know if it was a phantom or something. What's going on? There's a boy, there's an old woman, it's got a... I'm not sure, but I think there's a young child that's in danger there. We seem to care about the bird child. Maybe we care about this one, I don't know. Of course. Why don't you accept? It's a baby. Of course. Why do we give a pet?

It's a baby. Fuck. We just go up and ask him. Get out, right now. What's the woman look like? I'm going to groggily stumble over, put on my goggles as I start stumbling towards the light. That flesh looked dead.

She did not look natural. I'm going to stay 30 feet behind and try and stealth. Okay, so Beauregard, you're leading up? Yeah, I'm just going to walk in like, it's probably nothing. I got to pee anyway. So, not stealthing. Maybe you should not go first.

Okay, no, I'll stealth a little bit. Roll a stealth check, Beau. Okay. Yeah, no, that was almost good. That was almost good. 11. Okay. Who else is following Beau? I'm going to not follow, but go off to the side and try to go around the other way. Stealth check from you, Nott.

We have not had a short rest yet, have we? Nope. Okay. 16. A short rest I thought we did back at the house. A short rest, you didn't call it out. He was on first dodge. A short rest I thought we did back at the house. A short rest, you didn't call it out. But he was on first watch.

I get to use Arcane Recovery in my head because of the conversation that was happening. I'll allow a short rest before you guys went to bed. Definitely. I'll allow it. 16. Thank you, man. All right. So the two of you have branched off and are stealthing, you think. What are you doing, Caleb?

I wanted to go with Nott about 20 feet behind and cast Major Armor as I go. Okay, and what's your stealth check? It is a big 10. Okay. What are you doing, Keg? I pick up my battleaxe and there's a little medallion hanging from the bottom of it and I look at it and I go, goddammit, and I try to stealth after them. Natural 20. You have disadvantage, however, in your armor.

Natural 20. Whoa! What? That guy never does that for me. We did this the last time. We're not human. The anti-Wheaton has been found. You can't come back. This is bullshit. This is the last time! We're not human! The anti-Wheaton has been found. You can't come back! You can never touch Wil Wheaton.

You guys will cancel each other out like the bad guy in Time Cop. You'll just. Oh my god. Okay. Strangely, the stealthiest of all of you is the dwarfen plate armor. Amazing.

Amazing. Right? It's lubricated with all the blood of our enemies. Amazing. Amazing. Right? It's lubricated with all the blood of our enemies. Exactly. All right, and Molly, you're staying 30 feet back. I'm staying 30 feet back and attempting a stealth check. Yeah. That's cocked.

That's better, that's a nine, 10, 12. 12, okay. As you all slowly begin to approach this fire, seeing the shapes and the figures that were described by Caleb previously, Beau, you step forward and your foot catches an underroot and you stumble for a moment and you hear the scrambling of her arms

across the bottom of the forest floor, the moving and shifting of leaves and branches, and the old woman looks up in that direction and looks back at you, immediately making eye contact with you about 20 feet away, 30 feet away. Her arms immediately jump up in your direction, and she begins to shout,

You will not take any more of us. I will sooner die. I reach back out to her and I go, Yes, right, we are so going to die. I'm with you. Make a wisdom saving throw. Saving throw? Yes.

15. 15, okay. You feel some sort of magical force suddenly penetrate your mind, and this sparkle of colors begin to spray in front of your face that completely distract you and obscure your vision momentarily, but you blink out of it and find the effect drift off of your brain. The old woman goes and reaches down and puts herself in front of the boy between you and the child. Uh. Yeah, I'm not bad.

I'm not one of the bad guys that you were definitely talking about that I'm aware of, right? What bad guys are you talking about? Make a persuasion check. Okay. Ooh, that's crazy. In the middle of nowhere.

Ooh, key, ooh, key, ooh, key, ooh, key. 18. Her immediate tension drops slightly. She's still maintaining a very defensive position in front of the child. One hand is still up, but it seems that she's pulled back a bit from the aggressive stance she was previously in.

She lifts her face a bit. You can see more of her expression in the light as the hair pulls away as she lifts her chin. You can see the face is humanoid, but with a wider nose. The skin is grayish, almost blue tint with bits of, looks like a soft fur. It takes you a second to recognize

where you've seen these features before. This appears to be the same type of race that Pumat Sol is. It's a firbolg. It is a firbolg. Amazing. You can see there's a firbolg. It is a firbolg. Amazing. You can see there's a series of necklaces. It looks to be bones and rocks and stones that have been polished that dangle around her neck

as adornments and trinkets. A few bird skulls hanging on it as well. The child also, you see, is a young firbolg as well. Knees tucked against his chest. You see the child looks scraped up and bruised and appears to have been injured. I say, this bad guy's kidnapping kids, right?

That's scary stuff, trying to protect your son. Not my son, but we have lost a few, yes. Who, um. Looks past you for a second at Molly, who's not being stealthy either. How many are you? One, two, three, four, five. Currently five. Five.

But just call us the nine. The Mighty Nein. Very well. Here, yeah. M9? Oh, I'm just walking out at this point. I'll slowly emerge from the shadows. Okay.

I'm staying in the forest. Okay. I'm staying in the forest. Okay. I apologize, I was, I've been on edge for a number of days. You seem to know of these people, or have heard of them at least. We've lost a few recently. I'm sorry, I am Jamda. I'm a healer in my aged years for the Gui Tao Clan.

We are a smaller number and now yet smaller still. The Wataia Clan? Guai Tao. Guai Tao. G-U-I-A-T-A-O. Guatia Clan? Guaitao. Guaitao. G-U-I-A-T-A-O. Guaitao Clan. This little one is Oumbo.

He is awake now, which is good fortune. I've been trying to bring him back to health for a couple of days. You say he's not your son, but part of your clan? I guess he was under my care now. Is the whole clan wiped out? Who's left?

The woman, Jumda, looks around for a second and takes a deep breath. Three days back, the clan was in celebration for the coming of age of young Dume. A roasted boar was prepared and the 20 of us were dancing around the fire when the murderers came. Slutofa andollya with their arrows as they danced together. Others fought. Fennys died protecting me, and I managed to grab Hombor here

as he had been beaten within an inch of his life to unconsciousness. We fled, but I watched as they grabbed others in nets, pulling them away as they screamed and yet made no noise. You know exactly who and what she's talking about. The methods are very familiar. When they left, I returned to nurse those I could back to health.

Nila, by some luck, was off when the attack happened. She returned to find her love and child taken. Nila went off to find them alone. I begged her to stay, or she'd join their fate, but it's impossible to stop a mother when the child is in danger, so I... I fear for her life, but I understand her drive. So here I am, here he is,

and a few survivors care, too, but remains of our village a ways back that direction, and she points deeper into the forest. So, you know my story. What's yours? Our other half of our party members were taken from us in the middle of the night

just last night. Seems very similar ways, considering neither of the rest of us heard anything. Just woke up and they were gone. You were lucky. We'll see. Had you been awake, you might have had the urge or instinct to defend them.

Well, we're making our way to see if something can be done. Yeah. You're as brave as Nila. Nila? She's the one going after them? She was, I don't know where she is or if she's fed well. If they found her, I think she overestimates

her capability. What was her son's name? Her son was Dua. Can I do an insight check, just to make sure that she's telling the truth? You may. Yeah. 15? 15.

Oh! Whispers? Whispers! Whispers! Guys, D&D Beyond is a wonderful platform in which you can organize your statistics and your equipment. They've just recently done a revamp of their layout. Liam, how do you like it? I like it. It feels like I'm looking at the paper. And it's customizable. It's customizable. I haven't customized mine yet.

Are we talking about D&D Beyond? Always. Nice. Yes, Keg, we are. I heard it's one of the Sims. Well, if we indeed have an enemy in common, you are welcome to stay with us. I, and she glances across you,

I can perhaps maybe tend to some of your wounds. We have tea that's ready. It may help you in your journey ahead. I genuinely don't know how to say no to tea. You couldn't bring a horse back from the dead, could you? Do you know how far your ability's stretched? I'm afraid that is beyond my capability. Well, you can't kill a dead horse.

Waterclaws, it's gone forever. Yes. You saved our lives, though. You know, downtrodden stuff. Bastard. Keag comes out from the forest. Oh, I forgot you were with us. Thanks a lot, Nott. What are we doing here? These people have suffered the same fate that our people.

Are we going to help every single person we see along this road? We're going after the same people that have affected. We were going to camp back there, but instead we're going to camp over there. That's Caleb. He always stands about 20 feet back. At least. Well, if there are more of you,

you're welcome as well. I do not know if I have enough tea for everyone, if there's more, but. I'm feeling all right, but. It's just the five nines. So you're just offering us a place to stay. You don't want anything out of this? No.

All right. Some people are just good. Some people make tea. I'm going to head in. All right. Can you do anything about this acid burn? Then I sit down next to her. I see that you have encountered

some of the Ankh-Higg variety. Oh, they're called Ankh-Higs, you guys. Related to you? No, not. Keep trying, little detective. You'll get it one day. The subject seems to be exhibiting signs of distress, or at least annoyance.

Annoyance. So as you gather over to this space, it's a nice, lived-in space. You get the sense this is the home for this medicine woman who doesn't live directly with the rest of the village. But she inspects your wounds, has some balms and natural remedies

to help prevent infection. The tea, while it is not necessarily delicious by any means, it is very herbal and medicinal. It does actually fill you with a sense of rest and relief, and what restlessness you may have been struggling with through a night's rest is absolved. Sleepyhead. Chamomile.

Chamomile tea. So as you guys manage to stay here for the evening, you get the benefits of a long rest. All right. You come to consciousness now in the morning day, which is a little more peaceful. I have cards, we could have played cards. You awaken, you see over by the fire,

the little boy, Oumbo, is sitting there currently with these two small wooden pikes that are jammed into the side, and it looks to be some sort of squirrel-like critters that are hanging on them that are put towards the fire cooking. As you awaken, Oumbo turns and smiles, doesn't say anything, but looks over and inspects them and then brings them back and hands them out to you. It's breakfast. I will definitely take some. I'll take one, yes, thank you. You understand what I am saying?

Mm-hmm. Do you speak? Is his ward awake? You don't see her at the moment. Okay, but you do hear a bit of rustling in the actual little hovel in the tree archway. Can I make a perception check just around to make sure everything's copacetic? You can. 16. 16. You notice that the horses have actually been brought closer.

They've been hitched together to one of the local stumps to the circle here, and it seems that in your rest, your very deep rest through the evening, a lot of things have been tended to and taken care of in your presence. We got turndown service here. As part of your long rest and the tea which you took in for the evening,

you do have advantage on perception checks for the next eight hours. Oh! I would say that I bring Frumpkin, without saying a word, just telepathically, I have Frumpkin come down in front of the child and do a little owl nonsensical shimmy dance on the ground just for 10 seconds to catch his attention

and then have Frumpkin flutter up and land on his head and gently, like, find purchase and sit. Okay, he freezes on the arrival. I smile. And seems to smile again, looking at you, looking up at Frumpkin. Just stays frozen in place. At which point, the doorway opens from the hut,

and Jum'na emerges with what looks to be a small pouch of some kind, steps up to the rest of you. I see you have awoken. I know you'll be on your way shortly, but maybe this would help. She pulls back the top of the leather pack and reaches in and pulls out

what looks to be a cluster of moss that has been dried and holds it out to whoever's closest or wishes to take it. Mollymauk will take that. Always. What does it do? Should you find yourself in a wounded state,

this should help you with some rapid recovery of the wounds. Essentially, it acts as a greater healing potion, but it needs to be administered, it takes a minute to administer, so it's a non-combat scenario. Do you smoke it? That's my question. No, it is crumbled and then ingested.

You can also put some in the actual wounds if you like, but it is meant for ingestion. See? People are just nice sometimes. Never in my experience. Probably sometimes. Do you know which way this friend of yours was heading to find them? It was just north on the path, I suppose.

Just north is what I know, north, northeast. We'll see what we can do. If you find her in whatever state you find her, if it's not a good state, will you promise me to at least bring her back so we can give her a proper burial? The same part of my deal. If it's possible, we'll see what we can do. That's all I can ask. All things being equal.

Figure it out. Yep. Anyway, I thank you, Omba thanks you. And, uh... A little look at the kid. Is he freaked out by the way I look? No, not at all. I'm going to go down and try something.

Okay, he does have a giant owl on his shoulder and is currently preoccupied with the owl. I'm going to try this. I haven't tried this yet. I'm going to hold up the moon card. I'm going to try and do a sleight of hand trick and flip it to one of my little moon trinkets, moon baubles. Ooh, make a sleight of hand trick.

Let's go. This will be the most hilarious natural one. Eight. Eight? Okay. It happens, but the trick is very visible, what she did, and the kid still seems amused. Give him the bobble. Smiles. Fucking ruffles feathers. Looks a bit spooked.

I give it a little scratch. Love horses? Yes, we should keep going to find our friends. Thank you both. Thank you for hopefully doing some good in a very dark world. Well, dark business at hand. Do you know someone named Pumat Sol?

It does not ring a bell. How about one of his friends, Pumat Sol, or Pumat Sol? Or Pumat Sol? I apologize, I do not. I just thought maybe they knew each other. They all know each other. Well, I don't know how many of these there are.

Me? I'm out. You know a goblin named Fugglebugle? No, I don't know any goblins. There's lots of goblins. I don't know how many. All right, all right. Point taken, point taken. As you guys gather your things, get the horses ready, Umbo approaches and gives a little wave.

He watches Jumda approach this from behind him, rests her hand on his shoulder, looks up to you and says, Please be safe. Try. Thank you. Man, normally Fjord is here to do this part. No, no, no, no, no. He's really good. Is that all right?

