Dice Shame - 8 | 'A Shot in the Dark'

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

The cave before them sits embedded within the mountain wall. It looms over them, beckoning them forward, ready to swallow them whole... Dice Shame is a podcast that welcomes its audience to the gaming table. There’s nothing quite like getting together with your close friends on game night, getting the snacks out, and rolling some dice together. Right now we’re playing through Storm King’s Thunder, an adventure for D&D 5th edition. Like the games we play at home, we try not to take ourselves too seriously. The show is entertaining, inclusive, and irreverent, while still taking the rules (somewhat) seriously. As for the eponymous Dice Shame? When the rolls get cold—well, you’ll have to tune in to find out! Episodes are released every Thursday at 1:20 am. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

That is a big... That's a lot of rat. I see the passageways, boss. It's real scary. This is where we make our stand. Doran, he's sort of like caressing the buttocks. Their faces are slick with blood. Yeah, being surrounded by giant rats,

not Jack's favorite place to beat. When you don't have dark vision, you got to spend time to fuck around with lanterns. Yeah, you see the brain and the skull and everything kind of just separated. Well done, Doran. Let's fuck up some goblins. Hello there and welcome back to Dice Shane, the actual play D&D5E podcast. We're playing through Storm King's Thunder and we're on episode 8, a shot in the dark.

MVP this week is Marvin Tanner for his ongoing support and being the first person to review us on Pod Chaser. Check us out there for new episodes and if you like us, leave a review. Remember, you can be named in our intro as MVP as well. Just follow us on social media and tweet, create, post, or share a dice shame. We appreciate fan art, fan fiction, just about any fun way you want to share us. All right, it's that time. Let's go. I am really happy about Chester coming back.

He failed us in the first episode by missing the tree. Then he did two so far, natural 20s. Yeah. Well, you know what? Chester is an arbiter of what should happen. That's right. He is a sign of things to come. He was showing you that, you know, you shouldn't hit this tree because this is just your ego that wants to hit the tree.

That's so right. How many of us have dice in dice jail right now? I do. Jail or the Dice Jarre? The shame jar. You've got blue in there. The same jar is Dice Jail. I kind of want to grab blue and use.

You can't have him. You do your stint in Dice jail? I don't know. Okay, so I guess I think we're all maybe coming at this with a different mindset. For me, the Dice Shame Jar is not a jail per se because when I put a dye in there. I don't want him to come out. I took Chester out at the beginning because I was kind of weak and, you know, I'm glad I did. But I currently have another red dye in there that failed me hard on attack. He's never coming out. He's dead to me. I mean, but you've really set the

precedent with a die can go in and come out, go in. It's like a turnstile, dice shame jar over there. But this is kind of like a jail where you put someone in and come out and then the jail gets converted to a processing plant to kill people. Is that a thing that happens? Yeah. You don't have You don't have a person-killing processing plan where you're from. It's one of the most popular businesses. I used to work at one. Pulling that lever, that sounds terrible. If you feel like you wrongfully shamed and die.

Yeah, that... To me, this was like a wrongfully accused in jail, and I busted him back out. Well, because we want the dice to come back and go out into our listeners or wherever the hell happens to them and do really lovely, great things at their table. In their communities.

Once they've had some time to think about what they've done, and, you know, there's got to be hope for everyone. And Chester can be a leading example. example for these dice. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. You know, it doesn't have to be all ones. Yeah, you're right. I guess ultimately it is shaming. It's not dice punishment.

Anyway, as the defeated pair of ogres gasp, their dying moans at your feet, their corpulent bodies charred and slick with mud and oil and blood. You hear the sharp cries of goblins echo from within the cave. Your presence has certainly

been noted. Can I roll intelligence on what corpulent means? as Harlan. Jack would describe corpulent as like these ogres festering at our feet. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Just define, beside the dictionary is big Big dead ogre.

Dead ogre festering in the sun. Just be glad that they're not getting up and walking again in this state as can happen sometimes. Jolly good. Red's going to slide down from the tree and join you guys by the mouth of the cave. Well done, Jack.

wonderful job. Yeah, that was some good control in the battlefield there. Yeah, you really did great battlefield maneuvering there with the flaming sphere and the grease. Very clever. Well, it had some inspiration last night.

Came up with some new tricks. Literally. And actually, we don't have any inspiration right now. No inspiration in the park. Doren stands there and pulls the dirty rag from his back pocket and wipes his battle axe from the festering blood.

And the look on Doren's face is sort of a little bit like unsure, but also getting back into the rhythm of battle again. He's feeling and looking much more confident. Remind you the old days, Doran? Oh yeah. He nods at you. I'm very impressed at the ball

of flame you're able to produce. Thank you. It's incredible. So this Morak we're saving, did you fight, were you in the same unit? Years and years, we battled together. Was there a battle cry or something you had? Just something, maybe we can shout it to Morac to give him, let him know that hope and friends are coming.

we would always salute our maker Moradin. We would call it his name for Moradin on the way in, but I don't think any of you people would understand. What do you mean, you people? Well, I'm a cat. You're not a dwarf. Are you a cat? I'm a sort of foxy.

