Dice Shame - 2-79 | 'Best Laid Schemes'

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Imagine your best game of D&D. The shocks, the twists and turns, the moments that can’t be caught because you just had to be there. That’s Dice Shame.Join our DM Jo, her husband Harlan, their brother Alex & their best friends Rob and Alex as they experience those unmissable, gut-wrenching, heart-aching, joy-filled moments.This legendary AP releases a brand new episode every Thursday morning at 1:20 am!Content Warning: animal death, swearing, violence, claustrophobiaPart of the Rusty Quill Network Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are there any bodies around here? I'm usually not that reckless. Jack, what the hell? George the Key loved raspberries. You know what? I am actually a little relieved that there's no sewer. We never scaled the walls, mind you, but... Murray doesn't spit tank. Can you hold my hair red?

I read a great book about a key one. What, don't you understand? That's disgusting. How dare you? How did we miss that? And then, when that doesn't work, hit him with the rock. We've got to go. Just give him a second. Hey, good job, Ellister.

Thanks, Red. I try my best here to be part of the group. Yeah, let's all remember that. Next time, Elliston needs to grow big. Just push Mari off something. All right. Dora. I love the idea later on.

We're like, we need Ellister to get big. And wrestling pushes Mari. But it works. She's like, ah. But he's not there. So she just falls to her death. He's not there. It's like, sorry, I was in the bathroom.

I got to you. What happened? Marie's just on the ground. That's good. Welcome back to Dyshame. This is Season 2, Episode 79, The Best Laid Schemes. MVP this week is Comedy Fan 1095, who's just caught up to the current episode and has joined our Discord to hang out with us. They say that Disham's probably one of the best experiences they've ever had listening to a D&D podcast,

and that they can't wait to start listening alongside everyone else. That's so nice. nice, thank you so much for being with us. You are this week's MVP and well deserved. All right, should we play some D&D? Yeah, let's do it. I'm a part. I remember you saying that once

you guys were at like a restaurant, like a fast food and he like ripped a fart and then was like he was like, he was like he was like and the look on his face is like this super surprised and he's like I have to go to the bathroom then he came back from the bathroom he's like they were unsavable he's like I have to throw him out who is this guy is he a baby what is this no my best friend from childhood you know how Alex gets all

of his dwarf vibes they all come from his childhood oh yeah childhood oh yeah childhood oh yeah childhood yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he was also a drunk child setting my mood i wouldn't mind a a scene right at the moment we left because i think i need to apologize for dorin for blowing him up oh fuck at least a little bit i mean we'd be retreading old ground i think we already i think i think i think it ended with red running away yeah sure unless that doesn't work for you in which we could just ad libid there's always meat on that bone you want to rewind it yeah let's do it well okay and play the five of you are standing around corpses.

Again. As usual. You just slain these dwarves, these men at arms that Gautier Breithelm had sent to ensure that you had died

in a rock slide and they nearly bested you. Oh God, Dorn, are you okay? I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Oh boy. That's more reckless than I usually am. um you still got most of your beard yeah yeah yeah dorn's like tugging at his face his facial hair he's like yeah it's all right no it that was stupid i'm usually not that reckless i just um really usually you're not jack what the hell sorry i was worried and i only had this knife and my magic

wasn't working and i wasn't sure it was was gonna do and then that guy was full explosives and i just big butto-boom that's the yeah Red walks over, he's on the far side of, like, the crevasse, and you two, he just kind of hears them pittering away and walks over to the edge of the drop and, like, kind of spits over and calls over. Are you guys all right? Oh, yeah, yeah, we're okay over here. Are you guys okay over there? I think so, Mari? Oh, you're yelling to us, not the people down there. That, sorry, I am. They're not okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. And Jack walks over and kind of looks down to see if you can see any sign of them.

How are you guys going to get over here? Yeah, Mari sort of pokes her head over the edge, and she realizes just how deep it is down there, and then just sort of, like, pulls back and, like, shutters. It just like, knows. It extends past the periphery of your dark vision, so you can't see the bottom. No, thank you.

Oh, yeah, how are we going to get across there? It's kind of a wide, just like 20 feet across. I mean, there's, like, a bridge just over here. No time. Ellister, you better go big again and lie across it so we can climb on your back, and I haven't been thinking about this for the last few seconds.

I promise it just came to my head. Murray's already walking to the bridge. She's like there already. Ellister, there's no time. I don't know if I can make it happen again. What do you mean you don't know if you can happen? What do you mean? Let me just try really hard.

Hold on. That happened by accident? Yeah. It was Mari that didn't. Did it, wasn't it? No. Who made him big? He did?

He did. Marry didn't do anything Just happened sometimes I made them big You got excited and suddenly Ellister you made yourself big You don't know how it happened Okay well don't shit yourself

You look fine I can take the bridge That's unsavable And then yeah So Alistair moves along with Mari in red Yeah I feel like I kind of like Put a hand on Elster's back And I'm kind of like

You don't know how you grew big and you're not worried about that? Wait, you don't know how you did that? I don't know. There's a lot of, like, mysterious stuff about this body that I'm just kind of figuring out, I think. Clearly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, like, you know, if you can't do it again, do we have to worry about you doing it by accident? Like, sometimes we're in some pretty tight places. And also, not to be rude about it, but you being giant would have really helped when we were stuck in that rock fall, you know? Like moving boulders and stuff or just sticking an arm.

and making it big, so maybe we can work on trying to get you under control after. It seems situational. Yeah, I think there's some kind of, like, the trigger that we need to figure out together. Yeah, together. Does his clothes expand with him, or is he just, like, standing there and, like, tattered, tattered bags now? Unsavable. Doran's like, my tunic! Yeah, I mean, coming into Scarborough, Elester was wearing, like, a cast-off of Doran's clothes.

And I feel like Goetier probably put out some, like, less bloody things. Thorntz, like, you stretch the malls of shit. Same what you will about Goetheer, but his hospitality. That's right. Yeah, he might be a fuck wit, but he takes care of you. He throws a great dinner party. I can't fall to him. And the amazing properties of leather, you know, the ability to kind of go back to its original form.

