Critical Role - The Menagerie Returns! | Live One-Shot | Open Beta

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

The Menagerie returns! Join game master Matthew Mercer as he leads the cast of Critical Role through a LIVE One-Shot using the Daggerheart system! Though Daggerheart is still in Beta testing, we hope this one-shot can give insight into how the game can be played.Our Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest is now open! Sign up at https://www.daggerheart.com/ Please play often and submit your surveys at https://www.daggerheart.com/play Be sure to take a close look at the Change Log to get a sense of the updates, from major to minor: https://www.daggerheart.com/change-log Learn more at https://critrole.com/daggerheart-open-beta-playtest-is-live/ All Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest materials can be accessed via PDF on https://www.daggerheart.com/ and https://drivethrurpg.com.Daggerheart digital character creator and Nexus are also available virtually at https://app.demiplane.com/.Produced by Kyle Shire and Maxwell JamesGraphic Design by Bryan Weiss & Jordyn TorrenceDP by Michael SchmidtSound by Kyle PhamQuickstart Adventure sketches and Character Artwork by Shaun EllisCURRENT DAGGERHEART CREDITS:Lead Game Designer: Spenser StarkeAdditional Game Designers: Rowan Hall, Matthew Mercer, Alex Teplitz, Michael UnderwoodAdditional Writing: Layla Adelman, Carlos Cisco, Felix Isaacs, Erin Roberts, Eugenio VargasCombat Wheelchair Design: Mark ThompsonDevelopmental Editor: Laura HirsbrunnerArchivist: Dani GageSenior RPG Producer: Elise RezendesJunior Games Producer: Alex TeplitzAdditional Production: Alex UboldiArt Director: Anthony JonesAssociate Art Director: Leesha HanniganPlaytest Program Coordinator: Brieger CreativeLead Graphic Design: Matt Paquette & Co.Additional Graphic Design: John Harper, Vee HendroConsultants: Daniel Delgado, Rue Dickey, Rob Hebert, James Mendez Hodes, David Lezzi, Erin Roberts, Christine Sandquist, Rogan Shannon, Mark ThompsonLead Concept Artist: Shaun EllisCartographer: Marco BernardiniArtists: Juan Salvador Almencion, Zoe Badini, Paul Scott Canavan, Kristina Carroll, Stephanie Cost, Nikki Dawes, Benjamin Ee, Geoffrey Ernault, Laura Galli, Juan Gutierrez, Leesha Hannigan, Hendry Iwanaga, Anthony Jones, Samantha Joanne Key, Priscilla Kim, Michael Lim, Linda Lithén, Samantha B. Lucas, Julia Metzger, Reiko Murakami, Jess Nguyen, Irina Nordsol, Tamara Osborn, Mike Pape, Simon Pape, Jen Pattison, Marzena Piwowar, Andreas Rocha, Ernanda Souza, Jenny Tan, Rafa Teruel, Mateusz WilmaWant even more games? Follow Darrington PressWebsite: https://darringtonpress.comNewsletter: https://darringtonpress.com/newsletterTwitter: https://twitter.com/DarringtonPressInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/darringtonpress/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/darringtonpress

Hey there, Critter podcast listeners! We have a special new membership service at Beacon.tv, where you get early access to all new podcast episodes, including Critical Role for the first time ever. Beacon members also get things like live event pre-sales, merch discounts, access to a private community Discord, and new exclusive series like Critical Role Cooldown. Think of it as our digital Critical Role land.

Head on over to beacon.tv to check it out for yourself and start a seven-day free trial. Thank you so much for your support, for being a podcast listener, and for being part of our community. Good day, Critters! Travis Willingham here, and I am excited to welcome you to the podcast version of our Critical Role show. If you would like to watch the stream as it airs, you can tune in on Thursdays at 7 p.m. Pacific at twitch.tv slash criticalrole or at youtube.com slash Critical Role. The video-on-demand versions are immediately available for our Twitch subscribers or on YouTube the following Mondays at 12 p.m. Pacific. Podcast episodes are right here on the Critical Role Podcast Network on Thursdays, one week after the initial broadcast.

Now that we've got all that covered, let's get this adventure going. Hello, everyone, and welcome to tonight's episode of The Menagerie, where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play the Daggerheart open beta. The beta! Indeed. So today, we're taking the Daggerheart version 1.4

for a spin with the leveled-up Menagerie characters. If you guys hadn't had a chance to check it out yet, we had our Level Up video that went earlier today, as well as an update stream with Spencer and myself that talked about the update to the rules. Both are available now on VOD, on YouTube, and Beacon, our newly launched membership service. Oh, yes!

But in other Darrington Press news, before we jump in, we also released today, For the Queen. For the Queen! By award-winning game designer Alex Roberts. It is an incredible collaborative storytelling card game where you and your friends around the table each answer questions to weave a narrative of love,

betrayal, doubt, and devotion towards the queen as your characters accompany her on her journey. It's like a creative writer's room. Every time I play it, it sounds awesome. Find For the Queen right now at Critical Role online shops and other friendly local game stores. No, seriously, if you have narratively game-inspired friends, check it out.

Yeah. I love it. Laura, you have a quick announcement to make as well. That I do. Also available in the U.S. Critical Role Shop today, we just launched pre-orders for signed art prints of Bell's Hells by Mateo Scalera. Mateo Scalera!

And Mariano D'Inicio. They're the same artists who did Our Mighty Knight and Vox Machina art prints. Pre-orders for this stunning Bell's Hells art print. And on May 31st. And hey, guess what? What? If you're a Beacon member,

don't forget you get a 10% discount on items in CRShop. Stop it! That includes the preorder for this art print, as well as for the queen. What?! Whoa! Snapdragon queen? Whoa!

Sheesh! The queen is real dope. You know I love me a deal. For the Queen has a lot of amazing art for all the different queen cards. You can choose to flavor the journey as you begin it. We also have special custom art of Queen by Midnight to use in your For the Queen games as well.

So check it out in our shops and grab yourself some of these exclusive art cards. I am done with that announcement. And as such, I believe it's time for us to jump into Grab yourself some of these exclusive art card screens. I am done with that announcement. And as such, I believe it's time for us to jump into the second episode of The Menagerie. I don't know why I'm in German. I don't know either, but we don't know how to do this.

When in doubt. When in doubt. Roll the dice. All right. Looks like we're doing it somewhere else during the day. Indeed. So, friends. That's right, we go right in, we go right in! Here we return to the realm of Lockspire,

where we had left off the Menagerie, this gathered crew of heroes from within the Grim Warden's faction in our protagonist party at this table, had encountered fleeing fey protectors from a rapidly corrupting forest fane within the vast, verdant space known as the Emerald Sky. Trekking towards the core of a location

called the Velvet Grove, warnings from various indigenous spirits of this forest begin to warn you of the spreading corruption from within, as well as seeing more signs of other denizens of the forest growing dark and violent. Approaching this grove and witnessing signs of a variation to the legendary curse known as the Seep, seemingly spreading from within,

our heroes, you, managed to destroy the source of this corruption and cleansed Boko, the guardian of the Grove, and also learning of a man who wandered through not long before these events, who is likely tied to the source of this recent seep corruption within the woods, a man named Dyson Broche,

recognized only by Bunny here as a con man and a patron, commonly, of our home venue known as the Lilylocket Lounge in Lullavale. So with this refreshed information, the possible seed of mystery and coming danger as to who this Dyson figure is and what he wants with spreading such terrible sickness

across the realm. I thought he wanted to suck up the sickness. Whoa. Could be. SAM and LAURA, SAM and LAURA, I got it. Oh! No name is safe, ladies and gentlemen. Wasn't it Dylan? Was it Dylan?

Dylan Dyson? I think he knows his own name. Say it. If I have my note on me. It's Dylan? Dylan Dyson? I think he knows his own name. No, no. If I have my note on me. It's Dylan? I don't. On my sheet I wrote. Either one works. Listen. He was a pretty unforgettable person.

Big D. And Lolvil. It's definitely Dyson. That's fine. Dylan, though. Or was it Dylan? Dylan Dyson. Wait, Dylan Dyson. Whose notes? Did you write down Dyson or Dylan in your notes? I Wait, Dylan Dyson. Who's wrote?

Did you write down Dyson or Dylan in your notes? I wrote down Dylan, but I feel like now that I'm looking at notes, it says Dyson. Dyson. Either one. Dyson. Dyson.

Berenstain. Berenstein. You guys, we're in a parallel universe! What do they call it? I'm sorry, Matt. It's okay. Mandela effect? Okay, it's fine. This is how professionals do this.

Yeah. It's like, quickly go through my notes. A million NPCs in your head from all different games. It's fine, it's fine. We're just doing everything at once. Okay, so we'll go with that for now. But nevertheless, with this lead of information towards this darkening source of nature ravaging space.

Okay, so Matt says Dillon, then we adjusted everything to be Dyson, because I think I misspoke last time. Oh. Fuck Dillon. So yeah, it's no Dillon, it's Dyson. Who the fuck is Dillon? That's on me. Canonically, it's now Dyson. It's Big D.

Dyson's the bomb. Big D. Dyson, Dyson wants to suck everything up. See, now I regret it. Spread it around. No, but Dyson wants to spread everything around. Sure, sure. Regrets are for players, not for humans. Nevertheless, leaving the Emerald Sky

and trekking across the central continent of Lockspire to head towards the home abode of Bunny, heading off towards Lullvale. Pango splinters off towards his own seep-fallen subterranean home of Ubi in search of possible information about the seep's beginnings and see if there's a connection here.

So sadly, bids you all adieu for the time being, and we'll reconvene with you. You can hopefully put the information you've gathered together and have a stronger idea of what dangers beset this land. I'll miss you, Panko. I'll miss you, too. And he leaves.

I'll miss you, Panko. Now you walk throughout the Aetherlull Mountains. Oh shit. Pushing through the mist-shrouded mountain passes that wind between the daunting peaks of the Aetherful, numerous waterfalls carve down the sides of the range and pool in small ponds and lakes that dot throughout the craggy landscape.

The occasional moss-covered cabin or crumbled wagon peeks from the mists beyond the well-worn roadway that you follow, but as the sun begins to set, a wooden sign comes into view with pointed markers labeled in different directions with different distances. One is the Builder's Bridge, another says Sermon Turns.

The Crimson Mines. Oh yes, I forgot about Sermon Turns! Yes. Oh, what ridiculous. What did we do? What every player does, have fun. I forgot about servitors! Yes. Ridiculous. What did we do? What every player does, have fun. Yeah! That's what it's called.

But along this sign, you also see Lullavale, two miles. So you continue to hike along this road as the sky darkens, small dots of glowing red peeking through the surrounding stone like tiny, sparse lamps. You cross a creaky wooden bridge that crosses one of the smaller ravines to be revealed before you. A breathtaking view

of a multi-leveled cliffside city enveloped in dusky red glow from hundreds of exposed red crystals and veins of crystal that emerged from the eroded gorge face and tangled throughout the city streets. You see tumbling waterfalls framing the city, plunging into the ravine floor below,

while hanging colorful lanterns sway along the street arches and banners. You can hear the echo of mingling music filling the air as you approach the outskirts of the city, just as the final light of day begins to fade. This is Lullavale, the Crimson City of Sin. Honey, this is beautiful. Isn't it just the prettiest?

Oh, this is getting all tingly in places, being back home again. Right, why is it called City of Sin? How'd they earn that one? Oh, well, you see, um... I mean, sir, Dante could lay it out. You can really find anything anybody wants in there. And right as you step within the first street,

you can see up in this large balcony, there is an array of three beautiful people across the gender spectrum, well-dressed and all beckoning down to you as you step in. Travelers from afar need a place to stay, need a body to keep warm. Wow! I am cold! Never stop at the first place

that you come upon in Loth-Veil. Oh, you just keep going? You know, it's, yeah. If you want to shop around. At least around. You could go to the heat around, you know, shop around, see what suits you. Hello there, darling. Do you have any recommendations?

Well, depends on how much you're paying. Do we have any money? I think we have a few handfuls of gold. Do I recognize this woman? No, no. Much to your specific adage that you placed forward with your friend, you don't bother too much with the outskirts businesses,

as most of your life has grown up more towards the core of the city, where the true beating heart of the vibrant City of Sin resides. I just tell her, Pulse off, lady! Backs up off the side, and you can see it kicks a rock off the top,

and it tappers along. Ow! The city is beginning to bustle already. You can hear, amongst various porches, there are musicians out in front that are having jam sessions. You can see street performers that are beginning to gather their materials

and head towards the central core of the city. This here, the base entry platform of the city here, you can see there are staircases that wind up to a secondary and then a third level up along the cliff face that it seems to just wind up it as it goes. Everything giving this warm, vibrant crimson light throughout.

I've never seen such a beautiful place in my life. Wow. Yeah. It is definitely good to be back. Absolutely. I forgot what you sounded like. I know. It's fun, isn't it? Give it quiet all day, it's all.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I'll give you a quick little tour. Let's start with the Lily Locket Lounge. You got to see it. Well, they know about Dyson and then? Oh yeah. Okay. Oh yeah, he came in all the time. Do you remember that guy?

He was such a little chode. Oh, he sucked. Yeah. His name was Dyson. He sucked. His name was Dyson. Sucked. Suckucks. That horse is dead. Really? Yeah. That's all. Five minutes in.

Should've kept it, Nillie. Been there, done that. Been there, done that. And would you say this is a warm reception for you, or did you leave on good terms or bad terms? Oh no, no, no, we're good, we're good. Totally would recommend me for any other jobs. Yeah, no, you see, things just started getting so weird

with the, I don't know, maybe it's Seep-related, but I don't know. It could be. There was certainly some Mist-related issues. Yeah, it was getting all misty. Yes. Maybe the Sep appears different ways everywhere that it is, you know? Because Pango was saying that the seep there was watery,

and the seep we saw was gooey. Maybe the seep here is misty. Basically, what started happening is, you see, there's all these beautiful red crystals, and just out of nowhere, they started changing colors. What? I know, and it totally messes with the aesthetic.

Yeah, it changes the vibe for sure. What color did it change to? All kinds of weird colors. Black and brown and blue and... That's Trey. Moab? Yeah, yeah, it was all, it just wasn't, it clashed real bad.

Yeah, red is a really nice tone. Yeah. It does, it's a, it's a aesthetic for sure. Very dominating. The mist were quite dangerous, if I recall. It was not, I mean, we certainly had some scuffling issues over on the seaside, if I recall. Yeah, I rescued him.

This is true. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. That's how we met. Yeah. Rescued him from what? Well, the mists in the sea. The weird misty stuff. Yes. Oh.

It's very difficult to fight a mist, actually, it turns out. Oh, it didn't change you, or? No, just sort of tried to drown me and slowly press me beneath the sea. Wait, so it was like a fighting mist? Well, I was fighting, it was more just doing its mist thing.

It was just mist? Are you sure you weren't drunk? Oh yes. That was in and around Lolvale? Well, it was kind of on the outskirts. Right. Yeah. How long did you work here for? Oh, I've been here for so long.

Basically, since I was a young little girl. What was the name of that lass you said that you looked up to here? She's still here. What's her name again? Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Mufana? Yeah, you're thinking of Mufana. Mm-hmm. But she's, you know, she's... You're what now? Mufana. Oh! Mifana? Yeah, you're thinking of Mifana. Mm-hmm. But she's, you know, she's... You're what now? Mifana. She's... Mifana, Mifana.

But, you know, she's real famous, and she got almost too famous for us, so she's going around, she's traveling, she's doing her thing. What's she famous for? Taking her clothes off. Oh. She good at it, then?

Oh yeah. Oh. She's good at it, then? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So like a mentor, so to speak. Well, no, not really. Actually, you should just come to the Lily Locket. You'll meet my mentor. All right. Oh, that's a different, I'm getting people confused.

Are there any food stalls on the street? There are. As I go? No, as the music begins to grow more vibrant, as you press around, you can see some of the stalls that have opened into the street. It looks like there is just continuous buzzing of laughter and conversation. All manner of figures from all different types

of scales of wealth are wandering through and clapping each other's backs and chuckling as they go from one establishment to the next. It very much has a perpetual, subtle Mardi Gras vibe to a lot of the Central Street here. And indeed, there are many sidecarts and such. You can see immediately over to the right, there is this older, rotund, orcish man who has a heavy leather apron in front and a big table, and has a bunch of different fish, different sizes, hanging from top. And he's currently cleaning one and about to throw it on this massive kind of ramshod grill that he made off to the side. Smells delicious.

Excuse me, grandfather. Do you have any raw, you got any cooked fish or is it all raw here? In about two minutes, it'll be cooked fish. I'll have a little bit of cooked fish. You got any vegetables to go alongside that? Leans over and you can see with a carton heated to the right of them, has this somewhat dreary-eyed-looking, older halfling woman who is in the middle of a conversation with somebody, but looks to be about passing out,

and the orc guy reaches over and grabs a cabbage, crushes it in his hand and goes, it's cooked now, throws it on the grill. Great, yeah, it's not for me, it's for these guys. There's two puppies poking out. It's so good, the puppies! Well, it's only a day later or so, isn't it? Isn't it? No, it's been a while.

It's been a few days' travel. It's a few days. I didn't chuck them in the river the day after. Anyway, I'd like to keep them fed, you know, healthy food, raw sometimes, but cooked, you know, when they've been good boys. They're very good boys, aren't you? Good boys.

Happily, for just a couple of quick coins, carves up the cooked fish within the required state for pups of their age and size, mingles it with some of the now withered, slightly charred cabbage, and puts it into a makeshift, it looks almost like a wicker bowl that can fall apart in a minute,

and passes it over and goes, Hey, there I'll do for you. There we go. You are two good babbies, so you get farmer's dog. Mm, oh no. Oh. That's that good stuff. So expensive.

That cabbage is very, it creates quite a bit of gas. I should warn you, it's a very gassy cabbage. That's why I sleep outside. Oh dear. Following Bunny past the various buildings, and there are small spires and beautiful banners that are painted in multitudes of colors. There are, the words completely

ejected out of my brain, massive art pieces that are painted across the outside of heavy, wide walls. Murals. Murals, thank you. I got there eventually. Sounds like it. With your help. Sounds like it. It is definitely a city of art

and expression in all of its forms. And following Bunny's step, eventually you come upon a massive, dark maroon stained wood, multi-leveled decadent theater that you can see emblazoned on the outside across numerous entryways, and a gilded cursive that drifts across

in a beautiful, if rapid manner, the Lily Locket Lounge. Fuck me, that looks like a bit of the all right. Yeah. Well, come in, come in, come on, go! Oh dear. Stepping within the chamber, immediately you're hit with the smells of

old wines mixed with various perfumes that hit the stale air to not an unpleasant smell, but definitely a mishmash of people that have either been coming and going or have been moseying about for the time being. But the entryway as you step through has this beautiful arch that has these glowing magical lanterns that crackle on the sides

as you step into the main foyer space. A high domed ceiling that has clouds painted across it. It's almost like a midday bright sky above. From there, you can see all manner of marquees that set up all these different performers. You can see this amazing ribbit woman holding this massive inflated bubble that's guarding her naughty bits.

You can see this incredibly muscular, live trapeze artist-like human elf that is holding from this silk and has just bent this Adonis of a man. You can see all these various performers within the front entryway. Not too far off the left, you can see a familiar-looking figure.

Looks just like Bunny on one of these. If you want to describe what your marquee image painted on this wall looks like. Oh, shoot. What? Yeah, well, you see, you know, because my speciality is with the fans, you know? So you see just like, you know, it's me,

but a little bit more scantily clad, you know? Because I got to protect the bits. But you just see two big fans with two feathers, like what the showgirls use. And they're all feathered, just perfectly covering her, and she looks all, like too much glow. They went in and fucked with the brightness,

and she's just. Overblanked. Yeah. Just glowing. Just as this is happening, a thick... You're so spotless. Yeah. Fluffy. A thick-torsoed chimpanzee simian

steps up with this black coat on, the collar white, but it sticks out a little bit from the sides. He has a tie spaced around. The front of his fur seems to be cultivated into this big, bushy mustache that covers the top of the lip. He steps forward with a white rope and goes,

Oh, friends, yeah! Who'd like to see some magic? I would, I would, I would! Now watch this. Wait, do I know this guy? You do not know this figure. What is going on? I don't know. Oh boy.

We must have hired him after we left. You've got a big pile of close-up magic, haven't you? Not so much. Pulls a small blade from the pocket. Ooh, dangerous. Are you going to cut it? Yes.

Oh, sorry. Whoa! Two pieces of rope. Two pieces of rope. Out of movie range. Ties them into a knot, like you see before you, and pulls. It's a single piece of rope. How'd you do that?