Look, there are townsfolk inside. Moradin or Morac or whatever your friend is. Is in there, we need a plan. Now, when I looked in, there were two goblins on either side of the front door. Part of me thinks we could try to sneak in, but, and red sort of eyes. There's no sneaking dooring up and down. He's like, but that might be a bad idea. This is coming from the noisy little,

little fox we've got over here that tries to sneak, but ends up hat-ta-ta-ta-ta-thang everywhere. We could try some sort of diversion like we did last time, which worked really well with the ogre, or we could just go in. They know we're here. We might as well just go in and say, knob and thog, we fucking killed them. Show us hark or you're all going to die.

You think intimidation-wise? What else they got? They're tiny little goblins, and we just... How about this? and Doran walks over to one of the ogres and hacks off his head in this like really sick, twisted way while you guys are arguing about

how to how to show some, some intimidation. Now Doran, we should respect the dead. Oh my God. I don't think that that's... As Kraloth says that, all you hear is the... Oh, all right, and Krayloff is going to move aside

and he's going to begin casting a ritual, begins praying to Kalimvor to give him the sight to view any magical energies in the next 10 minutes. Speaking of inspiration, Alex, I think that was a very inspired idea. I will be awarding you an inspiration starburst. Thank you. Thank you very much. Red watches, you hacked the head off the ogre with like,

at first sort of a bit of surprise and then afterwards kind of like, Oh, interesting, like looking at the insides of the head or the neck, I should say. And then without consulting you, he pulls the head off the ogre and throws it into the cavern. And quite confidently exclaims, we're coming in! Let's go time, and I guess I'll knock an arrow. I will have my shield out, and I have cast, detect magic. Beyond the cave mouth is a vast cavern at the center of which is a thicket of stalagmites. Water drips from the ceiling ceaselessly.

The floor of the cavern is littered with broken spears and arrows and speckled with bat guano. Near to the cave entrance is a pool of mud where Nob the ogre was lately bathing. You can see that there are six naturally formed tunnels branching off from the main body of this vast cavern. There are five, ten foot high ledges that ring the circumference of the cabin atop which stand, armed goblin sentries. And as you roll this ogre's head into the cavern, they all plug it with arrows.

Everyone roll for initiative. Red? Nine. Doren? 17. Nice. Jack? Seven.

Krayloth. Eight. I can't actually see a thing, come to think of it. No, Krayloth, you can't see a thing. But I have detect magic on, so maybe I can see something. It is Doren's turn. I'd like to try and use this commander's strike, actually, for the benefit of red. When you take the attack action on your turn, you can forego one of your attacks and use a bonus action to direct one of your companions to strike.

Okay, so I'll just roll, use my superiority dye to give him the... So add seven to your damage. Nice! You're going to destroy this goblin. Thank you. Which goblin are you attacking? The one to the left of the inside cave. So what's it sound like when Doran is giving this command to red?

Maybe instead of, it's not so much a command, maybe it's more of an action. Like, I see Red drawing his bow and I say, there's one over there, take a fire at that. And I step in front of you with my shield up, sort of like blocking your whole lower half. Amazing. All right. Let's hit it. Yeah, that's a 26. Oh, yeah.

Hell yeah. 13 damage. Your arrow flies into the darkness, slams into this goblin's chest, knocks him off of his feet, and pins him to the far wall of the cavern. He's dead. Well done, Doran. Let's fuck up some goblins. Nice shot, Red.

Thank you. It's the goblin's turns. They can all see Red and Doran easily as you're standing in the mouth of this cavern backlit by the sunny forest behind you. They're all going to attack. 20 to hit, Red? Yep.

Eight piercing damage. Woof. Ooh. And Doran, 18 to hit? Yes. Seven piercing damage And two other arrows Fly out of the darkness

And miss both of you How are you doing health-wise there, Dorn? 14. Red, it's your turn. The first arrow of this campaign Hits me in the leg And it strikes in clean Oh, bloody hell!

First blood. Yeah, first blood for red Although it matches my, you know, fur color. Do I see any other creatures besides the goblins? You do not. Perfect.

Then do any of the goblins look particularly different than the others? a chieftain perhaps. Redd, you can see three goblins perched atopledges all around the circumference of the cave. I'm going to attack the one to the farthest to the right. Do it. 15. You hit? Eight damage. He's dead. And I will spend the remainder of my turn. Are there stalagmites that would possibly give me cover from both sides? Yes. Oh, I just realized I also get advantage. on creatures who have not yet taken attack rolls against me.