Stretch to twice its size. Red's like kind of like, thinking deeply as he's walking along, like, grew big and he turns to Mary and he kind of whispers. He's like I think he grew big when he was like worried about us, you know? Yeah, when everything really started to go down, that's when he kind of freaked

out and just I guess got huge, which is I don't know, pretty interesting. I don't know if we can find a way to get him to do it again without throwing him into danger. Do you think if we're doing really well, he'll go small? Just love him. I'm having

a great time. Everything's so good now, Alistair. Murray does a spit take, but she hasn't been drinking anything. She's just permanently wet, so... Ew. Oh, God, Marie. Spit was so viscous. Ew.

It's like a pocket-sized, uh, Elister. Oh. Well, that's what I'm wondering. Like, you know what? Let's not put the idea of him getting small in his head because he seems like the kind of guy that like, once he's thinking about it, he can't do it. You know, like that was an impulse. You know, we've been traveling with him like this for at least a few days.

I can't believe that Gautier is actually behind all this. Like, this is crazy to me to think that, I knew it was a bit of a slime ball, but to his own family? Like, what the hell? We've got to go, and we've got to get moving. How are we going to get into town? Yeah, we're pretty obvious, the most of us. Not a dwarf, very singed. Hmm.

Red's just still staring at Alistair. like with his hands, like, you know, kind of like shrinking him in his mind. Like he's standing like five feet back and kind of like closing his fingers together, be like shrinking, Ellis to could be. Well, oh, but you know, you made a great point accidentally there, Doran as well. This group came to retrieve our bodies, presumably, or finish up. They're probably going to be due back in a little bit too, so we have that clock. Are there any bodies around here?

In any case, we're definitely under haste. Red walks over the two fallen soldiers and starts looting their bodies. Maybe they've got something here to tell us where they were meant to take our bodies. From within the pockets of these dwarven soldiers' clothes, you find a couple of items. Altogether, you find 45 gold pieces and eight silver pieces. You find a silver key. that has kind of a diamond shape on the handle of it? Is that called a handle of a key?

Has kind of a diamond shape on the handle? It's called the bow of a key, for whatever reason. And that's it. Red picks up the key, kind of shows the others. What did you find over there? A key with a diamond hilt, you know, the top of it, whatever it is. It's called a bow, did you know? Yeah, I figured, but the normal audience wouldn't care or no,

so I figured just describing it as such would be enough. Look, if we're going to head into the city, which we have to do to save your mother, I don't think we can just walk in the front door. No. We've got to sneak in. Yeah. I don't know.

Maybe we should like walk and talk. No, absolutely. We shouldn't stick around here. It's this way. Can you do two things at once? I think I have the ability in my new, uh, dark dwarf body to do both. Wow, he's gotten so confident.

Walk and talk. Oh, wow. He can grow. He could walk and talk. Everyone rolled performance check to walk and talk. Shit. I don't have any performance. Concentration check.

No. Athletics. No shit. All right. 20. Oh, nice. Jack, you do great. Look at the way Jack Swagger.

He's jogging and doing a TED talk at the same time. You orate. It was touch and go. I read a great book about a key once, though, and it really got into the... Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, sorry. A book about a key? What the fuck?

I just smashed cut to Jack at a library being like, oh, this book's about a key. Ooh! Not just any key, but one key. Twenty famous keys of the sword coasts. Not the history of keys. No, no, no, no. You said one key.

You said a book about a key. One key to open them all. George the key loved raspberries in the beginning. That's a terrible book. I know. My joke is that it's a terrible book. That's the whole point. Created 11 keys for man.

Cool. All right, let's go. Agreed, Alistair. I can say it was a good book. It's this way. Listen, I don't know how we're going to do this. I don't, you know, I grew up in the city. There's no secret passages.

Nothing of that, sir. It's not as exciting as water deep. They don't have a big underground, you know, the shit is pushed out of the city through troughs. I mean, there's no, uh, Sewer. There's grated, grated sewer drains.

You know what? I am actually a little relieved that there's no sewer in some respects. Yeah, I don't blame you, Jack. I mean, or you, Maria. Yeah, shit.

That was the night we met you. Oh, God, it was. Oh. As you walk and plot your way of ingress, you recall the look of Scarborough from the height at which you first observed it. It's this massive town that's ringed by a huge stone wall.

There are several gates around its perimeter. As well, there is a slow-moving river that goes through these gates into and through the city. There are stalactites and stalagmites that traverse the cavern from top to bottom. Some of them are occupied as buildings. some of them, their use is unknown to you. What time of day is it, Jack? I get all turned around down here. Oh, uh, two o'clock in the afternoon, maybe just after tea time.

Hmm. All right, and Dorn, what about the river? Is it just a shit river? I'm guessing it's just a shit river. There's shit that's in it, but that, you know, that's not the only reason why we should avoid going that way, and I'll tell you why. Number one, the pee? Hmm?

Can I just pause you there for a second? Do the dwarves of Scarborough just like sluice their excrement directly into this river? It's not, you know, not generally speaking, no. But in like in any major town city, it's going to be polluted. Shit does get in the river. It's not exactly. It's not the cleanest. You drink from it on one side of town and you pour everything else into the island.

The fishing and drinking is on one side. Exactly. On the north side where the water comes in, that's where all the fishing and drinking and water comes from. And on the south side, you definitely want to avoid that. But I'll tell you one thing all around. Number one, there are large eels in the water, and they're pretty deadly. Did you guys try into that white eel soup? Yeah, those are the eels.

Yeah, the paster, the Dwarven spaghetti. That's right. They're deadly. How? Like, poisonous or electric or just feisty? Jack stops walking and looks at his tummy, and he's like, I ate so many of them. Well, just as deadly as any other. you know,

fierce underwater. Not again. They bite, okay? They bite. I had a friend that got his weenie, all right?