Magic, my friend. Magic. Can I use Reveal to make a spell cast roll? If anything is hidden within close range, that roll would succeed against it, is no longer hidden. And Travis wins the game. close range, that roll with 16 against it is no longer hidden. Yes, you may. And Travis wins the game. I'll go home now.

Oh! So 16, 17, 18, 19 with hope. 19 with hope, awesome. So go ahead and take a hope on that. Says, thank you, thank you. And as he's holding out his hat to take any sort of coin as a patronage, he leans forward and you see,

falling from the back of his hand, the two other pieces of rope that under the ground. Oh, you did cut it! Shovels it behind with his simian foot and grabs it and quickly shovels it into a pocket. I'm having a meeting. Have a good night.

And just darts off, embarrassed. You might have cut the rope, but they already had cut ropes. Yeah. You made him disappear. Well done. Very impressive. We're not, that's, he's not on our payroll. That was a bad first impression. He's just someone that comes to the bar

and tries to do tricks inside. And like, yeah, I understand what's happening here. I don't take that as a representation. I don't think I understood that you're a celebrity here. Oh! Well, you're on the water on the Marquis. No! No!

Oh, stop. Yes. Oh, no. Funny mind! You hear as you spin and look, speaking of bar, there is this majestic, multi-tiered, magically lit bar shelf with this massive, beautiful, dark mahogany,

polished bar with a brass edge to it. And you can see there's two bartenders running for some of the patrons that are starting to come up. For people really well-dressed in this space, you can see it carries an air of definitely upper echelon aesthetic. But one figure turns from the bar, you see this older elf woman with her gray hair pulled up

and victory curls at the top there. She has this very, kind of a nicer version of the stepmother from Cinderella. Oh. a nicer version of the stepmother from Cinderella. Oh. Like a high neck dress, you could see with pointed shoulders to go out, but she has this warm smile about her approaches.

My dear, I wasn't certain if you were going to return to us. Of course I'd return. I love you so much. Oh, you're so sweet, Dore. Who are your friends here, for my part? Oh, you're going to love it, everybody. This is the matron, Boa Adra. At your service.

And yes, she's like the madam. This is her establishment. Wow, it's beautiful, ma'am. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, madam. Pleasure is mine. I, it's beautiful, man. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, madame. Pleasure is mine. I prefer the term lording manager. Lording manager. Yes, it makes the men feel inferior.

But please, welcome. As friends of Bonnie, you're friends of ours. Yeah, these are, we came up with a real nice name for ourselves, we're the Menagerie. Ooh. Is this your performance troupe now? Are you looking for a contract? I think you want, no, you still,

you didn't cancel my contract, right? No, but I also don't recall the contract allowing you to bring another performance in under it, so we'd have to renegotiate. Speaking of, you have an infestation of magicians. I know, I'm working on it. You've got to get them out of here. And they're not very good.

No. He brought one fairly talented magician once and it just calls in all the riffraff. Nevertheless. I'm happy. Welcome. If you'd like to stay for the show, you might. What? Are you going to perform, Bunny?

Oh! No, no, I'm so rusty. I'm so... Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny! No. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Was that? I thought I would call the set.

Yes! Is that behind your back? I'm sure, Mom. Do-do-do-do-do your back? I'm sure, bub. I'm sure the performer, I'm sure the set list is probably completely full, right? But I mean, we could always make room if need be. Oh, yes!

Yes! To be honest, Laimond had to back out last minute due to an ankle injury. So there is a spot leading right up to our marquee performer. Mafarna has returned from tour. She's here. Oh my goodness.

Okay, you guys got to see this. I've always wanted to see Mafarna. It's incredible. What happened? Where's Lamond? I believe she's in her room recovering. All right, can I go see it? Of course you may. All right, can I go see you? Of course you may. All right.

Can I bring them backstage? We're more like roadies than actual performers. Well, they're under your... They're under your employ. For the time being, that means they're under your contract and they're your responsibility. I'll wrangle them. Good to see you again, my lady, as well. Ple the time being, that means they're under your contract and they're your responsibility. I'll wrangle them. Good to see you again, Malayna, as well.

Pleasure. Again, as always. Save a seat for us in the front for my friends? That could be done, yeah. For my compatriots? Don't worry, I'll see to it. All right. Bunny, my family's never put much stock in entertainment, but if you did want to perform, I'm sure we could give a higher quality addition

to your performance than what these people are used to. We could really kick things up a notch. Would you really do that? Normally I have a whole lighting set up and I have glitter and confettis, but I haven't had time. Yeah. We could help out. Okay. Higher tactics.

We're going to be back in Lolvale. Am I saying that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lolvale. You thought I'd let it all blur together. Right, we want to get to know you as best we can, yes. We're going to be back in Lullvale. Am I saying that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lullvale. You thought I'd let it all blur together. Right, we want to get to know you as best we can, so. Oh my goodness, oh. Put your best fur forward. Okay.

Let's go check to see if the dressing room hasn't been raided yet. Okay, I take them back to meet La'Mon. Okay, so the lounge is gorgeous. It's definitely, you get the sense, this is a world-renowned, and many of you have heard of it in some ways, it's a world-renowned performance venue.

Burlesque and dance and performance art, even some vaudevillian sketch acts, though generally not as welcomed here in the city of Lullavale. And apparently now, magicians And apparently now magicians. I love magicians. Sorry, magicians. It's just a scrolling list.

Sorry, Dillon's. Sorry, magicians. We have had a list going for nine years. Really are a big fan. Sorry, Quebec. Sorry, Quebec. Sorry, magicians named Dillon. Indeed. I want to go to there. But you get the sense that this is definitely an esteemed place,

and the clientele definitely looking amongst your ragtag troop, a few folks that wander through give you a bit of a stink eye, or at least a sideway glance, as you're eventually led to the backrooms where all the performers who live on site here, they have a number of their side chambers that lead to the backroom area, the performers who live on site here, they have a number of their side chambers

that lead to the backroom area, the behind-stage region. You head to LaMond's chamber door, and if you'd like to knock. Yeah, just take my acrylics and just... What do you want? LaMond! Bunny?

Bunny, is that you? You hear some sound that hits the floor hard, and as the door opens, you can see this beautiful human elf with long, curly, blonde hair that goes past her shoulders. She has natural beauty that exudes from her, wearing this heavy, comfortable-looking robe

that's wrapped around her and has a crutch under one arm. And goes, Hey, doll, it's so good to see you. I wasn't sure when you were coming back. Oh my goodness, I'm going to miss you so much. You are just such a sight for sore eyes. Oh, it's definitely sore. You got the sore foot. What is that?

I don't know. One of my shoes just broke during one of the rehearsals. I twisted my ankle. The doctor says it's not too bad, but not to the point of progging me down for the week. What? That's why you should always wear sensible shoes. Thank you for the unrequested advice.

Appreciate that. These friends of yours? Yeah. Yeah, they're friends of yours? Yeah, yeah. Look, they're kind of new to the scene. They might be nice. Call me surprised. We call ourselves the Menagerie. The Menagerie. The Menagerie.

Oh, but there's more than three of you. Isn't it like that kind of a menagerie? Oh, misunderstood, sorry. Well, welcome to my doorway, I suppose. Nice to meet you all. You're friends of Bunny. That means that you're friends of ours, I guess, technically, by the way that we run this place.

Pleased to meet you. Do you remember a man named Dyson? He was a con man. Yeah, what about him? Do you, did he like dark, gooey stuff? I guess he's wanting to spread his seep around. Oh boy. I hope we calm down, because it's not going to work.

No! How bad was it? It's not going to work. Cancel it, cancel it. No. Pull the plug. Key has been inserted. Lift the lid. No more Daggerheart, everybody. It's done.

Close beta. Close beta. Close to beta, close to me. Well, I haven't personally seen it, but if you've seen that happen, go ahead and let Laerry know at the front. We'll make sure he never comes back. That's not allowed. La'Mon, we're just wondering,

because remember how he used to be so weird and aloof and creepy? Used to be. Yeah, but has he been around? Because apparently he went up and he cursed a hill in the hill. How do I explain this, you guys? Wait, who was the guy that we saw that was cut in half? That wasn't him. Oh yeah.

Well, no, that was the... That was Cullen. That was Cullen. Right. Right, right, right, right. But he was the guy, the magical hill man. He made a little illusion. Well, if you're looking for him, if he's not in the audience tonight,

he's probably blowing his cash down at the casino or something. That's where a lot of the lowlifes take down their space. Whoa. I mean, I've seen him recently. Well, really? How recent? Like two days ago, he came in here, was creeping around the ladies for a bit,

like he does at a distance. Not enough to be able to report him, but enough to make us feel a little uncomfortable. Oh, he was here while we were fighting. It's both irritating and convenient. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Were they wearing any identified clothing?

What was that? Can I get that again, Travis? Break yourself? That's embarrassing. Are they identified clothing? I mean, I always wondered if he was a fisherman or something. He always wore this, like, it's like a heavy sort of fisherman's coat,

like big, big cuffs on the arms, a bit tattered at the bottom, collar folded. A bit, I don't know, a bit moth-eaten, it looks at times. I don't know. Yeah. Fisherman's coat. Moth-y to the point. Is there anything else you can tell us about him? I mean, I guess you could. What color is his hair?

To be perf, oh, what's left of it? Oh, oh, oh, here we go, here we go, here we go. Maybe a little salt and pepper. I don't know if he colors it, trying to make a presentation. Be perfectly honest, I keep a distance anyway. Does he smell? He's a leerer. He likes to stare.

Just a little unsettling, you know? It's very employable. Yeah. That's right. Well, hey, can I borrow one of your costumes? I'm taking your spot tonight. For real? Yeah. Well, at least I'm glad it's you and not anyone else.

I know. Wouldn't trust it, anyone else. I would hate it if it was that bitch Candy. Fuck Candy! Yeah. She's a little misunderstood. She's young, she'll get there in time. Candy's okay. She's a little mad at my mom.

Did you hear who's performing tonight, main stage? I did. Oh my goodness, why you don't look pleased? Why would I be pleased? Oh, what's wrong with Mofana? There's nothing wrong with her. She just overshadowed the rest of us. She's been doing this for a while,

and a lot of other girls have come up and proven themselves, and they all just can't seem to get out from under the space she occupies. Even when she's gone for over a year, everyone keeps coming and asking when she's coming back. Yeah, no space. Did you injure your foot before or after she came back? That was just two nights ago. Why? Do you think she got needsy Kerrigan?

I was going to say, did she hire, did she lose? You got Kerrigan! Did she like? I grew up, kids. Yeah. Mess up your shoe? I don't particularly know. Do you have your shoe? I have it, yeah.

Can I take a look at it? Sure, you're adorable. By the way. Thanks! My blue cheeks just go pink. They are at least saving her performance for the end of the night. No one has to go on after her, I assume. Big fan, by the way, but yes.

You're sweet. No, she'll be going on right around midnight, so it's a number of hours before she has to take the stage. Performances don't begin for a few more hours anyway, so you've got time to relax, enjoy yourself some drinks. Except for you, you should be sober on stage. Well, you know, just a little something to loosen up the gears.

Mufana? Yeah? I'll be honest. She showed up. She's always been a bit snooty, but special, I've seen the world and I'm better than you kind of energy. She returned with an accent. I hate it when people do that. It's awful.

Has anyone called her on it? Or is everyone just pretending like it's always been there? She shows up and she's like, Hello, everyone. I'm Mifana. And I'm like, bitch, you know, we've seen you before. We grew up around you. What the fuck is this? So she doesn't speak normal like you used to?

Yeah, no! Of course not! This is Lovel's natural accent. Right? I'm really confused. So many different kinds. It's really a cultural hub, this side of Larkspire. Like folks from all over come over.

It's a port town. Well, let me see your shoe. She takes off. Oh, the one that's busted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the one that's broken. She goes and takes it. Yeah, sure enough, it's a tall heel that looks snapped at the base where it is.

He goes, this is the one in question. Whoa. That's definitely been tampered with. It's definitely, I was thinking the same thing. You think so? What are you going to do with this shoe? Well, I was going to get it repaired, maybe. Oh, you're going to keep it. I was just thinking,

I could add it to my staff piece to make it a little taller. Make a presence roll for me. Oh my god. Just fucking come in. Add the broken shoe to your sorcerer's staff. Yes, I don't know. What am I doing? What did you say?

Presence? Presence, please. Okay. Okay, so that is 23 with fear. Okay. She takes the shoe, looks it over. I'm so sorry, that was wrong. With hope.

Oh, with hope? Yes. Okay. She takes the shoe, looks it over. Be perfectly honest, it's run its course with me. I'll just go and ask one of our patrons to maybe get me a new set. This is for you, just because you're cute. Thank you so much.

I'm just going to wrap the ankle strap around the bottom of the cigarillo. Some real unique friends you're making these days, buddy. I like it. They're real good peoples. Yeah, it's really good. Is it what color is the shoe? Is it yellow?

The shoe is a dark amber color with black bottoms to it, and it looks like this beautiful buckle with a pearl at the end. Incredible. What an incredible thing. Thank you so much. Can I take a look at it, though, a little closer

and see, does it look like it could have been tampered with? This is the new chair. Yes. This is the new chair. I'm keeping this thing. Make a knowledge roll for me, if you don't mind. It's going to mean something later. Exactly. It's a straight roll.

Probably not. Nine with hope. Nine with hope. Well, you get a hope out of it. It looks like it definitely snapped. Looks like it broke. Looks like it's probably why she hurt her ankle. It's been a long day. We're going to figure it out. Well, you know, who's to say?

Maybe she was jealous of the up-and-comer, Luminda Cello. It's possible. Yeah. Well, you know, I guess we'll just have to see how you one-upper later tonight, right? I mean, I can never follow in your footsteps. I'm just trying to keep up.

Oh, you could now, but it'd be at a weird pace. I'm going to make some tea and relax. It's a pleasure to meet you all. It's really nice to meet you, man. Big fan. You told me that already. I know. It's very sweet. It's still true. All right, thank you.

I'm still grateful. I'll be back in a bit to raid your wardrobe. Of course, of course. No, relax amongst yourselves. A few hours to go before we get started. I'll probably see you in the audience, so bye. Don't you still have a dressing room here? Well, yeah, but I had packed so much stuff up

when I was hitting the road. It's exciting. It's good to know that Dyson's here. Yeah. Yeah. If we've got a minute. Well, I don't know. I know you have to get ready at some point, but if we have a minute, there is a casino that we were seen at. Yeah. Yeah, we don't know. I know you have to get ready at some point, but if we have a minute, there is a casino

that we were seen at. Yeah, we can pop over. Do you know what time your curtain call is? Well, she said it was, she was, Mofana's at midnight, so I imagine I should, as long as I'm back by 11. Okay. Have I noticed any other fine girls in the area,

or do they seem... You haven't seen any within this establishment. You've seen a handful walking the streets to some other places. They're present within the city. In fact, the cultural melting pot of Lolveil is extensive. There are people from all over Lockspire here, including a number of very unsavory-looking types.

But yeah, it's a wide array. What time is it? It's just post-sunset, so maybe it's like, at this time of year, like 730. So the show starts at 10ish, so you have a little bit of time if you want. It's not exactly a hot trail, being it was two days ago, but we should check out the casino

and just see if we can get eyes on a balding fisherman coat wearing Dyson. What if... Hold on. I'm going to just squat down on the ground. Wait, maybe I should go outside for this. Oh, I'm going to go outside. As soon as we get outside, I'm going to do it.

Yeah. I'm going to find outside. As soon as we get outside, I'm going to do it. Yeah. I'm going to find dirt. Yeah. Even better. I'm going to squat down, and I'm going to put my fingers down on the ground, and I'm just going to hum. Mm, I'm looking for a creepy guy with salt and pepper balding head

and a big coat, and he stares. And I'm going to do an instinct roll to try to speak with any other fun girl in the area that might have eyes on him. Is that a thing? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fun girl network? Fun girl network.

So yeah, go ahead and make an instinct roll for me and I'll let you know what you can manage to do. What's my fun jersey? This down. Instinct. Instinct, instinct. That's a 13, 14, 15 with hope. 15 with hope, so you take the hope on that.

As you dig your fingers into the surrounding dirt and you extend your consciousness amongst the microscopic weave of plant and fungal matter that permeates the earth-covered shelves of this rocky, broken gorge, you feel yourself rapidly spreading out and you tickle the feet of various other fungal that are amongst other business,

but even at a quick passing through in this imaginary space, none of them seem to have eyes on where you are. You know what? I'm going to make a roll here. Natural 20, okay. So yeah, you find one fungral that is working. It seems like they're working security for a location here. You all of a sudden come into their consciousness,

briefly moment, like a ghosted visual perspective of the surrounding, and you can see there's a card table to the right. And as they glance around, acknowledging where you are, sharing this image in your mind into theirs, they give a glance over and point in one direction. You see just the faint back, mostly balding head

of a man in a strange-looking heavy coat with a ruffled collar on top that looks loosely like what was described. She sees something. That was the casino, right? There's a card table. There was a card table? There was a bouncer at a card table, and he saw him. Oh, let's go. Oh, that's wonderful.

As long as we're back here by 11s. Okay. Is this going to distract you? Do you need to settle yourself for the requirements? No. If you stay ready, you ain't got to get readies. Yes. Dang. Well.

Oh, I can't wait. All right. Is the casino far from where the Lilylocket Lounge is? It's maybe like a six to seven minute walk. Like a brisk walk. We'll call it the li-li-li-li-li. The li-li-li-li-li. The Louisville Lilylocket Lounge?

That's right. That's right. That's right. It's genius. It's amazing. True. Strumptious. All right. All right.

Following your guidance and heading through the boisterous nightlife of the center of Lullavale, passing by other mid-street jugglers and performers, you make eye contact with some of the other fungal that you had brushed by as they go, and they like, and one of them reaches over and grabs some rotting plant on a windowsill

and crushes it and absorbs it. Whoa, whoa. That's a powerful move. Yep. Never breaks eye contact. Nope, just continuous. You think it has eyes. But you lead them a little ways down

the main central street and then off to the right, not too far from the Bank of Borneo, which you pass by this large stone column structure that has in the front the Bank of Borneo. And you can see there are folks mingling on the outside, as well as the inchiway, individuals coming in and coming out. And you get the sense for a town that probably has a lot of really expensive entertainment and apparently a casino where there is likely gambling, a bank probably does pretty well here. But across from the Bank of Borneo, you can see this roaring structure.

It's this wide, it looks almost like an arena. It is circular in shape, but it is built almost like walls with a roof on top that is open, other than a, it looks like a cloth domes that across it that flows. The air itself is like an open-air casino. As the wind gusts through, you can see parts of the material flap and flags in the air itself is like an open-air casino. As the wind gusts through, you can see

parts of the material flap and flags in the air. I don't want to go there. Lit from underneath, too, it lights them. So it looks almost like a golden sea that's slowly flowing with the wind. Oh, wow. That's so cool. You could paint fish on it and it would look like the ocean.

Ugh. As we're walking through the streets, I'm just catching flies. There are many. Most of them are mosquitoes, but you know, if you get four of them, it's like one fly. Still tasty. Yeah. This indeed, you can see the large sign out front,

the Bax and Bones Casino. It has this very kind of... The letters are painted in gold against black, so they're very bold, but the font that it's put in is very stark and intense, like, you're here! And so while it has this beautiful outer aspect of it, once you step in the door, it is business. There's noise, there's music, there are performers on separate stages that mingle in the middle into some weird jazz-like mixture. There are a number of card tables, dice tables.

It is a bustling space. You also see there are suited figures wearing what you recognize to the fungal that you'd contacted in this space, some sort of a guardian suit for those that keep eyes across the interior. And there's a lot of them. Even just at the first glance,

glancing around, you see 10 individuals, various ancestries that are walking around, arms crossed, just keeping the peace and holding an ominous presence amongst the rest of the revelry. Hello? Do we have some time? I've got the itch, baby. What games are there to play? Oh, there's all manner.

Have you described to me, if you can, the extensive experience that you believe Zarlo has had with gambling? Oh, I've had none. But I've heard about it. And I'm here to lose money. So I don't understand cards, that's too much, but I do like dice a lot. So I'm going to gravitate towards any table

that has dice on it and just try to fake, fake that I know what I'm doing and see how fast I can lose me money. Beautiful. As you come to the first table you see with dice, there's four figures there. There's like an older looking, an elderly

ribbit that is hunched over the edge. The rest of her skin's graying a bit with a big thick set of spectacles, who currently has a big old mitt filled with dice and looks over. Hi there, sweet one. Yeah, you coming to join us at the table? Greetings, fellow gamblers.