That's something I got to remember for later. But anyway, I will move in. I will ignore the difficult terrain because I'm a natural explorer. I'll use my feline agility, and then I will hide between these two stalagmites. So as I move up, obviously, I see more of the map, and I call out to them, there's another one on the left, which I guess is a total of three goblins now. So there's one left on the right directly in front of the cave entrance. Flanking the entrance, yes.

And there are two on the other side, the left. Kralath. Okay, I'm looking into this dark cavern, and I cannot see a thing. But what I do see is Doren in front of me taking an arrow to the chest, and I can see him breathing heavier, and I'm going to cast cure wounds on him. Thank you, sir. So you are going to get four hit points, unfortunately. Hey, now back up to 18. Do you want to move at all, Kralath?

I can't really move yet because I can't see a thing. Maybe what I'll do is if Doran moves, I will follow him and stay five feet behind him. Cool. Red my mind. Just kind of hold on to his... Hold on to the rear of his cloak. Jack, what happens now? Jack launches Kieran off of his hand to fly into the cave and try and see if there's anything else that he hasn't spotted.

So there's a little pathway on the map to the southwest of the cave. And then I'm going to step just up behind Doren, spy the goblin to the right of the door and call his soul into my orb. against DC 13. 15. That'll do it. Nothing happens. Kieran, what do you see? I see the passageways, boss.

It's real dark. I never thought that was a problem for you. No, but it's scary. Fair enough. God, I love Kieran. Doran, it's your turn. I'm going to move in and attack this gobbling on the right-hand side here. He's 10 feet up.

So if you'd like, you can try to scramble up the wall, you'd have to be making an athletics check for me to climb. You know what? No, I'll use my crossbow. Hopefully I hit with a six. No, sir. You didn't have a lot of luck with that crossbow. Did you want to move at all? Yeah. Let's go towards this goblin. Toward the northeast goblin, the one that's flanking the entrance on the right. Yeah. Is there a way I can help Kralath move with me? In other situations, you might be able to pick him up with your action or drag him with you, but you've already fired your bow. Where are you taking my action? So now, me preparing my action to move with him, though. You can't prepare a movement. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.

But I suppose on Kralas' turn, he could probably move in my direction following. As if that had happened at the same time. Would that be fair? Yeah. Okay. That's fine. I wasn't particularly set on moving where I don't have cover either. Right, right, right, right, right.

So I'm just kind of approaching the goblin, and I'm going to take my chances, you know, 10 feet below him, hoping that he'll find some courage to try and approach me, and I'll take advantage of that. Great. It's the Gobbo turn. Gabbolet. The goblins see the Tabaxi red take a valiant run forward into the cave and then cowardly hides behind the stalagmites.

An owl flies into the cave and then a dwarf runs in shortly after his crossbow bolt. The goblin on the right side of the entrance, the southeast goblin, can't really get a bead on Doran because he's right at the base of this platform. He's instead going to try to shoot Kieran out of the sky. Ooh, sadness. With a seven. I think that'll miss. Ooh, so the arrow clatters off of the cave wall as Kieran wheels away into the darkness. Can you give Kieran mage armor?

plus five or something. The other two goblins along the west wall both aim their bows at Doran and fire. One of them connects. You take five piercing damage as the bolt sings through the darkness and hits you right in the trapezoid muscle. Doran exclaims with a feeling of love.

I love the feeling of piercing. I love the feeling of love. The goblins all then crouch back in the shadows and attempt to hide from you. I just rolled two natural ones. Ooh. On 3D20s. So they don't crouch at all. You don't have any dice left over there at the end of this?

Yeah, for real. The northwestern goblin, the one that's far back in the cave, melts back into the shadows. The other two just sort of ineffectually crouch. one of them lets out a real large fart. Red, it's your turn. I can sense that fart from a mile away. So I'm going to fire at the goblin on the west wall then, since he sort of has the clear shot to Doren right now,

and clearly I'm the only person protecting him. That is going to be a 16 plus 7, which is 23. You hit. Six damage. Palpable hit. Oh, that was palpable. Perfect. I'm going to just then bend down and continue.

Bending. I want to say hiding, but it's not hiding because I'm technically not. You're taking advantage of cover, but you're not hiding from view. Yeah, so I'm just going to get down. Krala.

Kralov pulls out his hooded lantern that he used when he was in the the graveyards. And he is going to take off his holy symbol. He's going to cast light on his symbol of Kellenvore. And then he's going to stick that amulet into the lantern so that it's like emitting this magical light. and then he's going to close the hood and then he can control and open it.

I love that. With his hand. And he's not going to move yet. He's just going to stay there and exchange a look with Jack. Okay. So you spend your turn fucking around with a lantern. That's exactly what I do. I love it.

