Critical Role - C2E64 A Dangerous Chase

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Giving chase to their wily target, the Mighty Nein travel north into the Barbed Fields, a dangerous and terrifying wasteland...Watch Critical Role live Thursdays at 7pm PT on https://www.twitch.tv/criticalrole

Hi there, this is Matthew Mercer, resident Game Master here at Critical Role, to welcome you to this podcast version of the show. If you'd like to watch the stream as it airs, you can catch it Thursdays at 7pm Pacific on twitch.tv slash criticalrole or youtube.com slash criticalrole. Twitch subscribers can access the video on demand immediately after the broadcast and it also becomes available on YouTube Mondays at 12pm Pacific. Podcast episodes land right here on the Critical Role Podcast Network on Thursdays, a week after the initial broadcast. Okay, with that info dump out of the way, let's dive into the story.

Hello everyone, and welcome to tonight's episode of Critical Role, where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons. We play Dungeons & Dragons! Wow, that was a great one. Just to let you know. What's happening? You guys, yeah, you got abandoned on that one. I was distracted by Marisha's call-out, maybe. I am, too.

Jump into the water at the same time. One, two, three. Nope. So anyway, welcome. Before we get into tonight's game, we have a few announcements. Starting with our fantastic sponsor. We have two sponsors tonight.

First one is our returning friends at D&D Beyond. D&D Beyond! D&D Beyond, guys, so many amazing critters support us and support Red Nose Day and support D&D Beyond by subscribing, not just critters here in America, but all over the world, especially, I want to give a shout out tonight to our friends and critters in Australia.

Because we are such fine voice actors with talented accent skills, I'm going to give a shout out to the Australian critters in their native tongue. No way. Crikey. Crikey, crikey, okay. Oh no, no, no.

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Adventure, Ghosts of Saltmatch. Ghosts of Saltmatch, which is Crikey, available today at D&D Beyond. The swashbuckling spooky adventure is finally here. Make it stop. Piece of piss, which I'm told is a good phrase. Well, I reckon that news is sweeter than Tim Tams covered in Vegemite. Ripper! Suss it out right now at dndbeyond.com and you'll be apples.

Beauty, that's not a knife! Back to you, Matt. Oh, did you also do the VO for the Outback Steakhouse? Does Australia, how big is their standing army? We have an actual Australian in the building, that's all it takes. What, you do? Just one guy with a knife.

Oh no, he's out there! He's out there watching this right now! I'm going to get shivved, or whatever they call it in Australia. Murdered. They call it murder. Murdered. Murdered. I'm going to get billabonged. All right, we're done.

Thank you, Sam. Clockwise, man. That's the only difference. Put me on edge. Oh. I was fine, now I'm nervous about the game. I don't know about you guys, all I can hear is white noise right now.

Thank you, Sam, and thank you, D&D Beyond, for your endless patience with Sam Riegel. SAM and LAURA, SAM and LAURA, and our secondary sponsor for tonight, our friends at Rook and the Raven. Returning once again, we've talked about them before, we're happy to bring them forth again to discuss their fantastic line of campaign books

they do, these amazing handcrafted, disc-bound books in which you can keep tabs on all your character information, your campaign information. Marisha, you have one over there right now that you have been using for quite some time. I keep adding paper to it, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger. It's pretty good, it's pretty good.

It's great, you can easily add or remove pages. It's great for any tabletop game, for keeping track of your character or your campaigns, and they have special editions for each. You can check out all their amazing stuff at therookandtheraven.com slash CriticalRoll. For a limited time, you can use the code CRITROLL on their website to get $10 off your order.

CritRoll. CritRoll. Go check it out. You all right? You just hit me and I just bled a little bit. I just took another d4 of damage. Okay, there you go. All right, and a couple other quick announcements, too. If you guys haven't seen it yet,

we showed it before the stream tonight, but it's on YouTube as well. We ran a very special one-shot of me running a one-on-one game with Stephen Colbert as part of Red Nose Day. It was insane. Who said that sentence? That was a real sentence. I know, I know. It didn't hit me until yesterday.

Hello, bees! Hello, bees. Hello, bees. You guys, thank you so much for all of your fantastic support. The people at Red Nose Day do incredible work to work towards ending child poverty, and you guys have already raised

an extremely generous amount for this. You are still available to make, you are still able to make donations right now. It is still available at CritRole.com slash RedNoseDay. If you haven't had a chance to see the video, it is up on our YouTube at the CritRole channel. It's so good. It's so romantic. I thought I was in love with Stephen Colbert before, and then like, I think we're steady now.

I was pretty happy about that. I thought I was in love with Matt Mercer before. No, I don't, yeah. I don't know what that feeling was. So thank you so much for supporting that, guys. Next Friday, May 31st, 7 p.m. Pacific, we will be airing a very special My Little Pony one-shot. Led by our buddy, Mark Humes.

Mark, do you want to come say hi real fast? Hey! Come over here! What's up, bud? Hey! He's been storming our studio this week. Yeah, been hanging out, just chilling out, doing stuff. Yeah.

Go lower, go lower. Go lower, go lower. There you go. There we go, there we go. Nice. Hey. Hey, everybody. Yeah, so we did a My Little Pony one shot, which I think there's a little promo for in the break,

I think, we filmed, so you'll get to see the cast, the cool artwork, it was a lot of fun. Liam and Ashley definitely kept me on my toes along with some of the other players that you'll see. Yeah, and it was really fun. Heck yeah, so look for that next Friday, May 31st, at 7 p.m. in place of, well, not in place of anything. It'll be Friday, so thank you, Mark.

Friday, man. Thank you. Good luck, Mark! For those who aren't familiar with Mark, he played Calian in this campaign before, so you should be familiar. Also, he has an amazing show called High Rollers. He runs the cast network.

Check them out as well. But yeah, so as part of that, we have our own Ashley Johnson and Liam O'Brien, as well as pals Markeia McCarty, who is amazing, Julie Nathanson, who's amazing. You saw her on the Nightmare Before Critmas one shot, and Roger Craig Smith, voice of many things, including Sonic the Hedgehog, not the movie.

Instead, that's another friend of the show, Ben Schwartz. But yes, VOD will be available on our YouTube channel that Sunday, so if you missed it the Friday, you can see it that Sunday. Check it out. And, I guess, Laura, you have a merch thing? Oh, funny you should say. Why, yes.

What is this? Shut up like you don't know Liam. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun! Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun! Whoa! New shirt alert. Yes, this is by our awesome critter, Jihuli. It's available in the U.S. store only right now,

but it will, you know, the uge. It'll make its way there. It's really cool, you should see it up close, because it's got all the stuff. What is that? Detail. It's our pattern. A mandala? Yeah, it's a pattern that represents

all of the Mighty Nein, so there's all these really fun little details in there. Yeah, and the closer you look. Check it out at our shop. Shop dot, what is it? Just say it in Australian. CritRole.com slash shop. That's a thing now.

Anyway, it's super cool. You should check it out. There's other stuff in our store as well. Thank you, Laura. You're pretty. And with that. This is what I was, oh. I'm sorry, no, I'm sorry.

I got really excited talking to Sam. She's got these dice that are insane. I've got cool dice that I'm excited about today. Show them off! What the heck are those? So these were given to me a long time ago, but I just am now bringing them to the game. They're all black. You have to fold them up. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

They're in the shape of your different kind of characters, so depending on what your damage is, it's like, oh, this is a sword, and it rolls a d6. This is a mace or whatever. Yeah. That's an eight. There's a potion bottle. What? And there's a fist, and these are both fists.

These would be good for humor. Bounce! They're really cool. Pop, pow! So anyway, it's cool, and I'm excited to use them tonight. You go like that, and then it's a four that it landed on. You much more successfully plugged your dice than our shirt.

I'm sorry. You guys, check out this awesome shirt. That's genuine love. I've been excited about this shirt for a long time, so this isn't the first time I'm seeing it, but it's the first time you're seeing it. What's the name of your shirt, Laura? Thank you, Laura, appreciate that.

It's not our t- Thanks, Laura. Okay. All right. Quick sidebar. Yes, sidebar? Laura and Taliesin are dressed like bees. And Marisha is wearing a bee. How did we do that? In honor of Eric.

Yes, all right. Eric the bee. Happy Red Nose Day, everybody. Happy Red Nose Day. Pufflepuffs, y'all. Damn right. Represent. Represent. Anyway, enough of this dilly-dallying.

Or shilly-shallying. Drop down into the moment that we left off in last time. Do it! Let's go ahead and jump in to tonight's episode of Critical Role. I'm sorry. The adventure begins They were always beside you Your nerdy best friends And the DM to guide you

And they rise from the flames For the battles ahead Villains beware Cause you're about to be dead They got magic and flair they got fouchions and cunning they don't see over there there's a monster incoming

inspiration is waiting rise up don't think twice put your fate in your hands take a chance, roll the dice Roll, Critical Roll, Critical Roll, Critical Roll, Critical Can you answer the call? Digging deep in your soul

As the legend unfolds Now it's your turn It's your turn To roll And to roll And welcome back. She's getting in on it. Yeah. Wow. Nice try. Respect.

So, last we left off, the Mighty Nein, who have been residing for a little bit of time in the region of Xhorhas, the eastern Wynandir area on Wildemount, you've made alliances in the city of Rosohna with Bright Queen and the Kryn Dynasty. You returned a beacon, You've done a few deeds and gave on to the Bright Queen information about movement the Empire was taking

in this war that they have with the Dynasty. You were rewarded as such and begin to pursue a thread of information that you worried might have something to do with this war. Whatever it may be, you've scryed upon an individual and learned of a dropping point, or some sort of a meeting that was to happen in the city. Upon the date of this fateful meeting,

you found a place to watch and lie in wait. You watched a number of individuals enter the Overcrow Apothecary, and Nott, when on a stealth mission, managed to avoid detection a number of times, except for the last one. Upon doing so, a brief conflict took place within the apothecary, in which the drow figure

that was meeting with this dragonborn character on horseback managed to flee. The bodyguard left behind to fight to the death. And the courier, it seems, this dragonborn killed in the street, along with its horse, you manage to diffuse the immediate tension of the nearby guard and populace

being interested in this sudden display of bloodshed and conflict. You manage to temporarily hold off and keep kind of a prisoner, but certainly under your watch, the owner of the Overcrow, Maruo the Goblin, as well as her bugbear bodyguard. You've dragged the corpse of both the Dragonborn

and the horse to the back of the building, and you've gained just enough knowledge through your spell use that the figure that escaped, this drow figure, has been on the move northward and beyond the reach of the spells you had already cast. So, come back to you all gathering at the Overcrow and figuring out what to do next. So, Mighty Nein, what would you like to do?

We should pull in those bodies through the window. The body of a horse? And the body of the dragonborn. I think the horse can stay. We can put it in the storage. We'll just cover a blanket or something. Let's put it in the back room. And just turn it to compost.

Eventually. Well, I start dragging the dragonborn through the window into the back storage room. Just leaves a little trail. Yeah. I try to pull the horse through. I think I might have messed up, guys. I don't think the Dragonborn was as important as I had initially thought.

Yeah, pretty sure we just shot the messenger. I'm sorry about that. Is that why that's a saying? I think so. Yeah. Wow. We just invented that phrase. Look. I'm a pretty witty person. Wow, Beauregard just invented the phrase

don't shoot the messenger. Canon. Where's Maro? Currently inside, in the shop behind the counter, just sitting there watching you all carefully. Marrow? Yes? Do you have any more appointments on the books for today? Not particularly.

This was it? This was the only meeting? Here were book for you? Well, they don't book them in advance, they just come in and pay me and use the space. It's not like I have an extensive ledger where they contact me weeks in advance and I fill out a calendar and make sure I can fit them in before I'm wanting coffee. Insight check, does she have a ledger?

Yeah. Please. That was an insight check. Way too specific. All right. That's pretty good. That's a 22. Okay.

Oh! Oh! You flipped us, Rue! Yay! Oh, I mean. If you couldn't tell by the accent, folks, 22. Okay. Oh! Oh, I mean. If you couldn't tell by the accent, folks, you can pick up the newest D&D adventure, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, today on D&D Beyond. It's a spooky adventure and you can get it

only at one place. Well, I think you can get it more than one place, but you can definitely get it at D&D Beyond. I'll put you out. All right. but you could definitely get a D&D Beyond. I'll put you out. Did the Trout tell you how long they were staying upstairs? No, they had no particular information about it. They just paid for the entry fee and then took the time and if it ever overlaps, I told them to come back later. How paid for the entry fee and then took the time and if it ever overlaps,

I tell them to come back later. How much is the entry fee? That's kind of curious, yeah. Per person, it's 25 gold. Damn, Marrow. That's a good hustle, yeah. Thank you, I appreciate that. Don't do too bad for myself.

Won't tell people get murdered in here, but. Oh, I appreciate it. you know, people get murdered in here, but. Well, I appreciate it. How often do people get murdered in here, actually? Not very often, because usually I do a much better job of keeping it low key. Did we already search the dragonborn body before we pulled it in the window? We did, okay. But we didn't search upstairs.

Yasha, you and I should go upstairs and check around. Anything we should know about up there before we start looking around? Ah! Traps, things with placeholder. No traps, but there is a little switch under the table. Opens a chute. Where does the chute go?

She points to the storage room. Motherfuck, that's how she got out. That's pretty cool, actually. That's pretty cool. Let's go look. Yasha and I will go up and start looking. Okay. I may head up as well for the two of you.

Okay. It's a very plain room, intentionally, so there's no decor, it's just wood walls, wood floor. There's the one window that's shuttered closed in the front. There are four chairs and there is a table. The table is bolted to the floor. You take a moment to look underneath and you can see underneath the table,

part of the table leg, there's an additional iron rod that's pressed up against it. An additional iron rod pressed up? Like an iron rod on the back of, on the inside of one of the table legs. Yeah. Is that the, oh, that's the trapdoor, yeah. Might be, yeah.

I mean, that's cool. Anything else? Should we look around? Yeah, let's look around. Okay, I'll take the desk. You want to take the rest of the room? Yeah. All right, both of you guys make investigation checks. Can I ask a question? Yes, you may.

Did we, in the end of the last game, did I already tell Yasha what I heard from the messenger? Have we talked about that at all? Did we brush over that, or did it? I don't recall, but you can definitely, you can rekindle that conversation if you'd like to clarify. 16 at the desk.

Eight for the rest of the room. Okay. At the table, the desk, it's clear, it's a simple table. This room, aside from that switch, is intentionally left blank, barren, neutral. You gather, based on the type of meetings that might happen here,

it's in the best interests of those who would come to a place outside of the visible spectrum of the rest of the city to find a space of complete safe neutrality. Okay. As we're searching around, I'm just going to... It's a square room. Yasha, I'm so sorry that I shot you three times.

I didn't mean to shoot you at all, any times, but three is even worse than one. Yeah, it's okay, Nott, I can take it, obviously. But just, I knew you were under something, but just try not to do that again, if you can. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I also did all this, and is everyone downstairs mad at me?

I don't even think that they're even thinking about it, Nott. I think there's a lot of other things that's on everybody else's minds. You're okay. Okay. You warned us, we came in, and... Are you mad at yourself, I suppose? I just got very nervous, that's all.

Why did you get nervous? Because I haven't been drinking. You haven't? No, but I think I should start again. I think I function much better with a little. With a little bit of liquid courage? Yes. Well, you know, I wouldn't tell you not to do it.

That's the kind of advice that I came here for. How pretty. While she's swigging, I send Frumpkin to pit a pat up to the peak of the house and go blind and deaf in here and want to see the streets, to see what the citizens of the town are doing. Okay. Or if there's any guards rushing to or anything,

if there is a problem. Make a perception check for Frumpkin. For Frumpkin? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Peace, peace, peace creatures. Where the hell'd they go? They're gone. Well, I rolled a 16, so I'm going to say 16

because I don't know where the creatures went. Where'd they go? Refresh. Yeah, just refresh. There you go. So Frumpkin takes a look around there, and I mean, occasionally you see figures in the street that are walking and whispering to each other. Like any folks who live in the outer boonies of the city, word gets around and there's a lot of locals

who are passing by and just informing each other of some sort of scuffle in the street, you may think. You don't see any guard getting involved at the moment, but it does seem that, you know, it's being discussed. Okay, so I'm going to stay in the state and say, the people who live here are talking about this. That is all, and I stay in it. Okay.

We probably shouldn't stay here long then. But wait, what if, oh, I'm not there. I mean, I don't know if Blondie's, what's his name? Greg. Greg, if he's going to show up or not. I don't. Was the people who were here his liaisons,

or was that something totally unrelated? Seems like a transaction was happening and happened. Maybe he was saying that he was sending somebody. Maybe he never said he was going to be here himself. Mara. Yeah? The drow man, was he holding anything when he came in?

Carrying anything? I mean, he had a pouch and travel gear, but that's about it. How big was the pouch? Pouch size? I wasn't paying attention! I'm going to lose my shit. You're sure you don't keep any sign-in sheet, record? That's what I want to do, is have a long sheet

that implicates me on every illegal activity that happens in my shop! Gives you an alibi. You'd think that! All right. Mr. Caleb? Mr. Caleb? Totally deaf.