Oh, shit. How was he trying to eat? I have questions. We were young and we were skinny dipping. But that's beside the point. Are you sure he wasn't trying to catch it,

like the way you catch a catfish in Mazdica? You know, you just dangle your weaner out. Listen, the other reason why is because they have to, they thought about this when they built the city. And I know because me and my friends would try to, try to swim under when we were younger.

And the gate that goes down beneath the water just goes and goes and there's no bottom to that gate. So if we can't go under, can we go over? We can't go under it. We can't go around it. We got to go through. No, we should go over. We can't go under. We can't go through it.

We've got to go over it. And that's where I'm looking at you, Red. Yeah. And I feel like we're like, you know, a couple hundred feet out, like, or a football field, maybe two, kind of, kind of. crouched by some stones overlooking I'm imagining this as

Mordor yes as Sam Frodo and Gollum watching the black gate to Mordor yeah and we're like kind of looking at the walls

you know what would be cool and this is just sort of meta now meta whatever if one of our audience if any of our artists artistic audience members were to draw this

I think it would be a spectacular, picturing one of those D&D book pictures, you know? Gauntlet dropped by Alex. Good luck. Yeah, I mean, we could definitely scale those walls, use some pitons, and I could secure a rope, and we could all scale it,

but we'd have to find a place along that wall that is at least guaranteed to be without any sort of patrol or eyes for at least, I'd say, 20 minutes to get us up and over and down? Now that, I can't help. with and this is i think where where our minds are coming together here because on the north side near that fishing if we go down a little bit further there's a spot where for whatever

reason feel free to give me an idea of why this reason exists for whatever reason it's sort of you can't get this far into a pitch and not having out well i'm improvving here guys insert pitch here you know what but for whatever reason feels very real world city to me. It's just like, yeah, there's a dumb thing here. Nobody really remembers why. I don't know why, but whenever my friends and I were causing mischief, that would be the area we'd go to to not be spotted by any guard patrol, to not be worried about, we never skilled the walls, mind you, but I mean, hell. Cowards. That's going to be the way. Mari, was that you or Alex? Neither. Which everyone you're feeling.

It's going to be an Alex guy. I don't think Murray would say it. No. All right. What else we got? Plans. Mari, what you got? And she sort of looks at the wall.

It's tall. She's like, well, I mean, if you want a scout, I can try to sneak ahead in some sort of other form. I don't know what kind of wildlife is down here. If, you know, I'm a little concerned that I can't really turn into a bird because I don't see a lot of them and I feel like that would just get a rock thrown at me. You could do a bat. That's like birds of the underground. Yeah. You could do a bat. There's lots of bats. Spiders. Things like that. Lots of spiders. Spiders? Lots of centipedes. We've got flies. Oh, God.

All right. Well, look, if we head to the north where Doran thinks there's less patrols, and then, Mari, if you turn into a wild-shape and scout and kind of see along the wall which area seems to be the least patrolled, then I could climb up, do my little rope thing. And there's kind of like an awkward moment where Murray, Red, and Doran all kind of look towards Jack. And there's like this kind of like feeling of his lack of magic. It's kind of like really, you can taste it almost hanging in the air. And Red's like, hang. And Jack, you know, without knowing what time it was, we wouldn't be able to work this way. Yeah

Yeah And he can climb the rope You can climb the rope right Oh We'll all have to climb the rope You can climb a rope right The best The best at climbing the rope

And Jack runs his hand Through his singed hair And you know another idea Mari Just out of curiosity Now that I'm actually I started to think about it And I don't really know

Can you turn into water Can you just Could you float through And go through those gates Underwater first of all that's a harmful stereotype about water genassies and I do not like it being perpetuated shit sorry the last thing I want to do is offend somebody with my prejudices okay just because you saw that play called the abyss it doesn't mean that we all just become water blobs the shape of water

in our very different movie in our in our fairness you are called a water genasi like it's in your name it's true and I it's one of those things it's a massive failing of me the fact that I can't just become the water. Believe me, Teenage Me had dreams. All right, so, Mari, you bat form ahead. We're going to swing wide to the right, because we've got to keep a wide berth from the city walls, Doran. It's going to take us a little time to get over there, but in the meantime, spot out the perfect place that we can climb up. I'd like imagine that Murray's standing there and everyone's sort of like watching her waiting to change, and she's like, can I have a little bit of privacy, please? Oh, sorry, sure.

Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah. I want to watch a change. Wait, not like that. I change into a... Have your eyes, Alistair. Creep. There's this moment where she looks totally normal and you can just sort of see this light

start to emanate from within her and then there's just this incredibly quick flash and a little noise, like the wind being sucked inwards as she becomes really small. And suddenly there's just a sense little brown bat on the ground with one little, like, blue streak just down its back. It realizes that it's trying to, like, fly from the ground and struggling.

It's really sad. And then it eventually kind of hauls itself up in a rock and is able to start flapping its wings and trying to fly off silently into the night. This is not a form that she's used to. I watched all that. There's a reflection in that shiny rock. And I feel like Red, Ellister, Jack, and Dunders. Doran, I'll start kind of moving wide to the right to get to the north.

Excellent. We got to go up that way. Mari, as you wing up and over the city, you are afforded a wonderful view of the walls that you are trying to scale. Along most of the wall, it is being patrolled fairly rigorously by these dwarven soldiers. They're all in these, like, matching armor. But indeed, as Doran mentioned, there is a lesser patrolled area towards one side of the city. Some of the stone braziers are actually dark in this area.

How much space is there for there to be like no guards? Is it sort of like 10 meters, 20 meters? How close do you fly down over the wall? She flies quite close. She sort of gets 10 feet of. above any sort of dwarven heads, but she sort of swoops around pretending like she's looking for bugs, but also.