When you don't have dark vision, you got to spend time to fuck around with lanterns. Jack, what do you do? Jack's going to step a little bit further into the cave away from the glowing target on Kralath. And then pull out his orb and from a. summon some magic missiles to go to the two to the one on the left and one to the one on the right magic missiles six points the one on the left four to the one on the right the one on the left four to the one on the right the one on the left takes all that damage and crumples into a bloody pile as your missiles pummel him to death the one on the right cries out in pain

and I'm going to ask kieran to fly sort of to the north and see if they can spy the one that was hiding over there to see what it's gone hmm kieran flies toward the north of the cave Why don't you make a perception check for him? 13. You fail to see any goblin. Perfect. And we'll just have him land. Doran's turn.

Doran, you're standing at the base of this ledge. You should just climb up and axe that guy. That's what I'm going to do. Okay. Say it's a cool, kill. The walls here are damp and slick as you hear the sound of water echoing throughout the cave. Make an athletics check for me. Nice.

I am athletic, actually. A natural 20. Oh, my God. You skip up the wall. Doran, being the dwarf that he is, living in caves all of his life, is like he's a crombring cake. So he climbs up and he attacks the goblin face to face with a, that'll be a 23. You hit. You absolutely hit.

Oh, nice. With a 10. You kill him. Nice. You kill him right dead. I love getting people's heads off. I'm picturing Doran, like, climbing up really quickly, and as he's, like, pushing himself up, he's got so much momentum from the fast climb.

He just pulls out his axe and, like, comes down in one swift motion. Your feet don't even hit the floor before the goblin is dead. Like, he hits the ground before you do. Sick. Take that, you little piece of shit. Temper. Are you going to eat him? Dora, and you sound a little turned on.

You lick your blade. Yeah. But instead of wiping my. blade with the rag, I use my beard again, which I do have the time. I use my beard to clean my. It's so gross. Your beard is just full of clotted blood. Yeah. It's your eye blood and bits of goblin. Dorn's almost like a like a Viking type thing. Yeah. I like it. The final goblin pops out from where he was hiding behind the boulder and takes a shot at Jack. That's a 17 to hit you, Jack. So it would hit Jack, but he's got a reaction to see, he like sees this bolt coming or maybe

Kieran gives him a little heads up that the goblins appeared in firing. It's whistling through the air toward you. Jack holds his hand up and the shield appears in front of him, bringing his AC up to a 20. Nice. The arrow is deflected. Red, it's your turn. I will pop out and I will attack the

last goblin on the northern west wall with a 17. And I kill it with an 8. And he never screams again. And then Red just stands up and clears his throat. They're all dead. on in to Krayloff, who's like still in the cave entrance.

Is it safe to come in now? Yes, please. Well, I want to do a perception check to see if I see anything. I open the front hood of my lantern and begin casting it around. Also with Detect Magic, I will say. So perception check in the cavern as I walk in and begin looking around. I have been waiting for this orange dye to roll a one. It has rolled several twos, some threes.

A four, a five, barely in the double digits. But on this perception check, this is the first only one that it has rolled. Critical miss. I have been sick of this die for a while. I think it's time for it to go in the shame. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. Shame on you. Shame!

Orange dies down, I'm going with, malty blue. The light just dissolves into the darkness. Yeah, you don't see anything. There's like nothing for the light to bounce off. Guys, I'm going to need your help to navigate this place that's looking like, it'll be all right. Are you guys all going to move into the cave with me? Yeah. You're all taking cover in this little forest of stalagmites.

Yeah, kind of climbing around a little. As you all enter the center of this ring of stalagmites, it becomes clear to you that this is where the ogres had been making their nest. Oh. There are broken shields. There's a lot of mud and matted hair. There are bones, humanoid bones here, that are lately pulled of their flesh. Oh, no. Can I look around for anything of any use?

Is there stuff that the ogres have left there that maybe is valuable? I'll save you the rule. There's nothing terribly interesting here. A lot of it smells really bad. There are six tunnels that branch off from the cavern. If we're going around the clock face, there's one at 12 o'clock, one at two o'clock. one at four o'clock, your entrance that you came in through is six o'clock. That's the south of the cave. Then there's another one at, we'll say, seven, nine, and ten o'clock. So like the spokes

of a wheel, six exits from the main cavern branch out into darkness ahead of you. So in seven o'clock, which is the first one sort of to the southwestern. That's the one I'm flying down first. Okay. Kieran flies down these narrow tunnels and it leads to a cramped network of caves. It's really cool to imagine this owl, kind of flapping its wings through a cave. I think we've all seen those National Geographic or BBC, you know, like... Past the fallen ogreheads, the native barn owl flies through the wet, damp cave. That's right.