He's busy, his mind is in another person thing right now. Do you need us to tell him something? Yeah. No, I'm going to come down. I'm going to go upstairs. Oh, all right. Pardon me, sorry, these are a little. Okay, this is just, I'll go left.

I'll go right, okay. Right, it's fine. No, please. All right, you head upstairs. You head upstairs, he heads downstairs. You head upstairs, you head upstairs. I was thinking if there's a way that we could maybe magically keep tabs on the room.

I don't know if there's a thread thing or if there's a thing you can do to alert us that people are in there. If we leave something behind, then Jester can scry through it. That's not a bad idea. Jester! Hold on, I'm in the middle of something.

I'm in the middle of talking to Yasha. All right, so Jester. Yasha? Yeah. Did you know that guy that you were fighting? I've never seen either of them before in my life. Because I think he knows you. Yeah, it seems like it. Well, okay, so when I was sending him a message,

I was trying to fake him out, right, that he should come back here, and anyway, he didn't fall for it, but he was like, Follow me north, bring her. Bring her meaning? I think he means Yasha. You do? That's kind of what I thought, you know.

Did he say why? No, he didn't, and here's the crazy part, okay, because, you know, I've used this spell a lot, okay? And, okay, so he never saw me, right? Like, I never saw that guy, ever. And somehow, when I sent him the message, he knew it was me. He knew who you were? Yeah, he was like, I know you.

That's not what usually happens. You usually send it and you have to say who you are. Well, yeah, unless they know me, they don't know it's me. Like he's been spying on us? I mean, what if he's scrying on us the way that I've been scrying on other people? To scry, you need to know someone

traveling in a party, correct? Right, or know of them. Like, he could know about you or something in the bin. I don't know. I don't think I've ever seen him before. Sometimes when I can't think of someone, I think of the first letter of their name. Does it start with A? Does it start with B?

Go through the alphabet that way? What? Yeah, like, what's her name? Agatha? You start sounding out. Is there anything, thinking of him? Because I think he might have been disguising himself or something. Is there anything, thinking of him? Because I think he might have been

disguising himself or something. I mean, I would have disguised myself coming in here. I did actually disguise myself as a moth. It didn't work very well. You got a taste of some curtains. That was so good. Actually, while we're discussing this, I walk over to the curtains

and give them a little munch as myself as well. Okay. Somehow less tasty in your current form. No, nope. Doesn't translate. So you don't remember this person at all? Well, if I think really hard on it, does he seem familiar to me at all?

Not particularly. You've not encountered many or interacted with many drow in the time that you grew up in the Iothia, moorlands, for the most part, the tribes there keep away and don't get involved in the Crean. So you have no recollection of meeting this individual before? He said, come north.

Downstairs, didn't the hobby gobby also call you something? Yes. He called me by the name that was given to me by my tribe. Which was Orphan Maker? Yes. That is a cool-ass name, by the way. Well, thank you, but it's

a little weird that someone knows my name and I don't know who they are. So. So the Orphan Maker was a name that you liked? Well, not particularly. I mean, my name is Yasha, but you know, when you... Oh! Oh! Oh, she's checking something.

That's not too backstory. Reference! I'm going to do that again. Reference! I'm just checking something, actually. Did you make an orphan by killing someone's parents? No, I think... When you're taken into the tribe, you, I feel like maybe I have told you guys this before. Yeah, I think you totally have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you take a blood oath that they call The Marking, and when you take it, they give you a name in the tribe. So the name that was given to me was Orphan Maker. Why that word? Because she's really tough, you know? We all have names like that, you know? Why am I the Little Sapphire?

I never knew, I couldn't figure it out, you know? You're shiny and blue and beautiful. Yeah. Oh. That makes perfect sense, actually, yeah. You are a Little Sapphire. Which leads me to believe that maybe Yasha has killed someone's parents.

No, I don't think it's like that. I think you're all given sort of a name in your tribe that maybe calls out whatever your destiny will be. Oh boy, that's rough. But I think, you know, we're all given names that are supposed to sound scary. What were some of the other scary names that people got?

Oh yeah, yeah. Were they all sort of dark and? Yeah, they're all dark and they're scary. Turtle dove. Turtle dove, yeah. Cherry blossom. Fluffernutter. Oh!

No. They're all big and scary names. Okay. Arterial spray. Yeah. But they're all like that. They're supposed to, when you meet other people or other tribes, they're supposed to incite fear. I don't think, I never took that name to heart.

I mean, my name is Yasha. But it's weird that they know that because that was only known in my tribe. Oof. Do you want to follow him north? I mean. I want to know why they know who I am. Because we could do it.

We could go after him. Maybe. We'll see. We'll talk with everyone and see what everyone wants to do. Hey, Nott! What? You pull that damn switch yet? Yeah, we're staring.

We're staring at the stupid chute, seeing what happens. I totally forgot. You break it or what? I will flip the switch. Flip the switch and the back corner of the room just comes loose. There's a little latch that's let loose and as it flies open, you guys watch

this part of the ceiling in the storage chamber that's off to the side of the apothecary. Hangs open at an angle and there's room for somebody to slide down. I go and slide down it. Okay. Son of a bitch. It's room for somebody to slide down. Woo! I go and slide down. Okay. Son of a bitch. It's like an action figure playset.

I'm going to tell Frumpkin to keep lookout and tell me if anything comes close or if there's any sort of stir beyond what I've already seen and drop down. What are we doing? I think we're going to check out. And land on Caleb, coming down. Fenton's out door.

Heads up, Jester coming. Okay. Did we ever check out that weird magical aura in the back corner, by the way, or no? A plane? A plan. That was the bodyguard. Thank you.

Thank you, brain. It's all good. Catching up. So I sent a message to the guy. He said, follow me north if you really want to talk to me or something, and he said, bring her, and I think he means Yasha, and we're probably going to go, right?

What's up, Orphan Maker? Ah. I mean, look, we're counting on this, right? We said we were going to deliver. If we come back empty-handed, we're not going to look to. Correct, but what about these two? They don't care. The mess, are you sure?

No, I think Caleb's right. All right, Maro, you got to die. Wait, wait, what? Any last words? I think that we can come to a financial arrangement. Go on. I think that maybe we can leave a little gold. In return, nothing is spoken of, and maybe if anybody, any of this party, especially if we leave a small sketch

of who we're looking for arrives, we are simply gently alerted. And in return, everything is just left as it is. I mean, to be fair, even if they're, we leave right now, just with a giant pile of bodies in here is a big problem for these two, anyway. That is true. Where's Jester at?

I'm on top of Caleb. Hey! Hi. Hey, Jessie. You still got that spell that lets you track people wherever they go, and so they are incentivized to play along with what we ask? Why don't you do that on over here? You got it. Make a deception check.

20. 20. Amaral goes. I hold up my Traveler symbol. I say, blanky blanky doo, shala gam, shaloo. I use thaumaturgy to flare my eyes. And blow his hair, her hair back. Yeah.

All right, you be marked. That does it. Don't let you be marked. That does it. Don't let you fuck us over, because it could go bad for you. Oh, ah, it's okay! You do the really strong one where they just die instantly if they break their- That's the only one I know.

Well. I got to say that there's a possibility that after this is blown over, maybe this could turn into a fruitful relationship for everybody involved. I'm all about fruitful relationships! I knew you would be. And you certainly do not want to piss off

the Empress herself. No, no, very confused, in general. That's good, that's good. You don't want to know all the details. I do not at all! You just want to know what we tell you. We're well known for our mixed messages. It's part of our job.

Who was in your shop today? I don't know. Mm-hmm. How did all these bodies get in here? It's the craziest thing! I woke up and they were there! We'll do well, yeah. Actually, I might suggest that we take

a couple of these bodies with us. See you next week, too, please! That would be great! Oh, so you'd like to talk to them? They're very heavy. Yeah, we could take them underneath, right? Given the circumstances, I think. We could talk to the dragonborn

about what they brought. I'd like to talk to both of them, to be honest. Where does this tunnel go? Can we dig them down into the tunnel for now? It goes from the second floor to the first floor. Both of them, including the horse? No, there's two bodies. I thought it went like this.

The hobgoblin and the dragonborn. Oh, yeah, let's talk to them. Because I'm not 100% convinced that these were the people we were looking for. You talk to them, I'll talk to the horse. Okay. Do you know how to speak horse? I know how to talk to dead horses.

Is that true? Yeah. Wow, that's cool. Let's do it. Just don't beat up the friends. I actually can't talk to them until tomorrow. I just invented that phrase. Okay. Not until tomorrow. Canon. Canon.

Just to clarify, we were supposed to intercept Greg, Blonde Greg. Yeah. Who you definitely heard say that he was coming here in person. Okay, do I remember if I definitely heard that he was coming, or I just heard the date and the arrival?

Let me look up the specific words to ensure that I'm not getting this wrong for you either. Okay. All right. Just a second as I go to my drop box. Your notes are dope. She has so many notes, how do you find anything? That's why I don't write anything down anymore,

because I just figure she's going to know it. From what I wrote down, it was, has the emblem at the Overcrow. You want to meet up in the next week. No, there were six days. No, that's too soon. 13 days. Then they mentioned a female in her paranoia.

That's what I got. Sounds about right. We'll go with that. Female in her paranoia is probably the right queen. But Greg didn't say, I will be there personally in 13 days. No, I was like, the thing will happen at the Overcrow. Okay, so this is what happened. And we got the money, and now he's got the emblem

or whatever it is that he has. Says, yes, I have the emblem, waiting for a window, but let's plot for next grison. Wait, grison the week after the Overcrowder. Yes, I had the emblem. He had the emblem. Is he going to be trading under the Bright Queen's emblem? No, so Greg sent the emblem, sold it for 50 platinum.

Right? We don't know. We don't know. Well, there was 50 platinum involved. But we don't know if this, she said, how many meetings do you usually have in a day, Morrow? One a week, it's not that often. Was this the only one, this was the only one today? The only one today, yeah!

She knows us. This may be stupid, but if they have the emblem and it's similar to our emblems, are they trying to create a distraction on the warfront so that they can do a singular attack here and try and hit somebody of high importance with that emblem, like a fucking DEFCON 1 badge. I feel like that's, I don't know, that feels like an awful lot of rapid smokes.

Putting Scourgers in, I don't know. Okay, should we go north? I think it is the only option. I mean, we can't be left here holding the bag. Let's follow him. Yasha, do you recognize anything up there that sounds familiar? Upstairs, Yasha said something really interesting

right after the stream ended last week about the word. Oh, but we didn't know, we didn't hear it. So tell us what you overheard. Well, we did not tell us everything. Oh yes, I heard, the only word that I clearly heard was bazozian. Bazozian. It was bazozian. Bazozan.

It was bazozian. Bazozian. Bazozian. Wait a minute, I think that's a place. Oh! It sounds so familiar for some reason to me. I don't know if I've been there, but I feel like I've seen it on the map.

Look at the map. Yasha, I think you're right. You're so right, it's right above this blood spray. Sounds like Gro-Alarm. Bazozan. And it so right, it's right above this blood spray. Smells like growl. Bazzozan. And it's north, that's what he said to follow. It is 100% right. Great thinking, Yashi. Yashi? Or would you prefer Orffy?

Nope. So how many days ride do you think that is? Bazzozan. I don't know. Where are we at right now? So how many days ride do you think that is? Vaz is in. I don't know. Where are we at right now? If you want to, both Fjord and Beauregard make an intelligence saving, or intelligence check, please. On this?

On the map, yeah, trying to look at distances. Oh, just intelligence? Yeah. Wait, did you say saving throw or just, no? Just a check. 15. Oh god, oh no, that's good. 19. 19, yeah.

Both looking at it, you get the sense that there's two paths there. I mean, you can go around the outside path that's known as the Hollowed Path. This thing? Yep. And take that to Bazzoxan, and that will known as the Hollowed Path. This thing? Yep. And take that to Bazzoxan, and that will take you about five days travel. Or you can go straight to the Barbed Fields,

and that'll take you about three days travel. Yeah. And I'm assuming the Barbed Fields is more deadly and less traveled. No, no, Barbs can represent that. The Barbed Fields was the ground zero for the final battles of the Calamity. Oh, we're going to go through there.

Take me on that TMZ tour. Road trip! Yeah! You have options. No, there's no option there. Is that like entering into the level 20 zone, though? Don't care, we are here! Maro, the Barb Zone. Barb Zone, is that what it is?

Yeah, Barbed. Barbed Fields. Oh, the Bone Zone. The Barb Zone. Barb Zone, is that what it is? Yeah, Barbed. Barbed. Oh. The Bone Zone. The Bone Zone. Wait, I'm not following this at all! Do you watch Stranger Things? Yeah. I've only seen half the first season. Have you ever been through the Barbed Fields?

What? No! Why would you want me to go there? That place is... Gary? Yeah? You're not from around here, are you? Well, Gabe was away. What can you tell us about the Barbed Fields?

I haven't been there. I just hear all these terrible stories and it's just really terrible to get around and it's hot during the day and there's all sorts of terrible creatures and weird, errant magic that just lingers from back when all the crazy-ass gods were fighting and shit and I don't know, I just,

that's all I know. Any groups in town that regularly make their way out there to scavenge for relics? None that I care to really know and few that come back, I'm sure. Yeah, all right. What kind of creatures? I don't know, I'm sure. Yeah, all right. What kind of creatures? I don't know, I haven't been there!

God. Maybe we talk to your doctor friend. What's their name? Doctor friend? Professor Wacko. Professor Wacko? Yeah, Professor. I haven't actually met them, to be fair. Yeah, Wacko. Maybe they could shed some light. I don't feel met them, to be fair. Yeah, Wako. Maybe they could shed some light.

I don't feel like talking to anyone. I feel like getting out of town right away. That one, let's do it. I do, I don't want anything getting back to the plate. I could send a message to the Bride Queen and see. No, no, no, no, no, don't. She's talking, we were. Yeah, we were going to do this perfectly.

Do this awesome thing. Totally biffed it. Hey, DM, what the fuck are these little doodads on the map there? That's a language you may not understand. What languages do you know? Definitely not doodad. Or even common. Do you know undercommon?

Fuck, why didn't I take that? Anybody got undercommon? No, but I can read anything if you give me some time with it. Spanish or French, whatever. Book is out and I'm starting to ritual cast. Okay. Comprehend languages. How long does that take?

10 minutes. Nobody speaks under, none of us? I don't think any of us would speak Undercommon. It's a second-level spell, it's a first-level spell, right? I have a choice. Ritual. Pike spoke up. Oh, really? That doesn't help.

Can she hologram in? Hey, guys! It's level one. Yeah, it's level one. One action, 10 minutes. What the fuck is that? 11 minutes of farm ritual. You got it, all right.

So you eventually can look at it, and it says the Deep River Mine. Deep River Mine. Deep River Mine. I will read everything that is in a different language. There's a little bit up here as well. That refers to the, let's see. Put it down so we can see. Oh, that is the Ashguard Garrison.

Ashguard Garrison. Oh, oh, oh. And here? That is the, let me put my map here, actually. Now that we're doing this. Now that we're doing this. Now that we're doing this. Hold up just a second while I pull up my map. Ooh, that's not right. You're writing on this shit, are you crazy?

Yeah. We want to remember. Damn dingle. You can write, draw a little more. Okay, there we go. No, that's the time. That's called the Blood Walk. The Blood Walk?

Right there, that leads to the Ashgard Gears. Oh, the Blood Walk. Okay, we have a little more here. Just a little more pencil. Okay, that right there is. And then we've to the lake? Some islands. There's Fevergulf Lake, and then those are the,

it reads as the Eyes of the Lake. Oh, good. Cool. Eyes of the Lake. Are you writing this down? We did that. No, nobody is. I got it.

To what end? I don't have reference, because we should just write it on the map. Why don't you just draw the map? Post-its, we need post-its. That's a really good idea. Is that a two-word idea? It's just Flair, yeah.

There was something mine, the bone shredder mine. The deeper of mine, that's actually where you've already been. That was where you had to go and free the giants from. You're writing really lightly. I like the idea of post-its. You're guys mad. Post-its, post-its. Let's do it later when we can. We're guys mad. Post-its, post-its. We'll see you later when we can follow up.

Okay, okay, okay. Eyes of a Lake, Blood Path. Blood Walk. Blood Walk. Universal City Blood Walk. This one's looking deeper for mine. Deeper for mine, thanks. Correct. And there's, is that one right here, too? That is.

That reads Charis. Charis. C-H-A-R-I-S. Ooh, I feel like that one had significant meaning. Does that mean stand out from all of my reading? Make a history check, guys. That's what it means. So hard.

Charis. Charis. 26. 26? No. Okay. Oh. Whoa. Wow.

Oh, you say Char gone with Jorgen! We got to go with Jorgen! Where is he? Straight to the endgame! Boom, boom. Where was he? You're not ready for that level. That's the bone zone.

This right here? Yeah. That's the bone zone! Okay. Complete the other missions to unlock. I can't type. You have very little information about the Lotus Dent Greenwood. It's considered a very, very dangerous forest.