How much are you committing to this bit? Are you eating bugs? Yeah, she's eating bugs. She's snacky. It's been a while. It's been a weird day, and she's hungry. And she's a bat now. Wait, so you eat things and, like, drink things

as the thing that you change into? Of course. But, like, without hesitancy? Like, isn't it you're still your brain there? Yeah, but if you're snacky and you're already a bat, might as well. It's like an animorphs, where, like, the longer you stay in the body of the animal that you're morphed into,

you sort of start to become possessed by, like, the instincts of that animal. I love an animorph's reference. In her case, it takes 45 seconds. Yeah, she's like, mm, a mom. So, like, then when Mari came out, she'd be cool, like, eating bugs too, right? She'd be like, well, I eat them when I'm a bat. No, that's disgusting. How dare you?

No. I don't understand. I'm so confused. Well, when you learned a wild shape. Well, she's mostly, she's mostly just kind of trying to, like, take the appearance of how a bat would be acting, like, sort of swooping around. Yeah, right. You're just hungry. You just want to eat a moth.

She just want to eat it. I imagine that if I was in a bat form, I would be like, I wonder what this tastes like. It tastes better. Well, I guess what I like about it is it implies that the wild shape has a slight influence over you. Yeah. Like, it's not just you turning into a bat. it's like every animal you turn into kind of starts twisting its arm on Mari like a bear I want to try a salmon I'm sure some insects are delicious maybe you just have to be a bat to find out yeah that's the thing I like to imagine the palate changes there's a lot of that nature nurture stuff too right because if you are a bat by nature now that there's you know now you get to try out some of that biology yeah bat by nature yes Mari you realize by swooping down low over the wall that the reason that this area seems to be fairly ill guarded is not because of a deficit of soldiers,

but because of inattention. There is a guard here at this weak point in the wall, but he's slumped down with his back to the outside. So he's got like his back against the wall and he's facing into the city and he's got his nose buried in a book. Can I see what he's reading? You can, but it's all gobbledygook to your bat eyes yeah you can't there is a picture of a key on the cover though aren't bats blind no no i thought they'd navigate through echolocation no no they don't have it's dark so they have to cheap cheap cheap so they could see the writing of a page my whole understanding of bats but maria is a bat is illiterate is illiterate she's mouthful of bugs brain just unable to read well you don't speak dwarven i don't also that no so you

Even if it was her, she'd be like, I don't know what this says. It's gibberish. But yeah, so there's a guard here at the place where Doran told you all to meet. But he is not paying attention. He's shirking his guardly duties, as it were. Is he like a young guy, an old guy? He's a middle-aged dude. He's actually got a stack of books beside him.

Seems like he's chewing his way through. I like this guy. He seems chill. Yeah, he's unbothered. You sure it's not the book, The Darkest Magic from the Deepest Depths? there might be a copy in there you could be they're all dog-eared like he's been reading these over and over again it's so many romance novels yeah unbothered by stories of dragon cultists or sounds from the deep he's just fucking he's gonna be the one who's responsible for the burning of the city in two years from now

you know excellent and uh she takes that all in and then you know chomps up another moth and then flies on down to the second spot that Doran had mentioned. Yeah, this second unguarded area is also not unguarded. There's actually a small crew of dwarfs here. There are three, like, workmen type dudes. They're in heavy overalls, and they're scrubbing a bunch of dwarven graffiti off the walls. No. Scoundrel children.

Unfortunately, you can't read Dwarven, or else I would tell you all the lewd thing. that the graffiti says. It says, tasteful stew. How dare you? I can't have that. Yeah, so again, no like attentive guards necessarily, but there are some blue collar types here taking care of cleaning the walls.

Right. On the outside or the inside? Both. One on the outside, two on the inside. All right. They're scrubbing straight through the wall. They are doing an excellent job. She snaps up more bugs.

and then flies back over to the guys. I can't wait for Mari to be back in Janassi form and, like, eating mosquitoes. She's picking flies in her teeth. Mari, you have fly wings all in your teeth. What is it? Dracula dead and loving it. Every has like a little grasshopper leg between his teeth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know what you're talking about. I can't believe what you're talking about. Picking her teeth of it. So by the time you circle back, Mari, the rest of the party is pretty much caught up to you. Yeah, we're, like, covered behind a rock. And then this bat flies up, and I'm like, Oh, sorry, Mary. She's only got one hit points if you hit her.

She just turns back into it. I love the idea, though, that you're like, dear God, and you just whack her really hard. And then all of a sudden just a Janassi falls out of the sky. Yeah. That's awesome, actually. Oh, damn it, sorry. I'm not impressed that you hit the bat.

God. Good of dexterity. Sorry, Mari. That's not how I like turning back. That really hurt. What did you find out? So tell us, what do your bat I see? Oh, bats actually are blind.

They are not, and she'd... Nope, canonically, they are. Red's favorite enemy is not bats. I love the idea that as a ranger, you have a favorite enemy who you'd like know everything about and then everything else. And an unfavored enemy? The opposite where I know nothing about them. I love that. That's bats.

Animal. But I play it like I know a lot about them. Oh, I mean, yeah, bats obviously. aren't blind. I meant because they're rats with wings and rats aren't blind that there wouldn't be rats. We're all just kind of making faces at red like.

Yeah? Red's like, do you hear something? No, there was something over there. Sorry, back to you, Mari. So anyways, Mari's hearing is still like ping ponging back into normal. It's like everything's a little too loud and echoy. Oh, that'd be kind of cool.

It's just kind of ricocheting in her head, and she's got... She's reacting because bats have terrible hearing. They don't, like, it's very muffed in there. God, I'm just picking bits of a moth out of her teeth. What did I do with their, God. Wait, so you don't remember what you did in Wild? No, I remember. What is this?

It's like a blackout drink. It's like a bender. All these new rules now. Being an animal is just like you're being fucking super drunk. You're like eating all these animals. You don't know where you are. You don't remember. You're like, God, who did I sleep?

Oh, did I sleep with a bat last night? I think I threw up. Are you eating moths? Can you hold my hair red? I do like the idea that wild shape is just party time. You just go feral, quite literally. That's awesome. Yeah.