It tries to make a nest within the goblin carcass. As Kieran flies through these caves and tunnels, he finds seven... small clusters of goblins. You notice that these goblins seem to be smaller than the other ones that had been fighting in the cavern. There's a couple of them who are huddled together on a mat of furs. There is in the far, far western end, kind of a spiraling type tunnel leads into a big pile of bones. Mostly small animals. Yeah, okay. Some humanoid bones. I think I'll ask here and I'll like fly and land on the bones for a minute, just to maybe get a better sense of what sorts of creatures that are here that they've been eating.

Just roll of perception, please. I would love to. 13. Some of these bones were recently stripped of flesh, humanoid. Oh. You don't find anything of interest. apart from that. And the small goblins that I saw huddling,

they look like children, like non-combatants, kind of... There are 14 overall between all of the different warrens, this warren of tunnels. They are clustered together and they look worriedly out toward the cave entrance.

Some of them see Kieran flying by and crawl backward into the darkness. And I think sort of having done a pass-through, Kieran leaps off the bones, flies one more pass through the cave, and comes lands on Jack's shoulder, and Jack's eyes come back to his face, and he stands up and walks back towards the center stalagmite to report what he's found down the southwest corridor. It's harrowing. They're, they're just children, but they've been eating people. We need to find what survivors are left. There's no one down that corridor and left alive if they're just a pile of bones and the young

Goblins. Should I do the next corridor? Yeah. This is taking an unexpected reality turn. You're like, oh shit. I mean, goblins are creatures, let's kill them. But babies? Baby goblin? We can't think about that. Listen. I can't not think about it. We're here now. We're going to do the best we can to save as many people as we possibly can. Okay. In the meantime, I'm going to go back and check those ogre bodies. They might have some things that we could use. Good thinking. I'll come with you. All right. I'll stay here heroically.

Craylath, what do you find in the bodies there? The ogres were carrying giant-sized javelins. Okay. Very large clubs about the size of your leg. Okay. Any studded leather armor? Yeah, you would be swimming in it if so. No, these ogres were only protected by their thick hides.

You find nothing. interest. You know, you're kind of doing, you're searching and you're, and you look up and there's Doran, he's sort of like caressing the buttocks of the ogre, feeling the hide. You know, if we had some more time, I might take it upon myself to fashion some studded leather armor out of this ogre hide. Stop it right there, Doran. Don't you feel like you've mutilated these corpse in the office? Jack shivers at this look in Doran's eyes and like quickly wants to be out of his body as fast as possible and leaps back into Kieran to explore the next passage. Where do you send Kieran?

We're going out at 9 o'clock on the west, the west tunnel. This passageway splits into a fork. I would like to know whether you take the north fork. Let's do the south fork. We're going to go clockwise as much as we can here. All right. Kieran flies into the darkness and, Jack, you see that there is an ankle-deep stream here in this passageway.

It's pouring through a narrow tunnel in the west. wall and forms a small pool in this otherwise empty cave. The tunnel that exits from this cavern seems to go on for quite a while. Do you want to continue down that way or head north? If it just goes seemingly straight on forever or for a long wise and I don't hear anything or see anything other than the stream, I might continue on to see what's in the north. Indeed. You come to a large round rock that fills a four-foot diameter tunnel on the west side of this passageway. So your way is blocked, and then ahead of you, the tunnel continues. Does the rock look like it had been moved or anything?

Why don't you make a perception check? 13. The boulder seems to fit snugly in this tunnel, but there are signs, scrapes along the cave wall that would intimate that this boulder is moved frequently. Okay. I'll fly back at that point and walk back to the center. I found something. It might be the prison where they're keeping them. It's a big boulder that's blocking a tunnel, but it looks like it's been scraped on and moved. Like they could be keeping prisoners in there. There is another passage that seemed to go on quite a ways with a stream in it that looks like it could, I don't know if it leads outside or leads somewhere deep down. I didn't follow it very far. And there's more passage to the north of this boulder. I didn't explore, but if this is the jail, I thought I'd see if we can move that boulder. I think if there's a way to look, you said there was a passage to the south. If there's a way that Kieran could fly around just to see where that ends.

Okay, well, I'll send Kieran to look that way while we go look at the boulder. Kieran flies through the narrow tunnel, follows the stream out. And after about three minutes of flight, having to take rests because it's difficult to fly through this narrow tunnel, he makes his way out into the sunlight, the dappled hill. Yeah, and I'm not inhabiting their body at this point. I'm just waiting them, letting them go explore and come back. Is it wide enough for people to get through? Yes. Yeah.

Okay. So we'll go investigate the boulder that Jack pointed out to us. So I'm going to head down the passage where the boulder was. I'll head stealthily down because I want to listen at that boulder to see if I can hear anything behind it. Is anyone else coming with you? Yes. I mean, sort of leading the way there. I'll stay 15, 20 feet behind you.

Yeah. So you're leading from behind. Well, she's being like that way. and, you know, at every junction. Is anyone else coming? It goes red, then whom? I'm going to stay back with Doran. Doran would go after, or before Kraloff at least.