That's all you recall about the vicinity. Something about unbridled, corrupted fey magic, and it's just this very dangerous forest, and you have no idea what Chara's is. My god, I'm so amped right now. Can we please go to ground zero? Can we please? I think we are going to ground zero.

Let's go! By going to the Barbed Guild. Expediently. Do we want to go fast, or do we want to maybe prepare a little bit? No, we just have to go. You got to go fast. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

You are forgiven. You are forgiven. We go get our moorbounders and we try to make up lost ground on this fucker. Do we want to talk to these dead things? Oh, right. We can take their heads. Or do we leave? We can take their heads?

I'm so sorry. That is dark shit. What? That's a good idea. I'm into it. I'm into it. Whoa! Yeah, I help Yasha put a head together. Oh boy, oh boy. Whoa!

Here and now we have a place for this. Time is of the fucking essence, Caduceus. I don't know who you are, but that's going to take weeks to scrub out of the fucking essence, Caduceus. I don't know who you are, but that's going to take weeks to scrub out of the wood. Whoa! Let me tell you something. If you talk, that will be you, understood? I understand completely!

You know, that's dark. We don't want to, though. I don't want to do that to you. I'm getting a lot of weird mixed messages from you guys. Just play by the rules, and you don't want to get turned inside out and your head cut off. You get it? No worries!

I take out 15 platinum from the platinum that we scooped out. No, what are you? I mean, go for it. We already dropped off some gold, didn't we? I don't think, do we give them gold, Jaden? Yeah, we dropped off some gold, right? Stop it. Didn't you in your plan? I mentioned it, I didn't actually, do we give him gold? Yeah, we dropped off some gold, right? Didn't you in your plan?

I mentioned it, I didn't actually get around to it. I recall, I don't know, maybe. Do it, do it, it's only money. One platinum is 10 gold, right? So that's 150 gold? It's worth it. Do your thing. How about half an hour?

That's only the best. Long con achieved. Gold? It's worth it. Do your thing. How about half an hour? That's some way to do it. Shk! Long con achieved. What about some now? Even for the map, I'll throw it. We don't know when we're going to return. That's right. Here, just take the 150 gold, take this 15 platinum,

and let's consider us this a down payment on our membership for whenever we want to use your facilities. How does that sound? Of course! Oh, this will happen to you! Ah! Also, have a really good day, okay? Thanks!

We should go. I want you loud and clear! Good day! What was your bugbear's name? I don't think we... Oh, oh. Did we get his name? You got it last. What was it, Nian?

It was very basic. Ken. Something very simple. Ken. Just so we can go on him again. Yeah, I left my note for that. That's fine, I know. I split up the rest of the plot

and I'm going to give everybody five platinum. Oh. I mean, thank you. Wow. Your effects are showing. Oh, it's what shit says. A lot of platinum. All right, so we move with expedience back towards the Moorbounders.

All right, so you head back to the Xhorhaus. Holding the severed heads of who? In the back of the building. Of which ones, of the dragonborn? The dragonborn. Oh, and the hobgoblin, you mean? Yes. No, the hobgoblin. You are totally right.

And the horse? No. Okay. We have the hobgoblin sword, too, right? Ah! You had some kind of crazy sword, right? The hobgoblin did? Mm-hmm. We haven't identified it or anything, right? Mm, yes, mm-mm-mm.

No. Wormbounders are back at our house, at the Azure house? Wormbounders are back at your house, yes. Hopgoblin. So you. Hopgoblin sword? You had a dope ass sword. Yeah. Did you identify it? You didn't yet.

I'm taking it. Did you give me a sword? The Hopgoblin sword. It wasn't given to me to identify. Well, let's say we have it in the back of the holding, but we haven't identified it. We'll take it back to that. Okay. I forgot about that. That's all good.

All right, so you head back to the house. You have the heads. You, you know, it seems that in the time that you've been there, you've managed to, at least for the time being, dissipate most of the dangerous interest of the events that transpired there. You've made an arrangement with the goblin owner of the Overcrow.

Hopefully things are okay for the time being. And with that knowledge, you make your way back to the Xhorhaus. The moorbounders are waiting. They probably haven't been fed all morning since you guys were gone overnight. They're all pacing. Thornball!

We should have brought the horns. Yeah. Don't eat the heads, they can eat the heads. Oh wow. That's true. A lot of meat on the heads, yeah. Okay. Let's go talk to these heads

in the happy room or the war room. You can't do it till tomorrow. You can't do it till tomorrow? Okay, we've got to travel. Let's shake the heads. That's why I even recommended it, because this is definitely late. This is late.

Saddle up, partners. All right. All right, so you guys grabdle up, partners. All right. All right, so you guys grab your equipment, the things you need. Can we grab, do we have food for the moorbounders here at the house? Have you purchased food for them? No, we should swing past Morro's on the way out of town

and grab the horse and take it with us. Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay, so. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay, so you mount up your moorbounders, gather what things you need, and start heading, tearing through the north ends of the city, back through the various districts,

outside the Gallimaufry, into the Coronas, heading over towards the Overcrow Apothecary once more, riding up on your moorbounders. You open the door and inside, Romaro and Bugbear are in the process of trying to pull the horse's corpse into the ditch and scraping the floor. Yeah, actually.

You back? About that, we thought maybe we would take this with us, so we save you some time. Please, by all means! What about the hobgoblin body, too? They could eat that, too. Yeah, Yon-Ball, feast up! Anybody got any experience with butchering bodies? As you're saying this,

you watch as Jester's more or better just inside the building, the doorframe cracks as it pushes through. Moro is like, Not that guy, only this stuff. And hides behind the desk. Oh, wow. You hear against the wood as the bugbear is now pressed up into the corner,

and your Mordremoth starts tearing into the corpse of the hobgoblin. Save some for your brother and sister. It's spraying across the room. It's the ditch on the back of the house. Yes. I'm going to take Yannick to the back and start trying to hoist, would you help me, please?

Of course. Strong woman, and start hoisting the horse onto the back of Yannick. Okay. And tie him on. Of course. Strong woman, and start hoisting the horse onto the back of Yannick. Okay. And tie him on. All right. Later, later. It takes a little bit of time, because it is a horse, and it is two of you. You are very strong.

I'd say with a third person, you could probably do it. I will help. Okay, so between the three of you, you're able to get the horse up onto the back, tie it onto the back of your moorbound. Never mind, he still has his head. Never mind, keep going. It's a curious juggle of limbs and body parts you guys have going in this recent session.

I am just keeping Yannick calm and keeping him from trying to eat the creature now while he's too strong and then I'll throw the horse out. Later, later, be spater, okay? Make an animal handling check. My streak going now. 11. 11.

Looks back at the horse and spins around and just starts digging into the body of the horse. Okay, just a little bit right now, and then. He has a big grin, big toothy tusks. I can't stay mad at you, you're a good boy. Licks the side of you, smears all the horse guts across your face. You shouldn't love it, but I do. Yeah, moorbounders are big.

They are fast and they are useful. They are also not inexpensive to keep fed. So just things to keep in mind. Okay. So they have to eat every day? Yeah. Just like us. Well, some animals can go a day or two, you know?

Get real hungry if they don't, though. Okay, okay. All right, so leaving the moorbounders to finish their feast, do you want to take, I think between the three, even how hungry they've been the past couple of days since just been off doing business and haven't been home, there's not much left of either of the corpses.

Great. Sweet, good. So they're feeding, we just let them go to town here in the back? So while we're doing that, maybe you can identify that sword. Sure, give it to me, please. All right. Spellbook out.

I'll give it to you at the break, because I don't have it on me. It's actually in the back room. So I'll get it later on. I hope it's a hype sword. I can only hope it can be as cool as the hype mage sword. Sort of ambivalent.

Indeed. All right. So, picking up back on the road, you make your way to the exit wall of Rosohna. Exit past the guards that wave you through with your badges of the Bright Queen, making your way into the Ghostlands. Now, at this point, it's early afternoon, since you guys began this fray late morning,

then travel back and forth and getting everything ready. So it's about three o'clock in the afternoon as you exit into the Ghostlands, pushing forward, and then travel back and forth and getting everything ready. So it's about three o'clock in the afternoon as you exit into the Ghostlands, pushing forward, passing by the ruins, the low fog that still hangs throughout these desolate plains that surround the city until eventually it goes from pitch black night

as it's been to midday brightness, hot sun on you. You escape from the radius of the enchantment that holds eternal light over the capital of the Dynasty into a clouded sky that is broken in spots. You can see there are beams of light that come down, these gold speckled sun rays that peek through, which is both beautiful and strangely ominous as you look beyond the Ghostlands

towards the gray and red tint of the barbed fields. And the rest of the day's travel before the proper sunset comes around. And it is nice to see a sunset, as it's been since your journey out to the mine since you've seen one. You make it beyond the boundaries of the Ghostlands and just on the cusp of where the barbed fields begin.

You're at the point where the Hallowed Path makes its way around both sides of the valley, and then looking forward, you can see barren trees, their branches gnarled and twisted, leafless. You can see large portions of the ground that have been pressed up into jagged stonework from heavy impacts from long ago. You can see heavy, dark puddles where rainwater

has seeped in over time to create these awful, oil slick puddles that occasionally bubble. And most of the ground here from the recent rain appears cracked, like as if it was a dusty desert floor that suddenly began to break in one-inch increments in a long sheet.

It's just this textured, broken surface of varying brown, red, ruddy color. Question. Yes. While we're traveling, can I take a short rest on the back of the moorbounders? While we're traveling, can I take a short rest on the back of the moorbounders? I'd say to take a real rest. You're either riding the moorbounder forward

at the speed you want to get there as fast as possible, which is both active for you and the moorbounder, or stopping and taking a short rest is like a sit on the ground, drink your water, or you can take the moorbound it at a slower pace for an hour, which will take some time. I'll be fine. We're going to have to sleep eventually. We'll be fine.

I have a question as well. Either during this day of travel or in the last 30, according to my keen mind, have I seen any kinds of birds in this land? Yeah, you've seen a few birds. Mostly ones you've left the city. There are some that stay in there, but they're darker birds.

What about out here, outside the city? Outside of the city, in the Ghostlands, not many. In the Vermaloc, you saw many birds, and there's a vibrant ecological system that live within that forest. Are there any crows? Crows, ravens, all sorts of sparrows, and other birds that just call the land home.

At this edge from the ghost lands to the barb fields, very few, if any. The ones you have seen tend to be larger birds of prey or scavengers. Okay. Even they're pretty sparse. Thank you. Is there any other wildlife or creatures roaming

that we see, any other threats? Make a perception check. That's not great. 10. 10? I mean, looking around, you see insects that crawl amongst the muck and the currently dried and cracked surface

of the edge of the fields. Occasionally, you see what looks like an armadillo, but the back of its folded, almost like plated hide has these spines that stick out the side and it crawls its way across before curling under a rock to get out of one of the hot points of sunbeam that are now slowly pushing through this region

and slowly baking that area of the field edge as it cruises across. Totally Chernobyl. Yeah. Is there anything that I would know or any stories that I've heard about the Barbed Fields? Make a history check. Come on, Yashi.

Come on, come on. 16. 16, okay. What you know is it's considered by some people on the northern side of Xhorhas as sacred territory. Sacred in the sense that it has a lot of meaning. It was a place where the final battles

of the Calamity happened. And those who are either ostracized or given severe judgment by their clan or by some of the cities before the Dynasty got involved in their day-to-day life, would be sent to the fields to survive as a means of proving themselves and possibly working through the infractions

that were perceived. Not many came back. Those that did usually spoke of it being a hellscape of survival, where nightmares walk the earth at night, large roving beasts and Udaks occasionally go out to hunt and scavenge, as well as other things that linger from those days,

entities from planes parallel to this that seem to either pop through or still remain just hunting for whatever sense of life they can come across. But people also try and cut corners, especially messengers or folks that are looking to stay out of the eyeline of the Dynasty and outside of its laws as well. Nomads, people that wish to

rob folks who use the exterior highway will usually stay amongst the perimeter or on the outskirts of the fields where a few dare to follow them to arrest them or hunt them down. Only the toughest bounty hunters usually will want to go deep enough into the barbed fields. Wow.

Bounty hunters. Okay. That's us. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently. I relay some of this information to you guys on our ride. Feel good about our choices. You think we'll be okay in here?

Yeah. We don't do anything to attract attention, we keep a low profile. We're fine. Have you seen our posse? Look at us. We're not very multiple five. We rolled two. Practically the opposite. There's nothing around here, though.

Exactly. Makes you stick out, doesn't it? Yeah, but nothing's here to see us. Well. Currently. Yeah. Wow. Yes, well, we do not need to worry about diplomacy, just survival.

This is the most optimistic I've seen you in a long time, Nott. I'm real drunk. Ah. Oh, Nott. How long were you dry? A few days. That's pretty good for you. A few weeks.

I can't remember. I think it was just a few days. Is that something you were trying to do, or you were trying to not drink? Just seems not, no, I don't know. I guess so, yeah. I'm sorry. What do you think now, better or worse?

Better. Not as scared. Let's go. All right. Okay, so as the sun is setting, do you guys heading into the barbed fields for a bit? Hell yeah. Right as the sun is setting.

Yeah, sounds fine. Okay. As you begin leaping your way towards the center of the fields. Hold on a minute. Do you want to tell the others you want to stop? I'm fine. As I clutch a broken rib.

You know, I'm not feeling so well. Oh no! I think I might need to rest here. Okay, let's all stop. I fell. You did? Was it when I fell on you? Yes, but it's not your fault, I'm very-

I didn't know you were so weak. You didn't? Yes, I did, I know you're weak. I'm very. I didn't know you were so weak. Jester. You didn't? Of course you know he's very weak. I'm sorry I jumped on you. My apologies. Would it be okay if we stopped here for me? I don't think we could use this horse, Caleb, if that's what you need.

We will rest as short a time as possible and head out as early as possible, and maybe not go through there in the middle of the, what time is it now? At this point, it's about 7.30, 8 o'clock. as early as possible, and maybe not go through there in the middle of the, what time is it now? At this point, it's about 7.30, eight o'clock. Maybe we don't want to go through there for the first time in the middle of the night.

I'm sorry. Yeah, we can lock it down here and leave it first light. Sure, can you build your dome? Absolutely. As they start the dome and I get off the back of Yann, I could just say, man, making a vulnerability look so easy. It is.

Is there any way to tie up our moorbounders? Is there any other, is there trees? Yeah, there are a little ways into the field, like a quarter mile or so, you can see some trees. Something with a little cover. Or we could just let them roam and hunt and come back. And maybe come back. Oh shit. Maybe come back.

Yeah. Maybe come back. Come back, Shai. They've usually come back. Yeah, unless they get eaten, I think, is the back part of that sentence. Unless they get eaten? Yeah. Oh, you're worried about them? Yeah. Oh boy.

I mean, unless we're there to keep them safe, huh? Yeah. I'm going to burn a little bit on Gentle Repose just to keep the heads from getting weird. Fair enough. What does that do? Just to keep the heads from getting weird. Dallis and Jaffee, 2019. Like Melty or?

Like Melty. All right, cool. It's a Hellboy short story. Yeah. So we start asking questions, they're not like, . Five flat-naked. . 10 of the Thiflian fields.

Before bed, I would do dome, the wire, Frumpkin sitting on top of the dome, and then also I will use some incense to re-summon Frumpkin sitting on top of the dome, and then also I will use some incense to re-summon Frumpkin as, would you allow me a vulture? Or is that too much? What is this? Oh man. If not, I will go crow.

I don't think it would be an issue, I'm going to double check. Thank you. Could be a small vulture. A little sickly vulture. Sure. I had to drop four copper on this. I don't think it'll be an issue, let me double check. Could be a small vulture. A little sickly vulture. I had to drop four copper on this. I don't think it'll be a problem, but let's go ahead and put it in.

There's my key. Four copper. Challenge zero. Oh yeah, it's fine. I have a gold. Yeah, you can do that. Okay, one dirty vulture. Sitting on the dome.

You got it. So, as you guys prep and bed down for the night, is anyone keeping watch, or are you feeling comfy under the dome and everyone's taking a long rest together? We're under the dome. Got the wire up, I'm feeling. In a dome. In the dome. It's been good.

We're in the dome. Frumpkin will wake me up if anything bad happens. You got him. Frumpkin's just up on top, getting used to the new form. All right, you guys go to sleep. You complete your long rest without much issue. You wake up with the morning light.

Another welcome sight, as it's been a little while since you've seen a dawn. Strangely muggy, warm morning. The clouds of the recent storm have broken a bit and you're seeing a bit of the actual blue sky peeking through. It's a little uncomfortable at the moment, just from the morning heat as it comes down,

unfiltered onto the baked floor of the fields. But you also get a good view as the sun crosses across and you can see in the distance these large kind of pointed spires that litter the distance across. You get a sense this might be where some of the name comes from. They're large, rocky, almost hooked in some places, pointed straight in others' shapes on the horizon of the field.

Too far to make up much detail, but you can just barely see them across the horizon. Awesome. How's everybody feeling? Great. Do you need to, I mean, we're just going to go straight to that town, where you don't have to message him again or anything?