You did very well. You did very well. The best you ever did. Low stand. Thank you. That does feel good. I did something today. You were nearly charming. Nearly charming.

Charming and Jason? Yeah. All right. All right, we leave. As we leave, Frumpkin's head does that crazy owl thing, goes 180 and flips around and just looks as they leave. As you guys vanish into the treeline, Oumbo the Child seems transfixed by the owl's behavior

before disappearing behind the trees, and you guys find your way back to the open fields of the northern Marrow Valley. So, now back on horseback, what pace are you traveling at? You still going at a fast pace? We shouldn't. We are well rested. Yeah, why not?

We've already lost two of our horses, why not lose a few more? Okay. Or the three Migos is where they go. Where's the saline bush? But now all of us know, ooh, I went back. All of us know what you already knew, which is that, yeah, still hurts,

that these people are terrible and deserve no mercy. Not the firbolgs we just met, right? You were talking about the people who kidnapped our friends. What do you think? I think the people, we're still talking about the people who kidnapped our friends. Everybody's doing so much better suddenly.

It's as if the vacuum means that other people have to now start pulling some slack there. This is nice. What? Well, you suddenly, you're being kind of charismatic, and Nott's making moralistic judgments that are in the direction of reasonable. Sure, sure.

I will say that I don't want to get hung up trying to help those people while we're in Shadyrun. Oh, you know, if we can. If we follow them. We're not altruistic by nature, either. All right. If you stumble upon one of them, maybe be like, hey, met your grandma.

Some days it's not hard to do a good turn. But let's be clear, we're going to eliminate the problem. Cheers. Save our friends, and if we can do something extra, we do something extra. When we can. And maybe even complete our mission. I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, no, that's a big deal. That whole mission-completing thing.

Been a little distracted. Yeah. All right, let's run these bastards down, yeah? All right, are you going at a normal pace or are you going at a fast pace? Fast pace! Fast pace. At a fast pace, Matthew,

I couldn't be, I'm on horseback with Caleb, right? Mm-hmm. Could I be on the back, maybe just flipping through Jester's sketchbook? Sure. Okay, I'm going to look through the whole thing. All right. It is absurd.

There are sketches across the spectrum of silly- faced interpretations and caricatures of people you've met, of each of you. There's little notes to the Traveler throughout. You see people that you've liked in the past looking beautiful with tiny bodies. You see people that you've hated in the past getting stepped on by a poop monster. It's childish in all the delightful ways that you'd expect from Jester's capability.

Is it all drawings? Are there any notes or letters or clues to her past? I will say, Laura's not here to specify necessarily, that there are passages in common to the Traveler. What languages do you know? Common, Goblin, Halfling. There are a number of passages in the language that you don't understand, meteor passages, longer ones. If only there were a tiefling here

who possibly spoke and read the same language. A wizard who can read anything. Oh. Keeps up. Keeps up. Keep steering, Caleb. I'm looking at nudie pictures. So you carry on at a pretty good pace and you're traveling rather swiftly, though there is,

traveling at this speed, it's harder to perceive things at a distance. Thankfully, this renewed vigor from the tea that you had for the evening may help you in that endeavor as well. So who is keeping watch on the roads ahead of you? I am. All right.

Go ahead and make a perception check with advantage and minus five to whatever you do. So advantage minus five, I'm for. Correct. Minus five's a good thing. Okay, that's not good. That's a one. So that means I got a seven.

Okay then. Seven. At advantage, minus five on both the rolls. I rolled a nine and a one. So hey. Okay. So for the next eight hours or so, you guys continue on the trek on the outskirts of the Crispvale thicket, eventually coming to meet up with the Glory Run road

that heads northward to the direction of Nog'varot. You can see there's a road sign that specifically points up to Nog'varot, southward to the crossroads. Following the map and the path you've charted out, and your experience as well, you travel for quite a ways along Glory Run, and then head straight north towards the Quantum Breach.

You'll be going off into grassland and scrubland at a certain point. Off-roading. Essentially. About the eight hours hit, you have another hour or so before the sun begins to go down. You continue to push for another hour if you'd like to, and I'll take constitution saving throws.

It's up to you. If we do the one more hour. If you do the one more hour, or you could stop and set an early camp and get ready for another evening's rest. You do not spot anything along the way. It's a beautiful open field. I'm sharp.

I should always do this. Are we getting close to where you think their headquarters are? How far are we out to the sheath? Oh, you probably have maybe two days more travel before you get there. I'm down to push the other hour, but my constitution is. I'm down as well the other hour, but my constitution is.

I'm down as well. Let's do it. But on that hour, we can look for a place to rest. Yeah. It's like pushing for the next rest stop. One more, we push it one more hour. Instead of going, do we want to go at a steady pace for this last hour, or do we want to push for a fast pace? Fast equals the constitution check, right?

Well, no, you travel for another hour of additional movement, which will give you probably another six miles ahead, and then we'll see if you get a point of exhaustion. All right, let's do it. All right, so you push for the ninth hour. I need you all to make constitution. Can we look for a good camping spot?

Natural 20. Oh shit! Natural 20. Oh shit! Natural 20. Shazam. Natural 20. I don't want to hear it. Natural 19, 21. 13 total.

18. Eight. Oh no. So Caleb, you take a Point of Exhaustion. The rest of you do not. Sweet, this is my first. What happens to me? Do I die on the spot?

Disadvantage on your checks. On ability checks, that's all. And you're hangry. Yeah, you're a little bit. That's my secret, Taliesin, I'm always hangry. So as the sky grows dark, there's still gray clouds that have taken the sky overhead. The temperature is dropping significantly.

It looks like it's going to be a particularly cold night. Do you wish to continue pushing on? I want to, along the way, do we see anything that looks like a good alcove or somewhere that would be nice to stop? Make a perception check. Check. Would you have advantage on me? Yeah.

No, you still have eight. It was eight hours, and you said the eight hours was? No, you've pushed now past hour nine, so you do not have advantage. No advantage. Oh, no advantage? So six. I'll take that six with my added perception of three,

so nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. Best you can find looking around, there are a few small boulders or pieces of natural rock formations that have pushed up out of the local hills as you're moving

through this more hilly area of the northern valley. But there's no alcoves or caves that you're catching any vision of that would give you safe and out of the public eye. Does it look like if we push a little further, there's any change in terrain? That's the only way to find out. I mean, even in the far distance?

You'd travel for another hour. Yeah, that's a way to do that. Want to do one more hour and then call it? Or Owlboy. Oh, well. He's hangry. We could push it, too, I'm good. Let's send the owl.

Okay, five minute little fly ahead. Okay, make a perception check. Okay. Hold on to my horse and stop hearing everybody. Disadvantage? It doesn't matter. It's the owl, technically, it's not him. It's terrible. It's perception? Is that what it's doing?

Five. Yeah. At this distance, it looks like it's just straight, moving, rolling hills and bursts of stone. Yeah, it's getting dark out here and I'm tired. If we can find a stone for cover, maybe. Okay. I'll take watch. We'll set up a proper camp. I'll take watch with Keg.

Great. Before they go to sleep, I do the silver thread. All right. So first watch is you two. All right, do you wish to combine your perception checks for this watch or take it individually? All right. Individual.

So go ahead and roll individually. 13. 10. Okay. First watch manages to go by. You both keep a very sharp eye out in the distance. Nothing seems to catch your attention, though the night is getting quite cold,

and towards the end of your watch, snowfall begins to slowly descend upon the northern valley. It's chilly. Sure glad I have all this booze to drink to keep me warm. Wouldn't you like some? I have 200 pounds of pure muscle. I never get cold. Well, it tastes good, though, so there's that, too.

Why are you trying to cozy up to me? I'm not trying to cozy up to you. I think we got off on the wrong small feat. You mean when you bared your teeth at me like four times? I have to bare my teeth at everyone! Look at these things, they're huge. You have no choice? No, I have very thin lips, very long teeth. Some would call them fangs. It's not my fault.

When I smile, it looks like I'm trying to bite your throat off. Show me. Ooh. And I like tongue. I was eating some tongue when you saw me. Oh, I forgot about that. I thought you were coming on to me. No! Oh, god, no.

Well, you don't have to be that disgusted. You're a handsome woman, but you're a woman, right? Yes. Okay, good. Just making sure. Just because I have a five o'clock shadow. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to presume anything. All right, I'll have some booze. All right. There you go. You know it never runs out.

It doesn't? No. Special trick. So who got took? Who are you missing? Oh, that's where this conversation stops, my friend. What? I thought we were getting to know each other. Who got took? Who are you missing? Oh, that's where this conversation stops, my friend. What? I thought we were getting to know each other. That's kind of a big gun to pull out right after giving me a little bit of libation. Did you go to school? Fucking guess, detective. Do you think I went to school?

I would say no. Yeah, accurate. Did you have a happy home life growing up? I grew up in Shady Creek Run. Everyone's favorite pastime there is stabbing people. No, I didn't have a nice growing up. I'm trying to think of a topic that's less charged. Do you have a favorite sports team you like? We could talk about Iron Show.

Iron Show? I love Iron Show. Never mind. Sorry. I just thought... Yeah, I know. You're trying to be nice. Never mind. Sorry. I just thought... Yeah, I know, you're trying to be nice. No, I just thought if we knew more about your situation, it would maybe lead to clues that would help us track down or know the weaknesses of these shepherds who stole or killed your friends. If we knew the circumstances around their untimely demise.

I know the shepherds well. Were you one of them? No. I wasn't. I just know them well. Did you go to high school? No, you didn't go to school. Everyone else is snoring. They're well known. Everyone there knows them. There's no way to not know them. No. So you're not trying to chat me up as much as you are trying to siphon information? I'm doing what any good detective does, which is just lay the groundwork for the case.

So who considers you the greatest detective? Jester. Jester's one of the folks that got stolen. Together, we were a dynamic duo of mystery solving. We could solve any mystery, find any criminal mastermind, no matter how nefarious. We had all the tools, all the insights, all the instincts. It was amazing. We were a well-oiled machine, and then she was taken. And now it's just me. I'm guessing she had most of the brains of this duo.

I resent that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry your friend got taken. I'm going to try to help get her back. All right. Well, I'll try to help you get revenge on your vague past. You don't have to say it like that. I'm just not much of a sharer. Sure, sure. How about you tell me one fact about you, and I'll tell you one about me. Something you haven't told anyone. It'll be like a game, and we'll each take a shot. Shot first. Here you go.

My friend was a slave, was enslaved by them. By the shepherds. So? I'm a pretty good dancer. I thought we were doing some deep dive shit! You were asking me some deep dive questions! You're going to fucking give me the dancer shit? I didn't know! I thought we were going to start small and then build! No, because you suck the breath out of us! You hit me with the heaviest shit first off!

That's what you wanted! Of course! We're trying to sleep, for god's sakes! Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh! Oh. Oh. Well, this has been fun. Yeah, I'm up, too.

Molly, you want to take next watch? Let's take next one. Yeah, all right. All right, so with Molly and Beau taking second watch, would you mind deciding who's going to make perception checks, please? Want to both go for it? Yeah. All right, both roll.

13. Nine. Okay. As you guys go to bed, the both of you keep an eye out for the rest of the evening, for the rest of your watch at least, and seemingly uneventful. Want to gamble? I'm not much of a gambler.

You think an adjuster. No, no, I'm not. What? This is a game we used to play. What? Take my cards, put the deck down. Put a question on the deck. Whoever draws the highest card has to answer it. Wait, are these playing cards or your tarot cards?

Tarot cards when they've got numbers. You know I fucking hate those things. I know. I don't want anything to do with them. I'll throw one out there for you. What's the best lie you've ever told? The best lie I've ever told? I'll give you mine if you give me yours. Whoever gets the highest has to tell. Or whoever gets the lowest has to tell.

All right, deal. Let's roll d20s, see whose number's lower. Okay, let me flip to my backstory. Uh-huh. You can be a little vague with it. You don't have to be. I rolled very high. Natural 20. 17. Natural 20. Ooh!

17, shit. Ooh! You played yourself. I did. This one has a pretty big number on it. Shit. Best lie I've ever told. I pretended to be royalty for three weeks for a scam.

That's fascinating. What kind of scam? It was just a little while after I had gotten my consciousness sorted out, and we got into a town and figured out that we could actually get some nice digs and they were seeing if I could maybe bullshit my way through it, and it was kind of my test. So I pretended to be a reincarnated royalty from across the sea. Wow. Yeah.

That's pretty fascinating. That was a lot of fun. Do you not like knowing your past? Is that a way you can have multiple backstories? Be multiple people at once? I like knowing that because it's not there, that it doesn't matter, and it helps.

It helps knowing I don't think it matters for anybody. I don't care where anybody's from, it's nice. I certainly don't care where I'm from. I'll tell you where my big best lie is, one that I was most proud of. I pass the drink. Just because that was a pretty good one. This is usually how this rolls. Yeah. There was a politician in the town that I grew up and didn't like very much. Politician?

Didn't like his wife either. Wanted to find some dirt on him. Pretended to be a house hand for them, a little handyman. Found some dirt, figured out that they were cheating on each other and destroyed their relationships and their lives. Maybe I shouldn't be proud of that, actually. No, no, I'm very impressed, actually.

You are a good friend to have and a terrible enemy to make. Yeah. Anyway. To not quite being the worst people, cheers. Cheers. Night. Just maybe don't have a job

that relies on relationships, either. That's very fair. Public opinion. I really had it coming. Yeah. The rest of your watch goes uneventful. Leaving to Caleb for the final watch. I'll take this myself. All right.

Make a perception check. Actually, you and Frumpkin can both make separate ones. I'll let you do that. Good. Frumpkin got, I'm going to use my cat stats because I don't have owl stats handy. I should have learned. I can pull those up pretty quick. Oh, okay, good.