Yeah, but we're both staying back by the mouth in the main lobby area. The lobby. What is this? As Red looks down that pathway and Jack sort of says, oh, it's to the left, I'm going to just going to take a quick second and I'm going to cast cure wounds on myself because we didn't take a rest and I'm down a fair amount of hit points and Kralov doesn't want to heal me.

So I get back five hit points. Sick. Perfect. And then I'm going to stealth down that passageway. Roll stealth. Yeah, no. Seven. Oof. Ah, cha, cha, cha.

I need some studded leather armor. You need to stop making that noise, but you sneak. I have my bow readied, obviously. This is a goblin-infested cave. have detected over 50. We have only killed seven. Obviously, there are more.

Red, as you walk down this hallway, you get to in front of the boulder and you're actually able to see a little ways down the continuation of the passageway. You are not a stealthy sneaker. I mean, I am, but my armor is really fucking me up. There's about half a dozen giant rats in this cavern. And they're busily stripping the flesh from the corpse of a human adult. Oh, fuck. As you watch from the corner of your eye, two goblins stand over the rats, poking them with sharp sticks and talking to each other.

You can't understand them. The goblins are watching you. A larger goblin with a stained chain shirt stretched over his pot belly stands nearby, grinning at you and strokes the handle of his scimitar. Are the giant rats beasts? That's a fair assumption. Can I use my primeval awareness? How long does that take? No time.

I have the innate ability to communicate with beasts, and they recognize you as a kindred spirit. Through sounds and gestures, you can communicate simple ideas to a beast as an action and read its basic mood and intent. Most importantly, I learn its emotional state, weather is affected by magic of any sort, its short-term needs, such as food and safety, and actions you can take to persuade it not to attack. Red sees these giant rats and kneels and holds out a hand to sort of catch the glint of their eyes. And I want to learn the emotional state of these rats, and most importantly, what I can do to persuade it not to attack. Okay. These rats are not affected by any magic.

Perfect. They are very happy right now. As they are being fed, you know that they are pleased to be in the company of their masters. They are well cared for. Their sleek, glossy coats speak to this. What actions can I take to persuade it not to attack? Probably by not being an eyesight.

These are beloved pets. They all look up at you, and the goblin with a chain shirt pulls his scimitar free from his waist, points it at you and says something menacing in goblin that you don't understand. Everybody roll for initiative. Oh, shit. Krayloff, what did you get? Three. Jack?

I got a six. Doren? I got a five. That kind of makes sense because you. you guys are off down the hallway. Yeah, isn't that funny? 21. Red, it's your turn.

Red stands up from the crouched position he had, sort of interacting with the giant rats. So we've come into this cave. We've seen a bunch of the baby goblins. We've killed the other goblins. No matter what we say to this guy, the best he's going to give us some sort of back and forth

of like, oh, you know, we'll let. But look, at the end of the day, they killed humans. It doesn't matter. So Red is going to spend his bonus action to cast Hunter's Mark on the chieftain. and I'm going to fire. And because he has not taken an action yet,

I'm going to roll with advantage, because that's just what I can do. Do it. I dare you. 21 to hit? Oh, yeah. Hmm. Right?

Yes, I'm going to quickly interject because the goblin boss has a reaction. Oh. When he becomes the target of an attack, he chooses another goblin within five feet of him and pulls that goblin in front of him. and that other goblin takes the hit. Oh, shit.

Interesting. So he grabs one of the other goblins in the cave, pulls her in front of him, and plet. Interesting. So that changes a lot because I cast Hunter's Mark on him. How much damage does the arrow deal without Hunter's Mark? Only seven. The arrow takes her a square in the stomach, and then he tosses her body aside. So it still kills that one goblin.

And then I am going to run. back down the cave towards this sort of choke point where we first started. And I'm going to be in a position where I have about 20 feet from the mouth behind now Kralof and Doren. So that anything coming down that tunnel I can name at around the corner. And as I'm running by, I would say, I missed him. I'm like, I'm just like running down the hall being like, fire out of the chief, missed them. Get ready. And he kind of like bumps our shoulders as he rushes by. You're trying to lose them back here. They're going to follow for sure. There's all. Also about 10 giant rats.

Then this is where we make our stand. You hear some low chattering in Goblin and then the pitter-patter of tiny feet as you are swarmed by giant rats. They approach you from all directions. All directions? From the tunnel. Unless she means they're not just coming from the tunnel,

but are they also coming in a pincer type movement. They surround Doran, Jack, and Kraloff. Their faces are. slick with blood. Jack, it's your turn. Yeah, this is being surrounded by giant rats, not Jack's favorite place to be in the world. What, are they dog-sized rats? You know, they're, they're small Shetland pony-sized rats. They're not quite horse-sized, but they are definitely, you know, medium. They're person-sized. I don't know, how big are they. Yeah, they're about, um, Doberman size. That, that is a big, that's a lot of rat.