I mean. Unless you wanted to throw him off the scent, tell him, don't come back, you hear? Well, gee whiz, that would have been nice for you guys to decide to do it last night, so we're not entering into this fucking day with you down and stuff. Or we could message Marrow

and ask if anyone else showed up yesterday. Yeah, I'll be sure to do that at the end of the day today if I don't use up all my spells. Gee whiz, you guys. What if we need me for Revivify or something? Gosh. Sure we will. Gosh. Yeah.

Tina, come in here. Use the spells at the end of the day. Okay, fine, end of the day. Can't give me a nod. Spellcaster. Are we talking to the head this morning? At the end of the day. Before we go? At the end of the day?

At the end of the day. You're another headshorter. Seems prudent to do it at the end of the day. But what if you use your spell and then you can't do it at the end of the day. At the end of the day. What if you use your spell and then you can't do it at the end of the day? Well, if I used my spell, then I'm really glad I didn't talk to them

at the beginning of the day because we would have needed that spell to get to the point of which we were talking to them at the end of the day. Are we going to ask them? Yeah, I'll follow Yasha. What if they have pertinent information that might be good to know sooner rather than later?

All right, you guys keep talking. We'll see you all across the way. Are you going to get on the moorbounders? No, we're just talking. Okay, have fun walking. What are you talking about? Maybe we should, actually, because. All right, maybe we'll get back on you.

I'm still picking my spells for the day, anyway. I know, me too. All right, so. I do some pushups to make myself feel useful. All spellcasters pick spells. There are a handful of empty, shelled, plated backs from the similar armadillo-like creatures you saw before, but they've been freshly cleared out

by your moorbounders. They're just strewn about, about eight of them in the vicinity. You can see a little bit of smear on the front of their face. They've been out hunting and eating while you guys were sleeping. Then as you come to consciousness, they're rested on the outside of the dome,

curled up and start waking up as soon as you guys start making noise and moving around. Any damage on them? Doesn't appear to be, no. Cool. It was a fairly safe night. All right. Anything you guys want to do before you start continuing your path?

I've already picked my spell, so I'm going to take Yannick for a runabout. All right. Get him primed for the day. About a quarter mile out from the dome. No, the dome's gone. Dome's gone now. Yes. So you're just taking him for a run? Yeah. All right.

Frumpkin, too. I'm going to make food for everybody, so that's going to be all. Okay. I took that spell, so I'm going to make enough food. I'll keep watch while this is happening, since we's going to be all. Okay. I took that spell, so I'm going to make enough food. I'll keep watch while this is happening since we are domeless. Perception check. I took that. Shit.

Zerchzer. Natural 20. Yeah. Ooh, nice. 22. Okay. Looking off in the path ahead of you, you begin to see there are pockets that are safer than others.

There are areas with that thick tar-like sludge seems to pool and spread across areas and you begin to mentally take note of what seems to be the most viable paths through that patch. You also can see what looks like large craters in the far distance towards the horizon. On that way, there's areas of land

where it seems to just drop off into these heavy pits. But nothing catches your eyes in immediate danger, but you do notice a few elements of the path ahead of you to make it a safer journey. Man, the terrain ahead is going to be gonzo, you guys. Might have to move at a three-quarter pace or something instead of dead sprint. You think that black sludgy shit will hurt you?

I mean, it's a fair bet. I don't know what it is. There's also whole pockets of earth and area that just gone. Bottomless pits. Your guess is as good as mine. This is where the wars happened long ago? I understand it, yeah.

She said the final battle. Dang. Yeah, left some pockmarks. Food made. Well, food made? We're all good, we got food. Enough for the moorbounders as well? Well, they're not going to like it, but it's, yeah.

Sustain up to 15 humanoids and five steeds for 24 hours. Plus water. Jesus, that's awesome. This is your tofu jelly? It's Boston. Your Boba Balls? It's Boba Ball. So 15 humanoids or five steeds. It's Boston. Your Boba Balls? It's Boba Ball. So 15 humanoids. Or five steeds.

Or five steeds. All right, so I'd say 15 humanoids. You can feed. In the meantime, I have this jar of beads that would feed us. One animal? You could almost feed all the morebounders. You could feed you guys and one and a half morebounders.

Yeah, they're eating. They seem to be eating. Yeah, so you're fine. All the food Nia does fine. Okay, come on, let's go. This fuckface is getting away from us. Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. Hyah!

Don't you hyah on the yarn ball. It's a handle, I'm not driving. Can anyone search for tracks as we go? Anyone who, Yasha knows the area or? I'm keeping an eye out for things. Yeah. Who wants to look for tracks? I will look.

Right, because they moved through here. Maybe if they took this route. They probably took the safe route. Caleb and I will look. All right, so Caleb and who else? I'll look, sure. All right, both of you guys make survival checks, please.

Survival, that's a natural one. Oh. 18. Nice. 18, okay. You, this terrain is very alien to you, and you have no idea how to pick up patterns across it at all. You're flustered by it. Creepy. Jester, looking around, you see tracks.

Some of them look like small creatures, some of them like large creatures. Some of them look humanoid and older, but you have no discerning way of knowing what tracks may be the individual you've been seeking or not. There are all sorts of matter tracks around you. Yeah, there's lots of footprints and stuff.

Okay. Keeping an eye out for anything unusual. Perception check. We're not on a trail per se, right? It's of footprints and stuff. Okay. Keeping an eye out for anything unusual. No, perception check. We're not on a trail per se, right? It's pretty open and crack. It's open at this point. Yeah! There's no set trails here. 26.

26, okay, good to know. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Okay. So, progressing forward one hour, two hours, the heat begins to cool a bit, So, progressing forward one hour, two hours, the heat begins to cool a bit, the clouds begin to close back in, the bright sunlight that was peering through

begins to vanish under the familiar gray skies of Xhorhas. Following Fjord's lead, you manage to move around some of these tar pockets, and as you go by, they're a dark, deep brown-green color. As you approach, there are still, nothing seems to, there's no wind where you are currently, and it's just this slick, almost reflective surface. You just maneuver through the patches of it.

You go past one of these larger pits this, and you maneuver through the patches of it. You go past one of these larger pits and you see what looks to be a grayish mound in the center of it, about five feet across. You maneuver around past that. Is it a being that got stuck? Make a perception check. Is it moving at all? Is he being a shmell?

Seven. Seven, hard to tell. Is that natural? I'll say with your perception check you had earlier as a general look, it does look like bone, and it may be a creature that got caught in the wind and did not escape. There are elements of it that remind you of tar, that got cotton within and did not escape.

There are elements of it that remind you of tar, except for the coloration. Right. Nott, do you need a sample of this for any reason? I wouldn't get too close to that. Brown, green, at certain angles and certain bits of light, it shifts from one to the other. I'm okay.

Okay, continue on. A few more hours. You begin to now approach the large spires that you had seen on the horizon before. Some of these are bits of dark rock that don't match the brown and red floor of this wide Badlands. It's a deep, dark gray, and they're ranging anywhere between 15 to 40 feet tall.

And they're thin, and they're jutting out of the ground like they were placed there or were pushed out from underneath. You did briefly encounter the Penumbra Range when you were going towards the Stone Giant's Fort, and the coloration and texture of this rock seems similar. So this rock seems to be of the same rock

that the mountain range, known as the Penumbra Range, is made of, but they do not, they seem deliberately placed, and they're massive size, and some of them being curved to a point, jutting outward, it's just a curious and unnatural feel to their placement. Seemingly random placement? Yep. Yeah.

So you come across two and keep a wide berth. The first one you come up nearby is about 20 feet tall. It's just straight, just sticking out of the ground. Are there any resemblance to bones themselves? Large bones? Do you want to go up and take a look? I will send Frumpkin to land on top of one. Okay. Take a look. Okay, so you look into Frumpkin to land on top of one. Okay. Take a look.

Okay, so you look into Frumpkin's eyes. All right, roll a medicine check. Medicine check. Ooh. 22. 22. Best you can tell, these don't appear to be bone. You're just not, these aren't natural

from a creature's body. Yeah. They're large structures made of stone. You just have no idea of whom or where or how old these may be. And they're pointed and jagged. Random directions, a different place. Not etched or glyphed or symbols on them or anything?

Nope. They don't look like they have, you go ahead, sorry. 15 to 40 feet tall? Yeah. Like tons of them, like Fortress of Solitude? No, no, like you'll come across one every mile or so. Oh, okay. That's cool.

At some point, you'll come across two or three within a mile, and then sometimes you go a stretch of five miles without any. They're randomly distributed, and then different sizes and different angles where they're placed across the field. I wonder if you could fly up really high if you would see a pattern. Maybe. That's a good idea.

I was going to ask, but then I'm going to take her up on that. Do they look like they have erupted up, or have been, or just been here too long to tell? The earth around them. Make an intelligence check. Going up with it, down. 21. 21.

These have been here long enough where there's no way of knowing. Wow! The earth that's been around them is a combination of just gathered through wind and dust that has caused a slight gathering around the exterior of the base, but there's no sign of rock erupted around it

from a recent impact or comparatively any cracks that show it. They've just been there long enough where they've just merged with the scenery, so you're not able to ascertain the direction in which they arrived. Okay, well, we must be at a halt, since we're the only ones who can ride these things, training them, and she called that out,

so I will send Frumpkin spiraling up quite high to look down, so this will probably take a few minutes. Okay. Like a mile into the air. Yeah, okay. Frumpkin goes a mile into the air and looks down and sees from his position about seven or so within sight. They don't create a big smiley face

or anything from above? Not from his perspective, no. What did that do? My mark must have seemed smart. anything from above. Not from his perspective, no. I do. The markings of some sort. That big dick. The barbs. Yeah. No pattern.

No discernible pattern. The barb fields? So I will summon Pumpkin Pack. These are the barbs. These are the barbs, yeah. I'll also say that, I mean, if they were to drop from the sky or if they sprung from the earth,

well, where do they spring from? There might be something underneath them, but that would be a lot to try and take care of. It's so old, it's probably dead by now, anyway. Make a history check. Oh no. What'd she usually do, Madsy? Make a history check as well.

In advance. You both have fairly learned it, so. You're going to roll a 12. Why don't you use your Dune Mansi? I have to do that in advance. You both have fairly good Nitsa. You're going to roll a 12. It's a spell. You have to cast a spell. So you have to have it precast. 15. Nothing's ringing a bell for either of you guys,

unfortunately. That's all right. Onward. So. Rolled a two. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? So you continue to press on,

deeper and deeper into the barbed fields, your first full day of travel. Northward, hours go by, the sun behind the clouds, you can feel the temperature getting cooler and cooler. Eventually, the light begins to grow darker and darker as it gets closer to dusk. Passing by, what are you laughing at?

Nothing, I'm good. A doodle. I think I'm sure a doodle is of some kind. Problematic. It's probably lewd. Problematic. Pushing onward, you begin to... I totally lost my train of thought. It's been a week. It's been a week. It's been a week.

It's been a week. Anyway. I'm going to blame him! I'm throwing up Mage Armor and I'm giving the Gift of Alacrity to Beauregard. Whoa! What's that do? Oh, is that that thing? Yeah. What's it do again?

Maybe that adds to your initiative. After Caleb casts Major Armand himself, reaches over and touches your shoulder, you watch as the hand approaches you. There's this slight gathering of dark energy that swirls around his hand and these tiny little specks of light that blink through it as it reaches over

and grabs your shoulder. You feel this brief surge through your body, and for a second, everything goes into slow motion, and then reverts back to normal. Shit's almost unsettling if it wasn't so dope. Par for the course. Yeah. I just invented golf cannon. MATT and LAURA laugh. Hate you all. Yeah. I just invented golf cannon.

I hate you all. The master's course out here on the barbed field. You're on the game. The par nine. That's nuts. Goddamn, you guys. The ball landed in an oily tar pit. Fuck. That was a lot. The ball landed in an oily tar pit. It turned real rough. A six-stroke penalty. It's all right.

Continue to pass by clusters of leafless trees. Some are completely broken in the center, burned charcoal. Some just appear to have petrified over time. But it's like walking through a graveyard of nature in time at different places. Occasionally, you hear different birds that have come out this far, largely scavenging birds, vultures,

similar to what you had given a form. You get partway through this one section of broken trees and a large chunk of ruin before, who's at the front? I guess it would have been me, and we were checking for bleeding. Well, I guess we've made it to the barb, so I don't have to be anymore.

My 20 probably wore off, everything I'd seen. Who's at the front? I'll be with you, Jester. All righty. So you guys are at the front of Moorbounder, and you're moving through the area, leaping quickly before your mount suddenly stops for a second and goes, What is it, Jornboll, what do you smell?

You can see there's a person sitting next to one of the trees facing away from you, just leaning against it. Quick, you'll have killed them. No. Why would we want to do that? We don't know anything. I'm going to roll Eyes of the Grave.

Eyes of the Grave. You okay? What? Nothing catches your interest? Of course. Should we call out to them? What do they look like from, are we seeing them from behind?

Make perception checks. Okay. Eight. Eight? It's hard to see. Since the sun's getting close to setting and there's now these long shadows stretching across the field, from what you can see, a pale person just leaning away from you against the tree. field. From what you can see, a pale person

just leaning away from you against the tree. In the shade, or is there still leafless trees? Leafless trees, there's no shade. There's only one of them. Come on, look, there's all of us. I am looking all around. This feels like a honeypot. I'm going to get off the moorbounder and flank right. Okay.

Weapon drawn. Should I just call out to them? Sure. Not yet, not yet. Can I send them a message? I'm going to jump off the moorbounder just in case. What if I send my bird to sit in that tree and we get a closer look? That's a good idea.

I mean, there's nothing for a very long time. They've probably heard us coming up. That's why it freaks me out. Yeah, that he's not doing anything. Maybe he's dead. Maybe he is. I send Frumpkin off to sit in the tree above. No, wait, tell me if they're undead.

I wouldn't tell me if they're dead. Okay. Yeah, you don't get any undead presence. Frumpkin lands on the branch and looks down. Are you looking through his eyes? All right, you see what looks to be a humanoid, a pale gray skin, no hair. Breathing seemingly alive.

Make a perception check. Yeah, of course. I'll use this die that has been fucking me. Does the fucking continue? I hope so. 14. 14. 14? He appears to be breathing. Okay.

Are his eyes open or closed? Hard to see from this height. Does he have a dead as hell beard? Muscular? Zoned out, or is he? Can't see from this position. Muscular figure or emaciated and slender? Looks a little slender.

It's hard to tell from this distance. You're about 70 or so feet from this figure. I'm going to, under the pretense of thinking that he's dead, send Frumpkin about 20 feet in front of him onto the ground. Do little mini steps closer. Okay. He's looking at food. Okay.

As Frumpkin lands and looks forward, you see the figure standing there, legs crossed. The pale gray body itself, you can see the skin pulled tight against the rib cage. Casting resistance. Resistance, okay. What'd you do? Just casting resistance. Okay. This is cantrip.

The creature's jaws open a bit. Its eyes are clouded over in white. You can see layers of broken, jagged teeth on both sides of its mouth. The pumpkin just squawks loudly at it. The pumpkin squawks loudly. Looks up at it. Dead thing, dead thing.

It looks back over towards you guys. I'm dead. It stands up for a minute. It brings its arm up against the tree, and where you look where its arm is, the forearm extends into this long hooked point. Oh my god. It stands up, gets up, and it turns around. You can now see its other arm is the same, and

there's a third arm coming out of its stomach that also comes to this point. It looks to you all No. Gives this low, mournful, What the fuck? Just wail. Uh-huh. Ooh. And we're going to take a break on that. No! I don't like it when you do that!

I knew it! I knew it was going you're doing! I knew it! I knew it was going to be a split-twit. Eight days later, shit! That was so scary! Oh! Fucking no! We'll come back here in just a few minutes to pick up from this encounter.

DM, can you hold the break behind the sword paper so we can find out what the sword is? Yes, that's what I'm going to go get right now. Yeah, I'm going to come back from the break and we'll consider it, if it's anything useful, taken care of. So anyway, we'll be back here in a few minutes, guys. Before we do that, we have our giveaway

from Wyrmwood right here. This is the, you may recognize from Campaign One, made famous by Scanlan Shorthalt, the Purple Heart. Yay, Purple Heart. Dice tray, it's so pretty. So pretty with leather interior there from our friends at Wyrmwood. The code word for tonight's giveaway is generosity.

Aw. So go ahead and put in the word generosity into the chat once, more than once, and you'll be disqualified. Once again, this is for U.S. and Canada, excluding Quebec. We'll come back at the break with a winner, and we'll see you guys in a few minutes. Happy Rendo's Day!

Happy Rendo's Day. Oh, hey there. Laura Bailey here to tell you all about the glorious goods we create inspired by our stories. Our stores are filled with the basics, like character-inspired T-shirts, dice sets, and pins, as well as more specialty items like fancy jackets, puzzles featuring gorgeous artwork, the comfiest joggers and pajamas ever, and much, much more. There's also a few special items that support charity efforts, like our dedicated Critical Role Foundation merch.