Cat stats. Cat stats. Oh, okay, good. Cat's Dance. Cat's Dance. All right, so that would be a plus one. 11. The unhearing of sight, so advantage on it, though, because the owl does have keen hearing and sight. 13. 13, okay.

So, well, it looks like this watch is uneventful as well. You guys had a clean night. Okay, so sitting in the silence, are any of these people awake? As I can tell. They all seem pretty asleep. Look at the lot of you. Look at these people. I should go right now. I don't know you at all. Look at this one. He's like a walking rainbow. What is this?

Why are you with him? It makes no sense. He's a circus performer. He's not going to help you. This one you told everything to, to try to get into a library. You learned nothing on your gamble. you failed, you're stupid. Smart as you are, you're stupid with this.

She could cave in everything. There's three that have been stolen. Yeah, they're nice. Two of them, one's weird. One of them tried to kill you, the other one, she's adorable, but what are you? Stupid. This one here.

What do you expect to do with her? How is she going to help you do what you want to do? She can watch your back. Yeah, I know, don't worry, but you're fine. She's as much a liability as anything else. Oh, you know you're fucking mad when you're gesticulating this much. You should just go.

You have told too much. You've told too much, you much, I'm going to go. It's time to go. Sit there for a solid five minutes. Two hours. Wait for everyone to wake up. Your watch comes to a close just as the morning light begins to crest into the sky. There's a mild break in the clouds on the eastern horizon over the Ash Keeper and the Dunrock

Mountains. You're still, for the most part, getting a mostly cloudy sky, but there are occasional bits of morning light, faintly light blues and yellows and soft white. The snowfall that has come throughout the evening and packed up the very chilly, cold night is beginning to faintly thaw, but it's still a very cold morning. As you all begin to come to consciousness and gather your things, the clouds close once more,

and you look off towards the northeast side of the valley, and you can see another darkened cloud coming with more snow and probably a less forgiving turn of weather, though it's a ways off. You can see it this far away. So you pick up your things. Horses at the ready. Do you continue your journey?

Anything you want to do before you head off? Do my morning push-up and pull-up routine. Squats. Squats. Yep, and then I'm ready to go. Okay, you have to set two horses side by side and use your staff there to get any pull-ups. Not any trees here, but you managed to pull it together. Dope as fuck. Yes, I do.

On the road? Hell! I'm a little ashamed, guys. I just figured out how we could save 30 minutes. You're just Chuck Norris-ing it between the two horses? It goes without saying, but Keg is aroused. You should do that Arnold monologue from that documentary, like, you know when I'm with my, I'm coming, and then when I'm working out, I'm coming, and always,

I'm like, oh. I'm always coming. Always pulling off, always. That's a great one. That's a neat callback, wow. Yeah. So, pushing on at what pace? I imagine continuing at your hurried pace. Yeah. Okay.

So pushing on for the remainder of this day, who is keeping watch? I'll take a round. All right. All right, go ahead and roll a perception for me, please. Minus five or? Yes, minus five, because you're driving at a fast pace. Natural 20. 23.

23, so still an 18. That's good, that's good. So about three or so hours into your journey, Molly, you look up ahead and you can see what looks to be a cluster of horses and a couple of carts heading your direction, heading southward. You're not quite there yet, but you're getting close

to where the direction you should continue on breaks off of Glory Run, but you're still on the road. But you do see a small caravan making their way southward in your direction. Should we, once they get a little closer, let's slow down and walk to the side of the road and just take a look at this. Okay. As you guys move off to the side.

Can I tell from just looking at it, the cart, if there's anything off about it? Make a perception check. Like the way that we talked about it. It's got five wheels. 17. 17. Glancing off, as you begin to approach, you begin to make out details. You do not recognize this troop,

and the cart seems like they're tarps and cloths laid over what looks to be large bundles. They're obscured from view specifically, so the contents cannot be seen, which is not what you're looking for. Okay. Yeah, they don't want anyone to see what's under the tarp, which is not the usual operation

that you've seen. But the folks that travel southward, they're dressed like normal traveling merchants, not of a wealthy regard, but those who probably bring common supplies, things from the northern side bringing it southward. It looks like they've supplied up for some sort of a trade run.

They're heading southward, and as they ride past you guys to the right side, they give a nod. Caleb, should I go check them out? The next rider gives a nod. They're not who we're looking for. Oh, okay. You can if you want to, but.

Are they suspicious? What kind of, I'm going to take a look. Not from what I can see. What kind of traitors do they look like? What are they trading in? With the perception roll you made, it's hard to see because they've covered it specifically, but you can see underneath edges and pieces

that are pushing out and the shape and places. It looks like they're bringing farming supplies. It looks like they're bringing what looks to be possibly grains and foods. It looks like things that would be easy pickings and the people that could defend it. It's a maintain a mystery and keep pushing. All right, keep going.

Okay, you continue on. All right. On this next leg of your journey, since we're riding on your perception roll off the road, your natural 20, I'll let that stand for a bit. The pace that you've been keeping on this without being kept by your cart has gained you quite a bit of ground,

and about another two hours or so into this afternoon, your eyes catch another cluster of carts facing the same direction you are. Can I make a perception check on this one? You may. 15? Yeah. It takes make a perception check on this one? You may. 15. Yeah. It takes you a moment of getting close,

and you're about, I'd say, a quarter mile back. But this quarter mile back from this troop, you can see the familiar two larger carts, one smaller. It stinks of familiarity to you. This might be them. What? What? Did we catch them, Sheldon? We did have.

Caleb, look at this picture of you in Jester's book. It's really funny. It's not the time, Nott. No? We shouldn't clue them off that we're here. No, let's slow our pace. Okay. Maybe a couple of us could flank around,

see if we can get, what's the terrain? They're moving, right? They're moving, yeah. They're moving. Can your owl see if there's a big human man. Fighter-looking guy. Bigger than an average-sized man, you mean?

Yeah, he's pretty surly, intimidating-looking, and he might have a half-elf with him. Well, we're about to get into it, yeah? I think we should wait until they start to set up camp. They've got to stop at some point. We don't even know who they are yet, though. What time is it? Think what case. It's mid-afternoon at this time,

so you've been traveling shortly after daybreak, so you're probably, it's probably three o'clock in the afternoon, you have another hour or so before you hit your eight hour mark and your horses start tiring and you start tiring. We're nowhere near Shadycreek. We're still up and out. You're a couple days' travel or so from it

at this pace. They're going to have to camp. I'll tell you what I do is I dab my thumb into my belt for a bit of sweet oil and I rub it on my bottom lip and mutter an arcane word or two and say, I suggest you tell us any details you've been holding back about these people

so that we are fully prepared. And that is a suggestion spell. Yes, it is. So I'm going to go ahead and have to ask you, Keg, to make a wisdom saving throw, please. Nine. Okay, to make a wisdom saving throw, please. Nine. That, isn't that a success? So you feel strangely, though it is out of character

for your intent, magically compelled to offer up a fair amount of information that would seem useful in the coming scenario about these individuals. Details. We love our guests, we love them. There should be five of them. The leader's name's Lorenzo. He's a human.

This is weird. Ruzza, the half-elf sorcerer. Prado, she's a little halfling. Rogue. Duelma is a half-orc druid woman. How much more do I have to tell? druid woman, and how much more do I have to tell? As much as would seem useful for this. Anything that was details that would help us

in the situation. I have to say everything. You have to say, you are compelled to say anything that is useful in what we're about to do with these people. Okay. Yes. So interpret that as you feel necessary. Okay. And if it tells you you've been holding back, that would help us

in this situation. Is Lorenzo like a fighter type? Yes. You do know that he walks with this nasty-looking glaive. Okay. It's a pull-on with a large hooked blade at the end of it that he uses as both a symbol of station and a very dangerous weapon if need be.

Okay. Gives him reach, gives him range. And, sorry, I'll tell you about that. And then, Juan, she's a human barbarian. She's not as bad as the rest of them. That's all I know. You know magic? There's a sorceress.

There's a sorceress, thank you. You're pretty sure there's a sorceress and pretty sure there's a druid. You don't know a lot about magic stuff, but you know that one of them seems to be more nature-based and the other seems to throw spells, but is cocksure and charismatic. Do you know anything about the cages

they keep their prisoners in? Are they magically enchanted or are they just cages? They won't be able, they'll look like normal trade from the outside, so it'll look like they'll be shuttling around food, innocuous items. But there's a magical obfuscation over them. And the ones with the arcane ability look like? The half-elf and the druid. The half-elf and the half-orc are the ones that are magical.

What color is the half-elf's hair? I don't remember. The half-elf is a very short, almost like a pointed pixie cut that is an ashy blonde. What was the name of the rogue again? The rogue is Prado. Prado. And...

I lied, Nott. I used to work with him. That is a pretty big matzo ball. Yeah. I'm not proud. I sort of figured. I figured everyone else figured at this point, really. I definitely deduced that from our conversation.

It's not surprising to me in the least. I take people at their word. I do, too, but people say things. I lied, too. I'm an average dancer. So are you, Mr. Steven. How bad are the terms that you're on with these people? Pretty bad. Pretty bad. That speaks well of your character.

Shot, shot, shot. Yeah. Not great. That's good. It's nice to have that. That comes to a close now, because you have fulfilled the suggestion. You guys are assholes. Yeah. We told you that. We've said that multiple times. Can we see if it's them?

Yeah, how? Do you have information you need? Can you go owl it out? Owl, owl. Yeah, lay low. I'm starting to get a plan. I plant my hand on Nott's head and go into Frumpkin's eyesight and send him up there.

Okay. Frumpkin's eyesight and send him up there. Okay. Frumpkin takes off and begins to coast at a fair enough distance to keep an eye down, make a perception check for Frumpkin with advantage. Advantage, you say? Yeah, owl still. Owl has keen sight in here.

Yeah! Owl rolls, yeah! 20. 20, okay. Frumpkin, getting a nice view from this distance, makes out that there are three carts. There's a figure at each cart. The two larger ones have two horses at each front.

The third one has one horse. There is a rider on each of the horses, or at least there's a rider on the smaller horse, and there are two that are sitting at the front of the carts that are currently holding onto the reins of the other two. You do see sitting next to the individual with the reins at the front, a very thick, muscular man, bald with tattoos across the back of his head.

This is our fucking god, this is our fucking god! With the glaive resting at the side, just staring ahead. Fucking Lorenzo! You see everyone else seems to have hoods up and are trying to keep their image obfuscated. All but Lorenzo? Lorenzo, he has a cloak on and stuff, but right now he just has the hood back.

He doesn't really see anybody catching their attention, and he seems to be enjoying the air across his hairless head. It's good, it's true, it's good. Shaved head, wind, it's good. But you see what looks to be seven figures. Wait, in the cages? There's no cages.

They don't seem to be cages. I assume you communicated all this to us. Oh, it's magical. Yeah, he usually narrates as he sees. Okay. Sure. He's very dulcet-toned. This time, yes.

Sometimes you do. Sometimes I do, lately. Don't want to get in trouble. We can't attack them like this. Why not? There's five of us. There's seven of them. We have an owl? I have a plan. It's a bit of a crazy plan. They're carrying the means of their own,

undoing if we can free whoever's in those cages. We get a lot of allies. We don't know if it's your friends. Anybody in there, I'm sure, is going to have feelings towards these people. whoever's in those cages, we get a lot of allies. We don't know if it's your friends. Anybody in there, I'm sure, is going to have feelings towards these people. Look, so we'll wait till they camp? I like waiting till they camp, coming in at night. What were you going to say, Keg?

When they take people, they break them. So if you're counting on whoever's in those cages to help, they're not going to be able to. So it's going to be five versus seven, even if we attack at night. Like mentally break them? Both. Yeah. Fuck. As far as you know, most of that process happens once they take them back. Yeah. Fuck. As far as you know, most of that process happens

once they take them back. Okay. Because usually it's a grab and run type scenario, but they do usually have them manacled, almost hogtied, manacled style and gagged. We can just get into that cage and untie them without them noticing. At night, maybe after they've camped.

And this is our best chance, because we don't want them to get to the destination, because then they're surrounded by many, many friends. Or a fortress or something. Yeah, now is the time. Should we just continue to follow them for now, or attack right now in the broad daylight? How far are they from Shadycreek?

You said two days. About two days, yeah. Two days at your pace, probably three days at theirs. Okay. We wait till the sun sets right before they go to sleep. Ooh! Do we know where they're going? We know where they are.

Why don't we ride ahead of them? Instead of an ambush? Yes. That's a damn good idea. I like that. I could be into that. That is wicked. I wonder if we could do a little bit of both.

Free the people in the cage and then ambush later. Ah, that seems distracting. Ambush free people, all one big thing. I'm sure they're not used to being attacked by people who actually know what they have. He actually had a good idea for once. I like it. Thank you.

I better get drunk then. Let's full speed blow past them, not even just nod and keep moving. On the same road, we're not even going to go around? No, we're going to wait till they... They sleep. Sleep. Yeah, we're going to follow at a distance, then they'll be down for the night, we believe,

and then just keep skirt around, yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah, I like this. This is a good plan. Well done, Nott, well done. All right. So keeping your distance behind them, pulling your pace back to just the normal, even slow pace is up to you.

Probably normal to keep pace with them. I don't need it. It's going to happen eventually. You, um. You gross, Marisha. This is true. I'm the worst. True, true, true.

About, let's say a few more hours, sundown hits, we'll say for the purposes of the narrative here, they pull off to the side of the road and begin to set up camp. You can keep an eye on this in the distance. You watch them. Keeping far enough away, making sure that you're not in eyeshot of them.

As part of that, I will say, two of you helm a stealth check to see whether or not they see you on the road behind them. Yeah, it'll be the two of you. Helming a stealth check? Why don't you look at that dough deck? Yeah, well, I already have it, I just haven't used it yet, the advantage. Well, it lasts for a day.