There is a guard over there. It's pretty quiet, but there is one guard. He's not paying attention, though. He's reading a lot of books. So we could probably either get the drop on him or take him out or sneak up or something. But we've got a fair moment. out of quiet space except for that one guy

and maybe we just send in Jack with a whole bunch of other books and he can distract him. Oh yeah. We probably don't want to show our faces. Oh, I don't want to give my books away. Yeah, that too, sure. This is a second edition.

Well, what are we thinking? So, okay, you presented three options, send in a distraction, take him out, or sneak by him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there any way you guys can put him to sleep or, you know, He's not paying attention.

If he's got his nose in a book... I could cast silence on him. We picked up 45 gold off of one of those dwarves earlier. How much do you think... We don't need them to be silent about us forever. We need it to be quiet about us for like an hour, right? How long is it going to take to get to your mom's house, Doran? Once we're in the wall.

Trying to bribe a dwarf guard, that's like... That's pretty difficult. Well, not only that. Let's remember our first interaction with the guards. They did not let us into the city under any circumstances. This guy is not the sharpest... I love that Jack is just... judging a guy literally who's reading a book.

Have you ever been really engrossed in a good book, and that's really all you want to do for the next six to eight hours? He doesn't want to bother with somebody climbing over the wall. If we're just saying, hey, ignore us. That's a dwarf. Don't even worry about it. We're going over this wall. You're making a lot of assumptions based on the fact that a man is reading a book.

Look, I'm not saying you're wrong. We could absolutely go and bribe him. But I would say the smarter choice would either just try to be working around him, not even involving him at all, because we have pass without trace and silence. We have a pretty good way to keep his ears quiet. Or doing some non-lethal damage on this guy from afar. I can pick him off, knock him out, and tie him up behind a rock until we're done. You'd rather hit him over the head than offer him some gold just to keep reading his book and ignore us?

What I'm saying is, one is guaranteed to work, one isn't guaranteed to work, and I don't think... I feel like those could be a sequence of plans that happen. You could, yeah, you could just offer him the gold and then if he says, no, you could just hit him with a rock. And we could try and sneak first, and then when he finds us off from the gold, and then when that doesn't work, hit him with gold. Or I just hit him with a rock now and we stop arguing about this because I could ping this fucker from 600 meters away. I could be a bat again and just go. All right. All right. Stop, stop. We're not shooting any dwarfs, okay? No, we're not shooting. He's going to hit him with a rock. Doren, pay attention.

It doesn't matter. It's a lot easier for all of you guys can become bats. going to attack a dwarf, all right? I mean, we just killed like five of them, but okay. We had lined to draw on the sand, Doran. They did attack us first. They threatened us. I'm not saying kill the guy. Can I speak? I'm thinking that we go the route of, you know, cast your spells so we could pass silently, like you said. Oh, my spells. And, and if we get noticed, then maybe try and bribe him. Last case scenario, we knock them over the head with a rock and knock him out. But I think we should at least just try to sneak by him. All right, fine by me. I mean, ultimately,

the best case scenario is no one knows we're going in or out, bribe or attack otherwise. If they don't know we slipped in, that's only going to be beneficial for us. He's got his nose in a book. If we go in silently, he's not going to notice. How much space between the guy reading the book and climbing the wall was there, Maori? Like, was it right next to him or like, you know, 100 feet down the wall? Or what? I mean, you've got, and she's sort of counting in her head trying to translate from bat to human size. Bat math. She's like doing Batman by of six. Yeah, like 200 bats.

How many crickets is that? Not so many. There's about 50 feet between him and the other sort of patrolling guards. So we got some space, but not a lot. So we're going to have to either take him out or be really, really stealthy because we don't have a lot of time. I got one last pitch, and it's a bit of Jack's plan as well. What if I shoot him with an arrow?

Okay. Until he's dead. Wait, let me finish. Red's waiting to see if they'll prove that much. All right, fine. But I'll make it a beguiling arrow. It's basically just getting like a little bit of a tap, and it won't even knock him out, but what it will do is it will charm him.

Then, if we just move along the wall, we got 100 feet of freedom versus trying to. That's actually a great idea. What are the odds this guy will recognize Doran? And if he just comes around and looks all official like this guy's going to shape up and be like, oh shit, I was caught. Maybe I should start patrolling again and you move on down the wall

one way and we make our... That's true. I mean, Doran was introduced at the guards. Well, look, we can stand around debating what we're going to do. I think we should just... The sneaking thing that you cast on all of us, whatever you do, Red, that thing that you do, that makes us

all silent. It's unbelievable. We'll just walk right up to the wall. You know, you climb up, attach a rope to the top. I would put money on it. The guy doesn't even lift his head. Well, all right. If that's what you want to do, Doran, ultimately this is

your mother's life on the line, but my pass without trace is going to lose its effect when I'm at the top of the wall, which means if we all go up together, by the time I climb up that 20 or 30 feet, you guys are going to be just exposed, standing on a wall next to a guard within 50 feet.

Well, I think we should just try and pass without a trace. All right, let's do it. Cool. And contingency wise, you shoot him with one of your beguiling arrows. I looked up the beguiling arrow. The beguiling arrow deals an extra 2D6 psychic damage on top of... extra fuck you. Fuck this guy.

The effect, right? So it's, and red deals pretty decent damage, so. Yeah, but here's the thing. I wasn't telling them that. I'm gonna lobotomize this dude. That's why Red waited, that's why Red waited like a good breath after shooting.

He was like, I'm gonna shoot the guy. Full stop. And I'll charm him. There was a secret sentence change. A Doran could just walk up to this guard and be like, hey, um,

you know, I'm, trying to get into the city, but I've been told that they're, that I'm not allowed in, or that there's a rock plague or something, like, alone, and maybe distract the guy while you guys... What are you saying? Plague weird. Plag.

I mean, if anything, Doran could say, you know, I'm just feeling nostalgic. I used to sneak out to this spot when I was a kid and climb this part of the wall. I just want to see if I still got it. Here, turn towards me this way. That would be a convincing way. I think we should go for. Most of these things, just how they find themselves work themselves.