You can check out all of our regional online stores by visiting the Shop tab on critrole.com or head straight to the U.S. store at shop.critroll.com. Every purchase helps support our shows and the stories we tell. Speaking of which, let's get back to the story. And welcome back. So, first and foremost, we have our winner of the giveaway. The winner of our fantastic. You're delivering. I know. Well, there's just a lot going on around me.

I'm easily distracted tonight. I didn't get enough iron. So the winner of our warm one giveaway tonight is Alejo Loreto. Oh. Woo! Alejo Loreto, congratulations. Woo-hoo! We'll give this to you ASAP. Well done, sir. PDto. Oh. Alejo Loreto, congratulations. Woohoo! We'll give this to you ASAP.

Well done, Sok. PD key. Indeed. And because I forgot to bring it out here earlier, this is the identified sword. That's the greatest name. I know. Oh my god. Can I say it?

Yeah, it's your weapon. Technically, Caleb. Technically, Caleb would. DM gave it? It's fine. I'm sorry. What's the name? You don't want me to be a hoarder?

It's called a skin gorger. Oh, what is it? Skin gorger. Ew. What does it do? It's pretty rough. Just take it. It's your soul.

Skin gorger wielded by Orphan Maker. Yeah, right. Skin gorger? wielded by Orphan Maker. Yeah, right. Skingorger? Cousin to Manslaughter in the first degree. Read it out loud to the people. This massive rust-colored blade was once wielded as a symbol of dominance by the ruling ogre lord and Ygrithid.

With a plus one bonus attack and damage rolls made with this weapon. I'll attune to this greatsword. You can use your bonus action and take a point of exhaustion to empower this blade. For one minute, all attacks with this greatsword deal an additional one to eight acid damage, and it critically hits on a roll of 19 or 20.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until the next turn. I mean, it would take you a while to recover from that exhaustion anyway. It's a point of exhaustion. Pull rust to get rid of a point of exhaustion. Once per day you can use it? Yep. Oh gosh.

So that's a, that's a, that's a. It's pretty tight. That's a double-edged sword right there. Does anybody? Nope, that's all you. That's you. Pour moi? Yeah. I mean.

But that sword doesn't have the Dispel Magic on it. Doesn't have the Dispel Magic on it. Right. It's interesting, but. Can someone carry around two longswords all the time and just like? You can keep a greatsword with you, but you can only use one at a time. And you can only have.

Are they both greatswords? Well, you technically could have two attuned. You just can't use them. You can't use them both at the same time. At the same time, yeah. Pick your tool for the day. I mean, that's true. Fjord't use them. You can't use them both at the same time. At the same time, yeah. You can pick your tool for the day. I mean, that's true for a dozen sorts. Yeah, I just want to give it up.

Never mind, that didn't go. You don't get it. Thanks, dealer. You don't get it! Sorry. Falls into one of those holes. The spoon barge. The vortex. This is all just trying to not think about what's about to happen.

I know, I know, I know, I'm so nervous. Yeah, the creepy thing. Oh no! So while you're going over that, let me go ahead and get the battle plan up. Oh no! Today's battle is brought to you by the good folks at Dwarven Forge. Dwarven Forge has a free download

of their 406-page Dungeon of Doom module available on their website right now. Dwarven Forge, be sure to... Oh, so close. Be sure to dwarven it up. Oh! Dwarven it up? Yeah!

Oh my god! Look at the dwarves coming from the tree! I'm going to pan that back to her. Skid board. I got this. These trees are an awesome gift from my friends at Hyperion Terrain. Whoa!

They sent those to me because I've been trying really hard to get dead trees for forever, and they printed them out and painted them for me. Oh, they're beautiful. Are those our moorbounders? For the time being, these are what I'm using. These are your moorbounders, because they don't have moorbounder minis.

Big boys! Big boys! We're the big boysies. Just big boys. Okay, so we had Jester and Fjord on the front. On the front, yeah. Nott had leapt off and had gone around the side. Yep. Right.

Yasha. All right, so who else got off of the moorbound? I stepped down. I stayed on. N not flanked right. So Beau, you would have been down on this one? Who else was on that one? I'm riding that one, but I would prefer to stay on. Okay, so we'll say you're on,

and we'll say that you're off to the side there. Caduceus is riding the other one. Caduceus? Yeah. Okay. Where's the fella? And the fella, because there is no mini for this particular individual, is right there and begin to rush forward. What the fuck?

As it shimmies towards you quickly, it has the three arms and you watch as two more stick out of its back. Fuck that! For a total of five appendages. No! Five? That's the worst number.

Let's go roll some initiative, guys. Don't fuck me, Gil. Wait, didn't you get an advantage on? No, I get a d8. Just having stuff. Natural 20. That's terrible. Plus four, so 24 plus five, 29.

Oh my god. Damn, great. Gina? Okay. It's 21 for me. So top of the round, 25 to 20. Well. 29. Yeah.

Jesus. Wow. 25 to 20. With that Lonely Island video, I don't know why. 20 to 20. What's that Lonely Island video? I don't know why! 20 to 15? 17.

18. 15. All right. Yasha. Fuck, man. Fjord? It's weird having a bandager on my shirt. All right, 15 to 10. So awesome.

15 to 10. All righty. Oh my god. 10 to five. Nine. Nine. Nine. Nott and Caleb going together.

Nope. All right, and where are your akadusas? Aw, sorry, buddy. Three. All righty, so top of the round, Beauregard, you are up as this creature begins to rush forward towards you. As soon as I see it twitch,

I twitch quicker than it, because I've got alacrity, and I go, no, and I just run straight towards it. Away? Away, away, no! Up to it there? Up to it, yeah. All right, go for it. Up to there? Up to it, yeah. All right, go for it. I just dart over to it, and I do a running barrel kick

to its face, going for it. Two attacks, two attacks. First two attacks, that's good. Shit. Oh, they's good. Shit. Oh, they're both the same. They're both 23 to hit. Wow. Both hit? Yes.

Ooh. That's good. Two, 12 damage for one, and 10 damage for the other, so 22 hit. Pop, pop. And after that first one, I'm going to do a Stunning Strike. Seize. All righty. Of course not. That is going to be a Stunning Strike, seize. All righty.

Where's Nott? That is going to be 15. By the big rocks over there. Shit, my save is 15. Oh shit, yeah, so it makes the save. How do I fix that? That's a problem. Do it again, I'm going to do it again.

Because stun the first time, try it again, stun the second time. Okay, so another point for the stun? Two points, I'm just trying to stun this bitch. Okay. That is a fail. He is stunned. Nice, he is stunned. Yes.

Awesome. So the second hit. Wear the Ring of Shame. Yeah. All right. One, two, okay. And then, fuck it, let's go big or go home. One more.

Flurry of Blows. Two more hits. Get advantage on those attacks because it's stunned. That's right. That first one is a 14. That's 24 to hit for the first one. That hits. Giving it nine damage.

The second one is a 16 to hit, 26. 10 damage. All right. Good round. Good round. Where's the damn wizard? All right, so. Rolls for a long time. As the sun has been setting

and the area has grown slightly darker as this encounter comes into play, this entity, as you're unloading on it, your blows are glancing and not quite impacting as hard as you would hope with each hit. But he is stunned. He is stunned still. Okay. With each hit. But he is stunned. He is stunned still. Okay.

All right. Glancing and not landing is hard. It's just held in place, its head swimming. You see its eyes, its white, pupilless eyes rolling in its head from the stun. Also, I hit it with, sorry, did you want to go ahead? I hit it with my, give me Extract Aspects. Yes, yes, yes, okay.

It has resistances to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing while in dim light or darkness. Oh shit, that's cool. So as the sun is setting, we are in dim light. Yes. Got it, got it. Okay. So I just quickly shout out,

the darkness makes this guy slippy. Slippy slang for something? Slippery. Is that your turn? Slippery, slippy. And that ends my turn. All right, Yasha, you're up. Oh shit, that's right, okay, okay, okay. I'm going to start, I would like to rage.

Yeah! So I am going to start booking it towards. Someone roll for your Mourn Boundaries as well. Is it all bludgeoning or like, because my fists are magical. Bludgeoning, in general. Is there a plus to that? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not.

Is there a plus to that? Whoever has the more bounder, doesn't she? For all. Yeah, you can. It's got to be Matt. It's got to be Matt. Okay, okay. Would it be the dexterity?

Would it? Yeah, I have the more bounder thing in the, but it doesn't have an initiative plus. It'd be a dexterity bonafide. Dexterity, no, no bomb. 12. 15 for Yarnball. Okay.

17 for Yannick. Well, they all go in one, so whatever you rolled is what they go as. Oh! Oh, all right. Otherwise we have three other initiatives to worry about, so. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. 15, that's a nice in-between at the end.

Got it, so sorry. Yasha, you, whoa. That would make 15. 15, that's a nice in-between at the time. Got it, so sorry. Yasha, you have Raged, and what are you doing? Okay, so I would like to start booking it towards this creature. You leap off the moorbounder. I'll say,. 30, 35, 40, that's your movement there. Okay, so I guess I'll take

the rest. Yeah. I will dash the rest of them away. I want to get to them. You dash up and with your dash, you can actually get on the other side to flank. Yeah. Okay. So you move around, blade at the ready. The Skingorger, by the way, just to describe it,

it doesn't have a hilt. It's one large, solid, rust-colored blade with two handles on the back of it. So it looks like you're, there's not a handle and a hilt. It's just like you're clutching two open handles on the back of one big, solid glaive. Cool.

That's so cool. That's not snarling. Ah! I love this blade. Is that the end of your turn? Is your movement action bonus? Yeah. Action bonus, yeah. All right, Jester, you're up next. Fjord, you're on deck.

Okay, I'm going to Guiding Bolt this creature. Go for it, you have an advantage on the attack. At the second level. Go for it. Whoa. Thank god I had advantage. Holy shit. Guiding Bolt plus nine is 24. 24 hits, roll damage.

Okay, that's 5d6. Oh, that's okay, it took me a second. This is going to make me nervous. 18, 21, 23. 23, woo! As it slams into the creature, the burning radiant energy courses across its torso and head,

the skin peeling back. It's looking to hurt. Okay. And in case he needs a double advantage, he does, yeah. There you go. All right, that finishes your turn. You're going to move or stay where you are? I'm going to stay on Yarnball.

Okay, so you're still on Yarnball. All right, that brings us to Fjord. Yeah, I'll use my 30 feet of movement to run up the map. Okay, so you leap off Morgbender. Five, 10, 15, 20. Actually, not towards it, towards this area, if I can. Sorry. All right. That'll get you 30 right there.

Anything I see over there before I turn my attention to blade hands? You're using your action to look? Oh, I don't want to use my action to look. I'll just send two eldritch blasts towards that creature, but I just want it to be there. Let me see over here. Actually, yes.

See another one of these creatures. Oh no. Just risen up from behind like. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, fuck, you don't need to make the noise every time. I will send two Eldritch Blasts towards that new friend. All right, go for it. Hey, Eldritch Blasts!

One of them is a 26. That hits. The other one is a 13. 13 misses, so you see it go fire both out, one just goes wide and blasts into one of the nearby rocks off to the side. That's accurate, that's accurate. That is 13 points of Eldritch Blast. That's my all.

13 points to the other, you got it. All righty. I'll use my bonus action to cast Hex on that motherfucker. Hex, ma'am. Is Hex an action or a bonus action? I'm sorry, Hexblade's Curse. Hexblade's Curse, got it! Got it.

There it is. Hexblade's Curse. Did we have to roll more Bounder Initiative? They did. They already did, yeah. Oh, you did it for us? She did it. Oh, okay, great. All right, so. That's it.

Alex, you yell out, Okay. The already darkened corner of that area over there, blocked by the light, the shadows get darker around it as the curse wraps itself, almost like tentacles, like, cuts across the creature. It looks, after being struck, it looks back at you.

And it's not their turn. From this nearby tree, you start hearing dozens and dozens of tiny squeaks. Oh hell. You watch as a series of bats all descend from the tree towards the brightest color in the vicinity. Caduceus, from the top of this tree.

Okay. Swarm of Bass descends on you from the top. That's going to be 19 to hit. That hits. That hits? Okay. Not bad for a plus five. All right, so you take... Would the creature that we're attacking that I've hit with the guarding bolt,

he's glittering with a mystical dim light now, just... Yeah, mystical dim light, he's in dim light. Yeah. Take five points piercing damage. Cool, cool. Do you know when you make light? They're just swarming around you right now. They're squeaking, they're scraping at you,

biting at you, and you're trying to shake them off. Not cool. All right, that guy over there is stunned. This guy over here, who's behind the rock, after he blasted the chest, is going to climb through that opening and instead turns and just and Skinner's thrown in.

Stop, man! Why are you doing this? Because it's fun. Runs past over here. Oh god. And is going to take its multi-attack arm spikes at you. He's going out on a limb. Ooh. No, no, no, no.

Very good. 18 to hit. Hits. Hits you, and the... I appreciate puns, you all know this. Dirty, dirty puns. It's all puns. Actually, sorry, instead of the arm spike, it's going to make an embrace.

Okay. So instead, it comes forward towards you, both of its arms out, and pierces them through your body and pulls you in toward it, all the arms like wrapping around you like a spider trapping its prey. And now you're pressed up against it. All you can see is its bright eye and its mouth open, just

pulling you as close to the creature as you possibly can. Nope. Worst person to happen to. Wow. Just loudly screaming in your ear, this horrible wail. You take... 20, sorry, 31 points of piercing damage. And you are grappled.

Copy that. Oh my gosh. Look. Grappled. Copy that. Oh my gosh. Look. 71 grappled. Condition. 31 points? That's a lot of damage. Wow.

You're also frightened while you are in its grasp. Grappled and frightened? Yes. Damn, okay. While it's holding you, you just feel its mournful wail just shaking your soul at its very deepest level. It's pulling you closer and closer towards it. That ends its turn. The one that's stunned remains stunned. Out from this side.

Oh god. What have we done? Higher-pitched comes rushing this way. I know. Five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four. It can't take any actions, but it rushes right up to you, Caleb.

Its claws are out trying to reach towards you. I don't know if it helps at all, but I'm on the moorbounder. Correct, but it's reaching, it's trying to hair you towards the creature. It's now the moorbounder. Correct, but it's reaching, it's trying to harry you towards the creature. It's now the moorbounder's turn. Do we each control our own? You guys control your moorbounders.

Oh right, and do we have to roll for? You can only make them sit and stay. Shake. I'm going to have my moorbounder attack the bastard forming it right now. Play doh. Okay. I'm going to have mine run up

and attack the one that's holding onto Fjord. Okay. It can attack with its hooves, it says. It's claw, it's a... Oh, it's a modified horse, got it. So it's a claw attack. Yes, it doesn't have a large array of attacks. So go ahead and roll against the bats.

All right, what's the plus to attack, by the way? Plus six. Plus six. Oh, that's 24. Yeah, good roll damage. That's a... 2d4 plus four. 2d4 plus four. What's its category, Matt, do you know?

Beast Companion, Familiar, Well-Shaped Mount, Summon. Seven points. Seven points, nice. It takes not a whole lot of damage as it's striking at a swarm of bats. One or two bats get knocked to the ground, but it's still just a large cloud and it's going to take a lot more to carve through them.

So that's your Warbounder's turn. Staying put? The Warbounder? Yes. I think it's interested in the bats right now, I feel like. Okay, for yours, Jester? Mine is going to run up and try to get the one that's attacking Fjord. Going to rear back and bring his claws down.

Go ahead and roll an attack. I hit Fjord. Oh good, 16 plus nine, six plus six. That hits, go ahead and roll damage. Okay. Ooh, 11 points. Nice. Laugh, laugh, laugh.

My charm sounds lame, but it's really tough. Because of the shaded space, the damage doesn't do as much impact as you would hope. As a reaction, it's going to use its tightening embrace. Tightening embrace? So as it gets hit, it wails louder and crushes onto Fjord even harder. No, no, bad move, burn them!

You need a hug! You take 17 points of psychic damage. Oh! Just from the. As it's pulling you in and it's screaming in you, it's shaking through your brain, and that fear that's inside you right now is just getting more and more painful.

That thing's crushing on you like an elven pirate. There you go. All right, and Caleb, your last moorbounder turn. I yank the harnesses to the right and say, Toad, which means death, and Zimnian, attack this one. Okay, roll attack. You said it's resistant to piercing damage? Piercing, bludgeoning, slashing.

18 to hit. 18 to hit hits. Yeah. Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. Including magical, if it's in dim or dark light. So light, light, light. Just six for that one. I could blow something crazy again. It's all I have.

All right, you got him. So strikes through and claws, doesn't do as much damage as you hope. Once again, they're in this shaded dusk space. They're empowered by the nearby shadow. All right, that ends your turn, Caleb? That was the moorbounder's turn. Moorbounder, is it going to move? It's going to stay? It's going to stay.

Okay. That brings us now to Nott and Caleb. What are you guys doing? Yeah. The Driftglobe says, I can light that thing up, and then says you can speak another command word as an action to make it rise. So does that mean lighting it up is a free action? Let me see the answer. It doesn't mention action in the first part, lighting it up, and then says you can then do an action to make it float.