Do I still have it? I don't have it. I think a couple days. Oh, but I can look at it again it yet, the advantage. Well, it lasts for a day. Do I still have it? I don't have it. Oh, but I can look at it again. Of course you can. This is why I say you shouldn't just hand it over. You'll save it for the moment. Well, I thought I might have needed it on the thing. You could, yeah.

I rolled a natural 20 on my sac check. All right, so you take your Fragment of Possibility. So, go ahead and roll. Do I have to call then when I use advantage on it before? Or can I, I can roll and then choose. It's afterwards, yeah. You can roll it and then choose to. It's like a lucky, a lucky.

I love F.E. Yeah, it's 20 total. Mine's 19. All right. Okay. So, you guys stay back and watch as they pull off and make camp. With that, as the cover of Ever-Encroaching Night becomes your ally, you begin to arc around on the opposite end of the road, going behind one of the larger hill grades, which manages to hide your horses as you speed up and take off ahead.

To do this, it's going to cost you an hour of pushing past. Sure. So everyone make your constitution saving throws, please. 12. 15. Oh, that was almost a natural 20, but instead it's five.

Okay. You still have your mode, you can use it now. Yeah, you can. Yep. Are we going to rest on the other side? The Dodec Keep? Maybe. It lasts a day, but I don't know.

Just use it. Just use it. Are we going to sleep on the other side? Maybe. Probably, yeah. Oh, do I save it? I'm going to save it. All right, 18.

I don't know. If she listens around, who knows I'm going to save it. All right. 18. I don't know. This one's aroused. Who knows what's going to happen? Six. All right, so Beau and Caleb, you both take a point of exhaustion. So you're at a disadvantage on ability checks. I know.

I can do that. Yeah. Better constitution than Vax, though. Oh, interesting. All righty. So pushing forward on this, you come to a point, how far ahead of the road of them do you want to set up your ambush?

Well, we would want them to get going in the morning, right, but not immediately get ambushed, like settle into a little bit of a pace for an hour or two. It's going to be just long enough to where they're zoning out. One hour in. Yeah. 90 minutes.

Yeah, somewhere around there. A couple miles. We'll stop when we see somewhere that seems advantageous. Yeah, that's the key. We see something. Oh, it's dark now, right? Yeah, we've got night vision. We've got globules of light.

60 foot night vision. Anything that we were going to do would be near the road anyway, so. Right. So who's taking a look for a good ambushing point? Me, I'm tired. Oh. Ooh.

All right, so roll for disadvantage because it is night, even though you have night vision, it's only a short distance. And I'm perception? Correct. All right, you find a place. I mean, it's a road. So you guys have an evening to, what do you want to do for your ambush?

We need to plan the ambush. We don't have a cart to block the road with. We don't have a cleric who can hold person. What do we have? Someone with a lot of sordid history with these motherfuckers. Okay, okay. Skeletons in the closet. You could stand in the middle of the road and distract them.

Yeah. It's actually not a bad plan. We have ball bearings. I would recommend they will probably be traveling pretty close together, and I could slow them down. So maybe if, magically speaking, if you were to bait them a bit and talk to them, and then if we pick a trigger point, and I could cast Slow, and they would, most of them, some of them will make it through unscathed, but.

Would they kill you on sight if they saw you? What if we did like a red dawn thing? We dug a hole, and then we got in the hole. You had one good idea. And then we came over and we popped out of the hole, and we grabbed onto the cart and rode under it, and then, I don't know, chucked a hole in the bottom of the cart. I don't know.

Does that have to do with the dawn. I just really couldn't. First, do we have any dynamite? Oh, no. You used it on the troll and it did nothing. Let's figure out what we do have, though. We have acid. We have acid.

We have four vials of acid. Do we have enough Dispel Magic that we could reveal the cart so we could see it? We don't have, do you do? Dispel Magic to reveal the cart? Make magic go away? How would that, what? Magic, have you never seen anybody do this before?

Just make magic go away. Have you done this before, Annie? Yes, I can, but what does that have to do with the cart? They're cloaking the cages. You could maybe free the people inside the cages with your magic hand thing that you do, You could maybe free the people inside the cages with your magic hand thing that you do. And if their horses die, those carts aren't going anywhere. Ooh, we could just kill all the horses.

And then they're stuck. We only have a split second to, you want to try to get these people out immediately, that's what you're saying, yeah? If they're out, they're helping us. Horses aren't a big threat. I would rather focus on the people. But if they kill the horses, the cart can't leave.

Yeah, but if we don't kill the people, then they could kill us. That's fair, too, but they could try and run. These seem like people who are confident in themselves. They don't run. It was two carts, you said? Three carts, two larger ones and one smaller. We could just ambush the last one.

I couldn't tell from the aerial view which one, they were all hidden, right? Do they drug their prisoners? Yeah, all you saw was just goods in the back of them. They tie them up and gag them. They don't drug them. Do you have anything we can use? I have an axe and a hammer

and three javelin. One last question, are these carts, how secure are these carts, or do they just trust that nobody's going to get out of the hogtie? They're in cages. It's cage, cage, cage, it's not wooden bottom, wooden top, it's with bars, there's no weak point to these.

You haven't inspected them for a weak point, you're not the brightest bulb in the shed, necessarily, when it comes to these things. They're cages, they're made mostly of metal, and they seem to hold. They got locks. So as long as we can pick some locks and tie some ropes. I think the main,

the main person to worry about, so first of all, Prado is the lookout. So if he, disabling him maybe, if you guys are trying to be stealthy, would be helpful, because he's got. We guys. We guys? You're part of the team now, too. We guys. Gentle with it.

We guys. Duelma's the creepiest and the craziest. She's the half-orc. Druid. Yeah. She's pretty gnarly. I mean, they're all pretty awful, to be honest. What's our primary goal? Just to stop them and prevent them from fleeing? If we're doing this now, we have to kill them. Yeah, so we have to stop the path, right? We have to block them from escape. How do we do that? Do we fell a tree? Can we fell a tree? That is a good giveaway, though. and I block them from escape. How do we do that? Do we fell a tree? Can we fell a tree?

That is a good giveaway, though. Honestly, once the combat starts, especially if you've got fireballs, we can just make sure those horses are toast. What can you guys do? Keeping an eye on the area as you're having this conversation, you glance around, there's an area not too far ahead

that you can just see a little bit of the moonlight coming and breaking through the clouds. The snow has not quite far ahead. You can just see a little bit of the moonlight coming, breaking through the clouds. The snow has not quite arrived yet. The snow. The snow. But you can see there are these two small hills that flank the sides of the road not far ahead, where you can see there are some boulders that protrude. It looks like there's a tree stunk,

a tree stump, and another old rotted tree that's sitting on another one. We could fell the tree right on them as they come by. It's not a very big tree. If it were to fall, it would just hit the side of the hill and be on the side of the road. At the very least. How rocky are the hills that are in between?

Can we trigger a rock slide? No, they're not very high. They're maybe seven, 10 feet tall at the highest. And it looks like there's been some erosion on the sides where they've just slipped on certain edges. That's what we're going to get. Maybe using keg is a distraction up front. They probably wouldn't kill me on sight. Lorenzo likes to make examples of people.

So what would you guys do if I bought you time? Kill all the horses first, so they can't get away. A couple fireballs. I could teleport into one of the cages and start untying people. Ooh, that's pretty good. I could also Mage Hand and start unlocking cages. Is there a way that we could,

if we can split them up somehow, if we can? Okay. How do you propose? Not split them up necessarily, but have each of them occupied. Because the problem is certain targets between some of us. The best thing that I could do in that department is slow, hopefully, all of them down.

All of them. But if they're closely grouped. If not, I could hold one person. What if we're trying to split them up, you could just slow the last carriage further down the road and sort of, they drift apart a bit. I don't know. The way I would do that would be with a giant earthen cat paw, which would seem out of the ordinary. I see.

With you at the top of one hill, if we give you some cover, you at the other hill, if we give you some cover, giving you both some distance, the three of us getting into the middle of it. Coming out of them at all sides. I could stun somebody, and depending on how close I get, maybe Lorenzo. Try and go square off against him. Of course, all the spell slingers are good to take out early as well. I will say that the half-orc has a weird liking for Lorenzo, so just be prepared if he goes down first that she's probably going to go insane.

Maybe we focus on the druid and the sorcerer. Always take out the magic users first. And if we can get a few friends and whoever's in those cages, for all we know, that's where we've got our people. I feel like if you can hold the barbarian, keep the barbarian away, I can maybe stun Lorenzo and focus down on the rogue and the druid.

Do you have any other weapons or any other special things? Is there a way to embed a spell into the ground? I have ball bearings. Yeah? Me too. On a muddy road, probably not very useful. If they try and climb the hills towards either of you, you can have some ball bearings to help slip them back down the hill.

I have a gun! I stole a gun in the last town we were in. I stole a gun, I have a gun. I'm going to take the gun. No, you're not going to take the gun. I'm taking the gun. No, you're not. I'm taking the gun. Okay.

Dex? Both of you make a dexterity check. This is going to be a grapple, so it'd be athletics for you, and then it'd be athletics or acrobatics for you. Oh yeah, I'm screwed. I'll take acrobatics. It's only 11, though. It's fine, I'm seven. It completely pulls out of your grasp.

Does it even have anything in it? I don't know. It's fine, I'm seven. Okay. Completely pulled out of your grasp. Does that even have anything in it? I don't know. I have rope. I'm just going to go ahead and say we're probably going to die, guys. We know. I have rope, can we set some sort of tripwire trap? Sure, sure, we could do a tripwire.

Is that something you can do? You're good at finding traps, are you good at setting traps? First of all, I'm not good at finding traps, but I found a few, and the ones that I found have been rope-based. With that big swinging log thing in the middle of the outfit. I could do a tripwire for the horses. I don't know.

There's part of me that's wondering, if we hid you in the downed tree, if you could sneak in and start working on the cages before they even know there's a problem. Okay. So we fell a tree in front of the road. They stop to move it. They stop to move it. I'm in there unlocking things. We send Keg to distract. You go in. You've already stopped, though. Right, but if they try to go around it or something. It's just a tree.

Sure, sure, sure. Between two hills. Keg goes in. That's the name of this next chapter of our journey. Keg goes in to distract, Caleb kills the horses. No, you go in and try and get the people out of the cage. Yes, of course. But wait, you can't see the cages?

They're magically cloaked? You can't see them from what you know, from what Keg told you, they're magically cloaked until you get there. Until you get there, maybe you have to be close enough. You go in, try and get them out, you come out, send a signal through Caleb that you're out, and then Caleb does a big slow thing, slows them down,

we go in, punk their asses, we win, we're victorious. This is a great plan. The winning part, especially, is amazing. If we can pick the locks and untie everybody. I am not going to destroy three horses in one shot. No, we slow, slow. I thought we talked about horses as well. We don't need to slow the horses, we have a tree.

And if we want, we have a- No, we slow the people. Hang on, let me go through this again. We fell the tree, we send in Keg. Keg distracts. We send in Nott. Nott tries to pick the locks to the cages, get the people out. Nott runs. Nott sends the message to Caleb. Caleb does the slow spell on the party. We go in, we kick ass, we win, we're victorious. I just said that 30 seconds ago. Did you guys get it this time? They come upon a tree and somebody. They come upon a tree in the road and a woman that they despise now, and that is not suspicious because... We could put her under the tree. No, it is suspicious, but it's distracting.

Ah, help! I'm under a tree. Also, you hate me. If you find somebody bleeding under a tree, that's not ridiculous. Tree fell, you happen to get hit, good luck. Maybe she's just standing on the tree and she's like, I'm a badass with an axe and a hammer, and I took down this tree, now I'm going to take down you. You could put you on top of the tree if you feel like you want to have some words with these people. I'm not demanding anything, but my counterproposal is that I walk 500 yards back along the road, put the silver thread across the road so we know they're coming, spend a few hours hiding ourselves at the tops of these hills,

waiting, nobody is in the road. We wait till they are just below us, I cast Slow on them, and then we murder them. And then we win, we're victorious, same plan. Same plan. You guys work on people. I still think opening the cages is going to be a good call. Well, unless we hear a feasible plan

for doing that first. Okay, okay. I say we just kick them in the ghoulies as hard as we can from the beginning. Plan A, you do that, we try to slow them. If that fails, you're our distraction. All right. I'm going to dig a hole just in case.

This red dog thing. I'm all right for this plan. Actually, I mean, that is a good idea. Could we spend, and I'm going to go set my throat Actually, I mean, that is a good idea. Could we spend an hour? I'm going to go set my thread across the road. Could you make hiding places for all of us, Nott? Sure, on the tops of the hills, and then one for me right in the middle of the road under the earth.

Do I have a sense of what they would do? Were they to reach Shadycreek Run? If they would disband at any point, if they would stick together, what they would take? No, they would probably go, from what your experience would be, they would probably go to the hideout, to their little homestead deeper into the Savalirwood.

They would drop off their payload and celebrate, probably, for an evening of revelry, and then come back the next day to begin the process of preparing them for delivery, which involves breaking them. And presumably, there are people in Shadycreek Run who would love to see them dead. Presumably, there are also people that would

help them, they have allies. Okay. They're working for one of the tribe families, so yeah. Okay, all right. I have seen both of you vanish. So if you put in a little bit of time and elbow grease, you can either find places on these two hills that are conducive to us hiding

or create those situations with grass or something. I don't know. Yes, absolutely. Let's do it. Let's do it. Crafting party. Okay. I'm going to tell Frumpkin to go in the sky and watch and head up the road a ways to set that alarm. Set the alarm, okay. I'm going to go ahead and pull out the map of the location

so you guys can plan out positioning. Oh, snap. But you can't know the map because we just came up with this ambush plan tonight. There's no way that you would have foreseen something like this from happening. I wouldn't know the location of where the hill is if you were to use that one.