Seeing these rats in front of him, Jack is going to pull out his orb and put the flaming sphere behind the two rats that are east of me, sort of between myself and red. Yeah, so you have three rats within five feet of you, and you're going to drop a flaming sphere behind them. Yes. So two rats are being menaced by this sphere directly. Yeah, I'm going to just turn around and as a bonus action, I can move the spear on my turn. So I might want to crash the spear into one of these rats. Do it. And so it can make me a dexterity saving throw.

That's a 15. So it'll take three damage. So, Jack, you place this sphere of fire behind two of the rats, and then you ram it into the back of one of the rats. And it takes three damage. Don't worry about your lantern now, Kralath. You can see with the light of the sphere. Oh, good move, friend.

I think I'm almost like back to back with Kralath now. Yeah, yeah. Like there's this element of we're surrounded by rats. We got Doren behind us. Doran, you are furthest down the western corridor, and there's a rat directly in front of you. Its little rat face is full of blood, and it wiggles its nose at you. You little rat face. Doran's wide body acts as an iron door to this cavern, essentially blocking Kralath and Jack from the Western front.

Right. We're all quiet. That's right. Just this intimidating massive. Natural. attacks, obviously, with a 20. That's your second natural 20. Wow.

This yellow dye. Roll all of your damaged dice twice. All right. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Oh, shit. Plus, so 19 damage to the rat in front of me. Even if the rats were allowed to make death saves, this one wouldn't be able to because you double killed it.

Like lumber. What does it look like? oh my axe I lifted far above my head and it comes down you know with such force is as if it was dissected oh you see the yeah you see the brain and the skull and everything kind of just separate dice sected Nice size. The name of our next hit podcast. Kralath, what do you do? So I see Jack has placed this flame. It's actually so bright.

And I no longer need me and my lantern. So I'm just going to put it on the ground and I'm going to pull out my mace. And as I pull it from my belt, I'm going to swing at the one that he's already hit with the flame. Okay. Do you still have your shield out? I do. Okay. I do.

I do. Rolling to hit. That is a 20 to hit. Absolutely. And I'm going to roll 1D6. So seven bludgeoning damage. You kill it. All right, my mace connects with its skull

and smashes its singed fur and face into bits. And Doran turns around and exclaims to Creeloth. Yes! Killing rats. And there's got to be some battle music in here. Red, you are sort of on the other side of this flaming sphere as you took to the stalagmites earlier. What do you do now?

Well, obviously, we've been pincest. by these rats. Where are they coming from beyond the tunnel that I just ran out of? There is another exit from that tunnel. You would have to presume. I see. Now, there are only rats out here. I don't see any goblins or anything like that. You don't see any goblins. So I'm a bit torn. Part of me says just attack the rats with maybe something like hail of thorns because it's an area of effect and I can help you guys out. However, you seem to be dispatching them pretty easily. The other part of me says, I don't think the goblin king, which is what I'm calling him from here on now, has acted yet. And if I

readied an action to sort of aim at that tunnel entrance for when he comes out, I could knock him right between the eyes. But maybe we should just dispatch the rats first. So I'm just going to regularly attack the rats, I think, because I only have one spell slot left, and I want to keep Hunter's mark on the guy and its concentration. If I changed, I would have to redo it. So I will attack one of the rats, whichever one is closest to Jack. I think he's the one who needs the help the most. Thank you. Yeah, there's one that's right in front of Jack. So I'll tack the one nearest jack. That is a natural 20. Oh, holy shit. I will be killing this thing twice over. You'll be trying. Well, yeah, so that's 13 damage plus three, so 16 damage. Yeah,

you also double kill it. Yeah, and for my movement, I am going to head back towards the Delightites and try to get into as much cover as I can, away from sort of the north, since I knew they swung around north, and right now we've sort of plugged the southern entrance. I'm expecting this goblin king to head from the north a little bit, and I want to be ready for that bastard when he pokes his greasy little head out of the cave. All right. It's the rat's turns. The one rat that was up north in the cave comes down toward Jack and launches itself at him.

I'm launching myself. I'm launching myself, hoping to make a lunch of you. Lunching for lunch. 16 to hit? It would hit, but I'm going to use my last first-level spell slot to pull up a shield. Just as it launches to grab at me, there's just a force field in front of its face. It bangs into the field and stops dead at my feet. Nicely done.

The two rats that are down the tunnel from Doran continue to approach, the one that is able to get itself through to him, fails to sink his teeth into your legs. And then the one that is up against Kralath with its back to a flaming sphere tries to bite him. 17 to hit. That is a miss. It clanks off my shield.

And then he tries to scamper up away from the flaming sphere. That succeeds. He climbs up the side of the wall and is directly above Kralath. If you like, you can make an opportunity attack, Krayloff. Oh, I gladly will. Squish that rat onto the wall. That's an attack of opportunity. That's going to be an 11 to hit.