Speak its command word. No, I would say you can just speak the word. Speak the word? Yeah. Then I pull the drift globe out and hold it up in the air and say, Fajar, and there is daylight streaming all around us. All right, so. 60 feet in every direction. 60 feet in every direction, that will encompass everything.

So as the orb is pulled out by Caleb. Sorry. I didn't make it out on the card. And for my action, I will take out some. Well, the globe was put away, you had to pull it out to use it, though. Oh, yes. Okay.

I'm saying if the globe wasn't at the ready, you'd have to reach in, pull it out, and then shoot the command word. I'd say that'd probably be an action to do well then. So let's use an object, technically. Cool. Okay, so that's your action. Do you want to move or stay where you are?

No, I want to stay on the moorbounder. Okay. You do watch as the globe begins to emit this bright, bright light that encompasses the area. The creatures begin to shrink away from it, and previously the tough gray hide that they had begins to crack on the exterior, seemingly affected by the presence

of very, very bright light. Light it up. So that finishes your turn, Caleb. Nott, what are you doing? I will around the back here of the volume. Yep. All right. Getting within 30 feet of the thing. Watch that it's got forward and I will attack.

Go for it. With the Tinker Top Bolt Blaster Crossbow. 29 to hit. That'll hit. You get sneak attack, because it's got all sorts of shit up in my version. Very much sneak attack. Not great roll, but that's okay.

Hit it, Hit it! Nine. Terrible. Yeah. Hit my fucking pancreas! I'll use... 21. I'll use Fury of the Small, add another nine points, so that's 30 points of damage.

Ooh, nice! Of which it is not resistant to any, since the light emanating from the globe has taken away their resistance. As you fire the bolt, it strikes in the back of the neck and actually comes through the front of the chin a bit, causing its jaw to dislocate slightly to one side, and it just looking down into Fjord's face.

Oh, fuck! Turtles are worse, though. Still up, it's still up. It's still up. Fuck! I will fire again. Go for it. Fire again. That's a 24 to hit.

That hits. Only scores, oh, that's not terrible. Where's my shit? 10 more points of damage. Nice, all right. It's still standing. It's looking hurt, it's looking hurt. If I have any more movement left,

I'll scoot behind that rock or that tree or any rock I can get to to get. Back where you were or back behind this tree or what? Maybe behind this rock? Yeah, you have enough movement to get there. Sure. Behind this rock! All right, that's your turn.

That brings us to Caduceus. Watch out, Caduceus! Carried by bats. They're armed! No, no. No, that's not it. That wasn't even worth a moan. Keep trying.

I'm going to keep trying. Yeah, let's do a... Audience of one. Yeah, sorry, I got thrown. I'm going to... Say five to the boat you're on. Hi. Oh, Cad's going. I'm going to, say five to the boat you're on. Oh, Cad's going. Yeah, I've got, I'm going to do something at second level.

I'm going to try a Ray of Enfeeblement. Okay. For fun. I'm actually going to hit the thing that's attacking Caleb. I'm going to stay where I am with the bats and I'm going to fire through and hit the creature that's going to hit the thing. Roll for, I believe at the rate, spell attack. It's a constitution, it's an attack save constitution.

Oh, I was wrong. 17. No, that's a 10. Nice. All right. So you deal only half damage. Oh, is it weapon attack? Would this constitute a weapon attack, it has a weapon? They're considered weapon attacks, yes. Okay, so yeah, it's at half damage no matter what.

And then, oh boy. Does it make save at the end of its turn? Yeah. Okay. It can make a save against the spell. Does it make save at the end of its turn? Yeah. Okay. I can make a save against the spell. Got it. And then, yeah, I think that's all I can do

without ruining something, just double checking. Yeah, just for fun, I'm going to see what happens if I turn invisible if the bats go away. Okay. So you vanish on top of your moorbound here? Mm-hmm. And I'm, yeah. All right.

That finishes your go. Top of the round, Beau, you are up. Does my guy look like he's getting crackly from the light as well? Yeah, the light radius of 60 feet has affected all of them, so they're there and all now in a bright globe of daylight. Seeing that, I'm going to do two Hammer Fists

and come right across his face. Go for it. That's a natural 19. Seven damage for the first one. All righty. Second attack. Another natural 19 for 29. With six damage, so 12 damage.

Nice. How's he looking? I thought six damage on that, you said? 12. 12 total. Oh, 12 total, gotcha. Seven damage from the first, 12 from the second. Gotcha. How bad's he looking?

He's looking pretty hurt. I want to inside check the DM. I like the way he's held up. He's looking pretty hurt. I know, right? Is he going to work? You suck, Vafan! What are you telling us?

Flurry of Blows again. Sure, two more strikes. I'm going to stun him. You've got four more arms. I'm going to stun him. You have four more arms. No. Start tickling you. 28. That hits. 11 damage.

11 points of damage, all righty. And last one, come on, come on, come on. 26 to hit. Oh fuck, oh wait, is that from? Okay, okay. 10 damage. All right, how do you want to do me? Okay, okay. 10 damage. All right, how do you want to do this? Yeah!

So I did the hammer fists across his face. I'm going to lace my fingers around his neck, do a knee for the second attack. Tie a full-on tie-a-clench. Then seeing how fragile he's looking, I'm going to loop around my arms. I'm just going to break him over my knee. Okay, and as you pull for that final break,

the knee comes up and the actual area, the center of its body breaks in half. You watch as the flesh burns into ash in the proximity of the daylight that Caleb had summoned. And as it falls into two pieces, you hear the exhale of its last horrible wail just shrivel up as its body slowly turns

to this paper-thin skeleton. I just brush out my hair out of the way and look at Yasha. Ooh! Speaking of which, it's your turn, Yasha, unless you want to move. You still have movement, actually. I will move towards the one

that's fucking with Caleb. You got it. Easy enough with your crazy movement. Yasha, you're up, what are you doing? I stand there, stuttering. Oh, okay. That one's taken care of by Beau. So I'm going to start running towards the one

who has Fjord all captured behind it. Behind it? I can get behind it, let's see. As close behind it as you can get. Can I mic it? There, you're not going to be able to get fully flanking it. You guys are helping! This turn, next turn you're going to get it.

All right, so I'm going to attack it from behind. The twice in my life, he's turned me into a prospector. Tom Hanks is the money team! Okay. Why do so many fights end up like this for you? I'm just as disgusted! 15 total.

15 to hit? Yeah. That hits. Oh! Give him more damage. Okay. Come on, Orphan Mic! Okay, okay, okay. Stop laughing!

Let's see what this skin gorger can do. Well, let's see. How's that? Nice. I'm right here! I'm going to do Savage Attacker roll again. Okay. That's better.

Seven, eight. I want to take the two blister knights and put them into the Monstrous Enthusiasm. Okay. 15, sorry. 15 points of damage, nice. All right. You slash through with the giant blade.

It slams into the ground. It's heavier than you're used to. You're just getting used to it. But you did carve a chunk of flesh open. That's now the flap is towards where its shoulder is exposed. But there would be muscle. You just see black sinew tied beneath the skin.

Okay, second attack. Yeah! Yeah, okay. Go back! That is 17. 17 hits, good roll damage. I'm sorry! You know what? I want to try this.

So this point of exhaustion. Do it. Yeah? I want to try this. Okay. I want to do the extra 1d8 acid damage to see what this. Okay. I want to do the extra 1d8 acid damage to see what happens. Okay. Because you weren't attacked last round, by the way, and you weren't attacked last round,

you're technically not raging. Oh, oh! So you lose your rage before this happens. You would have had to use a bonus action again to rage. It's been a while since we've been back, so it's all good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. But your rage would have dropped off,

so you would have had to use your bonus action this round to keep your rage. Okay, so then I'm going to not be able to do that? Yeah, I won't do that then. I won't do that. Second attack. 12 points of damage.

Then can I still use my bonus action then to rage? 12 points of damage. And then can I still use my bonus action then to rage? Yes, you can. Okay. Let's do that. We'll say you did it at the top of the round. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. That's fine. All right, that finishes Yasha's go.

Jester, you're up. Okay, this thing is still attacking Fjord, huh? So we're going Fjord. There's one back going towards Caleb that is practically unscathed, and there's a series of cloud of bats swarming around. And the guy attacking Fjord looks rough.

It's looking hurt. Mm-hmm. Okay, I'm going to not risk it. I'm going to do Guiding Bolt on the one attacking Fjord. Okay, go for it. Is Fjord worth saving? Oh no! I'm going to do it.

Fuck you. I'm going to do it. Fuck you. I'm going to do it at the third level. Whoa. That means yes. Okay. Roll for an attack. Whoa! Jesus. I went aggressive.

That's 16. Seven plus six? Seven plus nine. Plus nine, 16, yeah. Yeah. Fuck. That'll hit. Okay. Yeah. 66. 66.

Woo. Whoa. 11, 19, 20, 23 again. I didn't want to do this. Yeah! I'm going to hold up my Symbol of the Traveler, and I'm going to think really hard about saving Fjord and making him safe again. And I'm just going to send the blast of Guiding Bolt

straight, oh, I don't want to hit Fjord. I'm going to aim it low, and I'm going to go up through the back of the guy's head and out with the beam of pink energy. Okay. As it blasts in and fires at the back of its head, the head disintegrates in the divine energy, leaving this smoking crater where its neck and head once was.

Its body goes limp and crumples away from its body. That was better. Thank you. Now, what's the range on your hex blades, Chris? I regain 14 hit points if it dies. 30 feet, yeah, so 14. 30 feet?

Yeah, I don't know what else you can put it on other than one of your allies. I don't think I can transfer it. It's not like regular Hex. Oh, right, right. I get that. Are you sure? Yeah, it says, until the target dies, you die incapacitated.

You're right, you're right. For one minute. Thank you for the 14 hit points. Woo! There you go. Yay! Thanks, Jaxon. Thank you for the 14 hit points. There you go. Yay! Thanks, Jessie. You're welcome. All right, that finishes your turn. Yeah. Fjord, you're up.

I want to sit down and have a cry. I'll run up and give Jessie a little kiss on the cheek, say thanks, and I'll step around her and fire two Eldritch Blasts at the one attacking Caleb. Go for it. All right. I'm just getting turned over. Those are both nines, which means that's an 18 to hit.

Yeah, both hit. Okay, great. First one. Ah. 11 points of Eldritch Blast damage, and 13. 13, nice. After it just got blasted with Caduceus' array, you watch its body wither slightly. You can hear its wail get a little higher pitched

as its actual physical self begins to lose some strength, and then almost blown over, it catches itself on the moorbounder from the impact of both of your blasts, then picks itself back up. Its two back shoulder blade arms preparing for whatever its next maneuver is. Dope.

Going to move or are you going to stay put? I'll use the rest of my movement to step behind that little spire outcropping right there. Right here? A little more to your right, yeah, there you go. Great. Yeah, you can get there. Perfect. Okay, great. Now it comes to the bats' turn.

The bats have lost interest in Caduceus as you turn invisible, and instead move over to swarm around Caleb. Oh jeez. Oh no! Do I get an opportunity? No, never mind. Take opportunity if you want to take it. Hmm.

No, no, no, I'll hold. Okay, do you have War Caster? I do have War Caster. Double check, I believe you can. Oh. You can what? Oh wow, actually. I can, actually.

You get to cast a spell on them leaving. Yeah, I can, actually. But you'll lose invisibility. Not this invisibility. This is weird. Yep. Sure, in that case, I'm going to use, what can I use that actually, I can't do a lot of anything.

I will then do a Sacred Flame on the bats just as they're rolling by. Okay. Roll it all by. That is a dexterity save? Mm-hmm. It's a 17. Goddamn it.

Sorry. They swarm over to you and they roll a 22 to hit. That probably hits. Okay. Sorry. You have your mage armor up, yeah? Yeah, but I don't have shield prepared today. It's pretty low.

You take 10 points of piercing damage. Whoa! As the swarm is now swirling around you and biting you and harrying you from all sides. Your moorbounders are starting to back away, looking a little spooked by the bats, but frustrated by them. Schmertz! Schmertz!

Don't suppose my horn brought the guy. Now it is the creature's turn. Woo! So that one is going to reach up and attempt to embrace you off of the moorbounder. That's a natural 19. That's going to be a 26 to hit. Yeah, that's not big.

Shit, shit, shit. Rolled really well on that one. So you, Caleb, shit. Rolled really well on that one. So you, Caleb, take 20 points of piercing damage. Okay. Sorry, 23, because it's plus three to that roll. Okay. And you are grappled, so it's pulled you off the moorbounder now,

and you are being held by its arms as it pulls you in closely, and you are frightened in its grasp. Okay. All right. And the ball of light is just clasped in my hand, going, shining light everywhere? Just holding it, and you're just

pulled up against you, so now there's beams of it shooting out in different directions. Also. What's up? It's attacking Caleb, the thing in front of me. Yeah, it embraced him, and Caleb is now being held. Can I take a reaction? You do take half that damage, by the way, front of me. Yeah, it embraced him and Caleb is now being held. Can I take a reaction? You do take half that damage, by the way, as a note.

Oh, wow. Because it does half damage from the spell he did. Oh, that's great. So, 11. So, 10 from the bats, but that's not affected, and 23 from the El Cripo. And 11 from the Equature. So, 11 total.

Oh, yay. Between the two of them, 21. That's way better. Can I get a sentry attack? I'd forgotten. Sentry attack? You can, go for it. Yeah.

Damn, where were these rolls the past 10 weeks? 29. 29 hits, go ahead and roll damage. Yeah, 11. Okay. It's a cocoon. Whack. Go ahead and roll some damage. 11.

11 points of damage, nice. And then, um. Not for your damage. Yeah, no, but what damage do you do? So for the ray you do, does it affect weapon attacks? Mm-hmm. You got it, all right. It's going to use its reaction to tightening embrace.

So as you punch the creature, it squeezes on Caleb, and Caleb, you hear its wail just resonate through your entire embrace. So as you punch the creature, it squeezes on Caleb, and Caleb, you hear its wail resonate through your entire body. Oh, did I do that? Yeah, you did. LAURA and SAM and LAURA and SAM and SAM. It was going to happen anyway. All right, you take 23 points of psychic damage.

Ooh! Not halved. Not halved. Can I? No, I can't. I can't spend a ki point, right? I can only do it on my turn. Mm-hmm. I feel like he's just responding.

Leaping off the ruin there, Fjord, this has been your worst nightmare, dude. Your placement has not been positive. You hear this I want out of this haunted house! You glance up as one falls limply off the side and is going to attempt to drop and grab you in the process.

No! It needs to make an athletics check where it's going to take some damage. Please fall off. Please fall off. Well, the four had failed. So it does take, that would be a 30-foot fall. So that's 3d6 points of bludgeoning damage. 10 points of bludgeoning damage it takes right out of the bat.

Right off the bat. Right out of the bat's a whole very messy thing to do. So lands, takes damage, and then tries to embrace you again. Fuck. The 12 does not hit. It does not hit. No, thank god. We'll be back. Oh, and at the end of that one's turn,

it's going to try and roll to resist your thing. That's going to be a 17. What's your DC? Ray of Enfeeblement. What are your spell DCs? 17. So it just manages to resist the ray, so it's no longer affected by it. It gets its strength back. That one's taken some damage.

That ends their turn. Now it's the more bounder's turn. Okay, okay, okay, okay. More bounder people, what do you want them to do? Mine's going to run over and fucking claw the thing that just dropped down the fucking floor. Okay. Rush over to that side.

Go ahead and roll for an attack. Ugh! Whoa. That's plus six. Wait, plus six? Yeah, 13. 13? That does not hit, unfortunately. It goes to strike and it brings its claw forward, and since it's holding Fjord, or actually did not touch,

it didn't manage to grab Fjord, but it it's holding Fjord, or actually did not touch, didn't manage to grab Fjord, but it's not quite able to fully, actually, interesting point of order, it would not have been able to even get close enough to Fjord with the pincer space there to the creature, because Fjord's blocking the space there. So yeah, as part of the narrative there, it couldn't even get up to strike the creature.

Oh, okay. Caleb, anything with your moral by now? Yeah, kill this thing. Go for it, roll for an attack. 25 to hit. That hits, roll damage. He loves me so. Seven, no, wait.

It's two and two added? It's 2d4 plus four. Plus four, yeah, nine, correct, thank you. Nine points of damage, wait. It's two and two added? It's 2d4 plus four. Plus four, yeah, nine, correct, thank you. Nine points of damage, nice. All right, that one's starting to look kind of hurt. That one's taking some damage now. Mine, since I'm on mine, I'm going to roll around to the other side and attack, and I'm going to, yeah,

come in there, no, I mean like, I'm attacking the one Caleb also. Oh, got you. That's going to take me, if I can get in here. Move around here. Yeah, in there. Yep, and it's a swarm, so you can actually move through it. Yeah.

So you move around and get right up against. Mm-hmm. Where I want to be. And it's going to attack the one attacking Caleb. And that's 10. 10 misses, unfortunately. As it jumps off the rock and lands on the ground, it swipes out towards it,

and the creature just ducks out of the way. That finishes the Morbounders round. Nott and Caleb, you're up. Does the glove of blasting require me to do verbal semantic and all that, or does it just work? Unless it specifies, whatever casts a spell. Well, it doesn't say it on here, but it does for the spell.