He's going to see if he were humans. I have multiple maps prepared depending on where things happen. There's a TARDIS filled with maps. I know this. I have multiple maps with different scenarios. He did move like four or five maps into this building today, under cover of tarp.

Day? It wasn't that undercover, it was Max going, no cast is allowed in here for ten minutes! It wasn't that stealthy. You weren't here for that. I walked in the green room at one point and it was literally the, no, Mom, private time! I'm like, oh god, yeah.

We have a green room? I mean, it's that weird room with the weird hair salon stuff. Oh, the makeup room. We should get a map-making sock for him to put on the wall. Are we going to do a studio tour at some point? Oh, a map sock. We are. We wanted to film it this week, but we got super distracted with building the studio. You know, one of the things about the makeup room is it has those hair salon sinks where you can get a haircut in it or get your hair washed in the sinks.

Can I get my hair washed in one of those? I want to so bad! Anybody who wants me to shave their head off. This is the scenario that you've found. This is the path heading in the north direction. These are the two hills. This is the tree. How would you like to set this up? How do you want to do this? This is the path heading in the north direction. These are the two hills, this is the tree. How would you like to set this up? How do you want to do this? Mm.

It's a bus of a tree that I was hoping for. The best elements of cover. Can we move some of those bushes up on top of the hill? Can we snap some twigs and make the bushes bigger? I could see you probably do something like that, sure. You have a little bit of time. Fluff the bushes. Yeah, fluff the bushes a little bit. Fluff the bushes up here? What are you doing? Pointing out to me.

Yeah, let's do that. Here's your paintbrush. Skull. Skull. Oh my god, we're mindcrafting. We're going to do that over here a little bit. Uh-huh, that's good, that's good. This thing can't move, right? Or strong, I'm a beefy boy. You can try, you can certainly try. Should I roll something?

Roll and make a strength check. It's the athletics, actually, so may I have athletics bonus? Because this is you not just lifting it, but also bring it along. Oh shit. 19. Oh, she's fine. You begin to drag it, actually. You watch as this burly dwarf woman,

the five o'clock shadow that's now coming into an actual faint stubble, grabs it and it's like Rocky IV. Begins dragging it through this big groove in the ground as you pull it over. Where do you want to put it? Is anyone else aroused? In the middle, or should we, I'm aroused. Okay, great.

Sam Riegel. I'm aroused. Should we put it here to narrow the passage? Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. You can also dig a hole right underneath it, too. And the trebris?

And you have this tree here. Give you some over-covering. Is this thing hollow at all? That tree is actually somewhat hollow. Not completely all the way through, but there is an alcove in it where some of it is rotted out. That's where Nott's from. All right. I'll go ahead and mark you as this will be where you're hiding, just as a note there. Caleb, any other terraforming we want to do up here? We want to push the tree over, don't we?

Want to give it a good shove? As Caleb comes back from setting the alarm spell, tell me what you have worked out so far. We've added some- I set the alarm spell and I took a wee over that way. We added some bush up here and up here to hide in, to make that one person can hide here, one person can maybe hide here.

I'm excited. We've been gone for two weeks. I'm like, let's do this. We moved this over, and it's got a little nook in it so that Nott can stay in there. That's great. But we have this tree here. Do we want to knock over that tree and block the path? You have an awesome axe, right? I do. We also have a Nott- No, we left the axe, never mind. I think that we don't want to gild the lily

and have too, like that log is good. I enjoy gilding lilies. How tall is this tree, Matt? That tree is maybe 15 feet, 20 feet. So it only like- Actually, that one would be 20 feet tall. If you come to a road that has trees along it, your dander goes up, you're on guard. There was a tornado that came through.

How about this? If I may, if I may. This log that we've set on this side, what if we set it on this side over here, and then we weaken the tree in case we need to tip it over and block the other half? Should I have it again, or am I just doing it? Okay.

Okay, so now we can weaken this tree maybe with some chops and then it can block the other half. Should I roll again, or am I just doing it? Okay. Okay, so now we can weaken this tree maybe with some chops and then it can block the other half. You do that angle so that if you just hit it, you know which side it will fall to because it's... Sure, we can even stick a branch in there. Do I have to roll anything to smack it with my axe? To controlled... To controlled smack it with my axe?

I'm so powerful. You can certainly try. What do I roll? Go ahead and roll an athletics check on this one. Thoughts, track making, skills for health? Just... 15. 15, okay, so you're able to carve into it

and reduce your knowledge of where to hit properly and where the strength should be applied. You manage to cut a few wedges into it. It begins to move slightly and you're like, now's the time to stop. Nice. Just for, no, that would be too much. I was about to say, I could make a bullshit trip wire

that when the tree went down, it would tighten a rope and it would pop. But it would be rope on the ground. I don't know if it would hide in the, it might be too obvious. The best trap we have is kegs standing behind the tree. Let's, just for fun, I'm going to have some of our hemp rope already tied around this rock

with just a big mess of it ready to go so that we've already got one anchor point. Do we want to do any digging, any mudding, anything else? Is this our ambush? Where are you going to hide? Me? He's in there. You're in the log. I'm going to be in the log. Someone's going to be up here in bush one, someone's going to be in bush two. I'll be in bush two.

Someone will be behind the tree. Caleb, where are you going to be? I am going to be way ahead behind these bushes, because what I'm going to contribute I can do from far away, and I can be knocked down like that. Molly, you take in bush one? I'll take bush far away, and I can be knocked down like that. Molly, you taking bush one? I'll take bush one. Okay, so Molly, you're going here. Wait, I thought Caleb was the bush man.

Caleb's going to be all the way back there. He's bushier. That's going to be close. Beau? I'm bush two. Bush two here? Yep. All right, so Beau's going to be here. These are great code names. And you're going to be behind the tree?

Yeah. In case they're ready. Tree girl. All righty. Do we have like a signal as to when we go? You're going to do this little spell, and then we fuck shit up. Yes, I'm going to wait for the moment that,

I'm going to have to improvise, if they can all be clumped together for the best, but I'm going to wait, and when I, I'm going to call it in the moment that I'm going to have to improvise. They can all be clumped together for the best, but I'm going to wait and I'm going to call it in the moment. If there's two together and not three, I will go for two. If all three are together, great. Just dry run it here. Dry run it. Try running it. Okay. The cart's coming. It gets slow. Oh, what the fuck's going on?

It gets slow when it reaches along. I thought they were coming from the other direction. No, this way. Ah. That's the north side. Then this is it. Actually, that's great. I was going to say, that would have lit over the rock.

I'd say once the first caravan passes the log. Then slow it? But it doesn't stop, it just slows. Does it just slow, not stop? Yeah. Well, it's called slow, not stop. If it was a stop spell, it just slows. Does it just slow, not stop? Yeah. Well, it's called slow, not stop. If it was a stop spell, it would be called a stop spell. Okay, so it's going, it's going, it's going.

The people will slow. So right here, it slows. They're like, what the fuck's going on? We saw that Lorenzo was in the leading cart, right? The leading cart, yeah. Okay. I think we would want, how far is your distance? I think we want to get a little further.

Okay, so further. I think we want to try and get the slow spell off after it's past the log, right? So that we're closer. They're already past us, then. We can't stop them. No, because I'm here, I'm here, Caleb's here, you're there, because this will make them funnel, which will gather them for Caleb's spell. And a row of carts, though, not a group. What? It will make for a train, which will not get them all

within what I need, maybe two of them. Why don't you trade these with me, then? But it won't change. They're still on a road. They're still probably going to go in a, well, the risk of a straight line of them. How big were they? Would two, three of them fit in that space? The carts are about that wide. Okay. How wide is your spell?

They'd be going through one at a time. Okay. It's a 40-foot radius? Do we want them to go through one at a time? It's a 40-foot cube. Yeah. I mean, it's a 40-foot cube. They're never going to be in a weird group.

Maybe. They'll always be in a line. Maybe. It's dicey. It's right on the cusp, probably, for two or three. Two is better than none. Slow down. If the front one is slowed down, then they're all going to be slowed down through there. Or we do this. We slow them or whatever. And now they're ready for a fight. And they get here. Oh, crap! Or maybe we stop them first. Crash, stop, everything stops.

Then you hit them with slow. That's great, but they're still in a line. Why would they be in a line? You're just assuming they're going to be in a line instead of clumped together. That's awesome. Excuse me. That is fucking wunderbar if they were clumped together, but I'm going to give it a 50-50 chance of them being alive. If you slow the first cart, then the other two behind it are not going to be able to go any faster either.

Oh fuck! Then we should probably wait until they're deeper in and then we can all attack them, right? That is true. Maybe wait for, if they're in a train, we wait for cart number two to be in that bottleneck. And then I try to get the first two. The third one's not going to go anywhere.

What we're losing is the more of these assholes who you used to be a part of are, it's not just the carts, it's them. They can do less to us if I hit them. But it's not perfect. There's no perfect situation. So should we let one cart go first and then? Yeah.

I think so. The second cart in the bottleneck is when we should go. And then if we can push the tree on the first card, that'll be fun. Okay. Oh, that is a lot of fun. On the first card? Yeah, on the first one. On the first one, you're still the second one. We attack. We win. Still winning is a part of this

play. I just want to make sure that that's clear. Thank you, Mr. Sheen. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Wow. So the first thing that happens is the trunk, the tree. Correct. Yes.

The second thing that happens is Slow. Slow. The third thing that happens is I pop out of the tree trunk. Look for our friends. Which cart are they going to be on? One, two, or three. Do I know that? You have no idea.

I have no idea. Which should I start with, a three. Do I know that? You have no idea. I have no idea. Which should I start with, a small one or a big one? The first one, since it's damaged. Yeah, there's no way to know. If you go on the third, then you might be less likely to be seen. Or the first will be more engaged with us.

Or that. Didn't I give you a scroll of invisibility? Oh yeah, who has that shit? Yeah, you do, don't you? If you're invisible, you could maybe help get everybody out. Could you use it on me? Or would that ruin your books? No, it won't ruin my books, it's just I would only be able to use this one time,

and then it's gone. Because you haven't transcribed it? Do you have any paper? No. Yeah, it would be gone right away. You wouldn't be able to commit it to memory and then rewrite it later? You're out of paper? No, I mean, I do have a very near-perfect memory.

But it's near-perfect. Near-perfect. But you're out of paper? Yeah. How long does invisibility last? How long? I think it lasts for an hour, or until... But there's no slow if there's invisibility.

Oh, but it's a scroll. Yeah, it ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell. Here's a question. It lasts for an hour of concentration. I'm popping out of my German accent. If I cast a concentration spell and then I use a scroll, does it drop the concentration check? Yes, it does. It's still you concentrating on the spell. I think slow is more beneficial than invisibility. Sure, but if you use the scroll once we hear the bells,

and we've got an hour, your trap goes off, your little alarm goes off, invisibility, then you wouldn't drop with invisibility, like that's not concentration. They both are. Oh, yeah. You only have one or the other. When's the trap going off?

When's the alarm going off? When they cross the finish line. I have set a silver thread across the road, and if they move through that, anyone but us who walks through that line will set it off and I will hear. How many feet ahead, though? That's not a thing. No, no, no, it's in here.

And how many feet ahead did you set that? I wanted to do... 500 feet. 500 feet. No, I wanted to do more than that. Let's say 200 yards. Okay. Right. I like this plan. It's ridiculous.

All right. Are we doing invisibility or no? No. You guys happy to pull the trigger on this? No, I am in favor of slow over invisibility. I want to kill them. Okay then. Sorry. You have your placements. You want to kill them. Okay, then. Sorry. You have your placements. You've set the scene. The evening requires some rest, if you're

prepared for this, by the morrow. Yeah, I need to rest. I'm exhausted. You set up a small camp here without light, without fire. To confirm, step one is the tree goes down on cart one. If it's that way, right? Slow happens. You can get a sneak attack in if it's an ambush. I'm not going to attack. I'm going to jump on a cart in unlocking things. And try to find a cage or two, right? Okay, and everyone else is going to start wailing. Yes.

On people, on magic users. On magic users. And that was a blonde pixie cut and a half-orc. The bald half-orc. The sorcerer is the half-orc. Can you, can you? There we are. That's my voice, actually.

Up there in bushland, are you going to be able to do anything? Yeah, I can move 40 feet, my speed. I'm pretty quick. But that'll get you on the cart with the bad guys. You can't just rain down terror from above. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty, fifty. That's true. Are any of us doing ranged attack? I'll be fine. We're not ranged people.

I can get on the non-ranged. I'm ranged. Yeah, non-ranged. I've got some pretty dope mobility. And you can do stuff, once Slow is cast, you can also do other things once it's rolling. Sure, I can dispel any magical stuff going on in the cage shortly after, or improvise and switch

to long-range destruction. If things look like they're trouble, we'll just go with it. Yeah, the plan will fuck up, I'm sure, but we will scrap through or die. Rather than choose who we are going to attack in the moment, I saw through my owl, the half-orc with his hood down is a bolt man. I would say let's look for that one

first. That's the human. That's Lorenzo. That's the human? That's Lorenzo. That's Liam, Caleb. So everyone else was hooded, so we don't know. I think Lorenzo's going to be a problem, because he has reach, and he's a leader.

Okay. Well, I would say then that whichever one reveals them first, either half-orc or woman with their pixie cut, whoever reveals themself first, we'll just say that is the one that we all target at the same time, because we focus our attention to one and kill them, and they're out of the picture, instead of splitting between two. If we find that half-orc, druids are going to have healing abilities, so. Yeah, but if they don't reveal themselves first. Yeah, I'm just saying. But if they reveal themselves at the same time!