It is a night for the Jakes. And I sit down on my monkey ass. You sit down. The Jakes. The Jakes. Oh, Jakes. You plop down and the other figures at the table all look at each other and smile and turn back to you. Of course, please.

Happy to have someone of esteemed experience at the table. She throws her lot of dice. You see six dice scatter across the table. Everyone looks in, does a count. And she goes, No, that was quite bad, actually. And she shuffles some of her coins away and the rest of the folks take from the pot.

It is an interesting, like, everyone's playing for fun. It isn't like it's high stakes necessarily, but they're definitely going to test you. It is an interesting, everyone's playing for fun. It isn't like it's high stakes necessarily, but they're definitely going to test you. Go ahead and roll six d6s for me, if you don't mind. Do I have to put anything on the table? I was about to ask you, how much do you want to put down? I take one of the puppies.

No! You get a little gassy as you squeeze it. This is what you're tempted for. I hold out to the puppy. I pull out the second dog. I lay a play. All right. I have some gold. Hold onto them for me, will you, Daryl, and okay.

So I put half a handful of gold. Half a handful of gold. Right. All right. Do I need dice, right? 66. 66? I'll take those, because you got them ready. Four right there.

Thanks, Half-Shout. So the key here is everyone is taking turns of rolling six dice. Any doubles they get, add together, and they roll that many dice again until there's no more doubles, and the final number is the winner. So I'm looking for doubles.

Yeah. That's two. The highest number possible. All right. Here we go. Oh, damn! What about triples, baby? Triple twos. Triple twos, all right. So you add those twos together.

That's six. That's simian luck, you fuckers! That's six, now go ahead and roll those three dice once more. These three that were, okay. Let's go! Two threes. Let's go! All right, so that brings it to 12.

Go ahead and roll those two threes again. But I have to get doubles again? To continue, yeah. That's fucking impossible! No, you're doing it to 12. Go ahead and roll those two threes again. But I have to get doubles again? To continue, yeah. That's fucking impossible! I need to do a five. It's a five and a four. Okay, so 12 is your number. The elder ribbit from the table rolls. That is one, two, three, and three and three.

Oh! That's going to be nine. Oh! Oh no! It's going to be five again. You're going to lose your handful. It's going to be nine. Oh! So that'd be five again. Oh no! You're going to lose your handful. It's just a half handful. That is nine plus eight. 17.

That's going to be 17. Roll these two again. Two ones. Two fives again. Oh! Two! You lose half your handful. So what that tells me is that I need to try again, so I put the other half in the middle.

Oh no! That was a really fun game, though. I literally just made it up right now. It's really fun! It's really fun! I was trying to figure out where that came from. In the chaos of trying to prepare for this session, I built a casino and didn't think to add games.

I've done that a thousand times in the past. I'm like, they're not going to go and gamble, of course. They're going to go for the story. Of course we're going to gamble! I should know better. Let's go, grandma. I'm feeling lucky. All right, you go. Are you putting some money down?

Welcome to two and a half hours of us gambling, folks. Deckard! Showed off nothing on these here. Okay. I scoop the puppies back up and I put them in my shirt. I kiss one of them on the head. I have them in my sleeve already!

Okay, just wait. I got one out. Nope. Okay. Okay. All right. Three. What again, what are you? Oh! Oh! Four and four. 12!

Five and five. So that means 18, is that what that is? 18. Correct. And you get to roll those four again? Yeah! 12 on this end, too. Where is 16? 14. 12 and four. Oh, 12 and four.

16. 12 over here. I'm at 18. Here we go. Oh, I'm out! Oh, me too. Wiped out. 16. 18. 18.

You win the pot. To all our money. Whoa! The pot! Hi. So I got a half a handful. Here's your half a handful, Bec. You get two handfuls total from the table, including what you put in there, what you put in there, and the two others that had space there. Forget all the plot hooks.

We're staying here for the next round. I just drop off my collars and just pull them away. No! I want to play a board game! More games! You want to play? I'll start dragging them. Yeah! Thank you, Kekka. It's only fair. They get to play a couple rounds. You want to go in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to go in. All right, all right. Yeah! Thank you, Kax. It's only fair.

They get to play a couple rounds. You want to go in? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to go in. All right, all right. Well, how much are you putting on the table? I'm sorry. I'm going to do half a handful. You want to put a handful down?

Yeah, how many are you rolling? Six. Six. Six d6s. I'll take this back. 15 minutes later. Shit! Puts the cigarillo down on the table. Yeah. All right, all right.

That's good, that's good. Okay, so six, nine. Okay, so one of them is number? So two threes and three ones. I guess you rolled a five. That's 18. How many twins? Two six.

Two twos. 18 plus eight, 26. What did I have before? You had nine. Nine plus four, 13, plus 12. So 25. 25. 26 so far. Roll whatever got doubled this time. Let's go beta-peen.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! Plus an eight. You were at 25. 25 plus eight. You won! I won. You won this round. Yeah! Oh, I love this game! You get three handfuls.

I'm stopping right there! What, three handfuls of gold? Yeah, three handfuls of gold, and that one win. The rest of the folks at the table go, and they get up frustrated and walk away. Begayers' Lock, Begayers' Lock. The old woman goes, I spent a fine time playing you strangers.

We'll see you around next time. Bring some real fucking money to the table. She gets up and wanders off in a huff. Ooh! I just want to go home and play this all the time. Hot table, hot table. That was fun. Oh, this would have been really good.

Wow, no wonder people like gambling. Right? Yeah! You're going to open the table and just start looking around the casino for anything that resembles a fisherman's coat or a blinding foam cover. I'm trying to cover wherever your back is.

So do you want to make an instinct roll? And are you trying to help him? I'm trying to help him. back is. Okay, so do you want to make an instinct roll and are you trying to help him? I'm trying to help, yes. So go ahead and spend a hope and you can roll a d6 to add to his roll. All right. Oh, that's not a nine, 10, 11, 12. 13 with fear.

14 with fear. Thank you. 14 with fear. I will, for my jam move, I will take a fear. 14 with fear. Thank you. 14 with fear. I will, for my jam move, I will take a fear. All right, so glancing around, it takes a minute. You're hearing your friends laugh and cheer and make a scene their first few minutes into this casino. And aside from setting up your nerves a little bit,

it takes a moment for you to find your concentration. The two of you put your heads together and glance around the table. You can see there is one card game on the far off end of the space, where it looks like there are five figures in intense gambling, like speechless card checking and putting money across the table. One of them you see is this small, deflated-looking man in his late 50s, maybe? It's hard to tell his age. Thinning hair, sunken jowls, and he has this big navy coat

that looks a bit tattered at the edges. You see him holding his cards in his hand, his eyes peeking off the other ones. He's trying to put on a poker face, but he's awful at it, and you can see him. That's how I would play cards. Fold. I think we found our rotted fish.

Is that him? Does it look like him? What was that voice? It looks pretty close to... Would I recognize him? Indeed, you do recognize this as Dyson Dillon. Dillon Dyson. It's him. The Louisville Dyson. Yeah. All right, so what do we do?

What do we do? What do you do in this situation? Do we go over there? Do we arrest him? Do you know him, Jue? Do you kill him? I'm entirely sure. In the name of the Grand Wardens? Does he know you? Yeah, he would know me.

You know, maybe I could get his attention, make him think I'm flirting with him a little bit, and then we could hit him with the hard truths. Do we want to get him off on his own? I'll get him off on his own. Maybe we'll have to take a pee break or go to the bar? Is there a little hallway or something that I can slink behind?

Then we can kind of hide. From where he's sitting, no, his back's to the wall, and he seems the kind of person that would gamble, his back's to the wall, and he seems like the kind of person that would gamble with his back to the wall. Sorry, Laura. Yeah. You do see there are a few alcoves off to the side. There are a couple of water closets

set to each end of the room, as well as some elements of the outer walls that have alcoves with benches to sit in. And you can see people having some drinks and folks are having conversations. Some folks, they're deep in business conversation in the shadows off to the side. There is a lot of color and joviality to the space here,

but there's also just into the bit of the shadows, that sense of a lot of seedy business being conducted on the outskirts. So there are places to dip off to if you wanted. Why don't you all slink over there in front of the loo and I'll bring them over. We'll spread out. All right.

We won't look like such a concentrated group. Yeah, sure. It looks empty behind this door that says WC. Yeah. Winston Churchill? I'll stay stationed at the dice table. behind this door that says WC. Yeah. Winston Churchill? I'll stay stationed at the dice table. Just hang out over there.

I'm going to, is there an area that I could hide in? Like a potted plant? No, just like a corner, like behind a pillar or something that I could like. There are some central pillars. The place is well lit, especially in the places of gambling out in the open. So most of the spaces that are shaded

would be more in the outer edges of this main casino, unless you're looking for a larger figure to duck behind or under a table, if you want to somehow try for that. Hmm, what about in the areas that Bunny would be bringing him? Okay. If she can. You can see there are four main alcoves that have the bench seats and some small side tables.

People have cocktails off to the side, conversing. They are all currently occupied. You can see at the edges of each one, there are two stationed, similar suited bouncers, essentially, that keep an eye not too far off, looking for any sort of dangerous activity, any sort of violence or any sort of cheating in this area of the casino.

So they're all fairly busy at the moment. Is the security big lasses and fellas, or? Well, you see one squat-looking fungal who, as they sit there, they don't look particularly dangerous at first glance. They're thick, almost barrel-like with a cap that comes at an angle.

What you do notice is there are multiple eyes all across the cap, and you see them twitching and moving around and looking in the vicinity. So they have their specialty. You do see, whereas earlier there was a chimpanzee-coated sim, and you can see there is one massive, gorilla-looking figure, silverback,

with this massive, long hair that puffs out the collar. Jacket's a little bit too tight. And they're like the Bouncer or Roger Rabbit. They're just sitting there in the corner, just like... Oh, that tech lump is yoked. So there is a spectrum of power figures around here. And once again, looking through,

there are 30 or more of these bouncers scattered throughout this area. Some wandering on the outskirts, like outside of the building, coming back in. This is a very well-protected space. It's pretty huge if there's 30 bouncers moving. Oh yeah, there's probably close to 140 people in here. There are upper, higher areas,

almost like balconies where people are currently eating or dining or conversing business as well. You can climb a ladder if you want and try and get to those, but those also look very busy as well. Do we want to try and get him outside, perhaps? Yeah, you know, if anything goes wrong, there's a fight inside, then all those bouncers

are going to come piling on top of us. I wonder if we could lure him outside somehow to get away from the action here. Oh, I can lure him outside, no problem. But if you guys want to wait outside, wherever we want to wait. Makes sense to me. I wonder if he wanted a private conversation,

if he doesn't want to head all the way outside, you could just get him alone in the water closet. That could make sure that no one bothers you. That's a... Oh yeah. There's a lot of people watching everything that goes down here, and I think you bringing such a clearly despicable person into a water closet

is for some nefarious purpose one way or another, be it violence or otherwise. I mean, look at him. I want to rob him right now. He's just awful. Damn. So terrible. By the way, are you recognized in here?

Because your face is at the other place. So people in town know you, right? Are people clocking Bunny in the casino? Glancing around, most folks are very focused in either the tables that they're currently running or they're focused in conversation. If you take a minute to look, every now and then you do see a face go like...

There's a recognition, but they can't quite place it. Nobody is quite clocked or is coming up with fan energy yet. The ones out a little bit of money and enjoying their bottomless well drinks. Mm-hmm. I got to remember, you know, I've been on the road for some time, too. It's been a while.

People don't remember my beautiful face. We'll make a move. We will again. We'll cover you. All right. Water closet? Yeah. All right. Water closet? Yeah. All right. Get a room. Okay, I'm going to sashay over to him.

And I'm going to, as he's focused, I'm just going to do a little like... Oh, hi there. I didn't see. Is that Miss Bunny? Oh, hello, Big D. It's been so long. Miss Bunny, how you doing, Miss Bunny? What brings you back to Lovevale? Well, I've been here.

You know, I've been thinking about you so much. People are on the table that are in the process of finishing their hand of cards, all like, going to laugh a little bit. Really? Yeah, of course. Why? Here, why don't, you know,

it's rude to keep a lady waiting. Why don't you meet me in the water closet? I'm going to cast Enrapture on him. Okay, go ahead and make a spell cast. There we go. Is that what you want? Yeah. Full Lini, Jynx.

Can I spend a hope to use an experience? Yeah. Yeah. Which is weaponizing the male gaze. I mean, that is specifically this type of circumstance. So yes, you may. This is the moment. I don't see how this applies. Yeah.

Get it. Okay, I'm glad I used that. Lemon, 12, 13, 18 with hope. 18 with hope, okay. You take a hope, and he, so you walk over towards the water closet. I just, my magic, remember Uma Thurman is Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin,

and she had that compact? Yes, yeah, and she was like, it's like that. You see a little pink dust trail behind me. He's like, Half-Hole. Puts the cards down and skits up and full-on Pepe Le Pew,

just is being dragged across. Is the bouncer seeing it? Are the bouncers seeing any of this? I mean, this isn't... Rare, this isn't bad, this isn't... Well, it also isn't covert. There's bouncers nearby, watch as they go by. You head over to the water closet.

Yeah, I'm a few steps ahead of him, just keep peering over my shoulder. It's like, you know, it's a little game of cat and mouse. He follows along. Should we come over more? Are his feet two inches off the ground? Pretty much. He tiptoes as he goes. He's trying to, he looks confused and enraptured.

Right now, he's overtaken with the magic that you've wrestled into his mind and his attentiveness. What are you doing? Slip into the water closet. Okay, you open the door. It's Joggy Part! You open the door. Wait, what?

Ah! You see this grunty-looking panther, like Qatari, who's in there, covers his lap and goes like, I'm a Soccupy! You slam the door and turn around, and he's right there in front of you. What do you need? There's two of them.

Letterboxd, take it. Sorry, I missed over here. I'm going to go to the other one. Okay, open up. I'm a Soccupy! Ah! Shit. Should've thought about this!

Nobody checked. Maybe you can just wait. Yeah. Guess I'm just going to have to be patient. I know about patience. What? What? Hi.

Hi, it's just. I said just a second, come on! You know, I've been a little curious. You know, I've been on the road here lately, and I hear you may have been on the road, too. I want to hear all about your adventures. What does a rapture do specifically for Halloween? Keeps his focus, his attention on me, narrowing his field of view.

You got it. Yeah. What? Hey. I don't know what you're talking about. I've been here the whole time. Oh, that can't be true. I'm sorry to, you know. You just look like such a traveled, worldly gentleman. I've been here the whole time.

I haven't been anywhere. You see his eyes getting a little nervous. He's still focused on you, but he's, um. Oh, you're so silly. And he's a little chin scratch. We're out of paper, can you get me some paper? Open the door. Make a presents roll for me.

I'm going to go get some napkins. Yeah, thank you. It's also going to be awesome going in there right afterwards. Yes. So romantic. A presence roll? Okay, plus three.

Okay, so 14 with fear. 14 with fear, okay. Get done! The door opens up and you see this male goblin comes out pulling his pants up and looks over at you and goes like, Here you go! Sorry. Stuffs it in the back and then walks off. Oh, gross.

The chamber. They're cloth napkins. I just take my hoof and I kick the door open and grab him and yank him into the bathroom. Okay. Pulling the door closes. I look over at Kexen to see, make sure he's, sorry, got my back.

I do a very sly walk over once the door's closed and I'll cast Runic Lock on the door. Fuck yes. Okay. From the Book of Vargas Grimoire. All right, do you ever make a spell cast roll for that? I don't. Yeah? But anybody that I want can open the door. Anyone that I don't has to be broken with magic

if they spend an hour of time to study it. Got it. Cool. Why don't we just keep going? They're alone with them? Yeah, we should go in. Someone should go in there. Are we going there? We should go in there or we should play some more dice. Which one?

Oh, should we go play more dice? Should we help or should we gamble? It looked like she had it well in hand. I say we go back to the dice save. You can all go in, but just make your choices. Can, is there, okay, I have a question. Yes.

Are they perfectly sealed or is there a little crack under the door? I mean, you said you closed it behind and you locked it magically, so I'd say the door itself is closed pretty solid. There is a small gap under the door. Can we get down on the ground and look underneath? You can, yeah. You can go in.

Oh, that's true. Anyone I choose can go in. Oh, okay. It just locks behind you. I'm going to stand by the door, put an ear to it, not that I have an ear, but I can hear. But I'm going to, here if there's trouble, try and take it in. Bunny.

Do you want any company? I imagine all that Sweet Pea hears on the other side is me taking Dyson, slamming him up against the door. I'm going to take out my whip and wrap it around him so that he is pinned. Awesome. Okay. SAM and LAURA, both, It's not going well for him. Oh, what's the matter? so that he is penned. Awesome. Okay. It's going well for him. Oh, what's the matter?

I thought you were into that kinky shit. Yeah, keep going. Kinky, kinky shit. You know, it just, ooh. He seems kind of into it. Now, I think we should play a little game of truth a day. Okay. Were you up in

the Emerald Sky? His expression drops immediately. I have to go. No, you don't. I have to go. It's just, I'm sorry. I like you, but I have to go. I'm not letting go of him.

Hypnotic Shimmer. Hypnotic Shimmer. Hypnotic Shimmer. Yes. Okay. Is that a spud cast roll for you? Yes, it is. All righty. Let's go. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. 15 with hope.

15 with hope, all right. So you go ahead and take a hope. His eyes glaze over and they just go, why? And he's stunned, so he can't move. Indeed. Any sort of resistance has fallen. He's just staring at you now, open wide. Truth or dare?

You're not going to like the dare, so you might as well tell me the truth. Are you trying to intimidate him, then? Probably. Go ahead and make a presence roll for me, please. You can do it. Come on, come on, come on. Come on. Work that ish.

Okay. Ooh, dash roll good. Okay, so 19, 20, 21, 22 with Fear, but barely. Gotcha. Okay, cool. So he goes, the shimmer begins to wear off a little bit as you get in his face about it, and the stun fades, but he's not fighting your grasp

now that you've pushed your presence upon him. Just tell me what you were doing in Emerald Sky. It's not that hard, my guy. I was hired to deposit a package. That's all it was. Hired to deposit a package. Look, I got a lot of debt, and I got a lot of debt I built up over time,

and I just had to pay it off. And I was just paid to carry the satchel and bury it in the Emerald Sky. It was enough money to clear the debt, and then someone, I don't even know what it was. Barry, hang on, I'm just seeing. The rest of you notice that two of the bouncers are looking towards the door

and in the direction of where you're all holding it, and the two of them are like of the bouncers are looking towards the door and in the direction of where you're holding it, and the two of them are like. Which bouncers? One of them is the large, gorilla-looking figure. And you can see them glancing off and making eyes over to one of the ones across the way who makes eyes, and you can see they glance over to this really well-dressed,

even partially armored-looking, muscular Ribbit that looks over, gives a hand sign. I'm going to knock on the door. Bunny? I'm working here. The people are coming over here. Distract them. Who hired you?

Don't kill me if I say. No, sweetie. I promise if you behave, you won't even remember this. You'll have plausible deniabilities. Come on. It was Croatona. Croatona, they lent me so much money over time. I didn't know how to get out of it.

Wait, the mafia family? Yeah. Oh my goodness. They said I'd do this. They wiped the debt clean and paid me a little more on top of that. I don't know, I was just trying to get by. Please don't tell anyone. Who specifically from the Croatone family?

Come on, I'll give you a little kiss if you're a good boy. I'm so conflicted! Come on. You would never lie to a lady. Do you give him a little kiss? Yeah. On the nose or where?

Yeah, that's cute. That's just a meaning enough. Just a little. He goes like, Mordemma. What, what? Mordemma. Yeah, that's cute. That's just a meaning enough. Just a little. He was like, Mortimer. What, what? Mortimer. Mor-ima?

Mortimer. Mortimer. Honey, it's time to let the fisherman off the hook. Mortimer, almost. Did he tell you anything else? I said, so I know. That's all he told me. That's all I wanted to know.

He said, plausible deniability. You're so pretty. I knee him in the trunk. And this is for all the other ladies at the Lily Locket. Maybe don't hang around. You make them nervous. Understood. All right.

I'm going to cast Recant on him. I'm going to spend a hope. You're unloading on this guy. Yes. I am. The target. Okay, make, okay. Recant, use an action to spend hope and make a target roll.