Right. If it says there without components, then you would need those, but if it doesn't specify, then you still need what's required of the spell. If it doesn't say either way. Then yeah, then you still need to be able to talk and move your hands. Okay, then I am going to just try to

wrestle out of this thing's grip ineffectually. Okay. You can still cast spells while you're grappled, which means you can't move. Oh, I'm not held to? I can still do some damage? No, and even then, when you're restraining, you still cast spells.

You have disadvantage on attack rolls, creatures have advantage on attack rolls against you. Oh, well, fuck it then, I will cast Magic Missile at fifth level. Right into his chest, all right. Go for it, roll damage. Three stumps. Can I say something?

I got this wrong because it's in the notes, it's not on the main page of the Moorbounder, so it didn't show up when I clicked on it, but it actually does 4d4 slashing damage. 4d4 plus four, but it only adds a plus four to attack, not a plus six. So we've been doing it wrong based on, because your notes on it just showed up differently than I.

Gotcha. Okay. Good to know. And he can jump 30 feet. Whoa! Nice. Fuck. You guys. Good.

There you go. 25 total damage. 25 damage, nice. So Caleb held in there, puts his hand up right towards the sternum of this creature, and you watch this blast of arcane force just send this shockwave out from the center where he's being pulled inward.

It leaves this crater hole in its torso that begins to drip out black liquid, but it's still standing. Does that end your turn? Yeah, I can't move. Okay, at the end of the turn, you take 6d8 psychic damage. 6d8?

Peace. Wait, at the end of Caleb's turn? Because he's enveloped. That's a 56, because you're still held in its space. At the end of a turn, while you're still being held, you take a additional damage. Oh boy. That's well worth it.

Okay. You're surrounded by bats and shit. You have 30 points of psychic damage. Yeah, I'm out. All right. Caleb goes limp in its grasp. Oh my god. And just begins to almost try and,

it's trying to tuck Caleb up into the wound that he left in its body. Oh my god. Oh, he's trying to do what? Just trying to stuff him into the wound that was left there. What? Just trying to pull it closer towards it as it goes. Oh my god! Is he fording it? What? Am I being forded? Just trying to pull it closer towards it as it goes. SAM and LAURA and LAURA and MATT and SAM and LAURA

What? Am I being boarded? Oh no. Okay. Not. I mean, I don't think I can even see any of that. So I'm going to run towards the hole in the rocks. Okay. Five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.

When he makes this sound. You come through the space there, and you can see right now there's the moorbounder and there's the creature right on the side next to Fjord. Then across the way, you can, you have a hard time seeing what's happening over there. Yeah. I'm going to draw on the one with Fjord and say,

Fjord, looks like you could use an extra hand. There he goes. I'll fire at the things like hands. Go for it. The hand stabby, 22. 22, go ahead and roll damage. Okay. Nice spread.

24. 24 damage, nice. Its arm just severs off at the elbow, and you watch as one of its long, pointed limbs just hits the ground. Looks back towards you. It looks so sad and just sorrowful and fucking frightening.

Wow. What else are you doing? I'll do this, man. Yeah, yeah. I will, oh boy. I'll reload and fire again. All right. Why not? Natural 20. Yeah!

Dang! All right. Okay. That's 12 more points of damage. Plus your dexterity modifier, right? That's six plus six. Well, six times two, because you did a critical hit. Oh, so that's 18? 18 points of damage.

Plus it fires again. That's right, because the gun. Oh yeah, that's awesome! Natural one. Something bad happens to me. You shoot yourself. I shoot myself. Amazing. I suffer four points of piercing damage.

I love it. I love it again. Ah, fuck! I'm so badass, like, I got shot. Ah! Perfect. Seventh-day children. That's it. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shot. Splat! Ah! Yeah. Perfect. Seven-inch returns.

That's it. All right, Caduceus, you come back into your space. Okay, I'm going to move behind. I'm going to move next to Caleb. Right, the Warbounder, are you yourself moving next to Caleb? I'm going to hop, the Warbounder, are you self-moving next to Caleb? I'm going to hop off the Warbounder and move next to Caleb.

The Warbounder. Warbounders. Yeah. No longer Warbounders. They are Warbounders. I'm going to cast Cure Wounds at 4th-level. Go for it. I don't think you even know what you did,

but I'm so into it. You're so distracted, you don't even know. I love it. That means, Cure W's at 4th-level, you are up to 37 hit points. Ooh! Is he still in the grasp of the dude? No, he fell off the moorbounder

and is on the ground. But is he still clutched by him? He's not grappled anymore. From a flavor standpoint, it was trying to stuff him into his body in a really fucked up way. But he comes back to consciousness. You're not technically grappled, though. Now I'm just going to try and I'm taking a defensive stance.

You got it. All right, that finishes your turn, Caduceus. Up at the top, Beau, you're up. Okay, seeing what this guy is trying to do to Caleb, and I'm like, ah, no, sir, and I grab him by his head and just yank him back. No, sir.

And I'm going to just start fucking jamming him in the ribs. Yeah. Awesome. Natural 20! Yes! It's been waiting for this. Hotness, all right.

I rolled a five, so that's 10 plus another six, so 16 damage on that one. 16. I was trying to play Caleb, and it's 10 plus another six, so 16 damage on that one. 16 damage. I was trying to put Caleb in, it's Fajara. Fajara. Attacking, so I get 27 to hit. 27 to hit, yeah.

12 damage. All right, how do you want to do this? Oh! So I have him by the neck, jab him in the ribs, and then I'm just going to take, I'm going to do a full neck snap. You hear this sickening break noise. Its head, its horrible moan gets cut off

as its windpipe is pinched, and it just collapses to the ground as Caleb pulls his head out of the interior of its abdomen, just black with gore. Disgusting. You were almost ravioli stuffing. You snog your movement bonus. Beau just invented ravioli cannon.

Cannon. Cannon in a can. 1,200 years before Italy. I can still move. Yes, you can. Can I get to the one that's harassing? Oh, bats. Or bats, up to you.

Can I punch bats? Yeah, you can punch bats. Who can't? I've never punched a bat before. Speed Baggots. You can punch a goat. Okay, okay, okay. Of. You can punch a goat. Okay, okay, okay. I break that douchebag's neck,

and then I look up and I see the bats, and I just pull out my staff, and I start doing the whirlwind, walking towards the bats. That's sort of superstitious cowardly. All right, so as you move through, yeah, you can move through the bats to get over there. So we'll say, we'll put you over here.

You actually just go directly through it. So are you using your... Oh wait, am I doing stuff? Catch him, Daddy! Are you doing anything? Are you with your bonus action? Oh, I have a bonus action! Yeah! Yeah! I hit him with my stick!

Okay. I hit them with my bonus action. That hits. Oh wait, I need a roll hit him with my stick. Hit them with my bonus action. That hits. Oh wait, I need a roll to get it for my stick. Well, you can't use your stick as a bonus action because it's your off feature. Oh, okay, okay, okay. For flavor, we're saying it's your stick. For flavor, my stick, 12 damage.

12 damage? Wow. Really? Really well done. Plus the dice counts tonight. So you take out four or five more bats as you're spinning it, you come up the other side of it. It's still a swarm, it's hard to get a grasp on, but you're beating him away, it's taking some damage. It's along the old lady with a broom.

Yep, essentially. All right, that finishes your go, Beau. Yasha, you're up. Okay. Jester, you're on deck. So. I'm going to crouch down, just in case. Since I was not hit, I have to rage again? You attacked last round.

It's either you have to attack or be attacked. I know this, I know. I am so sorry. It's all good. Welcome to the Panic on the Board. Yeah. I'm going, can I try to make my way to this guy over here? Yeah, you can try. Try to attack Fjord.

Five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35. You can get around that way. I'm moving through four to move through the ice. Okay, okay. You're like... Having a bad day, man. I know, aren't you? Are you going to do the Yurt? Your new sword or your...

It's the same new sword. Okay, okay. She's going full Gwar. 14. 14 just misses. Oh, I thought it just, okay, second attack. Don't forget you're reckless whenever you want to do that extra.

I just rolled a natural 19 for the second attack. Okay, great. So that hits? No, no. But it hits. Well, it's for the skin gorger. But you couldn't use the weapon last turn because you had to use your bonus action to... You didn't take that point of exhaustion.

I didn't take the point of exhaustion. Yeah, you had to keep the rage going last turn. I see, so to use... Yeah, it'll be out at 19. If I use the, oh, that's if I get the point of reason. Correct, if you use the ability for the next minute, that's where your chance goes up by one and you do the additional damage.

It's like the whole fight. I see, okay. Oh. 10, okay, 15. 15. Points of damage. Points of damage. Sorry? 16 points of damage. Yes. Wait, with the second hit? On the second attack. On the second attack. Right, okay.

You got it. It's looking hurt, it's looking real hurt. It's carved past the blade. It actually, as you bring it down the second time, it embeds itself a good foot into its chest. It tried to stop it with its claws, and you watch two of its pointed arms just get severed, and they're now these arch stumps

that are just bleeding out. Is it going to go? No! Did I finish your turn, Yasha? I just danced. Jester, you're up. Okay. Why not for some flavor? I'm going to leap off the moorbounder.

Yeah! Pull out my battleaxe and try to swipe at its head with my axe. Go for it. So as you leap off to the air, battleaxe downward. Roll for your attack. Okay. Oh man.

I don't need to do this axe thing. Eight plus five is not enough. That's 13. As you jump to the air! Catches nothing. Shit! I cast Spiritual Weapon to make up for it. Okay, there you go. I'll do it at 3rd-level. No, that would be 4th-level to make it.

The trees, the trees! They're moving. Yeah, 4th-level Spiritual Weapon. Woof, all right. Bring it down to slam on his head. So it's 2d8. Ooh, so that's my lollipop with serrated edge. There you go, serrated lollipop. Go ahead and roll attack.

Plus nine, 17. 17 hits, go ahead and roll damage. 2d8 plus your wisdom modifier. I did. Aw, seven plus your 5 is 12. 12 points, how do you want to do this? I did. Aw, seven. Plus, your five is 12. 12 points.

How do you want to do this? Yay! Oh! I whiff with my axe. I go, and the lollipop goes down and slams into its head and smashes its head into its neck. As you whiff, it turns.

It gets grounded into the ground. It just stops moving and then it hits again. Hits again. See that? That was the art of distraction. Ooh. That was good. So we have bats on the're the best on the battlefield. So Jester, that finishes your turn.

Fjord, you're up. Fucking bats. Eldritch Blast! That is 19 and 21. Both hit. Great. That is, fuck, six points Eldritch Blast damage and 14 points.

Six and then 14? Yes. Total of 20. How do you want to do this? The giant lollipop comes down and I'm like, well, fuck. Over to the bats. As the bats are flying over Caleb's now conscious body,

looking up. Scoot, come on, scoot. Scoot. Go on, go on. Scoot. You're just trying to coax him out. Get. Get out of here. Get going. Get going. As you swing through once with your staff,

suddenly there's a burst, two bursts of greenish energy. The bats just move around. Got it for you. I don't care. once with your staff, suddenly there's a burst, two bursts of greenish energy, and the bat just. Got it for you. I don't care. Oh. What to do? Ugh. Okay.

Take a Stimulator for it. Did you just bolster your fingers? I did. Yeah. Okay. Nobody cares. That fight cost us an arm and a leg. Oh. No. Okay, fuck, no. Okay, so nighttime here, super duper bad, yeah?

Well, it makes them stronger, whatever it is. But hey, as long as we got the little glowing orb from, yeah. How long does that last? A while. How are you feeling, Mr. Kael? Okay, it's an hour, I think. Look at the spell. Thought he was going to bisect you for a second.

Well, we've got mass healing work, you guys. Yeah, one hour. I'll go inspect the bodies, but you said they turned to just paper or something? Or just, when you see them die in the light, you can just see how fragile the bodies become. It looks like long, dried paper mache that begins to crack. As you begin to check the body's become. It looks like long, dried paper mache that begins to crack.

As you begin to check the body, part of it just breaks apart and turns to thin paper ash. There's nothing. They don't got nothing. You can roll an investigation check. I'm going to very gently check out one of these trees. 27. Okay, 27. You get 18 points. Not much of interest.

You find some light papery skin and lots of thick, nasty innards. Okay, yeah, good discovery. I'm just going to take a look at this tree that the bats came out of, see if there's anything interesting about it. Make a perception check. 12.

12. 12. It looks like a tree. It looks like it'd be a good place for bats to live. I'm going to maybe just grab a little bit of one of the mushrooms and put it in my pocket. Okay. All right. And look at it, this is a fungus you haven't seen before. It has a dull turquoise coloration to it.

The stalk itself is a gray. It's unique, you've not encountered this. Put it in my little sample bag. Okay. Starting to crawl through around on the ground and picking up bats and squishing out bat shit into a rag that I keep in. All right, collecting your gauze.

I check around the rock formation to see if there was anything they had pulled from anybody that had come from through here before. Okay, make an investigation check as you go through and just look through it. 16. 16. A lot of bones. A lot of corpses that have since been

grown over with dry brush and other bits of very low, low land vegetation. As you're going to look at this, you can see around a lot of these formations, there seems to be a number of types of vegetation that do live and thrive here in these Badlands, but they just mesh in with the rest of the color and usually stick around other formations

that collect water. But yeah, a number of creatures have fallen and been dragged into this space. We're not in the Wildlands, right? That's another place. Yeah, no, we're in the... Oh, the graying Wildlands? No, that's north. You're far east. It's only getting darker, right?

Yeah, at this point, have you guys been searching? The sun is down and you're looking at nighttime. Can I look at the area of the ground that the creature came up out of behind the formation and see, didn't it come up out of the ground at all, or was it just chilling? Yeah, it was sitting and resting.

Got it. They seem to be called by your presence. Okay. Are there any of the barbed spires anywhere close by that are coming out of the ground? Make a perception check. Oh no. With disadvantage, because it is, you have darkvision? Yeah.

We saw 60 feet. You're fine. What'd you roll? 22. 22. Shit. It's hard to see, and the only reason you can see it is there's a little bit of moonlight that's peeking through some of the clouds.

The sky's opened up for the nighttime bit, and a little bit of the white moonlight, you can see the outer shape of what looks to be two larger spires on the horizon. You're not sure the distance, but you can see that there are a few in the direction that you're traveling. Okay.

Were these creatures anything we would have heard of before in storybooks or? You can make a religion or an arcana check. You could call it. Okay. 10. 10? I'm not entirely sure what these things are, but there's something about them that

they don't seem to be from Exandria. At least their essence doesn't seem to be something that would naturally exist on this plane. What's that light sensitivity? These seem so sad. Should we dumb up for the night? Yeah, one minute. Feeding bats to Yannick.

Oh, I also, for closing up, maybe it's time to have a couple of these conversations. Oh, the sending and all the cleric stuff that you can only do after 7 p.m.? Yeah. That's cool. That stuff. I'd rather do it in the tent, in the dome, whatever. I don't like this place.

We can talk to a head in the meantime. I'd do the bedtime routine and start putting up the dome on the wire. You gather a little bit of dry brush and make a little bit of a fire. Some warmth and light. Which one first? Who are we calling?

The hobgoblin first. Oh, we're going to talk to the dead. Five questions. Okay. So you have the ball still getting off the light as well? It's got an hour total. Okay. So we're like five minutes in, ten minutes out.

Okay. Also a really good beacon for where we are. We're in a dome. Okay. Let me take a look. Can light escape the dome? Is the fire in the dome? That was my thinking, but I don't know if, yeah.

Then the dome doesn't trap in smoke or anything. It just doesn't let things in. It also can illuminate from the inside itself, and that doesn't go out of the dome. Okay, that's cool. Oh, so it keeps light in? It generates its own light, I believe so. Let me recheck this spell.

But it is opaque, meaning creatures can't see what's inside the dome. Okay. Cool. He fold. Should we ask him? We should, yeah. If we talk to this dead hobgoblin, we think maybe you should make yourself look like

the drow guy he was with, because you can sound like him, yeah? Oh yeah. That's cool. You're really good at impersonating people, after all. Yeah, he sounded like higher crust, right? Okay. Can you wear his face as well? Sure. It sounded like higher crust, right? Okay.

Can you wear his face as well? Sure. Yep, I remember, and I'll use Mask of Many Faces to look like El Dral, dude. El Dral Blast. What are we asking? Remember, how does this look? Ooh!

It's very impressive, not bad. So I'm going to give you some ground rules before we go into this. All right. You only get five questions. This person, whoever they are, they're gone now. You're not talking to them. You're just talking to an echo.

It's a memory. There's not anything that can be bargained with. There's nothing that can be tricked. This is just a reflection. Can it lie? Yes, it can lie. That's why we're making him look like his boss. It will have no reason to think you aren't who you are,

but you have to remember that it also thinks you know what you know. So when you ask it questions, you have to do so in a way that is familiar and open and with the understanding that you two have a bond. We didn't catch this guy's name, did we? Won't matter if you do it right.