Go for the druid first? Correct, that's wise. All right. Yeah. Got to heal this guy. That'll do. Okay, we got a plan. All righty. So you set up camp without fire, right, for the evening?

Or are you lighting a fire for warmth? Mm. I don't know. I feel like we shouldn't. I feel like we shouldn't either. We'll huddle together. Yeah, we share body warmth by all spooning in a chain. We do set up the tent behind the, well, yeah. Okay, so you set up a tent behind the hill.

You spoon for warmth. I hate it. Who's lucky, Pierre? Huh? Who's in the middle? Who's in the middle? Aren't we all? Probably Mollymauk.

I'm very cold, but yeah, whatever. All right, so you muster through an evening of uncomfortable but necessary closeness. It's a very cold night. A faint bit of snowfall greets you in the morning. Not enough to coat the place in white yet, as these soft little flakes making their way down. A ways up on the road, a few miles out, you can see there is a front of gray heading your way. It looks to be a wall of snowfall that is probably going to be coming about midday or so in your direction. There's some mist in the distance. You come to, you shake it off. You're a bit stiff from a night of not necessarily comfortable rest,

but a long rest is had. You lose your exhaustion points. Yay. As you take a moment, Caleb, the bells go off. Oh, they're already here. Do I still have the dodecahedron? You do. You have to redo it again. Whoever wants to do it has to do it now. Do what? I toss it to Nott.

Nott. I look in. Okay. Aw. You guys are treating it like a... It's totally whippets again. It's whippets from Xhorhas, this is great. All righty.

No, no, every time it's magical and very special. Of course. I imagine it's a whippet that looks like the Matrix of Leadership from Transformers. Oh my god. You got the touch. Any time Caleb does it, he sees all timelines, but in the interest of brevity.

So. No, we're just getting high. As you guys are in your places. This is the darkest timeline. The first cart comes into the house. Are we really doing this now? Caleb, Caleb, Caleb. Are we really doing this now? Caleb, Caleb, Caleb.

Before we go, I'm just going to whisper to Caleb, Caleb, if anything goes shitty, I'm going to throw my flask of oil on the first cart, light it on fire. Understood. Okay. It's a good call. All right, and as this one comes through,

you notice the person who's guiding it is your friend. I'm lit, by the way. Peroto. Cloroda? Proto. Oh. Wrong timeline. We're going back in this.

Yeah, totally. He continues to push it along. They separate as they see the coming pinch of the road. Caw-caw, caw-caw! Behind that, you see the central. Looks like the royal deal. Those look like our dead horses. This has the one figure that you don't recognize,

it's just that it is driving the cart, and walking alongside it is Lorenzo. He begins to continue forward. He just pushes forward as well. Oh shit, I'm so scared. Me too. I'm so scared. Oh man.

You see on the sides of this, there is the half-orc druid. What is that? That's Dwellma. And looks to be Ruzza, who's the half-elf. It's the sorcerer. These are the two magic users. And in the back is the small singular card

that's being written by one figure. And there you see Hum in the End as a Wone, the human rage-filled warrior, the one that you've had the better experience with. The barbarian is a human? Correct. So pushing forward until about there. Okay.

Okay, am I doing this? Are you doing this? I fell on the tree? Okay, is this a strength check? Check, check, check. Is it going to be a strength check? Chug, chug, chug. That is a 18.

The tree immediately falls forward off the side, snapping at where it was left. How did you have that? Oh my god! Actually, all these tree priestess were sent by our friends at Steamforged as gifts. I was like, I get to use these at some point, and you guys are using them tonight. Falling and snapping right at the front half of the car, breaking through. I'm going to give Proto an attempt to try and dodge out of the way. He succeeds with the dexterity saving throw

because he's quite dexterous, but he jumps back into the front of the cart and you watch his lower half vanish as he stops there. Am I revealed or am I hidden by the stump? Okay, you are still, I mean, you don't know. Actually, it's a valid point. I'm going to have to have you guys all roll stealth checks. With advantage because we have time?

In advance, you mean? Yeah, I'll say in advance. So. We only roll once or no? I'm not moving, though. I'm hiding behind a stump still. Yes, Vax Die, yes. 12.

12, okay. 19. 20. 18. 20. Yeah, all of you are pretty stealthy, except for you. And as the tree falls onto the ground, the horses suddenly rear up, and you've actually broken

where the horses are attached to that cart. The axle snaps. Fuck, yes. That was my trigger. At which point, the cart's back up at this point. There's a shout in the back, and you hear Proto go like, Boss, what is? At which point, you're doing what?

Slow, and I will target these four assholes right here. I think I could get in one go, probably. All right, well. 40-foot cube. First, just for the sake of order here, because we are engaging in a series of aggressive actions, let's all roll initiative, please. Okay. Oh!

I'm shocked I can tell if that's coming. That's weird. I need a ruling from, oh, never mind. Roll it again, go. Okay, I roll. I'm going to add my boots. Pretty good. You missed the Percy mega initiative.

Yes. Yeah. I didn't even really understand how good I had it. I was just so used to being okay no matter what. So, even in a roll of one, I'm like. First order of business here for initiative. I'm going to sit down for this one, I'll fast-forward it down. 25 to 20, anybody?

21. 20. All righty. I'm so glad you're first, that's great. Oh, and not up first. 20 to 15? 18. All right.

That's what it goes for video. 14. And then, Sean. And 14, you said, Caleb? Yeah, I feel the same. A lot of bad guys through there. 14. 14, you said, Caleb? Yeah, I feel the same. A lot of bad guys through there. That brings us to Evil Barbie.

This is going to be a mess. Yeah, end of the show. Eight. I'm rolling poop on initiative. Three. Okay, well, no. No. I'm rolling poop on initiative. Okay. Oh no. And then... All righty.

Don't leave, we're at the ending now. So as the tree snaps and hits, he shouts back. Immediately the group looks out at all sides, taking this as a means of some sort of assault. Lorenzo glancing over and directly mate-locking eyes with the Ukeg. There's a look of taken aback and surprised. Before any sort of reaction happens, though,

you do get your action. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So You were casting slow, you said? Indeed I am. Molasses goes across my hand and I draw my hand down through the air and I focus on these four if I can. It's a 40-foot cube. A 40-foot cube? Putting this one in a corner. How many can you target with this? Up to six in a 40-foot cube. Up to six? with this? Up to six in a 40-foot cube. Up to six, that'll be corner packs.

A 40-foot cube, that's good. Yeah. One, two, three, four, five. You can get all of these guys if you want to. Me, yeah! All of them? Let's see. Five, because it's five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, yeah.

Well, you know, fuck it, let's also get this horse. Well, there's six, no, one, two, three, four, there's six people there. Oh, wow, yes. There's the one who's humming this horse, the one who's humming these horses in the back of the cart, and then those four. I didn't think we were getting all those people, good.

Yeah, all of the humanoids. All right, so for the two thugs that are in the horses, two and a three, natural two and a three. They are both slow. What does slow mean, by the way? Slow means half speed. Negative two to armor class, no reactions, and they can either do an action or a bonus action.

They can't do both. Oh my god, that's amazing. So I can get on there. You could just go like. But they can't do both. Oh my god, that's amazing. So I can get on there. You could just go like, boop. And then put the end on my wand. I get to cast a spell. That means that you can attack and then disengage for free.

Ruza does not succeed. Ruza is slowed. Ruza is a sorcerer. Did the druid save? Did you go out the back of the? The druid does save. Well, he's not slow. The barbarian.

Lorenzo saves? The barbarian does not save. The druid saves. Dwellma. And Lorenzo, that is a 17. Saves. That's pretty dope, though. So, this all happens. Combat has begun.

Mm-hmm. So, starting at the top of the combat order, Beau, you're up first. No, Nott is. Nott rolled a 21 and I rolled a 20. Gotcha, I put that in order. We're starting this? Nott, you 21 and I rolled a 20. Gotcha, I put them in order. We're starting this? Nott, you're up first. I'm going to get on this fucking cart. How am I going to get on this cart? I'm not invisible.

Through charisma, Sam. Your charisma. All right. I'll run past Lorenzo. Okay. Tonight, I'll run past Lorenzo. Okay. As I run, I will dump all my oil on him. Okay, that's your action. Yep, that's my action. Awesome.

You just. Looks at it and sees you dart by. Bonus action, disengage. Okay. So can I make a tag of opportunity on you? And jump into the cart and start doing this. This big one there? Yeah.

All right. You dart, and as soon as your vision comes through, you come face to face with a metal cage. Oh shit! Right there in front of you. You guys, if you can watch, back half of Nott is still visible. The entire cart is filled with cages, front to back.

They're invisible cages. The cages are blanketed by some sort of illusion. The part of me that hit the cage is now invisible also? Correct. Cool. But just the front half. It looks like Nott vanishes partway through, like you stepped through part of a doorway.

On the inside, you see what looks to be a very sweaty human man who is gagged and leaned up against the cage and looks up towards you. That's all I got? That's all you got. Are you trying to get a little further from, can you get a little bit more around the, or is that how you move? I pushed as far as I could.

How far, I'm probably more than 40 feet away from the druid. You can just get to the druid at 40 feet. 10, 15, 20. You do have to get down there. Sweet jump. Go ahead and make an acrobatics check. Come on, this is what you live for. It is what I live for. Parkour shit.

10! Come on, this is what you live for. It is what I live for. Hardcore shit. 10. 10, you just manage to land without losing two of them, you get right up to the druid there. Oh fuck, okay. Two attacks. First attack. Okay, that's a natural 16. So plus seven is 21, right? 16 plus seven?

21. 21. That's eight damage. That is. I'm going to spend a ki point to do Stunning Strike. That is a natural 15 plus three, it's 18. That really sucks. You've got ball bearings. I do have ball bearings.

They're slow. Take my second hit. Go for it. That's... Oh, that. Yeah, 20 total. 20 total, okay. Yep.

Another eight damage. All righty. I'm going to spend another ki point to try Stunning Strike again. All righty. I'm going to spend another ki point to try Stunning Strike again. All righty. What was there? Did you get a plus three? That is a 15.

What's the DC? 14! Nope. It's a perfect plan. I'm going to spend, I'm burning through so many ki points. It's now or never. I'm going to spend one more ki point

to do Patient Defense. Because I'm probably going spend one more key point to do patient defense. Because I'm probably going to need it now. Going into defensive mode. That finishes Beau's go. Three key points. Burning them out. Key question. All right, it's now Ruzza's turn, who is slow.

Bully on out. Hmm. Attempt to cast a spell with a casting time of one action. It doesn't go off until the next turn. Right. Wow, slow is the best. Yeah, it was amazing.

Russo is going to go ahead and step back, looking towards Lorenzo and goes, Brass, this is so weird. It's weird to hear this slowed down, deeper voice coming out of this female half-elf, but nevertheless, here we are. As she steps away and begins like. She does give a bit of bardic inspiration to Lorenzo. She's technically not a sorcerer. How does that happen?

Not a sorcerer. You got it wrong. You have something else as You don't know. Is that a bonus action, though? You have to do an action or a bonus action. You can't do bonus action. Oh, that's right. So they're not doing that. Yeah!

They're not doing that. Read the cards, people, read the cards. No dubstep today. No wub wub. Still saying that phrase, but not in an inspirational way. Is going to go ahead and cast Glancing Over in Your Direction as the source of it. I knew where I was. My stealth was that shitty.

Once you cast the spell, you reveal yourself. Ah. That's how it works, unfortunately. The cover of bush? He's Bushman. Yeah, we had it all bushed. You still have to make a move. I'm going to die, it's fine.

This is going to be, yeah, let's do some hypnotic pattern, why not? Next turn. Is that a loot? You'll resist it. All right, so begins like, and just slowly back to here. Getting up on the hill,

climbing to get some better visual perspective over the battlefield. That's going to end Roose's turn. Molly, you're up. I look at a keg and like, you got that one? Yeah. Right, I'm going to start my movement. I've got 30 feet of movement, so.

It's all dead. 50, 20, 25, 30. I can get almost to the edge of this mountain, right? You can get right there. That's 30 feet? That's 30 feet there. Then I can teleport how far? 30 feet.

Can I get a flanking to flanking? To flanking? So there you need it. Cha-chow. Yeah, you can do that. Is that way more than, like, I have a 30-foot teleport, right? Yeah. So is it possible to do it halfway through my movement

so I still have two steps that I can take? No, no, never mind, I'm good. Half hit. I'm good. I'm not going to fight it. I'm going to take two attacks. Yes! Go for it. And I have advantage. I'm good. I'm not going to fight it. I'm going to take two attacks. Yes! Go for it.

And I have advantage. You do. All right. I assume you had your rites prepared. Both are up. Come on. Come on, motherfucker! Yeah, that's 18, 19, yeah, that hits.

So that's, first one is awful. Seven points of damage. Seven points of damage, all righty. Second one is 16, 17, yeah, that's like 16 plus seven, so that's, yeah. That hits, go ahead and roll damage. Better, that's better. 12 points of damage.

12 points of damage. As you see's carving through. You watch as she's not slowed by the impact of the spell and taking these wounds, hurting her quite a bit. She's not horribly maimed, but it's starting to show some wear from the strikes that she's suffered. All right, that ends your turn? Mm-hmm. All righty, that brings us to Lorenzo. Oh boy. We've stumped him. I know.

So quiet. The only good plan that we've ever made is without Travis and Laura. Just to make that clear. Hey, I'm still, sorry. No comfort. I was going to say, I'm still stoked on our, was it Umbrasyl?

Mm-hmm. The Frost Dragon. That was pretty solid. Are you doing a throwback right now? Yes. Voragul. Voragul, Voragul. Umbrasyl was black acid.