And make a target roll a reaction roll of 15. You got it, okay. So what is, so you roll. I roll for him, yeah. Oh, make a target roll a reaction roll. Correct, no. Failed on a 10. Okay. He forgets the last minute of this conversation. So he's like,

I think I fell. Oh. Oh, that's how I'm scared. It took me a week to think I fell. Oh. I'm at a tower. I'm scared it'll take me a week to find out again. Oh. You've been just down in your drink. You shouldn't drink so much. Do you even remember our lovely time together?

What? I shove him out of the bathroom. I mess up my hair a little bit. At this point, you can see three of the bouncers have been approaching the rest of you, along with the massive gorilla, smitten figure. Start pee dancing.

Finally! I know. Do you guys know, are there any other bathrooms in the casino? Because these ones are taken. I think somebody's taking a poop. That one, that one, that one. Oh, I didn't. There's so many more. I didn't know

there was another one. We didn't know there was another one. Thank you so much. Excuse me, I'm just going to, pardon me. You push past and you see someone looks by. The door flies open and you watch as Dyson is shoved out. At which point, the gorilla claps his shoulder

and pulls him in, looks at you. Oh my, you weren't supposed to catch me in this moment of shame. Puts his arm around Dyson and begins walking him away from the bathroom. Excuse me, this restroom is out of cloths. You can find them now. Well, no, you should really have

your establishment stocked up. I think that's why it's taking everybody so long. At which point you see this small fairy woman flitter up with a handful of cloths and wrapped papers and is like, So sorry. I'm not naked.

Slips him up inside and close the door behind. You can hear her stalking up the interior. Thought that was going to distract him. Now those three bouncers are walking off with Dyson. I thought that was going to distract him. Now those three bouncers are walking off with Dyson. You can see some are still making eye contact throughout the room. We good? We good? Yeah, got him.

We should get out of here then, yeah? I don't want to share any information here. You got to do as well. Somebody stand between Zarlo and the tables and let's get out of here. Yeah, let's go. Z here. Yeah, let's go. Zarlo. What? Let's go.

I haven't lost all my money yet. Stop gambling. Have you made any more or have you lost it all? No, I don't have anything. You missed a part of your clothes. I'm feeling good. Your puppies are gone. I still have the dogs.

Shoes are gone. I don't have any pants. Didn't you say you were going to quit while you were behind, so. I said no one can quit on me behind. Let's go. So you all exit the casino? Yes. All right, so you scatter out. Whereabouts are you heading to next?

All right, once we get out of Earshot, I pull everybody aside. Oh my goodness, you guys, that was so exhilarating. Sounded rough. Yeah. All right, so yeah, I think I got all the information I could out of him. Apparently, he's working for the Croatones. Croatones? Cronotoa?

Cromatona? Chromatones? Croatona. Cromatona. All wrong. What'stoa? Cromatona? Cromatones? Croatona. Cromatona. All wrong. What's that mean? What's that? Who are the Croatona? So the Croatonas, they're like this mafia family here in Luvville.

They actually run the casino. They what? They run, look, they own the casino. Oh, so they know that's why they were so interested in him. I think so. They know that he gave his secrets away. Yeah, but it's okay. I wiped his memory, so even if they interrogate him,

he's not going to know. He's not going to say shit. Being a lore-born, I have advantage on any roles that would make me deal with the history, culture, or politics of a prominent person or place. Do I know about the Croatoanas? You know a little bit about them. Croatoa.

You probably haven't traveled too much. You know the various factional politics of the city. There's the Camarilla, which is the ruling female alliance of business owners, the Eshter Mining Company, the Matron of the Lounge that you met earlier, the mayor of the city. They all control the entirety of Lullvale politically.

What you do know is the Croatoana family is said to be a business family, came up in some of the subtler guilds and ended up moving into the city about three, four years ago. It's been slowly expanding its influence. But most folks think that they're probably with their fingers in a lot of unsavory businesses

out beyond the city, and definitely trying to build up their base of operations within Lullafell. He said someone named Mortimer paid him because he was swimming in debt. So they paid him off. Said they'd have raised his debt if he went to Emerald Sky and planted a package. Oh, that was the little baggie that was buried?

Yeah. And that's all he knew. He said he didn't know anything else. So I'm afraid we're going to be getting involved with the mafia. Are we being tailed? Go ahead and make an instinct roll for me, if you don't mind.

Oh, lord of the night. 14 with fear. 14 with fear. You glance over your shoulder, and the first thing you see is a group of about four to five figures that are heading your head in your direction from the casino, looking like they're well-dressed

in a similar familiar coat. The immediate sight of the shock suit, you take a stress. But you see five immediately, one of them being the wide, burly type. We've got a problem. They've pegged us. What do we do? What do we do?

Why don't you just tell them the truth? Which is what? Very limited truth. That he's been creeping around the Lily Locket and they just had to threaten him, tell him to never come by again. How many of them are there? You see five, and then you see the other four

that were hiding behind the larger gorilla figure. It looks to be a total of nine of them are all moving, and you can see them starting to spread around. Some of them are starting to vanish out of sight around the other side of the building that you're up against. They're side alley.

Side street, or are we in the main thoroughfare? I said you got out of earshot. The main road is off the way. You guys are in a small little side neighborhood. With some alleys and stuff nearby. Are we moving? We're moving. Don't think they're interested in talking.

Side street might do us some favors in case it gets nasty. With nine of them? I mean, we can certainly try. Ha! Try what? Fighting them? No, talking, talking to them first. Okay.

That's maybe... Hide. How far off are they, Matt? They're about two blocks off. They're not sprinting towards you. They're walking with intent, and you can see them starting to fan out, and a few are starting to disappear around one of the far side of the building where you are.

We might be able to lose them. I don't remember our way around. Is there a work in the neighborhood? Is there a place we can turn shop and turn shop again? Does it look like they're trying to flank us, Matt? Looks like some of them might be trying to, yeah. Should we? You know your way around the city. Let's move.

All right, I'll try and see if I can duck down some side streets, so we can see if we can lose them. Okay. So for this, I'm going to go ahead and ask for a leader to be chosen to do a group action roll to try and avoid being seen. Okay. I'm good at stealth. Okay, I got it. How good at stealth?

Wait! Let me see. Yeah, I can try to make us be better at stealthy stuff. But it can be anybody, really, that's doing it. It's a mess, right? How about you do it? Well, I can do it. If you roll with fear, I'll help you.

Here, I'll tell you where to go and you try and find all the shady spots. Okay. I'll try to be sneaky. Can I use my hiding advantage? You're just a sneaky little mushroom. If you'd like to, yeah. Yeah. So you can make yourself the leader.

If anyone wants to nominate you as the leader of this action. Nominated, seconded. Nominated! All right, so all other participants in this, which is all of you, I believe, in this, all of you get to make a reaction roll, a finesse reaction roll. So just go ahead and roll the dice. It doesn't matter.

You don't get a hope if you roll a hope on this. This is just to go ahead and see what number you get for your finesse. Ooh, ah, damn. That was, damn. All right. Wait, wait, I was thinking of something else. What did we roll? Five. Finesse, damn. All right. Wait, wait. I was thinking of something else. What are we at? Five.

Oh, is it? Finesse. All right. 15. 15. 20. 20, okay. Does hope, fear matter on this one? No. 19. 19, okay. 24. 24, all right.

So that's two minus one penalties and three plus one bonuses. So you go ahead and make the final finesse roll here. Okay, and I can do it with my hide move? Yes, you roll your finesse roll, and then if you have advantage because of your ability there. Why did I think I did, but I don't know if I did.

Hold on. If you roll with fear, you can always mark a stress to change it to a hope. Okay, so I'll just do that. Okay. So I roll with a plus, what'd you say? Plus one. Plus one. Plus my finesse. Correct. Okay. Oh, that's really good! Okay, that's a 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. No, I did that wrong.

18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Okay. Still good. 22 with hope. With hope, okay, so go ahead and take a hope. Utilizing your knowledge of the city and your being a sneaky little guy, begin to find the parts of the city where most of the street lighter than glowing crystals

are sparse and utilizing that, as well as some of the trees that have been grown here on the various city ledges, you begin to dart into side alleys and behind buildings and through some uncomfortable bushes to get to the other side of a small park that's been built on the part of it. You begin to see the figures spread out. Some of them are keeping pace, and then some of them begin to splinter off. You then see three following, and then all of a sudden there's just one following. Then eventually there's none following. You feel fairly confident that you've lost them.

Yes, that was incredible. Let's hope that they didn't recognize you, at the very least, or else they'll know where we're heading eventually. Well, you know, it just means it's going to be a full house later on. Ha ha. Where the fuck are we?

Where the fuck are we? If we loop around, we can get back to the Lily Locket. Okay. You went a little off path to even get away from this. In the neighborhood right now, you're not entirely certain you've been here before. It's a little like the rundown outskirts of the bottom plate of the Three Elements of Lullavale.

But it takes you a good 15 minutes or so to eventually get to the main street. And with that, you can guide yourself for the direct roll to the Lilylocket Lounge. All right. What time is it? It's about an hour and a half, two hours till showtime. Till my showtime, or as the show?

To yours, it'd be about three hours. It starts at 10. Oh, okay. So you have a little bit before you even need to be called backstage. Sheesh, what are we going to do? Gee whiz, I don't know. Should we learn about Mortimer? No.

Yeah. Should we learn about Mortimer? Yeah. Croatoa, Mortimer. He's part of the mafia, right? You know something about Croatoa? Maybe somebody's heard of him. Well, yeah, the Mortimer. Uh-huh. But I know of Mortimer.

You've heard of the Croatoa family. Yeah. Go ahead and make a knowledge check for me Mm-hmm. But I know of Mortimer. You've heard of the Croatoa family. Yeah. Go ahead and make a knowledge check for me if you don't remember. Well, I had Croa. You wrote it down as Croatona, right? It's Dyson. Is it?

Croatona, yeah. Tona. Croatona. Okay. Tona. Yeah, you're right. T-O-N-A. What am I doing? I'm rolling what? A knowledge check to see if you can recall information about that. 14 with fear.

Oh, I could have used my experience points. Gosh darn it. You do have that. 14 with fear. Do better. Taking a fear token there. You feel the night air grow slightly more ominous as you sit here on the outskirts of the lounge itself,

trying to recall anything about this. You know the family, you know its business spreads in some spaces, but you're not entirely well-versed in the inner workings of the city's underground merchant town. There probably are people of the Lounge, people you would trust that might know more, but definitely you get the sense you

just barely escaped rushing with some possible violence. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we can try and keep investigating until the show time, but we might get into just a little bit of fisticuffs. It's all right. I've got the cuffs. Ha.

Ready. But we've got time, and if the Cro-A-Tona are at the casino, maybe they have an office or somewhere where they're meeting? Something we could listen in on or try and sneak into? Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Well, hold on a second. I want to have a little conversation with the divine,

so give me a moment. I'm going to sit on the floor, curl my tail around my bum. Sneaky little mushroom. Hold me to dogs in my lap, and I'm going to use one of my prayer dice to up my hope, which is a little low, to three, so that I can spend three hope and use divination.

Once per long rest, I can spend three hope to reach out to the forces beyond and ask one question about an event, a person, a place, or situation in the near future. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to say, I'm going to reach out to Undra beyond the veil to say, I'm going to reach out to Undra beyond the veil and say, who is this Mortimer Fekir?

As you close your eyes and release this question, you feel the warm winds of the core of the emerald sky blow through you. You feel and sense yourself sitting at the base of these 100-foot tall trees that represent the core of her essence there in the middle of this wood. You feel that breath that she exhales through the land

flow through your clothes. In this space, you're given a vision, a vision of a tense-looking, corpulent toad-like figure, a ribbit larger than any you've encountered in your time, hunched over what looks to be a somewhat splintered wooden chair in some subterranean space

in the process of barking orders to two figures wearing similar coats as to the ones that followed you. As they get up and leave, you see it reach over and grab this thick cigar and take a giant hit from it and blow smoke outward before putting it out into the back of another servant. You can see his face down on their knees and they go like,

shouts out a couple more orders and chucks it across the room, grabs another cigar and lights it on a nearby brazier. So he's Ribbit Kingpin? Seems to be. All right. So I have a visual on the feller. And he was in a cave system underground, a basement? It looked more like a basement than a cave system. He's a The other ones you see have these dark gray, almost, they look formal, almost like suit jackets.

Like pea coats or something? Kind of, like heavy pea coats that have the sleeves rolled up to the middle of the forearm and they have bolo ties within the center. It's like this general uniform where you can see who to go to if you have a problem at the casino, or the folks that are keeping watch in the area.

I come out of it, let the group know, I just got a vision from the Lady Beyond that this Mortimer's a great big ribbit bastard. If I had to guess, he's maybe under the casino, because he seemed to be in a basement under. Well, you know, all of the Crystal City Ascent, it's all built into this cliff face. So, you know, there's actually a lot of layers to the city. Was the casino when we saw it, is it against any of that cliff face or is it on its own?

When you approached it, you could see there was part of the cliff face, almost like this pillar. It's built near it, but not against it. Well, he could be anywhere, but if we're going back into the casino, I'd keep an eye out for, I don't know. Keep your eye on the security, see if anybody goes down anywhere.

I imagine they're going to be looking for us, regardless. Unless there's sewers in the city. Are there sewers in the city? One would hope. Yeah, I imagine, right? You said imagine, it's like a picture. There are sewers built throughout the subterranean rock, and there's a drain,

like a central drain that leads past the ravine, and at the very, very base of this gorge, there is a ravine where it just goes into and people forget about it. Sure, that won't be a problem a few hundred years down the road. Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, I'm following you guys.

Do we want to go back into the casino? Do we want to try and case the joint? Gosh. We just left. Yeah, it feels like we need to go back into the casino? Do we want to try and case the joint? Gosh. We just left. Yeah, it feels like we need to try and get under. Or over. We'll look for an outside back entrance or something. When we were inside the casino

with the open-air tarp and everything, were there second or third floor office? What? The blinks. Sweet pea blinks. Sweet pea blinks. She is so sweet. Were there any offices or higher tiered areas that looked like they might be VIP or ownership or anything?

You saw a few upper, almost balcony sitting areas that were ladder or stair climbed up at the top. They were kept within the exterior wall. It was still an open air space. So nothing that matches a subterranean descriptive. Okay, cool. We should try and get underneath the city. All right.

Yeah. We can go to that sewer drain or whatever nearby. Yeah. I mean, there are openings to it. There's just the central drain that comes out from the bottom. It is a massive drain. People don't go over there for a reason. Yeah.

But yeah, you know where there are a number of entrances here. There are some large drains when it rains heavy to where parts of the city, the streets, are all guided to make sure that it doesn't flood heavily and it rains down there. There's one that could fit pretty much all of you. Yeah, let's do that one. Let's do it.

Okay. I mean, they're going to smell us coming. I'm going to have to take a shower before the show. Oh yeah, that's for sure. Unless it's a different kind of show. I can clean us up with some simple stuff. Okay. Wet wipes. Yes.

All right. Water wipes. Water wipes. Mm- Yes. All right. Water wipes. Water wipes. All right, so waiting for the right time and no one's really paying attention, or guarding for each other one by one, you begin to dive into this street side, open grate water spill off

into the subterranean sewage system. Splish, splish, splish, you all land into it. Your first worry is that this is sewage. It looks like it's part of a river runoff. It doesn't have a pleasant smell in there, but it looks like this part of the drainage isn't directly piping in the worst that the city has to offer in these tunnels.

It's warm! Kind of. Mostly. Can you still not swim? This feels very derivative. Just stop it! What am I supposed to do with this? Is there any ooze down here? God, I hope not.

Secret of the Ooze. I don't want to know the secret of the ooze. I've had enough of that already. Gogs! Sir John Tate's hello. Is it super dark in here? It's near pitch black. I'll use a Prestidigitation to just create

a little light coming off of my pincers. My little... It illuminates the space around here. Not a lot, but like a low torchlight that at least gives you some atmosphere. You can see the walls themselves are half cylindrical in shape around the edges, and most of the water gathers to the bottom.

There is that wet central river that's rushing by, you can hear as it continues by. You get the sense that, you saw a little bit of the weather as you were approaching. There was a recent rain. It's been about a day without water, but there's still enough of the gorge and above mountains runoff

that's filling these spaces and keeping the water flowing through. Are we ankle deep in that water, or are we lucky enough to have walkways on the side of it? There are walkways on the side, but when you all came through, many of you landed in that water and had to adjust yourself a bit. Oh, a river runs put.

How deep is it? That's nice. In the core? Yeah. It's probably about a foot. Not terribly deep. I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. So it's up to your chest. Maybe the sneaky folks move back towards where the casino was and see if we can find something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so what's the plan? You're trying to maneuver the subterranean sewers in the direction of the casino? It's a Cracker Jack plan, let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah. All righty. Where do we go? I don't know.

I didn't spend a lot of time in the sewers. Are we good with directions? Who's good with directions? Hmm. That would be Instinct, I imagine. Can you tell me? I would recall. Navigation would be instinct, I imagine. Can you tell me? I would recall. Navigation would be instinct.

So it would be a lower DC for anyone who's familiar with the town, but a higher instinct would also help. So it's up to you guys who wants to try and guide this path. And we all know, generally, the vicinity. General direction, but even the entryway to here is a number of blocks away. And I don't think sneaky is necessarily

what we need right now. Yeah, we don't need to be super stinky. Yeah, you're pretty good. You've got good instincts. I do, I have a really great direction sense. Should I give it a go? Yeah. Yeah, Oppy, come on. Go ahead and roll Instinct from me, Oppy.

It's just our lives in here, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like when we had to leave town, you know? We had to spend some time in the sewers that one time. Yeah, but we knew exactly where to go. Exactly. No problem. Yeah, go towards the Sting. Yep, good to go.

We got 15 with hope, and... 18 total. So 18 with hope? Yes, 18 total with hope. Go ahead and take a hope. Ooh!

Following the flow of water and where it conjoins further in the path, remembering where you walked from and trying to gauge the directions of the various roads on the above street, you begin to lead the directions of the various roads on the above street, you begin to lead the rest of the crew along, having to keep away from the water. There are meeting flows of water,

and some of them, especially the converging cross-section of the heavier stream in the direction that you're thinking is the right way to go, does not smell as good as the one that you just arrived from. I'm ducking in the water and putting my eyes up. Ew! Not me! The rest of us are just walking on the side,

so you don't actually have to be in the water at all. I'm still staying in. Yeah, respect. Keep your mouth closed. They're committing to the bit. You can't argue with the bit. Oh, what's all this shit in here? What's all this little shit in here?

In my face. It's true, though. Wouldn't there be more shit towards the casino? Probably, because there's so many people in there. That's why I know where to go, because all the shit's coming from there. Feeling confident that you're heading in the right direction. I know where we're going.

You do notice, what you first worry is maybe a barricade, but what you do see to be an iron grate that blocks off the tunnel, funnels in for a second, and there is an iron grate about eight foot by eight foot that blocks the path, the rest of the water and sewage flowing through it. Bingo! The bars are about three inches

across from each other on each side, so it's a bit tight for any of you to fit through, unfortunately. How do we get through? What part of this is bingo? I'm saying this is where we're supposed to go. Hmm. So we just have to get on the other side of that? Hmm.

Let's see. Can anybody? Sure is. I will take a look with my lit up Pick it on the other side of that. Mm. Sure is. I will take a look with my lit up pincers. Does there seem to be a mechanism on the other side of this grate, or it looks like it just continues on past here, but this is a barrier?

If you want, you can go ahead and make a knowledge roll to take a look at the full design of its construction to get a vibe on it. 17 with hope. 17 with hope, take hope. Glancing at it, it is pretty solidly in place. This is designed to just be more or less a half-slose barrier for heavy rains

to ensure that I can keep it at bay to a certain point and to catch any sort of either people or anything that falls. And instead of being carried out into the eventual exit, it'll stop them at this point. Unfortunately, you're on the wrong side of the flow. I can get some of us over there. I can get myself over there.

You can? I can too. Okay, well, I can take the rest of us. You can take the rest? You can take three other people with You can? I can, too. Okay, well, I can take the rest of us. You can take the rest? You can take three other people with you. If I spend three hope. Sweet. Let's do it. Flex it out. All right. What's this for?

Well, I don't know. I've never done it. I'm going to try it, though. I think this shoe on the bottom of my staff is really... Okay. Take inspiration where you can get it. Yeah. Is this a loud thing you're about to do, or a quiet thing? No, no, no, no, no. It's going to be quiet. All right.

It's going to be quiet. Incidentally, can I hear anything down here with us over the sound of the trickle of poo water? Sure, make an Instinct roll to see if you can take in any surrounding senses. That is a 16. This is, what is this, instinct? Instinct, yeah.