Why don't you use your disguise spell, Doran? just look like one of the gods that we saw at the door. You have a tattoo with disguise on it. Remember, we got you a magic tattoo. Well, hey, let's just do that then. Well, that's a great idea. I also have enhanceability, which might help, which I can also help give advantage on charisma checks, like on any... That would help him lie.

That's a great idea. Yeah. Dorn, all you have to do is get that guy to move down the wall. We can do the rest if he's out of sight. Now we're thinking. I'll just go up and say, your shift's over and go return your book, you lazy, guard. Perfect.

Remember how those guards looked at the front door? Of course I do. Just look like one of them. He lifts up his sleeve and looks at the tattoo. Yeah, that's right. I can transform.

I forgot about this. Man. Roll out. Huh? We'll do this. Okay, excellent. Doran, you transform into the image

of one of the guards that you saw yesterday. There, there. How do I look? Do I look guardy like? You look very much. much like one of the gods from yesterday, yes. Perfect.

All right. Yeah, I wonder what his name was. Don't overthink it. It was Mark. Just avoid it. Chris. Damn you, Chris. So, Doran, you're a dead ringer for that member of the guard that you saw yesterday,

down to the cloak and the epaulettes and the fancy beret that they all wear. So if I looked apart, let's go for it. Excellent. The minute you get his attention and stuff, pulling him one way, me and the other two will start working along the other wall. Unless you want a wild shape up there, Mari, obviously, you can just go up, but I figured you'd want to save your spells or something. I think I'll save it. And just before Doran goes, she's like, and just for luck. And she very gently sort of places her hand just like on his chest. And what all

he can hear is the sound of like twinkling bird song and like joyous laughter and this warm feeling of her hand that spreads out across him and that would be enhanceability that you now have advantage on charisma checks bears injurious oh no now you're just a big bear

go eat of salmon and then as soon as you do this Dorn like looks at you and he like I felt really nice he winks and you're like oh all right and I'll use my disguise

self-spell to look like Doren, and that way, when you polymorphed Jack to look like me, wait, what are we doing again? Go, Dorn, go, go, go. So Doren, now that you look like this member of the guard from yesterday, what are you going to do? Doren strolls up to the guard. You know, I kind of picture that we've all been standing off kind of in the darkness, like 100 feet away. I hope so. We're standing under a lamp.

No, just right next to him. He kind of, he does one of those, like, running walk things really quickly up to, like, the edge of the water. And then, like, strolls up from where they, where he might have been walking from the gate. He turns to the, to the guard. Hey, hey, what do you got your nose on that book for? Don't you know? I can't see him because he's, like, he's, like, he's sitting down. Yeah, well, I like, I walk.

Back to the wall. I walk right up to him. It's like, you can't. What? You can't get in. Oh, he's. How are you getting inside? Oh, he's inside the wall?

Everyone's confused. What are you talking about, Joe? I thought he was outside the wall. Yeah. Yeah, you're all outside the wall. I thought he was outside the wall. Yeah. The guard is like on the top.

He's on the wall. Oh, shit. Oh, that changes everything. That changes everything. We got to have this whole conversation for 20 minutes. To the wall facing the city because he's not on the top of the parapet. I said that the guards are on the parapet. Yep.

I missed that detail. Missed that, sir. I don't think anyone, I don't. I don't think anyone got that from that. I mean, I think I knew that, but... It makes perfect sense. Then how are we... Oh, I was totally picturing them walking around outside the city.

What did you know that, Mari? What did you expect Doran to walk up to do? I was like... I was like... If you knew that, what were you thinking Doran was going for? I was imagining Doran walking, like, up on the outside of the wall, be like, hey. I love the shot of, like, you see Red smiling and nodding,

and like, it pans over to Jack smiling and nodding. And Mari's, like, smiling and nodding. And then he gets to the bottom of the wall, And then Marty's like, oh, wait. Okay, I got this. Doren walks right. You know what? You guys stop me if you think I want to go too far.

No, do it. This is canonical, starting now. Doran walks up to the gate. And he nods at the guards as he walks in and he goes, shift change. One of them waves to you, Doren. Hey, Doka. Hey. Oh, tired.

And he walks in through the gates. Are we near a gate? I guess we were near a gate. I didn't picture we were near a gate. It's fine. Yeah. Doran, now you are alone inside. Level one success.

He turns and walks up the stairs. He knows where the stairs are. Like, Doran remembers the city, right? Yeah. So he walks up and he sees the guard that we've kind of all been talking about with the nose in the book, right? He says... Yeah, you pass a couple guards

on the way. Another one nods to you. What did he say? My name was doca. Doca? Docha? We're doomed. It's like two seconds.

Doja cat? He says, uh... Hey. Thought you were a station on the other side. Yeah, I was. But then I saw you over here with your nose in the book. Listen. On the other side of the city.

Boss says you got to keep moving. The boss says you got to keep moving along. A boss says that Yeah The real boss The big boss And he points up to the Chancellor's house Gautier

Roll deception Yeah The Chancellor is paying attention To you in particular Is that a charisma role? It's a charisma role It certainly is The big boss

He's going to God The big boss I mean should I roll my Lucky You have advantage I love the idea that this guy's got his back to Doren and he's, like, clearly failing. And then Doren just watches an arrow sink into the guy's back. And he just, like, falls softly off the edge.

And then he, like, zooms in. And I'm, like, waving from the rocks. You know what? And that's exactly it. Like, like, don't do it. But Doren sees you down on the ground over his shoulder. I have my bow drawn, Mari and Jack are kneeling next to me. I'm like, and like, there's a little conversation between us.

I'm like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm like saying it to Jack, I'm just. I'm going to take the shot. Just give him a second. And then do you see Doran's face? And he goes, no, no, no, no. And he just shakes his head.

He's going to fail. He's got to fail. He's totally fucked up. He shakes his head at you. No, no, no. We didn't even know this guy was on the outside of the wall. How did we miss that? It was bad, maybe.