When Voragul fought Yank. Lorenzo is going to, like, going to, watching you and your friends, just shouts out in your direction and goes, Boom. Well, he's not slowed. Oh, he's not. Gag. I don't know what you're trying here,

but I think the line's been drawn. He's going to step over here, pushing through the horses, leaping over in the direction of where Nott is. There. And is going to go ahead and shout out, Hey! Move aside! He holds his hand out in front of him.

That's going to end his turn. He's casting. He can cast? I thought you said he's a fighter! Your information is the worst! I'm not very smart! He scores. Prado is currently freaking out by this, sees this all happening, just barely,

narrowly missed the tree slamming into him, goes and pulls out his bow and knocks an arrow into it, and is going to go ahead and take a shot. Let's see, the one that he saw dark that way is going to be Molly. Going to go ahead and fire at Molly. I'm going to have, he's going to have a hard time doing that, so disadvantage. What's the range on it?

Of my blood maledict? Let's see, I'm not looking at the right thing. I believe it's a 30 or 60-foot range. Crimson, where's the blood maledict? Fear of Blood, Curse of the Eyeless? Yeah, it's 60 feet. 60 feet, so yeah, that'll do it. Amplified.

All right, amplified, so disadvantage on him. He gets two strikes. Yeah, I take a lot of damage for that. Five points of damage. So the first one with disadvantage is going to be 16 to hit. What's your armor block? For fuck's sake, 15. 15, so that hits.

That's because you are adjacent to an ally of his. You get sneak attack bonus on that. Fucking damn it. Rose is the worst. Slash the best. To be fair, it's a shitty sneak attack roll. That's a total of 14 points of piercing damage from the first arrow into your shoulder.

All right. The other one is going to be... Did he get disadvantage on the other attack as well? He did, yeah. 16 on this one. It was 11 and a 10 he rolled, and it's plus six on his attacks. Okay, so they both hit. Okay, the other one just deals six points of piercing damage.

Oh, that wasn't damage, I thought that was damage. All right. Six points to go on that. He's going to go ahead and jump off, move over here up onto the top to get a good view, since he's a rainish guy with his arrows, and he's keeping down and getting ready for that. No, I ran over there. I'm fighting the druid.

That's fine. Yeah. All's fine. Yeah. All righty. So that's going to go ahead and that was his action surge and everything there. So he's done. All right, next up. Bear with me, guys, there's a lot going on right here.

Yeah, there's 12 players. Caleb, your turn. It's back to me? Yeah, Because you had the ambush round, technically, because it was the trigger, the slow, and then everything happened at once. So what does the initial trigger go in? The tree triggered the ambush seeing you, so the only one who got a round off was you for the spell.

I could cast Dispel Magic on the cages, or I could attack the person about to attack me. He's about to attack me. He's about to attack you? That's what I would do. I will use the glove of blasting to fire on the person attacking me. Which one?

The one on the hill. The one on the hill. The sorcerer? Yeah. Okay, go for it. So roll for attacks on that. Yeah, three of those. Minus two of their armor class, so. First one does not hit, that is a 12. Goes wide.

Second is, sorry, 17. 17 hits. Oh, it was 16 on the last one. That would hit. Does that hit? Thank you. And the third one definitely misses. Okay. That's a two plus eight. So two hits, that's 46.

46. Yes. Not a bad opening round. Eight. Not that great. Ten damage, fire damage. They have to make a constitution save? Yes.

To maintain... Oh, they're casting an attack? Well, I don't know what they're doing. They still have to make a concentration check to see if they can finish with their casting, yeah. So that is a 13 plus two, so 15. So yeah, they're fine. Yep, they're fine. All right, then your turn, Caleb.

Just aim before you are. Yeah. I will lie down flat on my back. Okay, you go prone? Yeah. Caleb goes prone. Okay, now it's the thugs' turn. They are slowed, so they can't move too far.

This one is going to go ahead and move back. That's as far as he can move, and he's going to pull this crossbow, and he gets one shot because of the slowest spell. He's going to take it towards you, Caleb, with disadvantage, because you're so far away. I am prone.

Out of range. You're still within the minimum distance. It's disadvantage regardless, though. That is, with disadvantage, a 13. What's your armor class? Shield. It doesn't hit. All right. The bolt goes wide. This guy here is also slowed.

He's going to attempt to back away. Let the horses get an attack of opportunity. They do not. No! But he's going to attempt to use the edge of the tree for some cover as he goes and takes a shot at Beau. Disadvantage. Yep.

And that is going to be a 13 again. Miss. Miss, yeah. Tits up fast. We're still alive! Now it is Woln's turn, who is slowed. Who? And right here, next to Caleb.

I was prepared. He's going to go ahead and take a strike at you. Mm-hmm. Not technically. Not only gets one attack, so the first one would have been 12. Yeah, nope. Yeah. Spends 15 feet of movement, backing away. There. As the boss said, you do get an attack of opportunity if you'd like to take it.

I used my reaction. Oh, you did, that's right. Did you not? Do I still have a second blood maledict, by the way, this round? I can spend another round doing it. I know we changed the rules slightly. Do I have a fifth level? Do I get two uses or just two options? I'll have to double check. All right, when we get there. All right, so that's the two thugs' turn, that's Worm's turn. Keg, you're up. All right, Keg. Kill them all in one turn from 45 feet away. So I feel like, narratively,

Keg is actually pretty freaked right now. Is it weird to ever give yourself disadvantage on things narratively? No. It makes sense. We've all done it to some degree. It's definitely cowardly fear for two. It's Sam's raison d'etre.

Okay, so I'm going to give myself disadvantage on everything I'm going to try to do this turn. Just because seeing Lorenzo again, I think, has really freaked Keg out. He is covered in oil, which makes him kind of sexy. I'm aroused and scared? The armor that Lorenzo's wearing, you've seen it before, it's studded leather, but it's straps and hooks. The theme of it resembles very much elements of his profession, or at least reminding you what he does. So the oil weirdly does make it strangely erotic. It's your turn. You have 25 feet of movement. I only gave you about five squares

of movement. I only get about five squares of movement. Okay, I'm going to run. I'm going to run. Away? Away. Jesus. You're the worst! I'm roleplaying! I'm running away. Are you running towards the action or away from it?

I'll run towards this... No, I'm going to run towards those horses. I'm going to run that way. All right. Three, make an acrobatics check, leap down. Terrible. Terrible, awful five. Okay, so you lose the last fight

at feet of movement, that's your movement there. Okay. And my javelin can't go very far, right? Your javelin has a pretty decent range. They just have the ranges next to it in the app. Mm-hmm. That's okay, I have it here. The javelin.

So 30 feet and 120 feet. So you can go 30 feet without disadvantage and 120 feet with disadvantage. But you said that everything's at disadvantage, so. So you might as well. So might as well, yeah. So is Prado within 120? Prado disadvantage, so. So might as well. So might as well, yeah. So is Prado within 120?

Prado is, right up there on the hill. Okay. Okay, well I hate him definitively, so I'm going to throw it at Prado. The disadvantage. Oh, that's awful. Five. Completely passes over.

Ball sack. And then I'm going to, Five. Completely passes over. Ball sack. And then I'm going to, I can use my bonus action to move again. No, you can't, that's where you are. You can take another javelin attack because you have three javelins. All right, let's get one more swing at him. No, doesn't work.

It's terrible, I won't even bother. Okay, both javelins miss, you're just shaken won't even bother. Okay. Both javelins miss. You're just shaken by this experience. You did throw two javelins at an irritating creature, so that's good. Okay, it's very Olympian. Get the nerve back. It's now Duelma's turn.

Oh great. God, there's so many of them. Duelma is going to cast Dispel Magic. Does that mean I get to take an attack on her? Not unless you have the Warcaster. Mage Slayer? Or Mage Slayer. I almost took that. No, but you did.

Took Sentinel instead. It's going to take two turns, though, right? She wasn't affected by Slow. Really? Yeah. She was one of the ones that saved. That's why I was trying to stun her. What do you cast Dispel Magic on? The magical effect, which is the Slow effect. It will do it over all of the ones that saved. That's why I was trying to stun her. What do you cast the spell magic on? The magical effect, which is the slow effect.

It will do it over all of the? If it's any spell of third or level or lower, the target ends, so slow fades. Oh no! That's why I was trying to stun her! I think she still could have done it, though. This is awful. No, that didn't think stun, she couldn't.

Oh, well, cool. That feels really good about failing it twice. Sorry. Don't worry about it. She's going to go ahead and move to this side. Actually, and it's going to run.

So you both get attack of opportunity on it. You get an attack of opportunity. Come on. That's not very good at all. 12. 12 is not going to hit. Not with Barkskin, sorry. Actually, no, she doesn't have Barkskin

because the ambush, she doesn't have time to cast it, so it's an AC of 11, you do hit. What? She doesn't move anywhere. She gets stuck there, the back of her. Actually, no, because if you, yoink. Can you freeze her? She's not moving.

She can't move, and she takes five damage. Five damage. Well, I mean, so she's still between the two of us. She couldn't have circled. Well, no, she circled around. It's when she leaves the range, so she gets stuck there. Okay, that ends your turn. Or that ends her turn.

Now Lorenzo's turn's going to trigger. Oh boy. What the fuck is that? What is happening now? He's a dragon man? What is this? What is happening? That is huge. Jesus! What the fuck is that? I don't know. That's your call.

It just misses you, I think. It's right there. That's why I. It just misses you, I think. It's right there. That's why I go far away. As a cone of cold bursts forth from you watch as Lorenzo smiles as his friends are coming out of the way, and this burst of freezing cold arcane energy swirls in front of him, flash freezing everything in front,

including the cart, actually. So Nott gets frozen, too? Nott has to make a reflex save. Beau and Molly have to make, sorry, sorry, dex save. That's a rush. Natural 20. Nice.

You know what? I'll use my luck. 19. Go for it. Yeah, don't get frozen. Terrible. Oh no! What was it?

11. No way. Oh, buddy. All right, so. Okay, and what'd you roll? 19. 19, okay. Nott, you take 41 points of cold damage.

Oh, I'll half that. Okay, so use reaction to half that. Yeah. Did you say four, sorry, 41? Yeah. 41, okay. Molyne? That guy's covered in oil and snow.

You take, that'd be 20 points of cold damage. Jesus Christ. Beau, you take 20 points of cold damage. Fuck! I get half because I'm on a roll. 20 points of cold damage. Jesus Christ. Beau, you take 20 points of cold damage. Fuck! I get half because I'm on a road. 20 points? Yep.

Jesus. This is a lot. As it triggers and the frost finishes off in the space there, Lorenzo grinning just looks over his shoulder back at Keg and goes like, I'm not going to have to make a lesson here. Oh no, he's winning. That brings me to the top of the round, Nott, you're up.

All right, I'll use my, I think I have to use an action to unlock this cage. You pull out your, go for it, make your lock and pick a trick. Fuck you! Five plus, I don't know, what is it, usually seven? Dex and proficiencies would be seven, yeah. 12? That's not enough.

You spend a moment locking, it's just not going. These are pretty intense cages. You look over there and Lorenzo's just standing there with the glaive. I'm going to move around the cages or between them so that I turn completely invisible. Oh, that's a good call. Okay, so you move through.

There's a very, very, very, very, very small gap. They're pushed up against each other. Make a strength check to see if you can push through. You might not be able to. Nope. That's a three. You can't push through if the cages are too close. The small gap there, you try and muscle it,

but there's two to three people in each cage, and you can't push through. Can I use my bonus action to, Jesus, what can I do with this bonus action? I can't hide. Can I hide? You could try, you're partially obscured. Go.

I got nothing else to do on a bonus action, so yeah, I will try to hide. Lorenzo's eyeing him right now, you said? I'll go on the side of the cart and just kind of... Lorenzo's eyeing in that direction. I'll hide off the side of the cart. Okay, make a stealth check. Oh, that's wonderful, it's 29. Oh, there you go.

You failed to fail. All right, you appear in your mind to have vanished from the current site. From at least Lorenzo. All righty, that brings us to... Fishing Knot Beau, your turn. Oh god. Damn, this fucking druid. I'm just going to lay into the druid. Go for it.

Okay. First suck. Natural 20! Oh snap! You got the good stuff. Thank you, Gil! So that's doubling dice damage? Big money, come on. Okay, okay, okay. So that's doubling dice damage, big money, come on. Okay, okay, okay. Six plus four, ten.

Ten damage. On the first one. Oof, almost looking rough. Really? Yeah. Second attack. 14 plus seven, so 21. Although technically with the slow spell finished, the hypnotic pattern may have gone off. Yeah.

So yeah, so that would have gone off. So make a wisdom saving throw, if you don't mind. No, I don't mind at all. May I ask a weird question, Matt? Yes. The guy that I was trying to break out of the cage, is he alive? Glancing around the area, it looks like there is,

the people that were right on the outer edge of the cages are frozen. Would I have seen that before I tried to unlock the cage? The guy who's near you, he's fine. They blocked the impact there. It was your latter half that was sticking out that got blasted. Okay, cool.

All right. I rolled a 22. Wow. 22. All right. I rolled a 22. Wow. 22, all right. So hit art pattern does not affect you. Nice. Well done. I did 11 damage on my second attack on her. She was down. Fuck yes.

Down like dead? Like unconscious. Like unconscious and bleeding out, yeah. Awesome, not fighting. You're the only one doing stuff. Do you have any more attacks left? I have my bonus. Can I move and then attack again?

Yeah, if you want to. Uh. Ooh. Oh fuck, no, wait. Or you can just hit them while they're down and help them bleed out. I thought about that, but I have enough movement that I can make it to the Barbarian, right?

You could. Or can I get to, are you going to handle Lorenzo? Who's going to handle Lorenzo? Who's going to handle Lorenzo? Who's going to handle Lorenzo? I'm saying, then you. Fuck, I'm going to jump over the horse's asses and get to Lorenzo. You are. Oh dear.