18 with fear. 18 with fear. Listening over it, you can hear distant scratching sounds up ahead. Past the screed? Way past the screed. You can hear the occasional, like a slight screech

or scratching noise, a heavy movement, and you almost hear a chittering noise. That's not the sign of shit water. And just the... Speak for yourself. Wow. Wow. Oh no!

Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! What are you rock tumbling out of here? As you're listening to this, it gets louder and there's multiple of them. These squeaking screeches and the rushing of water gets louder. Is it coming toward on that side or this side?

It's up ahead. Right as you point up there, you can see there's a backflow, like a small wave of fresh water rushing past, but it looks to be a few dozen rats carried at the front of it that have just been swept up by it. Like, as it rushes towards you.

Oh no, I can't get out of the water! I'm going to use my grapple to grab onto the grate and then try and steady myself and grab anybody else we can to the rope. Okay, go ahead and make a strength check for me. What are the rest of you doing? I'm going to climb up to the top of the grate and just hang because I'm a monkey.

Which you can do. So you get what you hope to be just above the water level. Strength check. I'm going to climb up to the top of the grate, too, and just hold on. So this is not a shot to use the grappler, it's just holding on to the grappler. Are you holding on with your hand?

Are you holding on? Well, the grappler's, I can pull things back to, so I assume it's attached at some level, or I don't know. If you want it to be that way, yeah, but you're at the grate, so holding onto it would be the same as throwing your grappler four inches and holding onto it, So it's right there. All right, just going to go for it.

Okay, so you'll. He's holding me, yeah. Okay, do you want to help with the hope? Or let him roll? Oh yeah. You're so strong, Sir Dante. I give you a hope. I can see the cover of the romance.

Thank you for the hope. Well, you spend a hope and then roll a d6 to add to his roll. Mm-hmm. roll a d6 to add to his roll. Mm-hmm. Roll a d6. Oh, I do it or he does it? Traditionally, you roll a d6. I do it. Traditionally? Traditionally. You're helping. It doesn't matter whoever rolls,

but it's more fun if you're the one who's shooting. One. One. All right, 18 with fear. It's more for the aesthetic. 18 with fear, okay. The blast hits and you hold onto it. The impact of the water, the rats, you feel them coming through.

Some of them hit the grate and probably don't make it at impact. Another one's brushed past you as you clutch on, holding Bunny at your side. What were the rest of you doing? We kicked my wings out and flew up to the top. There was enough height where you can get above it. The rest of you climbing to the very, very top of the grate.

The water does hit you halfway at the bottom. Do still make strength rolls for me to see if you can hold onto it for the rush that hits. No, you guys managed to get high enough above it. Can I lock my no hands for my Climby Climb stuff? This is gripping as hard as you can. I would say you probably want your tail

and your hands on this to shine. All right, all right. Okay. So sorry, which role is it? Strength, please. Strength. Okay. That is a 12 for me with hope. 12 of hopes, you take a hope.

20 with fear. 20 with fear. I'll take a fear on that one. I have a gameplay question for you, Matthew. So as we fail at roughing people up in toilets and climbing through sewers, and we get fear, you can murder us with that fear later. I can choose when that happens to either gain a fear

or deal a stress or change circumstances in the story to complicate. Like, you being noticed by the bouncers was a consequence of a fear roll from a player. So some things will succeed. Some things will succeed with fear and it'll just add a complication to it. Some of the things, I just keep

in the back of my head for later. So a fear that I punt you at the beginning of the game as I fuck up in the casino could lead to something strangling me later in the night. Possibly. All right. Just like in real life. Mm-hmm. All right. Strangle me later in real life. Keep above. All right. Just like in real life. Mm-hmm. All right.

You keep above. You're holding on tight, just pressing on as it goes. You, Oppy, as it hits your nightmare as a wave of water far larger than you pulls you free of the grate and you find yourself plunging into the water and being rushed away.

Can I use... That makes no sense. I'm going to try something crazy. Yeah? Can I, seeing the Opie move in this huge column of water, can I cast Time Lock on this column of water, which is targeting a nonliving object within far range,

the object stops in time and space exactly for the number. The water wouldn't be an object, unfortunately. It's an element, but if you have an object that you want to try and throw and lock, you could try and do that. Oh, that's interesting. A piece of poo. in time and space exactly for the number of spots? The water wouldn't be an object, unfortunately. It's an element, but if you have an object that you want to try and throw and lock, you can try and do that. Oh, that's interesting. A piece of poo! Oppy's staff?

Well, what do you have? Well, Oppy's staff is also an object. Huh? Yeah, I'll do it on Oppy's staff. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so go ahead and roll for spell cast. This is cool. This is cool. So go ahead and roll for spell cast.

Oh, me! Yes, yeah, that's what it says. Oh, I believe that's what it says, right? Or does it just happen? If a creature tries to move it, make a spell cast roll against them and maintain the spell, no, it just happens. Okay, so it just happens. But it's equal to the minutes number of my level, so.

Got it, so you just concentrate on Api's staff. Api's staff holds and you clutch onto it. I'm going to roll for the force of the water to see if it moves the staff here. I can breathe underwater, I just can't swim. So it's against your spell cast roll, right? That's not a good question. 13, 16.

16. Oh no. Roll the four. Oh no, I mean, he's okay, but. So, Api, as you're floating away, your staff all of a sudden locks in place and you just wrap your arms around the water, rushing by. As you clutch, you feel almost like it's not shifting, like it's all of a sudden a single point in space

that cannot be shifted. The water eventually, this burst of water calms down, and you get the sense that a separate sluice somewhere in the sewer was set to drain probably another basin or some other water source, and that's why there's a sudden burst that came through, but eventually it comes to calm and rests now into a gentle trickle, as you are now hanging from the air

from your locked-in play staff. What do I do? What do I do? Thank you. Thank you so much. You guys have so much poo on you. We should get to the other side of this crate before another one comes.

Let's get to the other side and let's go. All right. Rock it, Api. I'm going to spend an additional hope each to bring them with me. So I'm going to spend three hope, because you guys are going on your own. Mm-hmm. Okay. Spending three hope, and I'm going to cast three hope, because you guys are going on your own. Okay. Spending three hope,

and I'm going to cast Blink Out. Okay. So make spell cast roll on a success, spend a hope, which I have an extra. You have, yeah, you have. Oh, I got to add another one, because I had another thing for this. Okay, so.

Shit. Okay, so that's all right. 15 with fear. 15 with fear, okay. So the spell does complete, I believe. Right, based on the spell cast difficulty of it? Yes. So you grab the rest of this troop here

and clutching your now freshly freed staff, you describe to me how the staff alights and how the magic grabs you and your allies to project them through. Yes, so when I get it to work, for some reason, I have to puff up at the top of it. And so I and it starts to flame up at the bottom.

And now the shoe that's on the bottom of it is starting to sparkle as well, because it's glittery and it starts to, a little bit of the smoke is billowing out. It's from the toe. From the toe, out of the toe. I don't even know what this is and how it works. How do you puff it up?

Do you have to take it by the other end and blow into it? Or do you just go, po-po-po in the air? I just grab it and get on my tippies. Right. And po-po-po-po-po-po. Just like that. Well, that clears that up. And it starts to go. I don't know, I don't know.

I don't know why this is what it is. Yeah. And there we go. Because I don't know it's a cigarillo. So as you ignite and the spell completes, it glows and you watch as this swirl of arcane energy dissipates out from the staff from the new shoe you've attached to it

and wraps around your friends and you all are scattered to glitter. You watch as they rocket through the individual holes of this grate, like they're just bits of dust in the wind, before reforming across the way, of which you right into a very, very deep part of this cross-section part of the sewer. Oh no, I can't swim! Deep underneath.

You begin to panic inside. I'll say, We're all under poo water right now? No, just you. The rest of you catch up on the side, but you plunge into it. Go ahead and shuffle your, shuffle the cards in your loadout for me,

if you don't mind. Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Qua. You're going to take one. I'm going to take one. Oh! What is this thing? Oh my gosh, it's a really good one.

Are you going to get it back ever? Don't pray. Okay. What'd you get? So Unleash Chaos. Okay, okay. So Unleash Chaos goes into your vault. Goes into my vault, okay. You can recall it for a stress cost. Sure, okay. But momentarily, the panic of this causes you to

forget one of your incantations. You're like, what was that spell? So. I forgot stuff, I forgot stuff! Eventually. That card is not in Daggerheart anymore. Good job. God, it's out of hand. Same thing, it's out of it.

Close. It's closed, baby. You do manage to pull yourself out of the water and catch yourself. Sorry, I haven't done that before. That was hard. You were magnificent. Thank you so much.

Ugh, no notes. We'll jump across as well. You were magnificent. Thank you so much. Ugh, no notes. We'll jump across as well. Arcane Door. Don't you have one to do as well? Yeah. You do already? No. Oh. I'm looking for some shadows.

Oh, okay. Are there shadows? You okay? Shadows down here. Yeah, I'm going to step into one. Especially if he jumps across. You are nothing but shadow around you. Oh, it's really creepy. 16, I need you to send me a spellcaster roll of 13 for Arcane Door, and I just.

Oh yeah. You appear next to your friends across the way. What color does your flashy arrival present? A purple and blues with a finish of pink. Love it. Cool. All right. Now I'm going to step back into shadow. I'm going to spend a stress,

and then I'm just going to appear behind Sir Dante. Rahoo! Capital. Yeah, well done. You're just humming as you come out of the shadows like a creepy fuck? It's a sneaky little mushroom. So sneaky.

Such a sneaky little mushroom. Such a sneaky mushroom. Okay. Kextian, if you would, well, we'll wait till we're, is there a way to un- Absolutely. When we get to the end. Yeah. Yes, thank you.

Should I do another check to see where we're going? Yeah. You still have a strong idea of where you're going. I didn't know where, actually. I got this. That won't worry. But following your direction sense previously, keeping this in mind along with the help

of discussing this with Bunny, you follow the winding maze of sewers. At this point now, the water level far more reduced since whatever gate existed before had been alleviated to the pressure from behind. You come upon where you pretty sure is near the base of the casino. But where that tunnel would go, it is bricked up.

Oh. Oh no. Shoot! I think this is it, though. How do we get through the bricks? Yeah, it smells of djinn and sadness. Oh wow. It's djinn. You'll move someday. Again,

I'll just look at the wall, and again, I'll use Reveal to see if anything that is hidden on this wall. Okay. Go ahead and roll for that. 16. Yeah, 16. 16 with? With a hope. With hope go for it. With? With hope.

With hope, okay, so you take a hope. As you're all looking at this wall, you concentrate and let the strands of magic fall from your fingertips and begin to touch across and dance across the tops of these bricks. As they do, you see a section of brick that begins to give a faint silver gossamer sheen to it. A pretty wide set of bricks,

about maybe six, seven foot on each side, and about seven to eight feet tall. So Dante, those bricks there seem a little different than the rest. Do they? You're our sewer expert. Sorry, that took me a minute. Just because I have the sword and the hat and the...

Fine. Do you have any pizza? I'm so hungry. Distinctly different. It's unique. Very, very unique. We be unique. Very, very unique. Bitchin'.

And I'm going to... I'm just going to use my sword to tap one of the unusual bricks to see what happens. Okay. It hits brick. Nothing unusual at all. It responds. Your sword bows a little bit.

The impact hit is hard brick. Are there any funny stones that look out of place? I'm going to start tapping. Make an instinct check. Actually, this would be instinct or knowledge, your choice. I'm just tapping, listening. I'll make an instinct.

I'm looking for any funny stones. Oh no. That's a 10 with fear. 10 with fear. I'll make it instinct. I'm looking for any funny stones. Oh no. That's a 10 with fear. 10 with fear. You're knocking on them. You go over and knock on it for a second, listen, and you hear.

And you're like, oh, something's knocking back before the bricks swing wide open, pushing you all back, knocking you back onto your ass. As it swings open, you see what looks to be a false door in the brick wall that is shoved open. You see backlit, this dark shape. It looks like a partially armored dwarf is standing there with a massive club in one hand.

That's like, who goes there? You see the flickering of light behind him. It looks to be the familiar interior of a basement. Oh! We found it! As a voice goes, whoever it is, deal with them. So you can partner with power and water? We're going to go to break.

Oh! Oh! Trust the DWP! DP! Oh shit! We found it. Oh my god. Lord, come on. Oh shit.

All righty, so we'll come back to this here in just a moment. We'll see you folks here in a few minutes. Let's take a break. It's a live break, baby. And we'll pick up. It's a live break. Live break? This isn't live, is it? It's a live break! It's a live break!

It's live, we're back. We gotta go! We gotta go! All right, see you guys in a minute. We interrupt this Critical Role Podcast Network broadcast to bring you news of dangerous treasures that lie sealed within the Critical Role shops. Only the heartiest of adventurers should dare seek them out. In all seriousness, though, I'm Matthew Mercer, and we've made some very cool things that we really like

and hope you will, too. If you'd like to support the show, please consider visiting any of our Critical Role online shops through the Shop tab at critrole.com and see if anything catches your eye. Okay, back to the show. Hello, everyone, and welcome back. So, here, at the moment that this hidden brick door slams open in the subterranean sewers under the base plate of Lull Vale. You find yourself suddenly caught off guard.

And I'm going to go ahead and pull it out, because here's where we are. Hey! I'm talking now, how did that happen? Oh god, oh god, oh god. Oh god, oh god. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun.

Dun, dun, dun. Oh my god, it's right on the bottom. Oh! Oh! That's couchy. Here's the doorway that you discovered here. Seeing as how you were both knocking on the door. Wait, is that Mortimer?

Got to be. The big one's Mortimer? Got to be. That's Francis. That is a lot of people in there. Both of you got knocked back as the door pushes you open. Those man-eaters are tough.

Where are the rest of you, by the way? I was just in the middle, back at the, yeah, because I had used the. Right. I was standing in a corner, I think. We're so cute. Yeah, you came out of a shadow. Yeah. Sweet Pea and I are maybe over there.

Over here? Yeah. Yeah. You are so cute. I'd probably be over here next to Sadante. Me. Oh, you? Look at that. So evocative. We just set you in the water? Yeah, maybe just out, yeah. You're over here, you said?

Yeah. I'd be behind. Okay. She's like the flying nun with the strongest wing. Well, with the action tracker down, my fear at my disposal, I'm going to begin this by tracker down, my fear at my disposal. Sally Field. I'm going to begin this by spending. Oh! Here comes the real flood.

I'm going to spend one fear to throw two tokens in the action tracker. I'm going to open here since the failure on that one. Immediately, I'm going to activate these two bodyguards. Oh boy. That go rushing out at the command of this large, swollen, ribbit figure, and they go darting out into this alley here

and beyond to the two of the fallen comrades. And they're both going to be, these two mob bodyguards, going to be attacking each of you once. They both have heavy war hammers up close that you see beyond the shadow. The one that's going to be striking you, Sir Dante. Ooh, that's going to be an 18 to hit. Does that beat your evasion?

That does beat my evasion. All right, so you take 20 points of physical damage. I'm going to use Arcane Deflection once per long rest, spend a hope to completely negate any incoming damage from a single attack on you or an ally very close to you. As the Warhammer comes down, he strikes this

sudden shield of arcane energy, deflects it off to the side of the Warhammer, scrapes off and slams into the side of the brick, causing parts of it to splinter and flake off to the side. Looks back confused, up at you. And holds still. The one that's striking towards you, Zarlo, that's going to be 13 to hit.

Oh, it hits me! It hits you? Yes. All right, that war hammer is going to. Gotcha, that'll be 14 points of physical damage. Oh, for fuck's sake! That hits. All righty. That's major damage to me.

Can you lower it with your armor? I could. Yeah, so if the Totoro. Totoro? Totoro. Total roll. Totoro. Totoro. No, I mean, that's way above my major damage. Your gap between your minor and your major.

It's huge. Yeah, it's big. Two hit points, two damage. All right, so I've taken my activation. Who wants to jump in? Real quick, I'm going to jump in and just say, all right, guys, let's make this a good dress rehearsal. And I'm going to rally. Okay, okay.

So yeah, you know what they say about bad dress rehearsals? We're not going to have them! And I rally. Is that what he's saying? That's what he's saying. That's what they say about Zekri playoffs. Yeah.

Fucking Oval, man. They got them quotes. Everybody, including myself, gets one D6 Rally die. Woo! That you can spend it to add to the result of an action roll, a reaction roll, a damage roll, or clearing stress equal to the Rally die result. So basically, however you want to use it,

you have a D6 on standby. So all of you set aside a D6 that you have at the ready if you need it. Right. All right, so with the rallying shout of the classic Lolveil rehearsal rallying phrase echoing through these sewer halls. Now break their legs!

I'm going to hop up, pull the sword, and do a nice sweep against both of them, trying to cut them both off at the heel. All right, so are you doing a whirlwind? I'm not. My rapier has marked a stress to target an additional target in range.

Oh, that's true. All right, so go ahead and mark that stress. Go ahead and roll for an attack against each of them. All right. Marking that stress. And first attack is this plus presence, if I recall. That's five, six, seven, eight, nine. That's 12 to hit with hope.

12 to hit with hope? Just miss. All right. So you take a hope, but you try and go ahead and swing wide and they pull up their shield and deflect it off to the end. Is that both of them or just one? Both of them. Because it's a single roll against both of them. of hope, but you try and go ahead and swing wide and they pull up their shield and deflect it off to the end. Is that both of them or just one?

Both of them. Because it's a single roll against both of them. So no go on that one. If you want to follow it up real fast, you can, if you'd like. Yes, I think I'm going to. Second token for him taking his fall. That's nice.

Let me see, what am I going to do? Actually, I'm going to swing around. I'm going to attempt to, actually, no, I'm going to hold, someone else can go. All right. As soon as one of the dwarves raises up their shield to stop Sir Dante's attack, I'm going to throw out my Axe like a frisbee

using my spirit weapon ability. When you have a melee weapon equipped, it can fly from your hand to strike an enemy in close range and return to me. I can mark a stress, which I will, to target an additional target in range with the same attack. Correct. So you can go ahead and mark a stress and attack them both.

Hit both of them. That axe, my silvered axe. Nice. Through the air. Marks through. Sting, sting. Go ahead and roll for the attack. Oh, that's a critical.

Oh, nice! Yeah, baby, double fours. Double fours. Great, so you get a hope and clear stress, the stress you just spent. And go ahead and roll max damage plus the damage die roll of your weapon. Max damage, oh boy. It's been a while since I hit something.

It's been a while. Max damage, so it's two of those. So that's a 2d10. Okay, okay. That's 20, add plus 2d10. Seven, that's nine, and I add, for a critical, I add what now? You add max damage on the weapon dice.

Oh! So 2d10, that'd be 20 plus whatever you rolled. So 29 total. 29 total. To both of them? That is severe damage to each of them. Oh! Nice. Fick me! So, boom, bing, and it hits them both.

One falls to one knee and looks like he's about to vomit on the ground, caught him in the stomach. The other one tries to deflect it with the war hammer and instead it goes across his face. He's like, ah, and cut through the nose. Ah, god! Oh, what?

Hey, I'm the healer. All righty, so that's your go. Anybody else want to jump in here? All right. Were you guys going to jump in? Do it! Okay, hold on. Okay, I'm going to cast Cinder Grasp.

And I also am going to spend a stress so that it hits the additional target as well. Is that within melee? That is... Yes, so can I move? I'm going to scooch up. You can try and scooch up here if you want to. To hit them both, you might have to adjust in here.

Wiggle around? Okay. It can be done, they're all clumped in there. So I'll let you do that. Okay. So go ahead and make the attack roll for Cinder Grasp. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, great. That is... Oh, that's a 12.

That's a 12. So, and I know that doesn't hit. No, that's okay. Oh, that's your secret! Reassurance! If you want to, oh! You can add that to it? Reassurance, once per short rest before an ally attempts an attack, roll a constant score. You can do it, Oppy!

Re-roll your dice! Oh, I get to roll my dice! So you get to re-roll? Oh,. Shit! Okay, wait, okay, wait. That's a 10, but can I roll my? You can, yeah. Okay.

And do you add anything? Okay, that's great. So this is with hope, so I take a hope. Do you add anything to it? You add your spell cast modifier. Yes, which is, I'm so sorry. Instinct or? Where's my? It's on your subclass card.

My subclass card, which is right here. Instinct. Instinct, instinct. So at three. Oh, great, okay. So, um, 18. Thank you. Look at these friends. Team effort here. The two family members.