It's the bat vision. It's all wonky. So it's an 11. Are you going to beef your role, Alex? Are you going to leave it? I'm going to leave it. Let it ride? Yeah.

With advantage? Yeah. Oh, I rolled a 10 and a 12, and I have a negative one. Oh, balls. The arrow, like, the bow is, like, taunt. It's like, you can hear it creaking. You can, it's his hand is shaking right now. Yeah.

The Dwarven Guard, he does that thing where he, like, keeps his place in the book with his finger and stands up to look at you. And he's like, what don't you understand? Like, you're reading a book. You're not even paying attention. Since when do you get to tell me what to do, do? I outrank you. Since you were reading, and Doran grabs the book from his hand and tosses it out of the city, like over the wall. Right, and hits red in the head.

So I want you to tell me specifically, what does he do when I do that? He watches the book go. So he turns his head. And this is when Doran pushes him right off the wall. It just gives him a good shove. Almost one of those, like, as he turns to the head, Doran leans down, grabs his legs and, like, does one of the, there's, like, no doubt. He's, that flips him over the wall. And Doran knows he's got to go quick, it's got to be quick and done once.

There's no doubt. Fuck it. This guy was rude, off the wall with you. I mean, for a warrior like Doran and a guard so unprepared, I think it's a negligible effort for you to absolutely tip him over this wall. Okay. And Red runs, runs to the base. He's like, oh, fuck, we're doing that. And Red, like, just starts running.

Because I can go in six seconds. Yeah. Because, A, I don't want him to die. He was reading a fucking book. And B, when he hits, he's just, if he doesn't die, he's just going to go, ow, guards. Like, like, this is so poorly thought of. I can't imagine.

It's like we should have planned this. Like, the thing was, the thing was Red's, like, shot was ready. And, like, Doran, like, pushed him out of my shot, right? So I don't even have the shot anymore. I'm like, fuck. The Red throws his bow. He just, like, uses his cat agility to run 70 feet to the bottom of the fucking wall. To get underneath a man that's falling?

Listen, I can move 120 feet in six seconds. Yeah, but you can't catch a guy. Don't make me do math. He's going to fall a lot fast than six seconds. How fast do you fall? Well, it's six. 9.8 meters per second square? But I think D&D decided 500 feet in a round.

In around? I thought so. So yeah, never mind then. But I love the idea that he lands in an injured heap like a half a second before Red gets there. Oh, God, damn it. Check his pulse and, like, see if his neck's broken or something. Oh, he's not unconscious. No, Red just kicks his head.

Oh, no. I have to make him unconscious now. You did this. Well, unfortunately, by power of improv, their uniform feature. is a beret instead of a helmet. Oh, good, perfect. That benefits my knee. You kick him in the head.

Why is it wool? So Red like runs up, this guy right in front of him. He's like, ow! And I'm like, sorry, man. And I just knock him out with a kick to that. Non-lethaly, we hope. That's right.

Non-lethal is the point. Great. Good, very good. Very good. And Doran with eyebrows raised and kind of giving a shrug to you, turns his back to look. Who are you shrugging it?

Absolutely as natural as possible. Yeah, and Red whispers up. to you and he goes, this is why we have plans. Doran, like, whisper, yells down. I'm sorry. Okay. Just throw the rope. Doran, you hear from farther down the wall.

Something wrong over there? For fuck sake. Red starts dragging the guy back. Yeah. It doesn't seem like... No, I lost my page. And then, no, no, he says, I lost my page. And then the book just falls back, like, I threw it back up.

I lost my page, and the book just comes, like, falling back up. We're read through it. Both of you get inspiration. I love that so much. Harlan, Alex, do you guys have inspiration? This book just like falls on his feet. I love that image. It's fine.

Thorne picks it up. Without hesitation as you hear of the books land next to him. And picks it up and puts his face into it, like, just as the other guard was. Yeah. Not a problem over here. Thought I heard something. Excellent. All right.

Red, Mari, Jack. Red stashes the body. I mean, I mean, Elista, you, look. You don't look exactly the same. What are you doing? He's trying to fart? What is this? Trying to get big.

You don't have to throw a rope, by the way. I drop a rope down. I tie it and drop it. I was going to say, I'm not going to throw a rope up 30 feet. You're going to drop a rope. That you brought with you definitely, because this was always the plan. And Red takes the armor off the guard and puts it on Elister. It's like, look, Elister.

If it buys us a second of belief, it's worth it. Might as well put one of us in actually. actual garb. Alistair does an experimental flourish with the cape. And then looks over at Mari from underneath the brim of the beret. How do it look? Weirdly fetching. Do you know what?

Don't answer that. All right. Let's go. Why does the beret have a brim? A really good beret. We advise her on the beret is so odd. Dwarven berets are built different. They're just different.

Dwarven built different. I'm a stupid parade. And maybe as we're walking, Reds like asking Jacks, like, I mean, why, maybe they would have Deregards gods, right? I don't know. They're just no people. Deregardes, am I right? Yeah. Yeah, who knows? I mean, it could be a lovely diversity.

I've never been to Scarborough. I don't know what kinds of dwarves live here. Doren's not the most forthcoming with information I would call accurate. Yeah, but he should have knows how to improvise a plan. He yes and did. The best part is he can haul me up the rope And so we don't have to worry about me falling That's the best part, yeah, good

Golden line I've found In the foreground of the shot There's like a crumpled body of a dwarf in heart underpants And nothing else Behind a rock outcropping And like in the background The characters are walking towards the wall Like assessing this fucking rope that Doran has dropped

Who's trying first? I'll probably just climb without rope I'll probably just scale cool because time is not our friend i'll go next to leave marie and our friend at the bottom together because excellent then i'll go last to make sure everybody gets up before me because i can i can pick the rope up if it falls or whatever um rope climbing not having been your favorite in um half elf gym class no and these dwarven walls being especially difficult to scale you're going to have to make an athletics check well here was here was my thought you loop the rope around your back you

you give it a tie around your waist, you give it two tugs. Doran, the strong one, hauls the weight of Jack up because his lifting carrying is well more than me, hauls it up, drops the rope back down again.