Okay. Zip, zip, zip, zip, zip. Make an acrobatics check. Hup, hup,ics check. No. 14. 14, okay. You get over the horses. Where are you going to stand? On the cart? There's not a lot of room here to stand to fight him. You'd have to get over. I have 40 feet of movement. I'll say you can get back here.

Yes, land on the horse's back. Can I land on the horse's back? Sure. Now you're mounted. Beat his ass from the horse? Yes, land on the horse's back. Can I land on the horse's back? Sure, why not? In balance? Now you're mounted. So you're on the horse. He's right there. I'm on a horse. Am I within range of him?

Yeah. He's right there. So I'm in combat range with him? Yes, you are. I'm going to spend another key point. Yeah, to do... Yep, to do patient defense. I don't trust this motherfucker.

Hopefully that's useful. Okay, go, go, go. All right, that ends your turn? Yeah. That brings us to Ruza. Ruza, who watched the druid go down, sees you, Mara, over there the druid go down, sees you, Mara, over there, seeing you really defensive,

looks around, hmm, make him over. Okay, he's going to attempt to cast Old Person at level three. I need Mollymauk, and I need Beau to make wisdom saving throws, please. You're a sucker. You got this, guys.

Big rolls, big rolls, big rolls. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. 25. 21. Wow. Completely resists it. Shit. Burn that shit. He's going to go ahead and back up around the tree trunk there. Damn it.

Big rolls. All right, that ends her turn. Molly, you're up. There's no way to get through. Thank you for sticking with us. I know this is going late, but I want to see how this turns out. You can go on for two weeks.

Consider it a bonus episode. There's no way I can make it to Lorenzo from here, is there? It's possible. Not anymore. You could climb over the cart if you want to. So I can maybe get, well, I'm going to get my ass kicked if I get there. I'm going to try and engage the Barbarian

before raging happens. Okay. And if I can actually, I may even like, yeah. Up to you. Yeah, goddammit. Fuck it, if you're in Lorenzo, I'm going for Lorenzo. Okay, make an acrobatics check to try and get over the cart without issue. Ten?

You lose some movement, but you still have enough to get right there. That's as close as you get. Lorenzo, ten, please. All right, and I'm going to take three attacks. I do not have take three attacks. I do not have advantage, obviously. No, you do not. All right, first attack. Is that cocked or is that okay? Is it your big dice?

It's cocked. Goddamn it. It was a 20. It was a 20. No. 20. That's a 22. Whoa! All right, go ahead and take your damage.

That's seven, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 points of damage. Woo, nice! I'm not happy. And that's a two. That's a 10. 10's not hit. All right. Then the other one is a three that does not hit either.

That first strike just carves past. You see blood spatter across the edge of the hillside. Mara's just like, All right, I see what you're doing. One for one. Slams the glaive onto the ground. All right, that ends your turn, Molly. It is Lorenzo's turn. Lorenzo's going to go ahead and make two glaive attacks against you. I think I have a second blood maledict usage now.

You're still level five. I know, and I have a thing here. I was looking because I know you change things and it says, Blood Melodic, you can invoke a blood curse a number of times per short rest based on your level. Second, one, fifth, two, ninth, three. Then yeah, go for it. So I'm taking, this die rolls worse, come on. For fuck's sake.

My Blood Melodic literally kills me. Actually no, fuck, was I going to do it advanced? I was going to do it advanced, so. It knocks me unconscious, my own Blood Melodic knocks me unconscious. You're going to do it in advance? I was going to do it in advance, so. It knocks me unconscious. My own blood maledict knocks me unconscious. You're going to knock unconscious? That was four hit points. Unconscious?

Oh shit. What was I going to do? Not that. God, is he still going to attack you? So first hit, you guys watch as Lorenzo takes, as Molly falls back and unconscious, Lorenzo takes, as Molly falls back and unconscious, Lorenzo looks confused. His vision still obscured with the blindness.

Am I flanking Molly? Am I going to be flanking? Yeah. Oh, you're not flanking because you're at an angle, you're on the horse, technically. So no. The first strike slams down into Molly's chest. The blade actually sinking about seven inches

into the chest. Blood spatters out of your mouth. You can use your reaction to make an attack if you like. I can't, as Sentinel, right? As Sentinel, you can, yes. Okay. Thank you. Do it. This is so fun. 14.

14 does not hit. Fuck! Fuck. Lorenzo looks back over towards Keg. Looks up at you, Beau, and says, an example it is. Molly, in the brief moments of consciousness, what do you want to be your last words? Oh no!

Can I say wait? No. He's in it? It's done? This is done. Do you get a reaction? Do you have anything? Maybe I can talk to him. Molly, you have a brief moment as the consciousness in life leaves you. What are your last words?

With blood. Oh god. As it slams into his face. Respect. Then twists the blade. The life leaves Molly. Eyes never shut. It's now Prado's turn.

Prado is going to go ahead and take his single shot, because he used his Accident Surge, to... now that he's gotten two javelin tosses, he's going to go ahead and fire at you, Axe and surge to... Now that he's gotten two javelin tosses, he's going to go ahead and fire at you, now seeing that you're in the proximity. That's a natural, too. He misses. Off your armor, you're not even paying attention,

you're looking over at this, and you just feel it deflect. No impact. Caleb, your turn. I'm going to hold my turn and cast Scorching Ray at the sorcerer the moment they do anything. Okay. First I will get up off of Prone into a crouch.

Okay. The thugs take their turn. Both of them are going to go ahead and. You should. Yeah. Okay. You must not! They're both going to back up and take two crossbow shots at Beau. You have your patient defense on? Yeah, I can't watch this. Okay. You must know! They're both going to back up and take two crossbow shots at Beau.

You have your patient defense on? Yeah, I can't watch this. Fuck. Oh god. That is still a 16 and a 17. They rolled. 16 misses, 17 hits. That's right. So first one, you just deflect out of the air. Catch it.

Oh no, she was using Reaction. The other one is a 15. I can still use Deflect Missiles, right? To lower it? Use your Reaction to do it. But it rolled a 15 to hit, so both manages to, you're just watching this happen, you hear the

deflected off. The other one, you catch and drop, still looking down at Molly's not moving body, as Lorenzo now grins back at you and says, Is it time for another? Or have you learned your lesson? You should know, I have no respect for authority. And another life it is.

All right, that ends Thug's turn. I'm invisible! The blind does not see you. Oh my god. As a quick reminder! Seven, eight. Yeah, see the closest there. The brain goes pulling in, is going to go ahead

and use action to move up into melee with you, but that's their turn. This is not looking good, guys. This brings us to Keg. Keg, you've seen these situations before. What are you going to do? Can I reach them with my speed? Can you reach who?

Lorenzo and Beau. No. Can I reach them with my speed? Can you reach who? Lorenzo and Beau. No. How close can I get? You can, with the tree there, it's going to get about there, it's about as close as you can get. Okay. You can use your action

to move, but you won't be able to do anything else. But I can talk to him? You can. All right. We can move up over the log and get you there. I say, stop, stop! Make me the example. Stop, just stop attacking them. Make a persuasion check.

11. Okay, that's your turn. Duoma's bleeding out. Nott, your turn. What do I do? Lorenzo hasn't been hit yet, has he? He got hit once. He got hit once. Once, but he's not going to go down.

He's still covered in shit. You hear Keg shouting and mid-battle parlaying. Wow. There's the barbarian on Caleb, which is not good. I will first try to use a bonus action to use item and pour acid on one of the locks, see if that opens it. Okay. You go ahead and pour acid on the lock. It's going to take a moment to... Acid is an immediate thing. If you're not going to splash it on somebody, it has to eat your metal.

Well, then I won't do that. You would know that as an alchemist. I will... What do I do? I can't kill anything here. I'm going to try the lock. There's nothing else I can do. I'll try to the natural one. I think the signs are pointing in a direction. What do you do and not? Movement and bonus, I will run towards Caleb.

But not directly at the Barbarian. Yes. That's a lot of time. Beau, it's your turn. You see Nott run. Let's see, movement is 30. How far could I have gotten with just movement? With just movement?

Yeah. Right there. Okay. Yeah, so that's fine. Go ahead. Beau, you see. We're running. You see Keg rushing to parlay.

What do you do? I say, hey Keg. No, wait, that's your name. Hey, Lorenzo. This one's for Beau. No, fuck, I'm getting all my names fucked up because I'm so stressed out. This one's for Molly and Yasha, because we failed on this before. I'm going to get it right this time, and I'm going to take my tinderbox, I'm going to light it, and I'm just going to right onto him, light him on fire. Okay, he's going to make a dexterity saving throw. I mean, I'm touching him with it.

I know, he fails. Okay. Full d6 damage. He's on fire. Plus d6 plus what? D6 fire damage. Four. Four points of fire damage.

There's now flames curling off of his body. He's taking it. I take my staff and just pure brute anger just right across his face. Roll for it. Get out of there, Beau. just pure brute anger just right across his face. Roll for it. Get out of there, Beau. 12.

Get out of there. Second is out. He's not even looking at you, he's looking at Keg. Run! Since she has his attention. 18. 18 does hit. Six damage. Okay.

Run! Okay. All right, I take my movement and go towards Caleb and Nott. Fuck. He goes, there's a reflex for him to go ahead and take an Attack of Opportunity on you with his glaive. He flickers, just looks back to Keg, seeming more interested in what she has to say.

Your turn? Yeah. All right. Rissa's going to go ahead and lock up. Give me everything you have for the sorcerers. The moment she does anything, that depends on how you want to interpret that. The moment she does anything, what were you going to cast?

Well, I meant like, do anything, I guess do anything to hurt us. Okay. So as you're watching her very carefully, what you're going to do, you're just going to go ahead and step up and cast Cure Wounds. Oh, it's a slay. Are you trying to capture Molly? Yeah. Molly's dead. Cure Wounds isn't going to affect him. It reaches out and touches Lorenzo,

and he heals up a bit. Cure Wounds. He starts trying to pat the flames out a little bit, and he's like, shoes are off. Fucking cleric. All right, now it is Lorenzo's turn, because Molly doesn't have a turn. Lorenzo's looking at you and says,

Looks like we have an eye for an eye scenario. Points off at Duelna, who at this point is bled out. She's dead? We'll say yes, she's bled out at this point. You say you want to be an example, huh? You want them to go? Sure. Puts his hand up, flames still curling up and burning his body, which we roll another d6. Another four damage.

Use your teleports, fucker. I had one! Puts his hand up with the glaive in the air, and he watches all the other thugs looking off, pull back their crossbows to the side. The barbarian in front of you, Caleb, you see this woman whose face is twisted in absolute rage, like.

Puts the hammer down. Lorenzo says, We're going to make an example of our old friend. Round up what you can. You welcome me, Keg. And leads you back over to where the rest of you are. As the warrior steps back. Still burning.

Takes. And leads you here. They begin to move forward and push the carts, begin to push the log off of this side. The warrior woman just grabs the front of the cart where the horses were and begins to drag it forward as it begins to pull away. There's one of them encased in ice. It's a flash freeze and then it goes away.

It's not like it keeps it there. As this one pulls forward. The Thuggas goes and grabs the body with their druid, throws it over the top of the cart, where she seems to vanish, except for a leg dangling out the side of the illusion. You look forward. Grabs your shoulder and pushes you down onto your knees.

Do you do anything? Looks at the three of you. The Iron Shepherds have a reputation, and I expect you to tell everyone you come across what happened here today and the mistake it is to turn against us. He pulls the glaive back slowly, leans into your ear and says, Death would be too late. I want you to live with the memory of what you did today. He just kicks you in the back and knocks you onto your face, turns around, finally pats out the flames.

Moving on. And if I see any of your faces again, well, at least you'll be able to see your friend on the other side. Fuck you, Lorenzo. Fuck me, indeed. He turns and joins the rest of the caravan as he begins to pull back on the path,

leaving the four of you beaten, bruised, and glancing off at the lifeless, bloodied body of Malimog T'Leaf. That's where we're going to leave tonight's episode. Fun guest star. Wow, and Ash? Uh, sorry. Good job, Ashley.

I mean, he was. Welcome to the game. You have destroyed the show. That was some ins. Go ahead and see my way out. No, no, no, this is part play the show. That was some intense. Go ahead and see my way out? No, no, no, this is part of the game. It wasn't all your fault, just mostly. That was a terrible convergence of events.

Yeah, bad shit happens. It does. Bad shit happens to mediocre people. Wow, I'm going to sit down. Oh boy. You did great. Well, thank you guys for sticking with us this long. I know it's been a late night.

Our return after a week off, and the drama has certainly kicked in. Pick this up next week. Let's use this week to love each other and... Yeah, don't remiss for all the things we probably did wrong. No, please don't. Everyone here is playing the game

as best they can in the moment, and honestly, a lot of it was dice swings and a lot of it was circumstantial, and this is how the game as best they can in the moment, and honestly, a lot of it was dice swings and a lot of it was circumstantial, and this is how the game works. And it's going to make for a great story. Yeah. And will continue to. That's one fucking villain now in your campaign. Yeah.

Oh, this is going to be delicious. So be kind to each other. We love you all very much. Let's take a week to remember Mollymauk. Is there nothing we can do to bring him back? There's nothing we got. Not with what we got. Not with what you got. I've got another vial of acid.

But on that note, once again, we love you guys. Have a wonderful week. And is it Thursday yet? Good night. Not yet. Your essays on the history and impact of the various ages and epochs of Exandria are eagerly anticipated. Just kidding. No homework for you, but if you are inspired to do some writing, please leave us a review. Your words can really help new folks find our show and encourage them to give it a try.

Thank you so much for joining us on this adventure. Until next time.