Okay, so, um. Great, that is a success. Oh, how do we not have a team? Oh, they're right here. Okay. So that will be... Oh! I rolled a 20 and I rolled a one. So they each take one point of damage,

dealing 1d20 magic damage and temporarily catching them on fire. So anytime they try to act, they take an additional 2d6 magic damage if they're still on fire at the end of their action. Currently in flames, but they both take how much magic damage, you said still on fire at the end of their action. Currently in flames. But they both take how much damage you said? One. One?

All righty. Not two frags. They're just on flames in front of the door? Now mind you, their minor is one. They both still take one hit point of damage. They're both looking pretty wrecked. Magic damage. They're on flames going,

. Are you sure? Oh my goodness. Okay, putting this away. All right, that was with hope, you said, right? That was with hope. All right. So who else was given here? I said I hid as soon as the door opened. Did that count?

As soon as the door opened, I'll say if you want to go ahead and roll a high that was outside of that, it's your prep. We can do that, and then we can go ahead and take your action. Okay. I don't have to roll, I just have to mark a stress. Oh wait, no, I do. Yeah, and then any rolls against me are at disadvantage.

Yeah, there you go. Okay. Yeah, you go ahead and off to the side. Okay, in that case, if I'm hidden, targets can't see me, even if they move into line of sight. Yep, so you hide in the shadows as the door creaks open. All this happens in front of you, and you're just kind of.

But I had also said, I don't know if it matters, I had said I was standing in the corner. Oh yeah, well, if you, okay, I misunderstood. So yeah, you're right over there on the side, watching them both in flames going, and I'm going to hit him. The one that's closest to you? Yeah. Go for it.

All right, go ahead and roll for the attack on that. Okay, so I roll, add a d6 to my damage roll. I have an advantage on an attack. Okay, so that means I roll and I add a d6. Add a d6, yep. Come on! Whoa, critical! Two 11s! Dang, all right!

Two 11s, so that means I get a hope and I lose a stress? You get a hope and you clear a stress. Yeah! Yep. And that's a success. Sweet! For a damaging attack, you go ahead and do max damage and then add the dice on top of it. Okay, so that's 23.

Is max damage? 23 is the max damage. Is max damage, and then I add what on top of it? Add a dice roll. Oh, and then I would also add my d6. For a sneak attack, yeah. Oh wait, I have to spend a hope before the attack roll, so I didn't do that, so that's fine.

You can get it automatically and you can spend more to do it. A six! A six? All righty. So 29 points of damage. 29 points of damage. What the fuck? All right. So this guy here is on flames, goes, turns to you.

Ah! Well, he stopped screaming, so that's good. We killed him. First kill. Nice! He's now on the ground. Just smoldering. He had some welcome pamphlets that fell out.

Yeah. Are any of these bad guys? Take care of him could have meant anything, really, the more you think about it. Is this just like an underground gambling club where you just went ham for no reason? You're not going to be able to come back to the city. It could have been a spa.

This could have been a spa. Take care of them. This could have been a spa. Okay, so wait, there's still a dude right in front of us? Mm-hmm. Yep. Oh my gosh. I'll move up and I'll just do a rapier attack. Okay, so you're going to shift through your friend. Yeah, I can do, as a faun, I can do a leap.

So I parkour off of the wall and then like. Go for it, go for it. Do a little deer leap. Landing strike, come for it. Then I'm going to come down with my bladed fan. Yeah, yeah. What is this? Presents. Plus three.

Ooh, that is so bad. It's pretty bad. That's real bad. So that would be seven with fear. Seven with fear. It's not even worth adding my rally die. All righty. You go to strike him right as he begins

to dart backwards into the room, like trying to put the flames out. You go and swing wide with your rapier and strike it into the stone where he was standing and your blade gets stuck there for a second. Before he moves, I'm going to use an Attack of Opportunity, if that's all right. Well, first, because she failed, it's not going to be the GM move.

Okay. So the Attack of Opportunity. If an adversary attempts to leave your melee range. Okay, yeah, cool. So we'll get into that here when it comes in on this point. So I'm going to go ahead and spend. You don't want to do that.

You don't want to do that. I'm going to spend these four spend. You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. I'm going to spend these four action tokens to activate these over here. We're going to dart over this way. I don't like that. Where's Eagle? One's going to go, All right, come on, let's get over to a safer place,

and pulls off into this area. You don't quite know where they are. Take me to a safer place. This one's going, Brother, I'm coming! And this other smaller ribbit darts over, like frog leaps off to this side. We're a family!

This one's going to try and run out to join them. Takes 2d6 damage. Is it doing any action? Well, as far as activation, his action is to put out the flame. So he doesn't do any attacks, but he's going to move as part of that. Putting him aside there,

you do get your opportunity to attack. So it's an agility reaction. Pounding out the flames, like the warhammer on the side of his belt as he goes to turn to run. Oh, thank god, the flames are out. 14 with fear? 14 with fear does hit.

All right. Just barely, but that... So I'm just going to do primary weapon damage right now. I'm not going to do anything fancy. Why not? Because this will, hopefully I'm not going to do anything fancy. Why not? Because this will, hopefully I'm just going to try and end it. Hit it.

I like turtles. 10, 10 points of damage. He goes down on the ground. He just put the flames out and is like, oh, thank god! It's like two steps and then just hits the ground. And you can just barely see across the way the other smaller female ribbit

clutching this weird scepter at the side, hiding off the edge. As you finish your strike, as they dart off the side, she's going to go ahead and activate. She's going to do... Yeah, she's going to do, yeah, she's going to spend Stay Back. I'm going to spend a fear.

She goes, Stay back, you all! You watch as she pulls her scepter out and points it, this weird globule of, it looks like a thick water, appears in this space here before splashing and this weird glue-like substance just scatters in that area. She has to make a roll on all five of you right there.

No! That'll be... Oh, that's not good. That's a 10. Am I a 10? But I'm clear in the back? You're clear, yeah. Yeah. So it's a 10. Who in this group, who's, does it hit?

My evasion is a 10. It's a 10, so's, does it hit? My evasion is a 10. It's a 10, so that does get you. Oh, my evasion is 13. It does. Misses you. Misses you. 11. Misses you. Ooh.

Zarlo, what's your? It's 10. 10, so both of you become restrained. Here goes this. In the glue? Zarlo, yeah, the glue holds you to the ground. You're both unable to move at the moment as you're bolted to the ground. You are currently restrained

until you spend two hope to break free. Icky! Two hope? Two hope. That's going to finish my activation on that. Who wants to go? I will use Arcane Door to bamf through everybody and get into the room. I'll give you some.

Do you need some? Gosh, I gain a hope because I rolled a nine again because of Strange Patterns. That's fucking awesome. Yeah, Wizard's Men. That's an 11 plus, it's 14, which beats the spellcaster roll of 13. Yeah.

And I spend a hope to disappear where I was, so I gained one and I spent one. Is that with hope or fear? That is with hope. Okay, so you gain hope from that as well. I gain it back! I gain one, I spend one, I gain it back! It's a fluid resource, man. Where you want to land. Yeah, right on the diet, like on that

platform. Right there? Can I see anyone else in the room? Indeed. You see the massive one right there. You see the massive one right there. You see one bodyguard off that end, and you see another bodyguard that's rushing in from this room that has just joined his side.

Does it look like they are trying to escape or that they are just taking cover and are intent, looking at me aggressively? At a quick glance, they're looking at you pretty aggressively. Okay, okay, cool, fun, awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's more people in here!

I saw him bamf out, and I'm going to do the same. I'm going to peek. Action token for that. I'm going to peek around, and I'm going to step into a shadow, and I'm going to bamf all the way across into the corner on the opposite side. Yeah. Over here? All righty.

You appear. You do not think they've seen you as they're all focused currently on your friend Kexin over there. You want to follow that up with something? Oh, and Marcus tries to do that. No, I'm... going to see me if I do anything, right? I would follow it up with something. Okay, okay. Gonna see me if I do anything, right?

I would follow it up with something. Okay, okay. Is there anybody, can I look around? Is there anybody behind Big Ol' Rivet? Currently, at a glance in here, you don't see anybody. Do you want to take a moment to really inspect the room while you're hiding? I'm going to look for anybody that could see me if I go behind him.

Okay, so go ahead and make an instinct roll for me. Just for us. We've got to try and talk to Mortimer, right? Yeah. Okay. Just before we mow them all down. He would know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 13 with hope. 13 with hope, okay.

So you gain a hope. Looking through, there is some good light in that area. The only one that was behind that you can tell, or hear, or perceive, was the other bodyguard that rushed in from the other room. There was nobody currently behind in that walkway. Okay. Then I'm going to step back into the shadow

and I'm going to pop out and shadow under that pillar behind him. Over here? Yeah. Cool. Okay, so we're going to dart over here. Yeah, I feel like I've done a lot at this point. And that's two quick stress and a roll, so you've set yourself up at that point. All right, we can come back to you if you want to.

Who wants to jump in? I'm just going to turn over to, what the fuck is your name? To Zarlo. Excuse me, what the fuck is your name? I know what the fuck. And I'm going to go, shoe-doop, shoe would put the fuck, and I'm going to go, shoo-doop, shoo-glue, boo! Then I'm going to do Inspirational Words

and you gain a hope. I gain a hope? Yeah. Then I will take the two, and that goes on your action tracker, apparently. I don't fully understand what that means, but you do. When you use it, it goes on my action tracker, which I can expend. I've got that one over here for you.

Oh, okay. Amber to yourself. Then I'll spend two hope to get out of this glue. All righty. Can I follow that up by using two hope, one that you just gave me, to pull my furry bottom up out of the glue? Yes, you may. Then I'm going to grab a bunny by the forearms

and say, turnabouts, fair play. I close my eyes and a surge of divine energy charges up your arms as I use my four-eye roll on a prayer die to give you four hope. Whoa! Whoa. Slick. All right, four hope on you, Bunny. All right, Skitterin. Skitterin?

I'm going to take run in and take cover right behind the wall, just in case. Yeah, just back against the wall, waiting for something to happen. Okay. I am going to blink out, show, sorry, come back in right behind Kexin on his left.

Over here? Yes. All right, so go ahead and roll the blink out. Okay. Ooh, yes! Okay, so that's a 16 with hope. 16 with hope. You take a hope and appear right next to him. These things are so fun.

Yeah, they really are. They're so colorful. They're very cool. They're so bright. And... very cool. They're so bright. And... Is that all I can do, or can I do another one? No, you can do a second. I can keep going? Okay. And then I am going to use my staff

to shoot out some magical smoke to the bodyguard that is to the left of Mortimer. Left of Mortimer there? Yes. Okay, go for it. Okay. What are you doing with this one? This is? I'm using my staff. Oh, you're using your staff to attack him?

Yes. Go ahead and roll for the attack. Okay, okay. Action tracker for that. No. Wait, what am I adding? It should say on the other staff there. The attribute you add to it. Should I use Instinct, it says? It is, but is it just, am I, I'm just, okay.

And then adding that. Oh, dang it. That's pretty low. It is with hope, but can you add anything? 10. 10, unfortunately, does not succeed. Dang it. All right. You go ahead and let loose with your staff, and it cranes off and hits one of the sides

of the entry chamber, sparking off and disseminating. You gain hope from it. That does bring it back to me, though, for the failure, though. I'm going to go ahead and, first, I'm going to have Mortimer. Wait. He's going to spend ahead and I'm going to spend a fear

and activate him to use Watch Him Fall. He lumbers forward and is going to go ahead and you see, what you didn't notice off the side of his body is this cane that he holds, that he unsheathes this long cane blade and there's a double strike that arcs out and attacks everything within very close range.

Oh crap. Which from standing right there would be all four of you right there. Jeez. So for that, it's going to be... Okay, that's going to be a 13 to hit. So can I use I See It Coming here, since he is, when you are targeted by an attack

coming from beyond melee range, mark a stress to roll a d4 and increase your invasion against the attack by its value. It is beyond melee range for you, yeah. All right. Because he gets to do this to everything and very close, which you all are. That's what I need a d4 for.

I knew there was something. Where are my d4s? There we are. So yeah, 19 is my evasion. Yeah, you totally dodged that one out of the way. Hits. It hits you? Yeah. All right, for anybody that it hits,

that's going to be 18 points of physical damage. Ooh! Just slices through you all with a quick snicker snack. Snicker snack. Snicker snack. Bring it to my Jabberwocky. Oh no. Humminger.

You said 18 points of damage? 18 points of physical damage, yeah. Okay. So now I can either take that as hit points hurt, or I can mark off armor slots, correct? You can take off armor slots to reduce it by your armor score. Yeah, I'm going to take off one armor slot and reduce it from severe down into major.

So what was that roll then, Matthew? 18. 18. I have a question. Mm-hmm? Is Mortimer considered about our size, or is he bigger? He's a little bigger. Or than our size. He's a little bigger. Take two hit points.

Woof-a-hoa-la-la-la-la. I'm going to skitter around to where I can just see Mortimer. And I'm going to project, throw my voice a little bit to where it's like a soft whisper, like right in his ear. I'm going to be like,

Okay, thank you for joining me on Bunny's ASMR. Let me just brush your hair back. Does that sound nice? I've seen her on YouTube channel. It's cool. Yeah. It's all about the ASMR. I'm going to cast Slumber on Mortimer. Try and put him to sleep. Okay.

Please read out what Slumber card entails. Make a spell cast roll against a very close target. Is he close? Very close, you have to move about there. Okay. And then you get very close, yeah. That is, I'm just going to whisper. On a success, they fall into a deep sleep until they take damage,

or the GM spins a fear to awaken them. Okay. So go ahead and roll to see if you target him. And I can add, I can spin this after I roll my rally die, if I need to. Nessun says otherwise. And with rally die, I can spin it to roll, adding to the result to an action roll.

Okay, so let me see how this is. Ooh, it was almost a crit. So, okay, hang on. That's going to put me, my brain at 14. I am going to add my rally die. Yep. That is a six. So that is going to put me at 20 total.

That succeeds. Yo, that rally die's clutch. Yeah. So with that Mortimer, who is holding the cane blade in his hand, you can see now that you're close behind him, there is a chain necklace that hangs around his neck that Mortimer, who is holding the cane blade in his hand, you can see now that you're close up behind him, there is a chain necklace that hangs around his neck

with this vibrant, deep, deep violet gem with this vibrant, deep, deep violet gem that just hangs there. As he falls asleep in front of you, it dangles there in front. Oh, thank you so much. We got a six-month subscriber. That was with fear? Thank you for your sub.

Yes, that was with fear. Okay, great. So at that point. And that was asleep until someone does damage, correct? Or he has to spend fear to awaken him. Okay. So yes, he's asleep until someone hits him. Unless someone can do something else while he's asleep until someone hits him. Unless someone can do something else

while he's asleep. Can I get the necklace? Can I use? Well, I get to go first. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm going to spend two of these to go ahead and activate two of these figures. Oh yeah. The other ribbit, the sister figure to Mortimer

that you saw Dart pass, Dart's out of the way and is going to go ahead and use Scepter to go ahead and strike over in your direction for, oh, it's going to be 13 to hit? I can only follow 13s back and back. Oh yeah, that definitely hits. Okay, so you take 11 points of magic damage from her.

Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Flings it off to the side and this sparkling orb of energy bank shots around Mortimer and hits you in the shoulder. With that, one of these other bodyguards is going to move in and enclose this gap. How many bodyguards are there? There's just two you see out.

Two, the other ribbit, and then Mortimer himself. I'm going to burn two more armor slots so that it doesn't cause any damage. Great, yeah, negate that damage. All right, that's my player's turn. I'm going to climb up Mortimer. You're going to climb up Mortimer? Yeah. All right.

He's sleeping. Good job. Right on top, yeah. Try to lift that necklace off without disturbing him from his slumber. All right. Go ahead and make a... Make this a finesse roll.

Finesse roll. Yes, come on, come on, come on. Can I assist by using an experience? You can't. Well, you can assist him by... Giving him some hope? By spinning a hope and rolling a d6 to add to his. If you want to do it yourself, you can use an experience to apply to that. Okay, that's pretty good.

With the rally die, that's an 18 with fear. 18 with fear. Are you helping? Yes, I'm helping. Okay, so spend a hope, and you get to roll a d6 to add to that. Another d6? Yes. All right. That's another three, so it's 21.

21. Nice! You needed a 20. Oh! Yes, yes! I'll tell you, fucking bollocks, yeah. You slip it off his throat, and hold the chain, and as you hold it, you can feel in your grasp, there's a force behind it, and it's drawing, it's beautiful.

It's drawing your attention towards it, and it's drawing. It's beautiful. It's drawing your attention towards it. And your focus begins to directly focus deeply on that. Turn it over. You guys see up on top, balancing lower hands, grabbing onto the sides of a slumbering warmer that's teetering in the middle of the space. Plus tail. Yeah, you see Zarlo pulls off this necklace

and now starts cradling it like the One Ring. Faded me. Snacks it up. However, because that was with fear, it comes back to me. I'm going to spend two of these to activate both of the bodyguards on the side. One of them is going to elbow Mortimer

really hard on the side and go, Boss, get up! And knock him conscious. Boss, go ahead. And you just see him look up and this fury chrome across the face of Mortimer as also his other hand feels the absence of the amulet. But both of the, that's one of them,

the other bodyguard is going to rush up here and is going to go ahead and take a swipe at you again, because you're sitting right there in the front. Jesus! That's going to be a five to hit. Fire! Dodge out of the way. That's going to finish the GM move.

Who wants to go next? I want to bam forward, spread another stress to get right behind Mortimer. Okay. I imagine he casts a shadow. Well, from the light sources here also, he's lit well from this area. There's a lot of light in these areas.

No, I'm good. I just need stress. Then I'll just run up. Okay, you can do that. I'll run up to him and I'll take that stress away and I will cast Shadowbind on him. Shadowbind. Oh yeah, he definitely casts a shadow. Oh, and within any enemies at very close range. So.

So you can Shadowbind the two bodyguards as well. Great, I will do that. Awesome. We are the definition of close up. I am making a spell cast roll. I was going to say, do you want to tag team this really quickly? How? Well, you're doing the Shadowbind. Yeah, I'm going to say, do you want to tag team this really quickly? What, how? Well, you're doing the shadowbind.

Yeah, I'm going to help you. I'm just going to flash and do a very, very big movement with the sword and bring it up and around and just try and stab right where it is to back him up right into you. Oh, right. Because I see you setting up. Oh my gosh!

No. Everybody take six hope. I take three stress. Do what you were doing. I don't have enough hope for that, never mind. I love, don't do, oh, you don't have enough hope? Good thought, we'll handle it later. Do what you're doing. Okay, I'm going to add my rally dice

to make it work better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to rally. There you go! Ooh, ooh! 16, 17, 18, 19. Wait, am I adding? Wait, wait, wait.

16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. With hope. 21 with hope. So you get hope, and that is a success. So all three of them then become bound to the ground. They are restrained currently, correct? Because their shadows are stuck to the... Basically like Peter Pan stapled them. Yeah. Yes.

Very cool. I'll just continue to use this for that. Putting you back up where you belong here, alongside the wall. And then you're still on the side. Do I have any movement left? Yeah, so you only move maybe halfway through close range. You can move another half.

Then I'll back up so they can't get me. Okay, so three squares to there is about as far as you can get. Okay. You can go further if you want to, but it's an agility roll if you want to try and No, I'm good where I am. Because I've been getting wrecked so bad, can I please use Mysterious Mist

as an action to spend a hope and cast a temporary thick fog that encircles the stationary up to very close range. Anyone that is within the fog is hidden to anyone outside the fog. And then can I move backwards as fast as I can? Yes, you may. So I'll spend that hope. Share Isaac Vildewaard.

I'll just take it. You take it. You take it by it and then you can have it. How far back do you go? I'm going to go back all the way to the wall, actually. All the way to the wall. So you slam into his small, large throne. My way, he's going to go like, and it's like.

All right, I'm going to use that mist to turn around that, just circle around that minion so I can get a shot at him and his boss. You can do that. With my rapier. Zarlo is benched mentally, right? No, he's back up. Zarlo, you can still take, if you want to try and take actions, you can try.

Oh, cool. Cool. I'm going to give you a- You're at disadvantage on any of your rolls, essentially. I'm going to give you a- Because you're distracted by its presence. Another action tracker. You're going to get an additional one

because I'm going to do slow and sturdy to get advantage on this attack for the two of them. He's weak, right? So I'm taking advantage, which means you get a... I get an action tracker on top of that? Great, that's two. I'll take two. I'm going to hit another stress because that's hilarious.

So I have just pulled four stress. That's fine. All right, here we go. Come on, don't be a jerk. 14? 14 on both of them. 14 does hit the bodyguard, does not hit Mortimer. That means, weirdly, if I fail with fear, I get a hope,

so I'm going to take that one hope. Weirdly. Cool. But it's still with fear, right? It's still with fear, so? It's still with fear. So I'm going to roll that damage. I'll take a fear on that. Oh god, he's getting a lot of. And it's just a, okay, so I missed on the big guy.