It is going to create more of a spectacle on the top of the wall that Doran the dwarf would be like pulling. Every once in a while, Jack can pull one out. Hold that in your back pocket. I got an 11 athletics.

So what's that thing for me? And 11, with the aid of a rope to climb up a wall, absolutely works. Yeah, I can rope. It's not the fastest climbing job, but you manage. Well, we knew that was going to be the case. All right, Mari, want to roll an athletics check for us? I see her struggling, and as Jack comes to the top of the wall, I, like, point down the stairs exactly the best place to go.

Right down there's a building go stand. there's a couple barrels behind that building. Okay. She should be able to hide right there. Yeah, I'll be right there. And I just take a quick scan over the books that this guy was reading. You fuck. You can't read Dwarvish, unfortunately.

I know. I just wanted to know. Maybe there was a common. And then Doren sees Mari struggling a bit. She's struggling. She's got so much roper, and it's not even funny. Her hands are raw at this point. Elister is already climbing up behind you, and he's actually got a good handle on

he rolled an 18 of his athletics. Oh, he's strong. So, Mari, would you roll? Five. Okay. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah, so you make it about two-thirds of the way up this rope before your strength just

fucking fails you. Mari, no! And you just, she just... Red calls out from below. Yeah, her hands are just so completely raw with roper and that she just can't take another grip on the rope and she just goes. and she barely even makes a sound and she's falling. And Elister, all of a sudden, red beside you, you just see him shift,

and it's almost faster than you can even really comprehend what's going on. He, unfortunately, shreds through his new guards clothes. Oh, no! Damn it, they're not leather. He turns into this massive hulking, dark dwarf and reaches out and grabs Mari out of the, air. Hurry!

Did I die? What is this? What the hell? Doran's doing his best to keep composure. Wait. Oh, okay. Sorry, I just... It's fine.

Thank you. Hold on. And he just starts climbing up the rope with you, like, on his shoulder as a large creature now. Dorn, suddenly hearing this, like, rope under huge tension is like, creaking. God. I'm like, oh, gee, what the hell's going? And turns around to see giant Elister.

carrying Mari up this rope. He's got a comically small hat on his head. With a visor and a beret. The beret with a brim. And then very shortly after both of you are safe on this battlement, he

whoop, whoop, swoop, shrinks back down to normal size. Thank goodness. Sorry I didn't know what. No, thank you. Are you okay? No, I'm good. Thank you. I guess that's what.

Decks, shut up, go down there. Go to the right. All right. You can't be talking up here. Down at the bottom of the stairs behind one of these homes, as Doran pointed out, there are some barrels. Jack is crouching there with his loot, maybe six books that you swiped from the top of the pile. I can see Jack going through a key, key, key, key, not in the fucking book of a key. Sure.

Can you imagine? And Elister crouches down there behind some of the barrels. and looks over at you, Mari, come, come on, back here. Yeah, okay. And she's, she scrotches down back there. She's like, I guess, I guess the thing that makes you kind of, like, get big, explode, whatever it is, is, if you're panicking, or if you're scared for somebody, or if it's a fear-based thing, or, but, yeah, but also thank you.

Yeah, no, no problem. I just, I, I just felt like my heart, jump in my throat and then almost like I couldn't breathe and then just I don't know I don't want to hey you heard it though yeah I'm and honestly very grateful for it because definitely had a split second there where I thought I was going to turn out like that other guy hey we're we're gonna get through this together red probably wouldn't kick you in the head he just runs down there just a kicker in the face sorry it's what we're doing right it was a really cute line and I stepped all over it

but I couldn't help my job. And then Red, you're the last one up, right? Yeah, I feel like Red just flips over the side. So the tap's door on the back. She says, okay. Terrible improvisation, by the way. Terrible improvisation. Sorry about that.

Look, the others are down there. Okay, fine. Red just links off, muttering to himself, I offered to shoot at the very beginning. And he said, no, he didn't want to hurt it. Oh, hey, guys. Hey, good job, Alistair. Thanks, Red.

I try my best here to be part of the group. Yeah, let's all remember that. Next time, Ellis DeN needs to grow big, just push Mari off something. All right. Dora.

I love the idea, like, later on, we're like, we need Ellis to get big and wrestling pushes Mari. But it works. He's like, ah. But he's not there, so he just falls to her death.

He's not there. He's like, sorry, I was in the bathroom. I got to hear him. What happened? Marie's just on the ground. It's good. It's good.

So Doran, like, looking around now that everybody's up, he grabs the rope and stuffs it back into his satchel. And then he's like, looking around thinking to himself, I can't just leave. They're going to be like, where's that guard? Doran has to do with the rest of his shift, I guess. He kind of walks up to the next closest guard. He says, hey, did you see where he's kind of hoping the name just comes to the team? She just looks at you. Doran's plans always fall

one step in I just opened my mouth and hope a name's gonna pop out that's Doran's every day What's his name? What's his name? Oh man I'm listen I think we

Listen we went for lunch together yesterday And I think we both got the same food poisoning So I'm Can you just keep an eye on things I got to run he ran to I'll be back I want you to roll Deception check

Dukeception No good thing He's got Eagle's splendor though He's still got the splendor going Yeah you still got Unnecessarily complicated lies Is Doran's brand 14

Yeah the guards sort of looks you up and down And he's like Yeah I mean Don't take too long No I won't I won't I won't And he Dorn acts it up a little bit

And holds his bottom As he's kind of running away Gets to the bottom of the stairs Dors are weird No, Doren's weird That's why he had to leave I think we're good for a little bit What did you do?

Buy us like no extra time What do you do you doing? Let's just get moving Okay, let's not stop and talk about it You know what, whatever, let's just keep going We gotta go get Doreen They're not even paying attention And Red casts pass without trace

All right, let's go And Red starts sneaking leading the way and then he stops and he goes I don't I have no idea where we're going Doory Oh I do

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