You miss. All right. Jack, it's your turn. I am going to start by tolling the dead of this one. I just stopped with the force field in front of me. It's smashed its face into there, and I'll pull my oar about and start to sort of try and pull its life force into it. I don't need to roll anything. You need to roll.

While she's rolling, just said to curiosity, was that force field like a reaction? Yeah, I do have a reaction. That's wicked. How did that work? Okay. Sandy. 15. That will save.

I am going to then, I have two options here. I can move the flaming sphere to plug the hole from the north so nothing can come out that way. Or I can, I'm just going to swing it around to bash into the back of this one that's in front of me. Absolutely. Do I make a deck save? You do now make a deck save. Yep. That is a 10.

That's seven damage as this fiery ball rolls right over it. Seven damage? Seven damage. He dies. Cooked rats. He crisps right up and falls right over. Doran begins to salivate. What's that amazing smell?

What's that delicious scent? Cave rat. Now what do you do, Doran? Doran just attacks the rat that took a snip at his ankle and missed. Third Natural 20. Come on. Oh. Nine.

No, you miss the rat. What happens next? Krayloff. Crayloth sees this rat scamper up to the side. He tries to swing at it and isn't able to. And now that it's kind of out of my range, right? I can't take a melee attack against him. You're pretty tall guy.

You could definitely try. I would say maybe that would be it with disadvantage because he's up 10 feet. I see him snarling and salivating at me and I smile. I put my mace away. And I'm going to cast the spell sacred flame. And so he's going to make a dexterity saving throw. So your holy symbol was in the lantern, right? Yes, it was.

So is this like you're using the lantern in the... Do I need my holy symbol for this? You do, for all of your spellcasting. Okay, then in that case, I put my mace away, I pick up the lantern, and then... You shoot fire out of it? I shoot fire out of it. Oh, fuck, yes. He fails his deck save.

Okay, and then he's going to take three points of damage. All right. He crisps up just a little bit. Just a little bit of crisping. Red, what do you do? I'm going to kill the one above Kralov. All right. With a natural 20!

Oh, my God. What is going on with your dice? And on such stupid animals. How much damage do you do? I do 10 points of damage. Then you kill it. Nice. Fuck these things.

That's two rats left, right? That's two rats left. I almost have this picture of like, Kraylock pulls out his flame, and then red shoots an arrow through it, and then all of a sudden it becomes as like a rat on a spit. And it's just like a nice cooked. And I shout out and I say,

The old one, too, Krayloff. That's the real old one, too. We got a new one now. Oh, yeah. Which we haven't tried yet. We'll do it. One of the rats launches itself at Doren, who is momentarily distracted by this light flying out of the lantern and crisping up the rat behind him. The other rat launches itself at your legs and deals maximum damage on a natural 20.

Oh, no. Oh, my God. 10 points of rat damage. That's 10 points of rat damage. That's the worst kind of damage. How much hit? Rats. I have three hit points left.

Jack. Jack, it's your turn. Jack looks back, sees the rats to the west of Doran, and hands his sphere out that way and tries to pull the life force out of one of those. That's an eight? An eight, is that one injured? No. It will take five points of damage.

Now it certainly is injured. And then I will slide the flaming sphere up to the north, into the northwest tunnel and sort of follow it that way, staying about 15 feet southeast of it. So Jack is going to walk up through the cavern following this sphere of fire. Okay. Doran, it's your turn. Oh, I'll attack.

Okay. That rat that just took a huge bite out of you? Yeah, with a 14. Yes. Okay. Seven damage. You kill it. Okay, perfect.

You just chop it into liver. And then I'm going to use my bonus action to use my second wind. Okay. Great call. So critical. 1D10, which is this one. So eight points of damage regained. Wow, good good stuff.

Good game for Doran this session. He also got inspiration this session. Yes, he did. Kralov, it's your turn. There's one rat remaining. All right. So just a meta thing. So like my healing, I've got a really great advantage.

If I try to cast a heel on you right now, I have to roll for it. If I let you go to zero and then cast on you, then you get full of the healing spell. All of his rules are automatically. Don't try to heal me right now. Okay. So I'm going to cast Sacred Flame on the one that Ajacted Toll the Dead On. The final rat.

So it has to roll a deck save and That's a 12. He's going to take eight points of damage. He's going to die. All right. Just erupts in a flame of light. Congratulations. You guys killed a bunch of rats.

Yeah. I love this picture of the lantern and this fire coming out of it to like this rat on fire. That's cool as shit. Yeah. And then Doran just smelling that cooked rat and getting hungry. The sound of Doran's, the sound of Doran's stomach growling echoes throughout the cavern. Well, looky here. It's Hark, crying in the dark, or at least some goblin fiend.

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