Okay, so that's nice. 18 points of damage. 18 points of damage. Ooh, that's going to be a major. So that's two hit points of damage. 18 points of damage. Ooh, that's going to be a major. So that's two hit points on him. Takes the hit. Still standing. Still like-

Am I in the mist out of curiosity? No, the mist is in the back of the room right now. Oh, damn it. Okay. That's fine. It's all good? Yeah, I'm good. Let's go next. I'm going to go for it.

I'm going to back up a little bit. Okay. I take a little bit of glitter and I throw it around. I split the difference. All right. I'm going to do Rune Circle. So I have a temporary magic circle on the ground around me. Any creatures in melee range

or who enter melee range of the circle take 2d12 magic damage and then are pushed out. Okay, let's mark this as your magic circle. Go ahead. Oh, well, while I'm staring at this. Do you have to roll for that, or do you just bend? I'll mark for frustration. You got it. Necklace, I can feel the big fella moving underneath me,

so I figure I better do this, and I go with my axe right down into his head. Go for it. Roll for an attack with disadvantage. Yeah. So that, oh jeez. Disadvantage means? You minus a d6. Minus a d6. That's not very nice, though.

It's a roll of six on the disadvantage die. Oh, that's nothing. That's absolutely nothing. That is a three with fear. Oh no! Three with fear. Oh no! Three with fear. Oh no! So you go and swing the axe down. As you go to strike it into it,

suddenly your axe stops about inches from the face. As you focus in on the other hand, from the one that's holding the amulet, you can see that Mortimer's massive frog-like fist is wrapped around your hand, at which point he lifts you up from the top of his head and is going to attempt to throw you off while also grabbing for the amulet that's in your hand.

Oh god. So I'm going to activate him. I'm going to go ahead and this is going to be a roll against your evasion. I will. Can I focus more on holding onto this necklace in my hand? Because it's so pretty. You can.

So the specifics of this is you're vulnerable while holding it, which means all attacks against you have advantage, all rolls that you make are disadvantage. So he's going to roll against you and add a d6 to it. That is a 14 plus three plus... That's going to be an 18. I need you to make a strength check for me and see if you can beat an 18.

Ooh! To beat an 18. All right. And then this is just a reaction, so you don't get to add any hope or anything. The hope and fear don't matter. That is an 18 with hope. That is an 18. I mean, hope doesn't matter,

but you manage to hold onto it as he throws you off his head. Wow, right on. Amazing. Because you get slammed into the back wall and barely catch on your feet. Do I get a hope in that? That's a reaction, so no hope. No, reactions, you don't get hope.

Got it, understood. He goes to try and give chase and it's like, Yes! And is unable to move from his spot. All right. I'm going to Cindergrasp Mortimer. Go for it. Okay.

Yeah, his shadow is stapled to the ground right now. He's unable to move. Mm-hmm. Okay. That is a 16 with fear. That hits Mortimer. Okay, so. Fucking bitch.

I rolled a one again. No! Sorry. It's all good. I'm not at 20 anymore. But that's usually the one that does so good. Really? So good! So good!

So Mortimer takes, that hits his minor, so he takes one hit point. He takes one hit point. But he is still in flames, correct? He's still in flames. He remains in flames. And any time the creature tries to act while on fire, it must take, must take an additional 2d6 magic damage

if it's still on fire at the end of each action, at the end of its action, so sorry. fire, it must take an additional 2d6 magic damage if it's still on fire at the end of each action. At the end of its action, so sorry. Right, and he uses an activation to get rid of it. Is that what it says? It doesn't say that. It doesn't say it. You see the Crabble heads?

It doesn't say it. It doesn't say it unless I'm missing it, and it's right in front of my damn face. Oh, temporarily. So yeah, I can spend an activation to drop it. I understand what you're saying. That makes sense more of what you're saying. No, you remain on fire the whole time.

Forever. Okay. Okay. However, that was with fear, you said, right? Ashley, that was with fear? I'm so sorry, yes. All right, I'm going to go ahead and activate all three. Oh no.

Down at the front. Damn. Hey, hold. So all three there, I'm going to go ahead and have... Arnarr. Arnarr. Hmm. Arnarr.

I'm going to spend the fear to get rid of Mortimer's Restrain. He's still in flames. He's going to go ahead and do a powerful leap. He leaps in the air. I don't suppose I get a attack of opportunity on that. If he leaves your melee range, which he's in, then yeah, you can do that.

All right. But he still completes his leap. Yes. And takes 2d6 magic damage. Go ahead and roll that. Well, I can keep them from moving as an option. Can you? I can. How?

No, like, read the ability. If an adversary attempts to leave your melee range, make an agility reaction roll against their difficulty. On the successful roll, choose one effect on the Okay, got you. I'm not going to stop him, because I cannot actually think of a way that that makes any sense, and also that terrifies me. You can if you want to try. You want to make an agility roll. I'm just going to stop him because I cannot actually think of a way that that makes any sense and also that terrifies me.

You can if you want to try. You want to make an agility roll. I'm just going to try and take a slice. Go for it. The slice is Achilles tendons. Seven. Seven damage? Yeah. All right, that's another hit point. Well, I'm going to give it a roll. Let's see what I get.

Come on, turtle, give us a slice. 21 with fear. Although it's a reaction, so. Ah, yes. Wait, 21 with fear doesn't matter. Yeah. Okay, 24 is my reaction roll. Okay, that definitely succeeds. And then that's, I don't know

what the fuck we're talking about. 11, 15 points of damage. 15 points of damage. All right, that's going to be two more hit points off of him. Ah, man. I should have taken Deadly Toke. It's fucked my life. I'll do that. Do we have the pink one? That's all right. What?

So he goes and lands Ability Leap, and he's going to try and wrestle that from you again. All right. So he's going to roll. That's going to be 16. Go ahead and make another strength. Strength? Reaction roll for me.

Okay, hold on. I want to read about my prayer die real quick here. You can spend one more of this. Okay. Okay, so strength roll. Here we go. That is 13. And I'm going to add my last prayer die to get me up to 15.

15, all right. Can I help him? Can I aid him with a hope? In this instance, he doesn't need to. Oh, great! I guess this was a 15. Yeah, 15, yeah, so you just. Oh, I just barely did it?

Correct. And then I want to scramble under his legs because he's so big and I'm so small. And I'm going to run by Bunny in her magic circle. All righty, back here? Help, help, help, help, help! Let go. Oh, that's not really an option here.

You'll get your brain back, I'll give it back to you. I am not letting go of it. Well, what the fuck'd you come over here for? You're not letting go of it? I will. You're not letting go of it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. I look at him. Liam is lambing.

Liam is like, By the nature of the enchantment, he's following the line in the narrative. So you can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, you know that? And I'm going to give him another inspirational words for him to heal a hit point, because you look like shit.

I feel like shit, too. All right, so I'm going to add the action tracker for that. All righty. Who hasn't gone in here in a minute? I know you haven't gone in a minute, Sweet Pea. You created the fog and that's about it. You, Oppy, haven't done. I did, I did. No, no, Sweet Pea. You created the fog and that's about it. You, Oppy, haven't done.

I did, I did. No, no, no, sorry. You just said Cinder Grasp, so. Real quick before you go, I am going to just go ahead and I'm going to pull out my fans and I'm going to start spinning them and I'm going to play an epic song to make a close target temporarily vulnerable. And I'm going to make it big, big fatty over there.

He is in flames and he is vulnerable. So with that, all attacks against him have advantage on his attacks. Ooh! Yeah. I'm going to run forward and as I run towards the wall near me, I'm just going to bamf into the shadows and bamf out right behind the big, big Mortimer.

All right. Can I be behind him? You can bamf underneath this table here, which has shadow, because there's a light right here. Okay. Sorry, I can't see. That's okay. You can get right behind him there. Great! Spend his stress to do that. Yes! You run around the side,

vanish, and then appear at a table across the way. Yeah, and I'm going to Shadowbind him again. Okay. Try to stick him back into place right there. Go ahead and roll for that. Oh wait, that was not, I didn't roll my dice there. Roll your duality dice. Okay, that is 16, 17, 18, 19,

plus, no, 19, plus, no, 19 with fear. 19 with fear. So I have to stop doing what I was going to do. He is, I'm putting all of the sparks on him. He's now on fire. He is vulnerable, and he is bound to the ground as his shadow, once again, is now pulling him to the ground. The tiny, dark elements of the lightless face beneath him is pulling pulling him to the ground. The tiny dark elements of the lightless face beneath him

is pulling his legs to the ground right now. And then I'm going to pull a Bellatrix Lestrange and just slide back under the table. Cool. Okay. As you go back underneath there. That was with fear, you said? That was fear. That was fear.

As you're pulling away, he's going to go ahead and angrily spin to strike at you in an eventual sweep with his cane sword. Ooh, that's going to be a 21 to hit. Oh, that's. Does he take two to six fire damage because he did a good turn? Oh yeah, he does. Okay. So roll for that.

Nine. Nine. Nine. That is one hit point on him. The flames, you shrug it off as he's pushing. That's going to be 19 points of physical damage against you. Oh! Okay. That's still major, not severe, thankfully.

That's good. I would have to use all my armor to bring that down. 19. 52, I guess. 17. I'm going to spend this my armor to bring that down. 19. 52, I got it. 17. I'm going to spend this one to activate her back here. It's going to be like, What about how you doing? It's going to run past like,

No, not so good! He's looking like blood's pointing out his mouth. The flames are on him, but he's just focused now over back on that amulet that you're holding. She's going to go ahead and... Hmm. that you're holding. She's going to go ahead and... She's going to strike with the scepter from afar. I think she sees the amulet in your hand and is going to go for you, Jarlah.

That's going to be over here. Over here. We got's going to be... See who, where, which one? Over here. We got to talk to him. I know, we got to talk to him or just try to take the amulet and run. That's going to be 12 to hit. Uh, yeah, that'll hit. All right. So as she pictures her scepter out,

sees him in the hand and goes like, We got to get it! And unleashes in your direction, you take 10 points of magic damage. Uh, okay. Wait, where's Zarlo? He's hiding behind. By Bonnie. Bonnie.

So I'll use an armor point. I'll use two armor points. So that it just tears into me claws. Armor point. And not myself. Okay, right, that's me clothes. One more point. And not myself. Okay. Right, that's an option. Yep.

Okay. And I am going to, in that moment, clutch a little daze, clutch my token of Ondra and hold my hand out towards the sneaky little, no, I can't do that. She's too far away. Talk to each other yourself, Amanda. Okay, no, I can't do that, she's too far away. Target a creature other than yourself.

You're going to crush? Make a spell cast roll, yeah. Do I have to have hands on for healing hands? Make a spell cast roll and target a creature other than yourself in melee. I have to be close. You can rush up and do it if you want to. That's a little hairy in there.

Instead, I'm going to run out the door. I'm going to hide behind that wall right there. Right there? Yep. All righty. Laura, is that you up in front right there? Uh-huh. All the way up towards you. Who's that with the little green? Oh, that's Oppy. That's me.

That's Oppy. Do you want to go? I was going to say, Oppy, do you want to do something terrible to this weird scepter? Is it a frog? It's another frog. It's another frog. Small one. Do you want to mess with the scepter frog?

Yeah. Ribbit. All right, with the ribbit. All right, I am going to sweep around, pull back the sword and say, let's see what you can do when you can't see and can't walk, but we're having frog's legs tonight. And I'm going to take a swig, if you can actually, you heard me, it's all power.

No offense! I'm going to add a no offense! Just trying to do a thing. I am definitely not getting dramatic flare for that, I'm well aware. If you know what happened to your frog, what did it say? I was doing my best, it was terrible.

You have frog legs tonight. I was not built for this. That rules. That rules. So that's, I'm going to use the tactician version of that so that it's three hope to do the tag team roll. And I get to use

the d20 for my hope. Correct, so you roll a d12 fear die, a d20 hope die, and you get to roll both your duality dice, and whoever has the higher roll, you both get. Am I adding anything? Am I adding or just the duality dice? Well, you just the dice, and then you add whatever your attack or spell is

that you're using for this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't even remember what you said. It was so weird. It was perfect. It was such a long walk. Boo. What's yours?

Nine. Nine? Nine with hope. 18 with fear. 18 with fear. So you still get the hope, though? I still get the hope? 18 with fear. Yeah, you still get the hope. Okay. Well, no, if you both take the roll. Yeah, do we not?

I thought the one who, okay. You choose which to take. Yeah, so I wouldn't. You choose which to take. Do you take the nine or the? I'll take the 18-win. Okay, so it's an 18-win. That does hit, but it does revert to me.

Okay, but we do get to do our damage then. You do. Oh, right. Still remembering how tag team works. So I'm going to go just try and sweep against the legs and if you're going to attack the head, if that works. So we both get to roll damage and add it together. Oh, nice.

We both roll damage and add it together? And add it together. Okay. You 20? No, whatever your damage, yeah, whatever, because yeah, whatever, because, yeah, I don't know your attack. I'm just adding mine.

My attack for, okay. My damage, anyway. Snatch? Yeah, 30 staff damages. Great, okay, so eight. That's good. That's good. Maybe 11. 11. 11 plus?

23 is what the total is. 23 is the total of both together? 23 points of damage to her. Yes! She's going to use, you wouldn't, as a reaction. She gets to mark a stress and reduce the damage by a d6, by one.

All right, so she still takes a major damage. She's like, takes the hit from both of you, pulls away, Mortimer, we got to get out of here! That was with fear? That was with fear. All right. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Two rolls. There, I rolled a seven on my d20. Okay.

Does anyone want to stop and talk? Or are we going to keep going? I'm going out on a limb here. All right, so I'm activating, and then we can come to your roll here to try and do that. There! No, but as you're shouting this, I'm activating, then we can come to your roll here to try and do that. There! No, but as you're shouting this, I'm activating both. She's going to go ahead and try and run up the stairs

over here. Oh no, there's stairs? I didn't see the stairs over there. Neither of these can go anywhere. So he's just going to go ahead and swing towards you, since you're shouting. Whoa! Does anyone want to? That's a natural 20.

Oh no. Okay. So we're toying with some critical rules here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's going to go ahead and swing here. Mm. I don't think we don't say very much for you. It's true. We're playing some cryptic roles here. I know.

We say everything else, but our company. 31 points of physical damage. Okay. So, okay. That's a lot. How many points? 31. Points of damage? How many armor slots do you have?

I have lots, so I'm going to use those. So, so, so, I'm going to use those is what I'm going to do right now. And I'm going to do... How far off are you? I mean, I have six armor slots to spend left and I have four. That's only two per armor slot. Two per, yeah.

So... Can you even get to your next threshold? Let me see if I can just get down to two. Yeah, so if I use that, then it's, jeez louise, it's two per armor slot? That's your armor score, yeah. Six times two, so 12 would be, if you used all of them, you could take 12 off.

Bamp it down. Could you bring it down to major? Could you bring it down to major? Could you bring it down to major? Yeah. I can also heal you. You can, so you can just take it. Yeah. Because it's three hit points, right? It's not going to drop it.

Choices. I know. I know, I don't like it. What's your severe threshold? That's going to take 18. 18, okay, so it's not quite double your severe. No, no, no. I'm just going to take it. It's not far off, Matthew. No, no, no. I'm just going to take it. I'm going to take it. It's not far off, Matthew. I know.

Take five more hits. Double the severe would be four hit points. Okay. So I have you backhand to Obby. And so now, as they're unable to run, you now have your opportunity to try and shout them down. So what are you doing? Take it easy!

Wow. Take it easy! That. Take it easy! Yeah, that's all there. Wait, since he took an action, he's going to take some fire damage. That was the guy over here. Shit, never mind. That's okay.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop! We can keep going. Are we talking? I don't know! I'm going to jump in and help Afi. Can I do that? Yeah, okay.

So you're trying to defuse the situation here. I'm trying to defuse the situation. You killed some people. Yeah, come on, Mr. Frogman. We just came here to try and to have a civil conversation with you. And then I'm going to, once again, try and use Recant.

So I'm going to spend a hope and see if I can make Frogman forget the last minute when he lost his pretty little necklace. Oh! Okay. So go ahead and roll your spell. Spellcast roll against Mortimer. Wait, Mortimer's not the one that did the 31 points of damage.

No, it was one of the bodyguards over here. Oh, I thought it was him. He got real lucky on that hit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Since I'm acting, and this was a dress rehearsal, can I spend another hope to add the Show Must Go On to this?

I'll allow it. Okay. Okay. Come on. Well, Show Must Go On would go for a presence roll in this scenario, because this is a spell cast roll. This is about casting a spell to affect his mind. I don't think it would apply to this in particular. My spell casting is presence.

Okay, that's a valid point. You know what? I'll allow it. I'm going to spend a whole test. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Okay, so that's that, plus three plus four, so... Seven, five, 12, 14, 16. And then you're adding a d6, right?

Yes, sorry. For three. Okay, so 19. So you shout this out, and Mortimer, who's on fire and stapled to the ground, goes, What's going on over here? And suddenly doesn't know why he's on fire. Oh no, how'd you catch on fire?

Oh, what happened to you? Oh my god! I'm assuming you heard me say, I'm going to telepathically, real quick, I'm going to open a line of mental communication to Zarlo and just say, the big fucker doesn't know that you stole his necklace. That's totally cool, he says as he continues to inch down the hallway with the necklace.

So he is on fire right now. Did you roll with hope or fear? With fear. With fear. Yeah. I have not had a hope roll. I think I've had one of those. That's been terrible. I'm going to just hawk up some spit

to try to help him put the fire out. I know it's not going to do anything. I'm just going to spit at him. This one. And it's up the stairs. I know, she's going away. She's going to do anything. I'm just going to spit at it. This one. And it's up the stairs. I know, she's going away. She's going to get help. She got away?

This one over here. Did I see that happen? You don't because you hit under here. I didn't quite get there before he hit me. Did I make it all the way under the table when he hit me? You said you still went under the table after he hit you. Yeah. Oh, okay, okay.

Wait, but I did see her go. You did. What's your preference here? Chasing her or trying to continue this charade? Okay, I'll stay, I'll stay, I'll stay. Okay, I'll hold onto this other one here for now. I like that. All right, so right now he's on fire.

You said you want to hock up a loogie to try and put out the flames? Mm-hmm. Okay, all right. Is he looking rough? I mean, he's looking hurt. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I mean, I know it's not going to do anything. It is an effort to try to be like,

we're trying to help you. Make a presence roll for me, please. This is to perform being an ally in this moment. That would be a 12 with fear. 12 with fear. Okay. I'm going to take fear on that one. Why did I do this? I'm just going to shut up. As you try and run up to him.

Sorry, I wasn't on him. The flames are still on him. Oh no. Mind you, it's still your spell. If you wanted to cancel the flames from the spell, I'd allow you to do that if you wanted to. Oh, and make it look like you did it? Make it look, yeah.

Yes, yes. Okay. I'll cancel it. So you spit. With the spit. You spit on there, looks down, looks at you incredulously, and the flames vanish. Glances around, turns around. Gimmer!

And is looking for somebody in the room, while the two other guards over there are still shadowbound to the ground. Can I? Yes, you may. Can I turn to Mortimer and say, I can't believe your men would betray you like this, and I will reach out a hand and cast Wall of Flame across the two guards.

Oh my god! Wow. Just lighting them up. Yes! Yep. Slug a row of napalm. Yes! Okay, go ahead and roll for attack on both of them. I'll Mark of Stress. Mark of Stress, create a temporal wall of flame

between two points within far range. Anything that passes through it takes 4d10 magic damage. That's a fucking lot of damage. That's a lot of damage. All right. 12, 21, 24, 25 points of damage. 25 points of damage, does you roll for a spell?

It doesn't. Oh, it just costs two? Yeah. Just that cost of stress to cast. Oh, stress to cast it, yeah. Sheesh. All right. I think it's this one. I think it's this one, just burns and ignites in the room

and is left screaming until he's quiet. Oh. The other one is still like, . Can I, and after the spell, can I just move up onto the diocese again, just away from Mortimer a little bit? Yeah. Damn it, she got away. No. I don't know. The frog. away from Mortimer a little bit, yeah. Damn it, she got away! Who?

I don't know, the frog! All right, at this point now, the other guard that's over there is going to try and turn and start shouting as it's trying to pull itself free. Which one? What are you guys doing? Which one? The other one that's still standing in the flames.