What do we want to ask him? I can send him a message and ask him. Hey, what was the name of that hobgoblin you were with? No, no, what was your name? Also, what was your name? I could fit it all in. Mm. Maybe we'll just stick to whatever we want to ask him.

I recommend friend, as always. Friend. Or as little as possible. You don't have to, there's nobody there you have to, this is just a body now. He didn't seem like the type of person that would say friend, FYI, when I had a little talk with him before. Yeah, maybe just, hey. Do we have a request for questions?

Ooh, that's good. Well, we want to know what they were handing off, what they bought with their 50 platinum. Also, where in Bozostan? Bazostan. Bozogaz, Exon, do they reside? In Bozo Stan. Bazelstan. Bozo-gaz. Exon. Do they reside?

Just say that you need their help. Help for what? Answering these questions. Your mind is hazy and you need help getting home. What were you handing off? Just as a note, so you should know, the spell Speak With Dead is you asking the questions to it. Oh, I have to do it?

I was looking, because I think it said that anyone could. I can point them to you. That is what can be done, because as it says, you can ask the corpse up to five questions. I can frame that. I can frame that. I can frame that. Be like, if we wait another day, I can make you look like this fellow.

I've got an idea. Okay. He can look like a two, but four can sound like him. I got an idea. I'm going to make myself look like Blondie Bear. Ooh. So I look like the drow and you look like the blonde guy?

Greg. Greg, Greg Blond Head. Okay. Do you sound like the blonde haired guy? No. But you're going to ask questions. Okay. I'll make myself look like Maru. I'll make myself look like Maru. I'll make myself look like the bugbear that was invisible.

I've got a weird question with the disguise. Can I decide even the state of myself when I come on? I'm going to be torn up a bit. I'm going to have some damage. Okay. I'm going to look like I've been in a fight and a lot of, like some throat and chest damage. Okay, the rest of you guys do anything? Invisibility. I'm going to step away. Yeah, step behind so it doesn't see.

Yeah, step behind. Start rolling this. Let's do number one. You burn the incense. You reach out and touch the disembodied head of the hobgoblin that you had slain the day before. You hear this weird sucking sound as it tries to draw air through a severed neck.

Its eyes flicker open and just look out and move in their sockets dryly across the somewhat congealed moisture in the sockets towards you, Caduceus. I step behind Caduceus' shoulder and say, My friend, it is so good to see you again. Do me a favor, time is very short. Answer my friend's questions here as quickly as you can.

I have pressing business elsewhere. And I walk away. Deception check. Go. Don't fuck me, Gil. You son of a bitch. 13, 14, 14. Okay.

Did you complete your mission? Yes. Repeat your mission. Keep him safe. Keep him safe. More specific whom prove yourself? Obann. Obann? Obann. Obann.

12 years. I'm free. That's right. Where were you going to meet up north? Specific location. Make an associate check. All right a 7-shake check. All right. All right, Caddy.

Going for it. Caddy, you sure? 20. Yes! Natural 20? 17 plus 30. Okay. Not a natural 20. The Tomb Under Bazosan.

Tomb Under Bazosan? What is the name of our organization? Prove your identity. We follow the Angel of Irons. The Angel of Irons? That's five. Oh shit. That was so fucking sick, you guys!

The Angel of Irons? Yeah. The Angel... Does it sound right, that Angel of Irons? That's the little bird. The name of their organization is the Angel of Irons. They follow the Angel of Irons. Caduceus, that was amazing! Oh my gosh.

You have like 90 more decibels before you're there. Yeah, I've never done that that way. That was interesting. I mean, it worked really well. He totally fell for it. That head was so stupid. One more head. We follow the Angel of Irons, right? That's what we follow. Yeah, we follow the Angel of Irons, right?

That's what we follow? Yeah, we follow the Angel of Irons. The fuck is that? Do any of us ever heard of an Angel of Irons? Make a religion check. Okay. Come on, now. 19.

19. Is there more proficient in it? Anyone who wants to make it, sure. Yeah. 13. Let me make sure that's a 16, right? So 22. 22.

22. 16. 19. Three. Okay, Caduceus? 16. None of you have heard of it. Ugh!

Ugh! Ugh! Fuck. Angel of Iron. Angel of Iron. There's a religion check. Okay. Iron, that's iron. What is our other person? The dragonborn, okay.

Could see what she was delivering. Yeah. This is a... Like the answer we don't have yet. Does the name Obann mean anything to me? Make a history check. Balls. 14.

Nope. But if this was, so this is a drow. The drow is among these people, right? And the drow in this area follow Luxon? Or wait, no, what's their religion? The Dynasty follow the Luxon. But he's not part of the Dynasty. No, I know, but that's,

so there's like a competing god in this? Lots of competing gods. Maybe the Angel of Irons isn't a god. Maybe the Angel of Irons is like... A lot of things. He could just be a bad dude. He could also be a god. He could be a demigod.

Do we need to talk to the dragonborn? I'm going to talk to the dragonborn, too. You should also look like the blonde guy for this one. I don't think it would be necessary. Not with this one. Okay. I'm just going to be myself for this one. Okay. So you dispel your disguise.

Do you want me over your shoulder? No, I don't think so. I still look like the guy he was meeting. She did do the handoff. Was it a female dragonborn? Oh, sorry, yeah. Up to you, this is your call. I'll stand over your shoulder, it doesn't hurt.

I still look. Aw, fleek. Okay. You pull out the dragonborn head. One more time. It's the fucking. They're not as gross as they could be, that's all I'm going to say.

Like Dead wood. Right? And then you go, and you go like this. And go. 10 minutes, get it going. It falls on its side, its jaw opens to try and draw breath. Put it back on its arm.

That way. This is so Santa Clarita type. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What was your assignment today? The jaw opens and the head falls to the side again because it opens the jaw, it has to. I'm going to hold because this is not civilized.

The assignment you gave me. Shit. The assignment you gave me. Shit, that's very close. Repeat it to me, please. What was the assignment specifically? Make a deception check. Come on.

13. Oh wait, you're not in the guys' world anymore. I'm not in the guys'. That's right. Which is why I was like, they don't know who I am. I forgot about that. So answer the first question. I'm going to check about that, yeah. Is Fy the last delivering our crest? Our crest.

Our crest. A crest? Our crest? Is it delivering a crest? I think a crest. Our crest is our crest. A crest. A crest. The Angel of Irons.

Is that a question? Yeah, which crest? Whose crest, I suppose, would be the better question. I don't know. Who is the Angel of Irons? I don't know. Fuck. You ask who hired him. Who is boss?

Who is boss. Who are the people you are meeting. Yeah. Who do you work for? Who do you work for? Who do you serve? I serve no one. I work for those who pay me. Ah, damn it.

I see. Who was your last employer? I don't know his name. Mm-hmm. I think that's all of them, actually. Is that it? That's all you got? More details? A whole bunch of nothing. Tell me what you know.

Was that four? I think that was five. I feel like that may have been four, but. I think it was five. No one argued it was five. I think that was five. I feel like that may have been four, but. I'm sure it was five. I think it was five. I guess you can ask. Any more details about who? Where did you meet your last employer?

Yeah, where did you meet him? Where did you meet your last employer? Yeah, where did you meet him? Where did you meet your last employer? Talinstock. Stalin? Talinstock? Talinstad. Talinstock? Definitely call that a job.

Do I know that? You do, it's in the Empire. Empire, yeah. Wait, where's our Empire map? We've been near there, haven't we? Not really been near Talonstadt, no. But not part of my history. Yours not. Talonstadt, over.

Okay, okay, it's right on the other side of the... Though both Beauregard and Caleb can both make history checks if you'd like. I live right next to that. East of Felderwin. Yeah, but you didn't travel much. No, I didn't. 12.

Actually, you can make history checks, too, if you want. 21. 12. 12. Oh, okay. 15. 15? Okay, so you guys pick up on it a bit. Talonstadt is essentially a... It's been a refugee tent city for about 20 or so years of a number of Ravanites

that fled from the destruction of Draconia and sought refuge in the Empire. The Empire welcomed them in, but kept them in this area as they were processed and given a place to stay, and it eventually became a settlement known as Talenstatt, which is temporary, but it's become more permanent, which means it's not a very... Yeah, and what is the Empire proper's feelings about them? Are they just tolerated?

They're not discriminated against, per se. There are some people that have different feelings, especially since what happened with Draconia and previous political relationships varied, depending on the individual. But yeah, with your role, especially, we know that there are members of, people who live in Talonstadt that are specifically worried that there have been surviving Draconian nobles

hiding within the political structure of the Empire and feel like they're probably working to eliminate the Ravenites' existence within the Empire. There's a lot of really tense and complicated political dynamics between Talonstadt, the Empire, and perceived allies that remain from the Fall of Draconia. But yeah, that's what that city is.

It's close to the border to Xhorhas. It's right south of Bladegarden. I'm going to gather up the heads and put them back into the bag. Okay. Who is it you wanted me to send messages to again? Well, should we message the Bright Queen and just say, mission is continuing almost to the end?

Just as planned. Following our guide. I think we should keep her in the dark for the time being. No news is good news. Yeah. Okay. I mean, certainly she heard of the action

around her town today. That's muddy. Do you want to try and message the one that we're chasing and pretend to throw him off the trail and if he is scrying on us or keeping tabs on us, he'll let us know. Or check in with your family, Nott. I've got three sendings.

Yeah. I can send multiple things. We could also check in with Morrow, see if anyone else showed up. Yep. That's a good one. Let's start there. Family, Morrow, something to do. I'm going to start with Morrow. Okay.

Hey, Moro! Any other people show up there? This is the blue girl. Remember, we'll kill you if you're lying. You got plenty more. Also, you're super cute. Thanks for the hair stuff. Perfect.

This is a little weird. Yeah, I'm fine. Nobody else really showed up. Couple customers. Just buying the usual. Don't kill me! Moro's fine, everything's fine, everything's good. Who else should I talk to?

I would love to check in, just tell Yeza we're still okay, but I don't want to waste a spell if we have other folks that we need to talk to. Hey-oh, Yeza! Is that one word? Let's call it two. Hey-oh, Yeza. Yeah, that one word? Let's call it two. Hey-oh, yes-ah. Yeah, it's two. We'll go with two.

So we're all safe. Don't worry about us. We fought these guys with five arms. Woof, we almost died. But no, we're good, we're good. That's it. Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad to hear you're good. I'll probably just clean up a little bit.

That's actually been nowhere good. It's cold. We should have bought him a coat or something before we left. There's a hot tub. That's true. But he has to boil the water himself. That's true, that's true.

I can't tell that I love her. Aw. Had enough words after that. He loves you so much. Last person? I've been thinking a lot about your child's and your mother's house, and I'm not sure that your mother's house is the best place

to send your child, after all, perhaps. What what? Well, what if the letter that you two sent has brought attention there? But here's the thing, Caleb. You know, most people don't know my mom's last name. You know, she's the Ruby of the Sea. So they'd have to really do some research, and I don't know how smart the people are

that are in your organization, but they probably wouldn't be able to figure it out, right? My point still stands. Okay, what if I send a message to the owner of the Pillowtrough? And say, and say what? Accidentally might have alerted the worst people in the world.

Hey. Be careful. If the person that, mm. I think for now, you know, your mother is probably all right if they're, maybe nothing is happening, but if they have been alerted to her, maybe they are watching, and if the child shows up,

it seems like an unnecessary risk. But there's nowhere else in Nicodranas for him to go. It's really safe. And then at least my mom can find somewhere else to go. Does your mom have safe houses or anything? Of course she does, she knows a lot of people. Should she go there now? Oh.

Well, that would be kind of hard to... She'd just be going to a safe house for no reason. Well, it's just she doesn't like to, you know, leave. So it would be hard for her to go to this. She doesn't like to leave her house because of work? Yes, no. She just doesn't feel comfortable, you know? Is she scared of the outside or something?

A little, that's the impression I got. It makes her anxious, you know? Oh. She feels safe in the chateau. Hmm. Maybe it's worth using that last message bell to just check in with her. Make sure she's okay.

Yeah. See if any ruffians or weirdos have been hanging out. Different clientele than the usual. What does Astrid look like? Well, she was on the short side. What does Astrid look like? Well, she was on the short side. Probably still short. About your height. I'm not short.

How tall are you? 5'3". About there. Okay. When I knew her, she had very short hair. It was dark brown. Dark brown, okay. Because it was a long time ago.

What color were her eyes? They were brown. Brown eyes? Probably some brown, too. Hmm? No. Hmm? Did she have any scars or any, you know,

features that were super prominent? Scars on their arms, okay, just like yours. Okay. I could be worried about nothing, but if your mother has been compromised in some way, it is too late, but it is not too late for your child. No. It seems like a bad idea to send him there to me.

It pains me to say that, even, but I trust you. Maybe you could say that. Jocasta isn't going to even be there for some time. That's true. And it would take more weeks for them to travel, but you're right, maybe we should call that off or just tell Shakasta to hold until we know more. Maybe he can go to the wizard's tower.

No, is that the bad idea, too? I don't know. I don't know what the wizard feels about this right now. I don't know. I would like to maybe bring your child to Rosohna. Well, let's check in. We're making a lot of assumptions on information we don't fully know yet.

Sure. I mean, it's a very us thing to do, but. I send a message to my mom. Okay. Hi. Little worried someone may be coming to the chateau. If you see a girl. Five, three. Brown hair and eyes.

Short hair. Killer. Scars on her arms. Bone. Shred and see. Jester? I'm worried. From the tone of your voice.

I will keep a lookout. I hope everything is okay. Come back soon. I miss you. That's all. We miss you. Aww. That's all. She misses me. I don't have any more third-level spells. If you talk to her again,

I mean, they could send anyone, I suppose, but the other boy that I was with, Eadwulf was his name, he was large. His hair was cropped very closely, like mine was, but I mean, my hair is long now, so that probably means nothing. His hair was black, his eyes were blue. He was muscular.

He was strong, in addition to being talented. For the future. Talented at? The arcane. Yeah, okay. So he was buff and he can cast spells? Well, that's not fair.

Multiclassing piece of shit. I don't know, I'm just joking. I don't know. Or he just lifts. Yeah, right. He can lift and read a book. Yeah. Steaming books. Can that change your cardio?

Is that true? Absolutely. Okay. I'll let my mama know that next time I talk to her. I'm sorry, Jester. Shall we turn in? I believe so. Just to make life a little easier, I'll spend our last 10 minutes before we go to sleep,

casting a one-day Prayer of Healing for anybody who needs a little bit of HP even before we go to sleep, casting a Prayer of Healing for anybody who needs a little bit of HP even before they restore their own stuff. I would not turn it out. Oh, that's pretty good. 12, 18, 23 hit points to anybody who wants it. Hit it on the person.

Okay. You guys all get the same setup as the night before, resting in the dome? Yeah, and Frumpkin will wake me if he sees anything. Okay. Roll a perception check for, uh... Come on, you buzzard. Natural one. SAM and LAURA, SAM and fine, we're fine.

No, like it's not, it's just dark. I have trouble sleeping tonight. Okay. Darn well. So the night draws on. Somewhat restful, sleep finds most of you. The morning comes back, the sun rises, the sky, clouded as it, the sun rises,

the sky, clouded as it was the day before, not quite as broken, with no sunlight peeking through this day, a duller morning greets you. You gather your things, set it up at Moorbounders and continue on for your third day outside of Rosohna. They're final, right?

Well, well. Maybe. Well, no, it's three full days of rapid-paced travel to get there. There was a little bit of slowing at certain points and you took a break right as you reached the edge. So you have about three and a half days of travel, so you still have a little bit more to go.

But we'll pick up there next time. Damn it! Damn it! Cool, cool, cool. I don't want to keep fighting. I know. One more, we'll just go one more day. One more day. Just one more day. 1030, you guys want to go to 11?

We can keep going. Oh, he's not going to call it. It's up to you guys. I want to read some stuff. I want to read some stuff before I go, so. Okay. I've got some stuff to read. I guess to get some stuff before I go, so. Okay. I got some stuff for you. I guess to get home and pump.

You up. Pump, you up. All right. All right then, we'll pick up this next Thursday. Okay, okay, okay. Further into the barbed fields of Xhorhas. One more hour. One more hour. Like old times, yeah? Eight hour games.

We can Postmates some of those. This is not fun. Some of this is going to be a bit of a block. Yeah. Postmates bagels. Amazon Prime and a pump machine. Yeah. Send it on a drone. Oh, that'd be so good.

I know. All right, well, that's it for next week. In the meantime, guys, have a wonderful week. We'll see you soon. We love you very much. Happy Red Nose Day. Happy Red Nose Day. And you broke $100,000.

No shit, really? Yeah. You're fucking kidding. Oh my god. You guys. What? The critters are insane. You guys are nuts. So dope.

Take that, child poverty. Yeah. That's so cool, you guys are nuts. Take that, child poverty. Yeah, that's so cool. You guys are amazing. No problem saying it's all with your fists. I guess it's a Thursday yet. One more hour! Thank you for listening to this episode of Critical Role. If you've enjoyed this ever weaving story,

please consider rating and reviewing our podcast. You might just inspire someone new to hop on the wagon for the journey. We have plenty more stories to tell. Stay tuned, and we'll see you next time.