Oh no, you don't! And I'm going to, yeah, I think I'm just going to. You could just kick the wall and it would retrigger the same damage. Yeah, I'm just going to give him a good shove. Is this smart enough? Okay. Go ahead and roll a strength check. Actually, honestly, it's easier

if I just use my sword at this point. So, because my strength is not nearly as good as my sword. I mean, if you want to hit him with your shell. Um. Shellshock. I don't have, that's not an experience. I'm out of hope. All out of hope.

Okay, there we are. So yeah, I'm just going to use the grapple, I think, to just, inside the sword, to just slap him. Go for it. See think, to just, inside the sword, to just slap him. Go for it. See if I can throw him into the fire, actually. All right, that's a... It's Vanessa.

Actually, no, I'll use the sword. It's just a spearhead. Six. So close. Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 to hit. 14 to hit. Just hits. Hey! With hope, I might add. 14 to hit. Just hits. Hey! With hope, I might add. With hope, finally. Thank god.

And then, let's do some damage, see what happens. 16 points of damage. So do you push him into the fire? Oh, it doesn't matter. Doesn't happen, yeah. Doesn't matter. You strike with the rapier, they fall back into the flames with their dying breath and are also consumed. Fire? Oh, it doesn't. Doesn't have to. Better? Doesn't matter. You strike with the rapier,

they fall back into the flames with their dying breath and are also consumed. That's turtle power. Damn it, she's got it. We turn in unison. Like Mortimer. Mortimer, cane blade out in one hand, looks at you all intensely and goes,

Put it away. Where is it? What's wrong? Out in the sewer, I think by now, I've held it so long, I'm like, oh, this is very nice, and I put it over my neck. Feels very nice. Just cradle it there. It's just what Kexin said, your men, they betrayed you.

They must've stolen your necklace, and they also were up there just blabbing their mouths, just like, yep, yep, yep, yep. That was the one. Make a presence roll for me. Oh! For me?

For you? Why'd I do that? You could spend a hope to help if you wanted to. Yeah, I'm going to spend a hope to help you. I'm just an honest little mushroom. I'm a sneaky little mushroom. Does that count? Can I use a hope to, because I jumped in on it. I'm a sneaky little mushroom. Does that count? Can I use a hope to,

because I lied a lot in our village. You're just sneaky and being good at lying. Well. That's fine. That's a, what am I adding to it? Four. Okay. 14, 18, 19 with hope.

19 with hope. 19 with hope. You seem to fall back a bit. They're always betraying me. Always. I can't trust anyone. Who are you? Who's putting this fire out? I can drop the fire.

You sure? Yeah. Yeah, I'll drop the fire. Drops. I'm going to get her. It means lumber over to push past you. Can't because of the Shadowbind. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Hey, you know what? Just relax a little, just calm down. I'm not going to relax. I need to get that back. What's so important? Who are you? Who the fuck are you anyway? We're here to help, obviously.

We're just big helpers. That doesn't answer the question. We're reinforcements from the Croatoanas. Okay. I'm the Croatoanas.. Yeah. I'm the Croatoanus. Yeah, you're distant relatives. We were, yeah. Looks confused.

Forgive them, they're hired hands. I can explain this very clearly. There has been a string of mysterious jewel robberies all across town. We were hired as out-of-towners, special contractors, so that they knew we couldn't actually have any ties to anyone here. We were in as out-of-towners, special contractors, so that they knew we couldn't actually have any ties to anyone here. We were in, we followed you in here,

we had no idea what we were walking into. Please. We are very good at what we do. Make a presence roll. I'm adding Hottie and a Halfshell, because I'm trying to smoke. Hottie and a Halfshell! I'll allow it.

Hottie and a Halfshell! I'll allow it. Hotty in the past show! I'll allow it. That's just straight presence. There's nothing else I can do with that, is there? There's no advantage I can... I'm going to spend a hope, because that was great. All right. Because I want to.

I will take that d6. Oh, you were floating. There you go. I should use it. Ooh, please. Add a six? Oh, add a six? I can't add when she's added. Add six. Okay, thanks. I can't add six. I should use it. I should use it. Ooh, please. Add a six. Oh, add a six? I can't add, once she's added. Add six. Okay, thanks.

I can't add six. I mean, you can. You just both roll and take the higher of the dice. There's no higher than that, though. Oh, wait, isn't that damage? No, oh, I rolled the wrong dice. Thank you, I was about to panic. It was about to be really bad. Yeah, I was about to be bad.

Make sure you roll the proper dice. That's better. Let's see, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 with fear. 22 with fear, that's with your? Well, that's with the dice. Yeah, it's with the d6. Oh, with the d6 and that, yeah. All right.

You get that back for me and I'll pay you real well. Okay. We will pay you real well. Okay. We will discuss what real well means at a later date. What, wait, what is it? Yeah, what's it do, just in case we need to be aware of? You got to know, just get it back. Okay. Jane, should we ask him?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean ask them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. Maybe in exchange, if we return your pretty necklace, you could just give us a little bit of information, too, about some other goings-ons that we're trying to investigate. See if I investigate this. And Jule and Eve Stoppers.

We're professionally paid to be professional. Yeah. From your distant relatives, obviously. Why? Sits back in his chair. And leans back. All right, investigators. What is it you need?

You ask. I'll go check out the upstairs, and I'm going to. As soon as you head up the stairs, the door opens and you see, this other ribbit comes rushing down. Brother! What are you doing? Oh shit.

Can you do a fireball? A fireball? The person, do they have any objects on them? They have a scepter. A scepter? Yeah, I will cast Time Lock on the scepter. Okay. It pulls back.

She's going to try and strength pull it out of the air. All right, see if you can beat a 12 on your spell cast roll. That's critical. Woo! Awesome. That's 16, 17, 18, 19. That'll do it. She gets held back and you see behind her,

there are multiple bouncers that are following. There's like, she went and gathered the troops. I'm going to use my grapple to grab her, pull her through, and shut the door behind us, unless you stop me. So, and then shutting the door. All right.

Yeah, you see right now, Mortimer's like, Who's that? Is that Gemma? Is that that thieving bitch? And stands up as you go charging towards the door. Go ahead and make an attack with the grapple. Mm-hmm. Here we hop.

I really hope that this works. Oh, that's a terrible roll. Is there anything I can do about that? Oh, I hate it. I miss. Can I help you in some way? I don't think there's anything that can be done about this. I will use Luck Bender.

Thank you. Once per session, after you and an ally in close range makes it an action roll, you can spend three hope to reroll the duality die. Thank you. And you are by the door, you said, so yeah. I will try and make it worthwhile. So that's a, let's see.

Come around, Sir Dante. It's slightly better. 10 with hope? 10 with hope will not succeed. Damn, damn. Can I spend a hope to get advantage on that or no? No, you can't spend it on yourself. Okay, I was just trying to figure out something.

No worries, I understand. Yeah, I'll spend the hope. You fling the grapple and she knocks it out of the way, pushes past you, and you can see now there's just a wave of bouncers rushing past. What are you all doing? There's a wave of bouncers? You hear footsteps going down

as Gemma rushes out and goes, We should leave at this point. Brother! Brother! Stop them, they tried to kill us! Yeah, we should get the fuck out of here. We should just die. We'll get your necklace, don't worry.

We'll be back, mister! And actually, if Sir Dante and I are heading down the stairs and out of the room, I would try to recast Wall of Flame in front of the doorway, just. Give it a shot. Yeah. Okay. I'll take another stress.

And it just instantly, right across the doorway, so both of those openings are covered by flame. You got it. Engulfed, and everyone, you hear a voice squawk, and you're just, hey, where'd they go? Hey, hey, this way! Oh shit!

They all pull back as the flames engulf the space. You will be sorry. We'll live up to your needs. We need to get the fuck out of here. Oh no. What was that? Don't worry about it. Oh, well.

Just don't worry about it. Yeah, okay. All right, let's, yeah. Let's go, let's go. Okay. I follow out towards Zarlo. Wall of Flame vanishes. That fast?

I think it's been a fear to do that. You put it up there. It helps you for a moment as you all go charging out into the middle of the sewer and begin sprinting behind, but you hear heavy footfalls giving chase. You also can hear the of the massive form of Mortimer following behind you all. What are you doing?

Did he have to use an activation to get rid of my Shadowbind? Because I never dropped it. We'll say we're out of the combat scenario here. Can we run? Can we run all the way to the? Towards the combat scenario here. Okay. Okay. Can we run? Can we run all the way to the? Towards the grate? Yeah, towards the grate. Do we have the means to get past the gate?

I have one hope left to spend, so I can only get one other person through the blink out. And I can't help you out with it. I can't give you hope to help you out on that. There's no, there's nothing. Unless you have a specific ability to give somebody hope. If we came up this way, then that grate screws us, So we could go this way.

We just don't know where it goes. We just don't know where it goes. I run up to Hoppy. I know you've got this. I believe in you. And I will use my last inspirational words to give you a hope. Okay. Okay.

Okay. So I can get two. I can get two additional people out. Yeah, you should. And I can also, I can. You should take you should. And I can also, I can. You should take the monkey. I can take us out to a very far range. So I can get us really far if I need to. But this one person will get left behind.

We could try the other direction. Yeah, yeah, just run the other way. We can't get through. Yep. Run the other way. All right. Okay, so you charge the other direction. Running blind run the other way. We can't get through. Yep. Run the other way. All right. Okay, so you charge the other direction. Running blind in the opposite way, you come to a T-intersection.

It goes right or left, what do you do? Definitely right. Definitely right. You know what I'm going to do? What? I'm going to channel raw power. I'm going to take one of my domain cards and from my loadout into my vault

so I can gain an extra hope. You can do that? Yes, I can. So we turn back around. So now I have to. You turn one way, you go. Oh, never mind! You turn back around and right as you turn the other direction, you run past this entrance once more.

Right as you can see, the people rushing through, and Mortimer is there. As you go by, Mortimer is going to angrily make a... You guys can get out? He's going to make a powerful leave action, because he can. So as you turn around, he's going to land in front of you all.

All right, who's telling the truth? I'm so confused! What do you do? All right, I am going. Shadowbite. I'm going to grab, touch it. Roll for an attack. He's having a bad day. Mm-hmm. Oh, critical!

Whoa! Yeah! Oh, the best you could get! You watch as a bunch of bouncers leap out and surround him. That hits how many in a? That's everybody that's close to me, and anybody that's close. It's very close.

They all get bound in that space, and none of the rest can get through, and they're all like, Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run! Don't you worry, sir! Animal instinct is on the job! Animal instinct! And running.

Animal instinct? That's our new name? Only for the next 30 seconds. Let's go! Instinct with a K, yeah. All right, so you all now, the three of them, and you on the opposite side of that grate. All right, so the three of you and Oppy

all up here on the opposite side of the grate. Just use Shadow, Shadow! Shadow through, and you're going to attempt to? Yeah, I'll spend a hope and arcane door through it. All right. You all manage to get past, whereas you hear acting behind you. Oh, maybe you can succeed.

Okay, okay. With fear or hope? With, that's fear. With fear, okay. The shadow bind. Make the spell cast roll. Oh, shit! Oh, gosh. What if you shadowbind. Make a spellcast roll. Oh shit! Oh gosh. What if you don't succeed? On a success, spend a hope.

So I would have to spend a hope. So that might not give me enough hope. What? Yeah, make a spellcast roll. Okay, hold on. I'm also on. But that's, it's adding enough. That's what the whole point is. You can spend more hope to get everybody.

You got a hope? I'm going to, oh, I was going to spend more hope to get everybody. Get a hope? What's it say? Oh, I was going to, well, assist, but. Can I help? I was going to assist. You were going to assist? I was going to assist. How?

How do you help her with the spellcaster? I was going to pick her up to carry her so that she can steady herself with the cane a little better as we're running towards the door. Oh, so she can go. Yeah, just so it's not trying to bounce. Okay, don't say what you rolled. Holding Cradle. Okay.

Sure, go ahead and spend a hope. All right. Roll a d6. Why not? Why not? This is Looney Tunes. I love it. My lips are wet! Three? Where we get there?

So we're at, we're at. It's worth it. That's less than I used to rally, right? No, it's 10, which doesn't make the 12. Oh no! So as you all rush up, you all get stuck in the opposite side, right as, and that was with hope or fear?

That was with hope. So I get a hope. Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. You all reach the edge there at the grate and the spell fails. Ha, ha, ha! Wait, wait, wait! You hear,

This is the worst birthday ever! Oh. Is this worth it? No! Oh, it's worth it! What did we do? You got through? No, you didn't.

No, none of y'all are through. You three and Oppy are stuck. Don't you take anybody else with Arcane? I'm going to quickly give Uppie a hug and say I'm so sorry, and you're going to feel, once put on rest, use an action and touch a creature to clear two hit points. So you're really fucked up, you look it.

And then I'm just going to turn around and start wailing on this fucking grate with my axe, my holy axe. Okay, okay. Are you attempting to just muscle it. Are you attempting to muscle it, or are you attempting to strike it with enough damage? What's the difference? Trying to break through it?

Can I also look at it and see are there any hinges or any? You've already glanced at it. Yeah. Give it a pretty solid look. It looks like it's old, thrusted, but it's still pretty strong. I'll say I'm striking the stone

where the metal bars are going into the stone. Okay. I would like you to make a strength roll for me. This is a very high DC. I'm also just making a reveal roll, just in case there's something that we have to do. There's also a group action roll that we can attempt a group action roll right now.

And all of us are going to pull it at the same time? Nott and the leader of the action, all of the participants in a group action roll? We can attempt a group action roll right now. And all of us try to pull it at the same time? Non-limit leader reactions. All of the participants in the group actually make reaction rolls. Any success gives the leader a plus one modifier and affiliates to the group. Give it a shot if you want. We want to go? I already rolled, so I'll hold it. Yeah.

If it distanced to a group thing. Do the bars actually go into the wall? They go into the stone. Ah, fuck. Jeez, there's no way. 17 with health just to see if there was anything that reveal would show. Nothing seems to reveal around it.

You do get a hope on that, though. Yeah, that or a tag team roll, because that does a super amount of damage, but that's just a, I don't think this is a damage roll, this is a group action roll. It's just anybody who succeeds is a plus one to the roll. Anyone who fails is a plus one to the roll, anyone who fails is a negative one. But. But.

How many more hope do you need, Ashley, to try again? You have one. I have one hope, so I need two more. It seems like the group thing is not happening. Okay. So I'll just declare what I rolled, that's a 12, which I'm sure. That does not succeed. Shit. Sorry, guys.

I can give you one more hope if you want to try again and take these two. No! I might be the better one to leave. No! We're going to have to split up. But you should get... Either way, I think. Yeah. That was with hope? Oh, yes. Okay.

It was. Oh, sorry. You've got to take him. He's got the necklace. You've got to get him out of here. Sure. Okay. Oh, sorry. You've got to take him. He's got the necklace. You've got to get him out of here. It's true. Well. You can't stay alone. I'll go back to Bunny. You'll go back to Bunny?

And we got to run the other direction. Okay, all right. I'm going to roll again and try to blink out, and I'm taking Sir Dante and Zarlo. Yeah. Yeah. I will play a heartbreaking sound as I caress your little froggy face. You got this.

Okay. And you get hope. Oh, that's right. Come on. Okay. That's good. That's with hope. 15, that worked. That works. That's, I had to be 12. Yeah. All 15, that worked. That works. That guy had to be 12.

Yeah. All right, all right, all right, all right. Okay. So you take- Let's go! So I'm taking Sir Dante and Zarlo. Okay. You both operate on the opposite side. And you stay behind. I'm going to banf over back to the other side.

I'm going with Sweet Pea. And we're going to try to run the other way. So, okay, there's a bunch of guards and... They're stuck right now. They're stuck. So just keep running. So. As far as you know, you just hear them up the way.

Some key stone caption. We came out, we ran this way, we ran this way, and the two of them ran back down. How deep is the Sludgy Water? Right now, it's about maybe just under a foot. Under a foot. As we walk back, as we start getting closer, do you have a good runway walk?

Mm-hmm. All right. I'm just going to need you to work it, okay? Okay. Work that runway. And I'm going to do Hypnotic Shimmer. And all the lights in the sewer go dark. And then, but at the top. There are no lights in the sewer, but magically you create lights.

Yeah, you see like, boom, boom, boom, boom, like a roll of spotlights. Awesome. Okay. Then there's a backlight, and I have a RuPaul figure. Yes. We just walk down the runway,

and they are, anyone in front of me is stunned. They are stunned, they are gagged. Okay. So I've spent a few of these action tokens from your activities you've been taking to use enough fear to break a number of these shadow binds. So as you turn around, there are a number of guards coming your way,

including Mortimer and whoever else is at his side. You cast the spell down that runway, and it is a thin space. I need you to roll against. Can I help? Can I help? Spellcast, roll against it.

Enemy is in front of you within close range, so I'd wait till we get close enough. Work it, Shroomy. Yeah. Do you want to spend a hope and describe how you help her cast this spell? I help her by taking my court staff and I'm spinning it like a baton

and doing a shimmy. I love it. Behind her. Okay, so spend your hope. For some reason, there's a wind machine in front of us now and my hair's going crazy. And my cap is just up. So like paraposite hair. Yep.

I'm going to spend a hope. You should put them up here. And I'm going to add. So what was that with hope, you said? I'm going to spend a hope to add, are these all men? No, they are a spread of genders. Can I add my experience,

face beat, body snatched? As I have my little runway moment? Sure. Okay. People are, they're like, they are literally stunned. You're helping me? Uh-huh. Okay, do you roll that or can you roll that? I mean, either can, but I think it's more fun

if the player that's helping gets to roll the bag and feel more involved. So nervous, so this is going to be plus four. Oh no, is it really bad? Yes, it is. It's real bad. It's really bad. It's whole. Oh.

I don't think I can do anything about that. Three plus four is seven. Seven. Plus three. 10. 10. Can I whisper into home? Fear. No, you are way away.

I know, I know, I know, I know. So friends. Oh boy. Uh-oh. Oh my god. Goddamn it. The four of you free yourselves from the sewers, topside, fingers crossed, that your friends will meet you somewhere soon and safe,

laying low and thinking of the best places to meet. For after all, there's supposed to be a show tonight. A performance. Oh. I'm going to blow my shit. Did we stun them? Meanwhile. I don't know if Bunny would know.

She would still just be like, . Oh, where are they? It's almost 11. It takes a moment for you to rouse to consciousness. Both of you finding yourselves tied to adjacent chairs and surrounded by members of the Croatoana mafia family,

as you are now both prisoners of them. Here in this familiar room, where chaos and flame has nearly torn them asunder, you can see, amongst the rest of these varying, hulking, angry, dystoic bodyguards, the massive, swollen, ribbit arms of Mortimer push past as he sits before the two of you. All right.

Now let's start talking truth, why don't we? That's where I'm going to end tonight's episode. Oh no! We're going to end tonight's episode. Oh no! We're going to pick up there next time with the two of you capturing it. We never got to see her set! No! What have we done? Oh my god.

That's how it goes. That's how the dice go. Sometimes you got to do it. Got to do it that way. There's a lot of fun little bits and pieces that can still get weird in here. The night's not over. And we'll see where it takes us next time. I also love when shit goes wrong.

Yeah. It gets too complicated. I love the idea of mapping. Like, I'll plan a nice little condensed one-shot. Cut to, fuck it up. That's how it goes, man. That's how it goes. Some sound tactics, some fun weird tactics, and some rough dice rolls,

and some interesting moments here. Props on the impromptu dice game. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of fun. I'm going to mess with that a little bit. I don't know where that came from, but I like it. And you're welcome to, if you're watching. It's so simple and so silly. But nevertheless, that was a lot of fun, guys.

I'm excited to jump into wherever this takes us in the future, possibly. So we'll see whatever that leads us next time. But I believe that concludes our menagerie game for tonight. Thank you all so much for joining us. Live! Capture your beta.

Live for our 1.4 open beta. We'll have more updates for the open beta as Daggerheart continues to develop, so please go check out daggerheart.com. Be sure to tell us your thoughts through our official Daggerheart open beta surveys as you playtest and experience it, the things you like,

the things that irk you, the things that you're excited to see, or suggestions you might have, all that's welcome. You're watching it step by step, getting more and more tweaked and fluid, and you're part of that process. You are all super important and valuable to this, and we thank you so much for being a part of this.

And I'm excited to see what's up for the next chapter of the Menage when we have a moment to experience that. So until then, we love you very much. And is it Thursday yet? Good night. Thank you for listening to Critical Role. If you've enjoyed the adventure,

please consider rating and reviewing this podcast. Your insight can really help support the show by bringing new critters into the fold. Until next time, dear critters, adventure awaits!